Neurosurgery Has a Special 'Calling' for Medical Student

For Candice Carpenter it's all about the brain. 

She slips on a pair of gloves and carefully removes a preserved human brain from a laboratory container of fluid to show the optic chiasm, an X-shaped area of the forebrain that transmits sight from our retina to the back of the brain which controls vision.  

"Do you see the little crisscross section?" asks Carpenter as she tilts the brain and points out the adjourning optic nerve. 

The fourth-year University of Cincinnati medical student hopes to be a neurosurgeon.  She'll know by the week's end which of the neurosurgery programs she favors has selected her for residency.

Carpenter, 31, will join other medical students in the Class of 2016 at an annual Match Day event set for 11:30 a.m. Friday, March 18, in Room E-351 of the Medical Sciences Building to find out where they will each spend the next three to five years of their lives training for a career in medicine.

After a months-long residency interview process, the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) does the actual matching, linking the program preferences of students with those of residency program directors. Residency programs at UC, Ohio State University, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Yale-New Haven Hospital, and University of San Diego are top picks, but Carpenter says she'll take others and is just grateful to be given a chance to follow her dream.

"I once thought it was all about location, but the longer I did clinical rotations, I found what I am looking for is a robust academic program and a solid relationship with faculty members," says Carpenter. "It's not just about location, but something more."

Neurosurgery has a special urgency for Carpenter.

In 2004, her mother was diagnosed with a hemorrhagic pituitary macro-adenoma. For 10 years, she had this large and occult tumor growing in her brain and no one know it, says Carpenter.

"It had gone undiagnosed for so long, and then one day it hemorrhaged and she had to have emergency neurosurgery," explains Carpenter.  "It was a terrifying experience for her as well as the rest of my family. Yet, she came through and did wonderfully. However, interestingly enough, she is one of very few who go on to have a recurrent pituitary macro-adenoma. She has annual surveillance with a neurosurgeon, endocrinologist, and ophthalmologist. It is regular conversation at our house to discuss the possibilities of another trans-sphenoidal surgery, or gamma-knife stereotactic surgery, or just watchful waiting for my mom.

"For me, going through that experience with my mom, I got to meet a lot of neurosurgeons at the time and step into this fascinating medical world I didn't even know existed," says Carpenter.

She's had wonderful mentors at UC in family, internal medicine, as well as emergency medicine, but "I felt I had a true calling for neurosurgery," explains Carpenter. "This happened to my mother and I think events happen for a reason."

For Carpenter, the first in her family to attend college and medical school, the path to the UC College of Medicine included some meandering along the way.  The native of Pomona, California, first thought about becoming a doctor at the tender age of eight.  While an undergrad at Yale University, she majored in psychology and pre-medical studies.

"For a multitude of reasons, I ended up going to graduate school and putting medical school on the back burner," says Carpenter. "I had a lot of other passions and interests."

She attended Harvard University after her undergrad years and obtained a master's in Mind, Brain and Education—essentially graduate study in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, explains Carpenter.  Afterward, she worked as a project associate for an educational consulting firm in Boston, tasked with auditing public and charter schools and helping to determine whether they should be strengthened or closed if beyond repair.

Carpenter was the lead writer and researcher in a team of consultants who examined school data and curricula, interviewed school officials and met with students.

"It was absolutely wonderful and I did that for a couple of years," she says.

"Basically, without anything external happening I had this profound realization and sense of urgency. Every day I was spending my time talking to kids about their dreams and hopes and their aspirations, and it began to nag at me that I hadn't exactly fulfilled my own. It constantly keep resonating with me that I was not actually following what I wanted to do in life."

 "Educational consulting was not where I ultimately foresaw myself for the rest of my life.  I had to make that decision to reroute back to the medical path and leave the life I had already built."

She applied to medical school and considered staying in Boston, heading back home to southern California or choosing Chicago.

UC was one of the last places Carpenter interviewed.

"I remember it was January 2012, and I thought let me go ahead and throw UC in the ring," says Carpenter.  "I literally set foot in UC's atrium and was enamored, because I am a big aesthetic person. I think for me it was definitely one of the most impressive schools—the atrium, the study pods, the warm atmosphere.

 "I was here for a two day interview process. The diversity program at the College of Medicine had put everybody up in a hotel across the street and everybody was really awesome and I had a great time meeting people here," says Carpenter. "The whole aspect, from the community of people that I met to the feeling of the place, I literally could envision myself here more than any other place."

"Surprisingly, people kept asking me why I would pick Cincinnati over any other school and city, but my mind and heart were set," says Carpenter. "I imagined myself studying in these pods, walking through these halls, feeling a sense of community. It literally felt incredibly right to me. 

"I wonder if it was the same for other people, but it was definitely an intuitive decision and I definitely do not regret it. I think it was the right feeling and now I can say 'Yes this place has really supported me in everything I wanted to do and I have really excelled at UC.' I've made great friends not only in the academic community but lifelong friendships in the surrounding medical community," says Carpenter.

Mia Mallory, MD, associate dean for diversity and inclusion in the College of Medicine, says Carpenter has the combination of "maturity, focus, poise, insight and determination" that is a rare find. She nominated her for the American Medical Association Foundation's Minority Scholars Award.

Carpenter was one of eight students in the nation to win the $10,000 award in 2014 and be honored at the American Medical Association National Conference in June 2014.

"Candice is much more than her outstanding academic record at the College of Medicine," says Mallory. "She is the student with the 'quadruple threat' of outstanding research, intellect and community academic service. She has been able to easily balance the rigorous curriculum with a great deal of leadership, teaching, mentoring, research and community activities."

"Her interest in the neurosciences continues to drive her commitment to success in medicine and her readiness to make an enduring impact on the lives she touches," Mallory says. "She works hard now because she wants to not because she has to.  I have no doubt that she will be one of a few female African-American neurosurgeons in the nation."