The experience of loss and the search for purpose are themes that shaped one medical student’s journey into rural medicine. After losing her father in a farming accident, she was forced to postpone her scheduled shadowing assignment with Dr. Wong in Ogallala, Nebraska, as part of the rural and wilderness track at Rocky Vista University. She reached out to Dr. Wong by email, explaining her situation and requesting to complete her family medicine clerkship rotation during her third year instead.
Her second year of medical school was filled with grief and uncertainty, but also support from those around her. She described the difficulty of balancing profound sorrow with a persistent sense of duty: “What words did I have for a grief so profound next to a call on my heart to push through and see it to completion?” Despite doubts about her place in medicine, she continued in hopes that clinical rotations would help restore her sense of purpose.
During clinical rotations, she found renewed happiness and meaning—first in child and adolescent psychiatry, where she connected with young patients full of hope, then in pediatrics working with children and teenagers. Her family medicine rotation took her back to Ogallala for two months—a region significant both professionally and personally.
Her father had been devoted to cattle ranching and native grass preservation in Nebraska’s sandhills. Many family trips were spent at bull sale barns or visiting other ranchers across the state. The sandhills held special memories for them both; he often called it “pretty country” and joked about moving there someday.
Returning to Ogallala brought back memories of time spent together on Hereford tours through the sandhills—a connection between personal loss and professional calling as she pursued becoming a doctor.
