The One Where I Talk About How My Job Might Actually Kill Me

I went to the doctor (well, actually to the nurse practioner) last month for my annual army physical. My blood pressure was high, but i thought it was just because i was having a kind of stressful day (it was the week i was Dr. Death). She recommended i do a Five Day BP check.

Today at my BP check my blood pressure was 210/126. And that was while i was sitting and relaxing. First it was 180/107, so the nurse said "hmmmm.....lets check that on the other arm". Well, the other arm was not quite as friendly, and gave us 210/126. At which point i realize i am probably going to have a stroke while i am sitting right there in the chair. luckily i didn't. But I guess what freaks me out is that if my blood pressure is so freakishly high when i am just sitting in a chair, what in the world is it doing when i'm in the O.R. with an emergency c-section, while getting hammer paged from the ER, and all the while wishing i could just sleep 7 consecutive hours without any babies crying. I don't mean to complain about my job. it's really not that the job is so terribly stressful, it's more that i'm just not handling the stress very well.

I am frustrated with the fact that i spent 12 years training to be a doctor, that i have finally made it to being an OB/GYN (although i still have 2 more years before i am technically Board Certified - does the training ever end!), and that the majority of patient's i deal with every day are rude and entitled. That patient's (and their husbands) feel it is appropriate to curse and yell at the medical staff, and to threaten us with complaints to the Patient Representative if they don't get what they want. Just yesterday I had a patient's husband DEMAND that she be induced that very day, regardless of the fact that her due date was 2+ weeks away. She was in pain, and if I didn't agree to induce her he was going straight to the patient rep to complain about the medical care. Although I know i was right not to agree to an unindicated induction, it is still such a pain to have to deal with the patient rep, which often means the physician has to actually call the patient and APOLOGIZE that they were unsatisified with their medical care! What has this profession become! In the end i agreed to do an amniocentesis on this crazy patient to document that her baby's lungs were mature, then do an induction. so yes, she got her way. But who in their right mind would CHOOSE to have a giant needle stuck into their uterus just so that they can be induced 2 weeks early?

To add to the drama i was contacted by the Patient Rep at Tripler this week to inform me a former patient was seeking compensation due to the fact that she didn't like her hysterectomy scar. I have to say I am very, VERY careful with my incisions. Probably to a fault. Sometimes it takes me 30 minutes to get the incision closed the way i want it (compared to the 3 minutes it takes to just staple it closed - which i don't do). So this girl has had THREE c/sections, and a hysterectomy....there is no way her abdominal scar is going to be perfect. So she is trying to sue me, the last one who operated on her, so she can get an abdominoplasty paid for. It's so so so painful to have to deal with this kind of crap.

It is so hard to understand how much i have sacrificed over the last 12 years to become a physician, and now i spend my day, every day, trying to satisfy patients who just can't be satisifed, and trying to keep from getting sued. It is depressing that i gave up so much of my life for this.

So now i am going through everything i can to figure out what changes i need to make to get this BP at least out of the stroke-out range. this means giving up things that i LOVE, like caffeine (i usually drink one Grande Vanilla Latte, and at least 2 cans of diet coke/day). I don't know what else it means giving up. I don't have much of an option as far as the job goes. I can't cut back on my hours since i am employed by the U.S. Army for the next 3 years (oh yes, which adds to the stress that when Obama sends 30,000 troops to afghanistan this year, they are going to need a WHOLE LOT of doctors to go, and i will probably find myself in the desert sometime soon).

so anyway, this is a big, long, ranting post basically to say i am basically a walking ball of stress and anxiety, and it's driving me to an early grave!

Either that or i am allergic to Colorado and cold weather, and they army should send me back to Hawaii to keep me from stroking!