As a health care professional, Dr. Erika Rangel is trained to know when things are going wrong. That alarm went off one day in her fourth year of surgical residency. Her son, just 3 months old, had developed a fever. She couldn't be late for her operating shift, but his day care wouldn't accept him if he was sick. So she did what desperate mothers do and got inventive: She slipped liquid Tylenol into his bottle, in the hopes of lowering his temperature, and dropped him off.
Later that day, she stood in surgery with her eyes continually checking the clock, willing the operation to finish in time for pickup. She prayed that the day care wouldn't realize he was feverish. Had they noticed that his milk had turned medicine pink?
"I felt like I wasn't being a great mom or partner or resident," said Dr. Rangel, 42, now an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. "Something had to give. I thought about quitting a lot."
When Dr. Rangel was in medical school, she searched diligently for a specialty that she liked as much as surgery. Her friends cautioned her that if she became a surgeon, she would never have a personal life. She wouldn't have time for children, they warned — and what man would want a spouse who was constantly in the operating room?
"It became a tug of war between choosing a lifestyle profession versus something I truly loved with all my heart," Dr. Rangel said. "I chose surgery in spite of all the warnings, and I've spent my whole life navigating that balance."
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/science/doctors-surgery-motherhood-medical-school.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
