Hi, thought I would take some time to reply.
My husband is an MD and he’s currently a resident physician, working long hours with little pay. I’m a DVM from another country, going through the ecfvg program, and I’ve been shadowing a few veterinarians and doing some part time clinic work to help with test prep. We used to live in Cali but now we’re somewhere else for hubby’s residency.
I get to see my husband only when he comes back from work, most of the time that’s about 8-9pm ish and we’re lucky we live in a small town and we’re only about 10 minutes always from his hospital.
As for me, even though I don’t have my vet license yet, I’ve been offered a couple of jobs like assistant professor at a local community college, or government positions. I did not accept any of these positions though, had some things to take care of first. I did realize that if I had taken on a full time vet or vet related job, I probably wouldn’t be able to see my husband a lot since the most time I can spend with him is during the weekend when he’s on call or at the hospital (i pack up my textbooks and laptop and stay in the resident lounge with him, he works on his laptop and I work on mine, and then we call it a “date”).
We did discuss having kids after he finishes residency. We also agree that he should take a one week on one week off job (and I take a part time vet job) to spend as much time as we can with kids, but also to still practice what we love. We figured that if both of us work full time and have full fledged careers (let’s say both of us are clinic owners), we’d probably be missing from our kids’ childhoods.
As for having an MD for a husband, I want to share something with you. One day I was reading Blackwell’s five minute canine feline and saw that for clostridium related diarrhea, it would be helpful to give the dog a high fiber diet (I might be wrong). So when hubby got home I told him what I read today and asked him what’s he treatment for humans with clos related diarrhea. He told me it’s definitely not a high fiber diet cuz it would make humans worse. We ended up being really confused and went to bed not having reached a conclusion on how to treat clostridium related diarrhea (no fight, discussion was always fun, but only if both can respect each other’s professions, which we can).
There’s also one thing that I would like to point out. I know we do euthanasia and all that but personally (for me and my hubby) it’s more devastating for the both of us when he has to call the time of death on his patient. He would come home really sad and he feels really defeated. As for me I feel ok after a euthanasia because I’ve always convinced myself that my patient is in a better place and not in pain anymore and that I’ve done a good thing. Most of the time, it’s my husband’s work that makes us depressed and as a wife, I share that depression with him. Just want to say that you can’t have two doctors feel down at the same time, one of you have to at least keep cool and be there for the other one when dealing with work stress.
Lastly about jobs in California, with my hubby it’s not hard for him to find a job in Cali, maybe it’s because he’s from Cali and he’s already got his own connections. As for me, I’m from another country but I do have help from foreign vet grads who’ve made it in Cali, and I also have the help of hubby’s awesome alumni system. It might not be much of a problem for me if we decided to go back to his hometown in Cali. I keep a close eye on DVM and MD openings all the time and it seems like they’re always lacking physicians and veterinarians.
I hope this helps.
