That Interview Invite

After the application is in….secondaries have been received and sent back off…comes the agonizing wait for interview invitations…or rejection letters.

That first rejection letter HURTS….and hurts even more when it was a top choice school.  It feels like all of you and your spouse’s hopes and dreams just went up in smoke.  Good news…they didn’t!  If you are like most people, the application went out to a ton more schools. Which means that there is a bunch more emails or envelopes that still can help you out in reaching that dream! 

That first interview invite is so exciting!  (I’m thinking Sally Field “You like me.  You really like me.”)  It’s confirmation that all of that hard work has finally paid off, that all of that extra time doing research or shadowing served a purpose and all those hours spent on the application and secondary were worth every minute.

My husband scheduled his first interview for the first open spot.  It was about a month away.  Luckily for us, it was driving distance (about 4 hours).  I started looking for a hotel.  Then my mom asked, “Are you going with him?”  I never really thought about it.  But, yes, I wanted to!  After all, it wasn’t only him moving for 4 years…it was our whole family.  I wanted to check out housing, the schools, the community, and talk to people.  So we made the arrangements for me to join him.  I’m so glad I did.

While he was in his interview, I drove around town, talked to moms at the park, and found the elementary schools.  I ate lunch at a restaurant with free wi-fi and browsed craigslist for local rentals.  Obviously they wouldn’t still be available when we moved, but they gave me a great idea of what was available, price ranges and I could see the neighborhoods.  I drove by most of those rentals. I left that town feeling so comfortable and confident that I could be perfectly happy raising my kids in this town.  That was huge.

I can’t help but write about his first interview.  It really is the worst nightmare for a first interview.  This goes to show you no matter how much planning you can’t always plan!  We arrived the day before the interview.  We drove around the town noting what was familiar and what was new. Found the school and found the easiest route from hotel to school.  We also timed the route.  The last thing my husband wanted was to be late….little did we know…

My husband is early to everything.  Not just a few minutes early but EARLY.  His interview was at 8:30am.  The school was 8 minutes from the hotel.  

We boarded the elevator at 7:45am.  The elevator went to the next floor and picked up 4-5 elderly guests…walkers, canes and all.  The doors shut and the elevator made this weird noise.  I looked at my husband in a panic.  The elevator wasn’t moving.  It was stuck between floors!

Of course, my husband starts freaking out!  He can’t be late to his first interview!  I push the elevator emergency button to which the person on the other end was less then helpful.  I pull out my phone and call the front desk and tell them we are stuck in an elevator…me and my husband along with 4-5 elderly guests.  They tell us they will call 911.

Fifteen more minutes go by…still nothing.  It’s now 8:00am.  He has his interview in 30 minutes.  We start Googling the school and seeing if anyone will answer on a Saturday.  Finally, someone at the school answers.  He explains who he is and that he is currently stuck in an elevator at the hotel the recommended.  He would be there as soon as he could. I call the front desk again and ask them a timeline…they say they have no clue.  I hang up and call 911 myself.  The operator tells me the fire fighters are in route.  Thank Goodness! 

8:10am the elevator doors crack open, a bright light is shone through, and we see a crew of fire fighters.  I climb out with the aid of the fire fighters.  The elevator has my husband and the elderly guests.  He can’t leave them there.  So, he helps lift all of the little old men and ladies out of the elevator…all the time praying he doesn’t rip the brand new suit he is wearing.  Finally, he climbs out.  It’s 8:20am.  Crap. He explains to the fire fighters what is going on….they had a great sense of humor about it and offered to write him a note for the interviewers!  We run to the car and rush to the interview.

He gets to his interview with 1 minute to spare.  He walks in and they knew who he was…no one gets to the interview only 1 minute early on purpose!  During the interview one of his first questions they asked was, “What is one of your biggest pet peeves?”  He responded with a laugh and ‘tardiness.’  He went on to explain what had happened that morning and how he had the privilege of meeting the towns fire fighters.  The interviewers laughed.

Eight days later…he was accepted! 

My husband scheduled 4 interviews and cancelled one of them.  But I went along on the other 3.  One we drove to, the others we had to fly to.  Luckily we had family at home to watch our kids.  The cost of me going was just the extra plane ticket.  No matter if I went or not we would have to rent a car and book a hotel room.  The extra cost to me going was the ticket and a couple extra meals.  Being able to view those cities, the schools, the neighborhoods, the people, helped me so much.  Moving for us is huge…we’ve never lived anywhere but within 30 minutes of where we grew up.  My husband had great input when it came to the medical school and I had different input because of the community.  It gave us the best of both worlds and we were able to decide on what school was best for him while keeping in mind what community was best for me and our kids. 

Tool bag

For the second time in less than a week, I have been extremely grateful that Brad carries a tool bag in his car. (I won't go into the story on here in case people aren't interested, but feel free to read it on my personal blog.) Anyway, the bag is awesome. It's like a first aid kit on steriods. Lots of tools you would want in a minor medical emergency. It's just a small messenger bag and he uses pencil cases to divide the tools by the emergency and keep things organized. Might I suggest you keep one close by? You never know when you will need one. :o)

Survivor Saturday--The "Family" Doc

Those of you with husbands in residency (or even some in medical school) are probably already aware of the phenomenon known as "free advice". Because your spouse is a physician, there are people in your life who will take advantage of that fact and will try to get his opinion on everything from the tiny little paper cut on their pinkie finger to the current health care crisis in America, regardless of his chosen specialty. Unfortunately, it comes with the territory, and I must admit that I'm guilty of it, too.

At no time was it more true for me than when I was pregnant with our son, since my husband was in his OB/Gyn residency then. Although I had my own OB to whom I went for my monthly visits, it was always much more convenient to turn to my husband when I had some question or concern weighing on my mind, like when I realized I had spent time in a hot tub before I even knew I was pregnant. I still occasionally go to him for advice, but I always feel guilty about it, since I've always had some notion that it's unethical to ask my own husband about such things. However, he's never seemed bothered by my concerns, especially when they really are something about which to be concerned. I don't know about your husbands, but mine never appears to get upset or anxious about anything. He's always been the calm, cool, collected one in our relationship, which is probably one of the reasons why I married him. He handles everything objectively and rationally, so when something doesn't seem to bother him, then I try to make certain it doesn't bother me either, even when we discovered our son was in a breech position late in my pregnancy and never turned before his birth.

It's probably my husband's calm, rational demeanor that gives some of our family members the idea it's okay to ask him about their particular medical conditions. If you haven't experienced this yet, it will definitely happen at some point after your husband starts practicing medicine. One day, he'll get a call from a parent or a sibling or a friend wanting to know what could possibly be causing this particular pain in this particular part of the body or why this particular thing is happening to this part of the body or whatever. I don't exactly know what our husbands are told in medical school or residency about how to handle these situations, but mine is usually fairly nice when it happens. He either gives his honest opinion if it's something that is within his realm of expertise, or he tells the person that he/she should seek the advice of another physician for his/her situation.

Sometimes, someone will ask your husband about his opinion on a medical diagnosis given them by their own physician. This has also happened to my husband, who told the person that they should seek advice from a specialist, and although nothing really came of it, it could have caused trouble, because the person went back to their physician and told him about my husband's advice. I'm sure no physician likes to hear that his/her patient is going behind his/her back for medical information, unless he/she recommends a second opinion in the first place. Of course, with the advent of the Internet and the massive amount of medical websites that are available to everyone, physicians are dealing with this all the time. But, I digress.

Another situation that may arise is a family member or friend may ask your husband for a new prescription or a refill on an existing prescription. Maybe someone else with more experience can weigh in on the ethics of this practice, which I have a feeling is illegal, unless the person is actually his patient. I, personally, have asked my husband to help me get a refill on my EpiPen (which still hasn't happened, because we both have been too busy to really think about it), but I go to his office for my medical care, so, technically, he is my physician. I still feel weird that I asked for it, though.

Any number of things can happen because your husband is now a physician. It can be much worse when he's a physician from a medical family. My husband's mother is a nurse, and his two sisters are both pharmacists. I'm not going to get into specifics, but I have heard so many arguments over certain drugs or the latest medical opinions on specific diseases or diagnostic tests that I sometimes just want to walk out of the room and find a quiet place to myself. It can all be so annoying and frustrating to the wife of a physician (and, most likely, the physician himself), but I think the most important thing is how the physician deals with these situations as they arise. If he knows when it's okay to speak his mind and when he should just walk away, then I think he's definitely cut out for the medical profession. But, of course, that's just my opinion. :)
Amanda--wife of an OB/Gyn and survivor

The Life of the Sleep-Deprived

I just wanted to share something I discovered this past weekend with sleep deprivation and how I now understand what my husband must feel like after his busiest call-shifts (and during his past residency). Months ago, we were invited to participate in a murder mystery party organized by some friends of ours in Seattle, Washington. We live in Indiana and were delighted to not only be invited, but also to be able to see our friends again. The last time we were in Seattle, our son was only about nine months old, and he's three years old, now. Because my husband had already taken a lot of vacation time over the past month, we decided to make this a VERY short trip. My husband was on-call Wednesday night, and he worked until 8 am on Thursday morning. He even did a delivery at 3:45 that morning! When he got off work, we drove an hour to the airport to catch a 12:20 pm flight to Washington. By the time we got there, it was 6:00 pm Seattle time, but 9:00 pm our time. Still, all of us (even our son!) were able to stay awake long enough to meet our friends for dinner and catch up on each others' lives. Of course, jet lag hit us hard on Friday morning, especially my son and I, causing us to wake up way too early. We were able to get through the day just fine, and did a lot of sight-seeing with our friends. We did take some time to relax in the afternoon before dinner, which helped because we didn't actually have dinner until about 9 pm (which was midnight, our time!). Then, yesterday morning rolled around, and boy, I really felt the sleep deprivation and jet lag affecting me. I could truly understand how my husband must feel some mornings after he's had a rough call night and must try to make up for the sleep he lost the following evening. Still, we were able to enjoy some time with friends sight-seeing around Puget Sound. The murder mystery party, which was lots of fun, started at 6 pm last night and lasted until 11:30 pm. Because my husband had to be back to work on Monday for another call-shift, we decided to try to get an early flight out of Seattle to have time to relax at home on Sunday evening. That meant, we had to catch our shuttle to the airport by 3:40 am for a 6 am flight! Oy! We didn't get back to our hotel after the party until about midnight, and then, we spent some time packing. Our son's sleep schedule was already thrown for a loop, and because he ended up going to the party with us, it was made even worse. Somehow, he took a long nap at the party, and we managed to get him back to sleep at the hotel. Though we talked about not even going to bed that evening, my husband and I went ahead and tried to sleep, but only for a couple of hours before we had to get up again. I was so tired when we got to the airport, I could barely think straight enough to type in our confirmation code for our boarding passes. I was irritable and snippy with my husband and my son, and I just wanted to get on the plane to try to get some more sleep. What an awful way to start the morning! We managed to get home safely, and we're now relaxing after our whirlwind trip. After last night and today, I now know what it's like to try to live on little-to-no sleep. It makes me wonder how my husband can function when it's 3:45 am, and he's trying to deliver a baby after having just done another delivery or having just checked on some sort of gynecologic emergency. Our husbands must really train themselves when they are in residency, kind of like for a marathon or an Olympic competition. It's amazing that they can think straight and prescribe the right meds and make the right decisions after having very busy days and nights and days all over again. I don't know, but I think my new-found appreciation for my husband's occupation might keep me from feeling bitter on those days when he comes home and doesn't want to do anything but sleep. My hat's off to you, gentlemen!

Dealing With Others' Mistakes

My husband just finished his first year of practicing medicine. The other day, he received a letter from the hospital stating another doctor was reviewing some of his cases from the past year. I'm not sure of the reasons for the procedure, except for the fact that it was his first year out of residency, and he's still in a kind of "probationary" period before he becomes a partner in his practice. Anyway, the letter stated most of his surgery cases looked fine, but it mentioned the fact that during one of them, a patient died of cardiac complications while he was operating, something unavoidable that he had handled just fine. He took the letter to his office manager because he never remembered a patient of his dying during surgery over the past year. They checked with medical records and found out that, not only did the patient die during a heart bypass surgery (my husband's an OB/Gyn), but also, the patient was a MAN (again, my husband is an OB/Gyn). Apparently, the person reviewing my husband's cases hadn't reviewed them very thoroughly because she would have seen that my husband had had no contact whatsoever with this patient. She must have only been reviewing cases by medical record numbers, which makes me believe that either the wrong doctor got connected with the wrong patient somewhere in the database, or the doctor reviewing my husband's cases looked up the wrong medical record number to begin with. Whatever the case, it made my husband laugh, but it made me frustrated for him. Such reviews probably go on his permanent record, and having wrong information there can give the wrong impression to others (employers and patients) later on. I know that his office manager and others are working on getting the mistake corrected, but still, it should never have happened. I think I'm most upset at the reviewer. If she didn't review this particular case as well as she should have, what else did she miss? Apparently, she also stated my husband did a laparoscopy case where the patient died. He doesn't remember that happening either, so his office is checking up on that case, too. There's another OB/Gyn in the area with a similar last name as my husband's, so, again, the case could have been connected with the wrong doctor. Have any of you and your spouses dealt with a situation like this? What did you do? I know that we humans aren't perfect, but still. This shouldn't have happened!

Residency Switcheroo

So Dr. C comes home after his first day in his radiology residency and says "couldn't decide which to do: a) hit car into tree and die, b) tell you that I made a huge mistake and do not want to be a radiologist.

So, now what? We bought a house, moved the family across the country - Melisa, any of this sounding familiar?

Wouldn't it be nice if he could just switch into a program here? We'll just have to see I guess...

Sorry

Sorry that I haven't been able to update the status of everyone on the blog yet or update some other things, but I am sitting in the Subway parking lot with my screaming baby.....who has been crying for 4 weeks, trying to get caught up on bills and other important things in my emails! The Internet people are finally coming this Thursday to install Internet so I will actually be able to catch up on what everyone has been up to. We have been trying to desperately find necessities for Tom to get to the hospital everyday (since we didn't get into our house until a few days before he actually started work), so blogging has not been a priority! Hope everyone is doing well and I will get things updated ASAP and get things hopping again! Take care!

Survivor Saturdays - Truly Awful Doctor's Wife

If you don’t already have an Awful Story, you probably will by the time you finish training. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m the only Truly Awful Doctor's Wife. But in case you don’t have an Awful Story, I thought I’d share mine in hopes of saving you the shame and disgrace of being a Truly Awful Doctor's Wife.

So Michael was in his fellowship year in Pediatric Ophthalmology. We had been married since MS 1, and now he was PGY 5. That’s a long time. On this particular day, I was a little weary. Between caring for our (then) two kids and the house and everything else, I was pulling a load of laundry out of the dryer when I noticed my once-lovely black twin set sweater amid the t-shirts and blue jeans. The sweater set that my mother had bought for me. At a department store. In the Name Brand section. The one I couldn’t afford on Michael’s meager PGY paycheck. The one that very clearly states in itsy bitsy font on the underside of the tiny little tag on the inside side seam DRY CLEAN ONLY. The sweater that was one of the very few nice pieces of clothing I owned because when your husband is in training, you shop at consignment stores and Target. The sweater set that I could dress up, dress down, and wear with every pair of pants and every skirt hanging in my closet. Well, almost.

The sweater set I now held in my shaking hands was shredded. Shrunk. Grossly disfigured. Completely ruined.

The doer of such an evil deed? My beloved pediatric ophthalmology fellow who, of course, was presently at the hospital.

I grabbed the phone, angrily punched in his pager number with all the force that my size 4 fingers could muster, and waited for him to return the call.

Calm down, I told myself. Breathe. Do not yell at him. Breathe.

But of course, when the phone rang, I let him have it. I yelled. I insulted. I fumed.

And he took it. Graciously. Humbly. Apologetically.

Whew! I feel better now, I thought. OK, I’m calm now. I took a deep breath and casually added, “So how is your day going?”

“Well,” he replied, “I just told two parents that their baby has retinoblastoma. He’ll probably have to be enucleated.”

(Retinoblastoma: a rare and ugly cancerous tumor in the eye occurring in young children. Enucleation: complete removal of the eyeball.)

Oh.

Michael sees retinoblastoma about once a year, and every time, he is devastated. He takes it really, really hard – often to the point that he can’t sleep at night. And the parents of these kids? I can’t even imagine.

And my stupid, stupid sweater was ruined.

And I just yelled at my husband, who was fighting to save a baby’s life.

Truly. Awful. Wife.

Never mind that he was doing the laundry. Never mind that he is the kindest, gentlest, most generous, most humble person I know. Never mind that he didn’t purposefully set out to ruin my clothing. He was trying to help. He was trying to lighten my load. And no one deserves to be treated the way I had just treated him.

So there you have it. I was a Truly Awful Doctor's Wife. I’m embarrassed to say it took another year or so after that horrible incident before I really understood what it means to respect my husband. I needed a few more kicks in the rear before I quit being so insanely self-absorbed.

He hates it when I beat myself up. He sees something in me that I find almost impossible to see myself. He is quick to sing my praises and tell anyone how much I have sacrificed for him, how he couldn’t do it without me. And even though I don’t think I deserve such adoration, I love him for it.

The lesson here? Spare yourself the humiliation. In your justified frustration, remember that he loves you. Remember that he is doing really important work. Remember that someone else’s very life is in his hands. Take a breath, and love him back. Try to keep it all in perspective.

There will always be another sweater set.

Jennifer Hunt
Survivor in Ped. Ophtho.
http://5merryhunts.blogspot.com/

It happened again, only weirder

Brad is on call this weekend. I got to talk to him a little this morning and he mentioned a big surgical case coming up this afternoon. I wished him luck and told him I would talk to him later. I am pretty tired after a lack of sleep last night, so I was on the couch taking a nap while my SugarPea was taking her nap.

I was roused from my nap by the phone ringing.

"Hello?"
"Hi, did you call Brad's phone?" (male voice this time)
"Uh, what?" (I'm still groggy and trying to figure out if he meant 'is this Brad's phone' or what was going on since I know I didn't call Brad)
"Are you trying to reach Brad?" (light bulb comes on in my head)
"Oh! My kids must have tried to call him. Is he in surgery?"
"Yes, he is all scrubbed in."
"I'm sorry for the trouble."
"No problem."

I then told the boys this wasn't a good time to be calling daddy. Obviously, I can't fault them for wanting to talk to him. They didn't know he had surgery this afternoon. Oh, the joys.

Is it only me?

To give you a quick background, my husband switched from general surgery to ENT in October. It all happened very quickly and at the beginning of the housing crash. Needless to say, we haven't been able to sell our house. He has now been living in another state for nearly 6 months. Believe me, I will no longer complain about call weekends. ;o) We talk every day, but there are just some days... Here is the story:

It was a late night, and I got distracted, so it was nearly 11pm before I called Brad. I expected he'd be sleeping, seeing as surgeons are doing rounds by 5 am, and I'd leave a message apologizing for not calling him sooner. But it was nothing that I expected. A woman answered his phone. Our conversation went thus:

"Hello?"
"uhhhhh...." (I was in a bit of a shock that a woman answered the phone and my head was trying to come up with logical explanations)
"Hello? Hello? {Dr Mons, I think it is your wife.} He's in surgery, he'll have to call you back."
"uhhhhhhh..... thanks....."

I figured out what the situation was before she said something, but I confess to being momentarily stunned. It isn't every day that a woman answers your husband's phone. He wasn't even on call that night, so I didn't expect him in surgery at 11 pm. Naturally, I made sure that his phone was on his belt holder and not in a pocket, because then I'd have to chew him out. :o)Seriously, I can't be the only one this has happened to, can I?

I want to hear some good stories! They can't all be ER stories about SOCMOBs (standing on corner, minding own business). ER gets all the funny stuff. ;o)