AkiraBrand/gist:51c38588779d0520b0f7f138165d3762

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The greatest loss in my life serendipitously led me to where I am now. When I was twenty I was at the peak of my academic career with a shining bright future in an operatic career ahead of me.  One sunny, gorgeous afternoon, while en route to my boyfriends house, I got a phone call from my dad, in which he informed me in short, clipped tones that mom had cancer.


She died, two gruesome and horrific years later.


I watched my mom rapidly deteriorate from mathematical and academic genius into nothingness-unable to speak or move at the end, a paralyzed body lying in a hospital bed ridden with pain that she could not cry out and express, only silently shed tears down her beautiful face in hopes someone would take note of and give her a dose of morpheine.


And there was nothing I could do but watch.  Nothing that ANYONE could do but watch.


The disease that took her is a malicious and cruel one-an extraordinarily rare subset of brain cancer called glioblastoma that 3 in 100,000 people get. Treatment is non-existent, really, all it does is perhaps extend your life a few more months.  Mom shockingly survived two years. I wish she had died sooner. No ones last days should be in immense physical pain and complete helplessness.


I realized with an icy realization during that time, that standing on a stage in a pretty dress and singing songs that few people understand was a hollow and incredibly stupid purpose to put my entire life toward.


I needed to fix this, damn it, and I needed to fix it now.


Fast forward many years later after much trial and error, and I find myself in tech; a field I would have never foreseen myself getting into.


But in tech, I finally see an opportunity to make a difference for people who suffer as my mom did, as I and my family did and do. Not because tech in and of itself has all the answers, but because it’s a field that works with my mind and ambition.  It provides flexibility to learn, constantly, and be on the cutting edge of treatments for cancer, and on the knifes blade of tooling to give to devastated and grieving families to work through their losses and get the support they need.  We may not always succeed, in many ways, we will have many many, many failures before a success is born, but tech TRIES-it doesn’t take no for an answer.  It solves the problem.


I cannot bring my mothers ashes back to life.  I cannot turn back time (yet) to those days where I felt all the innocence of the world glowing on me every day with the rising sun.  But I can train my mind to think.  I can train my mind to get better and better at solving the immense and vast problem called human suffering. To me, this is a worthy pursuit.
	The greatest loss in my life serendipitously led me to where I am now. When I was twenty I was at the peak of my academic career with a shining bright future in an operatic career ahead of me. One sunny, gorgeous afternoon, while en route to my boyfriends house, I got a phone call from my dad, in which he informed me in short, clipped tones that mom had cancer.



	She died, two gruesome and horrific years later.



	I watched my mom rapidly deteriorate from mathematical and academic genius into nothingness-unable to speak or move at the end, a paralyzed body lying in a hospital bed ridden with pain that she could not cry out and express, only silently shed tears down her beautiful face in hopes someone would take note of and give her a dose of morpheine.



	And there was nothing I could do but watch. Nothing that ANYONE could do but watch.



	The disease that took her is a malicious and cruel one-an extraordinarily rare subset of brain cancer called glioblastoma that 3 in 100,000 people get. Treatment is non-existent, really, all it does is perhaps extend your life a few more months. Mom shockingly survived two years. I wish she had died sooner. No ones last days should be in immense physical pain and complete helplessness.



	I realized with an icy realization during that time, that standing on a stage in a pretty dress and singing songs that few people understand was a hollow and incredibly stupid purpose to put my entire life toward.



	I needed to fix this, damn it, and I needed to fix it now.



	Fast forward many years later after much trial and error, and I find myself in tech; a field I would have never foreseen myself getting into.



	But in tech, I finally see an opportunity to make a difference for people who suffer as my mom did, as I and my family did and do. Not because tech in and of itself has all the answers, but because it’s a field that works with my mind and ambition. It provides flexibility to learn, constantly, and be on the cutting edge of treatments for cancer, and on the knifes blade of tooling to give to devastated and grieving families to work through their losses and get the support they need. We may not always succeed, in many ways, we will have many many, many failures before a success is born, but tech TRIES-it doesn’t take no for an answer. It solves the problem.



	I cannot bring my mothers ashes back to life. I cannot turn back time (yet) to those days where I felt all the innocence of the world glowing on me every day with the rising sun. But I can train my mind to think. I can train my mind to get better and better at solving the immense and vast problem called human suffering. To me, this is a worthy pursuit.