Today’s lunch break marks a significant point in my journey to become a physician. This morning, I received an email that my financial aid refund was in my account. So this afternoon, after lunch, I bought my first textbooks as a biology major. And now I’m $640 closer to being a doctor.

When I first started this blog, I was not honestly expecting to make it even this far. If you go back to my first post, you’ll see that all I had to hold onto was a faint hope that someday everything would just fall into place. As it turns out, it wasn’t hope that I needed. It was determination. And that determination didn’t really take hold until the day when my dear wife said, “Let’s do this!”

And now I’m on my way!

In which I discuss my recent decision to abandon my career and go to medical school.

Biology, Chemistry, and Physics . . . all in one fun-filled semester!!! That’s a lot of labs! Good thing I spent all summer working through a Chemistry book on my own. At least ONE of my classes should be an easy A!

So here are my lofty goals for the next 6 years:

1. Make straight A’s on the rest of my undergrad classes.
2. Score exceptionally well on the MCAT, despite the fact that I will be taking it BEFORE I take Org Chemistry.
3. Get accepted to the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center School of Medicine.
4. Keep God and family at the top of my priority list while I struggle through the long hours required by med school.
5. Graduate at the top of my med school class.

Failure is not an option.

In other news, a friend of mine told me that she recently used me as an example when she was talking to some teenagers about pursuing their dreams. When she mentioned that I was 31 years old, one of the teenagers said, “Hey, if an old man can do it, then so can I!”

Glad I can still be an inspiration in my geriatric years.

Until now, my answers have been vague and noncommittal, but I think I’m beginning to uncover my path. I realize that I will probably know nothing for sure until my third year of medical school, but right now I’m leaning heavily towards Oncology. Oncology has  been one of the front-runners ever since I started considering medical school years ago, but it hasn’t been until the last couple of days that I’ve started leaning heavily in that direction. In the last several years, I’ve seen some of the most precious people I know affected by Cancer, and I can’t imagine a career that would be more rewarding than joining the fight against this horrible disease and striving to improve the lives of those who are afflicted by it.

A dear friend of mine who recently went through a monumental struggle with Cancer had this to say:

Think about working with Cancer patients. I have been stunned by the compassion and determination of these professionals. They bring smiles, laughter, and most of all Hope to those who find themselves in “the Valley of the Shadow of Death”. They are bright lights in a world of darkness, angels who are able to both rescue those who are helpless and to guide with decency and grace those who will never come out of that valley.

These words really struck a chord with me. Thanks to the hard work of my friend’s doctors, his Cancer has been completely removed. If I’m able to do that for a single person, then I will be able to say that my work on this earth meant something.

Several weeks ago, I sat down with my wife, and we discussed medical school in a little more detail. The next day, after returning home from the grocery store, she told me I should do it! And even more than that, she said I should make it happen as quickly as possible. So in the last several weeks, we’ve put our house up for lease, found a renter, moved to Lubbock, and applied for classes for this fall! Everything has happened so quickly, and everything seems to be falling into place.

I still have two years of undergraduate sciences to catch up on before I can actually apply for medical school, but at the ripe old age of 31, I’m finally getting started!

More to come soon!

In business school, we were taught about feasibility studies. We were taught to do a thorough analysis of a project to determine whether it was (a) physically possible and (b) fiscally feasible. Today I’m starting my own feasibility study for medical school.

Step 1: Interviews

My first step is to get in touch with as many people as possible who have experience in the medical and/or education fields and pick their brains to make sure I’m thinking through all the necessary considerations. Among my list of people to contact are: my cousin, who is currently in med school at Texas Tech, a dentist friend, another cousin who works as an RN, a pre-med advisor at a university, and as many medical and med school forums as I can find.

My 2 main goals with this step are to:

1. Determine the feasibility of going back to school given my current situation.
2. Think through any considerations that I might not have thought of on my own.

So that’s where I am right now. Any and all suggestions/advice are more than welcome!