This is not the NFL

Hurricane, Bob Dylan

Medical thinking can be so screwed up. Not unlike the Nazis, doctors have developed a whole language to distance themselves from the lifestyle choices they are making and woo doctors-in-training into this lifestyle. We, a young medical family, try to be the exception to the rule, but it is really hard to keep your armour up and your thoughts pure.

Here are three examples of their mind/language tricks:

The first one is the golden weekend. When a medical student or professional is on an in-patient rotation (translation=living at the hospital with short visits home five nights a week) they stay at the hospital or work until midnight every fourth night. This night is called "call". On this type of rotation Saturday and Sunday mean nothing to the schedulers. If you are not on call on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, which might happen once in a rotation like this you get a “golden weekend". What is a golden weekend? It's just a weekend: coming home Friday night at 8PM and not going in until 6AM on Monday. There’s nothing gold or silver or bronze about it. When Phil first explained this term to me, I banned it in our household, "That's just a weekend. Don't let them get to you. Stay strong. You're worth a day of chores and a day of rest."

Medical students get all jazzed up about their fourth year of medical school because they get one or two months off. Both Phil and I were really excited for December because it is one of his "months off". Guess what? By the end of the month he will have interviewed at five medical programs, which is five longs days of smiling and schmoozing and five dinners of the same sort. He also has to take Step Two, a big test to check all that you've learned in the last three and a half years. When he hasn't been interviewing, he has been studying. He's not off. The other month off is a month to move. It's crazy talk.

Now this story is the craziest of all and shows Phil's weaken (medical people would say toughened) state. At one of these medical dinners the other night I overheard two people playing the Do-You-Know game. They both know someone that I'll call Sally and wow! is she amazing. She works so hard. In fact, she was puking one day, sick as a dog, and she dug deep and kept treating patients and teaching students. It was amazing. Apparently. It gets crazier. I told Phil about this mad conversation and he drew a sports analogy, "That reminds me of a story I hear about Tom Brady. He was playing a little bit injured and a team mate was asked what he thought of that. The team mate said, 'this is the NFL.' Emily, this is doctoring. Sometimes you play a little barffy."

I'm going to start to develop some propaganda of my own to foil this brain washing. 100% of NFL players get injured at some point in their careers. Doctoring is not good for your health.