I know that in life there will be sickness, illness, disappointments, and pain – it’s a given. What’s not a given is the way you choose to get through it all. If you look hard enough, you can always find the bright side. Rashida Jones.

When we are sick, we phone up our work place to say we are not coming in to work. We generally make an appointment to see a doctor because we are sick and we need medication and support. We then expect our GP to understand how we feel, to tend to our aches and pains, to understand our needs and to basically help us when we are feeling so poorly. Right? Of course it is, because generally that is the ‘norm’ and what happens. I see it day by day in my own role at my workplace.

So what happens when the doctor is sick??
What?? No, does not happen!
You’re joking with me … A doctor get sick??

Well, reality is … contrary to what people believe … they do get sick. Not often … but they do! Doctors are human too and at times, people do not realise this. Patients forget that doctors are human. And yes, doctors themselves sometimes forget they are human as well.  They are prone to the same illnesses and bad luck like the rest of us mortals are. No, being a doctor doesn’t protect you from the sicknesses that ail others!

Interestingly when our doctors at my work do have to take a sick day (rare), and my staff and I frantically start rescheduling patients, most of them are fine with it. But do you know, we do get the occasional person who does get angry or upset because the doctor is sick. In their minds, apparently, that is not possible. So we must be making it up for him/her to go golfing, or as I occasionally hear … to ‘have another holiday’. Hmmm, says the wife of the principal GP, “What holidays???”

It is not often that you hear the phrase …”my appointment was cancelled because my doctor was sick”. No, it is quite the opposite. It is usually the patient expressing ‘that I am sick and I need to see a doctor’. At times there seems to be an unspoken belief that by the doctor devoting himself to caring for others, it should magically protect him/her from those same diseases they fight.
Right?

Wrong!!
Oh yes, they do get sick. Not often mind you, but they do! I know because this week my doctor husband became victim to one of those illnesses. One of those extreme influenza bugs where you are coughing and aching and generally feeling poorly.

And how did he manage?

Well apart from me berating him for going to work to the surgery every day, for me being cross with him for still doing that demanding nightshift and the afterhours on-calls, and for him working while he was feeling poorly, he appeared to manage and make his way to the end of the week!

Was I happy? Not at all. Nope, husband and wife  were definitely NOT in the same framework or mindset this week!

I have a scrabble letter board on my refrigerator that indicates to my husband generally my mindset and mood for the week … and this week it certainly told him my thoughts! (This is such a great device every woman should have one!.- See my covering picture!)

Of course I wanted him to stop and take time off. What wife would not want this? Truthfully, I was actually quite irritated with him for not taking time out, for ‘soldering on’ as the advertisement tells us. I was unhappy with him as I lay there concerned, listening to him cough at night and not breathing correctly, lying in a sporadic sleep, while replenishing his body with fluids and Panadol (oh yes – he did actually listen to some of the advice he gives to others). I was highly displeased with him as he rose the next morning to attend to his sick patients in the practice. I watched his pale face throughout the day to make sure he was feeling ok and was not going to pass out on me. Oh – one concession, he did wear a facemask!

Now I have to admit, that was a funny scenario when the patients saw him with this item. Picture the patients sitting in the waiting room and their usually chatty, happy GP walks out, but this time, instead of seeing his smiling features, the face is now covered in this mask to prevent germs and contamination. There were a few funny comments and some ‘taken back’ somewhat surprised expressions on patients’ faces … what a shame I did not film it! But at least I guess he took charge of preventative medicine!

But back to the main discussion, while we generally curl up in bed and ‘die’ from our flu, particularly men … doctors still choose to go to work out of commitment, out of their sense of duty. Interestingly,  the JAMA Pediatrics 2015 online article stated that most doctors continue to work while they are sick due to fears of letting down colleagues and patients. A survey of 300 doctors in a US Children’s hospital in Philadelphia found that more than 80% of doctors reported working when sick. The same article reported that’ Sick GP’s often go to work because they feel under pressure – they have appointments coming out of their ears and patients who cannot see them may have to wait a week or two weeks. GP’s’s are the sort of people who have a sense of duty and keep turning up” Australian Doctor 17^th July 2015.

Yes, mine did!

I can only speak here from a few years personal experience, but generally speaking, I understand that the doctor cannot afford to get sick. Basically, Medicine is number one. The patients come first, irrespective of time or day. Doctors don’t get personal days off or take any ‘sickies’. They can’t leave their critically ill patient or expect any other member of the medical team to just cover for them. As much as they would like to, they just cannot ring up and say, “I am not coming in – find someone else.”  They still have to visit their in-patients who rely on seeing their doctor during their morning rounds. They also do not have any control over those patients who get admitted to the local hospital at the very last minute, or the surgery appointment visits that last longer than planned, or the emergency patient that popped up right as they are supposed to be finishing up for the day. No – from firsthand experience working with my husband, you cannot turn away a sick child, a feverish baby, a bleeding wounded patient or an acutely sick adult. Instead you welcome them and settle them into the waiting room in order to see the doctor whatever hour or time of day it is. Then, after the face-to-face interactions have ceased, they still have to get through the never ending paper work, pathology reports, specialist letters, and legal letters even when they are feeling tired, drained and ‘sick’.

And as a wife who was very, very annoyed and displeased with her sick doctor husband this week, I don’t think any of us can ever understand what we are walking into when we agree to marry a man who is in the medical path. Even if someone tries to explain it to you, it is  not something you can truly understand until you live it … and sometimes it can be an extremely lonely place to be.
When you distinguish, that apart from the hour or more of hospital morning rounds each day before the fully scheduled daily practice appointments between 9 and 5, each weekend ,many hours are also taken up with visiting his in-patients and talking with their families. When you have to book those days and weekends ahead for you and the immediate family to coincide with when he is not on-call for obstetrics or afterhours calls. When you have to plan an actual holiday or that long weekend so far in advance for this Principal Practice GP to actually take time off. When you know that as the phone rings at whatever time or day it is the local hospital or midwife with a call about a sick person, a pregnant woman or a woman in labour, and my doctor husband will always answer the call. Then count the hours undertaken by one person each week in their medical vocation.

But they do it.
They choose to do it.
My husband does it, because that is who he is.

And I do it too.
But in an entirely different way.

I have realised that choosing to be married to a doctor you are in this vocation together!
Yes, I chose this.

When I have shared him enough and as cross as I get and unhappy with the hours spent medically, I do understand where he is coming from. Even though I feel left out and feel we have limited time together, I do understand. As much as I may not always like the demands and mostly keep silent (or when necessary to speak outright – actually my body language information does it for me), I do generally accept it. I do try to see it from his perspective of the rhyme and reason of what and why he doing this.

You learn about patience as you watch the clock waiting for him to come home on a weekend so you can attend a function together.
You learn to accept the erratic hours … although at times it is hard, because if you don’t, then you know that anger and bitterness will begin to take root.
You learn to extend that forgiveness and that grace time after time when medical problems take him away because simply that is the way it is! You do understand.

And you learn that when we do have time together, that it is a special time, one-on-one and we both try to make it so.

We both try to not take our relationship for granted.

So, am I a martyr?
Do I just grin and bear it and smile sweetly waiting like the 1950’s wife for him to come home from work, for him to finish with his responsibilities and sit down and rest? To take his shoes off and have dinner ready and ask ‘how was his day?’

Oh no, not at all. Just ask my husband!

Firstly I work with him!

He knew I was angry.
He knew I was cross with him for going to work when he was sick.
He knew I was frustrated that he was sick and would not admit he was sick and simply stop work to let his own body heal.

Reality, you may accept things as a doctor’s wife, but you can also be vocal.
You can be understanding but you can also have your own viewpoint when necessary.
And believe me, this week I definitely had mine.
I love him and accept his commitment and what he does, but I also told him off!

Now as I write this blog, a new week is dawning. My sick doctor husband is on the mend. And yes he will return to work this week feeling much chirpier and more resilient. As his wife, I am happier too!

And I guess, quite unsurprisingly, my body is now feeling the beginnings of my husband’s influenza’s illness having its ‘influence’ on me.I guess that is the price you pay when you sleep with the doctor!

So – the significance of my blog story for this week?
The next time you go to the doctors, think about the hours he or she does in attending and caring for you.
Think about the rest of the medical team who work with ‘your’ doctor and depend upon this doctor; think about all the patients who truly depend upon ‘your’ doctor.
When you are tired of waiting to see ‘your’ doctor, or you cannot get an appointment straight away when you want to, think about the many hours already spent by him/her in their time given.

Most importantly, as you are sitting there feeling physically ill, upset, and emotionally drained in your own sickness and pain, think about that person you see as ‘your’ doctor. Try to think about them as a person and not just as your doctor.

Then perhaps, when you visit them next time, try to remember that behind that person, they too might have a wife, a husband, a family, who are all working together as part of  ‘your’ doctor’s commitment to you; collectively as one, in caring for you.

And, that, we are all, after all, quite mortal.