For one medical student, Jacobs School felt like a ‘comfort blanket community’

BUFFALO, N.Y. – As Match Day approaches on March 20, when graduating medical students learn where they will train in residency, fourth-year University at Buffalo medical student Maureen Fagan is reflecting on the journey that got her here. And she’s feeling extremely grateful for the support of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and the Buffalo community.

She is also thankful for the insight and perspective she gained while navigating medical school after her family suffered a tragedy that was deeply felt throughout the Jacobs School community.

Maureen’s older sister, Adeline Fagan, MD, a member of the Jacobs School Class of 2019, died at the age of 28 in September 2020 from complications of COVID-19. She was just beginning her second year of residency in obstetrics and gynecology in Houston and was working to deliver babies of COVID-19 patients in the hospital.

A close-knit family

Maureen Fagen is one of four daughters of Brant and Mary Jane Fagan of the Syracuse area, all of whom pursued careers in health care.

The family has always been close-knit, Maureen says. “We grew up hearing my mom say, ‘promise me you will always be close to each other.’” 

When Adeline began her residency in Houston and found the transition to living alone difficult, Maureen packed up and moved there to keep her company.

“Our family,” Maureen says, “has always embraced the idea that when one of us is struggling, the question becomes ‘who is free?’”

Maureen had just graduated from Canisius University and was planning to study for the MCAT and apply to medical school.

“I figured I could do that from wherever, so it was like, ‘I guess I am moving to Texas,’” she says.

When Adeline was diagnosed with COVID-19, Maureen was her quarantine partner and the one who took her to the emergency room of a Houston hospital after she noticed Adeline was getting blue around her lips due to a lack of oxygen.

Clarity arises out of grief

It was the strength of their bonds that helped the family navigate the loss of Adeline.

Maureen had originally planned to take six months off between her undergraduate studies and medical school but wound up taking 18 months to “cope and grieve.”

“It was hard, but I knew Adeline in life and she was very selfless,” she says. “She would not want me wallowing and wasting my life. She would want me to make something of myself, whatever that is, to make myself happy.”

Amid the sadness, Maureen found an even deeper clarity about what truly matters.

“During my first two years of medical school, I went home at least once every month,” she says. “Not because I thought I couldn’t make it in med school, but because that’s what I wanted out of my life at that time. I have two nephews and I really wanted them to know me.

“Could I have gotten better grades? Could I have been higher up in my class had I studied more? Probably. But the perspective I gained from Adeline dying is that I don’t need to be at the top of my class.

“Because at the end of the day, Adeline died and she was a doctor. But that is not what I think about when I think about her,” Maureen adds. “I think about her personality and what a great person she was. I don’t think about the fact that she became a doctor. I do not think that is the end all, be all.”

Finding her passion in emergency medicine

While at the Jacobs School, Adeline participated in four global medicine mission trips to Haiti. Maureen accompanied her on three of them as a pre-medical student.

“The way I was first exposed to the idea of giving back was through Adeline, and it kind of continued from there,” Maureen says.

When she enrolled at the Jacobs School herself, civil unrest in the region prevented Maureen from returning to Haiti. Instead, she found another outlet through UB HEALS, the student-run street medicine outreach program.

“That tied in more with what I want to do with my life and my future career in emergency medicine,” Maureen says. “That population — unhoused individuals and people dealing with substance use issues — is exactly the population I am treating in the ER.”

Her experience with UB HEALS, working as an emergency department scribe at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital and serving in EMS (emergency medical services) in Buffalo all reinforced her decision to pursue emergency medicine.

“It fits my personality. Everyone jokes that EM is for quirky ADHDers, and I think that is pretty darn accurate,” Maureen says with a laugh. “I go to the ED and it’s chaos. But it’s perfect chaos. And I think, ‘yes, this is for me.’”

Maureen says she is feeling a mix of emotions as she prepares to graduate and, most likely, leave Buffalo.

She says when some people learned she would be attending the Jacobs School, they believed they were paying her a compliment when they told her she was following in her sister’s footsteps.

“And to a degree, yes,” she says. “But on the other hand, it is my own life. I am living my own life.”

Still, Maureen says she and her family will forever carry a part of Adeline with them.

And she says the Jacobs School is the only place she ever wanted to be for medical school — “because UB and the Buffalo community are my family.”

“In these last five years, this is kind of what I needed — to have a safe space, basically a comfort blanket community. A place where I could figure out who I wanted to be and grow into my own person,” Maureen says.

“I think it is the idea of the relationships Adeline made here. In a way, I felt like she left a spot here for me to feel comfortable to move on.”