LMH cancer doctor finds work humbling

D’Anna Mullins had always wanted to be a doctor since she was six years old, or at least that’s what she said her parents told her.

That’s exactly what she ended up doing, although she became a hematologist and an oncologist instead of a primary care physician, like her 6-year-old self planned.

“When I interviewed for medical school, the director, a woman, said that I should also try to get a Ph.D., so I decided to do it,” she said.

During her time as a Ph.D. candidate, Mullins researched lung cancer. Her mentor urged her to go into oncology.

“He said today’s methods and practices were different from when he was learning,” she said. “There are new ways to research and new treatments to give to patients that he said made oncology worth going in to.”

“I was in my third year of school and I found an attraction to oncology during my time learning to treat cancer patients.”

As a doctor treating cancer patients, Mullins found that it was one of the only areas in medicine where a patient could die, but the family would still thank her for all she had tried to do to help them.

“Cancer patients are the most grateful people I have ever met,” Mullins said. “Being reminded of our mortality changes you. And yes, there are moments where it feels terrible to work with cancer patients, but there’s the reward of saving them.”

“It is an honor to treat every one of my patients. It’s very humbling.”

In her role as an oncologist and a hematologist, Mullins uses a variety of technology everyday, from something as simple as a computer to using scanning equipment and handling biopsies.

“It’s important to keep up with whatever technology you’re going to use, even the day to day stuff,” she said. “For me, it’s changed a little bit since I was in school. We used to have actual paper files for each patient that needed recorded and sorted.”

“Now we can just pull them up on the computer and update them right away.”

For Mullins, having another woman urge her to get more involved in medicine meant more than if a man had said anything. During school, she’d see women who had careers and families balanced successfully and those people would become her role models, to see what it took to have a family and a career.

But regardless of sex, she said the world needs research and scientific work of all type to make sure progress is maintained.

“I grew up being told I could be anything I wanted when I was an adult, but not everyone has that. Sometimes, kids just need to be shown they can pursue whatever they want,” Mullins said. “They won’t know what they want to do until they try.”