Every now and then...

So a lot of time I feel like I'm a little bit negative or at least not wholly (is that really a word?) positive about my job.  Something that is easy to be when you're working 65-70hrs a week and missing stuff you wish you didn't have to miss -- like next weekend with my family for the first Easter without my grandpa or my friends' weddings or showers or even little get togethers.  Anyone in medicine, or many other jobs for that matter where your time is not your own, can tell you of the many things they've had to miss, the holidays, the family gatherings, the get-togethers with friends.  It's oh so easy to focus on these things.

However, amidst all of that, we all have these moments where we feel incredibly blessed and just plain happy to get to do what we get to do.  Moments where we consciously choose to stay at the hospital to do that one last c-section or spend a few extra minutes (or more likely hours) making calls on behalf of a patient or finishing this "one last thing" rather than rushing home to our family.  Quite frankly, where we choose to put our job before all those other things we so often wish we could put first.

Every now and then I really am struck by how fortunate I am to get to do the things I do.  This job is far from perfect, medicine is, at best, an imperfect science, with a lot of fumblings along the way.  I am sometimes amazed by just how imperfect it is.  How much is unclear and how often we are just trying to do the best we can to figure things out in this imperfect, complex situation.  But I really do love it.  I get to cut into bellies, I get to catch babies, I get to cut into bellies and pull babies out.  Sometimes that is a beautiful, happy thing, sometimes it is incredibly, incredibly sad.  Sometimes you have to catch yourself so you don't lose it over the mom who can't bear to tell her daughter about her prognosis because she doesn't want to ruin her high school prom.  Sometimes you really, really want to throw your pager against a wall.  Sometimes you would rather quit than check one more cervix or rule one more person out for labor.  But at the end of the day, even most of the really long ones I just love what I do.  I genuinely do.  I find myself incredibly happy to get to talk to people, to get to make decisions, to get to challenge myself and sometimes fail very miserably, but to get to learn and move forward.  Learning is an incredibly painful thing and moves at a snail's pace sometimes, but then I look back over the last 9 months and realize how far I have come even as I realize how far I still have to go.  There are times I choose to stay - stay at the hospital, drag my feet about leaving - it becomes your second home, where you are comfortable.  You get to know the people you work with better than you know almost anyone.  You go through the ups and downs with them.  Yesterday was another long day, but at the end of the day I was proud of myself - for managing the floor, for getting everything done, for knowing most of what I needed to know.  As I went down to the OR to run the list with our fellow I was thinking how crazy it is that it's normal to throw on a hat and mask and walk into an OR.  Even at 7:30 at night.

I didn't finish until 8:30 last night, and I could have gone home and gone to bed.  Instead I went up to L&D and after signing out to the night person, left to go get us all dinner and come back to sit and eat with them and talk and laugh and make plans for the baby shower we are throwing tomorrow.  I got home at 10:30.  This morning I was back at the hospital shortly after 4:00.  It's a crazy life, a sh*tty one sometimes, but I chose it and for as hard as it is, I love it.  For all the times I b*tch about the hours, there are almost as many times I stay after the work is done to spend time with my fellow residents.  It's an awesome job even for all it's faults.  And it is not lost on me how many people have helped me get here or how much understanding there has been on the part of those who often come second to medicine, and for all of you I am so grateful.  So thank you to all of you who put up with this even though it wasn't your choice.  Even when it makes me crabby, I would be so much crabbier doing something I hated.

That's my sentimental post for now.