Take Me To Post Comment Form People generally get the wrong idea about doctors. They think of them as all-powerful and living by a thin code of ethics where they only care about how much they get paid and none of their real time goes into actually making the person better.   They’re not all like that.   Another misunderstanding about doctors is they are loaded down with cash, and they live a very relaxing lifestyle.   That’s wrong for the most part.   There’s a reason dermatology is the hardest residency to get into for doctors. There are no real emergencies, and you work scheduled hours with little to no weekend work, meaning you can have a life. If you don’t get that residency (and there are a select few others) then you are going to be working yourself to the bone most of the time. You’ll miss out on family functions, and you won’t have a lot of spare time.   People also think that just because you’re a doctor’s spouse or fiancé that you instantly won the Love Lottery. I’m here to tell you different.   Let me paint a picture for you: A doctor’s spouse has to deal with his or her significant other working long, tiring hours. They deal with getting their heads bitten off because the doctor doesn’t get a lot of sleep and is in an often frustrated state of mind. They’re there when the doctor needs them to be, but get out of the way when they need to study or work. They also raise a family as mother and father for the first years. They are often the sole income for the couple for the first years, too.   Doctors’ spouses deal with everything their spouses deal with. They deal with the deaths, the long hours and the ungodly amount of stress of the job and its training. They have to be more understanding because it’s all part of the lifestyle.   You can think of a doctor’s spouse as, oftentimes, similar to a military spouse. Whereas a military spouse would go months without seeing him or her, a doctor’s spouse wouldn’t see their significant other for a few days at the time during residency (where they are notorious for working 90+ hours per week). Even then, they only can spend a few hours with them (which mostly consists of them eating and then going to bed after working such a long day, hoping they don’t get called back for an emergency).   There’s a reason doctors make decent money. If you calculate the hours they work, sometimes it seems like a bad trade. While everyone else is out partying and enjoying their new careers and families, medical students are sacrificing a lot of their time and energy studying for impossibly hard tests. They spend around 12 hours a day studying for these tests. They prepare themselves for every situation: dealing with death and delivering the news to patients and families; doing examinations on first fake patients and then real ones; and undergoing several tests without breaks.   They and their families put their lives on hold until they have finally graduated which is when they are about 30, if they’re lucky. Even then, you’ve got to find a place to live and a place to practice. They don’t start making any real money until they pay off their student loans (which is pretty much a mandatory thing if you don’t join the military or come from a wealthy family). Most doctors don’t ‘make it’ until they reach their 40s or 50s. Until then, they’re working their lives away in hopes they will finally be able to support themselves.   Being a doctor isn’t as the television shows make it out to be. It’s hard work, and it’s mostly about a group of people trying to fight Death all the time. The only show that comes close to what really happens in a doctor’s life is “Scrubs.” There is fun and there are games that go on, but for the most part doctors are living in constant fear of being sued, messing anything up and juggling a balance between life and career.   They jump through hoops. After completing college probably in the top of their class, they have to take the MCAT, send in a bunch of paperwork and essays and references to the schools of their choosing, then have to be chosen from an elite pool of applicants to interview for one of a limited number of spots in medical school (all of which costs money to the applicant). From there, they spend an entire day interviewing at the campus and go home to wait for either a call saying they’re in, an e-mail or snail mail letter to tell them they’re not in or to say they are on the long waiting list. They say if you make it into medical school you’re part of the top five percent of the nation.   And that’s just to get into medical school. The process is somewhat repeated to get into a residency. No matter what you want to do with your life, you don’t get to go out and pick your residency. They pick you. For sorority girls, think of it as going through Rush.   Because of this, when people come up to me and tell me I won the jackpot just because my fiancé is in medical school, I have to shake my head and roll my eyes. When people talk like that, I know they don’t understand what it’s like to go through the trials and tribulations – to watch them jump through hoop after hoop. They don’t understand the sacrifice a medical spouse makes. They only see the outcome of the hell we go through. Appreciate your doctors, and don't forget they're not the only ones who sacrifice a lot for your health.