sh*t residents say, v2

Maybe it's the part where they're noodley?!

Overnight call: the good, the bad, & the ugly

Dr. D is currently on a rotation that has him working mostly nights this month. It has been, in a word, challenging. I'd like to share the good, the bad, and the ugly with you all from our experiences, but being the eternal optimist that I am, I'm going to save the good for last and end on a high note.

The sleep schedule.  

We are both pretty exhausted. D is living the life of a vampire. As much as the middle school version of me wished she could be dating Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it is not as sexy or as awesome as I thought it would be. I still have to function in the land of the living, so our paths cross for a couple hours in the morning (as in, we sleep next to each other during that time) and then again for a few hours before D goes back in to work. And Jdog is getting twice the sleep he usually does (at night with me, and then he naps again with D when he comes home), so he's like a groggy dog zombie pretty much all the time. It's zombies and vampires up in this joint, and it ain't pretty.

No, seriously. The sleep schedule blows.

Post-call days! 

If I were only allowed to give one piece of advice to couples who are new to overnight call schedules, it would be this: make the most of your post-call days. Date each other. Go on adventures. Explore what is likely to be a new city for you both. Fight that urge to stay in bed all day... you won't regret it, I promise. All I know for certain is that it's how we are staying sane this month.

Care to share any of your good/bad/uglies about residency (or any other life transition, for that matter)?

sh*t residents say

Inspired by this post by fellow empathizer DJ on her delightful blog,

Medicine: A Love Story.

Dodging Stress Bullets

I had one of those forgotten-class-stress-dream moments today.

You know the one I'm talking about. You're just going along in your dream, minding your own dreamy business, when the dream-version of a kid you haven't seen since like seventh grade is all, "Man, are you ready for this calculus final today?" and you're like, "Wait, I'm in a calculus class?!" and they're like "Yeah, you've been enrolled this whole time... I was wondering why you haven't been going to class!" and then you're like (1) thanks a lot, jerk, for reminding me about this now, and (2) I have to go take this freaking final right now! And you're super stressed out and you don't even consider the possibility that you could just drop the dang class because you're just going to be a liberal arts major anyway.

And then you wake up and you're like, whew, dodged that derivative bullet.  Relief.

I had a similar experience today, except without the dreaming. I just got this overwhelming sense that there was all this stuff that I should have already done--finishing classwork in the degree program that I'm wrapping up, finding myself a job in California, figuring out where we're going to live--and I froze for a second and thought to myself, what have I been doing with my time?!

And then I realized it's only been a week since we found out we'll be moving. Breathe, self. Chillax.

Dr. D has a job. I've already applied to one of my own, and there are other prospects on the horizon. There is no shortage of places to live, for crying out loud. It's a major city. And once I write a few more papers, I'll be done with my Masters.

Yes, there's a lot to do over the next couple of months, but we will get through it.

Sometimes you just have to smack yourself awake and put things into perspective.  And something tells me I'm going to have to do that quite a bit before we move.

To those of you in a similar situation, what are some things you do to keep things in perspective?

Stink-face States

Dr. D and I on the phone, going over which programs he should send his residency application to:

Me: "CALIFOR---

Him: "Why don't we just start at the top of the list and work our way down alphabetically?"

Me: "---NYeahhhh, that's a great idea.  Makes complete sense."

Him: "Okay.  Alabama."

Me: "........"

Him: "You're making a stink-face, aren't you?"

Me: "...yes.  You're not?"

Him: "What about Arkansas?"

Me: "........"

Him: "This does not bode well."

I have this problem where I can't control my face.  Or at least, I can't control my face in reaction to something I don't like or am anticipating not liking.  My loving husband knows this about me---he's had about sixteen years of experience dealing with how my face looks in these situations, and has dubbed it my "stink-face."

I'm pretty sure we all have a version of this face, am I right?  And in our case, mine was a useful tool for determining residency prospects.  Much to Dr. D's chagrin.

Don't get me wrong---to my knowledge, there is nothing innately horrible about Alabama, Arkansas, or any other stink-face state.  I'm sure we could find redeeming qualities about each of them.

I just can't control the face, people.

All told, we still ended up applying to a whopping 70 ENT programs (out of 105 total in the nation, some of which are military only).  We've got to cast a wide net, because this is a tough specialty to match in to.  There are people who literally do not match anywhere, and that scares the daylights out of us.

Luckily I know that Dr. D is brilliant, has great scores and experiences, and can pretty much charm the heck out of even the most demure docs.  At the risk of sounding boastful, I'm confident enough for the both of us that we'll match.  And we are determined to make the most out of next year's adventure in our new, non-stink-face home.

Anybody else have stink-face states?

Successful Submission

“Have you submitted?”

This question has been buzzing in the air among the medically-inclined crowd since the clock rolled over to 12:01am on September 1st.  While I wish so much that this referred to submitting to an inclination towards regular exercise, or even submitting to the urge to eat loads of chocolate cake, what this is actually in reference to is the submission of ERAS—an online application for residency programs across the nation.

We submitted on Saturday.  We submitted so hard that it cost us like $10,000. 

Okay, not really... it actually only cost a fraction of that, but still.  Beaucoup bucks, guys.  We had to shell out just so these hot-shot programs will even consider looking at Dr. D’s application.  Honestly, his app is so pristine that they should probably be thanking and paying us.  I mean really.

Here’s the way residency applications work, as far as I can tell:

• You update your CV, complete with hobbies, and then realize that you can’t remember what your hobbies are because you’ve been in MED SCHOOL for the past three years.  So you ask your wife to remind you what your hobbies are, and she tries to slip “loving your wife” in as a hobby and you’re like “Lol, cute.  But not appropes.” 
• You write a personal statement, and agonize over each word and its synonyms, only stopping yourself when you realize there is no synonym for “the,” so you might as well be done with it.
• You chew off all of your fingernails as you wait for the rock-star docs who agreed to write your letters of rec to actually submit the letters, and pray about ten times a day that they (a) remember to do it, and (b) put the correct name on the letter. 
• You choose which residency programs to send your application to, and pay based on the number of places you send it.  Some people research every detail of the residency program and its surrounding areas, and selectively and systematically identify which programs they want to work for.  Others utilize their wife’s stink-face method (more on that later). 
• You click submit and wait for the interview offers to come.   And according to your loving wife, they will come. 

Prayers and crossed appendages (fingers, toes, whatever you got) welcome.  And for those of you who have submitted or are about to, congratulations!  We’re so close!

The Big Unknown

Guys.

GUYS.  We are 193 days away from residency match day.  That's like 6 months and some change.  Chump change, y'all.  This is happening whether we're ready or not.

I'd like to think that we're ready, but we're probably ready for some things more than others.  For instance, we are so ready to not have the Big Unknown (aka our mailing address for the next 5-ish years) hanging over our heads.  If I have ONE more person ask me where Dr. D is going to residency, one of two things will happen:

1. I will launch into a tirade about how nothing in this life is certain and there can be no way of really knowing where you'll be tomorrow---or even an hour from now---so we can't be expected to answer such a question and perhaps we should instead focus on living every moment to its fullest potential and maybe the real question should be what are YOU doing with YOUR life and shouldn't you be asking yourself why you haven't done something epically selfless like joining the Peace Corps or Teach For America and why haven't you solved the world's hunger problems yet?  ...What do you mean, I have "deflection issues"? 
2. I will revert back to a ten-year-old mentality and say something like, "Where is YOUR MOM going to residency?!  Huh?  Huhhhhh??  Can you tell me THAT?!"*

All of that is to say: we're ready to know what the next chapter is.  Otolaryngology is such a competitive specialty that we really can't afford to be too choosy about residency programs, so we might end up virtually anywhere (except a few select places, but more on that later).

What we may not be ready for, however, is everything the next chapter entails.  And what it will most certainly entail is this: long hours at the hospital for Dr. D, a new job for me, and working on getting a family started.

Yeeesh.

Anybody out there fairly confident that you know what this next year holds for you or your med student?  I'd love to hear some stories about certainty so I can live vicariously through you.

*I'm sorry you had to find out this way, Mom, but yes.  I have been known to use a "Your Mom" come-back every now and again.  This doesn't mean I love you any less.

Home Stretch

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{What you see on the line above happens to be a guest post by J-dog. He saw an opportunity to rest his chin on the corner of my keyboard in hopes of an absent-minded ear scratch from yours truly as I gathered my thoughts for this post. It worked; ears are thoroughly scratched. Moving on...}

We're in the home stretch, folks. I'm talking less than a year until our future is determined. Less than 365 days until we find out where we'll be spending Dr. D's residency and beginning our next big life adventure.

Where's the fast-forward button?

This past Thursday was Match Day for fourth year medical students all around the country, a day during which I'm sure many tears were shed (both happy and sad) and many adult beverages were consumed (both in celebration and medicinally). Now all of those people are making plans for the future. And next year, that will be us.

I am doing my very best to live in the present, but every now and then I get that exhilarating roller coaster feeling in my gut because--guys, I don't know if you know this about me, but I love new beginnings. And I love road trips. So the potential of getting to go on another cross-country road trip with my husband and poodle on our way to start a new life chapter... well, there aren't a whole lot of things that could excite me more.

I mean, during our last cross-country drive we discovered 85 octane fuel, sweet potato fries, gas stations with slot machines, and gigantic dinosaur sculptures in Colorado. After that, how could I not be hooked? There's so much out there I haven't seen!

That being said, as I began fantasizing this week about all of the fantastic and scary new things that will inevitably start happening to us in a year, I decided to ground myself with some reminders about things that I love about the life we're currently living. I want to make sure I remember these things, so here I go, e-emoting them to the cyberverse:

1. The gorgeousness that is October in Illinois, and our standing tradition of family walks to take pictures of the leaves after they've changed.
2. Multiple college town radio stations, making for epic car dancing sessions and a fun local music scene.
3. Laughing with friends about the funny business cards, ticket stubs, and notes left by strangers underneath the glass table covers at one of our favorite laid-back downtown hangouts.
   
4. The giddiness I feel after winter's first snow, and the fantastically spastic way J-dog greets it, as if on a snowflake high.
   
5. Having a kitchen big enough for impromptu family dance parties when we need to take a break from preparing dinner. J-dog can totally cut a rug.
   
6. Living on a college campus and not having to pay for wireless internet, cable, or indoor climate control.
7. Having a legitimate reason to wear galoshes, and purposefully seeking out deep puddles.
   
8. The fact that sharing one car between the two of us is not a big deal because the public transit system here is phenomenal.
   
9. Knowing that everyone in our building can smell what I'm baking.
   
10. Fireflies in the summer.