this video is dedicated to my mom.

:( appreciate your loved ones. you never know how much longer they'll be around. cheers to anyone watching this, or even reading this. Fall of my M4 year - just some 6 months ago - after weeks spent in the ICU, my mother, at the young age of 58, passed two days before Thanksgiving on 11/25/25 from Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. She suffered concurrently from paraneoplastic SIADH, multisystem organ failure, ARDs, septic shock, pneumonia, with metastases to her ribs, lungs, kidneys, and every segment of her cervical spine, the ones to her lungs being so large that they were compressing her venous vasculature. She fought as hard as she could to keep appearing as if she wasn't suffering as to not worry us, but as we all surrounded her every day by her bedside we knew she was in a world of pain - she was dying, and the physicians in the ICU reiterated to us daily that there was not much time left. My father brought balloons and flowers for my mother for their 32nd anniversary, which was just one week prior to her passing. He placed the flowers, which he had picked from the park they'd walk at - the same flowers that she'd pick and enjoy just weeks prior - just by her nose, in the hopes that she would be able to smell them while she was unconscious and intubated in the ICU. The sweetness of the gesture and the unfortunate timing broke us all. Her passing came so much sooner than we all anticipated - I was able to visit her a final time, but on the day of her actual death, I was on rotation on Emergency Medicine in New York, as further accommodations could not be made. In a way, I indirectly paid tens of thousands in tuition money to work for free for the hospital, only to miss the death of my own mother back home. Ironic. I delivered a eulogy with my brother at her funeral in her memory, and I am grateful to all the numerous friends and family who came to show support. Her funeral was just under 5 months ago. She was kind, caring, and loving - the living example of what it meant to be a compassionate mother to her children and wife to her husband. It's only now that I look back on all the small things that we used to bicker about - like my bedtime on late nights playing video games, or how much hot sauce I should be allowed to use on my food - in regret. It's only after she's gone that I realize how much time I wasted not cherishing her presence, because now, I remind myself that I'll never hear her voice again - my memories of her exist now only through brief recordings and photos - though, of course, she still lives on in my heart. I always seem like this happy-go-lucky-guy who's only full of jokes and humor, but when things get dark, it's really hard to find the energy to reach out to people or to friends - adulthood just seems so isolating oftentimes. I always resonated with the idiom that the class clown is actually sometimes the most lonely or sad on the inside - my mom's death still breaks me to this day. Through all of the tears, loss, and death, though, I reminisce daily that I work in a field surrounded constantly by the reminders of my own - and everyone else's - mortality. It's only after my own mom passed that I know what it truly feels like to lose somebody so close; they're always there, and then one day, they're not. In medicine, it's very easy to become cynical or distraught by the bureaucracy (trust me, I have many opinions about the American healthcare system) and burnout that's experienced - especially in some heavier-hitting medical specialties where death is common. However, it's through all of my experiences in the past years that I hope to refine my approach to patient care and always remember that the person in front of me isn't just a name on a page or a set of numbers with vital signs - they're a person, too, and I'm going to do my best to do right by them. There isn't a day that passes that I don't miss you, mom. You were the best. Alvin FOLLOW ME ON: 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctor.alvi... 📸 🎶 Tiktok:   / doctoralvinlee   🎶