When things do not go as planned following high school, young adults can feel discouraged or even defeated. Not allowing those momentary feelings to become long-term barriers can make all the difference in finding future success and happiness.
Dr. Tammy (Olson) Crouse, D.O., a 1989 Parsons High School graduate, said her path following high school was not at all what she expected.
“Sometimes life doesn’t go from A to B and you have to know how to pivot,” she said. “You might go through times where it seems nothing is going your way and you are not where you wanted to be, but in my experience, you always end up with something better. It might be something unexpected and something you never planned, but learning how to go with the flow and take a few risks from time to time, you can find life can be a beautiful thing.”
While in Parsons Middle School and High School, though surrounded by many “just amazing teachers,” Crouse had not pinpointed a career to pursue.
“Bill Wheat taught biology at the high school. He introduced me to science, learning about anatomy and physiology, and understanding life at a more fundamental level. He showed me the joy of learning. Pat Benson taught Spanish and trigonometry. She instilled in me a curiosity about the world outside of my own as we learned not just about another language but the people and cultures who spoke Spanish. Jim Kindall just taught me to be a good human being in general. Ruth Young at the time, Kindall now, she was instrumental. It is probably Ruth Kindall who made me think English was my favorite subject and that is where I was going to end up. She was just one of those special teachers who made you feel important and maybe like you had more talent than you actually did. Pam Rapalino, I stayed in touch with her for many years after high school. I just loved her to pieces,” Crouse said.
Such teachers helped fan her curiosity and wonderment, and enhanced her passion for learning about many topics, so settling on one thing seemed impossible. Still, she planned to go to college, and hoped as she knocked out her basic required courses and electives, she would find her niche.
“I liked psychiatry. I loved writing, English. I thought business major at the time sounded like a great major, even though I had nothing in mind in particular. I thought about veterinary school, because I loved animals. I was all over the map and didn’t necessarily have a good idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up,” she recalled. “I had a full ride to go to college and was going to cheer, and do the normal college route, but I did find out I was pregnant about three weeks after graduation, so life kind of took a turn. I found out on a Wednesday, got married on Sunday and moved to San Diego. My husband (ex husband now) was in the Navy at the time, so we moved out there.”
For about four years, while her husband was serving and twice deployed overseas, she worked three jobs and raised their son, Tyler, while also going to college. She and her husband then divorced. She moved with her son to Louisville, Ky. to work with her father and enrolled in the University of Louisville to complete her undergraduate studies.
Her father had a marketing company so she finally settled on earning a degree in communications.
“I thought that would be my career,” she said.
She was wrapping up her final courses for that degree when she took the required biology and chemistry classes. It was then, she said, “I realized I absolutely love science.”
Her degree though, was communications. To be closer to her mother and brother, and allow her son to be closer to his dad in Coffeyville, she returned to Parsons in 1999, taking a job at Labette Community College as their director of public relations. Ron Fundis was president of the college at the time and while she had just been hired for the PR position, she shared her thoughts with him about pursuing an alternate career path.
”I kind of told him that eventually I’d like to go to med school, so he allowed me to take some classes while I was working full time as public relations director. I took physics and organic chemistry, all the prerequisites I hadn’t had as an undergrad to prepare for that,” she said. “Dr. Jothi allowed me to shadow him at the Parsons Free Clinic when I was working at LCC to help determine if medicine was truly a career I wanted to pursue. After working with him for several months, I knew that I had found the right career path for me.”
Everything from there fell into place. In 2002, she and her then 12-year-old son ended up moving to Kansas City so she could attend medical school.
She met her current husband, Doug Crouse in 2003 and they got married in 2004, but she didn’t miss a step in pursuing her new goal.
She finished medical school in 2006 and did a family medicine residency through 2009. She has been working as a hospitalist since then at Mosaic Life Care at St. Joseph Medical Center. It is there she found a career where she feels she belongs.
“Med school was kind of like when I was in high school. I loved every rotation. I loved neurology, cardiology … psychiatry. It’s why I ended up in family medicine, because you can learn a little bit about everything and you can take care of people from birth through death,” she said. “I did consider pediatric oncology, because I love taking care of kids and I considered neurology pretty seriously, but probably because of my age more than anything, because I was a non-traditional medical student, I decided to do a residency that would take three years rather than one that would take eight plus years to begin my professional career.”
She said it was her first rotation in residency where the light bulb went off and everything clicked. She was assigned to the ICU. She was now a physician and although still in training with oversight from senior residents and attendings, the patients were her responsibility, she said.
“It was scary and exciting all at once. I was taking care of the very sickest people in the hospital. For some, I was able to help them heal and return to their normal life. For others, it was a period of transition due to an illness that could not be cured. I was able to help patients and families navigate through some of the hardest days of their lives and I knew the hospital was where I was meant to be,” she said. ”Being a physician is about more than prescribing medicines. It is about helping others understand what is happening to their body, teaching them what they can do to improve their health, and sometimes just being present and listening to their story either to find the right diagnosis or to help them make hard decisions about how to live the life they want based on new diagnoses they may be facing.
“I love what I do and I get to see such a variety of patients. I’m kind of like the generalist in the hospital. I meet whoever comes in with whatever they have and then bring in specialists if we need it in a particular case. But helping people through their toughest day, their toughest diagnosis, their worst circumstances… I don’t know. It is just very meaningful to me. I like being able to help people navigate through those times.”
Reflecting back on her journey to the present, Crouse is grateful.
To students in high school today who may face similar challenges, she encourages them to keep striving for what they want to achieve, and not give up, even if their vision for the future is altered by unexpected and seemingly insurmountable circumstances.
“Life can be a beautiful thing with many surprises, adventures and meaningful relationships. It can also be difficult and dark at times with unexpected hardships that feel insurmountable,” she said. “I think if you surround yourself with people who lift you up and support you through the good and the bad times, then you always end up in a better place even if it wasn’t the one you set out to find.”