Posted: September 30, 2020
After becoming a mom and caring for her grandmother during her last years, »Ê¼Ò»ªÈË alumna Thea Marx’s childhood dream of becoming a veterinarian was resurrected with a new twist: naturopathic medicine. A Wyoming native, she has been a Cody resident for 20 years, where she’s taken on a variety of roles such as executive director of the Western Design Conference, president of marketing and business consulting firm Marx Productions Inc., and a volunteer at a variety of clinics. She embarked on her goals in 2016 by completing her prerequisite courses at NWC. Currently, she lives in Derby, Connecticut, where she is beginning her third year of medical school in the naturopathic medicine program at the University of Bridgeport. Marx plans to return to Cody in five years and establish her own practice after graduating and completing her residency.
How is your medical school journey going?
Medical school is indescribable. It’s an intense, soul draining, rewarding, amazing experience. The amount of information you are expected to absorb is staggering. You creatively adapt to use every precious moment to learn, understand, review. One moment, you feel so beat up and mentally exhausted, you’re not sure you can go on, but you do; the next you feel validated for all your hard work. It’s a crazy, wonderful roller coaster of learning and growing.
It’s like being in Navy Seal training, except you are doing hundreds of mental pushups in soft sand with the clock ticking over your head, instead of waves crashing over you, or you’re plunging into the deep darkness of the unknowns of mapping neurons instead of an unknown sea in the depth of night. Often, you are digging deep for that last bit of courage to overcome the self-doubt and burnout that keeps taunting you from the corners of your tired brain. The fall-out rate is tremendous. Only 50% of my class is still on the roster as we start our third year.
What has been your favorite experience so far?
My favorite opportunity has been to preceptor with an emergency department physician at Bronx Lebanon Hospital in New York City. It’s one of the top three busiest emergency departments in the country, seeing nearly 150,000 patients a year. I had no idea I would love emergency medicine so much. I’ve never been so fulfilled as when I walk out of there after a 12-14 hour shift.
What's been your biggest surprise?
How close my class is. I always heard how cutthroat medical school is, and some of the classes above me are like that, but we aren’t. We work so hard together and lift each other up. No one is ever allowed to fall back before someone stretches out a hand and pulls them forward. One of my professors said he believed we were the only all-female cohort in the country and most likely, the hardest working, collectively.
What are you looking forward to most when you return to Cody?
The clean air, the mountains, the community, the people! My horse!! Space. In Connecticut, I am one of 3.5 million in a state that is only slightly larger than Park County. I miss the miles of open space and the hiking trails, where I don’t see another person all day and the wilderness. I really miss the wilderness. And the taco bus. Good Mexican food is impossible to find back here.
Though Marx misses Wyoming, she promised herself she would “bloom where she is planted” and enjoy her time in Connecticut. She regularly escapes to the nearby state park to spend time outdoors. In her free time, she enjoys travel, cooking, yoga and taekwondo. She is currently preparing for her first round of board exams, set to take place this summer.