My Dad is a retired Army Ranger. And currently, I have a close family member who is in the Army. He’s in Ranger school right now, as I write this, actually. He is navigating through forests, precisely packing equipment, marching for long periods of time, learning how to lead in stressful situations. He’s also dealing with the potential distress of being torn down emotionally by berating from sergeants, compounded by the intense (we’re talking insanity level) lack of sleep.

He is operating on very little food, while still trying to learn what he needs to know to successfully complete each section of the challenge he’s presented with. He is allowed very few interactions with his family and subsequently lacks substantial support.

Honestly, I’m nervous for him to return because I’ve heard that after you leave Ranger school, Ranger school doesn’t leave you.

At least for a while.

In addition to your body recovering from near starvation and the associated weight loss, you are also challenged with recovering from, in many ways, emotional trauma. I’ve heard first-hand that some wives of Ranger students barely recognize their husbands when they return home. The fun, easy-going, goofy sides of their husband’s personalities can be hidden away for a while. They may sleep all the time; eat all the time (and still never feel full). They may neglect household duties and avoid substantive conversations.

Ranger school isn’t the same as residency. However, residency carries with it similar emotional distress, and some physical distress as well (helloooooo lack of sleep!). Similarly, it changes you. In the midst of it, and as you recover from the experience, in many ways, you experience personality changes due to the metaphorical starvation. But when you’re no longer in the thick of it, you slowly, eventually, find yourself again.

And you, the spouse to a resident, WILL see your spouse again. The story of a resident, and that of a Ranger student, both have happy endings. After all, the greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward.

So today, I take you back into the depths of residency part three, the final installment, of this series. (Read Part 1 & Part 2 also!) We’re trudging through the swamps in full protective gear. I’m going to tell you the residency survival tips I wish I had known, so that you, too, can make it to the end of this journey a stronger, sharpened, successful soldier AND team.

Ways to Survive Residency as the Spouse of Resident

1. During Residency – be realistic about your expectations

By now, you know I’m always giving you real-talk. But as downright depressing as it sounds, being realistic about your expectations (*ahem*…lowering them) is probably one of the most helpful mindset changes you can make, especially early in residency. Personally, I honestly thought residency would be something similar to a continuation of medical school, and boy, was I wrong. This meant that initially, I was disappointed when my husband was away so much, and I had a hard time understanding the new levels of the emotional strain he was enduring.

So retrospectively, I would have more quickly lowered my expectations for the amount of time he would be around in the evenings, the amount of positivity I should expect from him, and the amount he would contribute to household chores, etc. Obviously, your spouse still needs to treat you well (duh!), and be a good human, but if your expectations about the other aspects of life are closer to what your spouse can actually deliver, you will be much less disappointed in the whole shebang.

Trust me. They want to be home just as much as you want them to be. And want to sleep in the bed with you every night. They also dislike their pagers. If given the choice, they actually would probably even PREFER to be home tackling a chore list instead of writing the 45 notes or endless responses to patient questions in their work computer system.

So we just have to give them a little bit of a break, which often means reframing those expectations.

2. Believe that your spouse is “still in there”

When faced with any significant challenge in life, like I was talking about with Ranger school, you come out on the other side as a different version of yourself. Every person handles a challenge differently. Some get more introspective, others get argumentative, others close themselves off from loved ones. Some cope by spending more time outside, or with their dogs. It’s easy to take their behavior change personally, and then use that against them. (*guilty*)

My encouragement in response to this is that in my husband’s case, once he was getting sleep again and his schedule was less draining than it had been, he almost immediately snapped back into the person I always knew him to be. But now he had become a more resilient, knowledgeable, and technically skilled version of himself, with maybe a slightly more guarded heart after walking with patients during their days of suffering and tragedy.

Few things devastate me more than marriages that don’t survive residency.

I just, don’t consider this time to be a true look into what your full life will be. This is just a temporary moment in time; a blip in the radar of your life together. If you don’t like the person that your spouse is in residency, communicate about it, try to work on it together, but also have faith that when they are sleeping more and are less emotionally drained, they will bounce back into someone who more closely resembles the individual that you know and loves.

I think about myself, and what I was like when my babies were newborns. I was in complete survival mode, clinging tightly to any minutes of sleep I could grasp. Being around me was miserable because I was often miserable. I couldn’t effectively communicate my needs, and I expected others to try to figure me out. A real peach. Then I imagine my husband enduring what he did for years and I’m amazed he pulled it together as well as he did.

3. Keep yourself busy

The busier YOU are, the less you’ll be focused on how busy your spouse is. This is a great time for you to pick up some extra, flexible hobbies. I say “flexible” because if you want to see your spouse, you can’t have too many firm, time-dependent obligations or you will NEVER see your spouse. And that would be a bummer. BUT, it’s not a bad time to train for a marathon or start learning a musical instrument, or how to knit or make a reading goal. It’ll be fun, and you’ll learn something, too!

4. Do not undervalue your role on the “team”

In Ranger school, you may not be able to do much to support your spouse, but thankfully, residency is FULL of opportunities for teamwork. I’ve talked before about when your spouse is winning, YOU are winning! (Read it here: Finding Your Own Voice when your Spouse is Killin’ It). The spouses we choose say a lot about us, and rather than competing against residency for your spouse’s time and attention, it can be so helpful to learn more about what they’re doing so you can contribute and work more closely together.

My friend, Sarah, (remember her from parts 1 & 2??), said that it was massively helpful to her to have her husband share a little about the the person he was helping when he gets called or has to stay late. It helped their kids (once they were mature enough), as well, when dad had to head out. He would say something like, “There’s a little boy who is your age who was playing with his dog. The dog bit him on the face and he is bleeding a lot. I get to go help make his face feel better. Will you pray for me and the little boy while I’m gone?”

If you know a little bit more about the mission, it’s easy to get behind it. If someone were to ask you if you’d rather your husband be at dinner with you or be rescuing the little boy from permanent scarring of his face, it’s a clear choice, right? It makes it easier to stomach the latter.

Other awesome ideas of Sarah’s to consider that will add value to your experience and to the “team vision”:

• Cleaning and refreshing the resident workroom. You can help out by throwing out trash, cleaning the fridge, and maybe even posting a memo board of resident family photos, perhaps?
• Meeting your spouse for lunch or dinner in the hospital cafeteria.
• For those with kids, taking the kids to visit your spouse at work. Take them to the units, to meet the nursing staff. This is especially fun on holidays like Valentine’s Day and Halloween.
• Bringing fun treats like cookies or donuts for your spouse and his/her co-workers.

Investing more in your spouse’s team will make you feel as though you are even more a part of it!

5. Lean on your community

It can be ENORMOUSLY helpful to connect yourself with other medical spouses. You have something so meaningful in common, and they can truly relate and hear you. If you can find “your” people, you just may make the best friends you’ll have for life.  

In my case, my best friends were (ARE) this small group we started with a few other couples. They all had some connection to medicine and it was lovely to be united by that, but not required, obvi. They listened and supported me, laughed with me, and eased away some of that loneliness associated with having a spouse who is rarely around. I love them. Still do. We talk every day.

I also recommend getting to know your neighbors. There have been times I needed neighbors to step in sometimes when my husband couldn’t.

And then, for my Christian lady friends here, Side by Side is my FAVORITE resource. It’s a branch of CMDA, and it’s for the partners of doctors at any stage of the game. I was a part of the founding chapter while in Rochester, MN a couple of years back. It was life-changing. Check out their website HERE to see if there are any chapters in your city:

6. Avoid the comparison game

Sarah reminded me of this quote:

“Comparison is the enemy of contentment”

(author unknown)

This is YOUR story to do the best with it that you can. It’s no one else’s. It can be easy to be disappointed when you watch those around you with spouses who work 9-5 and are nearly always home for dinner. Or to see friends in your graduating class climb earlier to success, in comparison to your spouse who isn’t finishing up their education until nearly their mid-thirties.

This may not be exactly the story you had planned, but it promises to be a rewarding one! You do you! Keep the blinders on and stay the course.

7. Prioritize your relationship the best you can.

One of the positive differences between residency and Ranger school is that for a resident, we DO get to support our spouse with more than just the occasional phone call or hand-written letter (though there will be times in residency when you’ll be lucky to have that kind of interaction).

Sometimes, prioritizing my relationship with my husband meant something as simple as ending a great conversation with a friend so I could click over (do people still say “click over”?) to my husband’s line, as it may be the only two minutes I get to chat with him that day. Other times, it meant trying to share his interests. For example, we both love working out, so when we needed to work out, we tried to do it together. When he was on night shift, he’d get home in the morning and we’d go for a run together. He’d go to bed, I’d go to work.

Additionally, we tried hard to make the best of days off. Some weekends that meant an Alias marathon on the couch. Some weekends we went big and saved up our dollars for a nicer meal, or a weekend getaway. But I can’t say enough about scheduling date nights and then following through.

8. Above all, don’t lose hope.

I know that you, yes, YOU reading this right now, are one tough chick (or dude!).

You are

• SMART.
• RESOURCEFUL.
• BRAVE.
• EQUIPPED with the skills you need to survive these difficult days.
• living your own version of Ranger school, by surviving under these conditions of multiple sources of deprivation.

Your efforts will not go unrewarded. And you, and your spouse, can do this. And you will.

Chin up, soldier.

It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.

Deuteronomy 31:8

Thank you, THANK YOU for walking these roads with me. Drop me a comment. Are you surviving a journey in residency? What strategies of survival have been most helpful to you?

You won’t see me here on Tuesday this week because I’m guest-posting over at The White Coat Wife! My very first guest post! Yay! Check out my Instagram or Facebook to make sure you don’t miss the details about that post! Can’t wait to share some big changes with you!