What A Broke Medical Student Looks Like: Time Management at its finest and God's Grace

The main purpose of this blog is to help paint a picture of my experience so far having been in medical school for three semesters. I can confirm that the major force that has gotten me throughout this is my faith in God. For every non-believer, I could actually attest that my whole life is a testimonial of God's greatness. He has carried me through every single hurdle. And I owe everything to Him.

I am here because of Him.

And for all honesty, as cliche as it sounds, the 2 reasons I originally had as to why I had this dream in the first place are no longer the main reasons why I am doing this. My experience as an occupational therapist both in the Philippines and more so in the UK has become the main fuel or drive to become a doctor.

I just feel it in my bones that I was born to become one; that I can help more and do more if I become one. 

I'm not doing it for the money or the fame - I could've gone to other professions to get those. I am doing this because I want to be an instrument of His healing ; so I can help other people. Trust me, I would never have put myself into this self-imposed grueling hardship if I didn't genuinely want this. I have put my entire life on hold because of this dream. I wouldn't even wish this kind of hardship on my worst enemies - also cause I don't think they'd be able to handle it. (wink wink) 

As a skint medical student in a foreign island, I have 3 main priorities on the top of my list: meeting my most basic physiological needs (includes being 'healthy'), efficient management of  money  (for paying the rent, food, basic essentials like toiletries, household items, school supplies, etc) and  time , and studying.

Cupcakes baked by my first med. friend

Those were the only things that greatly mattered while I was in Antigua and literally nothing else especially during my first semester. I decided that I would solely focus on studying and make sure I pass before I allowed myself to do anything else. It was also the time to test the waters - see how hard studying medicine is, the style of teaching of the professors, the 'school' environment, my fellow students, etc. I was still establishing my routine and was trying to get back to the full on 'student mode' and switch from a professional who's already worked a significant amount of time. Also - I feel I'm no longer in the 'top shape' for studying compared to when I was younger. So let's say everything else became 'sub-important' or got filed under the 'worry or think about it later.' And those were like my family/relatives/BF (plus all the drama attached), friendship, non-school-related/extra-curricular activities (eg clubs, school politics, etc), news, etc.

I was like a horse with blinders - always just looking forward towards the goal: finish medical school in one go and as quickly as possible. I literally cannot afford to fail - I told myself that if I fail in any form or way, then that's the end of the line for me.

And so for me, coming to Antigua to chase my medical career dream means FAILURE IS AND WILL NEVER BE AN OPTION .

Hence, I studied everyday of the week. You can only find me in four places when I'm in Antigua: my apartment, on school/campus daily (about 90% of the time in the level three library commons or in a classroom when attending live lecture), the grocery store ( at least once a month mostly to do food-shopping), and the Catholic church (on Sundays when I get a ride/transportation).

Holy Family Cathedral

I've established a routine that manages my time so well so it's balanced between meeting my most basic physiological needs and studying. I've stuck to this routine which has indeed changed a little bit over the three semesters. But medical school is really damn hard. There's always too much content that needs to be covered over the shortest amount of time. After just the first semester, I have acquired a deeper understanding and a different level of respect and admiration for all medical doctors in the world.

What follows is what a typical day of 'MED1 Me' looks like.

My day starts at 6AM. I get up, drink my anti-HTN medications and vitamins, and prepare my ' baon ' (coffee and food for lunch, snacks, and dinner) into my lunch bag while talking to my parents (or to my BF when he is on a late shift at work) in FB messenger. I have been automatically enrolled into the school bus service which has specific pick up times to/from the school housing which meant that if I missed the bus, then I'd have to walk to campus or back home. So for the following semesters, I availed of a taxi service for $450 US (same fee for the school bus) for the whole semester and that takes me to and from school everyday (except on Sundays) on times that I want and it includes one grocery run per week. I walk to and from school on Sundays if I don't get a ride home or sometimes, when I do get transportation to go to the 7AM Sunday mass, I get to have a ride to campus after that too.

AUA COM Main Building

I'm already on campus before 8AM. I refill my water bottle in the water fountain and then settle in my usual table in level 3 (L3) library commons. I found that I cannot study in the quiet rooms (where you're not allowed to talk let alone breathe) but I get to concentrate more in a loud environment like L3. In L3, I can also eat and video call my parents/siblings/BF on FB messenger. Most of the time, they just watch me or are just in the background while I study.

AUA Campus

I study in L3 until 8 in the evening. For me, a "break" means doing ANYTHING ELSE apart from studying. So I don't really have a lot of breaks. My only breaks are reserved only for 'verbs' that are for meeting physiological needs like eating (ie lunch sometime between 1-3PM and dinner sometime between 6-9PM), toileting/personal hygiene, etc or going to church/hearing online mass. I do have occasional 'snacks' but I don't take a break from studying. Also from time to time in the library, some people will come by and have a chat but I try to minimize this as much as possible.

As I also try to maintain 'being healthy' which for me equates to 'not getting sick while studying,' I make sure I have some exercise during the week. My goal has been to go to the free school gym for at least an hour 3x (MWF) a week. When I do manage to force myself to go, because sometimes laziness wins and I justify it further with 'I still have a lot of studying to do,' I go between 6-8PM. With God's mercy and grace, I have never been sick for the past 3 semesters - alleluia!

When I get home from school, I tidy up my bag (wash lunch box contents) and if I didn't have my dinner at school (usually on days I go to the gym), then I'll have dinner while talking to my parents and my younger brother in Canada on FB messenger. After that, I have a short break to shower and go back to studying usually from past 10 until 12 midnight. Then I go to sleep. And the cycle repeats after 6 hours.

At least one Saturday a month, I'd go with one of my classmates-turned-friend who has a car to the grocery store early in the morning and then I meal-prep by cooking 2-3 meals which will last me a good 3 weeks. Then on Sundays, if I get a ride with a friend, I go to the cathedral for mass. But most Sundays, I just have to resort to watching online mass in YouTube either by Manila Cathedral or Quiapo Church. I almost always end up crying after receiving the body of Christ and I pray for Him to grant me the strength and wisdom to make it through this journey.

That was my routine. I never missed a live lecture class - either online or in person. Always on a Friday night, during the 5-7 minute ride home, I imagine how I would relax and take a break by watching an episode of MasterChef, just simply playing Boggle or checking social media on my phone. But the minute I get home, I do my routine and all thoughts of 'relaxation' go out the window. I said I'd just reward myself after the work is done. And I just don't want things simply 'to be done', they'd have to be 'done well.'

There is no rest for the wicked.

And that routine paid off and keeps paying off because for the 1st two semesters, I'm proud to say that I was part of the Dean's Honor Roll which is the top percentage of the whole batch. I never cared what other students got on every exam or quiz or assessment - myself was my only competition. I strived to be better than myself from the day before as much as I could. For all those who can relate:

I was Taguro (from the anime Yu Yu Hakusho aka Ghost Fighter).

I'm giving it my 1000%. Like I said,  I absolutely cannot fail . 

My Medical School Journey: The Roots of the Tree

This is a "tell-all" series regarding my medical journey. But I'm going to have to start this series of blogs with something very cliché.

"Since I was a kid, I've always dreamed of becoming a great medical doctor."

As an Asian kid, two main reasons drove me to have this dream. Firstly, I looked up to both my grandparents who were both medical doctors: one was a pediatrician and the other was an internist. Whenever we go into their house, they always have overflowing gifts from different people and medical agencies/companies/representatives, and even politicians. They were "rich" in my eyes; living abundantly and comfortably. I wanted to be like that too. I wanted to give my parents a really good life like what they have. And the second reason was that in the Philippines, doctors were regarded with the highest respect and medicine is seen as a very noble profession. These two reasons fueled my desire to strive to become one in the future.

Hence, all throughout schooling, I made sure that I will have a fighting chance to achieve my dream by building an outstanding academic resume. I applied to Universities for a pre-medical course and I was blessed enough to graduate from the University of Santo Tomas with a Bachelor's Degree in Occupational Therapy (OT). My family and I were able to overcome the financial difficulties; I was a working scholar and that covered the tuition fees, and my parents and eldest sister covered the miscellaneous fees and living expenses. God carried our family through it for 5 long years. I studied hard, however, sometimes fate has a way of being funny, and so even though I wasn't able to graduate with cum laude by missing a mere point something, I still emerged as the most outstanding OT intern/student for our Batch of 2013.

UST CRS Commencement Exercise Batch 2013

It would have been ideal to go straight to medicine after graduating. But since our family does not have the financial capacity to fund it, after passing the OT licensure examinations, I worked as an occupational therapist. It was the only decision that made sense. I can get to practice the profession and earn to save up for medicine and at the same time try to give back to my parents or at least help out a wee bit with monthly expenses.

Occupational Therapist UK Registered/Licensed

I practiced OT for about 2 years in the Philippines until God led me to greener pastures, and got me a job in the United Kingdom in 2015. I worked for less than 7 years before starting this medical journey. I was an OFW who was able to bring over her parents, grandmother and younger brother to the UK for a 3-month vacation during my first year of transfer (in collaboration with my older sister and one of my aunts who are both British citizens) . Together with my older sister, we were able to have our house rebuilt into that which my parents dreamed of, and I helped with monthly expenses by sending remittance until my younger brother graduated from University with a Bachelor's Degree in Medical Technology (now known as Medical Laboratory Science).

When I was able to save up some money and after having 'given back' to my parents, I figured it was time for me to pursue my MD dream. I was naturalized as a British citizen, I then took the UCAT and applied but all three Universities declined me for several reasons. Some of the reasons being because my educational qualifications are from the Philippines plus I technically have been out of school for about 10 years - making me a 'mature' student - having to compete with thousands of fresh UK graduates with 'better looking' educational qualifications (eg A levels, etc) than what I've got. Imagine: the cycle that I applied for had nearly 29,000 applications for only about 9500 spots. 

It was next to impossible for someone like me to successfully get into a UK medical school - not to mention how discriminatory the admission procedures of the UK system are. It was shocking how easily you can be discriminated against.

After failing to get into any medical school, I did my research and found that in the whole of UK, University of Warwick (UW) has a tie-up with a Caribbean school, the American University of Antigua (AUA), wherein after successfully completing the preclinical sciences (ie passing all 4 semesters over a period of 2 years) in their campus, a student can apply to transfer to UW and join the clinical rotations in the 3rd year. 

What's even funny, is that UW is about 30-45 min. drive from boyfriend's house in Rugby. And so, you might have guessed what happened next. I applied to AUA thinking that it was absolutely and completely an absurd idea. I knew that it would never happen anyway. But lo and behold, I got a reply back from the UK admissions team, I was interviewed and boom, I was offered a position for Fall 2021. You can only imagine the shock I had after receiving the letter from AUA.

The problem I faced after that was the reality that I needed to self-fund (ie pay out of pocket for ALL of the expenses: school fees and living expenses) because the UK government would not give any financial assistance since the school is out of the country, and at the same time, I would have to temporarily live as a student in another continent.

Essentially, I would have to "drop everything and move to a Caribbean island which is about 7000 miles away from the UK, where I know completely nobody, and know nothing of their culture. I literally just have to be a student studying for 2 years ."

It felt as if God was testing me: to see whether or not I really want this dream or not. It seemed like the craziest and for sure, the biggest decision I would have to make especially during that time when I seemed to have found the perfect workplaces (ie I was working as the lead/band 7 OT in an in-patient rehabilitation unit in Teddington Memorial Hospital from Mondays thru Wednesdays, and with the Discharge to Assess Team in Wandsworth on Thursdays and Fridays). The teams were among the best people I've ever worked with, and I was earning so much more as a locum OT that I never had to work an extra shift over the weekend which I was doing when I was an acute hospital OT in Kingston Hospital for about 5 years. 

To be really honest, my life seemed "perfect."

I was perfectly content with all aspects - emotionally, spiritually, financially, socially... all except for my professional thirst and passion for medicine. I felt like my professional growth had been stagnant and I was no longer getting any job satisfaction no matter how well paid I was and even though I was surrounded with great people at work. "I was no longer happy." I couldn't see myself doing the same thing for the next 5 years. And I didn't want to feel that way everyday when I go to work. I felt like I needed to and that I owed it to myself to try to pursue my MD dream by hook or by crook. God gave me a sign and told me to go to Antigua.

And so I've decided to chase my MD dream, and off to the Caribbeans I went.

For three semesters now, I was taking out a Richland Loan offered by a private US-based lending company tied-up with AUA. The loan covers 75% of the tuition fee (TF) and the remaining 25% is paid out-of-pocket (OOP). I got my aunt, one of my dad's closest cousins, who is a retired nurse living in California as my co-signer. And then by working tirelessly every term break, I was able to secure funds to cover the 25% OOP TF plus the living expenses (ie monthly house rent/fee and food allowance) for the duration of the terms. God has been carrying us through this journey.

God's perfect timing...

This system seemed to have worked with a little help from my parents, some relatives and friends. However, for the 4th semester, I am faced with yet another financial challenge as I would not be able to work enough weeks because I am going to undergo surgery to remove my right adrenal gland. 

Life happened...

Unfortunately, I was diagnosed with Cushing's on my birthday this January 2024, which was like over a week before I go back to AUA for the 3rd semester. I didn't want to take a break or pause medical school so I decided to go ahead with the 3rd semester and aim to have the surgery over this summer break.

I had to go private and pay using the school's insurance because the NHS route is taking forever. Imagine, I was referred to the surgeon last January and up until now, I still haven't heard anything from them at all - thank you, NHS.  And now I am awaiting my surgery date this June.

We're praying that all goes well, and I can get to recover quickly so that I would still be able to work as much as I can to save up some money for MED4.

And thus, with a hopeful heart, I started GoFundMe.