Dear Cali Chica:

The SD option has a few Ifs: if he meets his overhead costs, if he kills enough to eat enough (“the private model of eat what you kill”), if the somewhat-retiring doctor’s plan to back off from practice doesn’t change.

These ifs may be okay for some people but not for others. Imagine your husband having a day with only one patient, when the plan calls for three, how many white hairs are added to his head? One day spent being anxious is a long, long time. Even low-level worry, like a persistent itch, adds up.

You want a husband who is as calm as possible, a calm father to your planned children. The tidy list of pros and cons is a list on a two dimensional medium, a paper, but the man, he lives in a three dimensional medium where time has to be considered in connection to anxiety:

-on paper, you write if X happens (ex.: other doctor stays as busy), then we will do Y (whatever it may be), but in the 3D medium of life, X happens and there is that long, long space of time that nothing happens. There is no immediate, quick jump from X to Y. Within that time, for many people, white hairs grow and the heart and brain grow heavier and heavier.

anita