Sometimes in life we become educated or knowledgeable in something not because we want to, but because we have to. Sickness, debt, loss or math. Life has a way of teaching us lessons we may not be ready to embrace but nonetheless they are there. Right in our face.
Sophia Ionescu's life had a few of those moments. Moments in which there wasn't much time for choice, just action. After loosing a loved one to a bad surgery she applied herself to medical school. Though she was studying ophthalmology, an internship at a very over crowded hospital filled with typhus victims, introduced her quickly to the field of surgery (typhus often leads to amputations).
Then, during another internship in Bucharest, war forced her into another practice. The town had been heavily bombed and during one such attack she was forced to attempt brain surgery (which she had never done before) to save a young boy who had been seriously injured. The next year she became legally certified in medicine and surgery.
The path that she had planned out for herself may have looked different in her mind, but when life offered her course changes that she had no control over, she bravely faced them and continued to leave her mark on the world in the best way she could.
She became one of the worlds first female neurosurgeons, was a vital part of the neurological field, saved hundreds of lives and performed a surgery on a dying sheik's wife that no male surgeon was prohibited to perform.
Her life is an example that even when our life's choices may seem like they are being taken away, there is are still opportunities to show that we are responsible for our reactions. We still have the agency to make the most of what life has to offer us.
There are always choices and there are always opportunities, even when the ones we wanted or saw for ourselves close shut. Sophia Ionescu is powerful example of the good that can come from adapting and embracing to life.
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