You and Medicine have been on the outs for a while.
She's been giving you the cold shoulder when you slide into bed at night.
She doesn't laugh at your jokes the way she used to.
She can sense your resentment.
What started as a love affair has dwindled to ambivalent interdependence.
Medicine cooks, you do the dishes.
Breaking routine or separating households would only create more work for everyone.
What Medicine doesn't realize is you've started seeing FI (Financial Independence) on the sly.
It's platonic.
FI could see the hurt in your eyes, and invited you for an innocent coffee.
There, FI exposed you to ideas you'd never heard about in your years of work and training.
Ideas that could change your life trajectory.
Ideas that might just rescue your relationship with Medicine.
You felt a renewed sense of hope.
FI helped you find your long lost mojo.
Ever since you met FI, you've been looking at Medicine through different eyes.
She's suffered a progressive loss of autonomy and received mandates to meet productivity metrics.
She's seen her prestige diminished, her Press-Ganey scores dissected as if she were a customer service representative for a cellular carrier.
But beneath it all, you recognize she's unlike anything else out there.
You and Medicine are good together.
What you have between you still matters.
You are ready to renew your vows.
Go on, surprise Medicine this weekend with an unexpected trip to that bed and breakfast in the wine country.
Load the ipod with the songs by Barry White and Marvin Gaye for the drive.
Stop to pick up flowers and her favorite pad thai on the drive home from work today.
It's time to rekindle your love for Medicine.
Let FI help you get there.
Comments 17
Man if you’r going to do it, go strait to Isaac Hayes, chocolate covered strawberries and a rose’ Champagne… on the roof… a clear moonless starry night… little bit of Steve Cropper guitar backing Ike up… playing those lilting magic 6th’s in the back ground… I stand accused… Ol’ Ike is guilty…
Author
Where were you, Cyrano de Gasem, when I needed this kind of advising in high school?
Doing Anesthesia
What can I say? She’s my sugar momma. Clinical medicine and I have an open relationship. She pays me by the minute and doesn’t get jealous if I see other jobs on the side.
You never forget your first, and I’ll always come crawling back for more. If she ever kicked me out I think I would feel lost without her.
Author
I first read about relationships like yours when a junior high friend shared his copy of “Side Hustler” magazine with me. The centerfold was a utilization reviewer in Family Practice from the Midwest. It made my wallet tingle in awkward places it had not tingled before.
Since then, I’ve come to accept I’m much more traditional in my relationship with medicine, but my live and let live approach means I accept you for what you are, Side Hustle Scrubs. Some docs just aren’t built to be with only one profession – you are a man of tremendous appetites that must be satisfied.
I admire you’re committment. It’s quaint and old fashioned -like dialing from a land line or checking the TV guide.
Sure, all my side relationships increases the chance I’ll bring something home. You talk a big game about early retirement, but I’ve met monagomous docs like you before. No way you pull out early.
Y’all are crazy with the prose.
I am relieved to see that you are enjoying Medicine CD. Medicine needs more folks who can do it their way. With FI, you will always have options. That alone makes it all better.
You can then focus on a healthier balance of service and “what Medicine owes me”.
My husband and I practice with the view of giving back now. Medicine has given us more than enough.
It is better in Canada however….I am clearly biased.
Author
I can envision you and your husband as being in the giving back stage of your careers – this is entirely consistent with your love affair with the profession. Many of us (see Xrayvsn’s comment) have had more of an on-again, off-again romance, which is why love stories like yours leave us yearning.
As for being better in Canada (perhaps Ontario right now is the exception) I imagine many of the aggravations we deal with here are non-entities for you, which should certainly be cherished.
For a good account of how the two neighboring systems evolved so differently, check out historian Paul Starr’s “Social Transformation of American Medicine.” A bit dense, but worth the effort for the amateur history of medicine buff. As I recall, it boiled down to the respective professional society’s strength in organizing when faced with government regulation.
Appreciate your stopping by Dr. MB!
LOL.
I think it is too late for me.
Medicine is following the course of my arranged marriage and you saw how that turned out 🙂
Medicine for me was the pretty girl that you always wanted to have and with hard work and patience you won her over only to see that it really was only superficial beauty. The looks started to fade as the inner workings/personality started to come to the surface.
FI was the girl who was your best friend, “one of the guys.” She did not have the sexy appeal Medicine did and she was passed over many a time to go the prom because of it. But she didn’t let it bother her. In fact as the “It Girl’s looks started to wane” FI was the one that only got more and more beautiful.
We are only on this round blue marble for a short time. I much rather spend it with someone I like than someone I thought I would like.
Author
HA! I think you’ve still got a summer camp crush you have unrequited feelings for, Xrayvsn.
The plot you described was my favorite John Hughes movie from the 1980s…wait, this was every John Hughes movie from the 1980s.
Bahahhahhaa. CD-you kill me. All I can see in my mind’s eye is Tom Cruise in Top Gun singing “You’ve lost that loving feeling!”
Okay. This post and the following comments are hilarious. I wish I could add an equally clever and witty comment about my relationship with medicine, but it’s a boring one.
I’m still relatively new in my relationship with medicine. Past the honeymoon phase, but not yet at the 7 year itch mark. We still like each other, or at least I think we do. She helps pays the bills, still is attractive, and I see no other alternative as a better match for me.
Btw, nice view of Catalina Island from those stairs. Or at least I think it’s Catalina Island, correct me if I’m wrong 🙂
Author
DMF,
Young love, how sweet.
Photo taken on a visit to Thousand Steps in Santa Barbara – you are seeing either Santa Rosa or Santa Cruz islands in the distance. Good guess!\
Fondly,
CD
I see things differently. I was just using Medicine to get to know her second cousin, Financial Independence. I never really loved Medicine. (Maybe I had a crush on her when I was younger, but once I got to know her well, I knew that we were not going to be together, “‘til death do us part.”
Now, I am really digging Financial Independence. She is HOT ?! I want to spend the rest of my life with her and will have no qualms about kicking Medicine aside when it suits me.
That said, especially being that I am responding from vacation in Utah, I see no reason that I cannot lie with both for a while longer…
Author
Vagabond,
Many of us recall reading your diary back when you first fell hard into your relationship with the capricious, demanding intellect and sophisticated beauty of Academic Medicine. You showered her with bouquets of publications, spent time courting the favor of her parent the NIH (your Rogue MD guest post was bound to come back to haunt you someday), and eventually offered her your heart and your future.
When a shinier, brighter young attending caught her eye and stole her attentions, her bejeweled and politically savvy sister Community Medicine subsequently charmed you into a more meaningful, give-and-take relationship that raised you to local prominence and sharpened your strategic thinking even as she demanded all of your time. Eventually that flame burned you to a crisp, and you decided a jealous mistress was not the right fit.
I’m thrilled you have found an ideal partner in FI. There will inevitably be moments where the cerebral thinker misses Academic Medicine; where the autonomous, flexible physician goes out for a nostalgia date with Community Medicine. But when push comes to shove, we know who keeps the bed warm:
FI’s got everything delightful
FI’s got everything I need
Takes the wheel when I’m seeing double
Pays my ticket when I speed
Hilarious! Wish I was as creative as you when it comes to writing. I am totally swooned by FI right now …
Author
Want to help me write a physician finance romantic comedy? Love triangle between a Physician, Medicine and FI, high jinks ensue.
If it occurs as a romance between two med school students, we can model the lead after B.C. Krygowski and call it Top Gunner.
If we model the lead character after your time in NYC or London, Miss Bonnie, we can call it Checks in the City.
If after Vagabond, we can call it either Unbroken or What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been.
If after Gasem, FIRE And Loathing in Las Vegas.
More ideas?