HERE’S WHY I LEFT MED SCHOOL
PATHOLOGICAL…a term that, in medicine, is defined as: involving, caused by, or of the nature of a physical or mental disease. But taken apart, separate the Latin roots of the word, could be interpreted by an unknowledgeable pedestrian as “a reasonable way to go.”
That’s what went through my mind when I sent the email, at midnight, 6 hours before I was to start my first rotation of fourth year (anesthesiology,) to the Dean of University of Cincinnati: this was the rational choice to make. I wanted out. So the email was sent, my bags packed within 3 days, my apartment vacated, my gorgeous Siberian Husky adopted by a loving dog dad, and I literally fled with my black runt kitten back to the West Coast to Seattle.
In hindsight, all the signs and symptoms were there. At age 10 I was writing immature but time-consuming short stories and declaring to my family that I wanted to grow up to become a writer, just like Platt or Poe–in my mind, heroes, legends. To me, authors were the greatest thing you could become. My father, a family practice physician, told my close relatives privately and me blatantly “my daughter isn’t going be some fucking writer. She’s going to be a fucking doctor.” Blunt but that’s how his dad was and probably his dad’s dad. To him, and the Normans, the medical field was the best professional field and if your interests didn’t align with it then too fucking bad because no one makes money by “following some fucking unrealistic dream.”
And so the tumor appeared and began to grow, very slowly at first but slow expansion turned to metastasis as quickly as a temperature drop in winter.
I fought it at first. I knew it was a tumor and I wanted it removed. At Berkeley I took courses in philosophy and legal studies. I argued with my father of course. I loved a human rights course most of all. He groaned, but it was more of a disgusted snarl, at the thought of me becoming a human rights lawyer. Let me be clear: the decision to go to medical school was my choice and mine alone. But, just as a tumor’s growth can be blocked by medication it can also grow from additional gene mutations. And that’s what happened. Over the course of four years, as the conversations piled up, the mutated genes multiplied and I was majoring in Molecular Biology and scored in the 95th percentile on the MCAT.
I’ll be honest. Ignoring the tumor had its advantages. My dad sent me money each month. He offered to pay for my sorority fees. He paid for my rent. As long as I was going to become a DOCTOR and nothing else he was “proud” and for me life was easy. I was excelling, I loved having the money to go out at night and blow off steam at Kips, and I was, after all, going to become a DOCTOR and with that came some bragging rights and some ego-inflation.
I loved seeing the looks on the faces of my peers at bars who couldn’t believe that the girl taking tequila shots and wearing some “slutty” outfit had the brains to maintain a 3.6 GPA with a major of Molecular Biology and, with a score of 34Q on the MCAT and an entire page of research experience, might be their healthcare provider in 4 years. I loved it. I was immature and naive but those were the best years of my life–thus far.
Right now I feel like I just got rolled out of the OR without any pain meds. I have debt that I probably won’t ever be able to pay off and right now no job. But I don’t regret leaving medical school. I didn’t want to be some egotistical FUCKING DOCTOR who could only talk about medicine and was so sleep-deprived that even with the MD they never got the D (and if they did they were probably half asleep anyway.)
This blog is my road out of this recovery room, away from a painful experience, and hopefully soon I’ll see the light of day again and find success, not just to prove THEM wrong (yeah that’ll be nice) but to prove to myself that I followed my gut, my instinct, and made my own choice to be happy doing something I love.
Don’t get me wrong–I love the subjects I learned in medical school and I love the topic of medicine and Molecular Biology. I just don’t like the medical system or its hierarchy or the things you never hear about if you don’t attend medical school.
So, I start the process of sharing some of my experiences and thoughts about the medical field. Whether you’re in it or just a WebMD-er I hope anyone can relate to these posts. Most importantly, I hope my posts stimulate some thought and discussion about issues in medicine or the medical field that are mostly ignored.
Pulling the Plug on American Medicine 