Sacrifices

Abstract

Sacrifices Efrat Lelkes I've always been goal-oriented. Since I was a teenager, I've known what my life would look five, ten years ahead of time. I went straight through—straight to college from high school, to medical school, through residency, fellowship, and to a junior faculty position in academia. I never stopped to ask if this was the right path for me, nor did I ask what I was missing throughout this path. For me, the honor of being in academia meant that I kept going without questioning. I theoretically knew that sacrifices were intrinsic to becoming a physician, especially a physician-scientist. But to be an academician, I believed, was what I was supposed to be, and thus I knew that I would sacrifice sleep, money, and a "normal life" for a long time. I just didn't realize that I would sacrifice myself. In my mid-thirties, I began to recognize that the life I had forged as a physician-scientist was destroying me. I hated being in the lab. I missed my patients. I spent my time away from work living a very unhealthy life. And so, abruptly, I left the lab and my career as a scientist, and I transitioned to being a full-time pediatric critical care physician. I did so with the belief that I was a failure. I did so without considering the need to care for myself and to truly ask what I needed. I just believed I needed to serve others. The pressure I put on myself was immense. I started to mistrust myself as a clinician. I started to make mistakes. I deeply despised myself. And then I broke. With severe depression and anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and a need to run away, I left home for a year under the guise of further training in palliative medicine. It was the year that saved my life, and it was the year that I began to appreciate how much I had given up for this career. It was when I learned that academia was not life, and it was then that I learned what I truly wanted. I wanted a family. I had wasted so much time pretending that I didn't. No glory had been afforded—especially for young women in this world—to needing a companion. I was supposedly superhuman; I didn't need anyone else—whenever anyone asked what was wrong, I would defiantly aver that I was fine—and to suggest otherwise meant that I was a burden and useless. But, by my late thirties, after my year away, after starting to heal, I was learning otherwise. I wanted to belong and to connect. I wanted a partner. Just as much, I wanted to become a mom. So I entered the world of fertility, deciding to become a single mom by choice. My reproductive endocrinologist was remarkable, my friends and my family were supportive, and I felt courageous, proud, and ready. [End Page E16] And, just as I started this process alone, I fell in love for the first time. I met a man the same month I started to try to get pregnant through Intrauterine Insemination (IUI). The first cycle did not work. I was sad, and he supported me. The second cycle did not work, and I was relieved. He was as well. We were becoming part of each other's lives, and we were excited about the future. I chose to put motherhood aside to focus on us, in theory. But, in truth, it was hard not to think about it daily. I knew that I was getting to the end of my reproductive years. Though I wanted a fairy tale, and I wanted us to be together, the aching to be a mom would not subside. I tried to quash it, but it would bubble up, and it would explode. I should have listened to him when he told me he was not ready. We perhaps should have made different decisions about our relationship. But we were deeply in love, we believed in us, so we forged ahead. After an eternity of pressure by me—and pressure fueled by...