Living below my means. But why?

Is a Porsche pretentious?

I work hard. I work long torturous hours. My job is life and death. I save lives!

My new friend, who will remain anonymous, to protect her street name, would never drive a Porsche.

Could she if she so chose to- yes.

We’re talking about a woman who could own a home in just about any area of the country- a nice home, a home with multiple bathrooms, a maid maybe. A big yard, one of those swimming pools with no edge. The good life.

She could drive any car she chose to, with the exception of a Royce, because other then NBA players, and the Trumps, no one seriously drives a Royce.

She could wear designer shoes, the shoes people pay way too much for  just for the name, She could shop in Paris. She could pay someone to care for her children while she runs around the world dining and shopping and living luxuriously.

But she doesn’t. She drives a jeep. She rents a condo. She shops at the mall. Her kids are with her 24/7. She loves Kraft macaroni and cheese. And Ramen.

No one should eat Ramen past the age of 22, but she does. And loves it.

So what is so sexy about living below ones means? Ive yet to figure that out. Maybe I’m jaded to the idea of living this way. After making my way through medical school, I lived on a salary that never exceeded $30,000 for 7 years of my residency. I’ve earned the paychecks that are big. I deserve the calls from the bank, telling me that there’s just too much money in my checking account, and could I transfer some of it to savings.

I deserve a house that I am never in, and is far too big for one person. I deserve the car that makes others jealous when I drive by them. I deserve suits that are the equivalent in cost to most peoples rent, car payment, and visa bill combined.

Well, at least I thought I deserved these things. Now they just seem wasteful.

My dear friend is soon moving to a far away state. And although I haven’t had the chance to know her as well as I would like to, she’s changed the way I look at things.

Maybe its time for the Porsche to go.

The meaning of it all

Perhaps I should have entitled this blog- my life IS the hospital.

Last Saturday was Valentines Day. For the public, this is a day of roses and candy, dinner out and a movie, dancing and love making. For me, this is a day of long hours, numerous trauma’s and hours standing in surgery.

Valentines day brings tension, and fighting, and driving quickly to the convenience store because your wife expected more from you then a kiss on the cheek, on this most special of days.

I started my shift at 5 am on Saturday morning, did my morning rounds and by 7am, I was paged to the E.R., multiple traumas were 10 minutes out, head injuries, broken bones, internal bleeding, you name it, I saw it. For the next 12 hours I was in surgery.

By the time I could take a breath to call the girl who is my friend, but by no means my girlfriend, she was up to her ears in a WII tournament with her friends, and even though she’s incredibly patient, I decided not to dump the details of blood and brain matter and compounds fractures on her seemingly calm evening.

I didn’t get the chance to call her again until 2 am, and I got her voicemail, because at 2am, normal people sleep.

The next time I saw the girl who is my friend, but my no means my girlfriend, she was coming out the back of an ambulance, standing on the stretcher giving her very dear friend heart compressions and breaths. She had called me in a panic early Sunday morning, asking me what to do in the event that someone has a heart attack. I felt helpless. 4 years of med school, 5 years as a surgical resident, 2 years in a fellowship and years as a surgeon, all I could tell her to do was start CPR and I would call 911.

When I met her in the E.R., her arms were shaking from doing compressions for so long, and her friend had been down for over 30 minutes.

My team and I worked on him for 3 hours, because I couldn’t bring myself to go out into the lobby and tell her that we ” did everything we could” and watch her world fall apart. So I made sure that I did everything I could, and then tried again and again. My chief of surgery was the one who told me that I needed to stop, that he was gone. I would have tried all day and night.

It was a hard night for her after that. Very hard. I got off work at 5 this morning and went to her house just to check in on her. She was up, siting in a chair. And she asked me ” so what does it all mean?”

I wish I had an answer for her. Life is so delicate and so taken for granted that when it comes to an end, a very early and tragic end, it leaves the people who are still living, shaken and broken and lost. And how do you mend that? I can patch a liver, give someone new kidneys, stitch broken skin, heal the physical body. So that’s what I want to do for her, but shes not broken to the naked eye. I can’t run labs on her, x-rays, CT’s, to fix the wound. The wound is deep, the would is open and it hurts and for me, to just try to be there for her, to try to say the right things, it doesn’t feel like enough. But at the end of the say its all you can do for a person who is broken, and shaken and lost.

So whats the meaning of it all?

48 hours

I am back at my house, after 48 hours in the hospital, and 6 hours of sleep. In that 48 hours, I saw 3 gunshot wounds, 2 domestic assault cases, 6 fractured bones,a safety pin in a woman’s eye, an organ harvesting operation and a multitude of hypochondriacs testing my patience. I scrubbed in on 13 surgeries, and lost 2 patients. One with esophageal cancer who stroked out on the table, one with severe trauma to all major organs who went into shock.

I am a surgeon. Which  means I essentially, save lives, but fail to have one of my own.

I completed my basic 4 years of college, and decided that another 4 years of medical school wouldn’t be so bad. $197,000 worth of tuition and expenses later, they threw me into an internship where you make less then a McDonalds employee for an entire year or your life, and are abused and tortured by not only your resident who treats you like garbage, but also your attending MD who also, treats you  like garbage.

Into my 2nd year of residency in Lower Manhattan, I was treated less like garbage, and more like a maggot, which in my mind, is an upgrade. I survived 5 years of residency, and became chief resident, and got the privilege of having my own interns, which I in turn, treated like garbage.

I completed my fellowship in San Diego CA, where the sun literally, never stops shining. There is nothing dirty or “back alley” about San Diego. I lost interest in the area after 2 years and was hired by a major hospital in New Jersey, my home town, where there is nothing but dirt, and back alleys.  After seeing close to nothing but GSW’s and broken thumbs and missing limbs to make my skin crawl, I decided to move on from the garden state and fate put me in Michigan. Where the sun comes out when it damn well feels like it, and its dirty and clean and wholesome and yet, the polish mob occupies a large apartment complex near by. The perfect mixture of drive by shootings and tulips planted along the roadside.

Everyone here talks like they are directly related to the Palin camp, and  “dontchyaknow” is a phrase that even politicians use. ” Eh?” is the Michigan version of ” pardon me” or ” don’t you agree?” and complete strangers say hi to you in passing on the streets.

Having lived in large cities all my life, Manhattan, LA, Atlanta, Phoenix and so on and so on, it feels good to go to the grocery store, and have the cashier remember my name, and ask me if I liked the chicken recipe she recommended I try, last week.

So like I said, I am back at my own home after 2 straight days of blood and pain and trauma and stress, and I can sit and drink coffee and watch the t.v., and behave like a normal human being. And after cancelling dinner with a girl, who is my friend, but by no means is my girlfriend, because I was elbow deep in a operation, I gave in to her telling me to start writing about life in general, so I’m on my laptop, writing a blog about me. Me, the man who has no life.

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