Hey folks,
This may be a bit of a personal post, but I will try to keep details as nonspecific as possible. I am a third year undergraduate student at a good university and I was wondering if I can ask you all if you have ever encountered such a dilemma.
I transferred from a community college where I was started my first year with a strong conviction of wanting to be a doctor. I was raised in a third world country where I’ve seen many of my family members suffer stroke, high cholesterol, cancer, and other ailments, some of which may be related to poor eating habits. After graduating high school and not getting accepted to any of the UC’s I applied to despite my high weighted and unweighted GPA, I was convinced to do well in college. My grandmother recommended that I should look into medicine. I did minor research in it and volunteered at a hospital emergency department and decided to stick to that path.
As I became more involved in premedical organizations and public health efforts, I began to realize that medicine is a good fit for me. It’s a noble cause and I can assist folks back at home by practicing in a hospital in the Philippines that my grandmother’s brother helped build.
Unfortunately, my mother got cancer (stage 2) and had to undergo surgery, radiation, and chemo to treat the lump. She is fine now but has mild cognitive impairment. At first, I became motivated to pursue medicine even more to help assist her as a physician who is more knowledgeable about her health. But then again, I realized that as an only son to a single mom, a mom who is already in her early 60s, will being a physician be a family-friendly path anymore? Family matters to me, meaning I wouldn’t put anyone in a care home at any cost, so I began to explore other interests to see if this doesn’t work out.
Yet, due to this struggle of my mother getting too old and may need extra care being a cancer survivor, would pursuing a medical degree be feasible? Has anyone experienced similar situations? Thanks for reading and any advice would be great.
First of all, let me offer my sympathies on your mother’s illness. Cancer is a terrible disease. Both my husband and father-in-law had it. It nearly killed my husband and treatment left him permanently physically disabled.; it did kill my FIL.
Medical school is definitely not family-friendly. You will not have the time to be a full-time or even a part-time caregiver for your mother. Medical school requires an enormous time commitment. During the first 2 years, you will need to put in long hours of studying. During your final 2 years, your schedule will be extremely irregular, often with very long shifts and overnight call in the hospital. Residency will be even worse, with 8-12 hours shifts 6 days/week, overnight call in the hospital and little time off.
Also should you get accepted to med school, there are no guarantees where you will end up attending school, do your residency or any fellowships. Would you be able to uproot and move your mother to a new state/city 2 or 3 or 4 times over the next 10 years?
You have some hard decisions ahead of you. I understand the obligation you feel to your mother, but medicine, unfortunately, often requires a physician to put his training and patients ahead of his family.
Are there any other family members in the US who you would feel comfortable with looking after your mom? What about getting your mother a full or part-time [paid] care assistant who would come to her home to assist her with daily living tasks? Would your mother consider moving back to her home country where there may be relatives to help care for her while you complete your medical training?
Your other option would be to delay the start of medical school until your responsibility for the care of your mother ends. (After her death, for example, or until her medical needs have become so great you are no longer able to care for her at home.)
Thank you @WAY0UTWESTMOM for your insightful and helpful response. I imagined that medical school would be a huge time commitment. My mother is still able to function as if she isn’t ill, but she does have times when she gets tired and forgets things. I have thought of sending her back to the Philippines to be with family but I cannot let strangers take care of her.
In terms of uprooting, I am not sure, since I have moved a lot of times with my mother too (5-6 times in the last 10 years) and so i think she wouldn’t be inclined to the idea.
Thanks again. I think what I may try to do is go into a tech field, earn enough money and not pursue medicine for now. I am not sure if I can wait until she passes, but I guess time will tell if I am still passionate enough to pursue medicine. Hope everything goes well!