Relief

As an obstetrician, I helped bring life into this world.  What cooler job is there than that?  But honestly, I was not really the one bringing life into this world.  The life was there, I was just guiding it out.  It’s an interesting thing, being a deliverer of babies.  Most of the time I’m really not needed.  I’m there to help coach the mother, make sure her delivery is progressing and that both mother and baby are safe.  Most of the time, mothers do what they do and nature takes its course, bringing another baby into this world, just like the last seven billion babies.  A good attendant, whether obstetrician, family practitioner or midwife, can help guide the delivery to minimize injury to the mother, but the baby would arrive safe and sound no matter what we do or don’t do.  Not all the time, however.  There’s a reason mothers and babies used to die in childbirth in such huge numbers compared to today.  Things can go wrong, and when they do, they often go wrong very quickly.  

As I was evaluating my relationship with my career, I had to ask myself:  did I want to be in a job where I was often not needed, but when I was, it was an emergency?  That is a very stressful way to live.  When you tell people you deliver babies for a living, every single one of them says, “oh, what a joyful job you have”.  And they’re correct – most of the time.  I’ve not once had someone say to me, “ gosh, that must be so stressful – every mom is expecting a perfect birth experience and a perfect baby, yet nothing in this world is perfect – you have a lot to live up to!”.  This would be a more accurate description.  And so would, “wow, you have to make complex decisions quickly, and sometimes tell people things they don’t want to hear – what a responsibility!”.  I’ve never heard that.    It is a joyful job, until it’s not.  And I was finally realizing that I was not cut out for the hard parts.

People also think, when you say you're an ob/gyn, that all you do is deliver babies.  They don't think about the annual exams, the hysterectomies, the laparoscopic surgeries, the trips to the ER in the middle of the night for suspected ectopic pregnancies or for miscarriages in progress.  They don't think about the fact that I have to tell women they have cancer.  They don't think about the fact that I have to tell women they have an STD (and, therefore, that their partner has been less than faithful and/or forthcoming).

So what, just cut and run when things get difficult?  No, that’s not what I’m trying to say.  Every job has hard parts.  When I was sixteen years old and waitressing, I had a volatile Neopolitan boss who would scream at me in front of customers.  That was hard.  But the good parts (earning money for my class trip to France) outweighed the bad.  Life has hard parts, but you make it through them to enjoy the good parts.  But when you’re in a situation where you are dreading the hard parts of every day, when you just want to curl up in a ball under the comforter and never come out, when your job is making you clinically depressed, that’s a pretty good sign you’re not cut out for that job.  I’ve worked with fantastic doctors and nurses who ARE cut out for their jobs.  That’s not to say they don’t feel the difficulties, but for them, the rewards outweigh anything else.  That was just not the case for me, and the sooner I admitted it, the sooner I could move on to something that would make me happy.
Yes, I did some pretty cool things in my former career.  I even saved some lives, and I don't say that with any sense of bragging or arrogance - it could have been any trained ob/gyn or surgeon who saved those lives - I just happened to be the one on call when the patient came in.  But do I miss it?  Nope.  Someone else can save the lives, I don't need the glory.  I needed to save my own life. I needed relief.  And I am relieved that I made it out before I spent the next 30 years in misery.  How do I spell relief? Q-U-I-T-T-I-N-G.  Not as catchy as the Rolaids jingle, but it'll do.

When I think about my former career, from the vantage point now of six months out, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief.  Relief that I'm no longer working those hours, under those pressures.  Relief that I don't have to know everything anymore.  Relief that I have my life back.  Relief that I made the right decision.

There were amazing moments in my job and I will miss them.  (The fact that I don't miss them yet probably means I'm still healing from the PTSD...)  Delivering babies  - there’s nothing more beautiful than that.  But I give it up willingly to bring MY life into this world.