On my way to Norfolk, Virginia

Hey, remember about a year ago when I was frantically getting ready to move to Florida to go to Nova Southeastern College of Osteopathic Medicine to become a DO, for very carefully researched reasons, after more than 40 med schools rejected me? Remember the very cute house with the seahorse on the chimney in Ft. Lauderdale? The pottymouth professor that I couldn't wait to meet?

Never mind about all that. I got very uppity from being cancerous this year. When it comes to medical school admissions, cancer is a CARD, like a jack of diamonds, that can win things if you play it well and if the rest of your hand doesn't suck. And during the 6 month long death march of chemo, at some point during the 1.7 hours per day where I had the energy to form coherent thoughts, I applied to some sneaky backdoor graduate programs, that are hosted at med schools, for rejected applicants with decent credit ratings. I applied to 5, got in at 3, waitlisted at 2. Compare this to 2007 when I applied to 45, got in at 1, waitlisted at 1. What's different? Cancer. Better living through not dying.

I think what got me in was this little something I put in with my applications. (I made this in Publisher, of course.)


So I'll be in the Medical Masters program at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk in about two months, assuming I don't get diagnosed with anything else. This accomplishes a few things for my medical career:
1. It slows down med school, so that I have some time to recover from all the cancer treatment. As I write this, I still have 2 more days of radiation, and a big surgery in a couple weeks, and then I'll be starting 5 years of endocrine therapy with anticoagulation. Would YOU want to be building a medical career, at top speed, right now?
2. It gives me another shot at U of Washington. I have to re-apply to med school, and in addition to EVMS I can take on more schools. The by-far-most-likely path would be that I'm staying at EVMS: all but one or two of the 20-25 students get in there after the medical masters program. The big reason to still be trying for UW is that it'll save me about $100k with in-state tuition.
3. It gets me off the DO path. After 18 months of trying to make friends with Osteopathic Medicine, I've truly called it a day. Fundamentally, my ego can't handle it, and events and disturbia continue to grow. DOs better not let Peter Orszag find out about them...

So now, in between episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, and when I'm not outdoors in the marvelous sunshine that Seattle's doing instead of the usual, I'm frantically getting ready to move to Virginia. Mom and I will be road tripping, probably the last week of July.