Overcoming the Odds

Richard Boyd, 42, never abandoned his dream of becoming a physician
By JOYCE SMITH The Kansas City Star

A 42-year-old father of six and former truck driver who nearly flunked out of high school might not seem like medical school material.

Then you meet Richard Boyd.

The first-year medical student never gave up on his dream — and this fall earned one of 175 spots at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, where only one in seven applicants is accepted. “I always wanted to be a physician,” said Boyd. “For me, ‘doing for others' is the high. Giving hope and comfort to other human beings goes beyond any price.”

Boyd isn't the oldest medical student at the school, where the average age of first-year medical students is about 24. He will be almost 50 when he completes medical school, residency and internships.

Others his age are often looking toward retirement, but he's just getting started.

Learning difficulties

Boyd said he would have worked to become a doctor 20 years ago if he hadn't had such a difficult time graduating from high school in Midlothian, Va. His grades were so low he had to go to summer school two years in a row.

“In high school, three D's and three F's was a good report card. I was passing three subjects — what more could you ask?” said Boyd in his rapid-fire way of talking. “When I sat down to read, I had about 10 minutes of concentration before it was gone.”

Instead of going to college, he joined the Air Force, where he met his wife, Kathy.“

He was the man to go to for listening, getting things done. People in the barracks would say, ‘Let's call Sparky,'” said Kathy Boyd of their time in the service. Boyd got the nickname Sparky while serving as a volunteer firefighter in high school.“

You can see the intelligence just broiling underneath, but he couldn't figure out how to get it out,” she said.

After leaving the service in 1985, Boyd was working as a heavy-equipment operator in Virginia when Kathy was diagnosed with adult asthma.

“I helplessly watched my beautiful wife waste away,” he said. “We didn't have any insurance and she knew this was going to destroy us. She even tried to take her breathing tube out in the hospital so she could go home. I felt absolutely inadequate.”

Frustrated by his inability to help, he researched the disease and then took a six-week course to become an emergency medical technician. He excelled in the class.“

It was the first time I had done anything academic since high school, and there's nothing like success,” he said.

Boyd began driving trucks for a living — and serving as a volunteer EMT. Three years later he became a firefighter/medic while lecturing on respiratory emergencies to paramedics. Kathy got better.

Eventually, Boyd decided to pursue a nursing degree. He completed a two-year program over four years at a community college. He found he could handle two or three subjects a semester — but had difficulty focusing on more than that.

Kansas bound

After visiting his grandmother in Sabetha, Kan., in 1993, Boyd decided to move his family to the small town in northeast Kansas. He went to work at Sabetha Community Hospital. As a nurse, Boyd said, he was often told that he couldn't overstep his bounds, even when he knew more to do for a patient.

His desire to become a doctor was rekindled by a country doctor, John Yulich.

“The doctors would rotate calls on weekends, but he always took his own calls,” Boyd said. “He said, ‘If any of my patients need me, day or night, call me.' Wow, is that commitment. He learned the life stories of the patients, met their families.

“I wanted to be a country doc, too, and provide for people who don't have any other options — no access to health care, no insurance,” Boyd said.

At age 38, hoping to eventually become a doctor, Boyd went back to college in 2000 to pursue a bachelor of general studies in human biology from the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

He learned to study at the same time every day, alone, in the basement of one of the KU libraries, with no TV and no computer, and to use the same kind of notebooks — three-ring binders, same brand, same size.

“It had to be regimented. I had to eliminate as many variables as possible,” said Boyd, who didn't know yet that he had attention deficit disorder.

He lived in student housing and went home to Sabetha every weekend. The schedule was nothing new to the Boyd family because as a trucker he was often away for three-week stretches.

“Every week when I went home it was pure quality time,” Boyd said. “I don't do homework at home. My motivation is pure play. Remote-control cars, take Kathy out to supper or go dancing, camping, shop, or sit down to talk to the kids.”

Kathy Boyd also sent e-mail to her husband two or three times a day so he could help with parenting issues.

The first year was fine, Richard Boyd said, but he felt out of control in the second year as he tried to handle a full course load — physics with a lab, general chemistry with a lab, physiology with a lab, and trigonometry.

“I went from two or three things, which is what people with ADD can deal with at a time, to seven things,” Boyd said. “I went in for tutoring and found an ADD brochure. I had already developed by trial and error the fabulous study skills and discipline. I just needed the final component, the medication Ritalin.”

Within a year of taking medication, he was making nearly all A's.

At first, Boyd sat by himself in most classes. But when the younger students got a look at his high grades, they began sitting by him, asking him to join their study groups. He also taught an undergraduate physiology lab at KU after his first year.

Boyd beams when he recalls that he was ranked second out of 500 students in organic chemistry — one of the most difficult classes, the gatekeeper to medical school.

Medical school

Despite his qualms about being too old or too stupid, Boyd started medical school at KU in Kansas City, Kan., in August.

“He was regarded very highly. He had a lot of good and relevant life experiences and was highly motivated,” said Sandra McCurdy, associate dean for admissions at the school.

Kathy Boyd, meanwhile, wasn't surprised by his acceptance into the program.

“I said, ‘Wow! Yeah!' I've always seen him as a doctor so I was just waiting. It just was a matter of time,” she said. “He's very intelligent. He cares much more about people than things.”

Through a rural doctor program, Kansas pays his tuition and he gets a $1,500 stipend. In return, he must practice in rural Kansas for four years.

The Boyd’s paid off their house and cars with an inheritance. In addition, Boyd's sister and brother-in-law pay the family's monthly expenses, as they did through his undergraduate work.

“Ever since he was a little boy I thought he should be a doctor,” said his sister, Linda Hayes, who lives in Richmond, Va. “He was like a little old man, always asking questions and inventing things. And he would always try to help.”

Every couple of weeks, Kathy and the children — Hope, 4; Nathan, 6; Ricky, 8; Becca, 13; Erin, 16; and Renee, 18 — drive to Kansas City, Kan., for a couple of days, crowding into Boyd's studio apartment. They make soups and pies, clean, and do their father's laundry.

Kathy Boyd schools the children at home and recently started working on her undergraduate degree at Highland Community College in Sabetha.

“I would probably shrivel up and die if we weren't changing things and growing,” she said. “I'm the same way he is. We have always been a closely matched team; I've got to have something new to try. I don't see myself settling down in my 90s.”

Neither does her husband.

Although Boyd is years behind the average medical school student, he plans to make up for that by never retiring. Boyd jokingly adds, “Kathy told me she will not have me messing up the kitchen in her golden years”.

“I'm going to take care of people, regardless,” Boyd said. “People say, ‘I'm too old, I can't do that.' That's not true. They need to broaden their horizons a little bit.”

Introductions

This is my first post.

I have been encouraged in this endeavor by my daughters and my young colleagues. As I contemplated the construction of such a blog, it occurred to me that I had NO idea where to start!

At the tender age of 46, I certainly have no lack if opinions, in fact I have been told that I have more "variety" than likely my share.

After some consideration, I have chosen something that someone else wrote! This article was written back in the fall of 2004 by Joyce Smith, who is a reporter for the Kansas City Star. I chose this because of her meticulous efforts to get it "just right".

She interviewed me and members of my family repeatedly over a two month period and spent the time to get all of the nuances right. I cannot really describe much this article positively affected our lives which I will chronicle to some degree as we go. Suffice to say, once someone read it, I had to spend very little time on exposition as to what I was "all about".