Career in medicine = a privilege

Saturday we had a fairly busy day. Each morning as I drive into the office to see patients I have a great feeling of satisfaction. I have never had a job in my life before where I actual was excited to go in. This feeling of excitement was always experienced as I finished the day and was driving home. Even though family medicine is not my favorite kind of medicine I still get excited to go in and see patients. Each day there are a handful of difficult and frustrating situations the interaction with the patients makes it worth it. I am not naive enough to think that it will always be this way. I am sure as I move along in my career in medicine the newness and excitement may fade and the frustrations may become more common. Hopefully the satisfaction also continues. I just feel very lucky to be able practice medicine. It is a privilege.

During my previous careers my main goal was trying to figure out how to get out of work, trying to get more time off, waiting for the day to end. I longed for the weekend and could not wait to be away from work. It was more like work was a necessary evil to afford the things for my free / family time. My feelings for my free time have also changed. For example, in the past with previous jobs when things became busy it was often necessary to work nights or come in on the weekends and this caused feelings of  extreme dissatisfaction and ultimately job resentment. However so far in medicine, when a patient exam runs late or I am scheduled for Saturday I do not have the resentment (yet). It feels natural to me that if a patient needs to be seen in the evening or on the weekend, you just do it and I actually gain satisfaction from the process and the patients gratitude. Again I realize this may be a temporary utopia that fades over time as I become more and more jaded with the system. Right now I am going to enjoy it. One of my theories is  that because my day is spent helping / worrying about others I find it difficult to focus on my problems and this prevents me from feeling sorry for myself. The reduction in self pity makes everything seem better.

I still love my free time and family time. In fact on this rotation my only day off has been Sundays and I love these days. I feel like this is my time to recharge and spend time with the kids. It is needed time but as monday approaches instead of feelings of resentment or despair of having to go back to work I feel this excitement and look forward to the upcoming adventures. Hopefully this lasts for a little while. We shall see. A lot of the doctors that are my mentors and that I look up to still have this excitement. They obviously get bogged down by the frustrations of their career and they enjoy their time off but surprisingly they lack  much of the resentment that is typically seen in "work". I asked a surgeon mentor of mine how he can work some of the 24 hour shifts he occasionally has to do and his response was, "I do not even realize its 24 hours, in the middle of surgeries I am so caught up in the patient that the time flies by and before I know it I have finished my last surgery and I leave tired and ready for bed but extremely satisfied". I have worked with this surgeon several times and he is definitely sincere in his feelings. This is why I think that the ability to have a career in medicine can be a privilege rather than a burden. 

Another way of explaining it, is to compare it to video games. As a young boy I loved to play video games and I could play for hours on end. The limiting factor was usually my mom or dad forcing us to stop playing or having to go to school, church or other activities. I could play for hours because I loved the games and my brothers and friends who played with me. If someone said; you are going to have to play video games until midnight tonight I would have been thrilled and happily accepted the assignment. To a certain degree I feel like this way about medicine. On the other hand I would say my previous jobs / careers were more comparable to weeding. As a boy if I was told that I had to weed the rock pile, resentment would undoubtedly creep in, especially if it was on my brother's birthday. 

This is why I think that the opportunity to have a career in medicine can be a privilege rather than a burden.