Erin's Bio

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I sat in front of three fake patients last Friday, trying to make sense of what they were telling me; one with confusion/dementia, one a sullen, diabetic teenager, the third her overbearing mother. All getting paid their $20 or so an hour as standardized patients. This is med school's idea of testing you at the end of your rotation. Luckily, just this one. A few things made it hard to concentrate. First, I was exhausted after studying combined with a community preceptorship all week and after arising at 6 that morning for the written part of the final. Second, I was the very last student to pass through the stations. Third, I was unbearably hungry.

Because I'm newly pregnant.

The day before, First Response gave me two lines for the first time since July. Two bold lines. Two unbeleivable lines. Needless to say, and I'm sorry to say, Family Medicine and everything associated with it went by the wayside after that. Right now I could still care less about my recently finished rotation or the one coming up. I'm too busy being filled with a combined sense of wonder and dread. I hope that this works. I'm skipping my fourth year and starting residency in July as an ART. Make that starting in September if all goes as planned. I'll be an intern with a newborn.

But I also know that it is right. I felt empty after the second miscarriage; empty, alone, and bitter. I had to force myself to smile my way through a pediatrics rotation where I couldn't explain what had happened to anyone. I was still trying to smile through Family and not doing a very good job of it. There was a pregnant intern there that I now hold very dear, a wonderful person that I felt that I could talk to. She told me about her struggle with conception, and about how she "saw" a vision of her future child and became pregnant not long after, and how I needed to relax and let my body and mind heal. I started thinking that it could happen for me. It didn't that month, even with Clomid. Then I had my own brief vision, a sign that reminded me deeply of my mother who is no longer with me. I felt a sense of ease and calm that I hadn't felt for a very long time.

And two days later, if I'm correct, it happened.

I'm scared of being a mother and a doctor. I've seen my best friends do it through med school, and I know that I can, but how good will I be at either one? Can I be good at both? My two rotations have shown me that I'm capable of being a great physician. How will it be when I need to sleep during Surgery? What if I go into labor during Internal Medicine? What will some of my cruel classmates have to say about the whole thing, as they did with my friend? And residency...?

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*Some names have been changed.