First of all, congratulations to the many young medical students, soon-to-be residents, and their families who recently found out the results of the 2019 Match! A couple weeks ago was Match Day, a phenomenon that I had thought I might write about but which Lara McElderry of the Married to Doctors podcast and blog did so much more thoroughly than I would have! I highly encourage you to go over to her website and check out her post on the entire NRMP Match process. And while you're there, you can listen to her podcast, including a couple episodes where she interviewed me! Narcissism aside, Married to Doctors is an extremely valuable resource for all people in a medical marriage or partnership, and for the friends and family of doctors who want to better understand the experience.
Reflecting on J's Match reminds me of the moments in its wake when extremely well-meaning people wanted to share their wisdom and advice for this new stage in our lives. The problem was, many of these people were either not familiar with surgical specialties or were not involved in the medical field at all, so not all of the suggestions were equally useful. But what did I know? I was only just learning about what it meant to be a doctor's partner, and I had no clue! So I smiled and nodded and tried desperately to take their advice, only to realize months or even years later that their well-intentioned words may have done more harm than good. If only there had been a resource for them to learn what to say to this new almost-surgical-spouse in their midst...
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Seven years ago I sent a Facebook message to a stranger:
"Okay, this is going to seem incredibly forward and possibly a bit bizarre, but I hope you'll continue reading. . ." Throughout the month of January 2012 I had been seeing a guy I met online, a graduate student studying astrophysics or some such science in Chicago. He was nice enough, but I could tell after a few weeks that it wasn't going to work out. When I told this to a friend over email she responded "Well that's too bad. BUT there are plenty of other fish in the sea! You should really check out this guy, . . ." So I did. I checked out his Facebook. I checked out his JDate profile. I Googled him. My 21st-century-pre-date-research (which is definitely not the same as stalking) revealed he was smart, goofy, and almost definitely not a serial killer, so I sent him a Facebook message. Of course, I knew that when he checked Facebook only the first line or so of the message would appear before he clicked on it to read more, and I needed to make sure he wouldn't immediately dismiss my single attempt to contact him. He responded two days later, presumably after doing his own 21st-century-pre-date-research (definitely not stalking). Apparently what he saw (or didn't see) was enough to convince him because, as he wrote in his response, "It's a good thing I kept reading because that opening line really made it seem like the rest of the message was going to be asking me to donate money for a lost prince of Nigeria." Have you ever opened up a journal or diary from when you were an adolescent and just cringed? You probably wrote about how the world was ending because your crush didn't smile at you one day, or how your parents were "the worst," or maybe how you were so in love with your boyfriend/girlfriend and you were certain it would never end. . .
And then you put it away and think "Thank God I've grown up!" Those written mementos, melodramatic as they may be, are valuable reminders of how things change with time, perspective, and maturity. When we write them we have no concept of how to contextualize the problems into a larger picture, into a timeline of personal development that will inevitably reshape and resize the roles of those problems in our lives. And although reading them can be painful ("OMG I can't believe I thought that!"), they are a great means of measurement for how far we've come in life. Well, apparently our capacity for melodrama doesn't always mellow with age. This week we have a special guest post written by my husband, J! We've spent a lot of time over this vacation talking about how precious our time has become with our families throughout residency, and he asked to write about it from his perspective. I hope you all enjoy!
I met her for the first time on a sweltering June day. I was alone except for my backpack and three suitcases stuffed to the seams with everything I thought mattered. She waited for me with a crossed-arms, foot-tapping impatience that made me feel apologetic for any extra moment I took to get my bearings. At the curb outside the airport, she pushed me into a cab smelling suspiciously and excessively pleasant; the first of many affronts to the senses. The cab - whose air-conditioning was conveniently broken - raced and crawled and lurched and pushed its way through thick evening traffic, leaving my stomach trying desperately to hold on. She sneered.
The stairs of the Medical College seemed at once insignificant and insurmountable. We walked together, both full of insincere confidence.
“We can do this,” I said, more to myself than to him. “And I will be happy. But whatever happens, we’d better not end up living in Borough Park, Brooklyn.” I smiled at the sheer absurdity of the thought -- being not only in New York, but in a neighborhood where Yiddish was the lingua franca, where I would be an outcast. He squeezed my hand and I knew he hoped his parents and classmates wouldn’t see even that tiny indication of the trepidation we both felt. I've often thought that I should share my experiences with the world, but I've held back for fear of not having an audience. But then there are the occasional afternoons or lonely evenings spent on Google searches and blog posts, reading the experiences of others in similar situations, and they bring me hope, comfort, or sometimes a healthy dose of head-nodding, finding camaraderie and companionship in these strangers' words.
Because let's face it: being a resident's wife is really hard. And being a surgical resident's wife is hard. And being a small-town girl thrown into a big city is hard. And not having family around is hard. And living in New York is just plain hard. |
AuthorNashira is a music teacher and proud Small-Town Jew who, after surthriving six years in Brooklyn for her husband's surgical residency, is finally back in Wisconsin where she belongs! At least until the end of the two-year surgical fellowship, that is. It's a wild ride, and she's ready to tell you all about it! Archives
September 2019
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