99 hours....

Residency sucks!!

Not really.... Hehe. But when we say that we're actually enjoying it, people make the mistake of thinking (wha...?) it's easy.... (Seriously? You really think so?) Same thing happened in medical school, which we also enjoyed instead of endured.

I was driving Matt to work this morning (at 6:15 which, believe me, feels a lot better than the times he has to be there at 5:30—whenever he gets to start work at 7:00 or later, it feels downright luxurious) and, as I counted the seconds until I could get back home and crawl back in bed, I marveled for the billionth time that Matt just keeps on doing this. (I would die.) He works like crazy...! He wakes up early in the morning and goes to bed late at night. He goes to conferences on a daily basis to (gulp!) learn even more things, he studies medical literature, and he does research of his own (inducing pulmonary hypertension in mice isn't easy, it turns out!). He tends to bunches of sick kids and babies all day (and sometimes all night and day again...), picks up their nasty germs occasionally, and comforts their parents. 

And he doesn't mess up life by letting all of that get him stressed—and doesn't even come home from his 32-hour shifts and sleep all day (he plays with us instead! Nice...!). He keeps it fun. And has fun. And it's made what could have been a really difficult six years a whole lot of interesting instead. :)

I was marveling at his lack of tantrum this morning, knowing how tired he must be and how long a day he'll have, and I decided I needed to defend this man's honor! Hehe. So here's me dispelling the notion that, for Matt, "it's just so easy." :)

Take this week, for instance. A typical week, even. From this past Sunday until this upcoming Saturday, I counted up that he'll likely log 99 hours. It made me laugh earlier this week when he went to work Sunday morning. Both of us were exultant that, "ah, no big deal, it's just going in for rounds in the morning." Practically a non-work day! He went in at 6:15 in the morning, prepped for rounds, then had rounds, then got out as fast as he could. He left the hospital on this virtual "day off" at a glorious 1:30 in the afternoon. It was still a 7.5-hour workday! Hahaha!! And it didn't even occur to me until later that it was much of a workday at all. You know you work hard when you practically skip back home after working "only" 7.5 hours—when you're tempted to call it almost a "day off." 

The next day he went in to work at 6 in the morning, worked all day, worked all night (admitting kids, not sleeping one bit...), rounded the next morning and came home at 1:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday to take a shower and go to the Wild Animal Park with me and Seth. Went to bed. Got up to go to work at 6 again, and worked until 6 in the evening. (Only a month or two ago, we would have gone to the beach for the evening, but now with this infernal time change the sun is already down. Sigh. It makes a 12-hour workday seem so much longer than it used to!) Today: in at 6 again. Tomorrow: 6-6. Saturday, in at 6, out on Sunday afternoon. Day off? Monday! Finally.... :)

Now don't let me hear anyone say anymore that Matt is getting off easy! Or so help me...!! Hehe.

Yes, we're having fun. And, yes, med school was (gasp!) fun, too. 

Want to know the secret? :)

He loves it! How else are you going to survive a 32-hour shift in a good mood? (I even watched the clock on 6-hour shifts, in work I really, really liked! 32 hours? You kidding me?) He loves kids. He loves working with their parents. He loves medicine. 

Another secret: he even loves the learning environment. A lot of med students and residents get majorly stressed because they've never been in a situation where people are frequently telling them they're screwing up. Think about it: they're a whole bunch of overachievers who were always model students and model whatever else. Now they get immersed in this work they don't know that much about, with attendings in charge of educating them on-the-job. You can imagine that sometimes an attending comes around who isn't delicate when he/she says: "you sucked that up, kiddo! It's really like this." One of the best personality traits for this whole experience has been that Matt actually enjoys the teaching environment, appreciates direction however it comes, and isn't at all concerned—in the least—with looking like he doesn't need to be corrected. Every time he's worked with an attending who is notoriously "difficult," in med school and now, he's had a uniquely great experience with them, felt like he learned a lot and, in turn, earned their respect and formed a great (if sometimes kind of strange... :)) relationship. Erases a lot of potential stress!

Add all that to his being so accustomed to being sleep-deprived (he has spent his whole life unable to sleep about one night in four or five because of a totally bizarre condition—something to do with hypothalamus damage, probably), to his general tendency to shirk stress, his cleverness in minimizing superfluous workload (he's seriously a genius at knowing what needs to be overdone and what doesn't... :)), and his determination to make his family-time his top priority, and you get 99-hour workweeks that aren't so bad.... :)

So, ok, you're not going to hear us complain much about how terrible residency life is. But this man works so, so hard. And the world needs to know it! Thank the Lord he's in a career he loves so much, so that we can survive this path so well. It's truly a blessing. :)

[This is me grinning cutely now at Matt rolling his eyes at me for writing this post. Hehe. :-* Muah!]