The decision to go and specialize, especially in Pathology, is not one to be taken lightly. Consequently I have given this decision a considerable amount of thought.
The dream started as a child still in primary school in Parys, Free State. As a budding and enquiring young scientist, I asked my father many questions about this and that, but one of the main questions which I asked was: Why was there no cure for HIV?
The question elicited many further questions which my father needed to answer for me, but one of them was about how would I go about finding a cure for HIV. His advice included being very thorough in Biology, Chemistry, and especially Biochemistry. This sparked several thoughts in my mind and whenever I came across anything being related to Biology or Chemistry, I’m interested to read more, inquire more and find out more.
So I studied medicine because of an unquenchable desire to learn more about the origin of disease. Although being well at Mechanics and Mathematics, I decided to embark on the journey of becoming a physician. As a student I was fascinated by Medical Biochemistry, which we had as a subject from second semester. I spent my afternoons and nights reading up and studying protein structures in 3D format on PyMol using the Protein Databank as reference and going through the amino acids in sequence trying to figure out why the protein looks as it is, why it functions like it does and how the one viewed is different from the one in our textbooks…
Medical Biochemistry and the Roche Poster of Biochemical Pathways enticed me so much when I saw it at the entrance of the Biochemistry Department that I put two versions of it up in my room when studying so that I could view the bigger picture. In second and third year I was quite thorough at Medical Biochemistry and I enrolled at the University’s Tutor Program and tutored the year-younger students in Medical Biochemistry as well as Physiology. This granted me great pleasure, as well as something extra in the back pocket as a student.
