Session 36
What happens when the patient becomes the medical student, and then sets out to become the surgeon who treated him? Join host Deana Golini as she sits down with Antony Alvarado, a third-year student in the UCLA and Charles R. Drew University Medical Education Program and a two-time survivor of pediatric brain cancer. Antony was diagnosed at nine years old in January 2010, after a week of small headaches turned into an emergency CT scan and an active bleed. He spent nearly a month in the hospital, and somewhere in there decided that if he made it out, he would pursue medicine. He spent years telling his neurosurgeon not to retire before he finished medical school. Then in 2017, exactly seven years to the date of his first diagnosis, a scan found eight tumors across his brain and spine. His surgery was canceled four days before it was scheduled because the treatment would not have left him a good quality of life, and he did 13 months of chemotherapy instead. He has had no progression of disease since 2018. He walks through what it took to keep performing academically through all of it, including the neuropsychological evaluations that secured his accommodations from grade school through the MCAT and now the USMLEs, and the half-day senior year schedule that let him get chemo weekly and still graduate. He explains the UCLA and Charles Drew partnership for anyone building a school list, why he is taking a research year with zero publications to his name, and how founding Latinos in Surgery came out of watching Spanish-speaking patients visibly relax the moment someone on the team spoke their language. He also makes the case for a studio art minor in sculpture and photography inside a biochemistry degree, and how learning to read an image translates directly to reading a scan. If Antony’s story changes what you think a future neurosurgeon looks like, hit the like button, share your reflections in the comments, and subscribe for weekly conversations tracing the realities of the medical journey.
Full show notes coming soon!
