SAN ANTONIO – For Virginia Kaklamani, with the Cancer Therapy and Research Center at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio, cooking for her loved ones is everything.
“The whole point of food for me is really bringing the whole family together,” she said.
The Athens, Greece-born cancer researcher said gathering around the dinner table at the end of a long day is how she connects with her children.
“I always learned to sit at the dinner table together with my parents,” she said. "And what we do when we sit at the dinner table is go over our day and talk about what happened and what we want to do the next day, and it’s really the one time where everybody can express themselves and talk about what they just went through.”
She said that feeling of familial togetherness is what drives her practice as a cancer therapist and researcher.
“What I see with our patients is that their whole family rallies around them, the whole family gives them strength and gets strength from them. Everybody learns from each other,” she said. "And this whole community that is being built really reminds me of what we do when we cook for the whole family and we bring the whole family together.”
She said community is a big part of the UT Health Science Center’s mission.
“What we’re trying to do at UT-Health Science Center is bring the physicians and patients together. We realize that the patients need help from not just the doctors, but from somebody who can be an inspiration to them (and) lend them a helping hand,” she said. “We need to be able to understand what a family is because for us, our patients are our family and we know that for our patients, we are their family too.”
For more information about the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio, call 210-450-9000 or visit www.UTMedicine.com.