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Hi folks,
I'm the husband of a PGY-4, OB/GYN resident. Only another 8 months and 24 days to go!
I wish I had known about this group earlier in the process, because it's been a struggle. I look forward to the end of June 2009, but as as it gets closer I don't know if it's a light at the end of the tunnel or a train. When I met my wife she was working at Planned Parenthood and taking classes for her med-school prerequisites and I was working at a good job in a field that thrilled me and if you can believe it, was even more competitive to get into than medicine.
Eleven years later, after medical school, a post-sophomore fellowship, and three and a half years of residency, including two moves for her career--one after the match and one after she switched residencies, (and being unable to move and take other jobs in my field in other places), at this point I am very frustrated in my own career and also having severe doubts about being able to stay married to a doctor. We get along generally nicely--civilly, certainly, but we are more roomates than partners, more friends than a couple. When she was in medical school she gave me a shirt from the women's health interest group that read "Real Men Marry Doctors" and I wore it for a long time with real pride.
I know that when residency is done she won't have to work the same 75-85 hours a week that she does now, although the time requirements will still be large. The issue for me is more what's left of her after the job takes its cut. She is frequently grumpy and impatient, uninterested in what we do or how we spend her little leisure time. She doesn't seem to care or offer any volition or desire outside of medicine. Planning a vacation with her is excruciating--she won't let me plan or buy tickets, but she doesn't much care where we go or what we do. She seems to be turning into a Doctor Frowny-Face. I can see the scowl lines deepening across her forehead from the expression she wears at the hospital 12-14 hours a day, plus call. I rarely see the smile she used to favor me with all the time. And I feel very deeply that I am low on her list of priorities, far below the job, and the studying, but also other friends and family that she can spend the little time she has free with.
I understand that she is continually and completely exhausted. I admire her and respect her for her devotion and hard work and the excellent things she does. The toll that it is taking on her is heartbreaking to me as one who loves her and tries to care for her. She recognizes that we have serious problems, and has come with me, resistantly, to a counselor, but tells me that once residency is all done she'll have so much more time that things will be much better. I'd like to believe it.
Can anyone tell me what is at the end of the tunnel? Is the end of residency really a cure-all? I know her attendings still work very hard as do most physicians, and the committment and responsibility are enormous. I'm beginning to be afraid that more time is not the answer, that cutting her hours back to 60, or even 40, won't fix the problems. When she has an easy rotation like REI, it's better, but not good, and I also know that whatever job she gets is apt to be more demanding than that 8-5, easiest rotation of residency.
I've spent some of the happiest years of my life with her--I remember well what they were like. But I need to be more than the roomate-who-cooks for someone, with my hopes for my career perpetually subsumed to and also overshadowed by her inestimably more important and more lucrative one. I don't want to be miserable or to make her miserable either. We're both children of divorced parents and we have no stomach for misery in the name of staying together. We don't have any children and I'm beginning to doubt very seriously that we should add children to a marriage such as ours.
I guess I'd like to get some better idea of what it gets like past residency. I'm sorry that my post got so long and reads like such a bummer, but once I got started putting it down I couldn't stop with "Hi, I'm the husband of a..."
Thanks.
oh, to add a little bit of detail that people seem to post here--I'm a photojournalist. We have two big black dogs, a lab and a lab-collie.
I'm the husband of a PGY-4, OB/GYN resident. Only another 8 months and 24 days to go!
I wish I had known about this group earlier in the process, because it's been a struggle. I look forward to the end of June 2009, but as as it gets closer I don't know if it's a light at the end of the tunnel or a train. When I met my wife she was working at Planned Parenthood and taking classes for her med-school prerequisites and I was working at a good job in a field that thrilled me and if you can believe it, was even more competitive to get into than medicine.
Eleven years later, after medical school, a post-sophomore fellowship, and three and a half years of residency, including two moves for her career--one after the match and one after she switched residencies, (and being unable to move and take other jobs in my field in other places), at this point I am very frustrated in my own career and also having severe doubts about being able to stay married to a doctor. We get along generally nicely--civilly, certainly, but we are more roomates than partners, more friends than a couple. When she was in medical school she gave me a shirt from the women's health interest group that read "Real Men Marry Doctors" and I wore it for a long time with real pride.
I know that when residency is done she won't have to work the same 75-85 hours a week that she does now, although the time requirements will still be large. The issue for me is more what's left of her after the job takes its cut. She is frequently grumpy and impatient, uninterested in what we do or how we spend her little leisure time. She doesn't seem to care or offer any volition or desire outside of medicine. Planning a vacation with her is excruciating--she won't let me plan or buy tickets, but she doesn't much care where we go or what we do. She seems to be turning into a Doctor Frowny-Face. I can see the scowl lines deepening across her forehead from the expression she wears at the hospital 12-14 hours a day, plus call. I rarely see the smile she used to favor me with all the time. And I feel very deeply that I am low on her list of priorities, far below the job, and the studying, but also other friends and family that she can spend the little time she has free with.
I understand that she is continually and completely exhausted. I admire her and respect her for her devotion and hard work and the excellent things she does. The toll that it is taking on her is heartbreaking to me as one who loves her and tries to care for her. She recognizes that we have serious problems, and has come with me, resistantly, to a counselor, but tells me that once residency is all done she'll have so much more time that things will be much better. I'd like to believe it.
Can anyone tell me what is at the end of the tunnel? Is the end of residency really a cure-all? I know her attendings still work very hard as do most physicians, and the committment and responsibility are enormous. I'm beginning to be afraid that more time is not the answer, that cutting her hours back to 60, or even 40, won't fix the problems. When she has an easy rotation like REI, it's better, but not good, and I also know that whatever job she gets is apt to be more demanding than that 8-5, easiest rotation of residency.
I've spent some of the happiest years of my life with her--I remember well what they were like. But I need to be more than the roomate-who-cooks for someone, with my hopes for my career perpetually subsumed to and also overshadowed by her inestimably more important and more lucrative one. I don't want to be miserable or to make her miserable either. We're both children of divorced parents and we have no stomach for misery in the name of staying together. We don't have any children and I'm beginning to doubt very seriously that we should add children to a marriage such as ours.
I guess I'd like to get some better idea of what it gets like past residency. I'm sorry that my post got so long and reads like such a bummer, but once I got started putting it down I couldn't stop with "Hi, I'm the husband of a..."
Thanks.
oh, to add a little bit of detail that people seem to post here--I'm a photojournalist. We have two big black dogs, a lab and a lab-collie.
] I think all the resident spouses can relate to the residency pain. 
if I went back to working 80+ hours.
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