The beginning.

Finished. First year of med school down. Let's just say, I am so ready for this day. Maybe I felt like you do when you are a freshman in any type of school, and I am not even the student. It's my husband, Dr. H. (Dr. Husband)

Dr. H and I have been married for 4 years. When we married, I knew this was the direction he had been looking into. I think at first, I never really took him seriously. Like, everyone is "going to medical school." Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.

All of the sudden-saw it. Things I quickly learned about my spouse, SO PERSONALLY DRIVEN. I was never the nagging wife, didn't need to be. He just got it done. He researches everything. Oddly, it's almost like he does it secretively. Many nights our pillow talk is a presentation of something he has been thinking about for months, researching and getting excited about. At first, this was overwhelming. Now, I've learned how to listen to it, and table it.

Applying for med school was so stressful. We forked out SO MUCH MONEY just to apply. We did our best to use money we had and not take out any loans to apply. This narrowed us down to a handful of places to apply to. Which increased the stress level as you might assume.

I cried the day we got our first acceptance. We were in. No matter what, we get to go to medical school. We got lucky and had a few acceptances to choose from. Luckily, all of our interviews were close together which mean we didn't put down a deposit somewhere other than where we planned on going.

I thought for sure, we got in, end of my stress. WRONG.

Like I mentioned before, not long after he started applying to med school, there was a pillow presentation to do what's called HPSP (health professional scholarship program) Simply put-going through the military to pay for medical school. The moment we got an acceptance, we applied. Not to say we hadn't thought about it, because I said a straight up "oh, yeah, that isn't happening." However, all that research paid off and we were accepted into the Air Force. I cried even harder when we got this news. $300,000.00 of debt is a huge number. It all the sudden got MUCH smaller.

Fast forward a year and a half later and we are done with Med School year one. If I do some real math, there were more crappy stressful excrescences than wonderful ones. I have to, HAVE TO, force myself to look past them. It's critical that I do. The worst part about being the wife of Dr. H is no control. Let me put it this way, if he fails a class...he starts over. Not just a re-do or makeup of that particular class; it just starts over. So when your husband comes home with the news that he failed this quarter's anatomy (yeah, if he fails a class in a singe quarter, not over the year, we start over) It's kind of the end of the world emotionally.

The way our school works, the student stands before a board and explains what they think happened to cause them to fail. The board then decides whether or not the student starts over, takes a remediation test or is done with medical school. In our situation, there were so many students that failed this particular quarter, Dr. H got to skip this step and just retake the test. We had to give up our spring break and spend it in a cloud of emotional turmoil. It sucked. I never want to feel that way again.

Dr. H passed, and then sought out any additional help he could get. He was tested for ADD and we visited with a physician about it. We decided to get some medicinal help, and it changed everything. All of the sudden my husband was back to the good student he was before. He was happier and his grades improved. Our home life was bearable again. It was a real issue for him. Not that he didn't have to study less, or it was a magical all knowing pill, he actually studied more; because he could.

Next year will be better. It has to be.