i think we talked about this briefly before....i was heading that way too. i have very mixed feelings, but one thing about medicine is how (unnecessarily) consuming it is. the good old boys run the show (older generation doctors) who dont care about having a life, and really dont give a rat's ass if anyone else does or not ("i did it that way, so you should too"). there's a lot more awareness now about quality of life for med students/residents/attendings, but doesnt seem to change much. it wont get any better....the ratio of patients to doctors is rising EXPONENTIALLY....so who's going to take care of them? my sister is in her intern year in EM, and i see her about 4 times a year (lives an hour away). the problem is, unless you have the balls to stand up and say im not going to live like that when you're done with residency, it never changes....somewhat depending on what specialty you pick. but the trauma surgeons i work with have the most ****ed up lives you can imagine. if i wanted to spend that much time in a hospital, id just become an 80 year old chemo patient. on the flip side, you probably have a much more "normal" life, a lot more freedom to do things you want, more money (that's for sure), better opportunity for family, etc. and there's certainly no denying a passion for medicince/science. i think that's fairly equivalent to people's passion for flying, which i why you see a lot of people with both of those interests. ie, you don't see many people who go through college thinking "i can't WAIT to be an accountant!" those are my thoughts anyway. i do know several pilots in the navy who went to med school after their committment, and i know flight surgeons who "have" to fly as well. if you're interested in the med school program, talk to recruiter. obviously it's competitive, but not impossible.
