Looking up...

 Its amazing how much can change in a short amount of time.

My previous post was definitely negative. I was LOW at the time.

But some good news!

1. I decided to follow up with the Foundation Programme in the UK and they actually ended up saying I CAN retake the SJT. So literally 4 hours after I landed back in Poland I hopped a plane to London so I could take the exam.

2. I ended up passing the first round of the Irish internship exam. I honestly don't know how, because it was such a weird exam. And I discovered almost everyone else that I know that took it, failed. Today I took the second part and waiting to take the final part on Friday.

3. I got two interviews for Canada! One with Memorial University of Newfoundland & Labrador and one with Saskatchewan! I'm still in shock. And pretty proud of myself that I got that far. Getting those interviews was a massive confidence boost.

But I was bitterly disappointed to be rejected by Ontario and Dalhousie (I was also rejected by Manitoba, but for some reason that one didn't bother me as much). Still. I'm incredibly grateful that I will at the very least have the UK as a back up - that feeling of having a safety net again is back.

And good news I discovered that this year for the second iteration of the CaRMS match, Ontario will be making all unmatched spots "competitive" - in the past IMGs would only be able to apply to any unmatched IMG spots, which is incredibly rare. But I guess because so many spots were going unmatched last year they needed to make a change. 

It's funny because even though I felt a huge wave of relief by being selected by Saskatchewan (and MUN) for interviews, a part of me almost hopes that I don't match and will be able to try for Ontario in the second round.

Of course, thats purely an emotional response - because Ontario is my home province and I want to go home. And I would be fine being anywhere, even up north in Thunder Bay or Timmins. Logically though I know that is stupid and I'm going to do my very best in the interviews. 

At the end of the day, Canada is my goal. If I have to spend some time in Saskatchewan or Newfoundland, so be it. I'm definitely leaning to Saskatchewan though - its a shorter return of service (two years vs five years with MUN) plus the steams I can apply to are a bit better for my family. 

Anyway, now I need to get back to studying for finals. I have psych tomorrow and I'm not as prepared as I'd like to be. 

Need to level up

Its really been hitting me recently that I'm now half way through 4th year. We are now clearly on the downhill portion of my medical school journey. But it also means less time to get those required experiences checked off my list.

My post-grad group has been very popular especially lately. I've managed to secure some great speakers to run info-sessions on getting into various English speaking residencies and inspired one member to start a spin-off group for those who want to pursue residency in German.

But I've also been attending some of these sessions too, because I also have a lot to learn and recently a friend of mine did one on the USA. He really reinforced how much the average med student as accomplished before even getting accepted into medical school and how these are the people we are competing with for residency. I mean, it's not that different in Canada.

And as much as I'd love to be able to say "HEY! I graduated med school with three kids!"  its really not going to be enough. I need to push myself to do more, to improve my CV and overall experiences.

I've started to work on a research paper on the attitudes of medical students in Poland towards abortion. I found a great mentor to help me, but I'm still waiting for approval from our school's ethics committee. I heard they can take ages though so I thought I'd just start doing the analysis and write up of the report. My mentor suggested that I present it as an abstract at a medical student conference coming up in May so I want to try and finish my preliminary work for it in the next few weeks to meet the deadline.

Next my husband suggested that since I've received both doses of the covid vaccine already, that I volunteer at some local clinics. I've called two of them already and have received a very positive response and will hear back soon as to when etc they need me. I told them I'm willing to help out in any fashion.  To be honest, I have been feeling a bit guilty, for lack of a better word, that I was able to get the vaccine so early. I think its a bit crazy for us med students to get it, when most of our courses are online. And also a bit pointless - I contacted the IM department at my university to see if I can finally complete my mandatory IM summer practice that I was supposed to do last summer, and was still told I can't because of COVID, because they still don't know if we can transmit the virus to others Sigh. So I'm just sitting at home, with all my classes on MS Teams for the next few weeks. When I mentioned this to my husband he told me to try locally instead. And that way I can both be useful, close to home and potentially include it in my CV, even if it won't count towards my practical experience requirement. 

So thats my plan for now. That and reaching out to all my contacts to see what I can do to maximize my chances of landing a Canadian residency. I have a call with the son of a good friend of my dad's who is a family doctor in BC. He already mentioned he talked to his program director about me and will tell me everything he knows. 

I'm really hoping that I'm able to do an elective rotation somewhere in Canada this September. From my talks with other IMGs this seems to be one of the main keys to having a shot. And the more I can do, the better. Especially if I can score a strong letter of recommendation out of it. And fingers crossed my vaccinated status will allow me to skip the quarantine so I can maximize my time doing rotations and hopefully, see my parents and sisters finally! Its now been 1.5 YEARS since I saw them last. 

Another thing I want to do is subscribe to a question bank for the first part of the Canadian medical licensing exam. One tip I learned, that makes sense, is to start doing the questions NOW, even though I won't be writing the exam for like a year and a half. The guy recommending this said that it will just make me that much more familiar with the style of questions and the patterns - so even if I don't KNOW that topic yet, it will prepare me much better than simply studying the content. 

So that's me for now. Lots to do. 

When panic rears its ugly head

Today I had a panic attack. Ok, not a real panic attack but a freak out. A freak out about what the hell I'm going to do after I graduate. Will I even be able to practice as a doctor?!

Yesterday's workshop on the NHS and how to get a post-grad job in the NHS after graduation was amazing. It made me excited to have a viable option for where I could go after I graduate - and would have a wonderful experience -  but there are still some less than ideal aspects to it. Like the fact that the foundation years programme might be split up among various hospitals that may be a 100 miles apart, which would require moving every year. That would suck for my family. The fact that the training process is so much longer. Another big issue is Brexit. No one knows whats going to happen. And its so frustrating because at the moment, as an EU citizen, my path to fully licensed doctor would be pretty much guaranteed. Once the UK leave, my status drops and not only that, the UK has significantly increased the number of medical school spots so there will be even more competition.

But overall, as much as the UK system seems awesome, I still think I would prefer to go back to Canada, even if I couldn't get into the program that I want most.

So today, while procrastinating from biochem studying, I decided to read up a bit more on getting a Canadian medical residency as an IMG. I went on to a forum and stumbled upon a post by an IMG that was successful in matching back to Canada. I messaged him and he immediately messaged me back! He had some great tips and advice but his underlying message was: this is hard and getting harder. Make sure I have a good back up. That only about 50% of the Canadian IMGs in the Irish medicals school that applied got matched. That some of them were shocking because they were incredibly strong candidates. That students from med schools in commonwealth countries are preferred over students from non-commonwealth - which will make me have to fight that much harder.

The whole thing really bummed me out. Normally I am able to just not dwell on it. I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing and just shelving the issue because there isn't much good that will come from freaking out. But I took that box off the shelf today and I guess I just got scared that maybe I'm in complete denial about what my future looks like.

I just so badly want to go back to Canada. I don't even really care where, I just want to go back. I want to finish residency and start earning decent money so that my husband can take a break. I want to create some stability and a permanent "home" for my kids. I want to be closer to my sisters and their families. I want to be closer to my friends and live in a place that I feel like I belong to, a place where the values I hold most dear are respected and expressed by our country's leadership.

Luckily my husband was pretty good at calming me down. He said that there is no way I won't get a job anywhere since doctor shortages are going up everywhere and all the places that this is happening are going to have to address it sooner or later. That I still have 4 years to do what I need to do and that he is aware of the risks, aware that we won't be able to make any real plans for ages and that he is ok with that. It did make me feel better. I guess for me, the stakes are high. It's not just me who is on this journey, its my family too.

Anyway, going to get back to what I should actually be freaking out about - and thats the biochem exam.

Privilege

I recently posted on my Instagram account of how grateful I was to finally be able to do this and in it I acknowledged the huge amount of support I've received that enabled me to do it - including the straight up financial help that I've received from my parents.

One person made a comment about how nice it was to see me mention that. She said people often look at people like me who accomplish something huge (because being a mom of three and starting medical school is a huge thing) and wonder how we are able to do it when they struggle with much more attainable goals.

It is because I strongly believe in being open. In this day and age of social media it is so easy to show only a tiny part of the story - and people end up filling in the blanks themselves. A friend posts adorable photos of her and her kids at the park or zoo and we think "wow, what a great mom she must be to spend such quality time with her kids." What we don't see is whether or not she's suffering from postpartum depression, or that she is struggling with her marriage or that she hates her job. We see a friend constantly posting photos of recent travels and we marvel at how they seem to have so much disposable income to be able to afford it when just a weekend away in the nearest city wouldn't be possible without depleting our savings. What we don't see is that the person maybe hasn't gotten over a bad breakup years before and can't find someone special and is using travel to fill the void. We don't see that maybe they are racking up huge debt and that it keeps them up at night. Social media is our life's highlight reel and its often heavily airbrushed and edited.

So I believe in being a bit more transparent and show that there is more to the story. I've obviously posted about getting into medical school and moving half way across the globe to do so. I knew that people must have been asking themselves how I did it. 

So I want people to know that I wouldn't be able to pursue this dream of medicine later in life like I am without incredible support. Yes, its great that I had a lot of cheerleaders - my sisters, friends who didn't try to make me feel crazy about it. But I've had real, tangible help as well. My husband for carrying the burden of being the only income earner as well as devoting a lot more time to childcare and housework. My parents for letting us live for free in their house (and earlier for hiring me to work for their company so I could continue to earn money when I first started the journey) and stepping in with childcare too (for example when I had to study for my entrance exams they offered to watch the kids for a week so I could go away to study and sleep in peace).

Plus a lot of luck was involved. We have a house that we own that has gone up a lot in value. It gives us a great sense of security because if we ever find ourselves in some financial trouble (such as my husband not being able to work) we could sell it and live off the profit for several years - enough for the time it would take for me to finish medical school and possibly even residency. Plus we are currently renting it and making a comfortable surplus from the rental income. That, plus the fact that we don't have to pay my parents rent means we have a lot more disposable income which we are using for a full time nanny, housekeeper and private school/preschool. This frees up my time so much so that I can focus on studying and spending time with my family.

Basically, I have a ton of privilege. I was born into a family with means. I was born in a country where I was able to get an education and was able to build my wealth and know its secure. Raised to believe that even though I'm a woman I have equal right and ability to pursue whatever I want. I've had the luxury of time. The luxury to experiment.

Also, while it does look like I'm living the dream, there are of course some challenges. Sure, we can afford for me to do this but there is a huge opportunity cost of me doing so. Not just the years of income forgone on my part, but we've limited my husband's career growth and even prospects. I've struggled with some guilt and even some fear of failure because the stakes are so huge. What if I can't hack it? What if one day my husband resents me for holding his career back? What if my kids resent me for putting a career ahead of them (my son has already grumbled about "this is what he was worried about" when I told him I couldn't read to him one night because I had to study)? Not to mention if we DO have a financial catastrophe, how will I feel about it then we we have to sell the house for real and not just in theory? What if the market crashes and its not worth as much as we want?

But I guess the point of this post is to acknowledge my privilege. I don't want to take away from my accomplishment, because I did work hard for this - but I want to own the fact that I would not have been able to do it on my own. And that there are many people who would love to do it but really can't and its not for a lack of hard work on their part but purely because they aren't as privileged as I am. And I hope I never forget that.