When the Exhaustion Sets In....

Residency - there's nothing like it. After four years of college, you spend four years in medical school gaining a foundation on which to base your clinical practice. Then you go on to residency where you actually gain that clinical practice. While I love learning and practicing anesthesiology, it can be gruelling and utterly exhausting at times. Based on raw working hours, we typically work the equivalent of two full-time jobs - anywhere from 60 to 80 hours a week (my high so far is 87). This time is spent taking care of some of the sickest patients in the hospital, transporting patients from the ICU to the OR while ventilating them at the same time and administering potent life-saving meds between breaths. It is also spent in the operating room administering anesthetics, while being continually vigilant in monitoring almost every physiologic function imaginable (temperature, respiration, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, heart rate, heart rhythm, urine output, CO2 waveforms, venous pressure, arterial pressure, airway pressure, muscle relaxation.... just to name a few). Yesterday, I left at 5:30 am and arrived home at about 10:15 pm, then spent all day today with relatively challenging patients. All I can say is that I'm exhausted. Jack London describes my feeling perfectly with this quote from "The Call of the Wild."

"There was nothing the matter with them except that they were dead tired. It was not the dead-tiredness that comes through brief and excessive effort, from which recovery is a matter of hours; but it was the dead-tiredness that comes through the slow and prolonged strength drainage of months of toil. There was no power of recuperation left, no reserve strength to call upon. It had been all used, the last least bit of it. Every muscle, every fibre, every cell, was tired, dead tired. And there was reason for it."

Anyway, my advice to anyone who is considering a career in anesthesiology: think long and hard before you do it. It's long & gruelling, and residency is hard on both your marriage and family life. It's also hard on your pocketbook for upwards of the first 10 years after college, and there will definitely be times that you regret your decision. If, however, you are absolutely convinced that there's nothing else out there for you.... you'll love it. It's awesome. Full speed ahead!"

Finally, I just have to say that my wife rocks. When I was just a schmuck plugging away at college, she decided that I was worth hanging out with, and eventually, even worth marrying. Through more than 8 years, she has put up with occasionally having to feel like a single parent, dealing with my unpredictable schedule and endless hours of work and studying, missing family outings and holidays, moving our family across the country, dragging her into over $120,000 of debt, and living with secondhand furniture because "we can't afford it on a resident's salary." Despite all this, she still hasn't left (and claims that she doesn't plan to!), and occasionally, she even says she enjoys it. She's kind of crazy that way, but hey, maybe I can keep the wool over her eyes for another 8 years. Love ya, babe!