"I almost didn't become a plastic surgeon. Medical school was algorithms, protocols and rote learning — every problem had a fixed answer, and the doctor's job was simply to arrive at it. I had a scholarship and a settled path, but I was seriously thinking of leaving medicine."
The turning point was a day spent in a mentor's operating theatre. The patient on the table had lost their entire nose to cancer. Reconstruction involved fixing rib to skull with titanium screws, transferring tissue flaps from distant sites, and solving problems no textbook had described.
Thinking, building, deciding — in real time, with real consequences.
That moment, I chose plastic surgery. Not the speciality of vanity, but the speciality of the most demanding problem-solving — where anatomy, engineering, biology and aesthetic judgement intersect, and there is no fixed answer. Freestyle.