Surviving tumor leads to career path caring for others

BEATING THE ODDS: Eily Cournoyer, a student and brain cancer survivor, says her ultimate goal is to become a translational physician scientist. / COURTESY MICHAEL SALERNO PHOTOGRAPHY
BEATING THE ODDS: Eily Cournoyer, a student and brain cancer survivor, says her ultimate goal is to become a translational physician scientist. / COURTESY MICHAEL SALERNO PHOTOGRAPHY

Eily Cournoyer has quite the story to tell.
When the Portsmouth native was just 8 years old, she was diagnosed with a benign pediatric brain tumor and given a month to live unless she immediately had surgery to remove the noncancerous growth.
Over the next 13 years, she developed an interest in medicine that eventually led to winning a Fulbright grant to study cancer at the graduate level at the Cancer Institute at University College London, in England, where she’ll work on how to improve hematopoietic stem-cell transplants for blood cancers.
She also won a Whitaker International Program Fellowship grant to help support her studies.

PBN: Do you remember how you felt when you heard about your tumor diagnosis and that you would need brain surgery?
COURNOYER: I think because I was so young, it was more of a shock. I didn’t know what was happening. My parents did, but because it was so quick, I kind of went with the flow and knew they’d take care of me. I don’t think I understood the severity.

PBN: All these years later, does that experience make you thankful for your good health?
COURNOYER: Definitely. I appreciate the fact that it happened to me as a child now that I know so much more about science and what goes on. I’m glad I was more naive about it. If I had it now, I’d be on Web MD researching everything and the worst-case scenario. The best thing about it was that it was quick. You couldn’t dwell on it. I was given a month to live so I had to have surgery.

PBN: Is your personal experience alone what made you want to become a doctor?
COURNOYER: I think it was a starting-off point. … I got my tonsils out in the sixth grade and became interested in seeing what they would do. In the eighth grade I took a physiology and anatomy class and became much more interested in how the body works. I’ve also always wanted to be able to help people and have been passionate about caring for people. I came to the university, where I did some research and my first project was investigating nanoparticles and one of the unique properties was that they crossed the blood brain barrier and could be used in treatments. Going into school, I really did want to be a doctor. But at [an internship] last summer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital [in Memphis, Tenn.], that was 100 percent, definite this is what I was doing for the rest of my life.

PBN: Why was that experience so defining?
COURNOYER: I got exposed to oncology. I had been looking at cardiology and a lot of different projects but I got to learn more about cancer and cancer biology. I was surrounded by the children there. You would see them every day going into the hospital and research lab and it was very inspiring [as in] this is who I want to be and who I want to be helping. I’ve always loved children and the simplicity of how kids are, how they can be brutally honest and pure of heart. I just love being around them. Having what happened to me as a child, I want to make a difference [as a doctor].

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PBN: Why take the Fulbright year instead of going right to medical school?
COURNOYER: Through undergraduate, I haven’t really been able to go abroad because our curriculum is very rigid. I wanted an enriching cultural experience learning researching in a culture that’s different from our own. Being able to go the U.K. and learn that and understand how they conduct their research inevitably will make me a better-positioned scientist and more culturally aware of whatever my surroundings are and how other people conduct their research and look at experiments.

PBN: What is your ultimate career goal?
COURNOYER: To be a translational physician scientist. That’s a doctor who works in clinical and in the laboratory and bridges the gap between them so what they’re doing in the lab will influence what they’re doing clinically.
PBN: How has URI prepared you for what lies ahead?
COURNOYER: It’s interesting because the way I’ve learned chemical engineering specifically at the university isn’t what I’m going to be doing. It’s going to be more of the way I’ll be thinking in terms of thinking critically and taking situations and putting them into practice. It’s not the engineering I’ll be taking out of [my education] but the skills I’ve started to develop in my curriculum. I’ve been exposed to a variety of ways to do presentations at the regional and national levels. … My major is very small, so I really got to know the professors. I may not have had that type of chance at a larger college.

PBN: Why will you be a good doctor?
COURNOYER: I am incredibly determined and impassioned about what I’ll do. When you’re a doctor, you don’t just go through medical school. It’s a lifelong process of learning about the human body and it’s the caring for people, too. I work with girls at local high schools and being able to work with and introduce them [to math and science fields] has facilitated my skills to be able to do that as a doctor. I think that is what will ultimately make me the doctor I want to be; really caring for people. •INTERVIEW
Eily Cournoyer
Position: Student
Background: Cournoyer is a Portsmouth native who graduated May 19 from the University of Rhode Island. In September, she will become a Fulbright scholar at the Cancer Institute at the University College London, where will pursue a master’s of science in cancer. Her plan is then to return to the Boston area for medical school.
Education: Bachelor’s in science, chemical engineering; bachelor’s in science, biology, University of Rhode Island, 2013
First Job: Shaw’s Supermarket, Middletown
Residence: Portsmouth
Age: 21

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