Careful What You Wish For

Med School won’t be easy, in all sorts of strange ways. This is me pumping myself up for the biggest adventure yet.

Back in the day, I had this uncanny ability to, ahem, “cram”. Understand the jist of the material in class, but blitz-study before exams.

I tried cramming recently in Biology, one of several classes I must attend prior to Med School in August. I did ok in the exam. But ouch: if I keep this up, I’ll have to update my reading glasses and do Physio for my neck on a regular basis... I never used to have such issues!

A no0b mistake in my recent Physics quiz (I must complete several refresher classes prior to Med School.)

In a Physics quiz last month, I mis-converted 1.38 x 10–3 Volts to 1380 mV, rather than the correct 1.38 mV… I never used to make such mistakes!

I worry about not understanding my much younger peers, with their cool vernacular and mile-a-minute, mumbled speech. Or confusing instructors, sometimes younger than me, with my gray-haired, naïve questions.

My mom the nurse, and the rest of my family fishing, a day after I told them I’d achieved a promising rank on the waiting list for Med School. For lack of a better word, she referred to the pliers as “hemostat”.

I wonder how quickly — if at all — I’ll figure out when to speak up, or when to let this new practice take over me, given my Engineering, my-mom’s-a-nurse, I’ve-worked-in-all-sorts-of-fields quirky biases…

Can I finally make the switch to a Cont Ed, “formation continue” attitude? Drop my deep drive for excellent grades? This HAS to be my last degree. Enough already! No grades required for getting into the “Next Program”. (Med School might be pass/fail for all that I know. TBD)

Countless times I have gone by the Univ Hospital complaining about its expensive use of hyper specialists to deal with conditions that could have been avoided in some cases, had we engaged in more agressive preventive care and behaviour. But now lo and behold, who will be attending internships here... Never say never! Careful what you wish for!

Prone to guilt, I inevitably worry about maximizing my home province’s ROI re: my med training at fifty… But guilt is a poor guide. So I remind myself of how I have tired of having a health-obsessed dialogue with myself through the decades, with little training to back it up… I remember how working in a car garage, interacting with what can go wrong in a system, is also a surprising window into how it can run nicely…

Me being like a deer in headlights back in May: at 7th out of 56, my odds of getting admitted were excellent. (Got the news next to my acupuncturist’s office, btw.) Being wait-listed, then gaining admission to my third and last choice (a week later, on a quiet Saturday evening, via automated email) never felt so good!

Am I ready to part ways with my blissful ignorance as to the myriad ways one can suffer and die? (This is a big one for me. As a kid, I could barely look at Anatomy illustrations. We’ve come a long way…) Eye on the prize, Chris: wellness, preventing disease, a better understanding of the mind-body complex and ensuing interventions. Going face-to-face with all that can go “wrong” in a human will be trying — but I’d rather grow than stall. Practice, learn and know, than not. I also want to work in Health while earning a comfortable living wage, flexibly. (Remember all this when the going gets tough, girl!)

I was willing to go back to school for 4 years to become a Kinesiologist, Physiotherapist, or Occupational Therapist. Including Premed and excluding Residency, I am now staring down at 5. I would not have had the confidence (more importantly: the patience!) to go through the process of applying, nor of studying for so many years, before.

But on the eve of fifty, it seems that I am finally ready. Oui, you have my permission to laugh — I find it unbelievable and funny too!