It will all be worth it.....

July 1st isn't really a day most people think about.  It's the week of the 4th of July, its summertime, but it doesn't really hold any special value on the calendar.   That is, unless you are a resident (or in my case the wife of a resident). 

July 1st is not the day you want to visit the ER or get admitted to the hospital.  If you do, you will soon find that the place is swarming with overly excited, not sure what to expect, scared to death residents fresh out of medical school.  Full of so much knowledge their heads could explode, but close to no experience.

For those who are done with their first year, it is a time when you can check yet another year of training off.  For us it means, 2 years down, 3 to go.  Baby steps people.  We celebrate them.  Let me tell you why.

All along this "journey" people have been telling me, "it will be worth it in the end". 

To this I always politely smile, nod my head, and say, "that's what I hear," but on the inside I have been building up a speech.  This is what I really want to say.

Will it? Will it really be worth is?

I guess it all comes down to the way you define "worth it".

If by "worth it" people mean that Chris will have a job that supports us and allows us to pay off our LARGE amount of student loans, then yes, it will indeed be worth it.  But what I think most people mean by "worth it" is that he will be making a substantial salary- one in which we will live in a big house, drive sweet cars, and spend every other month taking our private yacht to the island that we purchased off the coast of France.

You see, what most don't see is the price my sweet husband is paying now.  He is 30 years old and still working toward a real career.  When you work 80-100 hours a week, it leaves very little time for anything else.  No more hobbies, daily runs, or playing basketball with the guys.  Rare family meals and family home evenings.  Infrequent and irregular playtime with your children.  No Friday night dates.  

You might say, well there's 168 hours in a week.  He still has 68+ hours of "free time".  He sure does.  And he spends them as wisely as he can. The problem is, when he gets home he has to choose- do I eat dinner or play with my daughters for 30 minutes before they have to go to bed?  Do I talk with my wife on the couch about our days, or read about my cases tomorrow?  Once he leaves the hospital, his work is not done.  Some nights he has to dictate notes and finish charting.  Most nights he has to read and do practice questions and prepare for his weekly conferences.   Then let's not forget the nights he is on call.  3-5 nights a week he gets this pleasure.  That means that he could have just walked in the door from working 16 hours and be putting a bite of food in his mouth and the pager goes off telling him he has to turn around, get in his car, and go back.  And let's remember he does have to sleep.  I seriously have no idea how he survives on such little sleep.  And he isn't even a caffeine drinker.

Now let's talk about what it's like for him at work all day.  To you Grey's Anatomy fans, they are not performing rogue procedures by themselves or practicing appendectomies on each other and they are certainly not eating lunch all together in random patients rooms or cutting LVAD wires.  They are running their butts off on the floor taking care of patients and standing holding instruments in uncomfortable positions in the OR, all while being belittled by their attending physicians.  It's how the game is played, and how it has always been played.  You have to pay your dues.  Be humiliated.  Work like a dog.

So he get's paid right?  He does.  About $8.50 an hour.  I seem to remember making that amount as a high school student at a grocery store bakery.  No overtime.  No extra for nights, weekends, or holidays.  One flat salary no matter the hours.
All this- 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of medical school, 5 years of residency- to enter a profession that is no longer respected.  You could get sued at anytime, for any reason.  Patients will call you a "stupid" doctor because you refuse to give them an antibiotic for a viral infection or because you only spend 10 minutes with them at their appointment because that's all the time insurance companies dictate that you need.

I feel horrible now as I look back on how I perceived the residents that I worked with as a nurse.  When I worked a night shift I didn't even blink an eye when I had to page one in the middle of the night.  If I had to be up, why didn't they?  Now I see it differently.  Here's what you are paging: a dad who is on the ground wrestling with his 2 year old daughter who he hasn't seen in 3 days.  They are both giggling and laughing.  Or maybe it's someone who got home at 10 and then has been paged every hour since laying down to go to sleep.  Or like tonight, maybe they have been paged 6 times in the last 30 minutes (giving me ample time to write this long essay) while they are trying to watch a movie with their wife!  That's why they might seem a little annoyed on the other end.  

I guess what I am trying to say is that to me, no amount of money 20 years from now will be worth the time we are missing now.  I define myself as a married single mom.  That's how it feel sometimes.  I am the only parent my girls see all day most days.  I wake up to all the cries in the middle of the night.  I do all the housework, all the yard maintenance.  I make breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and clean it up and do bath time and bedtime- by myself.   It's exhausting.  It's lonely.  My mom asked me if I was depressed one day when I said something to her about all this.  No, I am just being realistic and honest.  This is my life right now.  I am happy.  I am blessed.  It's my normal.  That doesn't make it easy.  The worst part of it all is that I can't be selfish about it (sadly, sometimes I am though).  No matter how tired I am, no matter how under paid and under appreciated I am all day- Chris has it worse.  He can top all my "woe is me's".  Some nights I want to cry for him.  Some days I see him wilting instead of blossoming.  I hear him say, "THIS REALLY SUCKS."  

Now it isn't all doom and gloom.  The 80 hour weeks are awesome.  We get 5 vacation weeks a year and 4 days off a month.  We live it up on those days. 

So the next time you see pictures of your doctor with their family on exotic vacations on the wall in their office, I hope you won't think to yourself how easy they have it.  They have paid a very heavy price (and are going to be paying off loans for the next 30 years.)

To all our hard core resident friends and their terrific wives- we got this.  

After all, I hear it's totally going to be worth it!