Match 2010 PROFILE Michelle L. Aguilar University of Arizona Matched at University of Arizona-affiliated hospitals, Pediatrics
Michelle L. Aguilar is a Tucson native and graduate of Tucson High Magnet School, and will be the first doctor in her family. Her mother, Artemisa, is from Sinaloa, Mexico, and her father, Mario, is from California; she has a younger brother, Mario Arturo. Her older sister, Consuelo, was diagnosed with cancer at age 26, when Aguilar was in her third year of medical school. Consuelo had an extremely rare peripheral nerve sheath tumor in her chest. After surgeries in Tucson and radiation treatments in Loma Linda, CA, she was hospitalized with what was thought to be pneumonia but turned out to be multiple tumors in her lungs. Aguilar was in a family medicine rotation at the time and spent her days working and her evenings at the intensive care unit at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tucson before Consuelo passed away on Feb. 17, 2009. “I learned a lot about the type of doctor I want to be, and how I want to deal with patients and their families during such difficult moments,” she says. As a child, Aguilar was fascinated with
science and the human body. In 2006, she received an undergraduate degree in physiology, with a minor in music from the UA. Her parents and teachers encouraged her to be a doctor. “It seemed like a perfect fit for me; I loved science and biology as well as helping and working with people,” she says. During medical school, Aguilar participated in the F.A.C.E.S. (Fostering and Achieving Cultural Equity and Sensitivity) internship and Conversantes, a pilot medical Spanish class. Aguilar is engaged to Anthon Vega, an engineer at Raytheon, and will be married on May 1. They met during high school (he’s a Sunnyside High School graduate) when they were playing mariachi for Los Changuitos Feos. Anthon was with her at Match Day, anxiously waiting to see where they would spend the next three years. Aguilar’s dream to pursue a residency in pediatrics, and then stay in Tucson to help underserved and uninsured populations, came true on Match Day. She matched in pediatrics at UA-affiliated hospitals in Tucson, AZ. Photo by Margaret Hartshorn, AHSC Biomedical Communications
38 Journal for Minority Medical Students