2018-08-31 Cincinnati
Happy Anniversary Part 10
***
Our Romance Part II: Courtship, beginning 19 August 1977
…continued from 2018-08-30
Cincinnati <– –> Cleveland
September 1977 – July 1978
Lawson’s and my months of wooing coincided with his 3rd year, considered the hardest and best, of medical school. At last, you’re on the wards, seeing all kinds of patients (the Big Five in the ‘70s were Medicine, Surgery, Psychiatry, OB-GYN, and Pediatrics), writing orders, being asked questions by vastly more experienced nurses and other health care workers, getting used to dropping the “student” in front of your name (“Student Doctor Wells” morphs into “Doctor Wells”), being humiliated by attendings and other – above you, of course – on the hierarchy, staying up all night every 3rd night, doing your own gram stains in the messy “doctors’ lab” that’s on the same floor as your patients, learning, studying, fighting to stay awake, seeing patients get better…it’s heady, albeit exhausting.
While he spent sleepless nights in Cincinnati, I burned the midnight oil in Cleveland. I was in my 2nd year – still focused in lecture hall and laboratory.
Our relationship had similarities to a 1950s courtship. Every other weekend or so, he would drive (he had a car) to see me or I would take a bus to see him. And during those weekends, we were together. We scheduled them, of course, on weekends he had off and I had no upcoming exams. The ratio of fun: duties was high.[1] We could shove aside any differences, since we had only the weekend to share.
***
…to be continued…
[1] I mention this because getting married after ~ 10 months’ commuting romance, was a rude awakening. I wish the scales had fallen from my eyes. Instead, I kept bristling against the reality that the fun: duties ratio shrinks considerably when you’re spending 24/7 with someone who is still a medical student (or intern, or resident, or junior faculty member, or tenured professor) and you’ve got Real Responsibilities in addition to hours at the hospital, clinic, laboratory, and library (like grocery shopping, laundry, thank-you notes, dentist appointments).
VicWulsin 