"Is it Worth It?"
I wouldn’t presume to imply that you haven’t given your decision to apply to medical school a lot of thought. Of course you have. The application process alone will weed out anybody who is not completely serious. Still, you may have some lingering doubts and if you do, it is better to hash them out now than when it is too late and you are so deeply into it that to withdraw will mean an unacceptable loss of your considerable investment in time and money.
The first thing you need to do is to cool your jets. Medicine is a good career but it’s just a job. I’m sure you will meet some zealots who seemingly breathe, eat, and live medicine but for the most part, by the time you get into residency you will find that most of your colleagues want pretty much what other working people want, namely a useful job with good pay and decent hours. In this regard, maybe the years of working long hours for little of no pay like you’re going to do in medical school and residency beats the idealism out of people but I prefer to think it teaches them the difference between professionalism and fanaticism. Naturally you have to pretend to be driven to get into medical school as showing passion is a de facto requirement. Your real reasons for wanting to be a physician, while perfectly legitmate, would sound trite and self-serving if you even dared breathe them aloud. Just between me and you I didn’t want to save the world either and just applied to medical school because I thought being a doctor would be kind of cool.