This morning at 5:15 I watched my wife, in her new white coat, walk off to face 37 straight hours on call at the hospital for the first time. I was so proud of–and anxious for–her that I couldn’t go back to bed. After hundreds of hours in lecture halls at Northwestern, countless exams, epic study sessions and of course the boards, she finally gets to go out and do something in the field that she is so passionate about. She had no illusions about what she was in for and knew that it would entail hours on her feet, scrubbing in for surgeries, ridiculous amounts of information, probably some bodily fluids and general chaos. And she still got up and walked out the door this morning. What a woman.

After a day spent trying to imagine what she was doing, she called around 9pm. We talked for maybe two minutes. In the course of the day she had seen a hernia repair, a gastric bypass, an emergency appendectomy and had run to a code that proved to be a false alarm. Her biggest challenge seems to be that she’s had almost no time to eat. Luckily her attending is looking out for her (she made sure Cate took a second to call me). She’s definitely overwhelmed, but I think it would be a problem if she weren’t. She is a trooper and I know she’ll be alright.

I’m off to bed, hoping that Cate will be able to grab some sleep at the hospital. Amazing how quickly this adventure got real…