Doctor’s Life

I’ve been tired for a while now.

That’s when I started medical school. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about medicine, including how little sleep a human being can function on and how quickly a physician can convince himself that exhaustion is simply part of the job.

Medicine rewards people who give more. More hours. More patients. More phone calls. More charts. More responsibility. Eventually, “I’m busy” starts sounding less like a temporary condition and more like an identity.

I know this because I did it too.

As a primary care physician, I could spend a day having serious conversations about diabetes, depression, cancer and end-of-life care. Then I’d go to a family gathering and someone would quietly pull me aside.

“Are you finally a doctor now? Can you look at this rash?”

“What happened?”

“It was there this morning. Then I put some cream on it. Now it’s gone.”

“Awesome! Congratulations. I'm glad I could help!”

The funny thing is that doctors are expected to be doctors everywhere. On an airplane, it’s actually kind of nice. Ask a stranger, “How are you feeling?” and suddenly everyone thinks you’re conducting a diagnostic workup.

At home, however, being a doctor is less impressive.

I recently found myself spending more time at home than I had planned. And I discovered something alarming:

My wife had apparently been running an entire civilization.

There were dishes. Laundry. Children. Activities. Repairs. Scheduling. Things that needed to be purchased, returned, cleaned, organized and somehow remembered.

I started asking, “Can I help?”

Eventually, I realized the better question was, “What needs to be done?”

So I started doing things without waiting to be asked.

It was humbling.

It also made me realize how easy it is to confuse being productive with actually living.

Healthcare has its own version of this problem. Primary care physicians can spend hours seeing patients and then spend more hours documenting, answering messages, reviewing results and completing work that somehow exists outside the workday.

The irony is obvious: we spend our careers telling patients to exercise, sleep, manage stress, maintain relationships and take care of themselves.

Then we go home at 8 p.m. and wonder why we feel terrible.

Work matters. A career can give us purpose, identity and an opportunity to help people. But it is only one part of a healthy life.

The people waiting for us at home aren't interruptions to our lives.

They are our lives.

Doctors are trained to save lives.

Maybe we should spend a little more time learning how to live ours.