Premed Perspective: Be the Rock

I was stuck while writing this blog post.

I’m not in a very positive place, and I don’t want to be a downer to readers…. But this path isn’t always ‘easy’ or ‘pretty’. While some individuals are blessed with a smoother process, others may not. We just happen to be one of those others. Not that a bumpy road is at all new or unfamiliar to us. We have always had to overcome and persevere. Add any other motivational growth buzz words into that as you’d like…. It’s us.

Our lives represent one giant motivational poster.

It’s crap.

To be perfectly honest, we just are too stubborn to give up and go to plan B.

After turning everything necessary for med school applications into the AACOMAS website, Hubs was hit with a problem with getting the military to send some of his credits in. It’s some acronym that I hadn’t heard of until this problem came up.  After a back and forth of about a week and a half, finally AACOMAS said to ‘just delete’ the military stuff and don’t worry about it since it was a non-necessary part of the application.

It would have been nice to know that before we wasted almost 2 weeks calling and emailing.

Delays.

Hurry up and wait.

We are now entering week 4 of verification of transcripts. We had everything together back at the end of July…. It’s the middle of August.

Such is life.

Persistence.

Stubbornness.

Grit.

Tenacity.

Determination.

THAT is what gets you through this process.

Don’t take no for an answer. There is a light at the end of this long, 8-16 year tunnel.

Do your thing. Motivate and push your partner.

Remain the bright and confident rock.

Get it done.

Then go have a nice, quiet, frustrated cry in a steamy hot bath.

Add some Epsom salt and essential oils to top it off.

Premed Perspective: Living Your Life While Waiting

One more year of waiting.

I can’t tell, yet, if it’s a blessing or an annoyance.

Hubs learned a valuable lesson from submitting applications on the tail end of the cycle.

We get an extra year of saving and family time.

We have to face another application cycle, with more schools and more wait time.

Hubs can take a class or two to help boost his GPA.

I’ve come to the realization that I am just along for the ride.

If I try to force anything or over plan our lives, I always end up disappointed.

The military taught me that within the first year of Hub’s contract.

There is nothing more frustrating than putting all of your eggs in one basket and staring at them as they all break apart and start dripping on your lap.

While we were waiting to hear for any status change on our wait listed application, I took to looking into every aspect of the possible changes in our lives.

I was overwhelmed, stressed and on the verge of a breakdown.

My problem was not that I was preparing, but that I was hording all my eggs.

Damn that basket.

Things were piling up and piling up.

Life.

I wasn’t living it while we were waiting.

I was storing it for a time when everything would be settled and decided.

It was a terrible way to handle being wait listed.

It took our entire family getting sick to snap me out of it.

I was miserable, Baby was miserable… (Hubs wasn’t as bad off because he worked 2^nd shift and rarely tends to not really be around the family as a whole. I can’t tell if he is lucky or not. )

I was ignoring the life I was living by obsessing this life that could be.

The life that wasn't confirmed yet.

Nothing was set in stone and I was planning like it was going to happen tomorrow.

I took a break from my obsessive compulsive need to look at absolutely everything to help Baby get better.

I took time to invest in some time for myself.

I took the time to look at the stress and mental deadlock that Hubs was in due to the exact same waiting game.

It was taking a toll on all of us.

I decided then and there that our family was going to treat being wait listed like a ‘No’.

We were going to live our lives like we were staying put for another year.

We were going to slow down and enjoy ourselves and each other.

I was going to allow THIS life to overshadow THAT possibility.

I couldn’t be happier with the result.

I haven’t stopped thinking of the future, I think I have most of that sorted and stored for an emergency move, if needed.

But I’m excited to plan little family vacations for when we get interviews we have to travel for.

One step at a time.

Positive, realistic thinking.

Survival Stories: Don't Yell at the Flowers

I'm overdue in posting something here, which really hurts me more than anyone since writing is so therapeutic to me.  Chalk it up to a stressful home purchase, moving, and trying to get settled in before school starts on August 13, but I haven't sat down to write in months.

A conversation I had with my children over the summer has stuck in my mind, though, and I think it's applicable to nearly everyone, in every stage of life.  Our son is nine; he is a bright, funny, friendly kid, but he inherited impatience from both my husband and myself.  Not surprisingly, it is his only sibling, our four-year old daughter, who tests his patience the most.  One day, he was particularly exasperated with her, and he moaned to me, "Mommy, why can't she just grow?  Why does it take so long?  When will she change?"

Many replies ran through my head, but as I was picking the right one, I saw a pot outside by my parents' pool.  In it were some zinnia seeds my daughter and my dad had planted a few weeks before.  The stems were getting higher, the buds getting more ready to bloom, but they weren't quite ready.  I pointed this out to our son, L, and asked him if the flowers would bloom sooner if we went outside and yelled at them, the way he felt like yelling at his sister.  He laughed, and agreed that yelling at flowers to grow would only make us look foolish.  I told him that he should try thinking of his (fierce, strong, vocal, determined) sister as a flower.  She is growing, but in her own time.

I think L understood what I was trying to teach him, though patience with Little A continues to be a big growing point.  Since then, though, I've realized how often I've tried to yell at the flowers, so to speak.  From little things to big, I somehow have this notion that my timetable is the best, the only way to go.  No matter what your spiritual leanings, I think we can all agree that none of is in charge here.  Things happen that we can't control, people do things that let us down, change happens slowly or not at all...if we are the yelling-at-flowers type, we will get torn up inside.  It's a tiring and unhealthy way to live.

As I've walked beside my husband through medical school, a five-year residency, and now four years of private practice, there are so many things that I thought I wanted to change--how long it was taking, how hard it was, personal struggles, financial difficulties, uncertainty about big decisions--but when I look back, I can see that if those things, people, and situations had changed the way I thought they should have, then perhaps my husband and I (and our kids) wouldn't have grown and changed the way we were supposed to, either!

It's hard for L to have patience with his sister.  But I know he loves her, and I know that the patience he does show is growing, and it is developing deep kindness, endurance, humility, and a prayerful heart in this young boy.  Likewise, being married to a person pursuing a medical career is very hard, harder in some seasons than others.  But I know we love each other, I know his career is more of a calling than a choice, and I know that we are growing in amazing ways--as long as we stay quiet and stop trying to yell at the flowers!


I am a stay-at-home mom to a 9-year old/5th grade son and a nearly 5-year old/pre-K daughter.  My husband practices general ENT in the Sarasota, FL area.  We have been married for 13 years.