Having surgery over the summer, can't do many activities. (Question)

vadeem · Jan 12, 2013

I'm planning on having surgery over the summer to fix a problem that I've been living with for many years due to an injury I had a while ago. This surgery will require me to be on crutches for roughly 1.5 months, and I really cannot be moving around too much because I don't want to damage the repair in any way. I'm worried that I won't be able to do many activities over the summer as I'll be recovering from the surgery. Is the gap in activities justified in this case, and how would I communicate this to ADCOMS?

I'm pretty set on my clinical volunteering, 2 years of hospital volunteering, and 1.5 years of volunteering in a free health care clinic. I'll have roughly 60 hours of shadowing by the summer, and I'm starting two different non-clinical volunteering gigs during the spring semester which will be roughly 8 months long each (tutoring and habitat for humanity).
Should I be worrying about this, or is it okay to not do much over the summer as I still have my whole junior year to be involved in ECs? I have other hobbies and held a part-time job from summer to spring.
(currently a sophomore btw)

Pattycake25 · Jan 13, 2013

Don't worry one bit, even med school adcoms will generously forgive you "taking it easy" to recover from surgery. So long as you still do enough ECs at other points in your premed journey (with the normal balance of volunteering, hobbies, research if you can, yadda yadda), the lapse in time will not hurt you at all.

vadeem said:
I'm planning on having surgery over the summer to fix a problem that I've been living with for many years due to an injury I had a while ago. This surgery will require me to be on crutches for roughly 1.5 months, and I really cannot be moving around too much because I don't want to damage the repair in any way. I'm worried that I won't be able to do many activities over the summer as I'll be recovering from the surgery. Is the gap in activities justified in this case, and how would I communicate this to ADCOMS?

I'm pretty set on my clinical volunteering, 2 years of hospital volunteering, and 1.5 years of volunteering in a free health care clinic. I'll have roughly 60 hours of shadowing by the summer, and I'm starting two different non-clinical volunteering gigs during the spring semester which will be roughly 8 months long each (tutoring and habitat for humanity).
Should I be worrying about this, or is it okay to not do much over the summer as I still have my whole junior year to be involved in ECs? I have other hobbies and held a part-time job from summer to spring.
(currently a sophomore btw)

Ismet · Jan 13, 2013

You're fine. Take it easy and recover so that you don't have to go through it again!

vadeem · Jan 13, 2013

I assumed adcoms would be lenient in this case, but I just wanted to clarify. Thanks a bunch for the responses. 🙂
Frankly I'm relieved since I finally get to be lazy for a few months haha.

cuculici1 · Jan 13, 2013

vadeem said:
I assumed adcoms would be lenient in this case, but I just wanted to clarify. Thanks a bunch for the responses. 🙂
Frankly I'm relieved since I finally get to be lazy for a few months haha.

Yeah don't worry about it too much. I also had a surgery the summer after my sophomore year (foot surgery). I had just started shadowing an orthopedic surgeon and I couldn't come in after the surgery in July because you can't go into the OR with an open wound anyway, plus having a crippled pre-med around in crutches is probably a huge liability. In general, your health will always come first and just focus on getting that back up to speed.

Having surgery over the summer, can't do many activities. (Question)

vadeem

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Pattycake25

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Ismet

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vadeem

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cuculici1

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