Making my way through medical school and life abroad

In college, I majored in psychology and was also pre-med, taking as many science classes as I could.  After I was diagnosed with depression, the psychology classes took on a whole new meaning for me.  I was obsessed with learning more about the brain, and about how mine had gone off track.  I fancied myself something of an expert, having lived through many of the things I was now reading and learning about.  

Applying to medical school

When the time came to apply to medical school, I decided that I wanted to write my admissions essays on my experience with depression.  I felt like it had made me a stronger and more compassionate person.  One of my psychology professors warned me that medical school admissions teams may not agree with my newfound conviction that my struggle was actually a strength.  She said that admissions may question my ability to make it through medical school, and later medical training.  I was always at risk for my depression to come back, and that could potentially get in the way of strenuous medical training.

Of course, I didn’t heed this warning.  I convinced myself that if my story was viewed negatively by any of the schools I applied to, then I didn’t want to attend those schools anyway.  I didn’t need those negative motherfuckers.  With the boldness of youth, I confidently sent my applications in and began the long wait.  As it turns out, I did need those negative motherfuckers.  I didn’t get invited to interview at any of the schools I applied to.  I was crushed.  And dumbfounded.  What would I do now?  I had really only considered one profession in my lifetime, and that was medicine.  Was there anything else I might enjoy?  I was faced with a reckoning of sorts that I had not anticipated.

After researching several other career choices, medicine was the only thing I could really imagine myself doing.  My options were to apply to a DO school, something I had not yet done, take some graduate classes and apply again later, or look into foreign medical schools (aka in the Caribbean).  I actually ended up knowing people that took each of these routes with success.  But at the time it seemed like picking from a string of bad options.

My grandparents had regularly vacationed on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten for many years, and this happened to be home to a medical school called American University of the Caribbean.  Having visited the island once with them myself, I felt a strong pull to this particular school.  Applying was easy enough, and I was admitted in time to start the fall semester.  It was a huge leap of faith, traveling to another country in search of what I hoped would be an American-equivalent medical education.  It was terrifying, but I went for it.

Life on the island

In those days, medical school was generally split into two halves.  The first two years were spent in the classroom studying anatomy and physiology, and all the other subjects that would supposedly turn us into doctors.  In the final two years, you were thrown into the hospital setting, finally seeing patients and learning to diagnose all the conditions you had been learning about.  In my Caribbean school, those classroom years took place on the island of St. Maarten, taught mostly by retired American professors who had all their expenses paid to come and teach in paradise.  The hospital rotations were set up at sites around the U.S. so that we could get our training in the country we hoped to practice in one day.

St. Maarten is a beautiful island, split in half by the two countries that had colonized it, the French and the Dutch.  The medical school was on the Dutch side, where most of the residents spoke English and accepted American money.  But the laid back attitude and it-will-get-done-eventually mentality of island life were still a bit of culture shock for most of the students there.  People always want to know how we were able to get any studying done in such a place, but you get used to it.  One of my future posts will focus more on the island and the amazing things to do there.

I spent almost 20 months living on the island, studying medicine during the week and seeking out beautiful beaches on the weekends.  I learned how to scuba dive.  Met great people from all over the U.S. and Canada, even some young families.  I interacted with residents of the island by working in diabetes clinics and teaching CPR.  My life in the medical school ended up being a really great experience.  And I think the daily sunshine and warm weather really helped keep my depression at bay.

Life in England

At the end, I decided to extend my living abroad experience and applied to spend my 3^rd year of medical school in England, doing rotations at a British hospital.  This was one of the options my medical school offered, in addition to doing rotations in the States.  I lived in a town called Kingston upon Thames, about 30 minutes SW of London.  I did all of my main medical rotations in Kingston Hospital, getting an inside view of life in socialized medicine.  And one weekend per month, we planned a 4 day trip to a different city in Europe.  It was an amazing way to learn.

Applying to residency

After all this, I found my way back to Detroit to finish up my 4^th year of medical school rotations in my home town.  It was a stark contrast to the suburban English neighborhood I had been working in, but rounded out my medical training nicely.  And then I had to think about applying to residency, which is the next phase of medical training after you graduate from medical school.  I had already decided I wanted to go into Pediatrics.  I didn’t like working with adults, most of whom worked against themselves while demanding miracles from their doctors.  The honesty of children was refreshing, and I loved seeing the world from their perspective.

Having attended a foreign medical school, I knew I was at a disadvantage in applying for residency.  But I had pretty good test scores, so this helped my situation.  I applied all over, to close to 100 programs, and this time I did get interviews.  I attended about a dozen, in all different parts of the country.  Then I had to rank the programs I liked the most, hoping it would match up with their ranking of me.  This process is called the Match, and a crazy way to get into medical school, governed by formulas and algorithms.  On Match day, with thousands of others, I waited for the email to tell me that I had succeeded – I matched!  I had to wait two more days to find out where I would spend the next three years of my life.  And I ended up going to the last place I would have imagined – my new life was starting in Iowa!