The Intern Blues(111)

Friday, March 21, 1986

I know this is going to sound crazy. It doesn’t make much sense, but it’s true. I’m pregnant! I found out today. I think it’s great, but I know everybody else is going to think I’m crazy.

I’ve been feeling lousy for a couple of weeks now. I’ve been run-down and a little nauseous all the time, but I just figured it was internship finally getting to me. And my period didn’t come last week, but that’s not so strange; it happens to me a lot. I saw Susannah in clinic last week and I was telling her how bad I was feeling and she said, “It sounds like you’re pregnant. Is that possible?” I hadn’t really even thought about it until then. I told her it was certainly possible, and she told me to send off a urine sample. I found out this afternoon that it was positive. Unbelievable!

Larry came home from Switzerland yesterday. I told him a little while ago. He thinks it’s wonderful. We’re both very excited. We’d talked about waiting until I was a junior resident before we tried again. I’m about six weeks now, which means I’m due sometime around next November. Sarah will be only about eighteen months then. That’s closer than we had planned. And it means that for the last year and a half of my residency, I’ll have two babies to worry about instead of one. But what the hell? One thing I’ve learned over the past few weeks is that we have to do what’s best for us, and I think having this baby is the best thing for me, for Larry, and for Sarah.

I’m not going to tell anybody about this just yet. A lot of things can happen. I had a miscarriage in my first pregnancy, and that can certainly happen again. And anyway, the chiefs probably are not going to be exactly thrilled when they hear about this. But I don’t care. That’s their problem. I really don’t care what they or anybody else thinks.

I just hope I can make it through next month in the neonatal intensive-care unit! If I continue to feel the way I do now, it isn’t going to be easy.





Mark


MARCH 1986

Sunday, March 16, 1986

It’s taken me a while to get back to normal, but here I am, having as much fun as I had during the first six months of this nightmare. Yes, even though I came that close to doing a triple gainer off the top of Jonas Bronck Hospital just two short weeks ago, life’s now become a barrel of laughs again.

This last month has really been pretty disturbing. I mean, I always had this idea that I was immune to getting depressed or something. I really didn’t think anything could get me down. I guess I just happened to stumble on the secret recipe for major depression: You take one garden-variety intern, deprive him of sleep for a couple of months, make him eat take-out pizza every meal during that time, and force him to take care of the sickest babies on the face of the earth. Mix well and let him marinate in his own juices for three weeks. Then you collect the pieces in a body bag and send them off to the morgue. I guess I managed to interrupt the process right before I made it to the final step.

I really can’t take credit for saving myself. Carole really did it. She took care of me, and I’m really thankful to her. Our relationship had been going down the tubes over the past few months. And it’s all been my fault; I mean, I’ve kind of had other things on my mind, like sleeping and eating, and I haven’t been paying much attention to her. So things hadn’t been great between us. I was starting to have some doubts that our relationship would make it through the year; of course, I was also having some doubts that I would make it through the year, so my concerns about the relationship were not exactly at the top of my list of things to worry about.

Anyway, over the past few weeks Carole has just about moved into my apartment. She’s somehow figured out how to get rid of all the cockroaches. I have to admit, things are nicer without all the wildlife even though they had kind of become my pets. She’s been here every night when I came home from work and she’s been really understanding, listening to me complain about everything imaginable, from how much I hate my patients to the fact that the West Bronx coffee shop was closed down by the Health Department because of “unsanitary conditions.” (The amazing thing is, that was the best coffee shop in the system. I guess mouse droppings and rat hairs really do make everything taste better.) I know I wouldn’t have gotten back to normal, if you can possibly call what I am now normal, if it hadn’t been for her being here when I needed her. Well, enough of this; it’s starting to sound like a sermon or something.

So for the past couple of weeks I’ve been working in OPD on the west campus. It certainly has been a welcome relief compared with the neonatal eternal-care unit. I like the emergency room because it gives you the chance over a very short period of time to torture a large number of children who, if you’re lucky, you’ll never have to see again. That’s a unique opportunity. It almost makes being an intern seem like fun. Not quite, but almost.