Finding purpose in grief: How returning to VCU is shaping a medical student’s career

By Laura Ingles
VCU School of Medicine

When Katie Buck stepped inside the VCU Medical Center in the spring of 2023, memories washed over her: the quick patter of footsteps on the wide lobby staircase, the smells of breakfast from the hospital cafeteria, even the floral vending machine on the second floor, with rotating bouquets of roses. It had been nearly 10 years since the last time she was inside the hospital, and at that moment, it felt like nothing had changed.

She and her husband were visiting Richmond to tour the MCV Campus. Buck had just been accepted into the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine's M.D. program and had two days to decide whether she wanted to train to become a doctor in the same place where she lost her mother to cancer.

Now a third-year medical student, Buck still thinks about her mom every day, and she said being in a place that constantly reminds her of her family's loss was hard at first. But gradually, the triggers softened into more of a comforting presence, and being at VCU makes her feel closer to her mom and empowered as a future physician.

"Now VCU isn't just the place where my mom died," she said. "With every patient I feel like I've helped, it means a little bit more that I'm here instead of somewhere else. My family feels that way too, that I'm making something good of a place that had a lot of bad attached to it."

As she rotates through the clinical phase of medical school, Buck is tapping into her childhood experience to connect with patients and provide the same kind of wisdom, compassion and support her family received more than a decade ago.

Roots of resilience

Buck grew up in what she described as a "classic white-picket-fence" kind of family in Chesapeake, Virginia, with a backyard pool, grandparents 10 minutes down the road and annual trips to Blacksburg for Virginia Tech football games. Her mom, a Virginia Tech graduate with a career as a mechanical engineer, was involved in the PTA, brought lunch to school for Buck and her older brother on their birthdays and never missed a volleyball or soccer game.

Buck was 7 when her mother was first diagnosed with lymphoma. She went through multiple rounds of treatment, including a two-month stint in New York for a clinical trial, and about five years later was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive form of blood and bone marrow cancer likely caused by the chemotherapy. Her health care team at VCU's Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center told the family early on that even with treatment, she was unlikely to survive for very long.

Katie Buck and her mom, Rachel Cox, loved getting ice cream together. (Contributed photo)

For most of Buck's eighth-grade year, as her mom underwent more chemotherapy, radiation and a bone marrow transplant, Buck and her brother traveled back and forth between Chesapeake and Richmond nearly every weekend. Their time in Richmond wasn't all bad, Buck said - while her mom was in treatment but not hospitalized, the family stayed together at the nearby Hospitality House (now known as the Doorways), which provides housing for out-of-town patients and their families. When her mom had the energy for it, they all loved exploring Belle Isle and other local parks, trying new restaurants and ice cream shops and playing board games back at the Hospitality House.

Her parents agreed that it was important for the family to maintain a semblance of normalcy, both leading up to and after her mom's death. After the funeral, Buck's dad made sure she and her brother continued being kids - seeing their friends, going to summer camp, playing sports - while also giving them space to grieve. She credits this intentional balancing act for the resilience she's developed over the years.

"You can't control the things that happen to you in life," Buck said. "Horrible things can happen any time, and as I've gotten older, I've learned that I can trust my ability to get through those hard things."

Power through understanding

During a recent internal medicine rotation, Buck connected with a woman who was in treatment for acute kidney failure. The patient's daughter had meticulously lined the beige hospital room walls with colorful artwork, much like Buck and her brother had filled their mother's room with framed photos, cards and stuffed animals.

Even more relatable was the spiral notebook this patient kept next to her bed for jotting down questions - a decade earlier, Buck's mom had maintained her own stack of papers with data and notes to discuss with her doctors. Buck said she often sees patients get overwhelmed or confused after interacting with physicians and deeply empathizes with their desire to understand what's happening to them. So, every morning during her two-week rotation, Buck sat down with this patient to review her most recent test results, answer questions and translate medical jargon.

"She expressed how much it meant to her that she felt like she had a better understanding of what was going on," Buck said. "I really enjoyed being able to take that time to talk to her and help her understand."

Buck never told the patient about her mom. But meeting people whose stories reflect her own helps keep things in perspective, she said, and being connected to her past drives her desire to be a trusted source of information for her patients.

Stephanie Kapllani, a registered nurse at VCU Health and one of Buck's closest friends, has seen that drive and compassion up close. The two met on the Blacksburg Volunteer Rescue Squad in 2019, when Buck was a student at Virginia Tech, and Kapllani said Buck immediately stood out as a leader. She described Buck as a natural problem-solver who's drawn to puzzles - "You should see how fast she can solve a Rubik's Cube," Kapllani said - and admires both her attention to detail and her knack for connecting with patients.

"She's really good about multitasking and balancing the ability to provide medical care for her patients while also talking to them like they're human beings," Kapllani said.

Buck has become Kapllani's go-to person for advice and insight, whether it's about a complex patient at work or her own mother's recent stage 4 cancer diagnosis. She said Buck's unwavering pursuit of answers is what motivates her in and out of the clinic, and is what makes her a dedicated friend and soon-to-be doctor.

"She's the kind of person who would never give up on a patient," Kapllani said. "Her future patients are going to be so lucky to have her as their physician."

When Katie Buck was 16, she bought herself a necklace engraved with her mom's handwriting. She still wears it every day. (Photo by Arda Athman)

The next chapter

Buck is enrolled in the competency-based graduation program, which condenses the four-year M.D. curriculum into three years and provides a pathway to match into residency at VCU. She is on track to graduate in the spring of 2026 and thrilled at the prospect of staying at VCU as a resident.

With plans to pursue internal medicine, a specialty she loves for its deep thinking, collaboration and problem-solving, Buck wants to become a doctor who can empower patients with the same kind of knowledge and understanding that her mother sought years ago.

"She was very much a 'knowledge is power' kind of person, and I think that's where I get it from," Buck said of her mom. "It made me someone who says, 'Let me help you by helping you understand.' I can provide comfort by providing an answer."

As Buck prepares for the next phase of her medical career, the memories of 11 years ago are still there. The place where her journey to medicine began - from the bustling lobby and vending machine flowers to the patients with notebooks by their beds - has not changed much. But it has changed her.

In reflecting on her two paths along the halls of this hospital, first as a daughter and now as a student, she doesn't subscribe to the notion that everything happens for a reason. She has, however, come to believe that something positive can come out of even the most devastating situations.

"I don't think it's good that I went through this horrible experience, or that I lost my mom," Buck said. "But I can recognize now that I will be a better doctor because of it."

This story was originally published on the VCU School of Medicine website.