Full Time Mommy

It's been quite some time since my last post, and the most notable update is that it has been a full 42 DAYS since my temporary retirement from clinical medicine.  Wow, has the time flown by.  Here are the facts:  I love medicine, and I love my family.  I love cooking, decorating, making crafts.  Hate cleaning.  But what I didn't love was cranking through patients every 15 minutes with that feeling of urgency... as a patient might be describing the intricate details of how their family dynamics precluded them from taking their medicine, I'm thinking...  "How can we wrap this up, the next 3 patients are waiting and I need to be done by 3:30 to make the bus... "- looking ahead at my schedule knowing that my last patient might be extra depressed today and despite my experienced interpersonal abilities, there are not many graceful ways to interrupt someone who is talking about thoughts of death to say I have to get my kids off the bus.

I would race out of the office like a banshee at 3:30, on the phone with my nurse wrapping up whatever I left in the middle of, only to arrive in the nick of time at the bus stop to get my lovely but tired and cranky children from a 40 minute bus ride (because their mother needed that extra time to commute from the office).  Trying to calmly work out squabbles, console, calm and feed my little people, and transport to activities while simultaneously doing homework and projects, knowing that I have at least 2 -3 hours of charting left to do after they were in bed.  Throw in an extra complicated homework assignment or a bad day at school, and all bets were off.

Basically, my mind just exploded.  I felt like a half-ass mother and a half-ass doctor.  Terrible to feel bad at everything, especially when one relishes the idea feeling like an expert in all things.  Clearly this is hard to achieve, but it doesn't hurt to have a dream!

So here I am, decorating, crafting, swimming, and summering with my little people.  I'm sure I'll miss medicine soon.  But not now, I have some chocolate popsicles waiting to be made...