July 4, 2025

It’s 657AM and I’m going soon to jog to my parents’ house to visit my dad. He had cataracts surgery. I’m getting older too and I didn’t fully realize what happens to a woman’s body as she ages. It’s been much harder on me than I realized, knowing that I have to wear this patch and take supplements that my doctor recommended to feel okay. It’s hard to know that you are relying on something to feel like you – does that make sense?

Just here typing on the blog, and returning to where I can be me. I think there are still folks reading? But I’m not really sure and honestly this was always just me living in my own head.

Our own son wants to be a doctor now, and a pediatrician in fact. It feels so right. His father and I have told him his entire life not to be a doctor. We are both physicians. And even with that and being born during our residency and how chaotic our parenting and our lives were during the years we were raising him, he still wants to be a doctor.

I’ll be honest. I’m still a practicing pediatrician despite my forays into legislative advocacy, buying a tree farm and all the “side quests” I’ve been on. I still see patients and have to decide diagnosis and imaging, and talk to so many children and families through the day. I’m absolutely happy being a pediatrician. Every day I walk into clinic and I am so happy to be where I am. I don’t think too much about the next clinical day. I absolutely don’t dread it anymore. I just do what I’m meant to do, which is doctoring. I’m happy.

But the realization that our son wants to be a doctor too, makes me worried. It is bringing back all the good and the terrifying moments that my husband and I lived together. The journey has not been easy, and in fact it’s been incredibly hard. I am not dissuading him. I am supportive. But as a mother who is a doctor, it’s the next stage in my life that I did not expect.

I just wanted to let the readership know. It’s terrifying to me. I wish he’d pick something easier.

But he’s the kindest boy. He was the easiest baby. And he’ll make a wonderful pediatrician. He has the absolute biggest heart. But it’s understandable that as his mother and knowing exactly the path he is entering, I am knowingly . . . reflective about it all.