True Life, I'm a Resident: An Entire Month on Nights

Every month, Josh switches services that he's rotating on.  For example, he started out on Vascular Surgery, followed by Thoracic Surgery.  He'll do other services in the upcoming months like Trauma Surgery and Surgical Oncology.  There are two different hospitals in which he switches back and forth between depending on the service he's on.

At one of the hospitals, people switch off during the week of taking the night shift, but at the other hospital, one resident is staffed for the whole month on nights.  It's nice on one hand because it means that certain months, Josh will never/rarely have to work a night shift.  But, pretty much every intern resident has to take their turn as the night shift guy/girl and October is Josh's month.   I've been dreading this month since we got Josh's schedule back in July. He works every Sunday night through Friday night for the entire month.  His only night off is Saturday night, but since he's doing nights all month long, it's near impossible to get off the night schedule for only one night a week.  So last night, despite the fact that he wasn't working, he was up until 4:30am.

What does that look like for family life?  Well, as you can imagine, it's not that great.  Really, residency in general is not that great for family life right?  But, we learn to work with what we've got.  We usually see Josh for 45 minutes or so in the morning when he gets home around 7am while he scarfs some breakfast err dinner?  (Sidenote:  Josh has lost over 20lbs since starting residency. I need to hop on this diet plan).  He sleeps most of the day and wakes up around 4pm where we get another hour or two before he goes in to work at 6pm.  It's tough, but this is resident life.

At least Ryan and I are going to have some visitors in the next couple of weeks to help us occupy our time.  One of my best friends Alexa is coming to visit for a few days followed by my parents at the tail end of the month.  We can't wait.

On another note, Josh got to do his first solo appi (the surgical lingo for an appendectomy).  He completed it all on his own from start to finish, with another surgeon in the room of course.  But still, my husband is just growing up and becoming a real doctor.  Hard to believe that four years ago he was prepping for Biochemistry and Anatomy midterms in England and I was wondering how we were ever going to make it all the way to this point.  Just goes to show that God IS Faithful.

Looking forward to November when Josh can get back to 80 hour DAYTIME work weeks and an entire week of vacation!