From the forums

This was posted over on the forum, but I wanted it to receive a little more attention. Anyone have thoughts, ideas, or advice for Janice?

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I am glad to read that a lot of posts are coming from the surgical spouse stand point. I am married to a (newly) second year gen surg intern. We have been together throughout medical school. So many people told me that the first year of marriage was the hardest and I always responded that the first year was going to be easy (his 4th yr of med school). It was his intern year that was going to be hard. Well, we made it past intern year with a few bumps and bruises, but for the most part okay. But this are starting to not be awesome and I am hoping to get some advice.

In general our lives have been a whorl-wind... moving multiple times in 4 years (hurricane katrina, moving to texas, back to new orleans , then back to ohio (where we are both originally from). Getting married, having a baby and random family drama. So basically we have never really gotten to take a step back and just relax.

Because surgery tends to not follow the 80 work week and the call schedule can be brutal my husband only thinks about sleep: wanting to sleep longer in the morning, wanting to nap, when's then next time he can get sleep... you get the picture. For the most part I get it, he's tired. Well, I get it as much as I can get it. I do understand that his job is extremely hard and time-consuming, but I need him to understand that my life is not perfect and I am tired too. Whenever we have any disagreement it always goes back to him being tired and me not understanding that. Previously we were able to talk about anything and workout our problems. Now he just shuts down, sometimes because he is too tired to talk or discuss anything, partly because he thinks I will never understand what he goes through.

If anyone can throw any advice my way I would really appreciate it.

Janice