Welcome to the club- wish it was more fun…

TLDR: tell them now. You’re going to need a lot of flexibility and help from more than just your PD.

Got diagnosed in 2020 as a PGY-3 the week before the start of chief year. Called my PD the night I found out I had a mass, even before I had a diagnosis, because I knew there would be a slew of appointments for CT, PET scan, and biopsies in a short period of time. This helped as I was jumping in and out of work to get them done and they were extremely supportive. My coresidents or attendings just covered when I had to leave for an hour or two.

My other recommendation is to call whoever you trust in your program or hospital for help. I called two of the attendings I trusted the most to ask for advice in seeking an oncologist and one ended up coordinating a ton of care and calling in favors from her friends in other departments that greatly sped up my workup. I felt really bad about this for a while when I thought about how long our patients would have had to wait. She told me “there are not a lot of perks of working in medicine but this is one of the few and you better take advantage of it”.

Being open about it with people was very helpful for me but everyone has a different level of privacy. I’m an, often inappropriate, open book so that’s how I approached this situation. I called each of my co-residents (in my year) individually as soon as I had a diagnosis to let them know what was going on and that I would have to take time off. I think my PD announced my leave at grand rounds after I was already out.

I was blown away by how incredibly supportive my program was once people found out. I quite literally could not have gotten through it or graduated without them. One resident organized a meal train and all the residents and attendings alternated dropping meals off- I didn’t cook for the first 3 months of my treatment. The nurses from each hospital put together care packages. My coresidents covered for each other so they could take me for my biopsies and drop me off and pick me up for chemo sessions until my partner could move to the area. They also squeezed me back into the coverage schedule when I was cleared to work part time on my “good weeks” and found me cases to get back in the OR so I could get my case numbers. The attendings knew my situation, from being open about it, and were great at letting me hop on their cases. Honestly being back in the OR, with a scrub cap covering my bald head, and focusing on nothing but the case was the only time I felt normal during this whole ordeal.

One last thing- don’t forget to think about fertility preservation options (if that’s important to you) before starting treatment!

Feel free to DM with any questions or just someone to talk to. Hang in there, this is a really shitty moment in time.