‘I’m proud to have achieved my dreams’
Woman’s ‘exceptional accomplishment’ in face of terminal cancer honoured in special ceremony
Precilla Veigas spent Tuesday basking in the glow of two things closest to her heart — the PhD she’s dreamed of all her life and the network of beloved family and friends who supported her daunting efforts to earn it.
“I feel so humbled and honoured,” said Veigas, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer halfway through her doctoral studies in 2015, and given six months to live. “I’m still in disbelief.” The 44-year-old mother was clutching the degree she had received moments earlier during a special ceremony at the University of Toronto’s Massey College in advance of official convocations next month.
It was attended by about 45 relatives, friends and colleagues who alternately whooped and wiped tears during her five-minute speech.
The special presentation of her PhD in medical science was arranged by the university in light of Veigas’ uncertain health.
“I’m on top of the world,” she said, following the 25-minute ceremony.
If convocation is about celebrating perseverance, the pursuit of excellence and achievement, then it would be hard to imagine a more fitting way to mark the graduation season at U of T.
It represents “an exceptional accomplishment by an exceptional person,” Dr. Sandro Rizoli, Veigas’s supervising professor and chief of trauma care at St. Michael’s Hospital, told the gathering.
He met his student a few years after she had immigrated to Canada from India with her husband and young daughter in 2005, when she was determined to become a medical researcher.
Veigas, who already had a Master’s degree in medical microbiology, put herself through two tough courses in clinical research at McMaster University and Humber College to get a fighting chance.
She went on to become co-ordinator of a massive and groundbreaking clinical study involving 75 hospitals that required collecting data on trauma patients at risk of bleeding to death.
The meticulous and delicate work Veigas demonstrated was enough to convince Rizoli to take her on as a PhD student in 2012.
Three years later, Veigas was more than halfway through when she got the grave diagnosis of a rare and incurable abdominal cancer that had spread through her body.
Despite the dire prognosis, she refused to abandon her academic dream. Instead, she used the work she was so passionate about to focus her mind and help her cope with the onslaught of medical tests and treatment that followed.
“I had a decision on my hands, to do or to die, literally,” she recalled in her remarks Tuesday. “I believed in miracles and I was ready to fight.”
She plodded through 20 gruelling months of scans, chemotherapy, fatigue and other disabling side effects while pursuing her research, publishing papers and giving lectures at international academic conferences in Calgary and Halifax when it was painful to even walk.
In March, Veigas took a break from chemo to build her stamina for the final step.
And six weeks, ago she dazzled a seven-member panel during a twohour defence of her dissertation in what Rizoli called “her best presentation ever.”
Her work is already making a difference and led to guidelines in use at St. Mike’s that help match trauma patients to the most effective blood products to transfuse in order to manage bleeding and save their lives. The PhD panel was amazed by “her passion, her energy, extreme knowledge and expertise in her area of research,” said Luc De Nil, vice dean of students at the school of graduate studies which, along with the faculty of medicine, arranged the Tuesday proceedings.
De Nil presented the sealed parchment degree to “Dr. Veigas,” reminding the elated graduate that “you can open it if you want.”
The event was an important way to honour a student dealing with “extreme challenges that I think few of us can imagine,” he says.
Veigas, who was raised in India by parents who stressed the importance of education, was lauded by family from abroad as well as the United States and Toronto.
Her remarks paid tribute to all of them by name, thanking them for their love and support, from her 80-year-old mother who was unable to travel to Toronto, to the youngest toddler in her extended family and her 15-year-old daughter Jadyn.
Jadyn, who says she’s “super proud” of her mom, wants to study pharmacology at university and follow in her mother’s footsteps to become a researcher.
“I’m proud to have achieved my dreams, although I don’t dream too much about my tomorrow,” Veigas told the gathering.
For now, she has another paper to publish, hopes to visit her mother and family in India, and more than anything, wants to see her daughter graduate.
“It is my wish to be a beacon of hope and encouragement to others,” she said.
That’s one wish, some would argue, that has already come true.