When I Grow Up

I want to be a doctor when I grow up.

I didn’t used to think I wanted to be a doctor. I thought the opposite. It was all gore and obsession with success and constant stress. It never even crossed my mind, except on its way out. I wanted to do biological research because I did well on tests and thought I could be good at it.

Then I decided that I wanted my life to be about helping people in meaningful ways, spiritually and otherwise. And I didn’t want a degree and career track that weren’t related to this. Of course biological researchers can help people too, but if I was going to put in all the years of school I wanted them to play into my future aspirations more than just tangentially.

I decided that I wanted to live overseas, but I’m holding that with an open hand. Nonetheless, if that was in the plans then suddenly a new track made sense: Medical missions.

All of a sudden it went from “Oh, I’m one of the few biology majors not thinking about med school” to “Well, I’m keeping that open as an option but not stressing about it” to “Heck, I might as well take the MCAT just to see how it goes” to purchasing an 1100 page MCAT study guide and 400 flash cards and starting studying three months in advance.

The more I sit down and think about who I want to be in 15 years, the more I realize that I want to be involved in medicine. But it’s not that clean cut. There are a ton of factors besides ignorance that made me hesitate for so long and that still make me uneasy. Here are the big ones, not in order of importance:

1) The fight for medical school admission – the stress and competition and résumé-building and worry over GPA and quality of extracurriculars and MCAT scores.

2) The torture of medical school – long hours studying, hard tests, the persistent competition, lacking time to pursue other areas of life like hobbies or wife-getting.

3) The length of medical school – four years of school and three years of residency, piling up debt and fatigue the whole way. I probably wouldn’t be finished and debt-free until I was at least 30.

4) The patient interactions – having to listen to a pestering, ignorant patient begging for unnecessary attention when I’m at the end of a ten hour shift. I don’t know if I enjoy people enough to treat patients well when they don’t deserve to be treated well.

5) The gore – even though I definitely wouldn’t become an emergency room surgeon, there would be times when I would be looking at mutilated insides. I haven’t been exposed to much gore and while I don’t get nauseous from the sight/thought of gore, I don’t know if I have a strong enough constitution to deal with a ruined, dying person and pieces in the wrong places.

6) The nakedness – routinely seeing and touching naked people. I can’t begin to get comfortable with the idea of this. And while it sounds trite, this is a nagging fear.

And the weight of all of these factors makes me wonder if I wouldn’t be better suited doing research or construction and helping people in my small way. Maybe medicine is meant for people with more resolve and vigor.

But a few days ago I got to go to the hospital where my aunt works and I got to see what primary care looks like from the side of the medical professionals for the first time. There wasn’t any flashy gore or nudity to test my stomach, but it was a chance to see what being in medicine is about. And I loved it.

I won’t share any details because I’m scared of HIPAA and I don’t know its boundaries, but I loved the whole experience. I loved trying to understand what was wrong with hurting people and finding out how to fix their problems. I loved the phone calls and the teamwork and informed opinions working together. I loved hearing that contrary to what I read, no one was making decisions based on money. I loved medicine.

I don’t know if that emotion is realistic, or enough to surmount six huge arguments against med school. But something vigorous inside of me wants to help people how doctors help people. I want to help poor people and dying people and sick children in third world countries. I want to fix broken bodies and give hope.

This is so dramatic.

But on some level, I think dreams should be.

Anyway.
I want to be a doctor when I grow up.