2 weeks Ago
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Friday is Match Day for University at Buffalo medical students in the Class of 2025.
It's when they find out where they'll be completing their residencies. "My journey to medicine started as a patient, and I still say it was the most important course I ever took," said Catherine Lawton, Class of 2025. RELATED: New breast cancer treatment trials offer hope for surgery-free cure in Buffalo Catherine Lawton is a fourth year medical student at the Jacobs School of Medicine.
With more than 150 of her classmates, she was about to find out where she'll do her residency. She overcame a lot to be here. "I thought, can I do it? Can it be done? Even after I got accepted, I was like, can I really do it, and I just showed up scared, you know, even if no matter what I thought, I kept showing up, and it just kept working out," Lawton said.
That's because on a camping trip in 2019, an oak tree fell on Lawton's tent leaving the Lakewood native with several broken bones in her back, paralyzing her left leg. She had two collapsed lungs, and several other injuries that forced her to stay in the hospital for 70 days. Before the accident, Lawton applied to medical school.
She was determined not to give up hope. "It just reaffirmed that this is the right field for me. So I really took it as a learning experience, and now am grateful for that experience.
In a weird way, it's weird to say that, but very grateful to have the perspective I have going into this caring field in that way," Lawton said. She got into the Jacobs School and throughout her medical school journey, Lawton adapted and didn't allow her physical injuries to stop her from learning. She's excited to see what the future holds.
"So I know that I have matched and have a job, and now we find out where. And so, when we get that letter, I'll find out where I go in the spring," Lawton said. Lawton's specialty is physical medicine and rehabilitation, and she'll be doing her residency at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"To come back around and be a doctor today, it feels very full circle. I feel very lucky," Lawton said. Forty-three of Lawton's classmates will be staying in Buffalo at the Jacobs School for their residencies in specialties from urology to family medicine.
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