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... One couch. One full size bed (mattress, box spring, and metal frame). A bench, a shoe rack, an end table. Shelves, a desk, four chairs, two tables, and walls filled with framed photos and artwork (large and small, delicate and not-so-delicate, all equally cherished). A kitchen cart, a baker's rack, too many dishes.
Our apartment has been itemized into cubic feet and pounds, looked at and assessed by professionals who see cargo where I see a home. It's been an arduous month, but I have finally checked off the first major item on my "Moving to Milwaukee To Do List:" Find a moving company. When I started looking in January I thought the process would be relatively straightforward, but as with most things in adulthood I was sorely mistaken. It often felt like there was no one resource to give me all the information I really needed, so in true Type A fashion I did far more research than any normal human being would be expected to do. In the end, did it help me make a better decision? We won't really know until everything is delivered to us in Milwaukee in July. But until then, here is everything valuable that I learned in my research process. I hope that it can help at least one other person preparing for a long-distance move. I love Queer Eye.
When it popped up on Netflix I vaguely remembered the show from the early 2000s that I never watched because I have no taste for reality TV, so I scrolled right past it without a second thought. But when a few of my fellow teachers began singing its praises last Tuesday at an end-of-the-year celebration, I decided to check it out if for no other reason than to balance out the extremely dark, intense shows that have occupied watchlist over the last few months (Handmaid's Tale and Westworld, in case you're wondering). It's summer vacation, after all! I could use a little light. I started watching that night and was immediately hooked. My friend hadn't been exaggerating when she said she cried at least once every episode. I think I made it through all of fifteen minutes before something in that first episode rendered me sobbing happy tears. Unlike many reality shows, this show seemed to make a concerted effort to represent thoughtful dialogue and affect meaningful change in the lives of both the subjects and the hosts. Each episode culminates in both an outward and a deeply internal change within the subject. Although I have to question the longevity of these transformations, the premise is simple: people can always strive to be a better version of themselves through introspection, a supportive team, and a fresh haircut. I broke one of my rules.
Rule #5 explicitly states: "If your insurance is kind enough to cover mental health, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT! It is not because you are sick or damaged or need to "get better," but because the closest person in your life will not always be available to support you and listen to you, and a lot of the emotional work may fall on your shoulders. A good therapist can go a long way in making the residency experience easier to bear." Apparently your therapist's maternity leave is not a valid excuse to stop going to therapy, even temporarily, at a time when your world feels like it's falling apart. It didn't take me long to learn one of the top ten lessons for surthriving residency: to "find a tribe." Participation in a tribe, or community, though a meaningful part of any healthy lifestyle, becomes an absolute necessity when your better half is absent. The relative value of that tribe increases with every compounded variable, whether it's a cross-country move, moving to a place with few existing connections, a spouse in one of the more demanding residences (they're all demanding, but some are more arduous than others), or, you know, all of the above.
In New York, community serves a secondary function: to make the city a little smaller and more manageable. As we prepared for our move someone told me that even though New York is a huge city, it begins to shrink the moment you settle into your neighborhood and your routines. Finding your routes and your haunts, your favorite coffee shops and 99-cent stores, that bar you go to with one friend and the restaurant you go to with another, these are the things that turn The Big Apple into something more bite-sized. Even in How I Met Your Mother, the characters agreed New York City was The Best Place On Earth™ while sitting at the same booth in the same bar night after night. The truth is that Manhattan or Brooklyn or the Bronx might be where you live, but your neighborhood is your home. It should come as no surprise, then, that upon arriving in Brooklyn I had one very singular goal: to find a community. Many surgical residencies strive to provide a variety of experiences and opportunities to their residents, though few hospitals have the resources or personnel to wholly represent every specialty. They can make up for this in the form of away rotations at other hospitals, usually for a month-long interval at specific points throughout the training program. In J's case, he's had opportunities to rotate through a community hospital that afforded him greater independence and responsibility, a renowned transplant program, and a massive hospital devoted entirely to trauma with significantly more severe and varied cases than his own hospital's trauma team sees in any given month. The first two of these away rotations were, thankfully, in New York City, but the latter is in Baltimore. It is undoubtedly a great opportunity, but unpleasant to have to spend a month apart, each of us living alone in apartments over three hours away. Still, in the weeks leading up to the rotation, we knew we would manage. We always do.
But life has a funny way of turning things on their heads and throwing wrenches into plans. 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!
It was nearly midnight and I was on the couch. J, meanwhile, was fast asleep in bed. It was nothing he'd asked of me, but I felt I did not deserve to share that space with him after what I'd said. It hadn't been intentional, I told myself, and I felt sorry the moment I said it, but there was no denying the harm it had caused. My negative feelings, warranted as they might have been, were no reason for taking them out on him. Since opening that letter on Match Day 2013, there was a word that occasionally popped into my mind unbidden, unwanted, but undeniable. The word brought with it a feeling that made me afraid of who I was and where our life would take us, and I pushed against it every time it surfaced. I refused to voice it to anyone for fear of giving it life, convinced it would tear us apart if it were allowed to exist.
Resentment. |
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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