The show sucks. I can't even discuss why or how much it sucks, because there are too many reasons why and it sucks too much. I'm also done with Grey's Anatomy, btw.
The real life job isn't half-bad. Only half-good, though, too.
I'm working with an ENT. He's great. The practice is pretty good, too -- everyone from babies to 90-year-olds; men and women; fairly benign run-of-the-mill stuff (eg, tonsils) to nice, complex cases (eg, head and neck cancers). It turns out I dislike whiny parents. I never really got it until now -- I've always heard that people choose not to go into peds not because of the kids (well, some because of the kids), but because of the parents, but I always figured these were just really impatient, uncaring people. Well, maybe I'm impatient and uncaring, but by the end of today I had had enough. And it wasn't even an all-kids day! Maybe I just had a bad day, we'll see -- I start pediatrics for real in two weeks, so I'll have 8 weeks of kids+parents and then we'll see what happens. I have to say that the parents of the surgical patients when I was on peds surgery weren't too bad, but maybe that's just because at 4:30 in the morning, no one is coherent enough to be annoying. But get the mom of a 5-year-old with recurrent ear infections into a private office at 2:30 in the afternoon and it's a whole 'nother story.
Anyway, back to my two recurring problems: 1) I have a test in two days and I'm wasting my time online. Nothing really I can do about that now. 2) I don't know what to do with my life.
Some sort of surgery is looking better and better, and I'm fine with that. But here's what happened two days ago: We were back at Kosair for a day of T&A's (that's tonsils-and-adenoids-ectomies, you pervs), and I was hanging out with my new private practice ENT attending and the peds surgery attendings I worked with last month. Everyone wants to know what I want to do with my life, and they are all very happy to hear that I'm a cutter.
Then, on two separate occasions, two different attendings tell me something along the lines of, "Just remember, you can't do it all. You can't be a full-time physician and stay-at-home mom and wife." Or, "You have to realize that you can't wear all the hats. You don't want to be divorced twice with kids who attend therapy five days a week." And I was like, "Yeah, I know that, and I'm OK with entertaining the thought of someday being a half-time doctor." Then later, I started wondering WHY they both told me that. Is it because they're arrogant sexist pigs who don't think women can be good surgeons? I don't really think so, even though they are men in a man's field and I am/will be one of the few women entering it. In fact, they were encouraging me to find a way to make things work out, like become selective in my cases and become a breast-only surgeon or something like that.
Or is it because I somehow exude some sort of sense that even though I have plans of world domination, I'm also dying to have babies? Probably. And maybe they could tell that I was already stressing about how to make it all work -- because I am. Having a baby by 30 (a one-time dream) means being pregnant as soon as I become a PGY-2 (there's NO way I'm being a pregnant intern -- I don't want my baby to be some crazed caffeine addict at birth), and some people would say being pregnant during residency at all is stupid. So that puts me at 32 or 33 -- not old by modern standards, but still a LONG TIME from now. And even then, who's going to raise the kid(s)? With two parents working full-time -- or greater than full-time -- jobs, that leaves the child-raising to nannies or grandparents. I guess grandparents are the better option, but I definitely see why career women get sucked into the thought that they can do it all.
And now is the time for my disclaimer: this isn't necessarily about ME, just about life-as-any-female-physician-who-wants-kids. In fact, it's about any woman who wants a career and kids.
So I guess these are the choices:
1. Be a physician first. Your kids are going to grow up without you and will probably be screwed up.
2. Be a mom first. You went through 12+ years of training just to throw it all by the wayside to have kids. Can't argue with that from an emotional standpoint -- it's what we're genetically programmed to do -- but why did you spend $300,000 to do it, and how are you going to pay it back now that you're not working?
3. Be a half-time physician and a half-time mom. A compromise, but one that most women probably aren't 100% happy with, which is how you get people choosing #1 or #2.
4. I guess you could choose to marry a guy who wants to be a stay-at-home-dad, but that's not really the first thing on most people's checklist for a potential mate.
No wonder there are days I envy the women who declare they never want kids ("My baby's name is going to be Porsche" -- don't laugh, I actually heard someone say that). And envy the men.
And of course I've been pretty good about pushing all these worries to the back burner, because there are much bigger things to worry about (oral exam in two days, right?), but TWO different attendings brought it up independently of each other on the SAME day. That's just weird. So it got me thinking, that's all...
Argh. "Life's full of tough choices, isn't it?" -- Ursula from The Little Mermaid
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6 comments:
I hate worrying about this kind of stuff. I think you can handle whatever it is you decide you can handle. And if you're wrong, you're not locked into anything, you can change your mind anytime you want. Be a full time mom and doctor! If you find out you're scarificing something you don't want to, change! This kind of decision used to freak me out too, but then I realized I've coped with everything else in life, I'll be capable of coping with that too.
btw, pushing daisies is pretty darn cool... i suggest you watch(dvr) that in lieu of the declining medical shows
Unfortunately, full-time mom and doctor have been proven repeatedly to not work, and I'd hate to bring yet another set of raised-by-nannies, hating-the-world-and-in-therapy, accidentally-spoiled children to life without realizing it first. Most things I take as they come and cope along the way, but this one's too big, I'm afraid. Still, you're right in that it's not worth worrying about it *right now* -- it was just weird that it got brought up repeatedly in one day and forced to my attention. (And brought up again today, too. Argh.)
Also, Pushing Daisies IS pretty darn cool, and i've been dvr-ing it for the last two weeks. I LOVE the "Ned is 13 years, 10 weeks, 5 hours, and 3 minutes old" thing, but predictably, it drives Eric up a wall. Aren't we a great match for each other?
Not to generalize (well, maybe TO generalize) but, in my experience, men who have a lot of power and prestige usually don't perform a lot of day-to-day, hands-on parenting duties. That isn't to say that they aren't okay (or even pretty good) dads; they just have other people that do the stuff that isn't the most fun. Most of them haven't had to make the difficult choices that women with highly-demanding jobs do. So, I would take that into consideration whenever such a man expounds on child-rearing issues.
Oh, yeah, it can be done. It's a new world, after all. It just takes thinking different (thanks IBM - or is it Apple?)
I just want to comment that if Kira wanted to be a full time doctor, I would gladly be a full time dad.
I don't know if it really can be done... the only women I've seen make it work are the ones who work less than full-time. The ones who still work full-time have children raised by housekeepers and therapists. And I'm not exaggerating. I just don't see how it's possible to work 60 hours a week (or heck, even 40), on call another night a week, and be available to read to your kids, tell them to eat their vegetables, and make it to their soccer games. Hell, even the absent physician fathers try to make it to soccer game (just ONE parenting duty), and usually can't do it.
adspar, I'm glad you'd be a full-time dad, and I know a lot of guys would. But I wouldn't search for a spouse with that criterion in mind (not fair to anyone). Plus, women are crazy in that even if you were a full-time dad, Kira would probably still feel guilty that she was doing something wrong by not being able to be a full-time mom and doctor.
Which, yeah, I'm still going to attempt to do, future psychiatry bills be damned.
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