The Results Are In…

You may have noticed it has taken me a couple of days to weigh in on what happened Wednesday with Andy’s residency match.

You guys, there has been so much to process!

I wish I could explain it, but I’m sure I can’t exactly.

You know I’ll use about 900 words trying though ;)

Rewind to Tuesday night…around 10pm.

Andy came into the living room where I was sitting and let me know his Army friend told him the results would actually be online at 0001 hours (12:01am) and we wouldn’t have to wait around all day Wednesday to learn our fate.

This made us both incredibly excited and nervous!  We planned to stay up (of course) and log on the second the clock struck 12:01.

We had to distract ourselves somehow so we grabbed a couple of beers and a card game and set about killing time.

Before we knew it, the time was upon us.  Andy grabbed his ancient Macbook (which is SOOO SLOOWWW) but had his login info stored, and we logged on.

It took forever and we were practically shaking.

I snapped this pic right before we logged on and although we look normal (albeit orange as Oompa Loompas!), we were in fact frantic.

With trembling hands we clicked into the status area and it said…

No data.

WHAT???

We refreshed the page…

No data.

AGGGHH!

This continued on for several minutes.  Andy texted his Army friend and learned he was having the same problem.

Phew! It wasn’t just us.

We changed browsers but didn’t have the password handy because Andy had the site set to auto-populate it.  He tore through our files looking for the info.

No dice.

We finally found the info in our internet settings and tried the site with another browser.

No data.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????

Our life is hanging in the balance and there’s no data!

Finally Andy’s friend texts that he got his info…his first choice too!

YAY!

I was so happy for him and just knew Andy was going to get a good outcome.

About 30 minutes after originally logging onto the site, we refreshed again and it populated!

Specialty: TRANSITIONAL

Location:

Our hearts beating out of our chests, we read the words and had no idea what they meant.  I immediately asked Andy what that meant and he had no idea either.

We just sat their stunned and anxious and a wreck.

I kept asking him, “What does that mean??” and he kept telling me he didn’t know!

Oh my goodness you guys.  It was so stressful.

I immediately decided to Google it.

Thank you sweet Jesus for Google!

Google seemed to have a clue what I was asking, so we poured through the search results and pieced together what this all meant.

Andy did not get an OB intern year.

He did not get a Family Med intern year.

He did not get Civilian Deferred.

He did not get a GMO tour.

ALL of the things we had tried to mentally prepare for were not even what ended up happening.

So what DID happen?

From what we could tell, Andy did not get one of the 10 OB spots, or even a family medicine intern year, but rather a transitional year which is a year that rotates you through a bunch of specialties.  Because the location was blank, it looked like Andy would have to track down his own placement for the year.

That was BAD NEWS.

He had two local civilian interviews just in case he got Civilian Deferred, but they only had 3 year family residency programs, so as much as they liked him, he couldn’t do a transitional year at either of those hospitals.  He would have to pound the pavement to find a hospital that DID have transitional years available and he’d have to apply for one of them late in the game.

We’d lose our military salary and health benefits for the year.  It looked like Andy may even become a less desirable candidate for an OB spot after this kind of intern year.

We were crushed.

Then our minds started reeling about how he could possibly be in the bottom 50 of hundreds of Navy med students (the Navy took on 50 more students than residency spots PERIOD last year – DUMB). How could he with all of his outstanding scores and recommendations and interviews come in so dead last in this selection process?

One of my exact statements was, “Do the other students who got spots poop rainbows or something??? What makes them better than YOU??”

It was a very hard night.

We grieved and hugged and prayed and shed tears (me).

I felt like God forgot about us.  I felt like He was looking over His shoulder like, “Oh yeahhh, I was supposed to do something there, wasn’t I?”

I know that is not true.

That’s the voice of the enemy whispering to me that God isn’t good.  That He is holding out on me.

The same voice that Eve heard in the garden when she had everything she could have ever wanted and needed and the serpent convinced her that God was holding out on her by forbidding the fruit of that one tree.

“You better take things into your own hands, because God is holding out on you.”

LIES.

I know it.  I believe it.

So we asked God for peace.  We told Him that as hard as it was, we were going to trust Him anyway.

With as much uncertainty as there was, we were going to trust that He had a plan for all of it.

After very little sleep for me and practically none for Andy that night, we woke up on Thursday and the news hung heavy in the air.  Andy went down to shower before work and he came back up quicker than he should have.

Turns out he logged into the system again, kind of like looking in the fridge over and over hoping something new and delicious will suddenly appear when you’re hungry.  You know how that is, right?

AND THIS TIME THERE WAS MORE INFO.

Location: Walter Reed Naval Hospital – Bethesda, MD

OMG!

Again I was asking, “What does that mean?? Is it for real? Will it disappear?”

I peppered Andy with questions and he didn’t know why the new info was there now and not the night before, but another one of his military friends experienced the same thing…no location at midnight but it populated Thursday morning.

This news was for real!

We are moving to Bethesda, MD in June!

The relief that washed over us was palpable.  We were not stragglers having to carve out a way for next year.  Andy was not in the bottom 50.

In fact, Bethesda, MD was our first choice location for an OB intern year.  They only have 2 spots, but from what we can gather, even though they didn’t give one of those to Andy, it seems they didn’t want to let him go, so he got a transitional intern year there.

It’s a fantastic facility.  It’s where they took President Reagan when he was shot (fun fact).   It’s near DC and it’s only about 8.5 hours from where we live in Michigan, so it won’t be too hard to drive back to MI for visits as we adjust to living away from our friends and family.

Getting this news was like entering Oz and having our world turn to color.

The emotional roller coaster we had been on in those 12 hours was harrowing.

Getting a bit of good news was so wonderful.

But I have to be honest, we are still grieving a bit.

Andy really really really wanted to get an OB intern year.  We would have happily gone to any of the 3 locations for him to have one.  Doing a transitional year makes us nervous.  We don’t know how this will factor into him ultimately getting an OB residency.

He may still have to do a GMO tour.  He may not get an OB residency and have to switch specialties (which is so sad to me because he’s worked so hard and done so well and may not get to do what he really wants to do).

Next year at this time we will be frantically logging into the site again to find out our fate again.

For now we are trusting God and processing the news and researching the areas in and around Bethesda.  We are hoping and praying that Andy will make a fantastic impression this next year and they will just have to have him in their OB program for the following 3 years.

If you’ve made it this far (I’m sorry this was SOO LONG) thank you for caring about our journey.  Thank you for reading my ramblings and for caring about our story.

I’m excited to see what God has for us and I’m excited to blog about all of it :)