Ten years time

Today the (future) missis and I were chatting about the future. We know where we want to be in 10 years. She wants to be a GP, with a special interest in the clap clinic, I want to be working a couple of days a week in something medical or paediatrics. We want to be living in the area that we live in now, and working in this bruised and beautiful city where we first met. We will be married, and on the path to adoption. We will be doctors, but not only doctors - we will be mothers, friends, spouses, daughters, sisters, Guide leaders and home-makers. When we get married, we will know what it means to love each other when we're sick and when we're well.

We know what we want our lives to look like, but there's just that little bit of extra uncertainty for us. I need to work less than full-time, and we need to live together because she is my carer. Foundation years are complicated for anyone, but there's just that little bit of extra hassle for us. We will have to be more organised, more disciplined and more patient. We will have less money. Where other people are stretched, we will be stretched just that little bit further.

Add up a lifetime of 'just-a-little-bit-harder's, and eventually you reach the straw that breaks the camel's back. We have given up a lot for medicine, but we will not give up everything. We are living day-to-day to make it through these few months, these few years until we graduate, because you can't study medicine part time. We are living day-to-day on the understanding that one day it will be different. On the understanding that one day those things that make life worth living will not be sucked into the vacuum that medicine creates in my energy.

When is enough, enough?