I made the statement that “I’m glad I’m a doctor” in one of my posts, but when I went back to link to the story behind the statement, I couldn’t find it anywhere. So I pulled up the story from the archives and have posted it below. Still holds true today.

When I was a student, one of the attendings on my ICU rotation told me a story that I still have not forgotten.

When I was in your position, I thought it was cool to be a doctor because you got to have a pager. Everyone wanted you. You were the “go to” guy. If someone needed help, they called you. Then I wore a pager for a couple of days and found out that being wanted 24 hours a day wasn’t very much fun. In fact it caused me so much stress that I didn’t want the pager any more. But by then, it was too late.

As I went through my training, I thought it was cool to be a doctor because you’d make lots of money. I’d be rich and could retire at the age of 40. That idea came to an end rather quickly. I got a hard lesson in economics. College loans. Medical school loans. Malpractice insurance. Lawsuits. Taxes. Licensing fees. You make more money because you work more hours. Sure, your paycheck is larger, but your expenses are unbelievable. There are a lot of easier ways to become wealthy.

Now that I have settled into practice and I have my nice little house with a picket fence, I know the real reason I’m glad I became a doctor. Helping people is great. Making money is good, too. But being able to protect yourself and your family in a medical crisis – that is something that no one from any other profession can do for you.

Never finished describing what happened when we got back from our vacation … three weeks ago. Dang does time fly.

When we walked in the house, the first thing we noticed was that it smelled like cleaning products. There were a mop and a bucket sitting in the wet room by the garage.
The fishtank in the kitchen was a ruddy brown color. We could barely see the fish. One fish was floating. Half of a large can of fish food that we had just bought was gone.
Instead of coming home to relax, we came home to a CSI scene. We began to explore further.

One of the things that I noticed was that our coat rack had been moved. It was sitting to directly block the view through the windows by the front door. I also noticed that there was a piece of tape over the side of the kitchen window. Our neighbors told us that all the window shades were pulled. Our kitchen window doesn’t have a shade. I’m sure that something was taped over it.
Two of our security cameras were unplugged and the third one was pointed at the ceiling.
Something big happened here.

We paid the kid to walk the dogs. We were gone for more than a week. We had just purchased a package of doggie doo bags before we left and we had put a brand new roll in the holder on one dog’s chain. Not one bag had been used.
The girls came down from their rooms upset.
“Someone went through my drawers and messed my clothing all up.”
“Someone rearranged all the clothes in my closet.”

We went downstairs. There was a hole in the wall from one of the legs of a bar stool. The house abuser had said that one of the dogs knocked the chair over while playing catch with a tennis ball. The angle of the hole made it clear that the trajectory of the chair was from up to down – as if someone was holding the seat and forcing the chair downward. An Ansel Adams print hanging on the wall had the glass broken.

There was a run in the seam of the basement carpet and the carpet had been unraveled. Looking closer, there was a stain on the carpet all around the seam. A pair of my youngest daughter’s underwear was hanging off the barbell sitting on my weight bench.

We called the kid’s mother. She brought her son over to see what we were so upset about.

I brought him down in the basement and asked him what happened. He stuck to his story. The dog knocked over the stool and put the hole in the wall. I asked him about the stain on the carpet. The dog urinated on the spot. He cleaned it and then the other dog urinated there again. I told him it seemed that he spent an awful lot of time cleaning. He said that he just wanted us to come home to a clean house.
Like we left the house in that much of a mess?

Oh, and he was concerned about the Ansel Adams print.
“Was that cracked already? Sometimes I get clumsy and don’t remember falling into things.”
“Yeah, it was broken when my son’s friend whacked it with a baseball.”
“OK, good. I mean I’m glad that I didn’t break it.”

We walked back upstairs. It was then that I heard house abuser’s mom tell Mrs. WhiteCoat that we were overreacting. After all, there couldn’t have been that many kids over and if we had just called her, she would have taken care of it.

Whatever.

The next two days at home were spent cleaning up the house that our house abuser had so thoughtfully cleaned for us. We also tried to taken an inventory of the things around the house to make sure that nothing was missing. The only other thing I noticed was that the house abuser cleaned out most of the soda and all of the Red Bulls in the refrigerator in my garage. However, there wasn’t a single can in the garbage or in the recycling bin. Why was that? We soon found out.

The following day, Daughter WhiteCoat banged her head on a dresser and I went to the freezer to get an ice pack. The house abuser just got busted. A bottle of whiskey was buried in the ice maker. And we don’t drink whiskey. A little while later, my son brought up a “Rolling Rock” bottle cap that was in the seat cushion of his official Xbox 360 chair.

This weasel and his buddies were boozing it up in our house while we were gone.

House abuser’s school has a policy that all athletes must sign. Get caught with alcohol or get caught at a party where there’s alcohol and you’re off the team instantly.

We called back his mother and asked her if she wanted to come and pick up his whiskey and beer cap or if we should just drop it off at the school for him.

Thirty minutes later, he was ringing our doorbell. When we opened the door, his dad threw him inside by the scruff of his neck.

His first words were “I want you to know that I’ve lost everything.”

Never really got around to saying he was sorry. Never really admitted having a party. Just said that some of his “so called friends” took advantage of him and were drinking here when he wasn’t watching.

His dad said that he had “misgivings” about letting him watch the house and that junior let him down again.

Would have been nice to know about that before we gave junior the keys.

We were still going to go to the school about the alcohol, but figured that we’d let things go and move on with our lives.

And for the first time in three weeks, we can see through the fish tank again.

Next time we leave, we’re taking the dogs with us.

Daughter WhiteCoat’s reading is going well. In keeping with the previous posts on the topic, she continues to learn about the adventures of Dick and his family and she still can’t understand why mom and dad laugh at her as she reads her workbook.

I bet the teacher sits in her class every morning just chortling away at this book.

I almost had an ironic picture to post from this week’s wrestling meets. Almost.

There was a parent in the stands several rows in front of me. She was cheering on her son, which we all do.
Her son was 13 years old and weighed 229 pounds. I know because wrestlers have their weights written on their arms in magic marker after they weigh in.
The lady easily weighed 300 lbs. She was cheering loudly and bouncing up and down on the stands.
Then her son won his match.
She stood up and put her arms over her head and cheered. Fair enough. We do the same thing when our kid wins.
In the woman’s left hand was a partially eaten doughnut. In the woman’s right hand was a partially eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
There she stood jumping up and down cheering while jelly dripped down her hand.

I did a double take and then unzipped my backpack to grab my camera.
But as luck would have it the evidence was eaten before I could get the picture.

That will teach me once again.
In photography, timing is everything.

So Jr. WhiteCoat is back to wrestling.

During one match, he is winning 11-0 and the kid he is wrestling flings his head back and hits Jr. WhiteCoat in the mouth. He gets a little cut on the corner of his lip and his lip started bleeding.
Referee stopped the match. It took about 45 seconds to get the bleeding to stop. During that time, there was a medical time-out. If the medical time out lasts more than 2 minutes, then the wrestler is disqualified.
Started wrestling again. Then the referee notices blood on the back of the other kid’s uniform. No further bleeding from Jr. WhiteCoat’s mouth, just a couple of spots of blood that the referee hadn’t noticed before. He stops the match again for a medical time-out. Trainer has to come over and use soap to wipe the kid’s uniform. Another 50 seconds.

Referee tells coach that if Jr. WhiteCoat has any more bleeding, that he will be disqualified.

Coach gets upset, turns to me and Mrs. WhiteCoat on the sidelines and yells “this ref is a friggin STROKE!”
Mrs. WhiteCoat gets excited and yells out “What?!?! He’s having a stroke?!?!”
Coach rolls his eyes and yells back over his shoulder “yeah, we should be so lucky.”

[cue half of crowd on south side of gym cracking up]

First, thanks for all the e-mails. I’m fine. Family is good. I haven’t quit blogging yet.

Remember the story about the Rock? My rock still sits on the corner of my desk every day to remind me of its importance.

Well, the rocks in life just keep falling out of the glass.

We got home and found that our house had been … not “trashed” … perhaps “abused” would be a better word. I’m going to get a couple of good posts out of that one. One of our fish paid the ultimate sacrifice when we came back and the water in the fish tank looked like Guinness Stout.

Also issues with close friends and family that need to be addressed.

Had planned to get several posts up in the past couple of days, but another time-sensitive matter came up that I had to deal with. Haven’t decided whether I want to let everyone in on what is going on with my other job yet.

Now I have a string of 12 hour shifts for the next 5 days.

Those that haven’t gotten bored of checking back with no blog updates, thanks for the patience.  I’ll try to add a couple of short posts this week/weekend.
Monday I guarantee I’ll be back to the Healthcare Updates and regular schedule.

Dear Diary
Well, it’s been over a week since I posted anything online. I think that’s a record for me. In fact, I haven’t been online that much at all since well before Christmas.
First, there was a miserable work week before Christmas. Almost 70 hours of work in 5 days. A lot of people were sick. Some people just want to come in and get “checked out” before the holidays. One lady with a cough and runny nose wanted me to give her antibiotics to guarantee that she wouldn’t get her unimmunized grandchildren sick when she saw them for Christmas. No guarantees, ma’am. Those children are at an increased risk of catching communicable diseases regardless of whether you get a ZeePack or not, so the only way I can guarantee that you don’t get them sick is to have you stay home for Christmas. Fortunately, they live out of town so my kids won’t have to sit next to them in school.
Another lady who felt weak for several weeks and wanted a clean bill of health before going on a holiday vacation instead got a diagnosis of severe anemia and lung cancer. “But I only smoked for about 10 years,” she said in disbelief. Throckmorton was right on.
Many family members brought in their elderly parents or grandparents saying that they “didn’t look right.” When we couldn’t find anything wrong with them, many times the family members got upset and wanted us to keep them overnight to watch them. Not sure what the overnight observation would accomplish, but not one of the families wanted to sign an advance beneficiary notice. I’m sure I’ll get nastygrams sent to Press Ganey about me because I was rude and unprofessional and incompetent for not admitting the patients. The good thing is that by the time the satisfaction surveys get sent to the patients, the family members will have left for the year.
After finishing my last shift, I drove home, took a nap for a few hours, then got back into the car and started a marathon road trip to visit the in-laws. Spent 14 hours in the truck on Christmas day and another 8 hours in the truck on the day after Christmas.
Stopped at restaurant in Tennessee and my youngest daughter kept asking “why does the waitress talk that way?”

Laying on a warm beach has a way of making a long trip worthwhile, though.
So we’re staying as guests in a retirement community for a week. It amazes me how priorities change once some people retire. You can’t get into any community without handing over ID and having someone at the gate confirm that someone in the community is expecting your visit. That’s more security than the emergency departments. There are landing lights leading you in the entrance to the security gate.
Once inside, some people honk at you if you drive too fast down the road. Others honk if you drive too slow down the road.
When going to work out in the workout center, it is a serious offense to use the center before 11AM if you don’t live in the community and don’t even think about letting a child do sit-ups in the corner of the room. And if you try to use the elliptical machine without writing your name on the dry-erase board – even if no one else is waiting to use the machines – a bunch of old men with New Youk accents yell at you and then argue back and forth about who gets what machine for the next 20 minutes until you end your workout by attrition.
When you go home to watch TV, you’re inundated with commercials from plaintiff attorneys who implore you to call them if you’ve taken acne medications or diabetes medications or if you’ve had cardiac bypass operations and you’ve suffered any complications. Same thing on the billboards. One more reason not to live in Florida.

Oh, and one other thing. We can get rid of mosquitoes using Raid. What the heck do you use to get rid of geckos – or “get-gos” as the people down here call them. And don’t say buy the insurance, either.
Annoying little buggers. They hide near the entrance to the buildings and then jump inside when you open the door.
Current thinking is to let them run around the house and starve to death. Personally, I don’t need a get-go climbing in my mouth when I’m sleeping or attacking me in the shower. And I don’t want a get-go corpse stinking up my suitcase. They can climb the walls, so catching them isn’t as easy as it seems. They’ll sit up near the ceiling and stare at you … until you come back with a broom and knock them to the floor. Finally caught one in a plastic container. Then I walked down the street and let him loose by the front door of one of the neighbors. Yeah, that’s right, Brooklyn. I saw you checking your mail after your argument over the machines in the workout center. Merry Christmas.

Then we get the text message.
We hired a college student to watch our home while we were gone. Good references. Cousin of a family friend. Seemed conscientious when we met him.
“Wild party at the WhiteCoat house tonight. Cars line the streets. Lights flashing on and off. Love, Mrs. Kravitz.” So I did what every respectable person whose house is being trashed would do. I called the police and made a complaint about the noise. Of course, I used Skype so my number couldn’t be traced.
Twenty minutes later, we get another text message. “Police at front door. People fleeing out back door. Cars on street vanishing.”
Called the next day and found out that there were “just a few people over watching a basketball game.” Oh, and by the way, the puppy knocked a barstool over in the basement and put a hole in the wall.
Last time we trust a family member of a friend.

OK diary. Just wanted you to know that I hadn’t vanished. Time to go to the workout center and listen to crotchety retirees yell at me.
Sunshine is a-wasting.

One of our neighbors with nothing better to do left a note taped to our front door chastising us because the lights on our trees lining the road we live on weren’t lit when he happened to walk by our house. The thing is that we usually have the trees lit, but we just happened to use the extension cord to power the air pump to pump up a flat tire that afternoon and forgot to re-attach the power cord to the tree lights.

I have a pretty good idea of who it was, and I was going to write “your perineum” after the first line and stick it in his mailbox, but that wouldn’t be in keeping with the Christmas spirit, would it?

Ho ho ho.

Based on your feedback, at least a couple of you like hearing about my dysfunctional family more than I thought.

If you’re not in that group, prepare yourselves for a boring read. Last year, I had a story about Christmas Eve that I never published. Here it is.

Around every Christmas, I get letters to Santa from some of the less fortunate kids in our area and get clothes and gifts for the kids. I hadn’t told anyone about it until last year when I wanted my oldest daughter to help me. She declined. I made her promise to keep what I was doing a secret.

This year, I told her that she was doing this with me whether she wanted to or not. She then pitched a fit and told Mrs. WhiteCoat that I was going to endanger her life by bringing presents into the inner city where we’ll get mugged or shot when they see our car drive by. So I had to pretend I wasn’t doing anything of the sort. Once my wife left, older daughter WhiteCoat got a scowl for breaking her promise.

Christmas Eve rolled around and I spent most of the day running errands and doing a little bit of shopping. When I got home, the house was a mess, the dishes in the sink were overflowing, and the kids were sitting on the couch watching TV and arguing.

“Can we clean up around here maybe?”
No answer.
“Um, helloooo. Can someone help pick up around here and maybe start with the dishes?”
Phineas and Ferb resonated in the background. No one moved. I went and turned off the television and began pointing at the bodies scattered about the couch.
“YOU! Pick up the floor. YOU! Stack the presents under the tree. YOU! Dishes!”
Oldest daughter WhiteCoat whined. “I didn’t make any of the dishes dirty. Why do I have to do them?”
“MOVE IT!”
Then younger daughter WhiteCoat mumbled “You’re meeeean” under her breath.

That’s it.

I went into my office and closed the door. I went on the computer and looked up the addresses of homeless shelters in our area. I found one about 25 miles away that was just for women and children. I called to see if they accepted gifts. Not only did they accept gifts, they had about 20 kids who didn’t have much. They were planning to have dinner in about an hour, then they would open what presents were available afterward. Perfect timing.

I went back in the living room. “Pick up those presents and put them on the kitchen table.” They all suddenly became quite animated and began cleaning the room.
“Presents. Table. Now.” I repeated.
“Why?” young daughter WhiteCoat asked.
“You’ll see.”

We took some of their presents, added a few toys from our basement that had never been taken out of their packaging, and loaded them in our truck. Then we drove to the store and bought some more toys to make sure that there would be enough for everyone. We turned on the highway toward the city.

During the drive, everyone was quiet. Andy Williams belted out “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” over the radio. I remembered galloping in a circle with my brothers and sister to that song in our living room when I was a kid. I got half a grin as I watched wind blow snow across the road in front of us.

“Where are we going?” young daughter WhiteCoat asked sheepishly.
“You’ll see.”

We turned in the parking lot of the homeless shelter. The entire block was fenced in. A gate swung open and allowed us entrance to the parking lot. The building was old, but not decrepit. In front of one entrance, a couple of men were unloading a washing machine from a moving truck.

The kids still had no idea where we were or what we were doing.

“Get the presents and bring them inside.” I told them.
“Where are we?” Oldest daughter asked.
“Let’s move it.”

A man unlocked an outside door and directed us through a hallway into a large room. There were rows of plastic tables covered in paper tablecloths. An elderly man sat at a chair on a small stage playing a guitar and singing Christmas music. About 40 people listened to him play as they ate dinner.

The cafeteria was clean and fairly modern. Families ate from plastic trays and drank soda poured from 2 liter bottles into paper cups. When they were finished eating, they put their trays on a shelf by the kitchen.

“We’ll wait until after everyone is finished so that the kids finish their dinner,” one staff member stated.

We sat there watching everyone eat.  I leaned over to oldest daughter and whispered “Pretty cool, huh? They don’t ever have to do dishes at all. They just put the cups in the garbage and leave the trays on the shelf.”
She didn’t respond.
I nudged her. “Pretty cool, huh?”
Still no answer.
“Want me to see if you can stay here for the rest of Christmas break?”
She wouldn’t even look at me. I got up and began to walk toward one of the staff. Oldest daughter grabbed my coat sleeve. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Stop it, dad. Just stop it.”

Then I went to Junior WhiteCoat and younger daughter.
“Kind of neat how no one has to pick up after themselves here, isn’t it?”
Neither one answered me.
“The gifts they receive tonight may be the only gifts they get for Christmas.”
They looked at each other and seemed eager to pass out the presents after hearing that.

Youngest daughter had a Barbie present that she was holding behind her back. “I want to keep this one,” she said.
“Just think of how happy it will make some other little girl who doesn’t have any Barbie dolls,” I told her.
When the children began wandering over to us, she pulled a three year old girl aside and told her “I have a special present for you.”

We passed out most of the presents. We gave the rest to the lady running the shelter to give to other kids who might not have been at the dinner.

The truck was quiet on the way home. But the kids had smiles on their faces and seemed quite content listening to the Christmas music. I hoped that they had learned something.

I had a lot of fun watching the kids open presents on Christmas morning. Junior got his XBox 360 with Kinect. He almost wet himself when he opened it. As they ripped through the presents, it seemed like our visit to the homeless shelter was a lot longer than 12 hours ago. I hugged and kissed everyone and then left for work. Yup. People get sick on Christmas, too and someone has to be there to take care of them.

When I arrived home from work Christmas night, wrapping paper was still on the floor and the sink was full of dishes. The TV blasted in the background.

I just can’t win.