Miriam Mutebi, Breast Surgical Oncologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at the Aga Khan University Hospital, shared on LinkedIn:
“The first time I knew I wanted to be a surgeon, I was eight.
I was standing barefoot in my grandmother’s bedroom, watching her try to fasten the buttons on her blue cotton dress.
She wore that same dress to church every Sunday. Her fingers were slow. Arthritis had settled into her hands, and the button kept slipping. She tried again and again. And again.
When she finally looked up and saw me at the door, she smiled.
‘Come here, child. Help me.’
I crossed the room and knelt in front of her. I buttoned the dress from the bottom up. She smoothed the fabric, stood, reached for her handbag, and walked out, steady steps, straight to church.
At eight, I didn’t have language for disease or degeneration. I only knew that something had failed in my grandmother’s body. And I thought: someone should be able to fix this.
I decided that someone would be me, but it took me a while to get there, because I had ‘an abundance of interests.’ At one point I wanted to be a doctor, lawyer, architect, pharmacist, publisher, writer, everything at once.
My father referred to my state of affairs as fortunate.
‘What matters,’ he said more than once, ‘is WHAT you do with it.’
Before university, I volunteered at a law firm, a community pharmacy, and a publishing house. Each offered something, but none felt quite complete.
Then almost as an afterthought, I walked through the doors of AGA KHAN UNIVERSITY Hospital.
That evening, when I went home and told my father that I was still torn between pursuing medicine and writing.
His response:
‘If you do medicine, you can still write. If you only write, it may be difficult to do medicine.’
And here we are, still plying the walls of Aga Khan two decades later…a surgeon who writes .
Have you grabbed Stuff Id Tell My Sister?
What was the moment you knew what you were meant to do?”
Other articles featuring Miriam Mutebi on OncoDaily.
