Why am I doing this again?

I haven't seen my son in two days because I leave before he gets up and I get home after he is in bed.  I spend more time with my fellow residents in one day than I spend awake with my family for an entire week.  I get four days off a month total including one entire weekend free (termed the "golden weekend").  That also means I can go weeks without any day off.  I work up to 80 hours a week and easily 12-16 hour days.  Many days, I don't get to eat.  If I do have time, then I gulp it down because it takes me away from finishing my work so I can go home.  This month, I am on nights for a week, then days for a week, then nights again for a week, then days with only a day in between to get accustomed.  My ridiculous sleep deprived state is becoming my new norm.  My beeper goes off incessantly.  I am capped with rounding limits but can have endless admissions or discharges over the course of the day.  I am a slave to the electronic medical record which is a blessing and a curse.  I have adorable pediatric patients that hate it when I come into the room.  I see the lifeless faces of patients during a code.  I watch as they are wheeled to intensive care with a tube down their throat.  I enter the empty room of a patient who died from a malignancy and feel physically ill at the sadness of a young life defiled by such a wretched disease.  I am in abhorrent disbelieve as I examine an infant patient who has been beaten unconscious by a loved one.  

I am privileged to be a part of my patient's life and health care.  I feel encouraged when I can educate parents about diagnoses and what it means to their child.  I get to see my patient's happy faces when they are "all better" and can go home.  I am surrounded by excellent nurses and techs.  I have the opportunity to learn about rare conditions and then see them in real life.  I can poke a needle in an arm and sometimes learn the best way to treat a person from their blood.  I am trained by great attendings and specialists that care about my education and are vested in my successful professional future.  I am supported by awesome senior residents that help when needed and give me a living example of how to do better.   I see the gratitude in the eyes of parents whose child improved under my watch.  I know that intern year is finite and it can only get better.   I take advantage of my family time because it is so limited.  I get all the hugs and kisses I can from my boys.  I see their happy faces when I get home in time to see them before bed.    My son wrote in his 4th grade "about me" essay that I am his hero because I am a doctor.

I guess that is why.