Anybody a caretaker?

[Newmanium]

Anybody a caretaker for a spouse with a serious, lifelong illness/disability (in the category of "devastating")? I'm guessing there's not too many (I don't know any in real life), didn't find anything with a search.

It's what made me want to get into medicine and will probably help me to stand out a bit, but it also will make med school particularly challenging (regular life is hard enough). My hope is that it will make me a significantly better doctor by giving me more empathy, the ability to speak from experience when talking to families about sickness and loss, etc. I've been reading up on single parents threads which will be the closest practical lifestyle while in school.

Just curious if there are any others. If not for spouses, maybe parents, brothers/sisters? Anybody who's dealing with this in school?

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[Nanon]

Anybody a caretaker for a spouse with a serious, lifelong illness/disability (in the category of "devastating")? I'm guessing there's not too many (I don't know any in real life), didn't find anything with a search.

It's what made me want to get into medicine and will probably help me to stand out a bit, but it also will make med school particularly challenging (regular life is hard enough). My hope is that it will make me a significantly better doctor by giving me more empathy, the ability to speak from experience when talking to families about sickness and loss, etc. I've been reading up on single parents threads which will be the closest practical lifestyle while in school.

Just curious if there are any others. If not for spouses, maybe parents, brothers/sisters? Anybody who's dealing with this in school?

I was the caretaker for my mom, who was an unmedicated schizophrenic at the time, all the way through college. And then she got breast cancer, which nearly killed both of us. I know what you're going through, believe me. The fluctuations in my gpa were tightly correlated with my mom's mental state.

From the time I decided I really wanted to be a doctor until now (finally applying), it's taken 14 years. I waited until my mom was finally conserved by the state to push the button on my application. You really are going to need a tremendous amount of help, because you only have x many hours in the day. Also, adcoms are going to want to see that you you will have enough time to devote to your studies, and that you have the emotional reserve. And to that last point, if you don't have one already, get someone to talk to. I have been called selfish for pursuing this so many times, and it tore me up until I started mentoring other pre-meds who were going through something similar, but were much younger.

Good luck, feel free to pm me!

S. (Also the mom to a 2 y/o... so still an "official" caretaker, haha).

 

[Newmanium]

Thanks for the reply, I'm quite curious how you'll do this cycle. I can definitely relate to your situation, I wish you all the best. To my naive eyes it certainly seems like you'd add a whole lot more to a class than a 4.0/38 fresh college grad, hopefully a bunch of adcoms see it the same way (for yours and my sake!!). You seem like a fantastic test of how willing they are to look past the numbers.

I figure if I can get through the pre-reqs, volunteering, all while holding a full-time job, that should be reasonable evidence that I have enough time/emotional reserve. I'm planning on pushing myself *hard* during the prereq years - I have the same vested interest as the adcoms do to make sure that I can handle the intensity/time committments.

Nice to hear I'm not the only one called selfish!