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Before Landon and I even started
dating we talked about what he wanted to do when he grew up. We were driving on
University Parkway in Provo, Utah, passing the Jamba Juice. “I think. If I had
a gun to my head,” (which is a phrase he uses a lot for some reason, maybe
because he had experienced that a few times in Argentina) “I would be deciding
between being a seminary teacher, optometry, or a Doctor.”
We were actually driving home from
buying his girlfriend/my roommate a birthday present during this conversation.
I remember thinking at the time, “MAAANNNN, I’ve always wanted to marry a
seminary teacher.” Little did I know, that 2 short weeks after that
conversation we would start dating and 16 ½ weeks after that we’d be married!
Three days into our honeymoon
Landon declared, “I’m going to be a Doctor.” My head went spinning a little. I
sheepishly blurted out, “But what about being a seminary teacher??” He said,
“No I want to make more money than that, I want to be able to travel, I want a
stable career, I want to help people. I’m going to be a Doctor.”
(My dream of being married to a seminary teacher was very
short lived just so you know.)
I had grown
up with an amazing mother who always, ALWAYS supported whatever my dad did with
his career. She just wanted him to be happy and she never, ever complained to
her kids about how busy my wonderful dad was even though some years he traveled
more than 280 days of the year. I’ve learned thousands of lessons from my
mother, but I never knew how important, how impactful, how much I would need
the lesson of supporting my husband with whatever he wanted to do with his
career would be. So with a big huge smile on my face I said, “LETS DO IT!!!”
That very
day, yes, the last day of our honeymoon Landon studied chemistry for 4 hours
and we went to staples to buy notebooks, pens, and a huge desk calendar so he,
WE, could start mapping out our “How we’re going to get into medical school”
life. It was an intense map, but nothing was going to stop us. Nothing.
Landon and
I spent the next 3 years thinking, eating, talking and dreaming about two
things. 1) Having a baby and 2) Getting into medical school. We rarely talked
about anything else. I spent hours and hours and hours researching schools,
interview techniques, resumes that stick out, volunteer opportunities,
shadowing opportunities, etc. I even got a a full time job, while I was still
going to school full time, so that Landon could take off a few semesters of
work to devote all of his attention to grades and the MCAT. Landon studied, and
studied, and studied and studied. Then he went to volunteer, shadow, research
and study. He did this all while I started his application process, ranked the
schools we were most likely to get into, and even added an extra column titled,
“How Safe is this Place.” We were a team, and we were going to get into medical
school.
Landon
killed it at BYU and he killed his MCAT. I’ll never forget the day he called me
from work and whispered his score to me (because he was in the middle of teaching
the missionaries). He whisper screamed and I scream screamed. (My colleges came
running.) We knew with that score we would not only get into medical school but
we’d have options. And we did, we got 9 interviews and only 2 of those did not
accept us. (One being the University of Arizona, which is just a little ironic
if you ask me.) We were a team and WE got
into medical school.
So off to
Medical School we went. The first year
of medical school was awesome. How could it not be? I was a new mommy and
Landon was working towards his dream. He went to school from 7:00-5:30. He hung
out with us from 5:30-7:00 and then he studied from 7:00-11:00. Every. Single.
Night. He studied all day Saturday and we hung out Saturday night and Sunday. We
were exhausted and we missed each other, but we were happy.
We had a nice long summer break to
rejuvenate and get ready for year two of school. Second year, first semester
was much like year 1. However by Christmas break we were both spent and were
ready to be together. Then, for the first time in our married life, and after 4
½ years of full time studying, Landon said, “I’m not ready to go back to school
yet.” And “I need more time.” I remember having the very strong impression
during that break that the next 9 months were going to be miserable. Absolutely
miserable. Step 1 was coming and he had to kill it so he could be an Orthopedic
Surgeon. We were nervous, but still ready to work really really hard.
This next
semester was hard and stressful. Landon studied even more than before and he
wasn’t scoring as well as he wanted to on his practice tests, which added a
whole other level of stress. School ended May 9th and Landon spent
the next 30 days, locked in a room, studying for 15 hours straight. It was
miserable. He was miserable. I was miserable. But June 6th came and
he took the test and he did really well and we thought to ourselves, “PHEW!!!
Its done. The major book load is over with. Now we can start feeling more like
a Doctor.”
Third year
started on June 9th. We were absolutely exhausted and we still
hadn’t spent any time together since Christmas. BUT, BUT, we were hopeful and
really excited to start the process of picking a specialty. We were pretty sure
we were going to pick Orthopedic Surgery, and Landon always said, “If I had a
gun to my head right now, I’d pick Ortho” but we were trying to keep an open
mind. OPEN, very very open.
He started
with Orthopedic Surgery actually. A weeks worth, it was too short to tell if he
liked it, but it was busy and he was glad not to be studying 15 hours a day.
Then Anesthesiology, then another Sub-specialty. We never expected to like
those so it wasn’t a big deal when we didn’t.
Plus Landon was still trying to recover from step 1 and all of that
studying. The first rotation was over and we took a 44 hour family vacation to
Cincinnati. It was amazing and it made us feel like, “okay… now we’ve had
enough time together we can get back to work.”
Then he
started OB/GYN. Landon was still trying to keep an open mind about things, and
remain positive, but he just never came home with his normal happy upbeat
attitude. I remember getting a text halfway through OB/GYN that said, “Just
delivered a baby. Most fun I’ve had in med school.” That text made me hopeful
that he was going to find someone he liked. But then he did a week of night
floats and he was exhausted and sick and miserable. And other than delivering
that one baby, he just didn’t like OB/GYN. But again that really wasn’t a big
surprise to us. He wanted to be a surgeon. “Lets just get through OB/GYN,” I
said, “Then you can do General Surgery. That’s what you want to do anyway,
Surgery right?”
Landon woke
up at 3:15am on the first day of General Surgery. I woke up with him to make him a big
breakfast and send him on his way. We were both a little nervous about the work
load, but excited to find something that he actually liked to do. I just wanted
him to be happy, he just wanted to be happy.
He was not
happy.
It had
really been a miserable 8 month, but we had no idea, NO IDEA that the next 5
weeks were going to be the absolute worst of all of them. It was so so so so SO
bad. He hated it. I hated it. Jax missed daddy so much. So much that he started
sleeping with daddys school I.D. That broke Landon’s heart. It wasn’t that he
was just tired, he didn’t like the environment, the intensity, the fact that he
never saw his family, and yes he didn’t like that he woke up every morning at
3:30. He liked actually surgery, but he didn’t like rounding and pain
management, and tests, and medicine and everything else about everything else.
He didn’t like.
Landon wasn’t
happy. For the very first time ever, ever, EVER, I was the one trying to cheer
us up, and I wasn’t doing a very good job at that. Landon is always happy. He is,
he is, but not the month of September 2014. No. He was not happy. And neither
was I, and neither was Jaxson.
About a
week before we finished Gen Surg I got a text while Jax and I were at play
group, “What if I went and got an MBA?” “WHHHAAATTT???” “WHAT? WHY? WHAT?”
Landon couldn’t really respond, a mean text to send to your supportive wife
without much response if you ask me ;). I didn’t think about anything else all
day long, even though Jax and I had a very full day of play group, birthdays,
and traders point farm.
We talked
a little bit about the MBA during the next week, but he had to work 90 hours
that week and study for his shelf exam at the end of the week. So we decided to
put it on pause til he finished General Surgery. And that wasn’t really that
hard, since we didn’t even see him.
Its been 7
weeks since general surgery. Only 7 weeks. I feels like a life time. We’ve gone
to the temple twice and we’ve prayed more than twiceJ. We’ve talked, and made pro/con lists, and talked and disagreed,
and talked some more. But we both came down to the same conclusion. We want to
be happy! And we won’t be happy if Landon doesn’t like his job. Landon doesn’t
hate medicine, but honestly, he doesn’t love it either. Most people that become
doctors are extremely passionate about it. They have to be, its really intense
work. Its apart of who they are, its their identity. That’s not Landon. He
appreciates it, he respects it, but he doesn’t live and breathe medicine. He
doesn’t want to. AND he doesn’t have to.
SO, with
that, we’ve decided to go ahead and get an MD/MBA. This means we will be in
Indianapolis for an extra year. It means that Landon will have two extra years
of book work, and it means that we won’t be leaving at the same time as our
dear dear friends the Daetwylers(which seems like a little thing to all of you,
but it’s a BIG thing to me). It also means that we will be an extra $70,000 in
debt. Those are the negative things.
The
positive things are is it is more education and more skills and more knowledge.
It is going to provide us thousands of more opportunities that range from being
a full time doctor with extra skills to open his own practice, to not even
working in the medical field at all. And it means that we have an extra year
for Landon to explore and find something he is really really passionate about.
Something that makes him happy, something that makes us happy.
We are
really excited about this new change and really really really nervous. We don’t
have a definite road of how we will pay off our debt anymore and we have
absolutely no idea what we will end up doing, but one thing I know and one
thing I’ve learned is that we are a team! We’ve made it this far and everyone
seems to be in one piece still. We are a team and we are going to find
something, we are going to fight for something that makes us both happy! And I for one, am willing to do whatever it takes to find that.
So that,
is that!!
