Today is the day. THE day. It’s time that I finally write about all things residency.

The truth is, I’ve been feeling like I NEED to write about residency for a long while, but I really don’t WANT to. In fact, I keep bumping it down my posting schedule every time it rears its ugly, ugly head.

And I know this is going to sound dramatic, but deep down I was truly DREADING the day that I would have to go back to that place in my mind. In my memory. In my heart.

There are a couple of reasons I was avoiding it. Reason 1: Most of the time, residency was flat-out not a great time, to put it mildly. Reason 2: I was nervous that I have forgotten (or just completely blocked out in my memory) a large part of this time, and I wouldn’t be able to accurately recall it for you.

Which got me thinking.

I’ve often heard that women eventually forget the pain of childbirth. Have you?

No, no. I know what you’re thinking.

I’m not going to honestly compare the intensity and pain of residency to that of childbirth. (Plus, three kids later and I never did have labor pains, so I can’t speak to that. And, my friends, that’s a story for another day.)

But anyway, recently, when I was down the Google rabbit hole trying to find an answer to this question, the one about whether women really forget labor pains, I learned about this thing called the “halo effect.” I came across this article on www.theconversation.com HERE which talks about the fact that moms don’t actually completely FORGET the pain of labor, but the reward of having their new little bundle colors their memory of the pain, creating an effect like a “halo” over the experience. It’s like a happy, positive light over something that was intensely difficult and life-changing. After some additional frantic googling, I came to the disappointing conclusion that that article most likely did not use the term completely correctly. (It’s usually used about our first impressions when meeting new people, and how that changes the lens with which we view them going forward). But regardless of the accuracy of the term, the idea of this “halo effect” really resonated with me when I think about residency.

My husband’s days in residency ended in June of 2016, making it nearly three long years ago.

When I think back, though I have indeed forgotten many of the small details, I CAN still vividly remember the lasting impression of these incredibly hard times, the struggles; the honestly…dark days.

But, encouragingly, from where I sit today, I can tell you with complete sincerity that that painful experience has been made new to me in my memory. My husband and I agree that what we both experienced feels so. worth. every day of that drama. Enduring those five pain-filled years, retrospectively, was necessary to get to this place of comfort, of greater peace, of greater security, of accomplishment. Knowing that residency was the only path to get where he is (we are) now, colors the way I view that experience, as hard as it was then. My very own, customized “halo effect.”

So you just remember that as you read about the bad and the ugly sides of residency today. Because in the end, it’s all worth it. Hold tight.

And now would be a great time for me to introduce a buddy of mine.

Some of us remember details better than others. ALL of us handle the experience differently. That’s why I thought it was important to consult one of my very best friends for this one. This…is Sarah.

Her husband is an ENT and was in the same class as my hubby in medical school. In fact, Sarah and I met while standing in line at the very first medical school function during 1st year. We were but mere babies and had no idea where this insane medical journey would lead us. We walked these roads together. In fact, she’s a big part of the reason I went back to school and got my Master’s in Speech-Language Pathology! She’s an SLP, too. You can trust her. She’s the best.

The main difference in my story versus Sarah’s story of residency is that she and her rockstar husband began their family in medical school, whereas my hubby and I waited until the chief year of residency. I love that I can bring you our combined perspectives today.

I was there. Sarah was there. Let’s chat.

The Bad and Ugly Sides of Residency

Residency is filled with overwhelming value, but is, no doubt, an exceptionally difficult time for the spouse in training and their fam. There’s no getting around or sugar-coating that fact. While you are in the thick of it, it can seem dark. Lonely. Confusing. Even hopeless, on the worst days.

This, my friends, is all about the bad and ugly sides of residency. And fair warning…this is a tough read. (The good parts of residency WILL come in my next post! Promise!)

1. The emotional strain

Residency can turn a human into a shell of themselves. As the spouse, it is incredibly difficult to watch the person you love most be challenged so significantly while you helplessly watch from the sidelines. Their mental, emotional, and physical health dwindles with every long call shift, every criticism from hospital staff or faculty, every sleepless night until they are merely walking zombies that can recite a LOT of medication contraindications.

Especially earlier in residency, the demands on the spouse in training are coming in from all directions and it’s impossible for them to keep up. This has the result of making them, and their partner overwhelmed. They want to be able to do it all (home and hospital life) and dominate it all. In fact, Sarah’s husband would get up in the wee small hours of the morning (no, but seriously, like 3 am) to study for his in-training exam before rounding, because he didn’t want to use family time later in the day for this purpose (assuming he was even able to make it home before the kids went to bed). It’s nearly impossible to do all that is needed to be done in the 24 hours a day you are given, and the continual striving to meet the expectations in and out of the hospital is exhausting, to say the least.

As the spouse, it’s hard to know how to help. You want to encourage and support. You REALLY do. But it becomes exponentially more difficult when your once warm and friendly husband turns seemingly cold from the stress and strain. And who can blame them? It is hard to separate who your spouse is in residency from who you know them to be. They are still in there. Don’t lose all hope.

2. The loneliness

My husband is my best friend. I like to hang out with him. When he’s not around, it’s kind of a bummer. During residency, I did a lot of things alone. I watched movies alone, I cooked alone, I ate alone, I flew to see my family alone. I had great friends, don’t get me wrong, and saw them regularly and loved spending time with them. But there were just a lot of days when my husband couldn’t be there for me during downtime. I personally handled this okay, in my opinion, but it doesn’t always sit well with everyone.

The schedule was just, there’s no other way to say it…horrific. My husband was almost always pre-rounding in the mornings, and often the last one to leave the hospital in the evenings. In fact, there were long stretches of time he’d be getting up at 4:30 am, and home at 8:00 pm. On the weekends, if he was around, we’d plan to watch movies together, and he’d be completely asleep on the couch by 8:00 pm. I’d eventually look over, see him sleeping, and then wonder how long I’d been watching “Iron Man II” alone. Ha.

And don’t even get me started on night shift. I’d be lucky to see him for 2 hours a week.

5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. 6 God sets the lonely in families,[a] he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.

Psalm 68:5-6 New International Version

3. The social impact

When we were invited to go out with others, I learned pretty quickly that if I accepted the invite, I’d likely be going alone. It was rare that my husband could attend. I mean, in the unlikely event that the activity did fall during his 2.3 hours off each week, the offer understandably had to be PRETTY DARN INCREDIBLE for him to be inspired to go. I wasn’t afraid to hang out with my friends and their spouses, but it’s not cool being a third wheel constantly. My husband missed several of my work Christmas parties during this time. I went to concerts without him. Festivals. Church. A whole lot of things. Things that I would have enjoyed experiencing with him, but couldn’t. It’s just part of the sacrifices you make!

Oh man….this is hard. Does it feel hot in here to you? *airs out collar* Whew!

Let’s press on. We can do this. We definitely can.

4. The unpredictability

This is not only about the schedule. The unpredictability of EVERYTHING is very difficult as a spouse. The unpredictability of my husband’s mood when he got home, the unpredictability of what his test scores would be, the unpredictability of whether he’d be able to stay awake for the movie we were going to.

And then related to the schedule, it’s difficult to plan vacations. YES, we always took them and I wrote a detailed post about it recently: 5 Reasons to Take All of Your Vacation Time – Especially During Residency. But we would sometimes have to pay significantly more money for our plane tickets because we couldn’t buy them until the last minute.

My friend Sarah describes the unpredictable hours as having an effect similar to emotional lability, which is defined as “a neurological condition that causes uncontrollable laughing or crying, often at inappropriate times,” according to Healthline, HERE. With kids, you obviously need more help from your spouse. And when you have no idea when you’re going to be able to tag out, as well as limited finances to pay a babysitter, it can drive you to a place where you feel unstable, confused, and trying to grab hold of your emotions and strength but often failing. Thus, cue the uncontrollable, inappropriate laughter and tears.

5. The inevitable priority shift

Obviously, residency is a commitment. A huge one. When you see the name of that program on that paper on Match Day, you are IN. You are partly THEIRS. If an individual is going to be successful in a residency program, they have to be all-in. And sometimes, that means that patients in the hospital come before the needs of a resident’s family. Not always. But often.

Sarah described a time when she was very, very sick, (violently vomiting), feeling like she needed her husband’s help, but he was stuck at the hospital. This feeling, “feeling like you’re on your deathbed while hubby is saving someone else’s life but not yours,” is a hard one to stomach, but is often reality. Sometimes, you feel like you’re in second place to the hospital and the patients.

6. 2nd Year

So, um, second-year gets its own little category here. It was the second year in my husband’s blue-collar, hard-working program, but maybe a different year in yours, depending on the structure. But, for us, everyone told us that it would be the hardest. And I’m here to tell you today that this warning turned out to be indeed true in our case. It was the hardest year of residency, the hardest year in our marriage (not a coincidence). The grunt work, lack of autonomy, the incessant beeping of that pager, the stress of the in-training exam, taking call as the very bottom of the totem pole, all made my husband very not happy. Which made me not happy. Things got better from there, exponentially, each year, I would say. But the overall sentiment here is that this is a year with a lot of suffering. Hold fast, stay the course.

Annnnd…now we’re all thoroughly depressed.

Sorry about that.

If you’ve made it this far in this story, I’m proud of you. It’s heavy. And man, I’d be okay if I didn’t write about heavy stuff for a while. It’s rough. It’s raw. It is hard. It’s hard to write about, and harder to experience.

So, I’m not even giving you advice today. Not even the grossly positive spin that is so typically me, (because yes, I indeed prefer being a super-crazy positive person). Not today. Just the facts today.

I’m gonna just let it simmer there until next time.

Today, we covered the bad and the ugly, but in Part 2, we’ll talk about the good parts of residency. There is, in fact, good here. Quite a bit of good, actually. And we need to dive deep into that, as well.

So I’ll see you there? (CLICK HERE to skip there NOW!)

Friends, thanks for being here today. It means the world. I promise you’ll be smiling at the end of the next one!

Love to each and every single one of you lovelies. (Yeah, you!) ❤️❤️