Becoming a Doctor and a Doctor's Wife or My Parents?

Becoming a doctor just became a lot more fun for Stewart. He is loving being able to watch and help out the doctor he is shadowing in all her surgeries and seeing all the pre-opt and post- opt patients in the office. He calls me everyday on his way home from his last surgery of the day and is so excited about everything he was able to do: stapling up tummies, suturing up intestines, and being a "surgical assistant" on a large variety of cases. It is so rewarding for him. His favorite part is working with the babies and children. I cant help but feel his excitement too when he talks about doing surgeries on one day old babies and about a little toddler girl who was wheeled in carrying her Elmo doll that they bandaged up just like her. He really loves it. Stew likes school and is a great student but the real thing is a million times more fun and rewarding! Right now Stewart is practicing suturing a banana together. :O) Pictured left is my dad with his mom when he graduated from med school

In some ways I feel like we are playing pretend. He basically is living the life of a doctor minus the real pressure and the real pay and therefore I am playing along as the doctor's little wife. What has struck me is how it takes me back to my childhood. Stewart smells like my dad, sterile, too clean, just like a hospital. He is now getting medical journals in the mail and when the kids go down I find Stew sitting down reading about "Botulinum Toxins". Everything keeps taking me back to little moments of my childhood. Like sorting the mail as a kid and seeing all sort of magazines with deformed feet and weird rashes pictured on the cover and how my dad would read it all for hours. You see, last night I came to bed later then Stew. He was tired and I wanted to finish what I was doing. When I finally got there he was sitting in bed reading his scriptures and medical journal. I brushed my teeth and plopped down next to him. As I cuddled up to him I took in a deep breath and smelled... the HOSPITAL. I sort of freaked out - it was too much like my childhood. That was how it was with my dad. He'd be reading in bed at night and I'd jump up on his bed and cuddle next to him and count all the moles on his arm while I could smell his smell... hosipitalness. I realized in one moment that I might be signing up for more of my previous life then I thought I would be. I am not sure if anyone will appreciate that besides my own siblings and parents but I found it startling. My husband will smell like my dad forever, he will work doctor's hours just like my dad, I will want to stay up and quilt (craft whatever) while I watch old movies and he will read his scriptures and medical journals just like my mom and dad would. Stewart seemed to read my mind and said, "Looks like we are turning into your mom and dad already." That threw me over the edge. I informed Stewart that maybe he should not be a doctor, maybe he could join CES like his dad or just be a research scientist, anything else but a doctor.

I don't know what I envisioned for our future but somehow this wasn't it. It was not that I really didn't want to be like my parents as it was too clearly laid out, too familiar to be exciting, not my own, basically it was not my future at all... it was my past! I have seen the panoramic picture of my parents lives and it was/is a hard life. Happy and full of wonderful things, but hard. I wanted to just think about surviving the med school years and my ideas of the future are vague dreams filled with finally having money and going to kid's soccer games. I hadn't really thought about the reality of it all and it was weird. Pictured left is my dad dressed in his surgical wear. They pauses to take pictures with their first little new born before my dad headed off to work.

Stewart could only laugh at me. He informed me that we had a long way to go before he was a doctor and that we had lots of years of studenthood ahead to soften the "blow" of being a doctor. Trying to calm myself I told him I could live with him smelling like my dad and a hospital but the reading in bed forever had to go! He conceded. :O) He reminded me that being a doctor had been more glamorous when my dad was a newish doctor. He promised to take me on fun medical meetings with him to wonderfully new places like Thailand just like my parents did when they were younger. Bless his heart, he soothed my fears and somehow conveyed to me that we would do it our way, whatever that was. It would at least be interesting and fun even if some parts were very familiar. My parents with , I think, baby number four or five. Todd or Jason ?

I realized that while in someways we will be like my parents - which is a really good thing, in other ways, in some ways I need, we will be different. I guess I realized I am not quite ready to be a doctor's wife, but I am glad we are both being schooled now and prepared to someday be what we deep down really want to be. Us, with a few dashes of my mom and dad. :)