From patient to doctor

Mirae “Sunny” Kim, a junior at Memorial High School, wants to study neurology. Here she is at a National Youth Leadership Forum on medicine with her sister Yeseul.

When I was young, I was pretty sure that I was cursed. Judging by the unusual number of injuries and coincidental scars on me, there seemed to be some supernatural force around me that caused incidents that hurt me. If there was an iron nail on the ground, I would fall on it and get it stuck in my elbow. If I tried to walk up the stairs with a glass bottle, I would trip and get a piece of glass stuck in my forearm. If I zoned out for one second on my bike, a car would come and hit me, but wound me with only broken bones, not fatal injuries. As this trail of accidents, mostly caused from my carelessness, continued on, I got accustomed to not only scars and cuts but also the sight of blood.

Not knowing that I was unusually prone to injuries, I fascinated myself with types of wounds and what emergency “protocol” works best for each types. When a nail was stuck in my arm, I actually tried to remove the nail myself and looked at the broken muscles and bones. Unlike other fifth-grade girls, the sight of blood and the interior of my body thrilled me (in a very non-psychotic way). That’s how it all started. Those little exposures to the human body built up this huge curiosity in my mind, asking, “So what’s really inside of me?” To answer that question, I needed more information, experiments and, most importantly, experience.

So I decided to go into medicine. My goal was simple: Find what fascinates me, and learn whatever I can about it. Looking back at my small injuries and cuts, I now know that they were probably not because of a curse or because I was special; I was just one of those kids who were reckless and childish. But now what seemed like a curse seems more like a blessing to me. Because of my “curse” I know what I want to be now.

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