My Experience of Taking Calls at 3 a.m.

Over the years, I met medical spouses who considered their partner's achievement their own. Sometimes you  had to wonder who had been through the greater ordeal — the doctor who had navigated the studies, endured the residency, taken sleep-depriving call and fended off the malpractice claims while making life and death decisions... or the partner who had brought in the income during school, accepted the absences (physical and emotional), raised the kids, held the household and the marriage together and kept the martyred feelings down to a dull roar.

Hard as it might've been to be the spouse, the problem-solving and decisions weren't theirs. The thousand cares from a thousand anguished patients never weighed on their minds. Nobody died on their watch.

Sure, every time the call from the hospital rang through at 3 a.m., I woke up. But that experience did not make me a doctor.