If you ask them about the impact of medical school on a marriage, though, they’ll both give you wry, knowing looks. “It’s the worst part of your life and the worst part of your marriage,” says Sheila, a fourth-year student in the College of Osteopathic Medicine.

That reinforces the value of Significant Others’ Support (SOS), a campus organization that helps students’ significant others better understand the worlds of health care and medical education. SOS also provides a support system and connections to DMU and the community.

“We’re like a lifeline to our spouses. We’re there when they need something to do or need help,” says Michael, this year’s SOS president. “It’s nice [for new students] to hear from someone who’s gone through medical school that, yes, you will make it.”

In addition to general meetings – during which the DMU Pediatrics Club offers babysitting services – SOS offers volunteer and social activities and several popular affinity groups, including a book club, men’s club, knitting club and cooking club. Significant others recently fed approximately 150 DMU students before their first anatomy exam in an SOS-sponsored “feed the student night,” held in the SEC Commons. The potluck extravaganza inspired an SOS cookbook Michael is now working on. “We have about 25 recipes collected already,” he says.

Another SOS benefit: It helps ease the guilt of medical students who often feel they’re neglecting their loved ones. “He can have his poker nights [with the SOS men's club], and I can study. It’s reassurance that I’ve not completely abandoned him,” Sheila says. “Medical students have to be very selfish. SOS brings their spouses into our world.”

• Double Duty
• Mother Load
• You can meld marriage and medical school
• A support network for those we love

“Put those two together, and you have your work cut out for you,” says Lynn Martin, Ph.D., DMU’s director of educational support services. “Spouses often feel taken for granted. Students often feel torn between academic performance and the ability to be a contributing member of the couple and family.”

Martin offers these tips to juggle both successfully:

• Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. Always greet each other (this does not include yelling, “I’m in here on the computer”) when you reunite at the end of the work/ school day. Let your partner know you missed them.
• Try to spend at least 10 minutes each day to talk about “non-maintenance” topics. (Maintenance conversation includes, “Will you pick up Ashley from child-care tomorrow?” “Did you pay that bill?” “What do we need at the grocery store?”) Sound easy? Give it a try: Most married couples spend less than 30 minutes per week in non-maintenance conversation.
• Sync your calendars once a week to find at least one block of time that you can spend as a couple – then follow through.
• Put the couple first. When children see the stability and love within the couple, the safety and security trickle down. Prioritize time with your partner.
• Don’t absolve the student of all household responsibilities – and then expect that to change once the student moves on to rotations and eventually residency and/or a job. It won’t.
• Remember, medical school is training for a career, not an identity. You can be replaced in your career by the next talented individual who comes along. You can’t be replaced in your family.

• Double Duty
• Mother Load
• You can meld marriage and medical school
• A support network for those we love

Elizabeth Ceballos and Alyssa Rammer emphasize the key role family and friends have played in their lives. But the force fueling their success is the women themselves.

Becoming a mom was not anywhere near Alyssa Rammer’s to-do list. A biology and psychology double major and gymnastic team member at Hamline University, she had been using birth control when she discovered she was 20 weeks’ pregnant.

Rammer, then 19, did not plan to have a relationship with the baby’s father and wasn’t sure she wanted to become a parent. But after a trip to an adoption agency, she concluded, “I didn’t think I’d be okay with having someone else raise my child.”

Rammer, who finished her spring-semester courses at Hamline right before the birth of son Porter in June 2004, praises her gymnastic teammates for rallying around her and her baby.

“Looking back, if it hadn’t been for the girls, it would have been a very different story,” says Rammer, now a third-year DMU student. “For the first two years of his life, Porter hung out with 20 gymnasts.”

“He could tell you more about your kidneys than the average six-year-old”

Alyssa Rammer, D.O.’12

Even with the support of family and friends, she still had to take a hard look at her dream of becoming a doctor, a goal she’s had since age two.

“I thought, ‘I can’t be a single mom and a doctor.’ I thought about nursing or [becoming a] physician assistant,” she says.

However, Sarah Manning, D.O., Porter’s pediatrician, saw something in Rammer that perhaps the young mother couldn’t: After Porter was born, she maintained a near-perfect undergraduate grade-point average.

“The pediatrician said, ‘If you can do all that, you can go to medical school and be a doctor,’” Rammer recalls. Her first medical school interview was at DMU.

“I walked on campus and thought, ‘I’m supposed to be here,’” Rammer says. “It’s so family-oriented. I’ve had an easier time here than in undergraduate.”

Not that it’s easy. Rammer recalls a particularly bumpy time after she’d broken up with her boyfriend – with whom she’s reunited – when classes and labs were especially intense.

“My mom came down almost every weekend because I was losing my mind. I felt like I didn’t have enough time to do anything,” she recalls. “Porter was watching too much TV. There were moments when I felt like I was being a bad mom.”

Still, that Rammer has largely juggled all her roles successfully demonstrates her determination. In addition to her D.O. degree, she’s pursuing a master’s degree in anatomy. Last year, she was a teaching assistant in surgery. She admits being “OCD” about attending lectures. But she prioritizes time with Porter, now six, a popular little man on campus who loves sushi and who “could tell you more about your kidneys than your average six-year-old.”

As for most medical students, time management is critical. Rammer attends classes, takes a lunch break, studies on campus until 5:30 p.m. and then fetches Porter from Children’s Garden, a daycare center next to DMU. “I remember last year thinking, ‘Have I been a mom all this time?’” she marvels. “Looking back, I have no idea how I did it. I just did it.”

Upon further reflection, though, she says, “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had Porter when I did. At the time, I wasn’t on track to be serious about what I was going to do. Then it was, ‘Okay, it’s time to get serious – you’re not a teenager any more, you’ve got to be responsible for someone else.’

“When I don’t have a lot on my plate,” she adds, “I’m not very productive.”

There were realities in Elizabeth Ceballos’ life that made medical school a seemingly dim possibility. The oldest of six, she was the first member of her family to graduate from high school. When she was 16, her mother pointed out a factory in their Idaho town and told her that’s where Ceballos would work one day. In her senior year of high school, she became pregnant.

Two factors empowered Ceballos, now a third-year osteopathic medicine student, to overcome all that: her desire for a different life and the very high standards she holds for herself. Both would be critical amid the increasing demands of her world: She graduated from high school on May 29, 2000; son Andres was born three days later. She also met a young man, Jose Ceballos, who worked at the restaurant where she was waiting tables. Their son, Blayz, was born 15 months after his brother. Jose and Elizabeth married in 2002.

In 2003, Elizabeth enrolled at Idaho State University, which entailed a two-hour bus commute one way, while Jose worked and his mother watched the kids.

“I knew I wanted an education, I just didn’t know in what,” she recalls. “It never crossed my mind to become a doctor.”

The health sciences and anatomy courses she enjoyed led her to consider becoming a physician assistant. On the commuter bus to Idaho State, she met an upper-class student, Lisa Jaramillo, who was determined to become a doctor; she encouraged Elizabeth to do the same.

“I thought, ‘Can I be that selfish?’ But my spouse told me that if I really wanted to do it, do it,” Ceballos says. “He’s been totally supportive of me.”

She kept in touch with Jaramillo, now a fourth-year DMU student. Ceballos visited her and decided DMU “was the place I wanted to come to school.”

That was the beginning of even more heavy lifting for their family. Other than Jaramillo, they knew no one in Iowa. They traded their house in Idaho for a smaller, two-bedroom apartment in West Des Moines. They had to find a job for Jose and a school for Andres and Blayz, by then third- and first-graders, respectively.

“I went through two to three months of thinking I didn’t do the right thing. It was a hard transition, to get accustomed to the speed of the information,” Elizabeth says. She struggled with going from being a dean’s list student as an undergraduate to earning a C on her first biochemistry test at DMU. “I really doubted I was going to make it,” she recalls. “I moved my family and have all this debt.”

Several things kept her going: Jose’s relentless encouragement, their sons’ love for their school, the support of new friends and her own determination.

“I kept pushing away. I like going to school, and once I got used to it, it became easier to balance,” she says. “I told myself there was no other way. I’m pretty driven.”

She hopes their sons will benefit from her choices, to make up for the family time she’s had to sacrifice. “It’s a given they’ll go to college, too,” she says. “I tell them that whatever they want to do, make it something they like to do.”

That’s where Elizabeth is now. That factory in her Idaho hometown? She never set foot in it. She revels at the thought of her recent rotation at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines.

“I’m working with a roomful of surgeons – I have to pinch myself sometimes,” she smiles. “I’m right where I want to be, doing totally what I love.”

• Double Duty
• Mother Load
• You can meld marriage and medical school
• A support network for those we love

Not only is there a (future) doctor in the house, but there are also diapers, toys and several other people who don’t often sit still.

It’s Walmart day for the Rhodes family. Erin Rhodes pulls a shopping cart, where three-year-old Cailyn perches, and a double stroller, where two-year-old Peyton sits in front. Attached to the back is a car seat, where baby brother Carson snuggles. Erin is on a mission, doing a week’s worth of grocery shopping. “I was a finance major – I have to have everything in order,” she says.

“I’m not sure I would have graduated undergrad had I not been married with children… For me, it’s a motivation, while others may look at it like a ball and chain.”

Brady Rhodes , D.P.M.’13, with wife Erin and kids Cailyn, Carson and Peyton

That’s a good thing, because her husband, Brady, is in his second year in the College of Podiatric Medicine and Surgery, which can create a fair amount of disorder. Brady, Erin, Cailyn and Peyton moved from Texas last year when Brady became a DMU student; Carson was born in May, the day after Brady’s last physiology exam of his first academic year.

“We knew what we were signing up for,” he says about taking on parenthood and medical school. “We knew we wanted our kids to be close together in age and to be settled by our 30s. We knew our 20s would be hell.”

“Hell” on those days when he had to leave home before the kids were awake and didn’t return until after they were in bed. But a tough schedule wasn’t new to the couple. They were married as undergraduates, he at the University of Texas-Arlington, she at Texas Christian University; after Cailyn arrived, Brady got a second job, the 5-to-10 a.m. shift at a local Costco.

“Then I’d go to school from 11 to 4 and wait tables three days a week,” he recalls. These days, he valets at a country club on Saturday nights, which Erin spends cleaning their Waukee, IA, house. Not that either is complaining. In fact, Brady credits his family affairs for his accomplishments.

“I’m not sure I would have graduated undergrad had I not been married with children. I’d probably be golfing and fishing,” he smiles. “For me, it’s a motivation, while others may look at it like a ball and chain. The most rewarding times in your life seem to be when you’re thinking about others.”

Preschooler Cailyn sagely understands the purpose of her dad’s weighty textbooks and time spent on campus: “so he can be a doctor foot.”

Oh, sure, there’s spit-up, sleepless nights, stress – your point?

DMU students with children agree they’re blessings, not burdens – even when they are burdens.

“When Clark comes home, he has a little boy running up to him, so excited to see him. There’s nothing better than that.”

Stephanie Johnson, wife of Clark Johnson, D.P.M.’12, with sons Ethan and Caden

Chatting amiably in the lounge of DMU’s Student Education Center, while two-year-old son Ethan bounces non-stop around the upholstered chairs and cherubic three-month-old Caden naps in his car seat, Clark and Stephanie Johnson recall a night when Clark – a podiatric medicine and master of anatomy degree student – had to study for a big test the next day. Stephanie, then pregnant, wasn’t feeling well and, as the natural laws of parenting decree, Ethan got sick.

“Clark sat on the floor all night with his hand through the crib bars, holding Ethan’s hand,” Stephanie says. “They both fell asleep that way.”

Not that one should pity Clark, who did just fine on that test. Stephanie, a former fifth-grade teacher, says that since she’s the stay-at-home mom, Clark is “definitely the fun parent.”

But she praises the way he makes time for the family. “Medical students could live at school,” she says. Clark recalls wise words from first-year orientation: “One of our counselors said if you’re at school, you need to be at school and not wishing you were home, and that if you’re at home, you can’t be wishing you were at school.

“Our family is a built-in support network,” he adds. “Sometimes I feel sorry for my single classmates and those far away from family.”

We have to talk

Communication is critical to managing family life sanely, married students say. In his first semester as a College of Osteopathic Medicine student, Barry Palizzi admits he didn’t let his wife, Christia, know enough about his schedule and class workload.

“She didn’t know when I’d have a test the next day and why I was stressed out,” he says. “I was in my own world, trying to do it on my own. Then I realized that would affect our family life.”

Now the couple uses Google Calendar, a free scheduling website that lets them post events and get reminders via e-mail and text messages. When they have breaks, they catch up on domestic chores and take advantage of central Iowa’s family-oriented activities with sons Julian, four, and Gabriel, two, including Des Moines’ zoo, science center, festivals, farmers’ markets and local parks. Despite the heavy workload that medical school puts on married couples, Barry and Christia are determined to enjoy their family now as well as later.

“I definitely have to cram sometimes, and I’m not at the top of my class. But I usually know when I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve studied enough to pass a test,” he says. “In two years, I’ll still be called ‘doctor,’ and no one will ask what grade I got on that anatomy exam.”

Barry, who met Christia during their high school jobs at Wilson’s Leather in an Auburn, WA, shopping mall, says moving to Iowa was “definitely a big leap of faith.” They quickly made friends, though, among his classmates and through their church. Christia became active in Significant Others’ Support, a campus organization for significant others of DMU students.

“DMU is very family-friendly,” she says. During Barry’s first two years at DMU, she often brought the kids to campus to have lunch.

“They like to see the skeleton in the OMM lab, and they love the ping pong table [in the SEC game room],” Christia says. “Plus the kids are rock stars among the DMU students.”

That, plus their father’s academic pursuits, likely will have a positive influence on their children. The Palizzis – who welcomed third son Owen on Nov. 4 – set up a home office for Barry; Julian sometimes sits at the desk with his preschool workbook.

“He’ll say, ‘I’m studying like Daddy,” Christia says. “He knows school is important.”

• Double Duty
• Mother Load
• You can meld marriage and medical school
• A support network for those we love