Wow! First thing I would recommend is for you to relax a smidgen. This is a very long, arduous process and at many junctures, you will have far less control than it appears that you desire. I am not exactly a BTDT, as I am male and cannot truly understand/empathize with all of the fertility issues...but having BTDT & succeed in med school, residency & beyond, maybe I do have a few pearls of wisdom to toss into the matrix.
Honestly, I am pretty relaxed, I'm just looking into variables, as I said before. This is a huge paradigm shift for me, and it influences a LOT of my life. My biggest worry right now is that I don't know how much I don't know (part of why I want to be a doctor). My road up to this point has had me studiously NOT exploring medicine as a career option, and while I have experience with doctors, nurses, and the hospital setting (the "end result"), I know NOTHING about med school or residency. Nobody in my family has ever been a doctor, so I'm turning to doctors to find out what it's like.
A 3yr BS in Microbiology is not me starting from scratch, btw. I have most of a BSN already, I'm just switching gears. All my liberal arts courses are finished, so the three years are solely for taking the courses required for a microbiology degree. I think perhaps where people are thinking that I'm trying to rush things is by thinking that I'm squeezing a 4 year program into three years, and that's not the case. I'll be taking 12-15 credits a semester, but that's nothing more than normal.
No, I have not pulled studies, but I can tell you that many of the fixatives & preservatives we use have a multitude of exposure concerns. I would not want my children to be under the influence of these compounds, esp during the 1st or 2nd trimester, or consuming them, potentially, thru breast milk. Many programs, for cost considerations, have changed over to pro-sections. These are pre-dissected cadavers in a permanently sealed & fixed presentation - usually embedded in heavy plastic. I would certainly recommend you research this. One of my classmates was pregnant & wore what amounted to a Hazmat suit for every lab...
I'm going to continue to research the risks and options regarding first year gross anatomy. I know that, for myself, I will not learn as well unless my hands are in the mess. As I said before, I'm just looking to make a plan, which I will then be willing to alter if necessary. It may turn out that the only ways to protect my children and also achieve my goals will be to either wean my current child, put off getting pregnant, or put off going to med school, all of which are acceptable options, but if there are other options, I want to explore those as well.
Not impossible as long as you have a sufficient support network at home - parents, in-laws &/or spouse/SO. I had a couple of classmates who reproduced during all 4 years of med school...it is a far easier feat for a SAH non-med student to do this, but even then, it poses many challenges.
If I may comment, even though a young child may not recall your protracted absence while you are in school or training, the child development literature clearly weighs in favor of establishing & cultivating maternal-child bonds early on. So, while the memories may not be direct, the impact of your absences should not be disregarded as trivial. Speaking as a father who has made a lot of sacrifices to assure that I am as involved as I can possibly be...and wish it was more...in my daughters lives. Being a med student, resident or attending level physician poses monumental hurdles to fulfilling this goal, irrespective of their age. I would be cautious in cavalierly discounting the importance of your presence.
I certainly agree with you that maternal attachment is important and necessary to early childhood development. While from the eight posts I have made on OPM there is know way for you to know differently, I am not "cavalierly discounting the importance of {my} presence," but rather doing a risk/benefit analysis to determine what the best course is for my family. I do feel that it is possible to form an attachment with my young children while I am working or going to school, though it would obviously not be the same attachment as if I were staying home full time. The question, to me, is not "Will my absence harm my child?" but rather "When will my absence do the least damage to my child?" and "Will the benefits my family will later gain outweigh the risks of my absence now?"
There are financial considerations involved in this, of course. Right now, I'm a CNA and I make <$30k a year. Whether I go to med school or not, I can't support my family in the way I want to on that kind of salary. There are things that I want to provide for my children, and opportunities that I want them to have, that I will not have the fiscal means to provide unless there is more income coming in.
My husband's disability precludes him from going back to school at this point, and he is happy as a SAHD. My original goal was to be an RN, but after working in the field for a while, I realized that I am not well suited to a career in nursing. I am contemplating medicine on the urging of friends and family who feel that it would be a good match for me.
Even if I don't do medicine, however, I am going to have to go back to school to do something to support my family.
Would I rather be doing this when younger, single, and childless? Of course. I don't have that option anymore, so the only option I do have is to forge ahead and figure out how, if at all, I can make my goals compatible.
While there are a number of programs who allow spacing your 1st 2 years into three, to my knowledge, they do not allow you to select which year, 1 or 2, to spread. As a general rule, it is a reconfiguration of the 1st 2 years that is designed to flow across 3 years.
Regarding splitting year 4: the only school I am aware of that readily permits splitting year 4 is Dartmouth and frequently > 50% of their students choose to do so for a multitude of reasons. Do be aware that you cannot go through the match unless all of your stuff will be completed and you will have graduated PRIOR to that year's start of internship training. So, I do not think it will be feasible to do what you have described.
Also, I would be curious to see if you will find a program that will permit you to extend twice.
I guess that question is going to have to be worked out with whatever program I get into. I have heard of people taking a year off, and I'm not opposed to doing that. My idea for "splitting" year four was to do first semester clinicals, then take off a semester, then do another year of clinical electives, then match. That may or may not be possible, but it's also at least seven years away, so it's not my most important worry right now. I was not planning on extending twice.
I would disagree with you being "crazy" for desiring to enter med school nor would I diagnose you that way for wanting a large family. What I do question is what such rigid aspirations on family size, timing & otherwise. I am asking that in a rhetorical fashion as I truly do not wish to know, but do feel that you need to explore these concepts in a reasonable & rational fashion. If you decide to actually pursue this path, then I wish you the best of luck & success. But, you may be placing an undue burden on yourself, spouse/SO and offspring...something that you should maybe weigh versus your professional goals.
Again, many my goals aren't as rigid as they may seem from my few posts so far on OPM. Just because I've placed a numerical value on them doesn't mean that I'm not flexible, it just means that I've identified a mean value that can represent my overall goal. The goals that I am rigid about are the decision makers for me, and the answers to some of my questions will determine whether I apply to med school in two years or look into another field.
Thank you so much for your input. I hope that I'm not coming off as snarky, bitchy, or rude in my posts, I'm just looking for information while trying to minimize my presence on the web. I truly appreciate the opportunity that OPM provides to put me in touch with other non-traditional students and doctors who have succeeded after being non-traditional students. Having that experience base to brain-pick is invaluable as I explore the options available to me.
I am more frightened of this decision than I have ever been of anything in my life, and I know that during the next two years, while I work on my coursework and my applications, I will be constantly trying to decide whether or not to actually go to med school. I may get all the way through the application process and then decide not to go, that the cost to my family and myself is too high, regardless of the money. At this point, however, if I don't at least explore the future that medicine might hold for me, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
