A Bright Future: Josh's Story - CHOC

So many people have CHOC to thank for making their future bright, and I just ran into another one in the hospital’s halls!

Let’s learn about Josh, whose time at CHOC as a kid inspired him to go to medical school and become a doctor for young patients.

Josh is in the third year of his residency at CHOC Children’s.

When Josh Siembieda was just a toddler, he had a severe reaction to milk and was taken to CHOC Children’s.

That hospitalization in 1986 was the beginning of a long relationship with CHOC as he and his family worked to control his allergies and asthma. He became a frequent patient of Sherwin Gillman, M.D., visiting his office “hundreds” of times as a child. He took regular allergy shots and participated in Dr. Gillman’s summer asthma camp.

CHOC Children’s allergy and immunology specialists are known for being thorough in rooting out the causes of allergic and asthma reactions and will spend time educating families about prevention and maintenance. They are the lead on a number of research efforts at CHOC to find the latest treatments, and they offer one of the only clinics in Southern California for eosinophilic esophagitis (EOE), an allergic inflammatory condition of the esophagus.

Josh knows what it’s like to be a sick kid. That unique perspective, and the impression Dr. Gillman and his staff had on Josh, inspired him to become a doctor.

“I went into medicine because of the respect I had for doctors growing up,” he says. “Being a patient with a chronic medical problem definitely played a part in my decision to go into pediatrics.”

Now 30 years old, Josh is in his third and final year of the pediatric residency program at CHOC, and he’s excited to start his career taking care of children.

“And,” he says, “I’m still a patient of Dr. Gillman’s.”