Hello Textbook, Good-bye Spouse? by Angela DeBernardo

I bet many of you are breathing a sigh of relief right now. You’ve gotten in to medical school. Finally! You are done with MCATs, application essays and interviews. No more prep work. Sure, the work ahead will be tough, but it’s what you’ve dreamed about doing for a long time. It will be fun to finally learn about “real” medicine instead of memorizing reaction pathways for organic chemistry. Surely, this stress will be different because of the underlying satisfaction in the work. I...

First, a bit of an introduction. I am Jenn Hussey, and I have been glued to the iMSN site since my husband’s internship year. Yes, another spouse surfing the web at 2am, bored and lonely. Since then, the iMSN family has held my hand through all of life’s great adventures, including the April 2005 adoption of our son Nikolai from Perm, Russia. Prior to the adoption, I had a job that required weekly travel. I did this for two and a half years and packed on about 20 pounds. I worked out wheneve...

The plan was to live as if we were still in training once fellowship was over. My husband and I imagined paying off all of our debt in the first 5 years and accumulating enough savings to buy land, a house in Germany and travel to Disney World each year. Do you see where this is going? Obviously, our expectations were a little high. Because we also are poor managers of money, we haven’t saved a dime. If our retirement money wasn’t automatically deducted each month, we might be looking at a card...

I heard the muffled sobs ascending up the stairs. The kids had been home from school for a half an hour and after eating a snack they had all gone their separate ways to color, play outside or read. I put down the laundry basket that I was carrying and walked down into the dining room. My ten year old son was sitting with his back to me. His shoulders heaved up and down; his face was buried in his hands. Within a few minutes, the story came spilling out. Children in his class had picked on him throughout...

Moving can be a stressful event for parents. We get so busy planning packing and preparing to leave that it can be easy to overlook our children’s stress. Depending on the age of your child there are some steps that you can take to ease them through the transition.

Babies and toddlers:

Young children can not understand the concept of moving. Your home and family is their world. you may want to read a story about moving. The Berenstain Bears’ Moving Day is an age-appropriate

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One of the joys of the medical life is that you’re guaranteed to never be in the same place for more than a few years! How you feel about that can be anything from utter dread to ecstatic excitement but the one thing that no one likes is the move itself. I have personally moved 12 times in the last 12 years (and that was before I married a military medical man) so I have gleaned some pointers that I’d like to share. Step One: Figure out where you are going to live BEFORE you move there. I wa...

When my husband started residency, the last thing on our minds was balancing our checkbooks. With the stress of q3 call looming over our heads and the challenges of being parents to small children, we embraced the attitude “we will get by”. Of course, it’s true that we all find a way to navigate the financial challenges that arise during residency and fellowship. With the cost of interviewing, moving and medical board exams and state license fees that approach $1000, just getting by can be...

Well, we’re a few months in to whatever stage of the medical education process that began in July and I’m sure there are more than a few of you who are pretty much ready to toss your spouse out the window. You’re bored? Lonely? Frustrated? Angry? With that in mind, I’m going to share my 25 Ways to Keep Yourself Sane and Happy. 1. Get to know your town. I have found the best way to learn your way around any new place is to get lost. I get in my car with a relative goal in mind (example: f...

As we prepare for my husband to finish residency and move on to fellowship, I am trying to soak up every last memory that I can.? I find myself wanting to memorize the landscape. I relish the conversations with friends and have bought more in the last two weeks (when I am trying to get rid of stuff to move) than I have in three years. Saying goodbye to friends leaves me choking back unexpected tears. Nostalgia is winning. What a paradox, when you consider how miserable I was my first year her...

It seems like just yesterday that we were preparing to have our first baby. We were both so young and it seemed like time stretched out in front of us full of endless adventures and possibilities. I felt