How I Feel About Tom Becoming a Doctor

This isn't a hard thing for me to think about.  Tom and I have been together for five years and seven months, we will have been married for five years on September 12th this year, and during this whole time, Tom has loved medicine.  He worked EMS for almost four and a half years and even though the hours were horrible and the pay was minimal, he loved working in medicine.  I am so happy that he is starting school to become a doctor.

I'm Happy

 Tom has taken a big risk here!  He quit his job and became a student.  Exclusively.  We seem to have the idea of "big risk, big reward" as a couple.  As long as we can survive financially, we will have big reward in the end.  I am happy that Tom has started to pursue what he really wants.  As I said before, he loves working in medicine and this is the first step into becoming financially successful in the medical field.  He worked EMS but that is financially lowest you can go in the medical field.  He loved working EMS but he knew he couldn't keep working it if we wanted to have more kids.

I'm Worried

Tom has ADD, dyslexia and dysgraphia which can make school work difficult.  He always did well with grades but he didn't need to study to do well which is not something he can do in college.  Especially with a Bio-Medical degree to earn.

Part of why Tom loved working EMS is because of the action.  He did mostly transports (taking patients to hospitals, nursing homes, doctor's appointments and dialysis, so not too much action there), but he also worked 911 for awhile.  I do worry that school may not have enough "action" for him but he does plan on continuing to be a volunteer firefighter.  In our very small town, volunteers firefighters are the only ones we have so they see all of it for every call.  With that, Tom should get his fill of "action."  He's working as a truck driver this whole year and he's done pretty good with just the fire call excitement.

I'm not really worried about this but Tom seems to have a concern.  This December, Tom will be 30.  He has a professor that is a year younger than him this semester.  He looks 20, really really on that, but he is 29.  I think it doesn't matter, but I'm not the one sitting in class surrounded by kids all ten years younger than me.

I'm Envious

Now this seems bad but I miss going to school so much.  I have no resentment towards Tom, I just wish I could also be going to school.  I wish that I can do more things that only I can do besides breast feed Raven.  I have always liked school, just about everything about it.  My "New Year" starts in August.  Shopping for notebooks, pens and binders are one of my favorite things to do.  I know that I'm going to need to hold myself back and try very hard not to do any of Tom's assignments.  I had to keep myself from organizing all his school things myself.  I know he needed to do that to help him transition from truck driver to student.

I'm Unsure About Myself

 So this blog is going to be a place where I can help others understand what you go through when you try to become a doctor (at the very least from the outsider's view with insider info) and what a family might go though when one of the parents are trying to become a doctor.  

When we knew for sure that Tom was starting school this year, I suddenly felt a panic, "What if I'm not what I'm supposed to be once he gets there?  I know what doctor's wives did mid century but what do they do now?!"

I was very unsure of myself.  I almost immediately Googled "what is expected of doctor's wives."  I found a blog with this post.  I felt better and now I have started to read the blog from the start.  Just like when you have a spouse that is in rescue (EMS, police, fire, etc.), you connect with others who have spouses in the field.  I went to school with two people that ended up getting married.  The husband worked EMS Fire and they had a little boy and she stayed home with him.  Very similar to us; Tom worked EMS (no Fire at the time) and I stayed at home with our Evelyn.  April, the wife, and I were in marching band together and in JROTC together and even in a JROTC team together, so we already had a bond, but when we learned that both our husband's were in EMS, we could vent about there schedules and how we try to pay for anything.  It was nice to be reminded that I wasn't the only one.  I know I'm not the only one having a husband start pre-med, but sometimes you do feel alone in uncharted territory, but what is great is that it turns out that these paths have been charted and can be found in blog form.  We will just have our own adventure, our own paths, our own mile markers to add to the world of pursuing ones dream of becoming a doctor and the spouses that follow them with children in tow.  I will be unsure for a while, I don't know how long, but I know that my insecurity in my ability to be a strength for Tom will diminish as I learn how to up lift him, when I learn how to help him feel better when he feels stressed by school and tests.  It will diminish when I meet other women as Tom does school, as we move for school.  I know it will all work out as long as we work hard.

So these are my feelings at the start of semester Fall 2014.  I plan on doing an update on these feelings once this semester is over.  I will go over each subcategory and update.

Best of luck to others who are starting this journey also.