Teresa Diaz, MD

Dr. Diaz, who is originally from Arizona, earned her MD degree from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She completed a surgical intern year at Cedars Sinai in LA and subsequently my radiology residency at Loma Linda University Medical Center in southern California. She then moved back to Arizona to be closer to family and took a job as a teleradiologist. After several years of teleradiology, Dr. Diaz returned to academics for fellowship training and is currently a Body MRI fellow at Mayo Clinic Arizona.

Lab Memory

During my time in the ablation lab, as a 3rd year medical student, I worked on developing a method to measure the amount of shrinkage that occurs during RF and MW ablation in ex vivo bovine liver and lung. My project led to a poster submission at WCIO and a trip to Los Angeles for the conference. By the 3rd day of the conference I was exhausted and decided to sleep in (including turning my phone off).

Dr. Lee got wind of my plan and I woke up to about 25 messages informing me that I needed to be at the conference immediately. I rushed to the conference and to my surprise I was greeted by multiple people who all said the same thing, “Hi Teresa…nice to meet you… congratulations on your prize, I would have loved to hear your speech.” I was very confused. Dr. Lee then told me I had won a prize for my poster, but unfortunately I was supposed to be there that morning to give an acceptance speech. I suddenly went from thinking this must be a funny joke to, geez I really screwed up. A few hours later Dr. Lee said he needed to talk to me and pulled me aside. I will never forget what he said, “Teresa, there are times in your life when you do something that you are going to regret for the rest of your life…. And this is not one of them! Haha we got you!”

Dr. Lee orchestrated this elaborate practical joke in less than an hour. The award was real, but the speech was definitely not.