Name: Daniel Robert Crockford
Faculty: Faculty of Medicine and Health
Course: Doctor of Philosophy
Theme: Challenges
In 2015, I started studying medicine at the University of Sydney after an arduous decision over my career choices. It’s a decision many are faced with at that time of life and only a good education can be your guide. Despite that it determines the direction of a lifetime. I took several years to consider this as no one in my family had ever tried to become a doctor, so I had no reference to its demands. However, I was a bird on the breeze, as if I were made to treat people. I sat in surgeries, clinics, and spent nights in the emergency department at Royal Prince Alfred to check I could cope with the demands that came with the job. By luck, a high school friend of mine started medicine in the same cohort as me which meant that I already had a study partner, like I just had to add a stitch to an already rich tapestry. By my second year, I was tutoring, sports coaching, working in a bike shop and doing research in a lab at the university. It was early the following year, I met someone that changed my life.
Near the end of my second year in medical school, my mum was in a fatal car accident while riding her bike. We spent about two weeks going to see her condition in the hospital. Her heart had kept pumping though nothing else worked. After two weeks, the decision was made that everything which could be tried, had been. Despite this setback, I didn’t falter in any examinations.
I deferred the following year to pursue my other passion, scientific research, by doing a Master of Philosophy at the university with the same group that I had been working with. It was 2017 by now and I was still doing the same sorts of things I had a year ago. My intention was to convert my MPhil to a PhD so I could keep working on it while I completed my time at medical school. I looked for places that my partner and I could move into. In July, I had a stroke. I had planned to see an apartment in the afternoon but that morning I was rushed into the emergency department, this time as a patient. With some complications, I was in a coma for most of the rest of the year. I finally left the hospital in October of the next year. My partner and I moved in together in 2019.
My new task, unexpectedly, was getting better. I couldn’t walk; use either hand properly; speak properly; swallow properly or read. Life was quite different from what I expected at the start of my medical degree. There was a chasm between how I was and how I thought I should have been. Throughout my recovery, I’ve needed a lot of help and, only by receiving aid, have I gotten to any point. I’m just the ball being passed among a team that’s gaining advantage. I never knew what I was capable of – it’s not something I could ever have done before – instead I keep getting supported up this slope.
The process of recovery was like perpetual lockdown and there was a lot of work to be done so there would need to be a big change. I had reached a point where I could use my hands well enough to use a keyboard and my eyesight was good enough now that I could read from a large computer monitor. Once again, I enrolled in a MPhil degree. I could re-skill as a different kind of scientist. I’d learn to work from home and a degree would prove I was good at it.
There had been several critical changes at USyd in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic which meant that I could no longer work with the same supervisor as before. I could work with someone who had similar interests to my old supervisor, with a more computer-heavy approach. Enrolment was the next hurdle. It’s like paddling up a wave. A lot of effort and clever timing is needed to get through it but it’s very relieving when it’s done and it’s time to float down the other side. Of course, the respite is short-lived as the next wave is visible and approaching by the time you reach the trough.
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