Final stretch of a life in a medical resident's family
It feels absolutely surreal when I heard my wife m saying her 5-year residency will end at the end of June, merely 30 days away. For some reason I thought it would be a few weeks longer, which would have made significant difference on my/our mental. Anyways, looks like we've already turned the final corner of this rough, brutal, nerve-wrecking, hopefully enlightening, but simply long journey. The last dance should be rewarding and celebratory, if this is a "normal" job, but looks like that's not the case with m -- with or without covid-19 daemonic situation.
Anyways, I can't imagine how we'll feel about the life of post-residency just yet. But I do want to NOT let the vows made in storms to be forgotten in calms. Yes we can't wait to be freed from this cage that has limited us in so many ways, but at the same time I do not want to forget how we feel, how miserable, desperate, exhausted we've felt, what we got, what we dealt with or couldn't deal with, what we fought for, how often we argued, what we sacrificed, what we still achieved, during this 6 years (including less than 1 year of research "off" year that terminated early due to 2nd kid's pregnancy). So I'll try leaving our footage as much as I can, by resuming this blog that apparently went into hiatus after 2nd son was born.
For today, what we are doing now? m is rotating in surgical oncology, which she originally expected to be relatively permissive. Turned out it is the opposite. All I know is partly because of surgeries that were considered as non-essential and thus pushed back earlier when hospitals were still evaluating the covid situations now back in the schedule. The past one week m's work schedule has been constant from my perspective -- left home before 6am, no lunch, came home past 8pm saying she only had time to eat crackers for breakfast, and hates to miss kids while they are awake. She's on home-call for 4 or 5 nights this week as well. One night her pager beeped and I woke up to it, realizing that I fell asleep with kids in their bed room.
Since earlier when hospitals weren't sure to the level where we are today about how they would have to allocate physicians for the care of covid contracted patients, many people thankfully cared for us. Fortunate or not, as a surgery resident, m has not seen covid patients and her work schedule didn't get affected as much. However it now is as I mentioned above. I had to free her from all the household chores (except only a few things I ask her to do incl. making kids meal, which she's been fully in charge successfully since the day#1 of the 1st son basically) to let her focus on the work, and also the board exams that will take place right after her residency's over.
Anyways, I can't imagine how we'll feel about the life of post-residency just yet. But I do want to NOT let the vows made in storms to be forgotten in calms. Yes we can't wait to be freed from this cage that has limited us in so many ways, but at the same time I do not want to forget how we feel, how miserable, desperate, exhausted we've felt, what we got, what we dealt with or couldn't deal with, what we fought for, how often we argued, what we sacrificed, what we still achieved, during this 6 years (including less than 1 year of research "off" year that terminated early due to 2nd kid's pregnancy). So I'll try leaving our footage as much as I can, by resuming this blog that apparently went into hiatus after 2nd son was born.
For today, what we are doing now? m is rotating in surgical oncology, which she originally expected to be relatively permissive. Turned out it is the opposite. All I know is partly because of surgeries that were considered as non-essential and thus pushed back earlier when hospitals were still evaluating the covid situations now back in the schedule. The past one week m's work schedule has been constant from my perspective -- left home before 6am, no lunch, came home past 8pm saying she only had time to eat crackers for breakfast, and hates to miss kids while they are awake. She's on home-call for 4 or 5 nights this week as well. One night her pager beeped and I woke up to it, realizing that I fell asleep with kids in their bed room.
Since earlier when hospitals weren't sure to the level where we are today about how they would have to allocate physicians for the care of covid contracted patients, many people thankfully cared for us. Fortunate or not, as a surgery resident, m has not seen covid patients and her work schedule didn't get affected as much. However it now is as I mentioned above. I had to free her from all the household chores (except only a few things I ask her to do incl. making kids meal, which she's been fully in charge successfully since the day#1 of the 1st son basically) to let her focus on the work, and also the board exams that will take place right after her residency's over.
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| A book at the bottom of Mt. Shasta. On m's presumably the last weekend off during her residency we went there to relax a bit. Well deserved, well socially distanced excursion. |
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