What they didn't tell me.....

When Mike went to medical school, and then decided that he was going to go into OB/GYN, I thought I did my due diligence.

I talked to OBs.

They told me about disappearing spouses on long call shifts....

....and middle of the night phone calls and pages

....and outrageous student loan payments.

They taught me how to smile warmly at someone that I didn't know....and that Mike couldn't introduce me to because of privacy laws....but who would stop us in the grocery store to say hi and show her doctor the baby that he delivered.

They warned me about inappropriate dinner table conversations suddenly becoming commonplace.

They told me that everyone would start to talk to me about their medical situations, assuming that Mike had already filled me in.  (He doesn't, just FYI, because he can't).

They told me about post call shift binge eating and manic shopping strips.

They taught me the "resident's trick"  (chug a cup of coffee and then take a 20 minute nap).

They showed me the secret energy snack that residents live on (graham crackers + peanut butter).

They reminded me that small town doctors know everyone......and everyone knows (or can recognize) the small town doctor's family.

They introduced me to awesome organizations and people who lived like us and thought like us and shared our faith.

They helped us grieve through the loss of our own babies and taught us about organizations that could help Mike help his patients heal after their own losses.

They taught me what it meant to be the wife of a Catholic OB/GYN.

....except for one thing.....

They never told me how hard it would be to see your spouse grieving for his patient's loss.   They never described the complete helplessness that you feel when there's nothing you can do to make it better or fix it or even lessen the pain of the doctor who did everything he could and it still wasn't enough.

They didn't tell me the words that I could say that would make the hurt go away - not even just a little bit - when he finally is able to come home and collapse from the sheer exhaustion of grieving in one room while motivating and encouraging in the next room over.

They didn't share how to parent the doctor's children who want to know why Daddy is upset when everything in their world seems okay.

They forgot to tell me how to hold his strong, steady hands while tears fall down around you and he struggles to tell you just enough that you can understand without telling you too much and breaking confidentiality.

They forgot to tell me that the miracle stories would be challenged by stories of great loss and suffering, and that I needed to be the one to praise God when he struggled to find the words.   That the valleys would be deeper than I'd ever thought they could be, and the fall from the mountaintop would be sudden and violent.

What they didn't tell me when they talked about lack of sleep and missed family dinners and student loan bills and silly surgical caps and children scandalizing teachers with proper anatomical terms and analyzing nfp charts while making dinner is that all of those things are the easy part.   The real work of supporting a doctor-spouse comes when you're patching up the cracks on a breaking heart and catching tears as they fall on pillowcases.    

......and I never know what I'm doing.

He said,

“Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb,

    and naked shall I go back there.[a]

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;

    blessed be the name of the Lord!”

Job 1:21