Survivor Saturdays: When the Doctor Has No Patience

At some point during medical school and residency, a low threshold of patience is common. Your spouse may become easily frustrated and even angry. Small things will become big things, and your spouse may turn into a different person. While this is common, it can be manageable. If you address some of the causes up front, you'll have a little more energy to deal with the unavoidable ones.

Sleep deprivation is one of the main reasons your handsome prince becomes a royal pain! Lack of sleep brings on irritability, depression, weight gain, and even hypertension. While you can't control how much sleep he gets, you can help him get the most out of his shut-eye at home. When he is in bed, keep interruptions to a minimum. Remove home phones from the bedroom and consider a white noise machine. You can even create white noise by going to this simplynoise website on a strategically placed laptop. Also, assure him you won't let him oversleep, even if it means setting two or three alarms for his peace of mind.

I mentioned hypertension as it relates to sleep, but hypertension is a serious issue and it's common in high-stress occupations. Hypertension can result in constant headaches, as well as a generally crappy feeling. Look for signs of hypertension. If your spouse has frequent headaches, irregular heartbeats, changes in vision, occasional dizziness, or flushed face, encourage them to check their blood pressure. I'm not giving professional medical advice here, I'm just telling you what I know from my own experience and conversations.

I've mentioned this before, but constant pager calls, stat orders, and repeated requests for on-the-spot decisions can drive a person mad. Since your spouse can't tell senior residents or nursing staff to take a hike, the frustration is likely to be redirected at you. Oftentimes, just telling your spouse what action you need from him, rather than asking him to make a decision, will go a long way. Men are problem-solvers, so those innocent conversations when you think out loud can lead your spouse into a mental meltdown trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. If you're just feeling chatty, tell him you want a sounding board and no response is needed. That may sound crazy, but it gives him permission to stop "rescuing."

Okay, this leaves us with the more touchy topic - inappropriate behavior. Don't allow your partner to treat you poorly, simply because he works hard. We all work hard. You probably wake up as many times to care for children as he does on a call night (revisit paragraphs 2 & 3 above). The God complex is a recognized condition physicians suffer from when they eat up the attention and become too full of themselves (yes, that's a little joke). If his behavior is unacceptable, point it out when it happens and suggest an alternative. He'll probably respond in like kind, and you can both offer to try something different. Keep other physician jerks at a distance, too, since they tend to suck others in to justify their own poor behavior.

When all else fails, consider finding a counselor to get you both back on track. Most insurance policies cover such visits and you may find that even one visit makes a difference. Counselors don't fix problems, they just facilitate discussing them in a more constructive way. If you can't convince him to consider counseling, surround yourself with other couples who have healthy marriages. Good examples go a long way and you both may pick up some better habits.

Hope this helps some of you attend to your spouses' mood and give your marriage the critical care it needs. (Hope you found my puns humerus.)

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!