Shot down in flight

A dozen or so years ago, an extremely energetic brunette, probably a fifth-year student of the Medical Faculty of the Medical University of Warsaw, Ania Waszczuk, came to my office with a declaration that she intends to work in a hematology research club. Her extraordinary intelligence was visible to the naked eye, and also her enthusiasm for scientific work, but it was not a bookworm type. Conversely, she was a very attractive person, sure of her femininity. Ania was active in three scientific circles and she had a significant share in each of them. Then I found out that she was the winner of the 1st place at the National Chemistry Olympiad and the Silver Medal at the International Chemistry Olympiad, where she represented Poland.

I was very proud of myself that I managed to get her to work in our Clinic. She addressed sepsis shock in patients with blood disorders, but before she got her PhD, she got married and had a son. She did other specializations: in internal medicine, hematology, clinical oncology, and she never managed to finish transplantology. She dealt with myeloma, its worst-prognostic form with kidney damage. Polish dialysis patients with myeloma owe her the fact that, like others, they can be treated with a hematopoietic cell transplant.

The clouds started when her Mom developed ovarian cancer. Mum was cured, but Ania also turned out to have the BRCA1 mutation. Maybe if at the age of 34-35 she decided to have her ovaries removed, she would be alive. Maybe. She was in control, but discovered five years ago that she was also sick herself. She began a dramatic fight for her life. In the meantime, she completed her habilitation. And she practiced all possible ways of fighting the disease. And at the same time she was trembling for both the Husband and the Son. When I was leaving for a few days she was already in a very bad condition, when I returned I read on the hospital computer screen: "the patient has died". She was 41 years old and one of the greatest talents of this generation of Polish doctors. Thank you, Ania, for being there and for having the honor of meeting you.