Using ultrasound in the classroom, TCOM students finds her own cancer, but overcomes it as is prepared for Match Day
Sometimes the stars have to be aligned for that perfect moment. In the case of Dominque
Iida, a fourth-year student at UNT Health Fort Worth’s Texas College of Osteopathic
Medicine, it was decades of moment after moment, after moment.
If her brother hadn’t been diagnosed with epilepsy when she was 11, she wouldn’t have been interested in medicine. If she didn’t fall in love with Fort Worth when visiting TCU for undergrad, she never would have come to Texas. If she didn’t take a deferment to start medical school at TCOM a year later, she might have gone elsewhere.
If the TCOM Ultrasound Interest Group hadn’t had their butterfly probe out during orientation, she might not have joined the club, and if a first-year student had stepped forward to volunteer to have their neck scanned by Iida when she was teaching them about ultrasound…she would have never found the thyroid cancer that was growing in her neck.
That all led to the devastating diagnosis that nobody wants to hear. This is the remarkable story of how Iida found her own cancer, overcame it and is leaving a legacy of inspiration for others.
Probing
Iida is not a native Texan; she hails from Illinois, but she fell in love with Fort
Worth in 2015 while visiting colleges and came to TCU for her undergraduate degree.
After graduating with a degree in Biology in 2019, she came to UNT Health and the
College of Biomedical and Translational Sciences for the Master of Science in Medical
Science. She was working as a medical assistant during the year, and upon graduation,
she was already packing for medical school in Oklahoma when she was offered a spot
in TCOM’s Class of 2026.
That meant taking a year off, but it also gave her a chance to go home.
“I love my family, and I was able to hang out with my parents every day,” said Iida, who has a twin brother to go along with her younger brother.
After the year off, Iida's medical school started in 2022. It was during orientation
week that Iida was considering the variety of student organizations to get involved
in when she came across the TCOM Ultrasound Interest Group table.
“I did not have any prior interest in ultrasound, but I loved that they brought a butterfly probe to their student organization interest group table,” Iida said. “I didn’t want to commit to a lot of clubs, but I ended up loving it because I was able to work with Dr. (Sam) Selby. I just love working with him because he’s such a great mentor, and the way we teach, peer-to-peer, is just an amazing way to teach your peers and learn.”
She did quite a bit of learning, but also growing. She was the club's first-year representative, and then Iida was elected as the President of the group heading into her second-year. It was in November of 2023 when she was teaching a thyroid lab to first-year students using ultrasound. Iida asked for any volunteers to get scanned, but nobody stepped forward. So, she just took the probe and guided it on her neck herself.
“I saw something, and I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew it was not normal,” Iida said. “It just looked very lumpy.”
She quickly moved the probe to the other side of her neck and kept teaching.
“I was in teaching mode, so I wasn’t really thinking about it,” Iida said. “I knew it needed to be looked at because it wasn’t normal.”
She took a picture of the image and sent it to Dr. Selby, who told her to see a doctor to have that looked at immediately. Iida went home to Illinois and was able to see an endocrinologist who did an ultrasound of her neck.
“I kept thinking I hope it’s not what I think it is,” Iida said.
After a biopsy of her neck, a few days later, she ended up reading her own pathology report when it came back in. Her worst fears were realized. She was diagnosed with Papillary Thyroid Cancer. The good news is that it is the most common form of thyroid cancer, accounting for nearly 80% of all cases, with a 10-year survival rate of 90-95%. Her outlook was good, but even after receiving such devastating news, she kept a positive frame of mind.
“I knew it was going to be okay,” Iida said. “We had just studied it, but it’s weird to question your mortality at 26-years old because you don’t really think about it. It just hit, and it can happen at any time, but I was grateful to find it.”
Iida was going to need surgery to remove her thyroid and to see if the cancer had spread. She was also determined to stay in medical school at the same time.
The stars aren’t done aligning
Dr. Collin O’Hara is the phase 3 curriculum director and student physician coach at
TCU’s Burnett School of Medicine, but she’s also an adjunct professor at TCOM. At
the time of Iida’s diagnosis, she was TCOM’s year 2 curriculum director.
When Iida came to her with her situation, O’Hara was supportive of her decision to try to remain in school while undergoing her surgery and treatment. O’Hara wasn’t just sympathetic to Iida’s situation; she had gone through it herself. In the final year of her pathology fellowship, O’Hara was sitting at a conference when she happened to scratch her neck and noticed a large lymph node on her collarbone.
She had lost 15 pounds and had a wicked cough, among other symptoms, at the time.
“I thought I had lung cancer,” O'Hara said.
Following a needle biopsy, O’Hara, as a pathologist, was able to see the results for herself.
“I could see the Reed-Sternberg cells under the microscope; I had Hodgkin's disease,” O’Hara said. “I was just starting my sixth year and would graduate in May. We talked about taking a leave of absence, but I was determined to finish this last year of training while doing my treatment.”
O’Hara did just that. She used up her sick time, battled through sickness from the chemotherapy, lost her hair, but kept her fellowship, and finished in May. So, when she found out about Iida’s dilemma, she naturally was already in her corner.
“I wanted her to have the same chance that I had,” O’Hara said. “I didn’t want to just say take a leave because I understood where she was coming from.”
They developed a plan to keep Iida up-to-date by working ahead, doing a few things remotely, taking some tests early and working together.
“I talked with Dr. O’Hara, and I knew I could do this because I have worked so hard to get here,” Iida said.
Iida had successful surgery on Jan. 18, 2024, to remove her thyroid, but they did find that her cancer had spread to her lymph nodes in her neck. She did radioactive iodine treatment, which meant taking a pill, which is a targeted treatment for thyroid cancer.
“I was really nauseous the first time, like I had a really bad flu,” Iida said. “It wasn’t terrible, and I had a lot of support from my family and roommates during that time.”
Iida was okay. What seemed like a whirlwind at the time was over in just two weeks. She was going to need time to recover, physically and mentally, but Iida was back at TCOM and continuing with her studies.
Finding her specialty in the OR
Iida was back in the classroom by the middle of February 2024. She was caught up on
her classwork and ready to move forward, but putting everything behind her was going
to take time, a lot of time.
“For about six months, it was still pretty fresh,” Iida said. “I’ve been able to go about a year now without thinking about my own mortality.”
She’s had the opportunity to concentrate on her future, one that seemed like a distant dream. Like many students, picking a specialty takes time, deliberation, or maybe even a chance encounter to find the right one. Iida’s chance encounter just so happened to be in the operating room for her own surgery with the anesthesiologist who was taking care of her.
“When I had surgery, the anesthesiologist just made me feel much better, answered some questions, but made me feel very safe, like a big sister,” Iida said. “That’s what steered me toward anesthesiology. I feel like, as a provider, I want to be a source of comfort for my patients. I like the comforting part of anesthesiology because it’s very scary for those having surgery. I want to be that person who makes them safe and in good hands before they go under.”
Iida was still the president of the Ultrasound Interest group, but in her absence, her classmates stepped up. Iida prepared her team ahead of time so they were prepared for her to be gone, and she was ready to resume her activities upon returning.
“At that time, it was peak ultrasound tryouts for first-year students to be TAs, and I wasn’t there for the first half of it,” Iida said. “My classmates took over for what I would have normally handled, and they really stepped up, and Dr. Selby did as well.”
Selby, an assistant professor in TCOM’s Department of Pediatrics and Women’s Health and a Pediatric Emergency Medicine physician at Cook Children’s, has been a mentor to Iida during her time at TCOM. In February, she teamed up with Dr. Selby and fellow fourth-year student Morgan Finley to create a simulation for students that incorporated virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
“Students like Dom remind me why I love academics,” Selby said. “She has always been intrinsically driven and dependable, but what defines her most is her kindness. Medicine needs physicians who are not only clinically excellent but who create a sense of safety for patients in vulnerable moments. Having walked through her own diagnosis with such resilience, she now carries a depth of empathy that can’t be taught in a textbook. That experience will make her an extraordinary physician.”
Match Day is shaping up to be a very exciting moment, but also an emotional one for Iida. Her family is very close, but she will be surrounded by her extended family as well.
“I’m incredibly proud of her,” O’Hara said. “I told her that what she went through is going to make her so much more empathetic with her patients. She will be able to connect with her patients so much better. An experience like this will make you better if you let it. It can make you bitter or better, but choose to let it make you better, and she did that.”
The confluence of so many innocuous decisions in Iida’s journey to match day goes back years, starting with learning how to care for her younger brother when he was sick, and it's something that she won’t soon forget.
“If it weren’t for the ultrasound club, I wouldn’t have found the lump when I did,” Iida said. “That realization still feels surreal. Looking back at everything that led me here - being in medical school, learning these skills - it’s incredible to think it directly impacted my own health.”