Answers to Readers’ Questions
At long last, here are the answers to the questions commenters asked in a post last month. I know I’m inexcusably late in posting these, but I had an international move with a baby, organizing the house and the start of a new semester. I know, there’s always something…
Rather than spend pointless time editing the answers (I tend to write spontaneously and whack away repetitively), I’ll get these out. Perhaps the “extra” information helps you know me a bit better. It’s a long read, so to save space on my home page, there’s a “more” link if you’re seeing this from there; otherwise, you’ve gotten the whole kahuna. Without further ado…
Punchberry asks:
1. What brought you to medical school and specifically to medical school in Mexico?
Medicine was always an interest, but I never took it as seriously as I did chemistry and other sciences. By the time I may have been able to change gears (I had thought very seriously about changing majors to pharmacy from chemical engineering) to a pre-med curriculum, I was already soured by the cutthroat-passive-aggressive-ever-approval-seeking premeds I was surrounded by in early undergraduate science classes. After getting involved with research, graduating, more research, etc., I eventually got a computer consulting job in the Real Worldtm. After being away from school for a few years, I decided that I really did like it after all, and I was just being a whiny baby. I took a leave of absence from work, and moved back home to figure out what I was going to do next.
I got to know a surgeon very well during this time, and he provided me with lots of exposure, as much as I wanted (which was a lot since I wasn’t working at the time). I was literally following patients from pre-op workup to OR to post-op managment, getting a very large picture at an early stage of deciding if this was what I wanted to do. Once I was in the OR, I was hooked on pursuing medicine–and that’s with me not scrubbed in, just getting peeks every now and then and helping the circulating nurse.
Why Mexico? I grew up on the border, so the culture and idea of Mexico wasn’t strange; a large % of doctors along the Texas border went to med school in Latin America. Being in Mexico is hard, but Guadalajara is a big city with lots to do and explore. I could not survive on an island, as much as I love the water, with such limited resources. I never even considered med school overseas. More on why not a US school later.
2. What advice would you give to an incoming student about to start at your school in the fall?
Fantastic question. I’ll skip all the academic stuff, because that’s nearly universal. Instead I’ll list a few things specifically about my school and living here in Mexico:
- Take the time you are used to for getting something done, multiply it by 2 (by 3 if it’s a Friday)
- While things are computerized here at school and in general here in Mexico for official things, they still obsessively shuffle papers and stamp things to make things official. Most secretaries have blue fingers because of obsessive stamping. Expect to wait in line to do just this to make it official, even though the transaction is already “done.”
- Waiting in line is like breathing air. So many Mexicans spend probably 1/4 their life in lines and think nothing of it. It’s an excuse to socialize, collect thoughts, talk on the cell phone, etc. To Type-A personalities who want things yesterday (like yours truly), this fact alone may necessitate benzodiazepene and/or ACE inhibitor therapy. You’ll get used to it, but nobody ever likes it.
- The international program obviously recruits and caters to Americans, but make no mistake–this is not the United States. The school is firmly rooted in patriarchal, old-school traditions: don’t challenge authority (ideally, and if need be, be gushingly respectful), expect to do things a different way, and expect to have your time wasted. Often.
- People assume that Mexico is cheap to live in, and that’s true–if you live like a Mexican. If you want any semblance of US lifestyle, food products, etc. be prepared to pay. I’m not talking about having to do without Crunch Berries (although it’s available for $6/box at specialty stores), I’m talking getting decent cuts of meat, various household products one takes for granted, etc. If you are willing to go to the fruit/vegetable stand for your produce, then the meat market for your meat, etc. etc., then yes, you can get things cheap. You just won’t have much time for anything else.
There’s more, but I don’t want to seem overly negative. There are good things about being here too, but you get a ton of that in all the school literature. Most of all the good stuff they say about the city and school is true, but it takes the perspective of having been here to understand if such-and-such really makes a difference in the end.
3. How did you meet your wife, and how long have you been married?
We met through a mutual friend at a gathering. We dated for about 7 months before getting engaged and continued on for two long years of postponed weddings, school prep, deaths in family, etc. before finally getting married in January of 2004.
lyndal asks:
1. What is it that you hate / love about medicine so far?
That’s hard to say, since I haven’t done my clinical clerkships yet, but I love the fact that I’m in a field that is always discovering new things, helping others, and holds unlimited learning potential. They say the net pay is going down, but as a doctor, it’s not like my family and I will be starving after I’m done, something that definitely helps when paying the dues (in almost every way) right now. However, I do see things I don’t like from my general exposure, and that’s increasing liability and litigation, increasing power and scope of the “business” end of medicine, and other things that I’d rather not deal with or I’d have gone to MBA/law school.
2. What are your aspirations?
To feel like I can go to work [most] every day feeling I’m moving forward, feeling fulfilled in my work and family life. I hope to strike a comfortable balance between the two, since I don’t think it’s possible for me to be happy overall without feeling fulfilled in both. As to details of what I’ll practice or where, all that will work itself out in the coming years and I’m not stressing over it. I can say almost certainly that I won’t do primary care and won’t be in a predominantly rural area–both do not suit my temperament. I’m also pretty sure I would never do OB/GYN. Many medicine subspecialties have some appeal (cardiology, infectious disease), but they all fellowship-level training, requiring 3+ years of vanilla internal medicine, which currently doesn’t interest me. Right now top potential careers are surgery (if I can stomach the training), anesthesiology and radiology (primarily for interventional radiology).
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