I Have A Plan

I spent much of today researching the medical school situation. First of all, this is going to be a long process. I scheduled a phone appointment with a pre-med advisor at the undergraduate school to discuss how I should go about doing the pre-requisites. As I have a business degree, I only took 1 semester of physics in college. To apply to med school I will need a full year (3 quarters or 2 semesters, plus labs) of physics, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and biology. It is also recommended that I take some anatomy or physiologoy classes.

I also called and spoke to someone in the admissions office of a local community college. Online I figured out that I can take all of the needed courses, but since I already have a degree I wasn't sure how what to declare as a "major". The admissions woman was extremely helpful and I think I may have a plan for applying and meeting with someone to be sure I am taking the correct course work.

It would be possible for me to start taking courses Winter Quarter (January), but I don't want to risk missing classes or anything because of chemo. By January, I may be pretty tired out, not to mention Grace's surgery is in January and I'll have her at home for a couple of weeks. So, the plan is to start taking courses during the Spring Quarter which begins in March. All of my needed courses are offered either during the evening hours, weekends, or via a "hybrid" class which has the lecture portion online and you only have to go to the labs.

I mapped out a course work timeline. Taking only 1 course next Spring and Summer and then 2 per quarter after that, I will take classes through Spring of 2008. I will have from March to August to study for the MCAT, which is only offered in April and August. I will take it in August 2008 and submit my application for medical school by the December 2008 deadline. Assuming I am accepted, I would start school in the fall of 2009.

That gives me 4 years to get things in order. I'll be extremely busy taking classes in the mean-time, but that will give me practice to get back in the study mode. I'll also have the next 4 years to beef up the extra-curricular parts of my application. Special consideration is given to community involvement and leadership. I would like to get involved with some local breast cancer groups, and maybe I can get involved in some other support groups or health related fields. They want applicants to have experience being around sick people (I wonder if my hours in the chemo room will count?). You also have to have experienced time with physicians. I have the feeling either Dr. L or Dr. Y would be happy to let me shadow them for a day if I told them I wanted to go to medical school. I also have a really good relationship with Grace's pediatrician, so maybe I could even get her to help me with that. I'll also be able to work on getting our finances in order and being prepared to become unemployed in four years. It's also not close enough, so that my current employer needs to get too concerned.

I also did a little calculation and I don't think having a second child is going to interfere with the plans either. I will have my 2 year cancer check up in September 2007. Assuming we get the "all clear" and permission to try to get pregnant, we will wait until January 2008. If I got pregnant immediately, the baby would be due in September, just after I take the MCAT. I would have almost an entire year before starting school. So I'd have a 5 year old and 1 year old when I started school.

Of course, this all still has to be approved by the Big Guy, but it's exciting to see that this is a possibility. You never know, He may decide he wants me to start sooner than 4 years from now, and I may do pre-requisites full time. Maybe Eric will have an awesome job fall in his lap and make enough money that I can quit earlier. But for now, this is the plan. I think it's a good one.