When I grow up I want to be...

Well, for the time being, I want nothing else but to be a stay at home mom (or SAHM, of course). I love hanging with my husband, son and dog. It sometimes surprises me that after 12+ years of education and a firmly instilled sense of feminism, nothing gives me a thrill quite like putting a meal on the table for my husband and giving my little boy a bath. Day after day I realize I am more satisfied and fulfilled changing diapers than I ever was intubating or putting in central lines.

But, I realize that when my little one (or ones) goes to school, perhaps I might wish to return to a more professional career. The trouble is, I feel I am no longer suited to the job I was trained for. Motherhood has forever changed me, and I think I have lost the part of me that made me a good emergency physician. Becoming a mother has probably made me a better person, but almost certainly not someone who should be running a code or a high-volume ER.

It is true, the medical specialties definitely have distinct personalities. Warning, these are gross generalizations. Pediatricians are warm, fuzzy people, super excited to see and talk to kids, and sometimes even have a childlike way about them. Women OBGYN residents tend to be really mean (though I have found this is definitely not the case with women attendings- during training they are very bitchy, but afterward, they tend to be nice women. Not sure what the change is, because life for an OB really doesn't get all that much better after residency.) Orthopedic surgeons are male, tall, good looking, and perhaps not as smart as some of their other surgeon counterparts, say ear/nose/throat surgeons. Well, ER docs are go-getters, who also tend to be hard-asses. We go into emergency medicine because we like variety, have short attention spans, and really don't have the patience to listen to people drone on and on. We like the quick and dirty. In the ER, sometimes you need to be a hard-ass. Which means tossing the homeless person looking for a meal and a place to sleep back out on the street. Same goes with the person with chronic back pain looking for drugs. Or, asking the tech to hold the toddler tighter in the papoose so you can quickly throw in two sutures into the chin laceration-- just get in and get out while the kid is screaming.

Anyhow, somewhere along with the placenta, I seem to have lost my edge. I just feel that if I were to go back to the ER, I would be utterly useless-- paralyzed by a sense of grief and hopelessness about the world inside a hospital. I would sit down and listen to the homeless person's story (and probably each one of the voices inside his head) and maybe even invite him home to my spare bedroom. No way could I move fast enough to be efficient in a busy ER-- I just don't have that in me anymore. I don't think I could deal with even suturing a child, let alone what would happen should a critically ill or injured child come in on my shift. So anyhow, I realize I am a danger in the ER.

OK, so what does that leave me with? Well, I am a doctor...so one would think I'd have ample opportunity for work. Well, not really-- I know what I know how to do, and frankly, not much else.

Thankfully, these days, I know EXACTLY what it is that I want to be doing, and I am completely fulfilled doing it. Down the road, don't know. There isn't exactly physician retraining--and again, I'm not too worried about it. And there's always that outside chance that part of my personality will suddenly come back, but I have to say I'd be disappointed if it did.