Day 3: Goals and Accomplishments

For today's "About Me Plan" post, I am to write on goals and accomplishments. I would say that one of the biggest things that I have accomplished is becoming a doctor. I was not one of the people who just easily went from point one to point two to point three, and bam, I'm a doctor. No.

I graduated from Messiah College in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in Biology, pre-med. I had already taken the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) at least 1-2 times by then, and did not have a score high enough to get into medical school. I took a year off to study, work as an LNA (Licensed Nursing Assistant), and to take the MCAT again. In fact, even my advisor from undergrad did not think that I would be able to make it into medical school. This time, my score was not amazing, but was much improved, to a level where I could get into school. I applied to many allopathic and osteopathic schools. I earned admittance to multiple medical schools, and I chose Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine. 

During medical school, I always had to study very hard for all of my exams. It never came easy, for me to pass my exams. I was able to finish my first two years of medical school, and moved onto rotations in Elmira, NY. During my third year, I met and married my future husband Tim, and at the end of my fourth year, I gave birth to Preston. My pregnancy with Preston was complicated by premature labor twice. Preston wanted to leave me early, and due to that, I had to be hospitalized a few times. This happened during my pediatrics rotation, and the doctor who I was working for ended up failing me. During the same rotation, I also tried to match in for residency, and was unable to match, so I had to scramble into a program. I had to do an extra month of medical school rotation, about 1.5 months after Preston was born, but thankfully I did that rotation at Guthrie/Robert Packer, which is where I was to do my residency. They allowed me to leave early, so I could go home to my newborn.

Residency also was not smooth sailing for me. I had a hard time balancing having a child at home, and the long hour requirements. During my second year of residency, I was pregnant with Flynn. I ended up interacting with a patient who had shingles. Since I was pregnant, my OBGYN wanted me to be checked for varicella immunity (the virus that causes both chickenpox and shingles) and it ended up being negative, even though I received all my shots as a child and had my immunity checked previously. I ended up being uprooted from my residency until after I gave birth to Flynn, so that I could get the vaccine. This pushed the end of my residency until end of October, instead of the normal end of June.

All of this work has not been in vain. I am now a family medicine physician, doing things that I love to do. It's not always easy, but it definitely is worth it.

A goal of mine is to continue to run. Eventually I would love to run the Boston Marathon. It is a race that my dad ran when my mom was pregnant with me. I do enjoy running.