CU Medicine Brochure

18 Dr. Alcina Kong only met her father once during her two-week stint on the ‘Dirty Team’. Having cleaned up after her shift, she met him outside the hospital quarters. The pair stood just close enough for their extended hands to meet. He handed her a bag of oranges, reminded her to eat fruit, and left. Her father knew what Alcina, a 2019 graduate of CU Medicine, was going through. As a paediatrician, he too volunteered to join the ‘Dirty Team’, only back in 2003, to care for patients during the SARS outbreak. Alcina was a seven-year-old primary student at the time, and didn’t know why her father would be away. She was ecstatic to skip school due to SARS. But she eventually asked her family where he had gone. Alcina’s father drew up his last testament. He had come into close contact with the virus, intubating a patient later diagnosed with SARS. He was then quarantined for 14 days. The father wasn’t so quick to accept the daughter’s decision to volunteer for the COVID-19 ‘Dirty Team’. He tried hard to talk her out of it, and Her Father’s Daughter Alcina Kong inherits goggles and duty from father