Life in Residency

Well, to be completely honest, it SUCKS!!!! So far the last two months have been living hell (sorry mom) and I feel like crying every night because I don't have a husband, I'm home all day with crazy kids and I'm in a new place with no friends.... tear drop. I knew that residency would be hard. I knew that Matt would be gone a lot. But I also thought I would be able to handle it a lot better then I am. I miss him. I miss his help with the kids and help with the 'manly' work with the house. I feel like a single mother right now. I go to church alone which, to be honest, I don't get much out of because all I do is show up and wrestle with my kids during Sacrament meeting. My sweet two year old calls me by my first name right now so when he doesn't get what he wants he yells "NO, TANA, NO!!" That way everyone knows which family is making all the noise. Then we spend the rest of the time in the mothers lounge until Sunday school starts at which point I wrestle with McKay as I try and teach my primary class. I come home from church more exhausted then ever. I think that my ward thinks that I don't have a husband. I can't wait for the day that he can make it to church.

Matt's first rotation was Trauma Surgery, (for your first year of residency you go through different specialties, such as ER, NICU, Trauma, etc. for 4 weeks at a time so that you can get more experience for when you go into your specialty.) This was one of the hardest rotations out of the year because you work about 13-15 hours a day, 6 days a week. He would start the day off at 4:45am and end it around 7:30 or 8:00pm then go to bed around 9:00 which leaves me little time to be with him. I know that it was "cool" for Matt sometimes because he would see some crazy stuff, being down town in Saint Louis. He took care of people who would come in with car wrecks, stabbings, lots of gun shots and many other life threatening issues. But then he would come home with stories that scared me so bad that I wouldn't even want to leave the house because I might get shot when I go shopping. Don't you wish you lived here and were in my shoes? After that first rotation he started NICU, which had about the same hours as Trauma. My heart would always break when I would hear of these babies that weigh between 1-2 lbs and born at 24 weeks. I can't imagine being the one taking care of these little angels.

Matt is being such a good sport about all of this though. I can't imagine being him and working as hard as he is and then coming home and spending time with us even though he is exhausted from a full day's work. I just pray that one day we will look back at this experience and say that it was worth it. So far, looking back at Medical School we can say that it was worth it. We met amazing people, we made memories that we will always cherish and we grew closer as a couple and a family. Who knows if we would of had that before. Hopefully we can have the same luck now for the next four years as we did then.