Insomnia When Husband On-Call

Does anybody else get insomnia when their husband is on-call? Or, do you stay up as late as possible so that when you do fall into bed you go right to sleep so you won't lay awake in the dark hearing scary noises and thinking someone is breaking into your house? That's what I'm doing right now. I got the kids to bed, I watched a movie and folded laundry, I made a post on my other blog, I checked other people's blogs, and now I'm on to this blog, putting off the moment that I'll have to go upstairs. Of course tomorrow I'll regret it because the kids will wake up early, Dr. J will "get off at 8" but not really because he'll have to tell whoever's on-call what happened last night, then he'll ride his bike home 10 miles after being awake for 30+ hours (does that sound safe to anybody else? He might be taking the "save the environment thing" a little too far). Dr. J is Q3 right now on Neurology, and it stinks. Thank goodness 2 year starts in 3 weeks and he'll be back to a better schedule - Q10. Can't wait for that.

Taking The Time to Make Dinner Only to be Outdone

It's probably better that I'm writing about this now, because at the time I was so infuriated that I probably would have done a lot of husband bashing. But now that I've had time to cool down, it's more of a learning experience, right?

So about a week and a half ago I took the time to make a really yummy dinner (I have to admit that my mom was visiting, so I wasn't neglecting the kids or anything). Dr. J comes home early, around 4:30, much earlier than we've seen him the past few days. Dr. J checks his email from work and says, "Oh, there's a drug rep dinner tonight at the Artichoke Cafe and my attending, Dr. E., is the guest speaker. I really think I should go...the last time he had a lecture like this none of the Interns attended and Dr. E. was pretty disappointed....(long pause)...but I don't have to go." (Let me just explain really quickly that The Artichoke Cafe is one of the nicer restaurants in town, the average entree is about $30. And we all know that drug reps are willing to drop a significant amount of money for dinners.) I try to stay calm and tell myself that it would be good for Dr. J to go, brownie points are a part of the whole game, but why drop it on me after I've already spent my time making dinner? (It's partially the fault of the guy who sends out the emails, he usually sends them out within less than 24 hours of the even.) And why does it have to be at The Artichoke Cafe? And gosh, I get disappointed when I don't get to see my husband most of the day only to have him come home and tell me he's going to dinner somewhere else.

Dr. J decided he should go to the dinner/lecture. I send Dr. J off most discourteously and inform him that if there are any leftovers from my dinner he won't get to eat any. I was so mad that I felt like I had a pit in my stomach (I hate to be cliche, but I could seriously feel all of my anger centered in my body). He's gone for almost 4 hours! This was due to the slowness of the restaurant. Dr. J said it took 2 hours just to get the main course. It was good that he was gone for that long, because I had cooled down enough to talk to him civilly by that point.

In my husbands defense I'd like to say these things:
1)He probably went because my mom was with me and could help with the kids
2)It was his attending, and it's always good to impress your attending
3) He told me that tomorrow night there's actually some big name psych guy coming to give a talk at another one of these dinners, but he said he's not going to go because he already had something else for work tonight (a book club through the department) and didn't get home until 9 PM.
4)He brought me home a piece of chocolate cake from the dinner, which tasted pretty good, so that helped calm me down, too.

In my defense, I would have been just fine if I had been given more than 5 minutes notice. I have nothing against free dinners and impressing your superiors, just tell me so I can take the kids out to eat.

Does the Hospital Own Your Life?

It would be really easy to take all of my frustration out on Jeremy, and be mad at him for being gone all the time, but it's really not his fault. After the first month of residency I came to the conclusion that the hospital owns our life right now. And you just kind of have to sit back and take it. Every time I start to get frustrated because he doesn't make it home for dinner or he's gone on Saturday and it ruins the weekend, I have to tell myself it's OK, it's not his fault. It's just what residency is.

Does anybody else feel like that?

Text Messaging

I was at the park a few months ago at a play group and some of the women there started discuss Blackberries (the phone, and how stupid they thought they were) and Text Messaging ("Why on earth are people sitting there texting each other when they could just pick up the phone an dial?"). I just thought to myself, "These people don't know people who are in the medical field...these things are like a God-send." There are so many times when Dr. J is with a patient or doing rounds, and he can't just pick up the phone. Text messagine has been a wonderful way for us to communicate. He has a pager from work that I can send texts to, and that's great, but we recently bought the Centro by Palm (which is a phone and palm pilot in one) and we love it. It's so easy to communicate with each other. Anyhow, nothing against the ladies at the park, but I love technology like that. It's great.

ER Bingo

So one thing that Dr. J and I did when he was on his ED rotation was "ER Bingo". I made a chart for each of us, and we each filled in our own squares (we got these from a list that Dr. J wrote down from all the common things you see in the ED). It took a few days for someone to get five in a row, but we eventually did it. And this way Dr. J and I would talk about what he did that night and all the patients he saw. Of course I just threw it away, but I should have taken a picture. Sorry.

What kinds of things do you do to make the time away from each other fun? Or what do you do to make sure you know what's going on in their life at the hospital?

I'm Not the Only One!

So when Dr. J first started his residency program I looked through the internet and book stores alike trying to find something that had anything to say about having a spouse who is a resident, attending, or even med student. I couldn't really find anything. So, why not share all of our experiences here? I know there are enough of you out there that have husbands, wives, S.O.'s who are in the medical field. And it's not easy to get up every day knowing that you may not see them that day or the next. Or knowing that when they work with sick people they bring home THOSE GERMS and get you and the kids sick. Or that before they have a huge test that even when they're home they're really not home, because they have to devote all of their time to studying.

I don't want to make this a whine fest or a competitive thing (i.e. "oh yeah! well, my wife worked this many hours last week!) I just kind of want to get everybody's stories and what they've done to survive the whole process.