Husband Looking to Start Med School Wife Needs Help!

but is it possible that there is more negative feedback here because it consists of those who have the time and resentment to spew these posts out?

Wow! That's a pretty big assumption from such a lil pony girl!
I doubt many medical spouses have so much free time on their hands, I certainly do not. In residency, most of them work full time, act as the family accountant, CEO, wife, maid, mom, shopper and secretary of the medical spouse that can do absolutely NOTHING in life but work. The honest and sometimes harsh truth in this thread has nothing to do with free time or resentment. Residency and the cost of medical education is high. Many, many physicians dissuade others from pursuing medicine nowadays. In fact, many attendings that I've personally worked with and known personally for years are disappointed with their choices, disappointed with the system and sad about what has happened to their families or lack therof.
I've seen first hand older adults abandon careers and eventually families to pursue medicine with disasterous outcomes.

[Meenah]

Kevin you make some good points, my sacrifices are really mostly financial. Fortunately my kids are not scarred by the medical training. Clearly we all have some issues here! I love this thread.

[DCJenn]

Oh, oh, oh... Lil Pony Girl...

JLynnB and I and a few others can assure you that there is nothing "easy" about a peds residency. Enjoy M4. It will change.

Jenn

Enjoy M4. It will change.

Jenn

Also often fondly looked back on as the "easy" year of medical school.

[SuzySunshine]

All residencies are hell in their own way. I have friends who are married to residents in the ROAD specialties, I have friends that are in surgical, and then my DH is in neurosurgery (some would say the worst).

There is a reason its called residency, they used to LIVE at the hospital, literally. While the hour restrictions have helped that they are still like nothing you've ever encountered before. They're worse than two straight weeks (or months) of studing for boards, they're worse then residency interview season, they're worse than most lifestyles most of us have lead before residency.

But if you love what you do (or your spouse does) you motor through it and look forward to the light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone can, and most do, make it but be prepared for the worst because when you're not and it arrives you'll be even more miserable. 8)

Also often fondly looked back on as the "easy" year of medical school.

Hell, someone let me know when M4 is easy. I know it's partially spouse and school dependent, but DW is doing something like her fourth AI right now 3 hours away from here. Granted she chose these multiple AI setup and we have a little residency choice crisis on our hands. But nothing has been easy. The brief time off was filled with Step II studying and the future time off is going to be filled with interviewing.

Maybe things will be fun in the late spring -- but at that point it'll be time to pack up the house, put it on the market, and find a job and new house at the next stop.

[houseelf]

quote] those who have the time and resentment to spew these posts out?[/quote]

Wow. Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel about us.

I'm going to take the moral highground here and assume that this didn't come off as you intended but were somehow impeded by the limitations of conversing in cyberspace and/or the fact that you are fairly early on in the medical process. I'm sure that you meant to provide some optimism because in YOUR experience, medicine hasn't been that bad of a choice.

I offer no apologies for not curbing my honest distaste for what has been a long, hard road.

Kelly

I occasionally wonder where we would be if we had this kind of brutal honesty before we stumbled off the cliff.

Most people can't imagine the cliff until they're free-falling from it. Likewise, the medical half can't be deterred either so we just have to make the best of it and hope it really is a hangliding lesson.

[PrincessFiona]

Well, there are many residency programs that aren't 'brutal' in their treatment of residents. Many of us here did arrive before the 80 hour work week curtailed some of the abuse and are in more malignant specialties.



Many factors including location of residency, type of residency, family support, your own family status (ie do you have children or are you making the procreative attempt :> ), and program malignancy affect the experience.

Pediatrics can have it's downside too, lilponygirl and probably the 1st year wherever you go will be more difficult than anything you've experienced during med school. If you and your dh end up having children during/before this, it may add to your stress if you are not near family.

It sounds like your dh will be going into a family-friendlier field than surgery or ob....hopefully during that time you won't find the time and resentment to spew out bitterness. But if you do, you know where to find us.
:>

kris

Ditto Ditto Ditto:

We aren't in residency, and already we've sacrificed so much. Those with kids have it especially hard. You are constantly taking care of home and kids alone, and then have to deal with emotions when daddy isn't coming home when they are away, and he isn't home when they wake up. My DH is in his subI right now, up at 4:00a.m. home - whenever for the next 4 weeks, this is hardly easy on a family. We've already had these experiances with other rotations last year. It's very hard sometimes to explain to a 4 year old why he hasn;t seen daddy for at least 2 days. Not to mention SOOOO many friends of ours are well into their careers and have had homes for several years, us we are year 8 in an apartment w/NO savings at all.... I hardly see it as resentment by spilling out the truths of medicine. Really I think if you see the truths as negative spewing maybe you should think about why you think they are negative - not to see your husband for so long, to work so hard alone, to have little money, to have to give up family, if you don't see these as hardships or negatives then why comment to that point at all, you see them as mill of the road then.

Also often fondly looked back on as the "easy" year of medical school.

Hell, someone let me know when M4 is easy.

Meant it more as a "yeah - if THAT'S easy" way. Some people manage to schedule lots of easier rotations for M4 ... my dh did not.

[Vishenka69]

While everyone agrees that med school and residency sucks big time, the most difficult years vary for everyone.

I agree that there are programs that are more doable with a family and have better/flexible schedules. However, something to keep in mind is that priority is usually given to female residents pregnant/with kids, then male residents with kids and then the rest of the team picks up the slack. Not trying to sound bitter or anything, but I've often felt that we're being penalized for our decision not to have kids in residency.

Getting back to the original question posed, the only reason to start on the path of being a doctor is if he/she absolutely can't be even content doing anything else.

[PrincessFiona]

I think Vishenka makes an excellent point. However, my DH may be an anomaly, but he thought that being a Dr was the thing he absolutely wanted to be. Now after 9 years of training and finally embarking on the real job, he would never, NEVER do it again.

I don't think that you dh is anomaly based on my experience with dh and with many of his colleagues.

kris

I just wanted to briefly address Susan / Lil Pony's post. I think the main problem with the logic behind her post is that it's really a form of an ad hominem. That is, EVEN IF we were to accept her premise that this site has a "selection bias" for lack of a better term i.e. this site is swamped with bitter / resentful people who are largely spouses of hard-driving specialists, that alone doesn't speak to the merits of the advice many people gave to the original poster. The advice given should and can be evaluated primarily based on its own merits without regard to who is giving that advice.

For instance, for the sake of argument, what if I were the bitter husband of a hard driving specialist? What in my posts can simply be refuted by that new fact? Would someone like to argue that decisions are best made when one is in the throes of a child's health crisis? Would someone like to argue that 10 - 12 years of foregone salary plus the debt burden of schooling in the face of college tuition for children is something that shouldn't strongly be considered? Of course I could go on and on pulling out the assertions I made in my posts and rhetorically asking which one has less merit depending on what you might imagine about me personally.

This is an interesting thread to me both as the wife of a new attending and also as a post-bacc finisher myself.

I have been with my DH through third year of med school through intern year and we just finished residency this July. Now, looking back on it, I would say the whole medical path was definitely worth it and I think DH would say he would think it is worth it too. Residency was awful, it truly was, but now that that's over I'd say things are generally excellent. So in my opinion, the medical path has been worth it but then again DH picked his specialty very carefully.

Then, there's me. I'm 29, and have a law degree and I went back to complete a post-bacc program right after law school. It took me 1.5 years to do, and then I took the MCAT twice, applied to med school and did not get in. That was a huge disappointment, and I still haven't gotten over it.

In the last two years I've been struggling, myself, on whether or not to re-take the MCAT again and re-apply to med school. I cannot decide whether or not the med path is worth it for me, given that DH is already the dawkter and I could get by doing something that doesn't require so much effort and sacrifice--but medicine, I think, is really the only career I've ever truly been interested in. I've wanted to be a doctor since I was a little girl, but watching DH go through intern year and residency scared me, however now that he's a real doctor, I am reconsidering.

His lifestyle is so great now that I think personally that it is worth it, and if I can just get my motivation back up to retake the MCAT a third time, then I will re-apply to med school for the second time. It will be a long, hard path, but judging from my DH's experiences, I think it would be worth it for me as well. But what that would mean, I guess, is that we'd probably need a full-time nanny as we would like to have kids sometime in the next 2-3 years.

In my experiences with careers and the working world, I cannot think of another career other than medicine that gives you such a great lifestyle, sense of giving back, great money, great flexibility. True, no other career requires as much sacrifice, studying, hard work, and debilitating toil at times, but once those 8 years are over, I think if you choose the right specialty, things are good.