Where Did the Weekend Go?

It is Sunday evening, 6:42 p.m. Outside, it is slightly cloudy and relatively cold. I don’t think it is more than 17 degrees. I am sharing the couch with Luca, who is making faces and whining because he has a bit of a cold and is very tired. He hasn’t slept for a few hours now, and at this point he is behaving like a little brontosaurus. The fact that I suctioned the snot out of his nose did not exactly help with his peace and harmony. And now I can hear him and his mother trying to negotiate a peace treaty. “Daddy upset you and now I have to calm you down? Tell me! Is that fair?”... Inside, I can’t help but smile. After all, each of us has our own clearly defined responsibilities. Judging by the sounds coming through the open door, though, I don’t think there is much chance of him calming down.

I was lying on the sofa, realizing that tomorrow is Monday. Where the hell did the weekend go? Especially considering that I don’t work on Fridays, so I actually have a long weekend. The last time I was at work was Thursday evening. I had so many plans for this weekend—or rather, not plans exactly, but expectations. I thought I would manage to get so many things done. Dream on!

On Friday, we spent the day recovering from the week before. We had breakfast together and started putting the house back in some kind of order. It is incredible how quickly mess accumulates when you don’t have time. At some point, I read a book on cell biology. Among many other things, it talked about cellular entropy and how, in fact, everything is subject to decay. Without the expenditure of energy, all matter in the universe will eventually turn into disorder, dust, debris, pieces of matter, particles. In that book, the authors compared it to a room in a house that becomes more and more disorganized as time passes. They used a similar idea to explain the physiology of the cell. The textbook was more than 1,000 pages long, and honestly, I don’t remember much of what I read anymore, but I remember very clearly the image of those two rooms: one clean and one messy.

On Friday morning, Laura stayed home with us because the poor little thing had a cold. Friday evening was much like Friday morning: we simply spent some slow time together as a family. Saturday morning, however, we had to get up at 7 a.m. At 8:30, we set off for Freiburg and a ballet club for Laura. On the way back, we did some shopping and managed to grab some lunch. From there, we went shopping again, and Laura ended up with a new pair of rain pants—the rainy season is coming—and some ballet clothes. Everything pink. She was absolutely glowing with happiness.

That evening, we met up with some friends who were celebrating an event. We got home late, accompanied by the screams and tears of exhausted children. The general in the family immediately started handing out assignments: “Pick a child and let’s go!” Next to me was Luca, lying on his back, trying to see whether he could spit upward and catch the spit with his face, so I settled for the task of changing his clothes. Just like on Friday evening, I couldn’t go straight to bed. Under my new standard of exercising and losing weight, I do at least one hour of exercise every day. I was hoping that even if I sacrificed some time last night, this morning I would finally be able to sleep for as long as I wanted. What a lie.

At 7 a.m., someone was sneaking into bed next to me. “Daddy, are you awake?”... “Uhh... Yes, I’m awake! Why?”... “Well, I'm hungry and I thought I’d wake you up so you could make me your omelette!”... After one sweet hug and many even sweeter kisses, Daddy walked downstairs in search of eggs.

While my girls were having breakfast, I had already started studying. In a way, medicine is a bitch. Six years of med school, followed by another fourteen in the form of two residency programs, two specialist exams, and enough years actually working as a specialist, only to realize I know nothing. Today I spent five hours of my life rereading medical literature. More specifically, I was reading about cardiac arrest and trying to figure out how I fit into my new role as a family physician. I can no longer do the same things I could do in the hospital, and when it comes to resuscitation, I am realizing just how limited the options available to me actually are.

But that wasn’t what shocked me the most. Of course it makes sense that I no longer have the entire apparatus of an intensive care unit at my disposal. What shocked me much more was the feeling that I am constantly forgetting what I have learned. I don’t know how it is for other colleagues, but every time I start rereading medical literature, I realize just how much I have forgotten. You read it and forget it, then read it again and forget it again.

After I finished studying, we all ate together, and I very deliberately moved straight on to exercising. I spent the next three hours cooking: wraps with minced meat, spinach, red beans and potatoes; broccoli cream soup with wild boar sausages; and an onion stew with chicken in tomato sauce. Yes, it is a lot of food, but it will keep us going for a few days—days when we won’t have to cook something in a hurry. “Cooking something quickly” usually means cooking something unhealthy. Fat guys like me don’t have the luxury of playing with fire like that.

So, you see... what did I actually do these past few days? If I were to break it down clearly: I spent my time running around after the kids, Laura went to ballet, I exercised, and we met up with friends. But the last 72 hours feel like a black hole that passed without me even noticing. When I was 30, time seemed to move more slowly. It felt like I had time to think, to decide what I wanted to do, and then still have time left to actually do it. Today, almost every second of my life is occupied by something that needs to be done. Is it simply that I’m getting older? Or is this just the normal pace of life?

I have to go... Luca’s awake and crying.