Med School Journey: The Catts

Our med school journey has already been an interesting one. 

Danny took the MCAT in May of 2011 and applied in late July of 2011*. He was going into his senior year at BYU that fall, so we were on track to graduate from undergrad and go straight into med school. We applied to about 20 M.D. and D.O. schools. 

In August Danny decided he was interested in doing med school through the Air Force. I have always been afraid of being involved in the military and my first reaction was "ABSOLUTELY NOT!!". But we looked in to it so we would know all of our options. In early October we both felt confident that we should apply for an Air Force scholarship. It was a quick transition for me to make, since I am usually very cautious but I felt really peaceful about our decision so we decided to move forward. 

Well just a few weeks later Danny was playing in an intramural football game and he got blindsided while making a catch and his leg snapped. I was on the sidelines chatting with some of my girlfriends when  one of them pointed out D had been injured. Like a good wife I continued telling them my story and figured he would walk it off, only to have one of my friends say, "Michelle, I think he is really hurt". I turned around and saw D's face and my stomach dropped. I knew he was seriously injured.  

The broken leg landed us in surgery a few days later, a cast for about five months, a couple of months of physical therapy and a solid year of no running. In January our suspicions were confirmed and we were officially disqualified from the Air Force. 

During this time Danny was invited to a handful of interviews but no schools we were really excited about. So when decision time came we rejected our offers and decided to wait the year to try to get a school we loved and do our entire med school journey with the Air Force**. 

We made a lot of mistakes our first go around and fate seemed to intervene but we learned so much. We just applied for our second time on June 5th (opening day) and we are excited to see what happens!

        

                                                             

*We will do an in depth post on this later but long story short, Danny's pre-med adviser encouraged us hold off on applying to bulk his service/shadowing hours. Don't listen to anyone who tells you to wait.

**Again, I will talk about this more in depth later. But there is a big difference between starting out with the AF and just doing a partial scholarship.