My husband is a hero. There's no doubt about it. I mean, how else do you describe someone who not only doesn't get furious at you when you manage to drop your e-reader in the tub AND lose a credit card in the same weekend, but actually gives you the last piece of his favorite candy just because he loves you?
Yeah, I'm married to a saint. The fact that he's a surgeon (he'll debate me and say he's still just a "surgical resident," but I don't care, he's a surgeon) just adds to his sainthood. You know, that whole saving lives thing. What he does every single day, whether he's actively saving lives or simply caring for ill patients, is no small feat. But that's not actually what I'd like to talk about here. Yes, he does amazing work and he's an unbelievably patient and loving husband, but he is also showing me that there is hope for a brighter future in the often dismal world of surgical education.
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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... Nine months ago the online application system opened for Surgical Critical Care, the specialty in which J decided long ago he wanted to do a fellowship after residency.
Eights months and two weeks ago, J submitted the Surgical Critical Care common application, indicating over thirty programs to receive it, most of them on either the East Coast or the Midwest in places we could reasonably consider living for a year. Six months ago, J flew out to Chicago for the first of what would be many interviews. Twenty-two in total, in fact, the last of which was one month ago. Two weeks ago, J submitted a ranked list of all those programs in hopes that the Match gods would look favorably upon the top of our list. In two days, we find out where J's education will take us after Residency. 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. A couple months ago I found myself at large, relaxed Shabbat lunch filled with about 15 people, half of whom were new to me. I eventually wandered my way into a conversation with two young women where we spoke about our careers, their dating lives, and my marriage. One of them had recently started dating a medical student and was trying to wrap her head around his education, so I began explaining the detailed process of becoming a doctor - not just getting the MD with your medical school diploma, but the training that follows. After what ended up being a rather long explanation, she said with eyes wide: "Wow, I bet your husband wouldn't be able to describe your career training so well!" J and I recently bought a new couch to replace his old one that was, shall I say, well loved. It was so well loved that it didn't sit much higher than a futon, and you could feel the springs under the cushion if you sat down too fast. Since we're living on a training budget in Brooklyn we try to avoid major expenses like new furniture, but I was finally able to convince him it was time to say his goodbyes to his sofa and welcome a new one into our home. As we hemmed and hawed over whether or not we should spring for the protection plan (we did; I'm a slob), he did a quick Google search for median salaries in his field, just to reassure us that someday this won't seem like such a big deal. The purchase, that is, not his mild case of disposophobia.
More often than not, instead of actually spending money on things for our home we just talk about the wonderful home we'll have when he is done with training and we're settled down. It's little more than a fun game, a way for us to make light of the circumstances we unwittingly find ourselves in. But I also find it a particularly useful exercise when things just don't seem to be going according to plan, whether it's because of some emotional trauma or because I burned myself on the radiator that is unavoidably too close to my side of the bed. In addition to helping me cope it's also a reminder that I won't always live in an apartment built without a single 90-degree angle, or that someday I'll have a closet that fits both my winter sweaters and summer blouses simultaneously. My family likes to remind me to dream big because, after all, I'm married to a doctor! So here it is: |
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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