I leave the house of my first home visit of the day – a middle aged businessman – and walk back to my car. I recall the heat of his skin on my hand, his yellow, sunken cheeks, his racing pulse.
An ambulance is on its way – I opted for the semi-urgent type, the type that comes within two hours, the type for people who are quite sick but not very sick. I wonder whether I should have chosen the very sick type, the one that races down the road, flashing blue lights and all.
A message lights up the screen of my phone – “I’ve found a button in her poo.”
I think now of my two-year-old daughter. I picture her careering around the room at playgroup, biscuit hanging from her mouth and dribble falling from her chin. Then come the usual worries: is she really enjoying playgroup; is the childminder overly strict with her; does she eat too many biscuits and did she really eat a button? If I’ve chosen to be out at work, do I even have any right to tell the childminder how to look after her? At that age, maybe my daughter doesn’t even know I’m not there.
Back at the surgery, the waiting room begins to fill. Swimming round my head is an endless list of things I need to do that I will never have time to do: the patient cases I should be writing up, the audit I need to conduct, the extra out-of-hours shifts I must work, the exam I need to prepare for – all in order to complete my GP training. I try to forget the morning’s events so that I can prepare for the afternoon ahead. It’s important to give each patient the best version of me.
My pregnant bump presses against the edge of my desk and I feel the familiar kick in the ribs from the one inside. As if she’s saying: “Remember I’m in here, Mummy.”
I have just one week left before I go on maternity leave. I plan to take a year off and then return to work part-time. Already I am wondering how it will be possible for me to do this. It’s not that I don’t want to go back – I love my job – it’s just that I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do for my family. The cost of putting two children in childcare and the worry that I will miss out on their early years are my main concerns. Alongside this, the fact that I am still training means that I have extra work to do outside of my already very busy job. But if I don’t finish my training, all the years of work I’ve done will go to waste.
I often ask myself the question: is it really possible to be a great doctor and a hands-on mother? Personally I’m not sure it is – I feel like I am continually striving to achieve the impossible and never feel satisfied that I am doing either job well. To be a good doctor I need to invest time in keeping my knowledge up to date but simultaneously my two-year-old needs to be the focus of my attention. I know I am in a position of privilege; I have choices women historically would never have had and (potentially) a very rewarding career ahead of me, but it all feels too much.
It’s a dilemma women up and down the country face – to work, to stay at home or to do a bit of both. I have one friend who feels that it is important for her daughter to see her going out to work every day so that she can aspire to the same. I have another who has given up her career to be at home with her child.
For now I have decided that the best way for me is to accept things as they are, to manage my expectations of what I can achieve at both home and work and hope everything works out all right in the long run. I will try my best to forget work on the days I spend at home and to trust that my children are in good hands on the days that I’m not.
That evening, as I try to convince my two-year-old that her princess dress isn’t really suitable attire for bed, I think again of the yellowness of that man’s skin and the look of desperation in his wife’s eyes. I promise my daughter we’ll go for ice-cream in the morning if she will just let me put her pyjamas on. After all, I know only too well that life is short.
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