Monday . June 10 . 2002 . 9:01pm |
dysthymia Today Joe told me that he's thinking about doing General Surgery. I promptly burst into tears and asked him if he was out of his freaking mind. Why in the world would anyone want to do General Surgery? The training is long. The hours suck. And at the end of it, what are you doing? Appendectomies, cholecystectomies, and excising anal warts. I know this, because I've seen it. And aside from the horrible working conditions, what of the lifestyle issue? These past few months, he's been changing his mind about what specialty he wants to pursue more than he's been changing clothes, bouncing back and forth between Cardiology, Gastroenterology, Dermatology, and finally, for the past few weeks, settling on Ophthalmology. The lure of Ophthalmology, not unlike Dermatology, is evident. Great pay, light hours, you get to have your cake (be a surgical subspecialist) and eat it too (not arrive at work until 10 in the morning, get to take vacations with your family whenever the hell you want). I was a little surprised that he had settled on Ophthalmology, but figured that all of the reasons behind his choice were sound, and I couldn't really argue with the high pay/flexible hours part of it. After all, that's in my best interest too, especially since I've committed myself to the low pay/flexible hours path with Peds. And then along came General Surgery. Today I did something I've never done before in my life. I told him not to do it. Usually I try to be pretty neutral or even encouraging when it comes to career planning, no matter how mercurial the winds of change and decision blow (those few days when he purported to be considering Peds being a prime example), but tonight, I went up to him, hands clasped, and said, "Please, please, I'm begging you, don't do General Surgery." I was kind of kidding. But mostly, I was not. Three years ago, when I was a first-year student, the first surgeon I ever met at this institution told me and an assembled audience of career-advice seekers that he never sees his kids. He just never sees them. "I go to work before they're awake in the morning, and I get home after they've gone to bed at night. I never see my children. But this is the choice that I made." He made it sound like some monastic oath, a divine but ultimately lonely calling. And this guy was a breast surgeon! He wasn't a trauma surgeon or a cardiothoracic surgeon or even a colorectal surgeon. He should be doing all elective procedures and living the sweet life. Or so you'd think. But this guy says he never sees his kids. This is the life he's chosen. And the strangest thing was that he was using that example to convince us, the budding medical students that we were, to pursue Surgery. He chooses to live that way, but I never could. All residencies are bad, I'll grant you that, but I see General Surgery attendings here until 10pm at night on too many weekdays to count. I see them having to come in on weekends, sometimes paged in out of the middle of their son's Little League game, because some guy showed up to the ER with some right lower quadrant pain that might have to go to the OR to have his appendix out. Or, even worse, attendings who get paged out of the Little League game because some guy showed up with an infected peri-rectal abscess that needs draining. And I'm not saying that attendings in other fields don't take call, or don't ever have to come in on weekends, or don't work long, thankless hours away from their family and friends. But if that were the case, I'd like it to be my decision to work the extra hours, not because it's the nature of the field to flog yourself like that. Andy thinks that my senior Surgery resident is dysthymic. Those of you that have even a rudimentary background in Psychiatry know that dysthymia is basically a state of baseline depressed mood. He's tired all the time, cranky most of the time, and nothing ever really seems to make him happy, even when he's doing what he supposedly enjoys. I agree that he seems a little down, but I can understand why. A couple of days ago, he gave me and Chris a small talk about Surgical Trauma. (I think there's a stipulation that senior residents are supposed to have teaching rounds with students every so often.) The obligatory lecture came at the end of the day, and lasted maybe 45 minutes to an hour. When we were finished, he pushed back his chair, glanced at his watch, and said, "Well, my talk ran overtime, so now I'm leaving the hospital at 8:30 at night, and my one-year old daughter is asleep." Until that moment, I didn't even know that he had a daughter. He sounded wistful. From the tone of his voice, this was not the first time that this had happened. Not even close. I don't want to be married to a Surgeon. xo Michelle P.S. Yes, I know I'm overreacting, but what the hell else am I going to do? Study for my Boards? Not fucking likely. |
