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Fighters can be made, but they can be born, too.

Trauma is my baseline. Typical. I’m a Black American female. Trauma is in my DNA. Trauma like the verbal and emotional assault on Kentaji Brown Jackson or the convoluted humiliation of Jada Pinkett Smith. Or Trauma like, you know, chattel slavery.

“Research has shown that the effects of trauma can be intergenerationally passed on through epigenetic mechanisms, such as methylation (264). Specifically, childhood trauma has been associated with alteration in methylation patterns in human sperm, which may induce intergenerational effects.”

Trauma “can result from the influence of the offspring’s early environmental exposures, including postnatal maternal care as well as in utero exposure reflecting maternal stress during pregnancy.”

That being said, My life is traumatic. From the beginning to now, my life has been a wavy line. An upward trend of blips. Now, my childhood was grand. Phenomenal. For its entirety, I was fiercely loved and nurtured. The shenanigans began after I left the nest.

For some context, I dropped into this world two months early to a mother struggling with undiagnosed Lupus (It was the 90s. They truly had no idea. I also had a heart condition called supraventricular tachycardia when I was 4. (I described the tachycardic (fast heartbeat) episodes as my heart “breaking”.) I started my medical education at 26 and was diagnosed with hypertension at 28. I had my first stroke at 29. My second stroke was at 30. My life began with stress…

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Signed Out: How my two strokes signed me out of my painstakingly planned medical education
Signed Out: How my two strokes signed me out of my painstakingly planned medical education

Published in Signed Out: How my two strokes signed me out of my painstakingly planned medical education

I had two strokes during medical school. Let’s talk about one and what I learned about life along the way.

AW
AW

Written by AW

I'm a 4th year medical student recovering from two strokes. I'm here navigating my new life & life in general. come follow me! join me! It'll be an adventure!

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