Faith and Medicine: Week Four

I remember one day towards the end of my senior year at Notre Dame sitting in my dorm room contemplating my path after graduation and asking myself if I could have any job what it would be?  I still remember the answer the came to me of to work at a children’s hospital.  The answer surprised me as I had not pursued pre-med and was not sure what other jobs I might be able to qualify for in that setting.  I smiled at the surprise of that moment and the thought of spending my life in that type of work, held the answer in my heart for a few moments, and then continued my applications for the postgraduate volunteer programs that I was applying for. 

After graduation I went on to be a high school teacher with the ACE program, an experience I am deeply grateful for and cherish.  After my experience with ACE I was blessed to be hired to work for the Notre Dame Vocation Initiative, which included the ND Vision program.  In this incredible experience I learned more deeply of the lives of the saints, and took very much to heart the premise of the program “Their gifts (the saints) changed the world… how will yours?”

As my experience with the ND Vocation Initiative unfolded, one day I head a prayer form in my heart and began to pray it daily:  Lord, let me glorify you through the gift of my free will. 

About a year later I found myself sitting on an ambulance floor in Calcutta, India en route to the Missionaries of Charity Home for the Dying, alongside of my dear friend Danielle, and beside a man who was dying and being brought to the home for care his last moments or days.  It was the first time I was in the presence of someone who was dying. It is difficult to translate the moment into words, but I can say that in that moment I experienced an unexpected but clear call to become a physician.

After returning to the US, I began exploring the reality of returning to school to take pre-med classes, and began them at the beginning of the next semester.  In 2007 I entered medical school, and from the beginning had a deep interest in the field of palliative care.

It has been eleven years since the moment in the ambulance in Calcutta, and I have since completed medical school, residency and fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine.  I am working now as a palliative medicine physician, and predominately work with people who are undergoing treatment for cancer.  I am often asked if I find the work depressing or sad.  It certainly is difficult at times, but not unlike most callings, I believe, which call us in some way to die to ourselves and to spend our lives for others. 

The beauty is that if I am attentive to it, each day is an opportunity to encounter Christ in disguise in the person in front of me.  I have reflected often that working so often and closely with people confronting their own illness and mortality it is a refining fire of sorts, that helps to burn away the things that keep me from an eternal perspective. 

The prayer still guides me:  Lord, let me glorify you through the gift of my free will.  It is also joined now by another prayer, written by Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta:  “Mary, my dearest mother, give me your heart so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, so full of love and humility that I may receive Jesus as you did and go in haste to give him to others.”

May God bless you all as you seek your callings, and the ways that your gifts will bless others and glorify God.  If I can be of any service to you in your journey, please do not hesitate to be in touch.  My prayers are with you, and I thank you for your sincere and earnest efforts for promoting compassion in medicine.  God bless you!

Nicole Shirilla received an undergraduate bachelor degree in 2000 and Master in Education in 2002 from the University of Notre Dame.   Several years after college she felt a calling to become a physician, and enrolled in medical school at the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in May 2011.  At the University of California Irvine she completed a residency in family medicine in 2014, and fellowship in palliative medicine in 2015.  She currently works in San Diego, California  as a hospice and palliative medicine physician.