He dreamed of being a doctor. After other careers, he earned his medical degree — at 62

Lindy Washburn
NorthJersey.com

Each of us has a dream in life. It may be buried beneath family obligations, financial burdens and logistical challenges, or deferred by dimming eyesight, a weakened pitching arm or a cancer diagnosis. 

But for some, obstacles and excuses are cleared away. Luck, money or a push — from family, friends, mentors — help bring the dream to life. The dreamer faces a now-or-never moment and decides to go for it.  

That is the story of Michael Butler, whose dream sent him to a tropical island, separated him from his wife and home for weeks on end, and landed him among peers less than half his age, with no guarantee of success in the end.  

His dream was to be a doctor.  

The dream persisted through four years in the U.S. Navy, business school, a three-decade corporate career and the growth to adulthood of his two children.

It grew stronger during years as a volunteer EMT on the first aid squad in his hometown of Ridgewood. When he witnessed death on an ambulance call, he wished he could do more — know the answers, solve the problem, save the patient. 

His dream became a half-serious joke when his son, Alex, applied to medical school and Butler said that he would, too.  

Michael Butler, who earned his medical degree at 62 and is starting a new career, with his wife Jessica and their dog Rogue at their home in Ridgewood.

After his son was admitted, Butler watched him don the white coat of a physician in an opening day ceremony that stressed compassion and care for patients. That’s when the dream really caught fire. He knew it was now or never.  

At age 58, he started college again — as a pre-med student.   

This year, at 62, he received his medical degree. 

Now he’s Dr. Michael Butler, his dream fulfilled. And like all dreams, the reality has turned out a bit differently from what he imagined. 

Oldest by far

He was the oldest student in his class, by far.  

Becca, Butler’s daughter, helped her father move into the dorm at Trinity School of Medicine in the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines at the start of his five-year pre-med and medical school program. Those who saw her leave were perplexed. Wasn’t the dad moving his daughter into school, not the reverse?  

Medical school really is for the young, it turns out.  

Medical school administrators call matriculants such as Butler non-traditional students. “Non-traditional is anyone over 22, really,” said Linda Adkison, who was dean of Trinity while Butler was there and now is associate provost of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.  

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Even though federal law prohibits discrimination in admissions based on age, last year just 6.1% of American med school graduates were older than 32. In each year over the last decade, no more than five first-year medical students in the United States have been older than 50, a spokesman for the Association of American Medical Colleges said. These oldsters accounted for an average of 0.014% of all students. 

“The hardest thing was the loneliness,” Butler says now. The closest thing he had to peers were a couple of classmates in their 30s. “The younger students in school didn’t know what to do with us — so they did nothing with us.” 

Becca Butler congratulates her father, Michael Butler, upon his graduation from medical school in June 2021.

The island, 133 square miles in the southern Caribbean, is not your typical tropical paradise. It's a volcanic island with few real beaches and no resort hotels.  

Butler began his year of pre-med classes in January 2017, after his scores on the MCATs, the Medical College Admission Test, were too low to win admission directly to medical school. On the section about “biological and biochemical foundations of living systems,” he simply answered “C” to every multiple-choice question because he didn't know enough to eliminate even one of the choices, he said.  

He found himself thousands of miles from his wife, his kids, his golden retriever and his comfortable old stone house with a garage full of motorcycles and tools for tinkering. “I was living by myself again,” he said. Stuck on an island north of Grenada and southeast of the British Virgin Islands, he studied organic chemistry and microbiology.  

He caught up quickly, and was done with the pre-med requirements by May.

With a mechanical-engineering degree from Cornell University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, he was an able student. Technology didn’t scare him — he'd spent four years on nuclear submarines in the U.S. Navy and decades as a business consultant.  

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But the sheer volume of material he had to learn and memorize, once he entered Trinity’s medical school in 2017, was daunting. There was so much, so fast. Younger minds are more supple than older ones. He “had to study and restudy,” he said. There were no days off.  

More than once, he came close to quitting, giving up the dream. That’s where family came in. 

His daughter talked him out of it each time.  

His son, Alex, was a year ahead of him at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. They talked shop, shared study aids.  

Butler and Jessica, his wife of 30 years, had discussed and dispensed with each of the obstacles he raised before he embarked on his new career. “His slogan has always been, ‘Life is the accumulation of skills,’ ” Jessica said. “ ’You’ve just got to keep learning.’ ” 

Michael Butler, left, of Ridgewood, NJ, received his medical degree in June 2021 from Trinity School of Medicine at age 62. Congratulating him is his son, Alex Butler, 29, right, who received his medical degree from  Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in May 2021.

Said Michael: “We realized the kids were gone. What do we do next? Golf? Florida? It wasn’t us.” 

First, there was the matter of money. The cost of his medical education would ultimately come to about $250,000, Butler said. They could afford it.  

Second, a medical residency — a minimum of three years of post-graduate training — was required after the medical degree to enter practice in the United States. They didn’t know if a residency program would accept an older applicant such as Michael, but were encouraged by advice they received from physicians they knew.  

“This was his destiny; he needed to do this,” Jessica said. “I don’t know if I actually thought it would happen. But I said, ‘You have to go for at least one semester. If you hate it, you can come home.' ”  

Michael was “a little unusual” because of his age, said Adkison, the medical school dean. "But he was at a place where he had done everything and it was time to say, ‘What do I really want to do, now that I can do anything?’ And he did very well.” 

So Jessica hunkered down in Ridgewood with Rogue, the golden retriever, and stayed engrossed in the consulting business she had founded. Many days, the couple kept a Skype connection open as Michael studied and Jessica worked. It was almost as if they were in the same room together. And every eight weeks or so, Michael came home. 

They lived apart this way for 4½ years.  

For the first 2½ years, Michael was on the island. The last two, he was in Baltimore doing clerkships in various medical specialties.  

He rotated through internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, family medicine, psychiatry, neurology, gastroenterology, hematology/oncology, neurology and cardiology. He passed the exams for medical knowledge and clinical knowledge. 

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And on June 6, at a ceremony in Georgia, where Trinity has its American headquarters, he graduated.  

Alex, who had graduated two weeks earlier with an M.D. and a master's degree, placed the green physician's “hood” on his dad’s shoulders.  

Then the Doctors Butler — Michael and Alex — embraced. The family cheered.  

Daunting prospects for residency

Michael Butler of Ridgewood, who earned his medical degree at 62 and is starting a new caree, is with his wife Jessica at their home on Sept.29, 2021, in Ridgewood.

What’s next for the newly minted 62-year-old M.D.?  

New Jersey, like most states, requires three years of residency in an accredited program before granting a license to practice medicine. Michael would be 66 at that point, the age by which many people retire. 

Having graduated too late to apply for the once-a-year Match Day, when medical school graduates are matched to residency programs in the United States, he has applied for residencies that start in 2022. He’s interested in family medicine, internal medicine and pediatrics. He and Jessica are determined not to live apart, so he limited his applications to the Northeast.  

Residency typically is a grueling life of long hours, little sleep and less pay.   

He said he’s ready. He sent out 45 applications during the first week of October.  

The prospects are more daunting than he expected.  

This year, some 4,000 medical graduates did not get placed in residency slots. There were 38,106 positions nationwide. For seniors graduating from U.S. medical schools, the match rate was 92.8%. But of the 5,295 applicants who, like Michael, are American graduates of international medical colleges, the match rate was 59.5%. 

Michael Butler of Ridgewood, who earned his medical degree at 62 and is starting a new caree, is with his wife Jessica at their home on Sept.29, 2021, in Ridgewood.

His former dean said she thinks age will not be an impediment to acceptance in a program. Medicine has traditionally been friendly to physicians who practice well past the standard retirement age. “In medicine, there are a lot of people who just keep on keeping on,” Adkison said. “It’s about the connectivity,” the relationship with patients. 

Even if he starts at 66, “I think he’ll be an excellent physician.”  

Michael is sanguine. He has done what he set out to do.  

“If I can’t do it, I’d like to help train the next group to do it,” he said.  

Many of the young medical students he saw were smart but had little exposure to actual medical practice. They were uncomfortable asking personal questions and examining patients. He’d like to help them, perhaps as part of a medical school faculty.  

While he waits to learn what’s next on Match Day 2022, next March 18, he volunteers. He works at the Bergen Volunteer Medical Initiative, a health center that provides free care for uninsured, working residents of Bergen County. But he cannot treat patients, because as an unlicensed physician who is neither a medical student nor a medical resident, he has no malpractice insurance.   

And he has recertified as a New Jersey EMT. One night a week and every fifth weekend, he’s on the ambulance rig responding to medical emergencies.  

“I'm unemployed right now,” he admits.

But his dream of serving through medicine — though stretched and tested — is still alive.  

Lindy Washburn is a senior health care reporter for NorthJersey.com. To keep up-to-date about how changes in health care affect you and your family, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: washburn@northjersey.com 

Twitter: @lindywa