Ophthalmology and Neurosurgery Resident

Another neurosurgery spouse here. It is hard no matter what but it will be extra hard for you both if she is not on board. Definitely a decision that needs to be discussed together. The other side is that I knew my husband wanted to do it, and I knew that if I held him back from it he may hold it against me. I felt I would rather have a happy, hardworking husband than one that is around all the time and miserable in career choice.

Spend some time with your neurosurgery department to get a feel for expectations. It's hard, but not impossible. It does require commitment and passion for the field.

Given I don't have kids yet, but I have never cried because my husband had to work late. This spouse she is talking to may not be the best example of an independent wife. Take what she says lightly, and ask around to some other residents and spouses. There will be some positive as well.

[Vanquisher]

I'm a strong, independent woman. It doesn't make me less of one that I hated ortho surgery residency. I did feel like my DH chose it over family. It was HARD. We did it, but if you aren't 100% sold on neurosurgery, don't do it.

It rocked our marriage to the brink. We're rock solid and have always been very much in love and a team. Residency, though, just sucked. We also had two kids going into residency which highly upped the suck factor.

If you'd be happy doing ophtho, that's what you should do.

[Gwendolyn]

DH is two years out of Glaucoma fellowship and I can say it is wonderful to have a more balanced life. He considered more time demanding surgical specialties, but actually fell in love with ophtho and hated what he saw the time demands of other specialties would do to his life and family. He did not consider neuro, but seriously explored nearly everything else. While I was a factor in his decision-making process, my line was always to ask him what did he really want. He, in return has always asked me the same question.

Having said all of that, attending-hood in ophtho can be great. I'm married to a man who loves to work and will be seeing post-ops while I'm checking-in for my scheduled induction...and he asked if he could "do some quick lasers" too. Ophtho can be intensive, but he's never on over the weekend and he's always home by 7p.

Regardless of life now, I will say training was true misery. He worked 100hr weeks his intern year (it was the first year of 80hrs and they were just told to lie). Each year of Ophtho residency got better and better, but it was an average of 60-70hrs a week. And for fellowship he was paid a whopping 35k a year. We were pushed to our limit as well. Having kids in the mix made a big difference in the suckage. I will say that I'm pretty independent. I have my own life and direction. I was working on my own PhD while he was in school and training and I hated that most of my colleagues thought that I had invented a fake husband. We are just starting to be able to talk about training without fighting about it.

I guess what I'm getting at is this job is too hard no matter what specialty you choose to not go for what you want. Do you want more time at home and more control over when and how you get that time? Would you be excited by doing the same very detailed surgery thousands of time during your career? DH loves that he actually gets to fix a problem with immediate results and no one ever dies. Other than the time difference involved in the two, it's very different work as well.

Anyway, good luck. Try both in 4th year. Make sure you get an ophtho rotation (that made a huge difference for DH who was still on the fence at the beginning of 4th year) and a neuro rotation (if you don't automatically get one).

[diggitydot]

Each program is soooooo different. You may find an ophtho one that sucks balls and you may find an NSG one that doesn't suck as much ball as most.

It's truly a crap shoot. Which is why I HIGHLY recommend rotating through the ones you're seriously considering ranking. My dude completely removed his top choice from his rank list after one rotation there.

ETA: Point your gal our way. No matter which path is chosen, we'll help her deal. We're cool like that.

[Ladybug]

The spouse that you choose to marry with have a greater impact on your life happiness/fullfillment than your specialty or subspecialty. I've seen people end up both unhappy and happy in both. If you can't imagine yourself with *any other woman* then you should listen to the boundaries and limits that she's openly sharing with you. If you can't imagine yourself doing anything other than NS then you might be choosing the wrong spouse and a painful outcome.

[GrayMatterWife]

Which is why I HIGHLY recommend rotating through the ones you're seriously considering ranking. My dude completely removed his top choice from his rank list after one rotation there..

This. And, with NSG, it is extremely helpful to do an away-rotation, to earn a letter of rec from another NSG chairman (you absolutely must have a letter of rec from your home school NSH chairman). Doing two away rotations would be optimal, and is much easier to do now (back in the day, when my husband was a 4th year, NSG was an early match and two away rotations was hard to squeeze in).

Choose an away-rotation selectively and specifically: would it be somewhere you'd like to go (and could conceivably match) and who is the chairman? Where is the chairman from (that is, where did he train and under who and with who in terms of co-residents). NSG chairmen tend to come from a certain group of residencies (UVA, Harvard, etc.). And many chairmen were co-residents with other now-chairmen. Who the chairman trained under is important because it tells a lot about how the residency will be run and who that chairman happens to know. And that is important because who the chairman writing the letter of rec knows is important because it may be received well by people who are of the same style/training background, etc. These people all know each other. Who vouches for you means something.

[ides]

Something else to consider is how involved in your family you want to be. How much of a family man are you? If you have children is it going to kill you to have to spend all your time away and or involved in studying instead of building relationships with them? Surgery makes being a family man nearly impossible.

[DCJenn]

Neurology? (ETA: oops just read neurosurgery... totally different) Have to say that at least for Peds Neurology attendinghood, it's been sweet. Training sucked balls but that's across the board no matter what program you're in. He did residency before the 80 hours restrictions so there's no point in reliving that joy but fellowship #1 and fellowship #2 were nearly as bad. We didn't go with him for #2 though- I'm far too invested in my life (job, house, friends) and my kids stability than I was following along to watch him study for a year.

Here are some thoughts for your girlfriend: To be a successful mostly happy medical spouse you have to buy into these facts: during training you will never see your spouse on every holiday- you'll be lucky if you get to see them on ONE holiday. Making lunches and dinners seems like it's romantic but enough cold dinners alone and forgotten lunch bags by the door and that'll stop. Nookie in the call room will give you MRSA and other disgusting and near fatal diseases- the call rooms are typically the most disgusting places in the hospital, second only to the call room bathrooms, which should be cultured for toxic warfare. It's important to make your own plans and have your own life and don't drop everything just because the good dawkter is home. They're cranky and tired and generally unpleasant people anyway. The good dawkter doesn't get a bye on all responsibility. They can take out the effing trash can and fold their own damned laundry. Get used to going to office parties, PTA meetings, scouting events, family weddings, funerals and birthday parties by yourself. If you want to have sex, you're just going to have to make them. Sleep deprivation is no excuse. OK- that's just off the top of my head and really, it's not that bad now that we're done.

J.