I am feeling a little raw and exposed about it, to be honest. My online “persona” has collided with me as a person… and I don’t know where that shift suddenly occurred, but I am finding that less and less people get what I am doing. More people seem to think that I am actually like this “tealou” person, and it’s almost become an expectation… like I am some circus monkey that has to lay on the filth or something. Heck, some people even call me tealou, even when I say not to. It feels bizarre, because it has gotten away from me and I don’t know how to switch it off.

I am not sure if it’s either a case of severely missing the mark, the demographics of Twitter changing (and thus resulting in less… errr… intelligent people), or because I now have a personal stake in the reaction because a lot of my Twitter followers are also my friends. Because then I go through this thought process… that I met them through this channel, which means there is this expectation of someone more… boisterous… our foul-mouthed… or emotionally needy… or flirty… or whatever. And I find myself playing this part, because people seem to like it… and then it gets me in trouble and does actual damage, hurts someone, and I go “SHIT! This is all just a joke that got out if hand!”

It may surprise you to read that I am actually very quiet 98% of the time. I am socially awkward. I would prefer to read a book over watching TV. I would prefer to watch TV than have sex… I would give my last dollar to anyone who needed it more than me and I actually avoid confrontation and backdown from bullies more times than I should. In many ways the “real me” is quite… opposite… to the “tealou” me… but as we move on, I find myself feeling pressured to be the funny one, or the crude one, or the one who says things to provoke… rather than being the multi-faceted me.

For the @tealou persona? It’s not a misrepresentation, per se, of who I am. It’s more of an id version of me… using the challenge of 140 characters to say what you are thinking, or to make a joke, or whatever. I have a strength with the written word and Twitter is great for that.

But, I dunno, things have gotten weird. Maybe it’s because of my new status as a “single” woman, that people are now reading everything I say like I am somehow desperate to find a man or something. It’s actually quite the opposite and I am so not interested in anything like that… I just want to be alone. But I dunno, something changed. I was reading a brochure about divorce and how your friendships can change when people perceive you to be “after their husbands”, whether it is the case or not. Maybe there’s a little of that… where… what used to be safe & funny to say as a married woman…. vs…. what’s safe & fun to say now that I am single… that on some level I need to accept that everything I write is going to be read differently from this point on? It’s so weird because it’s so not me.

As I have said before, I started the tealou username when it was anonymous. I built this following over time, and its weird because it has now become fused with my “real name” and people truly expect you to be exactly who you say you are. What a bizarre shift… that Facebook caused… to the point where most people now expect on some level, you to be yourself. But the Téa you see is the Téa that has to adopt this mask in order to even leave the house. The Téa that you meet is overly friendly, and even flirty, because I find it so unbelievable that anyone would like me, I try my hardest and smile & laugh… because that’s what “confident” people do, right?

It’s so bizarre. I haven’t yet figured it out. Part of me wants to kill the @tealou persona, but then, I have an audience and it has led me to so many wonderful people… people I would never have connected with if not for that. But how do I get to have both authenticity and interest? Because frankly, without the swearing & snark, I am actually kind of dull. It’s a hard one, huh?

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It sucks balls. Like, really, really sucks balls.

The thing that upsets me is that I am pretty vigilant about these things. I am careful about cross-contamination, careful about what I eat… because I can’t afford to be unwell. But every so often, BAM! and I am down.

Jason was going out so I ordered pizza from Dominoes. They’ve exposed me to gluten before – the last time we ordered in fact – and I put it down to a one-off. There have been some odd reactions before, but because I had wine with it, I assumed that was the cause.

So, I ordered pizza for the kids. I had half a slice (I have no appetite) and that was it.

I haven’t eaten today, there is absolutely no other possible source.

And now, for the second time, the Dominos “Gluten Free” base has me in so much agony I can almost imagine dying rather than tolerate it. I came very close to having a dose of Morphine, the pain is so bad. I am going to have arthritic pain for 2 days, all because Dominos can’t seem to take gluten contamination seriously. It’s not a joke. Sure, it’s a bit of a fad thing for many, but geez… noone is going to compensate me for the 2 days I now lose because I need to be in bed, are they? But, who cares, right? It’s just a little dietary thing anyway… I can just go back to eating wheat next week if I want. Sigh.

It is now 5:20am and it has taken me 40 minutes to write this. Because it has literally been in between massive waves of excruciating pain, breathing through, and trying to distract myself and not end up on the floor. It’s just not good enough. It’s one thing to make a mistake, but it’s an ongoing problem. I know where I won’t be eating again… even if it is only half a slice.

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I know, I know, you’re all like “tell us something we don’t know”. But, stay with with me.

Today I wrote a blog post about the end of my marriage. But I did leave out one little detail, and that is that I am actually quite mean when I want to be. Or, in this case, manipulative and cruel.

The thing that started all of this discussion? How much I flirt on Twitter, particularly with a handful of guys. It’s always been innocent and fun, all about the joke, how far the joke can go… pushing, etc etc. At least, it was for me. I have this thing where I will take a joke and hammer it till it dies. Add in some people that encourage that and it generally heads gutterwards pretty quickly. But I am all about the joke.

Now, it’s not so much the flirting itself, but the fact that Jason just not seeing it the same way as me magnified all the other issues that have been brewing for some time.

So, anyway, we clashed on it. Jason argued that me making gutter-jokes on Twitter would give men the wrong impression… that I was interested in them, whatever. I maintain that as adults, most of us married, it’s a joke and everyone knows it is. I am so not this @tealou person. I consider it a persona, a bit of fun, some flirting with happily married people who ALSO get the difference between joke, exaggeration & reality. And then I was told that people take it all on face value, and, well, yeah.

Which of course not only spoiled my fun, but it also made me assume the worst of everyone. Yes, for me, it’s all about the planting of a seed with my insecurities and then they blow into a full-blown paranoia. Which turns into a big “FUCK YOU YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO”… and that’s what I’ve been doing the last few weeks. Very publicly poking and prodding and daring Jason to bite. On some subconscious level I guess it’s easier to end a marriage if they hate you, I don’t know what the hell I am thinking. But…

Again, having what I perceived to just be jokes along the lines of The Man Show, turned into something… weird and creepy and self conscious. I am a little shitted off about it, but, being a self-aware and reflective type of person, has realised that I probably went a little too far, in an attempt to prove a point (and also hurt him, which, ironically, is not what I set out to do).

So, while the last post is obviously how I feel, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair not to acknowledge that I have also decided to break up my family, and just want to be alone. The Twitter stuff? Meh. Whatever. But I also acknowledge that I pushed it too far in an attempt to make it easier to break up.

So now I have decided to grow up, separate, without the stupid childish shit. Because my marriage is over, but, I d0n’t need to a) drag others into it or b) lose my dignity in the process.

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Initiating a separation is harder when the person you are married to has done nothing wrong. Well, nothing deliberate. Because the thoughts are not of getting out of a toxic situation, or an abusive one, or even wanting to be with someone else, but with having to explain to people that it’s just not right for me anymore. Because no matter how I look at it, on the outside it just looks selfish. I feel selfish and mean, and it brings up a lot of issues about my mother and her moving on to another man and ignoring her children… all sorts of things. But, at the same time, I didn’t choose to be married to someone who sits on the spectrum, and if I had have been aware, I probably would have ended it. People keep on asking “what happened?” and offering condolences, etc… but… I feel…. flat. They say that the initiator of a separation often moves through the grieving process prior to making the final decision, and I think that that is what has happened here. My marriage was in trouble from the beginning, and propped up by various events, dramas, the job of raising children, we never had the chance to actually evaluate our relationship.

And because it’s not his fault, and he is a good person, and I genuinely like him, but we just have a completely different outlook on everything… and I feel stifled. Like I can’t even have my own thoughts and feelings anymore without needing to run them through a filter (that will inevitably put it down, or find something wrong with them)… and… I have realised that I am actually pretty special. And I don’t mean that in an arrogant way… but… that… I am really smart. I have BIG ideas and see the world very differently to most people. And I used to think this was a problem with me fitting in and that it was actually me. But, I guess part of growing up, is realising that your ‘weaknesses’ are often only in the context of what other people expect you to be.

• I am not domestic.
• I am not an… attentive… partner.
• I am in my own head.
• I am a dreamer.
• I am selfish.
• I am neurotic.
• I need to be reassured. CONSTANTLY. Incessantly.
• I expect full attention with my shit, and don’t listen if I am not interested in yours.

That’s been my whole identity for most of the marriage. Feeling like I need to be less of a dreamer, less of a brainiac, less selfish, less neurotic. Some of those are issues, like, me thinking the world revolves around me, sure, but it wasn’t my strengths, which are many, but about focusing on my weaknesses, and, feeling generally crap about myself all the time because I could not fit into the “wife and mother, part time careerist” model. It was the expected role… my search for meaning being treated as laziness, flakiness and instability, rather than as adventurous, seeking and positive. My marriage, simply, makes me feel bad about myself. Every day. Because the communication difficulties with someone literal or semantic, when you are into exaggeration and hyperbole, erodes you over time. Someone who likes adventure and impulses and enjoys just laying on the beach on a school night… is not compatible with someone who is not only worried about it being a school night, but will go ahead and remind you how right they were when you are tired the next day. A person who doesn’t value money, or mortgages, with someone who love routine and security…. well… it’s just not a good mix. I feel emotionally abused, even if it is not the case – and he does too.

And it sounds like I am slagging him off even when I am writing it… but I am not. It’s just a major, philosophical disconnect, couple with a fundamental incompatibility… that…makes both of us bring out the worst in each other. And I am by no means saying that I am doing Jason a favour by initiating the separation, because that would be so arrogant… but I honestly think that he doesn’t know how he deserves better than that. We BOTH do. And it’s not a matter of seeking counselling, or whatever, we have done all of that. I am now just realising that there is another alternative… which is rather than suffering in quiet, simmering resentment and miscommunication, DAILY, we separate and try to salvage a friendship while we can.

Our friends tell us we belong together, it’s all just so much external pressure. Internally, I feel we should not have gotten married in the first place. And I think that when something so fundamental is incompatible, it’s hard to come back from. I always had the view, even if it is naive, that you should have them ‘get’ you. Like, really get where you are coming from. They don’t have to agree – that would be dull – but to truly understand how each other ticks. And I haven’t felt that way in this relationship. Because of the pressures of needing to have children fairly young, low confidence in my ability to truly… attract someone without ulterior motives… I settled into the relationship that felt comfortable. Because it is comfortable. We are friends. But, we don’t have a marriage.

And it sounds cruel. It sounds like I am leaving him, taking him away from his children because I want to go and find someone else. That’s not it at all. I want to find out who *I* am. Because I have never known. I know that I am clever, and funny, and flawed in a million ways, but everything I have ever done has been in reference to either survival, or in reference to other people. It sounds like the lamest reason ever to end a marriage. But, truth be told, I would prefer to be afraid and lonely and tired… than to live another day in a relationship where both of us resent each other equally. I think Jason sees things my way too and I think that he agrees – it’s hard to tell with him how he’s feeling… but… I think we were limping. In a huge rut. And it really just took someone to actually say it loud and mean it.

So while you might be shocked to hear the news, or might not understand… remember that it’s internal. It’s how I feel. And I feel pretty shit because of it. But, I also don’t want to be 40, 50 and 60, having the same ridiculous conversations because noone had the balls to say that it was an unhealthy relationship.

We may figure it out in the end… and of course that would be great… for everyone else. But, you know, even if I end up being the bad guy in all of this, ultimately all I am answerable to is myself and my children. And they deserve a positive environment as much as I do.

I hope this gives some insight.

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1. I want a decoupage tombstone.
2. @jasonjordan will MC my funeral in a Gimp Suit
3. My funeral song shall be “Shaddup Your Face”
4. My children shall be forced to live with their grandparents muahahahahahahahahaha
5. The food at my funeral shall be an assortment of ball-shaped foods.
6. My ashes shall be scattered #onyourface
7. @sebsharp can have my sex toys
8. I bequeath all of my debt to the animal shelter.
9. I offer to donate my body to science, ONLY if they make a midget lift me onto the table. On his own.
10. @sebsharp can have all of my sex toys, with the exception of the 13″ stainless steel one, who I bequeath to @shelly1912
11. Scrap the ashes. I shall be stuffed and put on a seat at @Mooba as a deterrent for Exomod spies.
12. My children are required to point toward the Apple store at hourly intervals and salute.
13. I would like my bum to me made into a nice lamp.
14. If my death is suspicious, I consent to an autopsy, limited ONLY to left ring finger.
15. If you memorialise my Facebook account, clean my fish tank & harvest my crops whilst you are there, thanks.
16. If you sleep with my ex, beware, he’s crap in the sack. Hence the toys.
17. The invitations for my funeral shall cost no more than $1.99 & need to have bedazzling
18. You shall, as a community, commit to tweeting no less than once every 23 seconds in my honour.
19. If you find… the thing… in the… thing… you know what to do :)
20. @jaso32 remember to put the bins out.
21. If I could at all come back as a vampire, when I die tonight, please let me be a GOOD vampire, not a shit Twilight one.
22. If I manage to communicate with you after I am gone, cover your ears for it shall be Dexter spoilers.
23. If I do actually die, which is a certainty, I nominate @mrsisterchris to tearfully (vomitly) read out this list.

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I saw a GP, who is the brother-in-law of a friend. He had offered to run a bunch of tests on my behalf to figure out what was going on… and there were a few whacky results and I was put on T4 (Eutroxig). My hair started falling out and I saw minor improvements, but it was still not… right. I started the coeliac journey not long after and that made a HUGE difference to my well-being, but I still was not right. I had my MRI & CT Scan and I haven’t seen the reports. But, that friendship got complicated and I didn’t feel comfortable with it all.

So, in May, I saw a new GP. He’s a little… umm… offbeat… but I can’t deny that there has been some improvement. It was a little funny because it’s traditional medicine, fused with complementary medicine, fused with western Medicine… and I tend be a little… skeptical. He felt my pulse and diagnosed me with hypopituitary. Now of course, the bloods reflect that too, as well as my clinical history, so I am not going to be dismissive of the method… but… lo and behold… he actually listened. He actually examined me. He looked at my hairline and my eyebrows and my mouth and my shoulders. And yes, a diagnosis of coeliac to boot. I decided against having the colonoscopy to confirm the coeliac diagnosis – primarily because I am all-procedured-out. So despite me clearly being a raging coeliac, there’s a question mark on it and right now, the gluten free diet helps so that’s all I need to know.

I have across the board deficiencies in hormones, in combination with an absorption problem. But it cycles. Still. Whether the source of these problems are related to an underlying tumour is still unknown… mostly because I haven’t been back for a follow-up since Grandma died (must remember do that!) and I have been feeling somewhat OK. And for someone who has had chronic problems for many years, 90% is a miracle.

I was prescribed a bunch of medications, including Dessicated Thyroid. This stuff has changed my life. I have also been put on low-dose steroids and a few other bits and pieces. In combination with the Cymbalta and the Dexamphetamine… lo and behold… I have lost about 12kg. It’s actually quite amazing, because I have never, ever lost weight. EVER. Even when I don’t eat. Even when I exercise… NEVER. I have also had a diagnosis of Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which has brought a lot of self awareness about my eating disorder, the triggers, the reasons why I behave in certain odd ways socially… and it’s been a massive growth period for me. I seem to have a lot of co-morbid issues, and I deal with them bit by bit, day by day. It sounds like a whole list of crap, but they are all so related, and dependent on each other (eg, BDD as an offshoot of my weight issues) that it is just about trying to feel better rather than a list of problems.

One thing we know for sure is that I am deficient in a whole bunch of pituitary hormones, which means my whole HPA-Axis is out of whack. So that, in combination with the hormonal changes of tubal ligation, plus God knows what other things, and my body is often a bit… hectic.

Generally, I still have zero libido, but I think that is more related to how I feel about my body (and my face) than about hormones… but again, I’ll go through phases of intense “hormone” rushes where I could easily take 30 men on at a time, so there is obviously something underlying going on there. Major hormonal surges of cortisol that will keep me up at night, then crashes that have me in bed all day. The medications I am on temper the severity of the cycling, and for the most part I am doing pretty well, but I would not say I am fighting fit. I have a fair amount of random abdominal pain too, that I have just put down to stress but is probably just scar tissue from all the surgeries over the years.

I saw my other GP (the one I initially wrote the letter to) and he asked if I was going to pursue diagnosis. My answer was, basically, that the issues remain and I have pretty much given up. I said to him that I intend on putting out spotfires, and that if/when things escalate again, I’ll be an Endo myself, and I’ll deal with it then. He seemed disappointed in that, but that is the reality of the situation – there’s just not enough information at the moment. I still have either excess cortisol or none; excess testosterone or none; excess prolactin or none – the list goes on – and there is a quite clear pituitary & hypothalamic disease of some description. But, thanks to Modern Medicine, I can at least put out some spot fires while we figure it all out.

What do I say when people ask what the diagnosis is? It’s hard. People like to have a label for you and define you in terms of your chronic disease. Having lupus, having MS, having Addison’s – they’re not easy but people like to have a path. At this point, it is actually unknown and I am going to 4 different Doctors for various aspects of my problem. So rather than come to a conclusion, I just say that it’s chronic, autoimmune, and a complex dysfunction. That’s about all we can figure out at the moment, but we are making some progress, albeit slowly.

But the fact of the matter is, that a year ago, I needed a cane to walk some days. Now, I am able to move, I can go on a brisk walk, and I don’t have joint pain most days.  Even if I haven’t got a clear diagnosis or future, I feel it is worth pursuing ad hoc treatments just to have some quality of life back. I am a work in progress, I’ll figure it out eventually (I suspect some time around menopause!), but in the meantime, I’ll take 20 tablets a day, because no answer and some treatment is better than nothing.

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I came home one day last week and noticed that my son (18 months) was heavier. That is generally a sign that I haven’t seen my kids much, and in this case, it’s right. I haven’t seen my 9 year old daughter in what feels like months, and the middle boy (nearly 5), well, the only time I see him is when he seeks me out. It’s not a good balance.

And the thing that scares me, at this very moment, is that I am about to get a whole lot tireder.

I am genuinely surprised about the knock-on effects of this decision to become a Doctor. I am not sure if it is related to turning 30, or that I have opened a Pandora’s Box of figuring out (and asserting) what I want out of life, but something major has shifted in me. I feel a little bit like I am suddenly evaluating all of the choices I made up to this point – all of the things I have done out of obligation, or habit, or societal expectation… and its like the decision to uproot my life and try to do Medicine has made me question everything else, including my marriage. Like my previous career (s!), my marriage is not a bad one. I’d be okay if I stayed, but there’s just something that I am yearning within it that makes me feel incomplete. And I need to be separated to figure it out.

Because the feeling that I have when I am at a Lab, or studying the Sciences? It makes me feel complete. It might sound crazy, but Chemistry was something I was told was hard, that I was a creative-brain and that I wouldn’t cope with it. So I didn’t do it. Same with Physics. Others expectations of what I should do and how I should feel prevented me from finding my passion. Because to me, Chemistry & Physics are simply applied Philosophy. Nobody ever told me that Aristotle is as much the Grandfather of Science as he was of Political Philosophy. Noone ever said that Classical Philosophy had as much of a scientific application as a creative one. And I feel a bit let down by that, because if Chemistry had been explained to me in terms of the search for meaning or understanding the world around us, or explaining the Universe… I would have taken to Science 10 years ago. I think it might be a failing of the public school system that they don’t show the overlap between the Arts and the Sciences. My only exposure to it in high school was Bicarb and vinegar and memorising the periodic table! But, if you show me how osmosis applies in the body, why they put physiologic saline in a drip with drugs… I not only retain it, but I love it.

So I feel a little bit of sadness at how I was a Scientist for all these years and never knew it, purely because the system doesn’t encourage us to find our passion, but to pick a job we can do.

And I am sure all the Doctors that read this will laugh, because right now, I am studying only to get my GPA up so I can get in to Medical School and I am studying basic Chemistry, basic Histology, basic Physics… the sort of thing all you eggheads take for granted. And I may be right-brained but I am home, because I understand *why* these disciplines exist – and that they are a philosophical hypothesis like anything else, and it’s a discipline based on Millennia of thinking and reflecting, like anything else. If anything, I feel that having studied the classics n Philosophy prior to approaching the Sciences will make me a better Doctor, because I get the why as well as the how. Understanding things at the molecular level, and applying it across disciplines… excites me in a way I have never ever been. I want to be a Scholar, not a subset, and the discipline of Medicine is so broad, I am truly excited about my future.

And like cells have an enormous impact on the whole world, that one little decision to pursue my dream of being a Doctor has had a butterfly effect I could not have foreseen. I am truly excited.

Having said that, there are some practical hurdles that I keep coming up against. The main one is time with money a close second. And University bureaucracy is doing my head in, to say the least. My University decided that in order to graduate with the new triple-minor in Politics, Public Policy & Biomedical Science, I needed to take a whole bunch of Politics Units… it meant an additional year of study in something I had already done, so, me being me, went on a bit of a Twitter tanty. We finally negotiated that I could do as initially promised, plus one more Politics unit and that would be fine. I was a ball of stress about all of this, because as it is, the numbers are against me even getting into Med, without being stuffed around on top of it.

As I said earlier, I am full time at University, and working in a business that requires a lot of time. I got out of bed last Monday morning at 6am, to catch the train for an 8:30am lecture, to have the lecturer pretty much read from the slides that are available online. I started the Semester with the intention of attending every single lecture (to show I was committed), but at this point in time, I felt it was unsustainable, and an inefficient use of my time, so I decided to dedicate blocks of time for the whole week’s revision, instead of FOUR 1 hour lectures, on different days, per unit. I feel like I am functioning a little better this week because of it. Because it’s not so much about my commitment to the degree or to getting into Med School… for people who are grown-ups, with jobs and families (and in my case heading into single parenthood for at least a little while), it is about my time being valuable and needing to schedule efficiently. I am still attending all compulsory Labs & Tutes, and doing my best to go to lectures, but at the same time, I need to be aware o burnout. Because I have health issues, stress is not good for me and I need to learn strategies to be efficient rather than super-human.

I hope that I can at least be an example for those other older people considering entering Medical School – that it’s not about the right timing, or having enough money, or being able to take it on. As you get older it only gets harder and more complicated… and if that burning desire is there, and refuses to subside, leap now. It is really hard. It is really exhausting. And it may open up feelings and thoughts that you didn’t expect or realise. My personal growth since the decision to try for Medicine has been a combination of surprising, invigorating and downright terrifying, and you need to be prepared to feel like a different person on the other side. But, I’ll tell you… after my histology lab, with the microscope that was too high and hurt my back, and the eyestrain from staring at my own eyelashes for 2 hours, and the migraine that followed… I felt a sense of bliss like never before. The week before, I was wrist deep in cow’s guts and I have never been happier. And I was in a first year dissection lab, fighting back tears because I was just so overwhelmed with excitement and privilege to have gotten even to that point… it is so worth it.

And I know that on my first day of Medical School, I will sob like a baby. Because it has taken not only a tremendous amount of physical energy, but the emotional and spiritual transformations I have inadvertently discovered along the way, and I will feel so lucky to have the opportunity to even be there.

Which is why, whenever I feel tempted to pack it all in (which happens at least every second day), I think of that moment. Not even finishing Med School, or being a Resident, or finding my speciality, but I think about that very first day of Medical School, and that feeling that I have discovered my calling and my dream, and that feeling of nothing but pure excitement, and an immense feeling of privilege and humility, that will make all of this tiredness, separation logistics, forever teetering on bankruptcy, worth every second.

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Of course, staying up until 4am for a 7am rise is not sustainable, and definitely not something a Doctor would advise – although by now I am already aware of the irony of the superhuman efforts it takes to train as a Doctor and the advice we are told to give others when THEY do it. So, on the first day, I figure I have learned that it is day one of doing as I say, not as I do.

So, I’m tired and have a full day of Uni. Of course, a lot of this could have been avoided if I had told myself at 21 that I was going to want to be a Doctor and that I had better make sure my T’s are crossed and my I’s dotted. But, you know, instead I have an Undergraduate Degree that has 2 failed Semesters, dragging my GPA to down to 4.

I have a degree in Politics and a minor in Legal Studies, so what I have done is enrol in a degree that will credit me with another Arts degree, but because I have to do at least 24 points at the University, it is structured with 3 minors. So, I have covered 2 of the minors and am doing a third minor in Biomedical Science. Which, if all goes well, I graduate with a GPA of 6 and make myself more competitive.

It’s certainly not the easiest road. I am the main income earner for my family because my husband is injured, so basically I have committed to full days at University, cutting up animals, learning the Chemistry and Physics I need for GAMSAT, and then doing a full days work in the evenings.

So anyone who looks at me sideways about being a Doctor, saying the hours are shit? Well… I am used to it.The first year I get paid will be a sweet relief and ironically, it feels as though an internship at a tertiary hospital will be a walk in the park! And I could not even think about doing this if my husband worked full time. So as much as I complain about being tired, I also know that I am one of the lucky ones that has flexible enough work to go to University.

But, it’s hard. I joked on Twitter that I was thinking of getting corporate sponsorship, finding some sick, rich old guy that wants me to cure him… I am very stressed about the financial aspects of supporting the family and running a business, and frankly, sometimes it seems impossible.

But this week, I officially started formal preparation for GAMSAT. It’s both exciting and terrifying and I get to cut up my very first mammal today. I am the proud owner of a $25 dissection kit and I am thrilled about it, but there is a part of me that worries I may not have what it takes.

For the younger folks thinking of going for Medicine, do it now. Because sometimes it feels really hard, with all the grownupness and commitments alongside everything else. It’s only my first day of BioMed and it’s not the material that phases — it’s all the other stuff I have to do JUST TO BE ABLE TO ATTEND LECTURES. I’m tired. It’s only 11am and I am exhausted and I will have to work till midnight tonight to support my family.

But, it’s worth every second because despite the insecurities, the heavy books, the sitting-in-a-room-with-kids and the neglecting of my family, (and the ever haunting voice in my ear that tells me I am doing this all to not get in anyway!), I feel like, for the first time in my life, I am home and feeling lucky that I have the opportunity and privilege to do this.

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