Who's your doccy?

Here's some more Thursday link-up lovins coming your way! I'm linking up with DJ at Medicine: A Love Story to share more med-love antics. Click on the icon above to visit her blog and to view this week's link up posts.

Today's topic: Which fictional doctor is your significant other most like?

If you aren't in a relationship with a medical significant other (let's hereafter refer to them as med sig-O's, shall we?), allow me to let you in on a little secret: all these medical shows they've got on tv nowadays, while admittedly pumping up the drama and sex a bit for ratings, can actually come pretty close to portraying the different doc personalities you might come across at your local hospital.

Say whaaaat?! They've got McDreamys up in that biz?

Yes. And McSteamys, people. Just check out the hottttay I married.

(The one exception I'll make to this is that we've yet to come across a Doogie Howser, although sometimes attendings treat med students like 14 year olds.)

That being the case, when I started to think about today's topic, it wasn't too tough to pinpoint things in on-screen docs' personalities that reminded me of D. The trouble was, there wasn't any one fictional doc who fit the bill completely. So I did what any reasonable person faced with such a conundrum would do: I made a love-child.

The heart, soul, and gosh-I-could-just-sit-here-on-this-gurney-in-the-basement-eating-potato-chips-and-waxing-poetic-with-you-all-day-ness of George O'Malley. Wit, humor, and elevated probability of finding himself in the thick of some whacky hijinks akin to J.D. That's my guy.

But Neil Patrick Harris will totally play him once we sell our story to FX (it has be a network that can air the word "sh*t").

sh*t residents say, v2

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

A place to call "home"

There are a lot of habits that D and I have slipped in to over the years. One of my favorites is that we'll usually find ourselves in deep, soul-searching conversations during road trips. It's something we've been doing since we were teenagers, and I absolutely love it. One of us will come up with an open-ended question, and we'll spend time piecing together our thoughts by talking through them out loud. {To be fair, this is not the only way we pass the time in the car. There are frequent breaks for singing at the top of our lungs, dance parties from the waist up, and road-raging with a sailor-like mouth. Okay, so that last part is just me. I am the worst backseat driver.}

On a post-call day trip we took early last week, our conversation of choice was this: If you had to pick one place to call home for the rest of your life, what places would be in the running? And why?

This was a really tough question for me. I tend to fall in love with cities because I'm a sucker for nostalgia--once I've had a positive memorable experience somewhere, it has a special piece of my heart forever. And on the flip side, I can't really imagine living in places that I haven't at least visited.  Here are the five cities that I came up with:

City meets sea, tummy meets Mexican food.  

Sunny for 360 days out of the year? A world of yes.

After living here for five formative years, there will always be a tug at my heart to return.

 

Crisp air and clean streets.

Ridiculously fit people with a love for the great outdoors.

 I've never met a Coloradan who wasn't (a) incredibly kind, and (b) hilarious.

Dude. This place is, like... so chill, brah.

All the beachy perks of San Diego, but without the crowds or traffic.

My parents lived here in their early twenties. I can't get enough of visiting their old haunts.

The greatest city in America.

You will never have a better meal than at Girl and the Goat.

I realize both of the above are bold claims, but after four years of frequent visits, I stand behind those statements 100%.

Sailboats, seafood, and sensational people-watching.

 It practically always feels like fall weather here. Read: boots and scarves for.ev.er.

I agreed to a lifetime with Dr. D while standing in Crissy Field, so it seems only fitting that now this is the closest "big city" to visit during residency. I can't wait to explore it again and again over the years.

So there you have it! D's list was fairly similar to mine, except he included New York City and Los Angeles instead of Ventura and Denver. What about you guys--what's missing from our list of possibilities? Where do you hope you end up?

The 'schmerz

It's that time again, folks! Today I'm linking up with DJ at Medicine: A Love Story to share more med-love antics. Click on the icon below to visit her blog and learn how to take part as a blogger, or at least see what everyone else has to say about today's topic.

The prompt: What's the most interesting medical fact you've learned vicariously?

 
Since Dr. D and I are going on five years of the medically graphic over-sharing dinner conversations (four years of med school and over half of intern year), there isn't much that shocks me anymore. Oh, to be again the wide-eyed innocent who nearly spit out her cereal after moving the Sunday morning paper only to uncover a textbook page full of diseased penises (penisi? I really feel like that should be penisi... can someone with some clout in med linguistics get on that?).

If you've been with me from the beginning of this blog--just Mom? okay, cool, no worries--then you may recall me blogging about a few medical facts that I learned and deemed traumatic enough to warrant infliction upon others. Like discovering that I didn't drink enough urine as an embryo, or that death-breath is a thing, or even what it's like to inhale the smell of burned flesh.

But I think that out of all of the medical knowledge I've unwittingly amassed, my favorite factoids tend to be the ones regarding medical terminology. I'm a fan of words. Always have been. Give me a medical phrase that sounds like a Harry Potter spell, and I will be entertained for hours. Seriously, hours, if not days.

So imagine my glee when D came home one day and said, "You know what's a fun word?

"Mittelschmerz."

Um, yes. Yes it is. Particularly when attempting to say it three times quickly, a la Beetlejuice. I loved this new word! I took to that sucker like a toddler who just learned her first curse word, and he let me walk around the house jabbering about it for a solid half hour before telling me what it actually meant. Why didn't I inquire about the meaning, you ask? Because I. love. words. and I was too distracted.

Too bad it means "the abdominal pains occurring between menstrual periods." Way to take a fun word and assign it to something that is NO JOKE, Germans.

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)?

Are you high??

Let's be honest: if I'm going to participate in my first blogging link up, who better to link up with than one of my first blogging friends-who-is-also-a-stranger-but-not-really-because-yay-internet? DJ writes a blog I visit every day, and I follow it because she makes me laugh and generally feel like I'm not the only one whose life has kinda flown the cuckoo's nest because I'm in love with a guy in the medical profession.

Imagine my glee when, after a prolonged blogging hiatus, I returned to find that DJ had just set out on a new blogging endeavor called Medicine: A Love Story. The only thing better than experiencing our own shenanigans at home related to being in residency is reading about other people's shenanigans during residency. It has a normalizing effect, and I love it.

So, on to today's link up.

The prompt: What's the craziest/funniest conversation/experience you've had as a result of sleep deprivation?

 
There have been plenty of screwball conversations between Dr. D and I that have been tinged by Step-study dazes and post-call sleep deprivation. To wit, this particular text exchange between us as D went to get drug tested (chillax! D hasn't developed a drug habit. Testing is a required procedure for all interns rotating at our children's hospital) after being on an overnight shift:

I'd like to think this illustrated two things rather nicely: (1) We're super mature about drugs, and (2) D was too tired to even remember where he lived. I really hope they didn't attribute his blood-shot eyes and disorientation to something else.

sh*t residents say

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

Medicine: A Love Story.

2013

{I could explain this photo, but I'll let your  imagination run wild}

So, hi.

Last time we spoke, Dr. D wasn't actually a doctor yet. And if we're going to get all technical (which we are because this is my blog and I do what I want, obvs), I wasn't a master yet. I like to joke that my degree sounds cooler, particularly when I make claims to be a doctor's master. But I digress.

When I think about the fact that I posted a whopping 3 times in 2012 (dismal!), it would appear to have been an uneventful year. On the contrary, it was rather chaotic. Yet somehow we find ourselves on the other side of that tunnel, panting from holding our breath and a little frayed around the edges from the speed of it all, but ultimately in a place that is exactly where we want to be.

But now here's the weird part: D has had to take off at a full sprint again, and I'm taking a breather (somewhat involuntarily, thanks to a tough and limited job market). I'm hoping that with some of this free time I find myself with--and I keep trying to tell myself to enjoy it while I can--I'll be able to get back into the swing of blogging and connecting with other people who are in med couples across the country.  Because let's be honest, we have some pretty great stories to tell.

With that, I say: bring it, 2013.