Vacay: In Sum

So my last post sounded super Debbie Downer, and seriously? Vacation? Not working? Free food and bevs? Perfect weather? Yea, no room for complaining. In all honesty, I was disappointed not to work because I really do love personal training, I love big shiny gyms and I like people. I was kind of looking forward to working with a new batch of 'em. But all in all, everything turned out okay despite having to accept not working (seriously?). I mean, I did have to "show up" for work each day at 8 am but after 20 minutes of blundering through Spanish with terrible acoustics my first day I asked Hector if I could just work out as long as no one needed training. He agreed that would be fine, and this is how it came to be that I took a vacation where I was paid to show up at 8 am and workout for an hour every day.

I know, guys. Pity me.

After we'd work out, we'd go to breakfast where I fell in love with the omelet station and the pineapple bar and I'd stuff myself silly on these two items. Afterward we'd go back to the room and slather up with SPF 30 before setting up camp at the pool. Oh, the pool. I stayed poolside from about 10-2, with at least 3 more SPF-ings, voraciously reading. I quickly learned there was a "leave a book, take a book" and went through at least one whole fiction novel each day. Matt earned himself resort wide recognition playing beach volleyball and/or life-sized chess games. (Pics to come.) We'd take a break around lunch, and then call it quits again around 4. We'd head back to the room for a nap or to watch the only English channel, CNN (for me, nap > CNN) and then shower before heading down to the bar. On one day, I'm pretty sure we laid down for a nap around 2 and didn't stir again til 6. We slept. A lot.

I know.

Matt had stayed late night at one bar watching an NBA game and befriended a bartender - a local with a penchant for tossing Grey Goose bottles high into the air and catching them moments before they crashed into the ground ` and so we quickly became regulars at this entertaining lobby bar. We'd have a drink or two, wander off to dinner, and then meander our way back to our still-warm bar seats. Here we'd chat with Teo - our bartender - learning much about his life, the traditions of the island (what mamajuana is, and is not) or meeting other hotel guests, sharing our TV and pistachios with them. Around half-time, we'd head up to our room with a "roadie", where Matt would finish up the basketball game and I'd quickly be studying the back of my eyelids. 9 hours of sleep became a regular habit for me.

I know.

Tough life, huh? I tell you what, you hardly appreciate it while you have it. Before you know it you are walking back through the customs terminal at Charlotte International, looking at your cell phone light up with missed voice mails and emails and wondering why it isn't possible to store up all that extra sleep and sun like a debit account for later withdrawals. Our vacation turned out to be exactly what we ordered: relaxing, detached, unscheduled and drawn out. The perfect fulcrum point to a hectic end of medical school and a sure-to-be-hectic beginning of internship. We're both now wondering if the florescent lights in our workplace will give off UVA/UVB to help keep us in the carefree, happy place of this last week. Somehow I think I know the answer to this, but I'll wear SPF 15 this week just to be sure. At least something will smell like coconuts this week, because my beverages certainly will not.

Pics to come.

Not My 9-5

I have been surprised at the language barrier here and how many of the staff - from concierge to gym staff - speak little to no ingles. I also have been surprised at the relative ease at which my Spanish has, thankfully, found its way back to me, after being tucked away in my subconscious for nearly six years. So, as mentioned, I'm here to personal train, right? Right. (And, y'know, test all the daquiri flavors.) I had visions of a shiny resort gym, a sign-up board with appointments, giving my trainees my best Jillian-esque workout, maybe even doing some on-the-floor weight loss coaching, converting their vacay into a mini Canyon Ranch in their one hour with me. Lovely, right? (I'm good at this vision work stuff.)

Reality? Not so much. Why I was way off:
1) It took me 2 days to merely figure out who scheduled people to be working in the gym. In these 2 days Matt and I learned that it also takes an act of congress to get towels or make a dinner reservation. Laid back? Um, you bet. When I finally found "my boss," I'm not even sure he really knew I was supposed to be here. Then he asked if I could teach "aerobics in la piscina." Luckily "no" needs no translation.
2) The gym looks exactly like my high school gym which was geared towards wrestlers and lineackers. The only thing "shiny" about it is the perma-stains of sweat on the weight benches.
3) The gym is run by Hector who speaks no english, thinks Matt plays for the Braves (did I mess something up in translation?), works from 7a to 7p for a wage that makes US minimum wage look like a make it rain kinda salary, and told me he's is mucho bored. So, no sign up boards.
4) I saw 2-4 guests use the gym. Most of the occupants are employees of the resort, and clearly not interested in a training session. I guess this is how Hector survives - companionship.

I felt somewhat awkward and useless today in my first "working" day. I spent 20 minutes talking to Hector, but the acoustics in the gym were so bad that every 3rd or 4th response was lost - add to that I was trying to salvage my rusty Spanish skills and it ended up being my brain getting the biggest workout of all. Don't get me wrong: I ain't complaining! I'm in a tropical paradise, working 1 hour a day, and the pina colada machine never turns off. I'll figure out a way to live with all this let-down.

The Proper Choosing of Language

The best part of floundering in a new language is the absolute thought, care and devotion dedicated to the choosing each world. Each "please" and "thank you" is a bridge between two worlds and the look of comprehension in the recipients eyes when the right tense is combined with the right verb is like the giving of no other gift.

Tonight we met Danny and Angela, siblings from Boston, who slip easily from Spanish to English with a mere flicker of thought. At one point, I asked Angela the best way to say "I would like" when ordering - knowing one could say "Quiero," "Pido", "Me gustaria" and so many other choices. (Imagine: in English... I'd like, Can I have, Bring me, Yea I want the... Gimmeah....). Her answer, "Deseo", was not one I had considered and my joy at using just the right word in the future is just so tangibly unique to any other experience.

What a strange and separate world it is to know just a sliver of a language. Enough to "act as if", but when the waterfall of worlds tumble out in response I back away, hands up, pleading "Mas Despacio!" And then as if the water was not cold enough the first time, I plunge back in.

Estamos Aqui!

We have arrived in Punta Cana! We are just sitting in the main lobby of our hotel now, awaiting our room to be ready. Ya'll, it is HOT. Like, North Carolina in August minus the option of air conditioning plus the stupidity of wearing jeans because I was traveling on a plane and plane are always cold HOT.

The deal is that I'm contracted as the personal trainer here at this lovely resort for up to 3 hours a day, in exchange for us getting to stay here - room, food, drinks - for the mere cost of one night's stay, 2 plane tickets, deportation tax, and the taxi ride from hell. Not a bad deal, if you can arrive here without losing your lunch in the taxi. I swear, the ride here made a Manhattan taxi ride look like a Sunday drive with Nanta and Pa. There are no lines on the road, stop signs apparently are optional, motorcycles are merely temporarily distractions to swerve around, oncoming traffic is No Big Deal when passing, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me that speed limit is in kilometers? After awhile, I just shut my eyes and prayed that if we crashed, the ER doc sitting next to me would still be conscious because I'd rather take my chances on him saving my life with something out of our toiletry kit than go to the Punta Cana hospital - if there is one.

But we made it, and we're here waiting and the resort looks gorgeous. The resort is kind of u-shaped facing the beach, and there's two pools. One is the quiet pool, probably more family-friendly, and the other currently has Jock Jams pumping and the swim-up bar is jam packed. The resort is more international than I thought it would be - I just sort of assumed (estupida americana) that all the staff people would habla ingles. Not so much. Fortunately, my Spanish is reliably coming back to me.

Now, if we could just get in our rooms (and a/c) and get into bathing suits... it's vacay time!

The Doctor's Wife

It's amazing that 4 years of medical school have come to an end. From my perspective, they flew by. However, I did not take even one night of overnight call, study one day for boards, take one lecture on the Krebs cycle, go on one residency interview or tolerate one pimp session from an attending.

What I will say though is that being a medical school wife was easier than I thought it was going to be. To be honest, I imagined the worst. I imagined a husband who would never be home, would be stressed all the time. I underestimated my own independence, my own patience, the wonderful friends (wives) who would be always be around.

As I write this, my husband is CLEANING THE IRON. (The iron, that is dirty because I melted something on it.) Meanwhile, I write blogs. Not exactly how I imagined being a med school wife would be. I never dreamed we'd go on a road trip nearly every other month. Or that Matt would get to spend as much time on the golf course as he would in the wards 4th year. I never thought I'd come home to find my garage organized and shelves hung. I figured free time would be minimal, patience would be short, and I would have to do everything around the house. That as the "doctor's wife", I would always come second to my husband's career.

This statement is nothing short of laughable.

Don't get me wrong. There have been challenges. Boards studying sucked. Watching my (then boyfriend) stare into a computer screen for 34 days straight? Quizzing him on pharmacology drugs so frequently that even I started to dream about them? Worrying about what his scores might be, how that might affect residency and where would we end up leaving? Sucked. But, it passed. (He passed.)

OB-GYN rotation. Surgery. Medicine. Early mornings wake ups. Visiting him in the call room that looked the worst Quality Inn you've ever visited. Driving 1700 miles in one week to do 4 residency interviews. Sucked. But, it passed. He passed. We passed.

When I look back on medical school, I know I won't remember the dog-eared copies of the STEP-1 book. I couldn't tell you the names of any of the attendings who pimped him or what that one rotation was where he had to write the absurdly long SOAP notes. I will remember that during med school we made some wonderful friends. That we created vacations resourcefully - visiting friends, bartering personal training for resorts (see: next week's vacay), staying in vacant apartments of family members. That we had potluck dinners where one couple brought the margaritas and one couple brought the salad and another couple brought the hamburgers. That we remembered to thank each other for going out of the way to help when one was busy or just simply needed a break. (Thank you for ironing the curtains while I blog.) That we got married and bought a house. That we had fun, more days than I can count. That we made it.

Contrary to the Worst Case Scenario I might have imagined medical school wifery to be, it turns out that when we look back on medical school we may remember them as nothing short of a wonderful way to start a life together. If anyone is surprised by this, it is most of all me. I wonder what I was so scared of?

Happy Graduation to you, and happy completion of a chapter to us.

Graduation Recap

A Graduation Recap for all of you who weren't there. You, I guarantee, were much warmer than I.

Joe Biden was the commencement speaker. There was much to-do about the increase in security and we hustled over to campus about an hour & a half before the ceremony was to start, imagining TSA-like security. The line was indeed about 2 football lengths long. However, when we got to the front we realized the slow down was due to the fact that 2 kind ladies were holding open boxes of Krispy Kremes at the entrance.

The purse check at most Wake Forest games were more rigorous than the security. Hold open purse, walk by as they wave wands, hope they did not see my flaskoculars.... and go.

Oh and the weather? Was freezing. I have been to 4 WFU graduations in the last 5 years. All had temperatures in the 90s. Today the bookstore sold out of jackets, sweatshirts, socks, blankets, anything with bundle-like properties was gone. So you can imagine. I had bought a cardigan at Target the day before that was on clearance and kind of was a cross between a cardigan and a pashima. It quickly became known as the "dressy snuggie" (or, the druggie) and despite the questionable fashionable-ness of it, I was SO thankful for it. (Example of the dressy snuggie.) I sat indian style with my stocking-feet underneath my body swaddled in my dressie snuggie, breathing on to my body for warmth. New Yoga Pose: Mother Hen?

They are smiling, but they can't feel their toes.

Devoted wife, warm blanket.

The fact that I just devoted an entire paragraph to cold and what I wore should pretty much sum up how I felt about Joe speaking at the ceremony. And also: could not hear.

After the ceremony, at which my Dad declared there was "no such thing as cold weather, just poor dressing" a mere three times (but also gave me his suit coat. Pity WIN!), we relocated to the recital hall for the medical school diplomas. En route, we found the Krispy Kreme krew had overestimated the donut needs of the crowd and was passing out boxes by the dozen.

Jason: "I'll just take one."
KK lady: "No, take the box."

By the dozen.

Well. Twist our arms.

The indoor ceremony was nice, climate controlled and all. They also seemed quite aware of the idea that we had all our major AWWWW THEY DUN GONE BECAME DOCTAS moment yesterday and this ceremony was short 'n' sweet. No whooping in between names, no long speeches and congratulations, no political agendas in the speech.

Speech, speech, diploma, clapping, standing up...more clapping....they are DOCTORS now! Doctors!

And with that, commencement comes to an end.

Hooding

Today was my husband's hooding ceremony for his medical doctorate. Although the graduation for all WFU candidates is Monday, this is a smaller ceremony that focuses on just the medical class and I think really just sets aside time for the family of the now DOCTORS to celebrate what they have accomplished.



I'm not a parent, but I imagine one of the first things you do when you find out you're pregnant is start imagining what your child will grow up to be. I wonder what it felt like for all the parents there to sit there and gaze upon their very grown babies and think back to all that they hoped for them. I imagine that that is a kind of happy/proud where words would just fall short.

Ever since I have known Matt (we met as sophomores in college), we have referred to this pursuit as "the doctor's path". Sometimes in jest, sometimes in conflict, but always on mutual understanding of the priority that was given to "the doctor's path." Becoming a doctor has been his single greatest focus for more than a decade. A decade! At 13, he hurt his knee playing football. A trip to the orthopedic later and Matt just knew he wanted to be a doctor. An essay he wrote shortly after this event in 7th grade describes not only how he is going to be a doctor, but he's going to attend Wake Forest Medical School.

I know, right? At 13, I wanted to be an architect. And an author. And a teacher. And, oooh, a psychologist! In other words, I had no idea.

Talk about a single track mind.

The doctor's path has been many things: stressful. challenging. confusing. surprising. bonding. fulfilling. None of these words fully encapsulate the journey I have watched my husband persue single-mindedly for the 8 years I have known him, and the one I joined him on when I became Mrs. To see him stand up there and take the Physician's Oath and know that years and years and years of commitment, focus, determination and sacrifices have culminated in a one single ceremony-filled weekend that marks the transition from student to physician? Amazing & inspiring.

If I write any more, I just may lose it. Congratulations, Dr. I am so proud of you.