It’s July…Happy New Year!
I know, most people celebrate New Years in January, but for some of us, July 1st is the start of the “new year.”
See, I’m married to a doctor and my husband has been in training for the past 11 years…with two more to go. Four years of medical school, five years of general surgery residency, two additional years of research and starting July 1st of this year, two years of surgical oncology fellowship. Each of these “milestones” or transitions occurred in July.
This July is a big deal for us.
When we were in medical school, he initially thought he wanted to do ophthalmology or radiology, but as he progressed through his different rotations, it became increasingly obvious that neither of those were a good fit for him. He loved surgery. He tried to love a different specialty, but his passion as a physician was really in the operating room. We knew the road to become a surgeon was really hard so we began looking for ways that our family could make it work. Everybody I talked to – literally EVERYBODY – said that a general surgery residency was the worst thing that ever happened to their marriage and they wished they had never taken that path.
Everybody.
Now Aaron and I had a great marriage, but I was not naïve enough to believe that we were somehow immune to the challenges that these other couples had faced.
Surgery residency is marked with 80-120 hour work weeks – consistently, for five years. Some of the general surgery residency programs in the country have prided themselves that “no marriage has ever survived their program.” (As though that is really something to be proud of….)
How were we ever going to make this work? Our family was the most important thing to both of us, but honestly, I couldn’t see a way to navigate those years.
This July marked the end of those five (turned seven) years that I was terrified would destroy my marriage. We made it. And we didn’t just survive the process, we actually thrived during those years.
But thriving was a choice. A deliberate, daily choice.
Now that I am on the other end, I have many people ask me what tips I have for surviving residency. Forgive the personal nature of this post. I really wish there had been someone to tell me these things seven years ago. For that reason, I’m sharing with you the 10 lessons I have learned in hopes that there is someone out there who will find it helpful. I recognize that not all medical relationships are where the husband is the resident and the wife is home raising small children. Often both partners are residents -which presents a totally different layer of complexity, or the resident partner is female. I have used the pronouns to reflect my experience, not to be stereotypical. {Lesson 1}
It is amazing that you survived general surgery training! I think this applies to most residencies and fellowships (there might be a few exceptions like psychiatry or physical rehab:) but my husband just finished oral boards for ophthalmology, 10 years since medical school began and thankfully no fellowship as 6 years of away rotations was enough for us…he is however a surgeon, with full surgery days and every other week hospital call in our rural town means he’s often at the hospital in the middle of the night sewing up eye lids and many other “emergency” procedures…lest anyone start classifying it as an “easy” route…there is no easy way through medical training. I’m just grateful a fellowship wasn’t in our cards since we barely survived training…I guess you never know what you can do til you have to do it, though!
That’s absolutely true! All medical training is taxing and the process certainly has a way of teaching you what you are capable of. Best of luck to you on your new adventure.
I love this article and all of your tips. Thank you! Your advice has come at the perfect time, as my husband is just beginning an Orthopedic Surgery residency. We have 4 years of medical school, one General Surgery intern year, and one year of research under our belt. But with five more years of training in our future, I truly appreciate you honestly sharing your experiences and wisdom. Thank you!
Thanks Melissa. I’m glad you found it helpful. You’ve already come so far! Congratulations. Hang in there. You’ll make it 🙂
I really love this article, thank you for sharing! It is something I have really needed lately. My husband is in his first year of residency as an intern doing General Surgery, and then we will be doing 3 more years of Opthalmology (and possibly another fellowship year in retina). We knew it would be hard but man it sure is harder than we even imagined! I will definitely be using some of these tips (especially the extended family vacations one!) and I know it will help us through this year!
Best of luck to you through this process, Stephanie! It is hard, but it is possible.
I trained on the other side of the drapes (Anesthesiology residency) from your husband. I always found this article to be very helpful and have passed it along to many others. Thanks for your wisdom and insight. It certainly helped our family.
Very insightful. Thank you for the tips. Its helpful for the thousands of us in the process of residency.
Thank you so much for sharing! I am 7 months into my husband’s general surgery residency and my pediatric residency…13 hours away from one another. This article was excellent and very encouraging! I am so glad ya’ll made it through ‘to the other side’ and are thriving so beautifully. Thanks again!
Dr. Kim Blackham,
Thank you so much for these amazing tips. I am not married nor have kids but I am dating someone who is applying for residency next year. I’m about to turn 31 and he will be 30 this month so the only next step for us is to move forward. I like to read tips and success stories to prep myself and him on how I can better support him and how we can support each other on this new adventure. I will be graduating with my FNP end of next year just in time for him to find out where he will end up for residency. Hopefully with our powers combined, we can support each other and survive as life long partners in medicine. 🙂