Here we find ourselves yet again. Going through yet another residency match cycle. A position we never in a million years would have thought would be a part of our story. But here we are! We could be resentful. We could be just over it completely. We do feel slightly defeated after all these years of trying to break this dang glass ceiling, but nevertheless...we are persisting! Through all of these disappointments and so much confusion and rejection after rejection, we have chosen not to throw in the towel, but to believe that there is a greater overarching plan for our lives, for Jonathan's career, and our charge is to just keep pressing forward. And so we do! When we talk about our situation, we often remind each other that ultimately our story is being written. No good story started out great, had no hiccups, and ended beautifully with no struggle. Nobody would ever invest the time to read a story like that! So here's a little of our story...
Back in 2015 we thought we were headed straight for the big finish line in the most epic way possible. We were expecting our first baby after years of infertility. The Lord had finally provided the time and the finances to be able to go through IVF, and so we tackled that in 2014 and we were ready to meet our little man in April. Greysen Neil arrived healthy on April 28th, 2015. Jonathan had all but aced Step 1 and rounded out basic sciences with flying colors. We cruised through the summer and fall enjoying our sweet new baby, and we were ready for 2016 to be another epic year for the Womacks since Jonathan was going to be finishing clinicals (he was still maintaining that stellar GPA) and apply for residency that fall. And then one by one the pieces of our little tower of success started kind of coming undone...
In March we found out that Charlie, Jonathan's dad, was going to have to have kidney surgery to remove a tumor that had been found there. Miraculously, Jonathan had the month of March off of clinicals, so we were able to be there to support Charlie and Bernice through that. While we were there, Bernice shared with me in confidence that she had begun having symptoms of her cancer returning (she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in July of 2012 mere days before Jonathan and I were to be moving to the Caribbean for him to start medical school). I tried to encourage her by reminding her how well she had responded to treatment before. While it scared me, my heart wouldn't let me accept that she was having a true relapse of her tumors. Charlie's surgery went fine and he recovered well at home...no cancer for him! But as the story goes with medical school, we had to ship out to Maryland to continue Jonathan's clinical rotations up there. While we were there, more testing and appointments with Bernice ultimately led to a grim prognosis. She wasn't responding well to treatments and her body wasn't strong enough to endure the heavy hitting medicine that would have been required to eradicate the cancer from her body again. So we came home in May (again...the Lord graciously provided us another month off of clinicals for the month of May, but we had no idea how much we would need it). We hadn't accepted yet that we had arrived at the awful dead end of cancer where the choice is to either end treatments completely, or try some hail Mary's that might end her life anyway because of their toxicity. So we came home and in transit from Baltimore learned that Jonathan's grandfather, his last remaining grandparent, had unexpectedly passed away from heart failure. So we started our trip home with a funeral...
Fast forward about 2 weeks, and we were walking the road of palliative care for Bernice. Our heads spinning, our hearts broken...but there we were. Seeing his mama decline like that really just crushed Jonathan. How could it not?? She died holding his hands. We buried her on our 9th wedding anniversary, June 2, 2016, and Jonathan had to get back to Maryland to continue his clinicals on June 4th. Greysen and I stayed behind in OKC to help ease some transitions for Charlie, so Jonathan was by himself in a strange place studying for board exams and getting up and going to work every morning alone. When the fall rolled around, I pushed him to go ahead and take the board exam he had been postponing. It's something I'll always feel guilty for doing. He is SUCH an incredibly smart man...a VERY studious person. He had done SO well on Step 1. But he knew himself and he didn't feel ready. But he took that stupid board exam 3 months after losing his mother and his grandfather less than 30 days apart. And not surprisingly it did not turn out well for him. It's so incongruent with the rest of his application...it's not indicative of his propensity to be an amazing physician...it's only indicative of the fact that he endured something completely out of the ordinary right smack dab in the middle of medical school...
So Cycle #1 we got 5 interviews for residency, and we didn't get his passing board scores until exactly 24 hours AFTER the deadline to submit his rank order list. We had to withdraw. Cycle #2 the system changed up the process by which programs gain access to his USMLE transcripts and we didn't get the memo until it was too late. No interviews...we had to withdraw. Cycle #3 he snagged a great interview at a great program here in Oklahoma. The interview went amazingly well and we felt like it was a lock. And then 48 hours before rank order submission opened, he got an email from that program director saying that the funding for his program was being pulled and the program was no longer able to participate in the match. So we went through the match knowing we would have to SOAP (throwing his hat in the ring for ANY program left unmatched). Then the ERAS system went straight BONKERS and even the SOAP was a disaster. Out of the hundreds of residents participating, less than 30 matched through SOAP. So we didn't match...again...
Through all these disappointments, God has been gracious enough to show us WHILE we were going through it where He truly wanted us to be. The first cycle we needed each other instead of a residency. We were still healing from losing Bernice and Tommie, and then we lost my sweet Mimol and miscarried our Soutine in August of that year. The second cycle started with loss which was hard, but ultimately it was clear that the Lord wanted us firmly planted at our church to be a part of the rebuilding foundation. So we dug in there. The third cycle I was pregnant with twins. God wanted me among my Village and He wanted Jonathan by my side. SO much happened between applications and the official "no go"...my head spins just thinking about it...
So here we are. Cycle #4. We are leaving no stone unturned. We are leaning HARD into God's will for our lives. Believing that He finishes what He starts. We are limping and beaten down...we are better for the journey we've been on, but our tenacity has begun to wane a bit. Jonathan is called to be a physician. I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt and so does he. But OH how I pray that this is seen through to fruition. He deserves it. WE deserve it. Our family deserves it. Sometimes I find myself thinking "What in the WORLD do we need to do? Where are we going wrong??" And there are no clear answers. Applicants with WAY less desirable applications are matching and we aren't. It just flat doesn't make sense. So we only have to believe that the reason it's not happened for us yet is because it's part of the story we are writing. The epic saga of Rachel and Jonathan Womack. Our zany adventures, our misadventures, our triumphs, our trials. This has been SUCH a long chapter filled with LOTS of plot twists...
Looking at our three beautiful boys helps us keep things in perspective. There was a time we thought we might never get to have babies, and now here they are. Happy healthy and so stinkin gorgeous I have to pinch myself. So there was a time we thought maybe this residency thing wouldn't happen for us...and we are ready to say "Here it is! And it's so stinkin amazing we have to pinch ourselves!" I hope you'll join us in hope and prayer and perseverance as we press on toward this prize. We're so close we can taste it...
