Not Just Mrs Doctor - A Beginning

It seems I've always had crushes on doctors. I don't know if there is enough space in the blogosphere to psychoanalyze my crush on Trapper John Macintire from MASH, or perhaps I'll save it for another time. For now, I'll stick to Gilbert Blythe.

Reading or watching Anne of Green Gables was a favourite past time of mine - not only for the fiesty Anne and her troubles with cordial, but also because of her fraught-with-tension relationship with Gilbert. Who could forget the first time Gilbert whispered "carrots" or Anne smashing her slate over his head? Who could forget the agony of Anne's rejection of his first marriage proposal or of his subsequent near-death experience? The first kiss when she indeed agreed to be Mrs Dr Blythe?

I admit that I still tend to be foolishly romantic when it comes to literary or television romances (and, ridiculously, Nora Roberts), that I have a particular affinity for heritage clothing, and that I dream of a life where apple orchards and horse-drawn carriages are dialy norms. Still, as I am able to look at Anne and Gilbert through adult and literary-study spectacles, their relationship - as they move through their early marriage and childbearing years - evolves in a troubling way. In the beginning, they were an intellectually equal couple, competing for the top spot in the class, showing down at spelling bees, pursuing higher education. Yet, as the books progress through to Anne's House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside, etc, fiery Anne begins to fade - she moons about alot by herself on the beach as Gilbert tends to his patients, she befriends an old sailor, she becomes known to one and all as Mrs Dr, she suspects Gilbert of not delivering middle of the night babies, but of having affairs. She bears 7 children who themselves begin to take over her story with Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside. Mrs Dr, mother and wife. I miss the Anne who lips off to Mrs. Rachel Lynde, who saves Diana's sister, who cracks slates over boys' heads.

All this to say, I don't ever want to become a Mrs Dr, though sometimes, on these darker nights when my husband is on-call and after my three-year-old daughter is asleep, I fear that I am becoming that. You see, when we met, my husband was a 20-year-old boy (as I was a 20-year-old-girl), and neither one of us knew what to do with our lives. We stuck together through 4 university degrees for me, 2 for him, got married somewhere in the middle of it all, and then he received that fateful acceptance letter from medical school. For me, at that moment, everything seemed to change.

I don't want to give the impression that I am bemoaning my fate here. As I am reminded over and over again "it will all pay off in the end." What I am saying is that there are compromises along the way, and I don't think anyone entering this field, or supporting someone who is entering this field, has a clue what those compromises could be. Maybe the point of growing up is learning about compromise and sacrifice. Still, I don't want that compromise to be me.

When my husband was accepted into medical school, I had just finished my second graduate degree, was in early negotiations with a literary agent, just got a job teaching at a college, completed a writing studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Needless to say, at 28, I was entering some kind of momentum. Then we moved, and I became friendless, jobless, pregnant and unable to sleep or write. Medical school began and I never saw my husband again. Ok, that might be an exaggeration, but we certainly didn't even walk our dog together anymore.

Being jobless, friendless, pregnant, and unable to sleep or write, I believe it's fair to say I lost some of my confidence. This was compounded by his classmates' questions, "So, what do you do?" I learned the way to stop a conversation is to say that you are a penniless poet who currently gestates for a living. Now, I have met many of my husband's female colleagues who are wonderful, intellegent, funny, compassionate and creative people, but at that time I felt nothing but crushing inadequacy to their success - here they were strong, smart, successful women and I was, well, me.

I won't go into all the details of medical school, early residency, and all other associated travails in this post as it seems to be long enough. Sufficed to say that I hope this blog - should you find it - will help you know that if you are a medical spouse - male or female - your experiences are shared. And, if you are not part of the medical mafia, maybe you will find the salacious and secret details you always wanted to know. Even more, I hope this blog will be a space where I can again exercise my medicalized and mummy-fied brain, a space where bigger issues (violence against children, wars) that have been eating away at me can be explored, and a space I can share with you through all those nights I'm awake, my husband's gone, and the rest of the house is sleeping.