Medical student with cancer taking part in white coat ceremony | al ...

MOBILE, Alabama -- Shortly after being accepted to the University of South Alabama College of Medicine two years ago, Tom Garth was diagnosed with cancer.

He had surgery to remove a tumor, then joined his classmates in the fall to begin the formidable task of training to become a doctor. Last year, while studying for exams, he got news that the cancer was back.

This time, doctors urged chemotherapy.

A few hours after his last exam, Garth was hooked up to a machine to pump cancer-fighting drugs into his body. He spent much of last summer undergoing the intensive intravenous treatments.

?Unless you?ve been through it, people just can?t appreciate the difficulty of chemotherapy,? said his father, also named Tom Garth. ?He?ll be able to look at a patient and tell them, ?I know what you are going through and there is a way out on the other side.??

Today, the 27-year-old Garth and other rising third-year students at USA will receive white coats during an annual ceremony to recognize the physicians-in-training.

In the U.S., medical schools typically organize four-year curriculums into two phases: pre-clinical and clinical. At USA, students spend the first two years in a classroom setting learning the fundamentals of science and pathology. They devote the next two years to hands-on training under the supervision of faculty and resident physicians.

?It?s going to be so amazing,? Garth said of entering his clinical years. ?I?ve always dreamed of being a doctor. Now I?m going to have something tangible to show for it and I?ll have an opportunity to serve others.?

During the white-coat ceremony, students take the Medical Student Oath, a pledge to honor and uphold the human aspects of medicine.

?I really believe that life is about relationships,? Garth said, ?and the people at South really solidified that. Everyone kind of banded together and helped me out. I didn?t feel alone throughout it.?

Garth said that his prognosis is ?very, very promising.? Follow-up tests in the past year have detected no cancer cells.

But he said he won?t feel comfortable saying that he?s cancer-free, or a cancer survivor, until he has five years of clean scans behind him.

?I think tough challenges help you to re-evaluate your priorities,? he said. ?It took a lot of faith and good people to be positive and encouraging.?

Before applying for medical school, Garth spent about six months as a volunteer serving in a Honduran orphanage. That experience, his father said, helped him decide on a career in medicine.

His father, a local lawyer, took his son to the chemotherapy treatments, and his mother picked him up afterward. ?He was told by some of the docs he should take a year off after the chemo,? his father said. ?And he said he?s worked too hard, he doesn?t want to delay.?

Garth graduated from St. Paul?s Episcopal School in Mobile and Birmingham-Southern College. He?s still deciding, he said, what kind of doctor he wants to become.

Last Sunday, Garth met a woman at church whose son was recently diagnosed with cancer. He talked with her about what helped him in his own struggles.

?I realized how important it is to be surrounded by people who are positive,? Garth said. ?You should surround yourself with positive and encouraging people. It?s an element that I hope to bring to my patients when I start to practice medicine. That?s the way that God has made something good come out of this whole thing.? ?

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