A blessing in disguise
First-year medical student Oliver Sroka finds life passion for medicine during battle with cancer
Feb. 20, 2018 — When first-year medical student Oliver Sroka was 19, an unusual lump on his body caught his attention. After a moment of consideration, he reached for his computer.
“Of course, I had to Google it. And you know any time you Google something, it’s going to seem like cancer,” he recalls. “I went to my primary care doctor, who showed concern. An ultrasound revealed that it actually was testicular cancer.”
Within a whirlwind of one week in March 2014, a urological surgeon removed Sroka’s tumor. He and his family, who live in Jacksonville, thought the ordeal was over, but a follow-up MRI a couple of months later showed enlarged lymph nodes on the right side of his pelvis. The cancer had spread before Sroka’s surgery.
“I had three rounds of chemotherapy, each lasting about a month,” he says. “The treatment for testicular cancer is intensive. It’s a lot of chemotherapy at once, followed by a long waiting period. The treatment could’ve made me blind or deaf, but I was lucky that I didn’t experience any of the more serious side effects.”
Throughout those trying months, Sroka found hope and motivation in his oncologist Dr. Winston Tan of the Mayo Clinic Jacksonville.
“Dr. Tan was everything you’d want in a practitioner,” he says. “I had many days in which I didn’t feel good, but he kept pushing me forward. He encouraged me to eat healthy and to exercise despite the fatigue I was feeling. He perfected the balance of telling me the tough things I needed to hear and the things that would keep me hopeful.”
Sroka has been cancer-free for more than a year. He says the news provided him extreme relief – he was finally free to focus all his energy on pursuing his medical education. He says he’s considering surgical specialties like orthopaedic oncology, which would combine his passion for sports with his interest in oncology. No matter the field he enters into, he knows the kind of physician he’ll become.
“Even after medical school, I’ll keep in mind the things I learned from Dr. Tan. As a physician, I’ll be real and truthful with my patients about their situation, so they can make the best, informed decisions,” he says. “I’ll instill a sense of hope in them like Dr. Tan did for me, so they can be as hopeful and healthy as possible both during and after their medical treatment.”
Sroka’s passion for medicine is aided by receiving both the Avonelle C. Noah Scholarship and the Empowered Physician Scholarship, awarded by PracticeMatch. In his award-winning essay for the agency, Sroka outlined how his battle with cancer was actually a blessing in disguise.
“After going through such an experience, I have realized that every second of every day is an opportunity to make a difference in the world,” he wrote. “I know that becoming a physician would allow me to seize those opportunities to help others to be strong and to provide supportive counsel for those who are sick, no matter the diagnosis. That would bring me the greatest satisfaction in life.”
