which is worse?

My DH is only in his intern year, but so far, I think residency is much harder. At least when he was studying constantly, I could go in and give him a hug or eat with him. Now that he is gone all the time, it gets alot lonelier and harder to handle everything on my own. And I got spoiled with all those school vacations! He misses our little girl so much and goes days without seeing her when our schedules are off. This year has really made us appreciate our family time together more.

This is my experiance as well, and we just began. Medical school is hard though is it's own sick twisted way. It takes a while for the students to feel like they know where they are in the whole jist of things, a good student, a mid road student, one that better get it together. This makes mental stress for them especially in MS1. DH left a lot when he studied, so that first two years was hard cause many nights he wouldn't even come home until 7 or 8 after putting hours of studing. The lack of money was rough, but once you accept it, you learn to deal with it. The biggest thing that I am enjoying about residency is the absence of "the Match" talk. It consummed everything. People you met wanted to know how your DH would get a job, so there you are once again telling the millionth person how it works. Then the family wants to know, then MS3 and MS4 it's all anyone can think of. EVERYTHING is about stacking all rotations, getting in research, and honoring what they call all for the might Match. So what the heck else is there to talk about, it seemed not matter how much we wanted to forget it, it came back to hit us in the face. I hated that, HATED IT. I hated how it made our life seem less perminate, how I had to think about the unstability of moving so much, it creates hype and stress. Seeing as this residency is the end of DH's training that stuff is no longer in our talk - research,more programs to investigate, possitioning yourself to get into a fellowship, this is NOT in our vocab. I LOVE LOVE that. I tell DH all the time, all I want after this is for him to get a job and move on with life. To get medicine out of the front of our life. But many people have to fellowships so guess what that causes those issues for many in residency.

BUT - residency is hard, lonely, stressful, lonely, sad, lonely, hard

I moved away from family, to an area I don't know - still, and take care of two kids primarly alone, and I have no friends - so in this respect medical school was a breeze as we stayed in our hometown.

how's that for an answer

What a hot-button to push! Way to get your count up!

Yes. Residency was much, much harder than med school for us. The biggest reason for this is because your spouse is at work so much, and when not at work they're asleep or studying. Add the financial burden, and you've got a messy, sleepy, cranky, emotional situation that is years-long. THEN add the misconception that practically everyone around you will have that since your spouse is a doctor you're now living the good life when in reality you're wondering how you're going to pay for _______.

I literally felt like a poor, single parent the first two years of DH's residency. (BTW- 2nd year was the worst for us. ) DH didn't get a golden weekend until his 3rd year... and we were in a family-friendly program!

DCJenn wrote

fellowship is where they truly suck out your soul. at least it was for us.

trying....hard....not.....to.....complain....but YES YES YES!

[madeintaiwan]

We just started residency but I really can't complain much about either. My biggest complaint for both is being 1500-2000 miles away from family. Moving to a foreign place that wasn't "home" was and is a very lonely thing. Although with time, you learn to function (and well at most times) the aching for home never goes away.

As far as medical school is concerned I really think it depends on your spouse. Even though we had two kids (we had one during M2), for me the hardest time in medical school was match. Throughout the 4 years there was the distance, aching for home, and the budget but I aside from that I really can't complain much. I had great friends and during M1 and M2 DH carpooled with another classmate who had kids and they left every morning at 5am and got home by 5pm at the latest. Sometimes they were home by 3pm. It was really nice that he had his studying done prior to coming home and we ate dinner together and he helped put the kids to bed. There were some exceptions, events he had to attend but I'd say 95% of the time (M1 and M2) he was home by 5 at the latest. He still performed well, had a "life" outside of medicine and us, and spent time with the family. He did well on his boards, was on committees, did research with multiple pubs, junior AOA, and played sports, lots of sports. Again, in my opinion I think your medical school experience is dependent on what kind of student your spouse is. 3rd year was an adjustment but again there were only certain rotations that were hard.

Again we just started residency but it hasn't been too bad. Rehab was cake and he just finished his first month of ortho and it wasn't even that bad. He was q3 but the month seemed to go by really fast. Again for me the biggest challenge is not being "home" again and learning a new place. And that we found out we matched here 1 month after our cousins who lived here moved to FL.

I think that both medical school and resideny have their challenges and they are both hard. I think for me, I just accept that they are going to be hard and pushed through it. Maybe I was and am too consumed with missing home that the difficulties in medical school and residency just didn't phase me. I am very grateful that medical school was as easy as it was for us. We'll see how the residency is.

[SuzySunshine]

Med school was MUCH easier for us, but I do agree it probably depends on your specialty in residency. M3 was probably the hardest of med school but residency has definitely brought new and different and harder challenges IMO.

[ides]

Med school was a special type of hell, but compared to residency dh had a lot more free time. His studying all the time wasn't so fun, but atleast he was around. So far residency is harder in the respect that time is much more limited. When he's home, which isn't very much, he has to study and can't seem to help with anything. Atleast during med school he was able to do the dishes some and do things around the apt, but now it takes months to get a simple task done. I asked dh how he felt about med vs. residency and he said he likes residency better. It's more demanding but he really hated med school and all the pomp and bs that happens there. At least he actually gets to do things now and make decisions. We have made it into second year and so far, besides the lack of OR time (2nd year is purely SICU) it's easier than Intern year. Intern year was really, really hard.

I agree with a lot of what Auspicious said. Looking at the derm residency, I would say it wasn't a whole lot worse than medical school. There are some differences that made it "worse", aside from things going on outside of residency that happened for us. I think that residency is sort of weightier -- it's just a bigger deal. Having a difficult attending or co-resident has to potential to matter more than having a difficult MS2 professor or classmate. I felt less in control of our lives and time and that DH was less dependable during residency. I don't want to sound like I am minimizing med school but probably will -- it is just school.

Other than that, the start of MS1 was a big transition for us. It sucked quite a bit and given that I didn't have residency to compare it to, it really sucked. Things got better after that. The start of an IM residency before the 80 hour week was exhausting and I would categorize as worse than medical school MS3 rotations. I think specialty and the program make a big difference on the experience too.

[MDPhDWife]

I spoke to and saw DH MORE being long distance (not within driving distance) from his MS3 and MS4 years, than I did being married and in the same house with DH for his R1 and R2 years.

Wow Flynn, that says A LOT!!!

I was thinking about this thread a little more this morning. I wasn't uprooted from my home, family, and friends during med school. That would have made med school more of a challenge. We did have to move away for residency so that was a huge challenge and hardship. It's still hard sometimes, but there are lots of things that have been good for us living away from our families. We had to make new friends and we've become very independent because we don't have family to lean on. We also don't have family in our business either.

CCVQueen, it's like most things in life...it's better not to know EVERYTHING you're getting yourself into beforehand, instead just to deal with it as it comes. Would we have all gotten involved with our DHs if we REALLY knew the challenges before us? Probably...but we might have thought twice about it!

Is residency challenging? Definitely! In the end, DH is totally worth all the sacrifices. I bet we all feel that way or we wouldn't stay.

[v-girl]

Residency is proving to be more of a challenge, but part of that is because we decided it would be fun to have one more child before DH graduated. We obviously don't have a clear concept of "fun" or we would have either had him earlier or waited until intern year was over. LOL

[GrayMatterWife]

OK, I'm the freaky oddball (shock!).

Medical school was harder for us. DH was an MD-PhD and his PhD years had some major issues related to his mentor and some other stuff. Plus, I was in law school for three of those years and we lived apart for a year while I took a temporary job across the state.

[v-girl]

Abigail - We had childcare issues toward the end of DH's PhD years and for about 3-4 months, we only saw each other at dinner time and on weekends. I worked days and he did his lab work and research at night. Sucked rocks but it prepared me for those night shifts (though I still hate them).

[pstone]

Aside from the one month surgery rotation in med-school, it was really a breeze. We had our first child during 3rd year and really never had any rough patches. Residency however...well...yeah.

It depends.

DH is about to start his PGY4 in vascular surgery. I see him a lot less now than I did when he was in med school. He has a lot more responsibilities now than he did when he was in med school. He is almost always on call even at home. Then again, we have more money now than we did when he was in med school so the financial burden is a lot less (we live in Europe so he has no med school loans which is a blessing).

When he was in med school he was always studying. We were more worried about him getting into residency (there are not enough residencies here for all graduates... only 1 in 3 make it in). We were broke. On the other hand, he was never on call.

I think for him, he actually prefers residency as it has more of a defined scope IYKWIM. He goes everyday and learns skills as opposed to going to class to learn material to pass an exam to try to him him into residency eventually. It's more concrete with residency. He's planning on doing another residency in general immediately after he finishes vascular next year.

[houseelf]

Julie/ColorMeSulky:

residency is hard, lonely, stressful, lonely, sad, lonely, hard

We're here for you.

and can I get an amen from the choir in respect to Ms. Hussey's astute observation that :

Fellowship is where they suck out your soul?

Kelly

[GrayMatterWife]

Abigail - We had childcare issues toward the end of DH's PhD years and for about 3-4 months, we only saw each other at dinner time and on weekends. I worked days and he did his lab work and research at night. Sucked rocks but it prepared me for those night shifts (though I still hate them).

Oh, gosh. I can only imagine how much harder it all would have been if we'd had DS earlier. Our year apart due to work was a downer, but it wasn't that bad.

My estimate of which is harder is very relative...only comparing DH's medical school experience compare to his particular residency experience. Even our worst days and most frustrating problems were not bad, especially compared to what other folks have encountered. In the end, however, we have been extremely fortunate and have no encountered any truly (as I think it was Flynn who said) "soul sapping" experiences. Yet...