The Other Side

If you read our profile you'll see that we own a small business of screen-printed children's tees and that we have day jobs. But what we haven't really discussed is Tom's day job. He assists in surgery at a local hospital. We feel lucky that he has the job and was able to cut his hours back to part-time because the business continually grows. This sounds nice, expect that his job isn't a normal job. When I say part-time I mean 20 hours a week (7:00am-5:30pm two days a week) but then there is the call. He must be on call at least once a week (7:00pm-7:00am) and then take call for a weekend (Friday 7:00pm-Monday 7:00am) about once a month (it used to be worse- every other week- when they were short staffed on and off for a year). When he is on call he must be at the hospital within 25 minutes. The call is the stressful part because he (we) have no idea of how our night or weekend will end up. Sometimes it is very quiet, but other times, more often than not, it can be crazy.
Take this weekend for example:

Friday: Hospital 7am-5:30pm
Saturday: Farmers Market 7am-2pm
Hospital 3pm-10pm (Appendectomy and ORIF Mid Shaft Humeral And Radial Fractures)
Sunday: Hospital 12am-6am (Multiple Stab Wounds To The Chest)
Hospital 9am-2pm (Laproscopic Cholecystectomy And An Appendectomy)
Hospital 5:45pm-? (Appendectomy)

So, it's Sunday night and almost 10pm and I haven't heard anything yet. I don't know when he'll be home, I just know that it ends at 7am tomorrow morning. Luckily, he doesn't have to go back in to hospital to work a normal shift until Wed (which is a new policy that changed recently). But we have a bunch of work for the business that needs to finished by the end of the week.
You might be wondering why he(we) keep(s) doing this. It's for the health insurance. If we were to buy our current health insurance out of pocket through our business it would cost us $12,000 a year for our family of four. We're just not there yet. We feel so fortunate that we have the insurance and it's the best out there. We are very liberal in our thinking and believe that all should have excellent health care provided by the government. But until then, we will keep working to move forward so we don't have to live on this crazy schedule just to stay healthy and not go bankrupt because of medical bills.

Update:
Well, Tom came home that night at 11:30pm, went to bed at 12:00am. Then was called in again at 3:00am (Ventoral Hernia with Incarcerated Bowel) and came home at 8:00am Monday morning. Crazy!