My Journey to PharmD
The Beginning
When I was 9 years old, I had a small accident that required a few stitches over my eyebrow. I was sitting in the CHOP emergency waiting room with my parents, anxiously shuffling around while holding a bloody towel over the wound. My dad prepared me for what to expect, as all good doctors should, "now, they're going to use a needle to numb the area that they'll put stitches on". I was never afraid of needles, but I was quite aware about how much pain I could be in from a needle to the face compared with a needle to the arm. Hours later we funneled into one of the patient rooms and the pediatric ER doc came in with a gel. Lidocaine gel. He explained that this would numb the area and that I'd feel a little pressure but no pain. "No pain?!" "No pain.". It was incredulous to me. I was ecstatic, and I felt no pain.
A few weeks later I'd enter into the 3rd grade and write an essay on the wonders of lidocaine gel. I'd subsequently forget about that essay, and rediscover it during the first week of my P1 year as my family packed up our home and moved. Discovering this essay was the proof I needed that starting pharmacy school was the right decision for me. Looking back, I realize I had a larger body of proof in the total history of my love for medicine.
My parents are in the medical field. My dad is a kidney doctor, my mom is a critical care nurse. Medicine was everywhere for me growing up. We had pantries full of it. I knew the appropriate dose of ibuprofen to take at 7 yrs old. I knew what a code meant, what dialysis consisted of, and I knew what my parents did was AWESOME. However, there was still a lot I had to learn, and most dinner conversations were filled with medical terms that kept my mind spinning for days. I wanted to understand my parent's secret coded language. I wanted to know why people got sick and I wanted to know how these magic drugs worked to help sickness.
My secondary source of inspiration was my science teachers. I never thought of myself as a scientist or even a science person growing up. I wanted to do graphic design, art, writing. But in high school I had a chemistry teacher who believed in me. On the very last day of my high school career, she gifted me a pen with a pull out periodic table and that was the spark I think I needed to believe that I actually maybe was good at science. She was followed by a college chemistry professor who believed in me, and then an organic chemistry professor who absolutely kicked my butt, but also believed in me even though he'd be hard pressed to admit it. He recruited me in my sophomore year to do research in his lab, building a library of molecule fragments. Although I loved the challenge, I knew research wasn't for me in the long run.
Finding My Place (And My Pharmily)
I eventually realized that despite years of feeling pretty indifferent to almost every school subject and telling myself I was no good at science, I felt impassioned by medicine and chemistry. The subject I felt married the both of those subjects, was pharmacy. It made sense to me: a healthcare profession, medicinal chemistry and pharmacology were two subjects I gravitated toward all through undergrad, and I got to help people. It wasn't long after that I started taking prerequisite courses needed to get me into a pharmacy program.
Pharmacy is different from other medical graduate programs, like MD or DO because you don't need a degree going into the program as long as you take the basic prerequisite courses (which are essentially just your sciences). In fact, my class is split 50/50 between kids with undergraduate degrees, and kids like me. I labored through the final classes I needed, and applied to pharmacy school in the fall of my junior year of college. I took my PCATs about a month later, interviewed the weekend before Christmas and learned of my acceptance that same day.
It seems cliche to say all of that is only the beginning but it's so true. I had no idea how much I would be challenged, and how for almost every day in those four following years I would also surprise myself. I surprised myself with my dedication, my resilience and the passion I had for the subject. As someone who kind of floated all through high school, I never expected that I could funnel such love and energy into a career choice. The more I learned why medicine and how medicine worked the more I fell in love, the more questions I had, the more I had to know everything I could about the drugs we use. Don't get me wrong though, it was hard work and a lot of work. I spent mostly everyday studying or in class dawn to dusk. I became that weird person at the cocktail party who wants to tell everyone how alcohol is metabolized. My life was entirely riddled with studying, assignments, projects, and work ups. Luckily, I was able to lean on my classmates, many of which became like family (or Pharmily as we affectionately term it!).
It also helped that the rotations I had were the perfect supplement to my didactic work and honestly kept my spirits up during some of my hardest weeks. My program had us do our IPPE rotations during the school year, so every week I had a designated day to show up and learn real life practices. It really did keep me sane some weeks. I rotated between a HIV clinic, a community center for blind folks, an emergency room, and so many more interesting places. They all inspired me in one way or another to keep going.
Three Years Down, One to Go
That is ultimately the story of how I ended up where I am today, in my fourth year on my APPE rotations, set to graduate with my PharmD in just 9 months. I still have a very long road ahead of me to become the pharmacist I dream of being, but I'm on my way and trying to absorb as much as I can from my didactic experience and apply it to my rotations. I think my 9 year old self would laugh if I went back and told her one day she'd learn that there are way cooler drugs out there than lidocaine to write essays on.
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