What's so hard about this residency thing?

So man, I hear all these people talk about how difficult residency is with the incredibly long hours. Geeez, c'mon. Residency isn't that bad!

Okay, so obviously I was one of these people complaining about the long hours. I guess what I am saying is that what everyone kept telling us was true. While some rotations are very, very bad ... some are only sort of bad ... and some aren't bad at all.

Don't get me wrong. JB is still working a lot of hours. He is doing 6am to 6pm which is 12 hours a day. But man oh man, twelve hours feels glorious!!

Of course most of our neighbors who are not in medicine are doing the normal military day. The normally military day begins at 7:30 with Reveille. If you don't know what Reveille is, click on the word to hear a sound bite of these trumpets. I'm sure you'll recognize it when you hear it. Tif and I hear this each morning when we start our walk. The military day ends at 4:30 with the playing of The National Anthem. If you are outside and hear this, you must stop your car and wait. JB must stand at attention.

Now here's what I think is sort of funny. All the interns got an email that if they had a day that they were done early they were required to stay at work until 4:30pm. I think this is a JOKE! Seriously. Absolutely ridiculous. First of all, John has never been done before 4:30pm, but if he was, I really think all the nights that he didn't get home until 9pm would easily make up for one early day! Don't you think?

Well that's another subject entirely. I write this post to say that I think both John and I were quite stressed during the first two months of residency. Actually we were beyond stressed. We were both looking at each other each night and thinking: How in the world will we make it through these three years? We were actually thinking: It's probably good we don't have children because how would our child ever see their father or see their parents together?

I also felt like I was the only wife who felt this way. Every other wife seemed so calm about their husband's schedules. But then I realized this week as JB switched to an easier rotation and Matt (Tiffany's husband) switched to a harder rotation, that in fact, it was the fact that JB was, as they had told him, starting with the hardest rotation and following up with Pensacola, one of the most time consuming rotations that was causing us such grief. I am not glad Tiffany is now dealing with this of course, but am glad that my husband is now, not dealing with this.

John is currently on nursery. He can call me and even email throughout the day. I had to go up to the hospital and get my TB shot and the end of my Hepatitis series post-Africa. I actually got to tour where he was working. My husband the doctor! Wow! I was so proud of him!

Off track again. Back to how frustrated I was by those hard rotations ...

These rotations caused JB to say to me, "After all this military stuff is done, I think I'll just moonlight a day a week and not get a real job." Moonlighting is working in the ER for a 24 hour period. It pays very well and requires little commitment. It isn't what John would want to do, but working like a dog isn't what he wanted to be doing either. Some interns moonlight during residency to make more money. (The military has a clause that prohibits this.)

Anyways, the schedule is better. My parents are coming in tomorrow night. (Cannot wait! This is awesome!) John actually has all weekend off and possibly, he may have short days on Friday (a family day on the base) and Monday (Labor Day). This is amazing and definitely helping us to realize that we will get through this and come out okay at the end.

This residency stuff ain't so bad!