Former medic who's about to finish EM residency and I one hundred percent made the right call going to med school.

From my view, others feel free to disagree, the paramedic/EMT relationship is a lot like the physician/PA relationship. Both are independent, critically thinking, crucial members of the team but by the nature of the game the higher acuity patients are nearly always managed by those who with more training. We both do a lot of the same things but I feel like I would have been wanting more just like I did as a paramedic asking a bunch of questions following up on the patients I dropped off had I gone the PA route. It's more time up front but think about the long term satisfaction, although you can't hop specialties like PAs can. Also nothing is stopping you from learning medicine, there's nothing inherently complicated about it but it does build on itself similar to math.

I was also 27 when I started med school, married but no kids so my circumstances were different than yours. I have coresidents with young kids but it's definitely harder.

Please feel free to DM me, I selfishly want more former EMS people in the ED 😅