Mikayla Coates

Finding Your Path

How does someone go about choosing a career that they will most likely have for the rest of their life? Many factors go into shaping such a huge decision in one’s life. For Mikayla Crapps-Coates, the question was asked, but the answer came much easier than expected. From early on in her childhood, Mikayla always had the natural ability to see when someone needed comforting or healing. It was this naturally nurturing nature that would help to shape her future. As a girl, as with most girls, she was always given baby dolls or other toys that catered to the nurturing side of their nature, learning how to care for something that could not care for themselves. Most girls grow out of this caring stage, however as Mikayla grew older, she traded in the dolls for something real and began to take care of animals and her family and friends. Her way of taking care of people was to first see their emotional health, by making them smile or feel warm-and-fuzzy, and then to check their physical health. She has always been a creative type when it comes to doing things.

Always creating some craft or drawing, Mikayla would use this skill to make people feel good, she never wants to see anyone in any type of pain, emotional or physical. Years later, in high school, this nurturing path would lead her to become a VolunTeen at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Egleston location, and help her to decide her fated career. Starting-off in a standard placement as a volunteer, Mikayla witnessed many different types of people in the hospital, and this made her heart quiver and grow. She became more aware of the different situations that families are in and decided she wanted to be like a Superhero and become a doctor to help those who couldn’t help themselves. It wasn’t until her last year as a VolunTeen when she occupied the head position, that she decided fully what she wanted to do. She wanted to be a heart surgeon, to help the many kids who suffer from heart conditions, that limit and obscure their childhood. It was then she realized that everything that happened in her youth, from the dolls to her love of taking care of animals and people, that she found her calling. This a Mikayla Crapps-Coates, a future Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgeon!