Heck Of A Guy

An astute reader has noted that yesterday’s account of my soi-disant “straight-forwardly conventional” plod through life included the less than straight-forward jump from earning a BA in English in May to entering medical school in September, and has asked for an explanation.

Okey Dokey

Why

First of all, being a doc, at least in the 70’s, wasn’t a bad gig: physicians performed important work, were paid well, and were generally respected. Health insurance companies issued checks instead of denials, and, sometimes, a “MD” after ones name could garner an otherwise unavailable restaurant reservation. To a kid from the Ozarks, this was, if not the good life, a reasonable substitute until the real thing came along.

In addition to these standard reasons to choose medicine as a vocation, there were a couple of other compelling factors.

1. My draft lottery number was #19, a ranking that offered me the opportunity to supplement my knowledge of iambic pentameter, my expertise in reciting Chaucer in the original Middle English, and my insight into the overvaluation of Baudelaire’s influence on T.S. Eliot with the ability to field-strip an M-16 and wade through chest-high swamp water in Viet Nam. There was, I admit, an allure to the notion of learning the doctoring trade while indefinitely deferring the chance to be all that I could be. (I was never clear on the benefits of being all that I could be if that included being a target for enemy snipers or a preferential host for intestinal parasites indigenous to southeast Asia.)

2. When my father asked me what I intended to do with my life, I replied with my whim du jour, “I’ll go to graduate school and get a Ph.D. in English Literature.” My father’s next question, spoken without a trace of irony, was, “OK, how much does that pay?” In the ensuing conversation, he offered to pay for my future schooling if it eventuated in a medical or law degree. (My dad, by the way, was a unsuccessful farmer who built an impressively profitable business buying used cars in Michigan and wholesaling them to dealers in Missouri and Oklahoma; I suspect he knew I didn’t have what it took to follow in his footsteps, although I do believe I could have handled the failed farmer bit.) As it turns out, there was a substantial gap between his definition “pay for my future schooling” and my interpretation of that concept, but by the time that difference was evident, I was ensconced in my first year of medical school.

How

So, the reasons behind my choice of medical school were perhaps complex but not atypical. Why a medical school accepted me is quirkier.

Happily, one of that era’s political fads coincided with my application to medical school. Several predominantly rural states were then harrumphing and denouncing their medical schools that turned out doctors for urban centers and did little for the underserved countryside. Consequently, state-supported medical schools were threatened with reductions in funding unless they accepted more students from rural areas of the state because – and here is the bizarre part, so pay attention – those individuals would become MD’s who would return to practice in the areas where they were raised. It is but to snicker. Why, one might hypothetically query those legislators lounging around Jefferson City (Missouri’s capital), do you think folks who survived growing up on southwestern Missouri farms most suitable for growing bumper crops of rocks and then managed to get through local facsimiles of colleges want to go to medical school in the first place? Well, the answer to me was obvious: (1) To be a doctor for all the afore-listed reasons (2) To exchange the rustic rigors of country living for the bright lights and dark temptations of the city. As Homer Simpson (who, coincidentally enough, resembled the legislator from our district) would say, “D’oh.” In any case, I suspect that sending my application from an address that included “Rural Route 5″ enhanced my prospects at the University of Missouri.

A second serendipitous political trend in the early 1970’s was the notion that every class of medical students would needed a token student who was not a science jock, a position for which I was eminently qualified. On the day I received my letter of acceptance to medical school, I had a total of five hours of traditional pre-med science courses; at that time I had six hours of Bible courses (residual from my aborted shot at the ministry).

The final stroke of my master plan required the shrewdness to be being randomly matched for my interview with a Dean who was an expatiated New Yorker with a penchant for political involvement. When he unexpectedly asked why I had not elaborated on one of my few extracurricular activities, serving as Chief Justice on my college’s Student Court, I was too taken aback to fabricate a believable, self-aggrandizing explanation and replied, truthfully, that is was political patronage. To support a friend of mine who was a candidate for student body president, I published a couple of editions of an underground, muckraking newspaper. When he won, he offered me my choice of appointments and Chief Justice had the most grandiloquent title with the least work. (I did manage to refrain from blurting out that last part.) That, apparently, was the right answer or, perhaps, the secret word of the day.

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