Upset

So overall right now I'm very happy.  I like my job, although I'm too busy.  Y and I are doing very well, despite both being very busy.  I'm still so excited about being a father I can barely think about it without my thoughts just exploding.

However, it's that that leads to a bit of upset.  When my brother died recently, much too young, I went to his funeral in the rural town that is my paternal hometown.  My last name is so well known there it's like I'm a celebrity.  My brother who passed was amazingly loving towards me.  We had a great relationship.  I think he felt a bit like a black sheep and around his house I'm a lot of a black sheep, so that was a bond.  Besides, he just loved everyone.  He was a peacemaker.

Much of my extended paternal family thinks a lot of me.  They see the messed up situation my mom and dad's divorce left me in and the fact that I came through fairly normal and a doctor secures me some big points.

My step mom hates, me, though.  In the Southern Baptist church, divorce is not an option.  So I'm a reminder that my dad was married and divorced.  My mom was mentally ill and terrorized my step mom, so that's a factor, too.  So when I show up, a decorated combat pilot, a military doctor, all the things valued in rural mid-America, she doesn't know what to do.  She can't bad mouth me, because it makes her look bad, but she can't bring herself to claim me.

Ok, the divorce was a long time ago.  I've spent my life trying to heal this rift.  It's never going to happen.  It's gotten better, but I still wasn't invited to sit with my brother and sister at our brother's funeral.  I'm only a half-brother and didn't grow up with them.  I wasn't warned, though, so I had to figure out where to sit as I approached the casket.  Instead of being allowed to focus on my grief, I had to also deal with this bullshit.

The trip there was hellish.  Airline errors forced me to drive from Denver to the panhandle of Oklahoma.  I almost fell asleep driving, but I made it.  It was important to me that I honor my brother.

Afterwards my dad and I drove around this rural town and had a long talk.  I wanted to tell him that my wife was pregnant, but I didn't.  I'd agreed not to.  I want to share the news with him, but don't.  He doesn't deserve to know.  He hasn't earned any connection with me, let alone my child.  He urged me to continue as a good Christian, giving me specific advice.

By surprise afterwards, once I'd gotten home to California, with no warning and no explanation I can think of I realized my sister had "de-friended me" on facebook.

Really?  I can't count the number of times I went hungry as a kid.  Dizzy, about to pass out, hungry.  Thinnest in my class always.  Dirty clothes, because my mom was mentally ill.  Aware of how I wasn't really presentable, but never having learned how to fix it myself.  Being poor and dirty and unkempt is miserable, but being self-aware of it and ashamed of it is worse. I tried not to hate my father.  He wasn't as dirt poor.  He wasn't rich, but he had a business and his kids ate 3 meals a day.  I dreamed he'd rescue me someday.  That someday it would get bad enough, that I would have suffered enough to merit intervention.  That never happened, even when I went into foster care.  Why should a boy whose father has a home and 3 other kids ever go into foster care?

Now for him to tell me how to be a Christian?  Christians try not to let strangers go hungry, let along children, let alone their own children.

My sister to defriend me?  She's a lawyer.  I'm a doctor.  We've got a lot in common and I have always hoped we could have a sibling relationship.  I guess we can't.  I've tried not to hate her, but she never went hungry, even when I was.  She has no standing to despise me and I have every right to despise her whole family.  I'm angry that she would take out her mother's hatred of my mother on me.  That's not right.

Now with my first child coming, I'd like him or her to know my father.  I will never, ever let my child feel awkward and out of place, unwelcome and unloved.  If there's not to be any connection with my paternal family, so be it.  It's better than explaining why we're not second class citizens even if we're sometimes treated as such.

award ceremony

Promotion, sweet promotion

I would say the suckiest part of med school for me has been the regression in rank.  It's really shallow, but rank in the military is symbolic of everything else.  Intelligence, knowledge, experience, competence... I now understand why it's not really directly correlated with any of those things, but almost everyone uses it as a surrogate.

For instance, in this course, I have more directly applicable experience than most.  We're physicians or soon-to-be physicians learning how to take care of pilots.  I know pilots.  I know flying.  I know the physiological challenges.  So to be one of the 5 most junior officers when previously I'd be comfortably around the mean is difficult.  My experience is less valued.  It's valued, but it always seems unexpected that I'd actually know something.

When I graduate on May 15th, I'll be promoted to Captain.  I originally pinned on Captain around May 2001.  The way they'll take my previous service into account is to give me "constructive credit".  They'll take half my previous time and adjust my date of rank.  So 9 years will become 4.5 years and my DOR of 15 May 2010 will become something like Dec 2005. 

Since medical corps officers (physicians) are promoted to Major at the 6 year point from their promotion to Captain, I should promote to Major on Dec 2011.

Not bad, but I should have put it on around Sept or October 2006.  So I'll be about 5 years behind where I was.  I really feel I shouldn't have been penalized for going to medical school, especially since I did well there.

USUHS AF Surgeon General's Award

My mind is officially blown.

I heard from the Office of Student Affairs that a "nice letter" was mailed to my house and that Yolanda could open it.  I thought it might be a thank you for interviewing applicants or something "nice" like that.

It was a notification that I've been chosen for the USAF Surgeon General's Award at graduation.  It's one of the top five awards.  There's Valedictorian/Consultants of the Armed Forces Award, which is the top student.  Then each service has a Surgeon General's Award that is for an academically and professionally successful student who best embodies the mission of that service. 

The letter said I'd been picked.  It was my last "dream goal".  I've fulfilled everything I wanted to happen at the school except that and it was mostly a daydream.  The sort of thing you imagine might happen if all the cards line up in your favor in the way that they almost never do.

I'm speechless.  I'm truly blessed.

I'm also sad for my best friend, because I heard today that his grandmother died.  She was a wonderful woman and was the one who suggested his parents open their house to me as foster parents.  Funeral is Friday, so I have to see whether I can make it up there.

School update

At the Aerospace Medicine Primary Course.  Having a great time.  My time as a pilot is referred to in almost every class.  My experience is respected, even if I'm outranked by pretty much every classmate (except the 5 other med students down here).

Yesterday we did our Spring elections for the honor society.  Elected what look to be a great bunch of people.  I was concerned towards the end, because one person (don't know male or female - it's very anonymous) was at the cut line.  He/she had the highest USMLE Step 1 score (the first part of the licensing exam) of all the applicants and one of the highest GPAs.  He/she hadn't done as much volunteer/leadership and research.  One fellow voter suggested there were two years almost totally unaccounted for during his/her undergrad.  It was accounted for by a lawn mowing business.  He/she mentioned in the essay that he/she was the first person to go to college from his/her family.  I had to jump on a soap box and shout from the rooftops (mixing metaphors, huh?) that THAT WAS SIGNIFICANT!!  They wanted to write this applicant off as a "one trick pony" with great grades and great test scores, but that's it.  Well, it's sometimes harder when you're the first and that achievement represents more than "just grades".  This applicant was from my wife's undergrad, was likely Hispanic and economically disadvantaged, and some of the other honor society folks just don't have the background to understand those hurdles.

Meanwhile, I got my last test score.  At least an 88%, which should be easily enough to get the A (I had a mid 90s on the subjective eval).  So my final GPA should be around 3.93, with one B in first year (anatomy) and one in fourth year (emergency medicine).  One was in academics and one was in a clinical clerkship.  Not bad.

Altitude chamber this week, flying again soon....