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Feeling Happy
Making choices: Why I am not a vet or a doctor
"I wonder if maybe you should have been a vet. Your experiences are really moving. You'll have plenty to look back on, one day.
Comment from wildflower1764 - 4/9/05 7:41 AM
People say that to me all the time, "You should of been a vet...you should of been a doctor...you should of lived on a farm..."
In another lifetime, or two or three, I would have been a vet, a doctor, a farmer, a professional tai chi student in China or Japan...Life is simply too short to follow all the things that I have fallen in love with. :-) I also could have been a jockey, a writer, a forensic scientist, or a cultural anthropologist. What I am, and what was the most difficult for me to achieve because of my infertility, is a Mother.
When I was a child, I wanted to be a vet. I actually have a picture of me standing talking with the governor of Kentucky at the time--Ford--who was in town to dedicate a new library building. I asked him why the state of Kentucky does not have a vet college when we are the very heart of horse breeding in the world...he ignored my question, talking over my head to my parents about some coal gassification project, teaching me at a very early age that politicians are only interested in those who can actually vote.
I still think there should be a vet college in Lexington, Kentucky!
Later, after we moved up here to an urban area, I decided I wanted to be a jockey. This was the era of Secretariat and I was in the Bluegrass. There were only a few women jockeys in the seventies and early eighties. I did get to exercise Thoroughbreds at Latonia Racetrack, and do some hotwalking. I eventually got to do some exercising at Keeneland down in Lexington--the most beautiful racetrack in the world. I was very small and not very physically strong at 92 pounds, however, a very famous trainer once told me I could ride anything "with four legs and hair." :-)
Then I left home, and showed horses and starved for a few years. Somehow I ended up in college (since I was a high school drop out, I took my GED. When the woman gave me the test scores, she called me personally at home and told me that she could get me into college and get me a scholarship, that there was a program where they were actively recruiting kids like me. (I suppose she meant high school dropouts. I never asked her what she meant.) I ended up not going to that college (Thomas Moore) but Northern Kentucky University.
By now I was obsessed with becoming an OBGYN. I ended up with three majors--Anthropology, Psychology and Biology (premed). College, after the stifling atmosphere of high school--which was why I quit--was incredible. It was like being at a smorgasboard and having all I could eat. I fell in love with so many topics...anthropology foremost among them.
I "should" have been an anthropologist.
I had lucked into the best little commuter college in the world. NKU was full of nurturing, talented professors who came to our parties, loved their students, took many of us under their wings, and came to my wedding. Some are still life long friends. There were no graduate students to "steal" all the fun stuff, so we undergraduate students got to do real research. I got to meet Dr. Jane Goodall a few times, and Dr. Fran der Waal, another famous primatologist. I got to do a sexuality encounter group for UC medical students. I did research on post abortion cognitive dissonance. I got to go to Harvard one summer and proofread a book on Montenegro. David got to go to the Bahamas to study ichtyology, and did several years of independent study in local Fish. I could have stayed at NKU forever, if the Reagan administration hadn't cut funding for students. (In fact, the cut was so severe one year I would have had to drop out if Dr. Sharlotte Neely hadn't gone to bat for me and obtained another scholarhsip for me in two days.)
When I decided to apply to med school, we moved over to the Ohio side of the river so I could try to get in state tuition to UC. While I spent that year off, I worked as a Hamilton County Children's Protective Worker with sexually abused kids. It was the most heart wrenching time of my professional life. While I had been in college I had tutored blind students and worked at an urban runaway shelter. I did think about becoming a therapist, but to be honest, my own head was not on so tight. LOL
I also drove carriage horses in downtown Cincinnati, and one summer day right before medical school I was catapulted off the carriage when a drunk driver hit the side of the buggy and threw something at the horse. I was in physcial therapy for five years...and at the end of that I no longer wanted to be an OBGYN.
I had started attending the births of my friends as a doula (labor support) and was crushed to see that the doctor does not stay with the woman in labor. What I had WANTED to be, had I only known, was a midwife. I love the emotional support and the bonding of labor support. That is the fulfilling part for me. I've been at over thirty births. Each is a miracle.
(When Shelby is older I'll return to being a part time doula. I've had four requests to attend a birth since she was born, but can't until I feel I can leave her for up to twenty hours at a time. I never charge, although the going rate around here is five hundred dollars. I feel that it is such a Gift to be asked to be with a laboring woman and a connection with the Goddess so sacred that it moves me to tears.)
Meanwhile, my own biological clock had gone off,while I was in physical therapy, and my first daughter Robyn was stillborne in the second trimester.
It is a blessing now that I was not an OBGYN. The ten years of infertility treatments would have been a nightmare if I was surrounded by fecund women all day. When I started my infertility workups, in vitro was very new. I didn't need it anyway. I got pregnant very easily with drugs, only to lose baby after baby after baby.
I adopted my darling Mandy, and I knew that being her mother was the only career I wanted. She had lots of special needs and she needed me full time.
I babysat seven kids a day to help support my husband during pharmacy school.
(This is my passport to heaven. It requires a saint to watch seven kids four years and under in a tiny cottage. ROFL)
I also wrote and wrote in the small press. One year I had seventy articles published about miscarriage, infertility, adoption and homeschooling. Some are in the sidebar link. This was before the widespread internet, and there was no support for my situation.
After seven years of infertility treatments, I gave birth to Tabitha. (Two more adoptions fell through). Homeschooling and attatchment parenting was my passion...and seven years later, Shelby came along.
In between, I had fallen in love with martial arts---tai chi and Aikido-- as a way to heal my disconnection between my body and mind...I still struggle with whether I should return to martial arts and all the time it requires--not to mention the injuries--of course, I quit as soon as I was pregnant with Shelby and her twin. Her twin died, but I had my Shelby after seven long months on bedrest.
Now that Shelby is here, I won't have an empty nest until I am sixty five. Who knows what I will want to do then?
If I had to pick at THIS instant in time, I think I would go back to anthropology and become a forensic anthropologist...maybe even get my MD/PhD. ...of course, that would mean abandoning homeschooling and never seeing my family...notgunnahappen.
It was hard to let go of wanting to be an OBGYN. I actually went to therapy about it for a short while. The social worker I saw told me that I could not do both, be a mother and be a doctor.(1986) At the time, I thought she was projecting her limitations on me, but as I've aged I realized she knew me better than I thought she did. I never could have done either one part-way. After all, Mandy lived with me for nineteen months before I ever left her ONE TIME, to go to the grocery. I wanted her to know I would never leave. Tabitha was eighteen months old before I ever left her even for a minute...I have not been so possessive of Shelby.
I think about writing, but most of that need is taken care of in my journal. :-) I'd love to make some money so I could spoil my kids more and buy a horse. Sometimes I sell my blood plasma if there is something I really want for them that is not in the budget...
Life is Good. I am never,ever, ever bored.
We have almost forgotten how strange a thing it is that so huge and powerful and intelligent an animal as a horseshould allow another, and far more feeble animal to ride upon it's back.
-- Peter Gray
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Wow..you amaze me ,you really do..I say that in a good way of course. I've noticed with my illness.. I'm scared that I may never have a baby myself. Yes of course I need to get well but the clock is ticking is I have gone in and out of ovarian failure for unexplained reasons but most likely the medication they have me on for my thyroid.. I worry they will never get me well and that I'll never have a normal TSH in order to get pregnant.. let along be able to keep the baby as I now have thyroid antibodies.. but I suppose if its now some type of adrenal disease on top of it then maybe they will be able to get it right.. one day. I can relate to you on the not being able to get pregnant.. and also on all the things I could have done in life as a profession but haven't done.. now if I can only find 1/10th of the strength you have as a woman maybe I'll do all right..in the future.:) hugs* Your such a caring human being..a rare quality in this day and age..Mel
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So glad I am getting to know you better, Kas. You are an amazing woman. Have you ever written about the two failed adoptions? I don't think I've seen you mention that before.
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Thank you for sharing yourself with us. You have had and still do have such an interesting life journey. I am with you mothering, children are my passion. I have babysat, been a day care teacher, a special ed aide, a mother of 5 stepsons and of course my 3, now as a bus driver my days are filled interacting with children. I am the first and last school person they see. I feel it's my duty to be the best possible contact for them. I get rewarded everyday when they wave good bye to me after I drop them off, their stories are amazing and I am truly blessed. thanks ! rose
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Well by not being a vet you get to choose and pic what you want to do. So that is nice.
4/10/05 12:17 PM
Tracie