beginnings.

I have wanted to be a surgeon since I was knee-high to a tadpole.  When I was very small (maybe a year or two), my great uncle, from Australia, gave me a stuffed koala.  I still have it; it has a place on my vanity.  

I performed 'surgery' on it from the moment my parents allowed something remotely sharp in my chubby little hands.  There are slashes across the belly (I can hear the rant of one of my former attendings, "Horses have bellies, humans have abdomens!"  Well, Dr.___, this is a KOALA!!), and I had chopped off all of the claws (why?!).  I also had a doll (the chosen one), who came down with multiple imaginary ailments, of which I would repeatedly cure her.  My poor cats were also my experiments--don't worry, not surgically, of course, but--I would constantly check their noses to see if they were the proper temperature.  If they were the slightest bit warm, they were immediately subject to tea bag compresses and warm tea to drink.  The poor things were very tolerant, and I was smart enough, I suppose, to realize that a few sips of human tea to a cat, meant the world to me.  When I was in first grade, one of our teachers asked us to draw ourselves as 'What we would be when we grew up.'  There I was, by a patient's hospital bed, in scrubs, a white coat... I think I even had a mask on!  

Sure, I had little forays... I love to draw, so I seriously considered architecture.  I looked into schools.  But, the human body proved too fascinating to me.  One of my college professors suggested (much to the complete and utter horror of my parents) that I had "it" to be the next F.H. Netter.  An amazing compliment, to be sure, which left my parents speechless--literally, they wouldn't speak to me for days, nay, weeks.  I entertained a double major--BS in biology with a BA in fine arts, but settled on the aforementioned BS with a minor in fine arts/drawing... and, in the end, I found my way back to my original passion.  Medicine, in the true art form of caring for people, not just drawing them, and their ailments, and later:  surgery, in my true, and original calling.

(For those wondering, even with the above excerpts, it is much easier for me to care for humans than animals.  Humans can tell you (usually) more easily what's wrong... ditto for peds.  Note that I am NOT a pediatric surgeon.  Further, I have a hard time dealing with the parents of said patients.)