Life has been a little crazy for us at the Sheffield home. Then again, it would be more accurate to say, "Life has been a little crazy for us at work (with minimal time at home)."
"We" finished my last December as a resident (Yay! Milestones!) with a bang! My two months of being the "Clinic Chief" full of elective surgeries, lab work ups, etc. was replaced with a month of "Trauma Chief," just in time to hit the holidays hard.
Some of the spoils from my time as Clinic Chief
While I've been on call the last 3 weeks, Abe has been working the night shift. One of the great reliefs of residency is pawning of calls to other doctors (often called "Turf wars", which I find has less to do with fighting over cases to do and much more with fighting over cases you don't want to do) when you are on call. Unfortunately, this is much less satisfying when you know the call you are punting to the other team (in our instance, very often Otolaryngology) will mean your husband will be up all night taking care of it and thus sleeping during the day instead of seeing you!
Anyway, we have been working opposite shifts, with me in clinic during the day and Abe working at night (plus me working any night and weekend time I get called in). This leaves about 40 minutes of crossover time if we are lucky per day, and a few runs of days without seeing each other. Thankfully, (1) we have some amazing and generous church friends who brought us meals for days and days and days (who are these people? Saints!) so we could have warm meals together in our pockets of time; and, (2) the night shifts are coming to an end. Yay. (3) And we have had a bit of overlap in the hospital with late night dates eating fried food in the cafeteria.
Don't we look so festive in our red and green scrubs?
I spent my nights alone very motivated for some reason cleaning our house and studying. Too bad our house is a big mess now from all of the holiday fall-out and I'm still not as smart as I'd like to be!
I did some major rearranging which gave me some extra motivation
As for the end of 2013, we were each able to take a few days off (took some call schedule maneuvering on my part) together. We took a quick trip to Chicago for a little extra Sheffield family time and to escape our igloo (I mean house), mostly just meeting Abe's brother and his wife for dinner and eating beignets at the Grand Lux Café before our traditional drive-back-from-Chicago-in-a-blizzard. (Seriously, I feel like it snows every time we drive back from Chicago, even in the summer!)
We were unlucky enough to have our furnace go out on one of our sub-zero weather days here in Iowa the day before New Years Eve. If I were someone who left dishes in the sink overnight (which of course I am not!) I could have taken a picture of the ice in the sink when the thermostat reached 32 degrees F. Since I am not, you'll have to imagine as best you can with this photoshopped one!
Okay, okay, you caught me! But it is a pretty good painting, right?
Okay, okay, it really is just real dirty dishes. Thankfully, we were able to survive until it was fixed without a lot of additional trouble. Hopefully I'll still feel that way when the bill comes in the mail.
As for ringing in the New Year, I was welcomed back in town to drain a huge dental infection in the operating room with just enough time to have an exciting New Year countdown (snooze), and finally kicking off the New Year with an early morning jaw fracture surgery.
And now I'm exhausted! Anyone ready for round two of this New Years post?
2 comments:
Cool! Sounds much more exciting than what I did all month. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote.
Think of the time you two spend apart as an opportunity to pretend like you are meeting all over again once your schedules stop conflicting. ha ha
I couldn't imagine you spending New Years any other way. :)
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