Life as a Medical School Wife

It has been on my mind lately to do a post where I share about having a spouse in Medical School. Joe graduated in May 2009 so we are still pretty fresh from him being in school!

Basically, Joe decided to stay near where we did our undergraduate work to go to Medical School. I think part of that reason was because I was still a student so I wouldn't be able to re-locate with him if he moved. But he loved the campus and he was impressed with the staff when he interviewed.

One of my favorite parts of the beginning of Medical School for Joe was when he had the White Coat ceremony where they gave them their first white coat and the students took their first oath. It was such a big moment in his career and I had seen how hard he had worked to get to that point. 

I don't know if it's the same for every school - well, actually I know it's not - but for Joe the first two years of school were almost entirely in the classroom or lab and the last two years were almost entirely clinical. I can remember when he'd have lab days when they'd work on the cadaver and he'd come home smelling really RIPE. Ha! I bet a lot of you can relate!

About midway through Medical School Joe really started to think about what he wanted to do his residency in. At first he thought he might like Neurosurgery so he did several rotations in both Neurology and Surgery and decided he didn't like being in clinic so he chose Anesthesiology (say that five times fast) because that meant he could do procedures all day in the OR. I guess he liked knocking people out! Ha!

My advice to anyone with a significant other in medical (or dental, or pharmacy or whatever! :) school would be to take the Step Exams seriously, do lots of rotations in many different things and also consider lifestyle when choosing a speciality.

I have to say though, I still feel like I have no idea what he's talking about or doing most of the time. If he can relate things back to Grey's Anatomy I'm usually pretty good but I'm more of a numbers girl and most medical things gross me out! Ha!

If you have a significant other in the medical field - please link up because I think it's awesome to hear how others have gone through the schooling.

Happy Friday :)