Med School Student Passes Out at the Start of Her Second Year, 7 Weeks Later She’s Diagnosed with Leukemia (Exclusive)

Mackenzie Paul stood observing a nurse throughout a scientific rotation on her first day of her second yr of medical faculty at Michigan State College School of Human Medication when swiftly she began to really feel faint.

On the time, the 23-year-old former school athlete at Lake Superior State College did not assume a lot of it. She tells PEOPLE she sat down on a sofa within the affected person’s room and put her head in between her arms, hoping it might assist her really feel higher. However then she handed out.

“I woke as much as 5 nurses standing round me and it was simply bizarre,” Paul says. “I assumed I hadn’t eaten sufficient, or drank sufficient or slept sufficient ‘trigger being a medical scholar, it is exhausting to handle your self. So, I brushed it off.”

The next week, Paul was on the identical rotation at Spectrum Well being Hospitals Butterworth Hospital when she observed herself feeling dizzy once more.

“I used to be simply standing in a single spot not shifting in a affected person’s room,” she says. “I’ve seen numerous totally different procedures. There is a distinction between seeing blood and being grossed out by it however it wasn’t something like that.”

Paul known as her main care physician who steered she get labs and bloodwork completed. Seven weeks afterward Aug. 17, Paul was recognized with acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

AML is a most cancers of the blood and bone marrow affecting a gaggle of white blood cells referred to as the myeloid cells, based on the Mayo Clinic. Signs could embrace fever, bone ache, fatigue, shortness of breath, simple bruising and frequent infections.

“Apart from being extra drained I actually did not have any signs,” she says. “My complete life I have been actually wholesome. I used to be a school athlete. However I bear in mind taking a look at my labs and I used to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, that is horrible.’ ”

Paul remembers, “The medical doctors have been fairly amazed that I did not get sick in any respect as a result of all my white blood cells have been actually low,” explaining that she “got here into the hospital as an outpatient with my prognosis and most AML sufferers are admitted after going to the ER as a result of they’re so sick.”

She provides, “I used to be actually fortunate that I listened to my physique and received the blood work completed and figured it out earlier than it did become one thing a lot worse.”

Since her prognosis Paul’s taken a go away of absence from medical faculty to give attention to her well being. She spent 5 weeks on the hospital after receiving her first spherical of chemotherapy.

Whereas she has since been launched, Paul will proceed upkeep chemo till she finds a donor for a bone marrow transplant — one thing that can hopefully happen inside the subsequent few months. 

“My total life, every thing’s been in my management,” Paul says. “This you may’t research tougher for, to make your labs go up or have the result you need. It is very humbling and I simply must have religion. I do not know why that is occurring to me, however it’ll make me a greater particular person and a greater future physician.”

She provides, “I hope individuals take away that religion, household, and group give us power when issues are out of our management, and that these issues have saved me preventing every single day.”