KU School of Medicine-Wichita

25 About the best explanation David can offer for his family's interest in medicine is … cows. Growing up, he says, he thought "no way do I want to go into medicine." His siblings had been there and done that, to say the least. But he did work with cows on his parent's small dairy farm, which has been in the family four generations. "I'd be out there milking most nights," says David, who attended Bishop Carroll High School and then Newman University. "I will tell you it keeps you busy. Things get challenging and you have to find new ways of doing things and adapt." Baalmann helped his father deliver calves and cared for them when they were ill. In particular, he remembers having to place an IV in the neck of a sick cow out in the field one day when his dad was away. "I remember being so scared, so shaky." He got the IV inserted. Another big impetus for following the new family trade was a mission trip to Gallup, New Mexico, that he went on as a high school student. Baalmann was part of a group that helped feed, clothe and care for impoverished elderly residents of the area. The experience convinced him that more could be done to help the people by helping them lead a healthier lifestyle. "I want to have a much longer impact," he said. Yet another consideration was the example set by his sister, Jennifer, who is practicing medicine despite having endured two surgeries for brain cancer. "She is an amazing woman," he said. "I really had a lot of great examples." David also hopes to practice in a rural setting one day. "I love living in the country. I learned a lot from the small community that raised me." At Newman, the lanky Baalmann played trumpet in the jazz band, sang in the choir and started a swing dance club while majoring in biochemistry. Last summer, he traveled to Las Vegas to compete in an international barbershop chorus competition. Now he'll channel that energy into medical studies. "Getting into something you're passionate about is really easy." There must be something in the milk. How else to explain the fact that four children of Colwich dairy farmers Judy and Gerald Baalmann have either become physicians or are studying to do so? "It is really kind of crazy," said David Baalmann, who entered KU School of Medicine-Wichita (KUSM-W) last fall. "They joke that 'When we're old, we're going to be well taken care of,'" David said of his parents. The string started with the family's oldest child, Damian, who graduated from medical school at Creighton University in Omaha, interned at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and now works as an emergency room physician in St. Louis. Next was Jennifer, a KUSM-W grad who completed her residency at Wesley Medical Center and started primary care practice in Wamego, Kansas, last September. Then came Michelle, who graduated from KUSM-W in 2017 and is now a resident at Via Christi Health, with an emphasis in family care. As for David's other two siblings, Melissa is a nurse at the Via Christi St. Francis campus and Stephanie is in the nursing program at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. Then there's a whole other branch of Baalmanns — David's cousins — also from the same area of Sedgwick County. Joseph is a KUSM-W grad now practicing family medicine in Wichita. Christopher is an interventional radiologist in Wichita. Joshua and Angela are pharmacy students at KU in Lawrence. "There are a lot of us, I'm sorry," David said with a grin after going through the list. ✤ ✤ ✤ ✤ ✤ ✤ ✤ ✤ ✤ ✤ David Baalmann, first-year, Colwich

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