Med School...
You know what med school does to you...ok....what med school does to me? It makes me forget that I want to be a doctor. We move so quickly through the material that I find myself questioning how I'll ever take in everything. I have so little time for my family, and yet I still feel like I am not doing enough studying. It seems like there is always something to feel guilty about....why didn't I study more? How many nights in a row is this that I have come home after my kids are in bed? How long can Mike keep going like this? I thought I studied so hard in my undergraduate studies, but I really had no idea! In the midst of all the academic work, it is easy to get bogged down and to lose sight of why I started on this journey.

Thursday night, however, I was reminded. At the South Bend campus we run block scheduling the first year. That means that we take our science classes one at a time, and right now, I am taking anatomy. Anatomy is classically the toughest class as a first year, and having it all crunched into 7 weeks is intense! In addition to our science classes though, we also take a course called "introduction to clinical medicine." Every couple of weeks we meet for dinner at the med school with our professors, and we discuss issues in clinical medicine. Thursday night we had a session on death and dying.

I first have to say that our faculty is amazing. Dr. Faye Magneson is the course director and is assisted by Dr. Diane Musgrave. Dr. Magneson has such an amazing personal story, as a physician, wife, mother, and now as someone who is battling ALS. Dr. Musgrave leads the class in speech, but she made it clear to us from the beginning that although Dr. Magneson has lost her ability to speak, she is still the driving force in this class, and she continues to add so much to our experience through her preparations, feedback, and written contributions during discussion.

Last Thursday, Drs. Magneson and Musgrave made arrangements for a chaplain and a palliative care coordinator to come for the evening. Along with them, Nancy Sawyer joined us. Nancy is the mother of four children and the young widow of Patrick Sawyer, who passed away this summer after being hit by a drunk driver as he was cycling to the YMCA to work out in the morning before his classes at IUSB began for the day--he was only two weeks away from graduating with a nursing degree.

Talking through the scenarios that were given to us, composites of actual experiences the chaplain had during his time at the hospital, it came back to me....the reasons I want to be a doctor, I mean. There are a lot of reasons to become a doctor, a lot of good reasons, even. For me though, it is out of a burden for demonstrating love, for building relationships and ministering to people physically, and emotionally, to provide an opportunity to demonstrate compassion. Not my own compassion, but that which was given to me by God. I don't claim to have or be anything special on my own....you know the whole "jar of clay" thing....but God is so amazingly loving and so unconditionally faithful. I was talking to my sister, Laura, last night. What a beautiful young woman she is. We were talking (I was doing most of the listening) about how serving others is so easy when you realize what God has done for you....when you're so grateful and humbled that your heart aches to serve Him...and when you realize that by serving others you are serving Him.

It's not that I had literally forgotten these things, but I had gotten so wrapped up in the academics of medicine, that I lost sight of the mission.....I know that sounds cheesy....but it's true...and maybe I'm feeling a bit cheesy. What I know right now though, is that it is a lot easier to drive on after having an encounter with someone like Nancy, who so willingly sat with us and shared her thoughts and feelings about doctors and death and dying, and what it's like to be broken and looking to the doctor because you're the one who's survived.

I think I started to feel like I would get the academic part of medicine taken care of, and then I would go back to worrying about the "people" part of being a doctor when I finished medical school. For some, I suppose that might work. For me though, I just don't think it is possible. The people part, the ministry of medicine, that's my fuel for the academic part, and if I get too wrapped up with the latter, well, I just don't think I'd make it.

I really do need to get back to the academics right now, but I encourage you to check out the blog that Nancy keeps. (click here) She told us she started it to share the story with Patrick, when he woke up from his coma. Now we know God had other plans for it. Please remember her and her four children in your prayers.

Thanks for remembering me too!
love, shannon