Let the competition end and the collaboration begin.
Medically Brunette
I've been wanting to write this for some time now to explain why on earth I would decide mid-life to work towards becoming a physician. I took a few moments to write something down. The story isn't finished yet...it's a work in progress. Btw, if you have questions or comments or thoughts for improvement...please let me know! It would be great to tweak this thing as it might help someone out who's in a similar place. Thank you Martha for getting me to get off my derriere to write this out...it's kind of scary to do but good!!
This is the story of a mother, fast-approaching or already in middle-age, who decides to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a doctor. It's a spoof of the movie, 'Legally Blonde', as well. In that movie, Elle Woods, the main character and a sorority girl, decides to pursue Law School in order to get her boyfriend back. She is the least likely person that you would think would be smart or determined enough to be accepted into law school, let alone Harvard, and then actually finish.
I'm a bit like Elle Woods, except the brunette version. While blondes are dumb and have more fun (no offense to my gorgeous and smart blonde friends!), brunettes are smart and get married and raise babies. Well, I was raised to be a good house frau, wife, and mother, at the same time encouraged to learn everything about the world. My dad was a surgeon and a bit of a renaissance man. He was supposed to be a blacksmith, but thanks to contracting malaria at age 12, got ambitious and studied to become a physician. He raised me to appreciate science and the arts.
At the same time, my dad was determined that I be a good wife and mother and marry a Turkish doctor, not actually become one. But, he also wanted to make sure I had a career just in case my husband died or I divorced and wouldn't be left destitute. He is a practical man. I had a strange adolescence in that I lived in Little Turkey (like Little Italy) at home during the evenings and attended an American school with all the trimmings during the day. I wasn't allowed to do sports or participate in social events with my friends. Parties where boys attended were a definite no-no. Thanks to some wonderful friends, I was smuggled in to at least one that I can recall.
My mom's side has some cool medical history, however. My grandfather was a well known radiologist in Turkey who studied under Marie Curie in Paris. He and my grandmother were part of the Turkish social elite who spoke fluent French and German and traveled a lot. I personally think that my grandfather was a spy for the French Resistance and he knew some Nazi officers. I know he hung out with Madame Curie and maybe even Einstein. There's a hotel in Belgium called Hotel Ustel which was his last name. He died in 1945 (WW II ended) when my mom was only 3. But, that's the romantic dreamer in me talking. He actually had radiation poisoning and was dying from all that experimental testing he had done when younger.
At age 12, I had a dream that I saved my dad from cancer. Somehow, he had this weird pink stuff in his body that I found while doing exploratory surgery in his body. I took the tissue back to my lab (remember, this is a dream), and figured out a way to save him...to cure the cancer basically. Ironically, a few years ago, I read a scientific article talking about how mice exposed to pink light developed malignant tumors.
Thanks to this dream, I pushed a little hard to do well in school and went off to college at the University of Michigan. I chickened out of premed during school due to the steep curves and competition. Dad pushed me cold turkey into Computer Science, and I went on to finish. I worked a year as a systems analyst programming surgical inventory systems. Not quite liking it, I studied for the GMATs and got into UM's MBA program where I met my husband. I started to bloom in those couple of years, landing an internship with a major bank in New York city and even being elected President of the International Business Club. I would later move to NYC to work for an investment bank in the field of human resources. My husband and I worked in the fast paced world of downtown New York for a few years until it was time to start a family.
A lovely opportunity with Capital One in Richmond, VA, came to both of us to start a new life together. We got married and not only helped build a company but also a family. Within 5.5 years, we found ourself with 4 children, au pairs to help us raise them, and me with a full time director position and then a part time position. My oldest daughter started to have developmental delays and I felt I had to stay home. Working with physicians, therapists, and specialists, I started to become immersed in the medical field. I found that I had a knack for putting ideas and solutions together, medically speaking. I found various vitamin and herbal remedies together from different scientific research, which greatly helped my daughter's mental and physical development.
Art can be a tremendous way to discover what you are made of and what you are supposed to be doing. I think that creating different art works particularly helped me listen to what my own soul was telling me to do. I just had to get knocked on the head a bit to really listen. Namely, after a second surgery to repair body damage from childbirth, I inadvertently became dehydrated and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. I was pretty close to leaving the planet and felt and heard the 'other side'. After being given a moment of tremendous peace, I was given a choice: do you want to stay or go? I remember thinking..I think I want to stay. The answer I heard back was: Ok then, you've got some work to do.
Now what that work was I had no idea. I still don't know as I don't think the journey is over yet. Thanks to meeting some amazing people in the medical field, I started to get a sense that it had something to do with medicine. I thought I was too old, too busy with kids blah, blah, blah. I asked my heart or God 'what do you want me to do? how do you want me to help the Family...humanity, that is?' And then by some strange miracle, right as I was driving by the gates of the University of Richmond, I got a phone call on my cell phone by a woman asking for 'Jean' which is my last name. This woman had turned out to be a retired professor of poetry and literature from Emory University in Atlanta, GA. I'm still in touch with her. This woman told me that I must be a child of God because I didn't hang up on her and tried to help her out. Her surrogate father, a minister, had just passed away and I got this weird body rush and knew what I had to do. It was as if this guy was saying good bye to his daughter and telling me 'go for it girl!'.
And I did. I contacted UR and spoke to the director of pre-health sciences in my flip flops and frilly skirt. Bless this man's heart as he listened to me and told me to begin the experiment and see how well I would do. I was nervous, but I enrolled. My husband even felt that science and medicine fit me better and never knew how I ended up in business. I think I was just supposed to meet him. I worked my butt off, and I ended up getting A's and B's in my classes. I met some amazing professors and friends there. The students were 20 years younger than me but treated me like one of them. I was old enough to be their mother but felt accepted. Honestly, things just seemed to work out from there. It wasn't easy juggling it all, but I literally had what I'd call miracle helpers along the way. My grades continued to stay strong. I think you get smarter when you get older either because you are paying for it or wisdom and better organization skills catches up with you.
Testing my desire for medicine came in the form of volunteering at a free health clinic. This was an amazing experience as I got to shadow doctors and physicians assistants. My heart particularly goes out to all the underserved patients who have full time jobs but no insurance. These are the hardest hit folks as their higher stress levels bring them more medical troubles. I later did a medical internship with this clinic during the summer. Again, my kids were somehow ok with some great babysitters. I also had very supportive friends. However, I have to give the most credit to my husband who supported me the most, especially while I studied for important tests and did homework.
In my second year of studies at UR, I continued to do well the first semester. However, I think I lost some balance in the second and overspread my work load. We hired a nanny that didn't fit in which created a chain reaction of events that would test whether I would continue this path. My son Steven was given a mis-prescription of medications for which he was hospitalized. Losing some focus due to worrying about my son, I started to lose my edge which impacted my grade in physics. I tail spinned into my first MCAT and did dismally. Fortunately, the second was a huge improvement but not enough. The family was getting sick of mom being in school and pursuing her dream. It really put the breaks on whether it was all worth it psychologically. Did I still want to do this?
One amazing highlight through that weird time is that I shadowed an amazing oncologist who I now consider my mentor. He's a hematologist and internal medicine guy as well and is a renaissance man himself. He told me an important lesson about how best to look at arterial fibrillation. Don't look at the rhythm but rather the rate. Basically, it doesn't matter if it (heart/life) goes in fits and spurts. Just make sure the pipeline gets something through it, keep it moving, keep it flowing...it's all good.
A silver lining, scientifically and psychologically speaking, last summer was that I isolated a protein that might help someone with Type II diabetes. It's called TUG and binds to the GLUT4 receptors in fat and muscle cells. In real terms, it's like a tugboat that carries a big boat with doors to attach to the cell membrane for glucose to get into your cells. Insulin says 'knock knock' to your cell membrane which is the main gate. If allowed in by the doormen (the series of molecules that begins the gate unlocking process), it enters and breaks the hook between the tugboat (TUG) and the big boat (GLUT4). When you don't have insulin, like in diabetes, this hook never gets broken and glucose never is allowed to enter. Too much glucose in your bloodstream...things start going bad, feet fall off, eyes can't see....too much information! Anyways, I found the little tugboat. I still want to find out how it hooks to the big boat.
This year, I applied to something like 20 schools. I've been rejected by every single one except for Penn State University...still Penn-ding...ha ha! I was this close to entering the Doctor of Osteopathy school in Blacksburg, VA, but I choked in my first interview. I was so nervous (literally hyperventilated) which was a shock after a 10 year career in Human Resources with 7 job offers coming out of the MBA program and recruiting and hiring people. It wasn't meant to be I guess. Doesn't matter though, I've learned something about balance. I need to stay in Richmond. I didn't want to be in Blacksburg. My MCAT score is good enough for the D.O. schools, but I just can't move. Besides, I think I'm meant to be an MD with an artsy, holistic bent.
So I'm studying for the MCATs now. I'm taking a brain engineering class to literally rewire my brain, hopefully making it creative and effective. I volunteer at the ER and hospice to get some patient interaction, whetting my medical appetite. Even though I wasn't accepted into medical school yet, it's not stopping me from reading all the books on histology, anatomy, physiology, etc. I have Harrison's big fat book on internal medicine which I read at a turtle-like pace. The turtle won the race in the end, didn't he? Plus, I'm still a mom and wife and always will be. I want to be a doctor, but not at anyone's expense. I want to save lives, not unbalance them, especially those of my family. I'm still learning how to do this...pacing pacing pacing.
In this phase of my journey, I've technically failed. However, I've learned that failure can hopefully lead to success as experienced by other successful people. All I know is that I want to keep having fun. Pressure and unhealthy competition is definitely not the way to go. I have applied to the M.S. in Microbiology and Immunology at VCU in Richmond. I hope they select me. If not, I will keep trying every year, taking classes, and continuing self-study. Especially in physics, which is my achilles heel. The day that I start to be able to link concepts with the formulas and solve problems without a lot of trouble will be a happy day indeed. On the other hand, maybe I've succeeded in that I'm still flowing along (like the heart rate) looking forward to each day as it comes.
If there's a change in my status, I'll let you know. Otherwise, I'm keeping peaceful just enjoying each moment...
...Thanks for listening.
This is the story of a mother, fast-approaching or already in middle-age, who decides to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a doctor. It's a spoof of the movie, 'Legally Blonde', as well. In that movie, Elle Woods, the main character and a sorority girl, decides to pursue Law School in order to get her boyfriend back. She is the least likely person that you would think would be smart or determined enough to be accepted into law school, let alone Harvard, and then actually finish.
I'm a bit like Elle Woods, except the brunette version. While blondes are dumb and have more fun (no offense to my gorgeous and smart blonde friends!), brunettes are smart and get married and raise babies. Well, I was raised to be a good house frau, wife, and mother, at the same time encouraged to learn everything about the world. My dad was a surgeon and a bit of a renaissance man. He was supposed to be a blacksmith, but thanks to contracting malaria at age 12, got ambitious and studied to become a physician. He raised me to appreciate science and the arts.
At the same time, my dad was determined that I be a good wife and mother and marry a Turkish doctor, not actually become one. But, he also wanted to make sure I had a career just in case my husband died or I divorced and wouldn't be left destitute. He is a practical man. I had a strange adolescence in that I lived in Little Turkey (like Little Italy) at home during the evenings and attended an American school with all the trimmings during the day. I wasn't allowed to do sports or participate in social events with my friends. Parties where boys attended were a definite no-no. Thanks to some wonderful friends, I was smuggled in to at least one that I can recall.
My mom's side has some cool medical history, however. My grandfather was a well known radiologist in Turkey who studied under Marie Curie in Paris. He and my grandmother were part of the Turkish social elite who spoke fluent French and German and traveled a lot. I personally think that my grandfather was a spy for the French Resistance and he knew some Nazi officers. I know he hung out with Madame Curie and maybe even Einstein. There's a hotel in Belgium called Hotel Ustel which was his last name. He died in 1945 (WW II ended) when my mom was only 3. But, that's the romantic dreamer in me talking. He actually had radiation poisoning and was dying from all that experimental testing he had done when younger.
At age 12, I had a dream that I saved my dad from cancer. Somehow, he had this weird pink stuff in his body that I found while doing exploratory surgery in his body. I took the tissue back to my lab (remember, this is a dream), and figured out a way to save him...to cure the cancer basically. Ironically, a few years ago, I read a scientific article talking about how mice exposed to pink light developed malignant tumors.
Thanks to this dream, I pushed a little hard to do well in school and went off to college at the University of Michigan. I chickened out of premed during school due to the steep curves and competition. Dad pushed me cold turkey into Computer Science, and I went on to finish. I worked a year as a systems analyst programming surgical inventory systems. Not quite liking it, I studied for the GMATs and got into UM's MBA program where I met my husband. I started to bloom in those couple of years, landing an internship with a major bank in New York city and even being elected President of the International Business Club. I would later move to NYC to work for an investment bank in the field of human resources. My husband and I worked in the fast paced world of downtown New York for a few years until it was time to start a family.
A lovely opportunity with Capital One in Richmond, VA, came to both of us to start a new life together. We got married and not only helped build a company but also a family. Within 5.5 years, we found ourself with 4 children, au pairs to help us raise them, and me with a full time director position and then a part time position. My oldest daughter started to have developmental delays and I felt I had to stay home. Working with physicians, therapists, and specialists, I started to become immersed in the medical field. I found that I had a knack for putting ideas and solutions together, medically speaking. I found various vitamin and herbal remedies together from different scientific research, which greatly helped my daughter's mental and physical development.
Art can be a tremendous way to discover what you are made of and what you are supposed to be doing. I think that creating different art works particularly helped me listen to what my own soul was telling me to do. I just had to get knocked on the head a bit to really listen. Namely, after a second surgery to repair body damage from childbirth, I inadvertently became dehydrated and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. I was pretty close to leaving the planet and felt and heard the 'other side'. After being given a moment of tremendous peace, I was given a choice: do you want to stay or go? I remember thinking..I think I want to stay. The answer I heard back was: Ok then, you've got some work to do.
Now what that work was I had no idea. I still don't know as I don't think the journey is over yet. Thanks to meeting some amazing people in the medical field, I started to get a sense that it had something to do with medicine. I thought I was too old, too busy with kids blah, blah, blah. I asked my heart or God 'what do you want me to do? how do you want me to help the Family...humanity, that is?' And then by some strange miracle, right as I was driving by the gates of the University of Richmond, I got a phone call on my cell phone by a woman asking for 'Jean' which is my last name. This woman had turned out to be a retired professor of poetry and literature from Emory University in Atlanta, GA. I'm still in touch with her. This woman told me that I must be a child of God because I didn't hang up on her and tried to help her out. Her surrogate father, a minister, had just passed away and I got this weird body rush and knew what I had to do. It was as if this guy was saying good bye to his daughter and telling me 'go for it girl!'.
And I did. I contacted UR and spoke to the director of pre-health sciences in my flip flops and frilly skirt. Bless this man's heart as he listened to me and told me to begin the experiment and see how well I would do. I was nervous, but I enrolled. My husband even felt that science and medicine fit me better and never knew how I ended up in business. I think I was just supposed to meet him. I worked my butt off, and I ended up getting A's and B's in my classes. I met some amazing professors and friends there. The students were 20 years younger than me but treated me like one of them. I was old enough to be their mother but felt accepted. Honestly, things just seemed to work out from there. It wasn't easy juggling it all, but I literally had what I'd call miracle helpers along the way. My grades continued to stay strong. I think you get smarter when you get older either because you are paying for it or wisdom and better organization skills catches up with you.
Testing my desire for medicine came in the form of volunteering at a free health clinic. This was an amazing experience as I got to shadow doctors and physicians assistants. My heart particularly goes out to all the underserved patients who have full time jobs but no insurance. These are the hardest hit folks as their higher stress levels bring them more medical troubles. I later did a medical internship with this clinic during the summer. Again, my kids were somehow ok with some great babysitters. I also had very supportive friends. However, I have to give the most credit to my husband who supported me the most, especially while I studied for important tests and did homework.
In my second year of studies at UR, I continued to do well the first semester. However, I think I lost some balance in the second and overspread my work load. We hired a nanny that didn't fit in which created a chain reaction of events that would test whether I would continue this path. My son Steven was given a mis-prescription of medications for which he was hospitalized. Losing some focus due to worrying about my son, I started to lose my edge which impacted my grade in physics. I tail spinned into my first MCAT and did dismally. Fortunately, the second was a huge improvement but not enough. The family was getting sick of mom being in school and pursuing her dream. It really put the breaks on whether it was all worth it psychologically. Did I still want to do this?
One amazing highlight through that weird time is that I shadowed an amazing oncologist who I now consider my mentor. He's a hematologist and internal medicine guy as well and is a renaissance man himself. He told me an important lesson about how best to look at arterial fibrillation. Don't look at the rhythm but rather the rate. Basically, it doesn't matter if it (heart/life) goes in fits and spurts. Just make sure the pipeline gets something through it, keep it moving, keep it flowing...it's all good.
A silver lining, scientifically and psychologically speaking, last summer was that I isolated a protein that might help someone with Type II diabetes. It's called TUG and binds to the GLUT4 receptors in fat and muscle cells. In real terms, it's like a tugboat that carries a big boat with doors to attach to the cell membrane for glucose to get into your cells. Insulin says 'knock knock' to your cell membrane which is the main gate. If allowed in by the doormen (the series of molecules that begins the gate unlocking process), it enters and breaks the hook between the tugboat (TUG) and the big boat (GLUT4). When you don't have insulin, like in diabetes, this hook never gets broken and glucose never is allowed to enter. Too much glucose in your bloodstream...things start going bad, feet fall off, eyes can't see....too much information! Anyways, I found the little tugboat. I still want to find out how it hooks to the big boat.
This year, I applied to something like 20 schools. I've been rejected by every single one except for Penn State University...still Penn-ding...ha ha! I was this close to entering the Doctor of Osteopathy school in Blacksburg, VA, but I choked in my first interview. I was so nervous (literally hyperventilated) which was a shock after a 10 year career in Human Resources with 7 job offers coming out of the MBA program and recruiting and hiring people. It wasn't meant to be I guess. Doesn't matter though, I've learned something about balance. I need to stay in Richmond. I didn't want to be in Blacksburg. My MCAT score is good enough for the D.O. schools, but I just can't move. Besides, I think I'm meant to be an MD with an artsy, holistic bent.
So I'm studying for the MCATs now. I'm taking a brain engineering class to literally rewire my brain, hopefully making it creative and effective. I volunteer at the ER and hospice to get some patient interaction, whetting my medical appetite. Even though I wasn't accepted into medical school yet, it's not stopping me from reading all the books on histology, anatomy, physiology, etc. I have Harrison's big fat book on internal medicine which I read at a turtle-like pace. The turtle won the race in the end, didn't he? Plus, I'm still a mom and wife and always will be. I want to be a doctor, but not at anyone's expense. I want to save lives, not unbalance them, especially those of my family. I'm still learning how to do this...pacing pacing pacing.
In this phase of my journey, I've technically failed. However, I've learned that failure can hopefully lead to success as experienced by other successful people. All I know is that I want to keep having fun. Pressure and unhealthy competition is definitely not the way to go. I have applied to the M.S. in Microbiology and Immunology at VCU in Richmond. I hope they select me. If not, I will keep trying every year, taking classes, and continuing self-study. Especially in physics, which is my achilles heel. The day that I start to be able to link concepts with the formulas and solve problems without a lot of trouble will be a happy day indeed. On the other hand, maybe I've succeeded in that I'm still flowing along (like the heart rate) looking forward to each day as it comes.
If there's a change in my status, I'll let you know. Otherwise, I'm keeping peaceful just enjoying each moment...
...Thanks for listening.
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