Decisions, Decisions

This is actually one of the pieces (the others are too long and boring to be included here) I used in my application to the Writing Program at Hopkins. It's about the best doctor in the world, my mom.




To be perfectly honest, I’ve always been vaguely suspicious of all those who claim that their primary reason for entering medical school or the medical field in general is “to help people,” in the same way that I’m leery of people who describe themselves as “generous” or “humble.” What are my reasons, then, for considering healthcare as a potential profession? Well, it’s complicated.

Medical school has been on my college map since my freshman year, but I’ve very purposely kept it off the must-see list. It’s more like one of those “we’ll stop there if we have time on our way back” kind of landmarks that reek of good intentions and rare follow through. I’m not ready to completely rule it out yet because it might turn out that I really want to be a doctor. At the same time, I can’t set my future in stone like so many of my declared pre-med classmates, because I have seen and can instinctively feel that the med school train is not an easy one to disembark, and inertia alone should not be what is responsible for bringing me to my ultimate occupation. Further complicating this already difficult decision is the fact that my ambassador to Medicalschoolville is my mother, a successful neonatologist who has been saving newborn baby lives for over 30 years.

Growing up with Dr. Mom had its share of disadvantages. I had several school friends who were granted permission to stay home from school to tend to a medical crisis as underwhelming as a stubbed toe, but my mother wouldn’t think twice about sending me off to school with a fever of 99.8 (“It’s low-grade; just make sure you drink a lot of water,” was her usual dismissal). Even working part-time, moonlighting and taking day shifts as she did for most of my childhood, she spent a lot of time away. My most anguished moments of those years occurred when I would occasionally slip and refer to our longtime babysitter as “Mom.” She always assured my red, round face that it was ok, it didn’t mean I didn’t love my mommy, but I never actually felt the satisfaction with this explanation that I conveyed.

Of course, having a doctor in the house did come with benefits, many of which are evident to me only in retrospect. Trips to the pediatrician outside our yearly checkups were few and far between for my sisters and I, a blessing which I can only now, after seeing those stewing germ traps (“sick” waiting rooms) and amateur screaming contests (“well” waiting rooms), truly appreciate. Chest colds, bloody noses, and weird skin rashes never rattled my mother, and her lack of anxiety or fear was usually enough to quell my own worries about such ailments.

Another thing I couldn’t appreciate until I was in my teens, and even more so when I had had some medical training (I became certified as an EMT a year ago, in an attempt to test out the patient-care waters), was just how good a doctor my mother is. She is precise, thorough, extremely knowledgeable, and though she may curse like a sailor, she stays calm during a crisis. And if there is one thing the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit sees, it’s crises. Now when she comes home after a long 24 hour—yes, 24 hour—shift and tells me what a dumbass the obstetrician was being, I know that he probably was. I know that not all doctors can catch an obscure (and usually highly improbable) condition portrayed on ER like my mother can, and that many pediatricians can’t answer a surgical or cardiac question as well as she.

These recent realizations that give me so much pride as a daughter also give me much doubt as a potential medical student and doctor. When I look over the facts, I appear to possess exactly none of the qualities that make my mother such a good doctor: she is meticulous and methodical, while in school I muddled sloppily through much of my schoolwork; she works incredibly hard and goes on little sleep, while I have been known to break down into tears if woken before I’ve gotten my necessary eight hours; she has every planner, organizer, and calendar that Day-Timer makes, while every planner I’ve ever owned goes ignored after about two weeks of inconsistent use. Knowing that I have the intellectual abilities but none of the work ethic, I doubt very seriously that I could ever live up to this legacy, could ever be as good a doctor as my mother. I have the natural aptitude and lack of motivation that echo “wasted talent” and “so much potential.”

If my mom knew she was raising a potential future doctor, she probably would have kept most of her stories of medical school and residency to herself. Tales that would fit in nicely around a campfire on a dark summer night, they told of soul-crushing 36 hour shifts, fatal misdiagnoses and days without time to shower or eat a hot meal. I can recall one particularly shocking tale that still freaks me out a little. My mother, a resident at the time, had just gotten off another zillion-hour shift at the university hospital in Baltimore and was pulling out of the parking lot, headed home to Ellicott City when she realized that her brakes were not working. Not knowing what was wrong and desperate for sleep, my mother, the same woman who arrives at the airport two and half hours before the flight is scheduled to leave and still gets nervous when any of her three grown daughters stands “too close” (read: four feet) to the unenclosed edge of our back deck, drove home the nine miles to her apartment using the hand brake as the only means of stopping her car.

This story is all the proof I need that medical training can drive a person crazy. If medical school can transform the most cautious-to-the-point-of-neurosis person I know into a reckless sleep fiend, what insanities await me if I choose the same career path?

Besides fearing for my mental health, much of the agony I have suffered in considering this major life decision revolves around what my mother will think about my decision. I know that she would be very happy to have another doctor in the family, but this wish has never been verbalized. Both my parents have been very careful to make it clear to all three of their children that they do not want us to worry about what they think about our decisions, that these are our own and only our own. Whenever I think about the (granted, mostly unspoken and very light) pressure from my mother to go into medicine, I can hear every after school special/grrrl power magazine/episode of “Full House” in my ear, telling me that it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about what I do, that I should follow my heart no matter what. But those things never taught me who to listen to when my own heart is mute, indifferent, shrugging. This is my true and somewhat shameful reason for considering a career in medicine: I don’t know what else to do. I hear no calling of my own, so saddle up to the next best thing, my mother’s calling. I inherited her face and her stubbornness, so why not her vocation?



When the pre-med pressure gets to be too much and I begin to feel suffocated under all the MCAT preparation bibles, imagining living my life without ever making my mother proud, I remind myself of an incident from my high school days. At our high school, parking lot space was limited so parking without a permit carried a hefty fine. I, being a senior and an athlete, was fortunate enough to have the coveted piece of plastic dangling from my rearview mirror, except for the day it fell down onto the passenger seat floor without my realizing it. When I got to my car after school and saw the large orange “VIOLATION” sticker unceremoniously adhered to my window, I stared, confused and pissed, until I saw the missing permit. I went to the finance office to clear up the misunderstanding, and was stymied when the head of security refused to waive the fine despite my rational explanation. I was livid at the injustice for days until my mother approached me about the incident. She had just been at school and had gotten talking to another member of the school security team, a woman who had been in the room when I had made my protests about the permit violation. My mother said that the woman had remarked how impressed she had been with my handling of the situation.

“She said you were calm, but firm,” my mother recounted, beaming. Out of all the highlights that I thought had been my most shining moments—a 1550 on the SATs, the winning goal in overtime of my senior playoff lacrosse game—I felt more pride emanating from my mother over this small and unglamorous encounter than for any of my academic or athletic accomplishments.

Though I still cling to many of my dreams about impressing people at the neighborhood Christmas party with my illustrious job title and making my mother proud through my career, I am beginning not just to understand, but to believe that I can only truly live up to my mother’s legacy by becoming the person she is, not doing the work she does. More so than her medical aptitude, I hope that I have inherited her tenacious attitude, her ability to cut through endless amounts of bullshit to get to the heart of a matter, her constant striving for growth. No matter where my career and my life lead me, I know now to look at her less as a reputation I have to live up to, and more as a commiserator, a knowledgeable guide, a companion in the foxhole. She has taken the path that looms before me now, so veiled and ominous, and has triumphed.

Until I hear my own calling, I wait, patiently and without (too much) anxiety. And hey, I might turn out to be a really good neurologist. After all, I do like to help people.