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MEDICAL SCHOOL
EVALUATION & GRADUATION

Two Sisters

in Medicine:

Two Roads Less Traveled,

One Goal

By Chinwe Anyanwu and Nneka Anyanwu

Student doctors Chinwe and Nneka Anyanwu aren’t just sisters in couraged the naïve idea of being a struggling artist in a place she’d never
medicine. They also happen to be sisters in real life! These two sisters born lived, and of course nudged her into going to college to at least have a
to Nigerian parents, sometimes referred to by family as, “The Sisters,” be- “backup plan.” Little did she know that this nudge to college would
cause you never see one without the other, took two very different roads bring a wind of events strong enough to skid a freight truck and propel
to medicine with one same goal in mind: diversifying medicine. her into the field of medicine. Returning home for the first time after
Nneka, the older sister by 4 years, fought tirelessly to get into med- her first semester of college to find out her brother passed away from a
ical school and the road was anything but easy. After being diagnosed seizure helped scope much more of her future career than she realized.
with scoliosis as a young girl and having spinal surgery to place rods at Sitting there as EMS attempted to save his life and not knowing what
the age of 10, her ties to medicine were sealed tighter than a jar of pick- to do in that moment to help the one person she admittedly loved most,
les. Learning later in life the medical error that occurred during her manifested itself as a deep love for the field of emergency medicine. She
surgery, in which adult rods were placed instead of the appropriate then went on to work as an ED medical scribe for the next four years
growing rods for children, she had spinal reconstructive surgery her and obtained her Master’s in Epidemiology.
senior year of high school. She wheeled across the stage at her high In 2018, both Chinwe and Nneka were accepted into medical
school graduation in a wheelchair to claim her diploma as if it was her school at University of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic
birthright and wheeled herself straight into college at Prairie View Medicine (UIWSOM) and Meharry Medical College, respectively,
A&M University in that same chair. She then went on to complete and collectively have received over $140,000 in scholarships. Obvi-
two master’s degrees. Her experiences meticulously fashioned her pas- ously, one sister chose DO, while the other set on pursing an MD. Two
sion for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She learned then, she very different roads, though admittedly one even less traveled than the
had a strength that few had, and it was that same strength that would other, but have these roads really been so different?
carry her through her journey in medicine, and apparently right along- As they talk about their medical school experience, there are many
side her little sister. similarities, such as both being part of relatively new programs.
Chinwe had a very different path. Never interested by just one thing, Nneka’s class had rolled out a new curriculum, so it felt like going to a
she never actually planned to go to college. After high school, she was new program full of lots of trial and error. As many know, UIWSOM
set on moving to New York to be a creative and fashion designer. Just is literally a brand-new medical school, with its first class graduating
as many Nigerian parents would feel though, her parents actively dis- this year and is all too familiar with the trials and errors of a new pro-

26 SAN ANTONIO MEDICINE • June 2021