A Surgeon's Life? Not for Us...No Thank You.

Evan has really had a rough past few weeks.  His schedule is daunting and exhausting.  I don't know how he does it.  Last week, he woke up at 4:45 every morning from Monday - Friday.  He, naturally, gets to sleep in on Saturday right?  WRONG.  On Saturday, he was already at the hospital at 5:30 that morning and did not come home until 11 on Sunday morning.  He was beyond tired.  I felt so bad for him.  He told me to wake him up at 2.  I woke him up at 3.  We laid in bed until around 3:30.  And before we knew it, his "weekend" was over when he went to bed at 9:30 last night.  He was at the hospital around 6:30 this morning.  He's already on call again tomorrow, which means he'll get in at 6:30 and won't come home until Wednesday.  I feel so bad for him.  What makes matters even worse is that my schedule isn't 'spend time with him' friendly.  He'll probably wake up around 2:30 on Wednesday, but I probably won't come home until 6 because I'll be working at the law office. 

Evan had a semi mid-life career crisis a few weeks ago when he started surgery and realized he didn't like it.  Surgery was originally going to be his back-up for Urology.  I have to admit that when he said he didn't like surgery, I was rather disappointed.  I thought he would be great as a general surgeon.  Plus, it's kinda hot: "yeah, my husband's a surgeon!"  Actually, it was more than that.  I find it VERY attractive that my significant other has such high career goals for himself.  I find it VERY attractive that my significant other is so intelligent.  My Dad always says you should be with somebody that you respect and for me, intelligence is a big factor in respect.  Evan's a trillion times smarter than I am.  He doesn't think so, but that's why we work!  He says that my ability to focus and do so well with my career has always been very appealing to him.  Sure, I could have said "I'm marrying a doctor, I don't care what I do with my life because he'll support me."  But honestly, that was NEVER an option for me.  At the end of the day, I wanted to be proud of myself, and most importantly, I wanted my husband to be proud of who I was.

After these first four weeks of surgery, I am incredibly glad Evan didn't like surgery.  I'm entirely convinced that if somebody decides to become a surgeon, they must not like their spouse that much!!  What you'd basically be saying is, my career is #1 to me.  Not my family.  While Evan and I are both very career oriented, we come first in each others lives.  That's the way it should be.  That's the way it has to be.

If Evan does get in to Urology here in Lubbock, he will have to do general surgery for a year (it's his first year of residency).  That year will suck.  It'll be just like these past 4 weeks, but worse, because he'll actually be DOING the surgeries.  But, it'll only be the first year.  After that, he'll do Urology.  His hours will get somewhat better and he gets to take call from home!  That sounds MUCH better.  If Evan doesn't get Urology, he has decided to do OB/Gyn (he wants to do a Uro-Gyn fellowship afterwards).  Again, those hours aren't great, but they have a better schedule set up for their residents and the hours aren't quite the same.  When he was on OB, he occasionally got to sleep when he slept over night.  Also, he wasn't GO GO GO the entire time. 

He only has 3 weeks left, which means I only have 3 weeks left...then I get my husband back!  We haven't woken up together in so long.  This Saturday, we'll finally get a morning to wake up together.  Our Saturday ritual is waking up whenever we feel like it, and then turning on some stupid TV show for 30 minutes while we cuddle and occasionally fall back asleep.  It's amazing.  We can't wait...HGTV, here we come.