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.