This Really Won’t Hurt a Bit AND You Just Might Win Something

I have EVERYTHING for you today! A book review! An Author Q&A! A giveaway! I know you are falling over yourself with excitement! It’s a Friday Reads Extravaganza and it’s NOT EVEN FRIDAY.

So first off: what’s the book and why should you care?

The book is called This Won’t Hurt a Bit (and Other White Lies): My Education in Medicine and Motherhood by Michelle Au, MD. You know it’s important because it contains a subtitle, a colon, a parenthetical and has the whole MD thing going. But don’t worry, this book is not scary, see it’s totes adorbs cover:

So I know I’m married to a doctor and thus have a more-than-casual interest in the medical profession. (I am also a total psycho who was obsessed with being a doctor as a teenager so I’m interested anyway.) But I think a lot of us find the idea of doctor-hood fascinating. I mean, we watch Grey’s Anatomy every week despite kind of hating it and wishing it would die, right?

Michelle  also deserves your interest as a long-time blogger at the underwear drawer where she catalogs the trials and tribulations of the medical field and posts pictures of her two adorable kids. Lots of bloggers dream of turning their blog into a book, so here’s your new idol! And don’t be fooled by her super-serene author photo, she is hilarious in the best way.

From michelleau.com

I got a chance to read Michelle’s book and here are my thoughts:

1. I am so glad I didn’t go to medical school.
2. This book reminds me a lot of One L, the Scott Turow memoir of Harvard Law School that is obligatory reading for all soon-to-be law students. Except this one is way funnier and contains significantly less suicide and depression.
3. Hmm… maybe medical school wouldn’t have been so bad.

In all seriousness, if you don’t know much about what it’s like to go through the grueling process of training to be a doctor, Michelle’s book is a fascinating and funny and insightful look at it. If you do know (probably more than you’d like), it’s nice to remember that there are other people who have done it and survived and maintained their sense of humor.

Michelle's Scutmonkey Comics theunderweardrawer.blogspot.com

Michelle’s story of residency has the kinds of crazy anecdotes you’d expect from someone who spends a lot of time in the hospital. (If you don’t believe me, read the first paragraph. Seriously. Let’s just say it involves gloves and a lot of lubricant.) But her book is different because she also had a baby in the middle of all of it.

I got the chance to ask Michelle a few questions and she is her usual charming self. My questions are in bold because it’s my blog and that’s just how I roll.

Jess: As the wife of a resident, I obviously have an agenda. You and your husband are both doctors and suffered through residency together. What advice to you have to us poor souls who are married to residents? How can we get the right balance of being supportive without being resentful of all the time we lose?

Michelle: It’s tough!  I think in some ways it was easier to be a resident married to another resident, because as difficult as the path was and as amplified as the time constraints to our relationship were, I was grateful that I very rarely needed to explain why it was that I got sucked into an emergency and was going to be home late yet again.  Honestly, it’s hard for anyone not to resent the ordeal of residency and, by association, resent your spouse for being part of it, but I think you have to remember that it’s not a selfish choice, nor does he have much say in the matter.  It’s hard not to get frustrated sometimes, because let’s be honest, residency is extremely stressful and can at times feel like a punishment to both the trainee and those in his life.  But compounding that with pressure at home for not being there enough is one of those tug-of-wars that no one can really win.  As the spouse of a former resident myself, sometimes the best thing I have done is just held my tongue and trusted that my husband would sort out for himself how best to allocate his time.  He loves his family and I know that, given the option, he will do the right thing.

Jess: On the flipside, what advice to you have to residents about making it through the long haul without losing touch with their spouse?

Michelle: This is something that Joe and I are still trying to work out, so if you figure it out before us, let us know!  You are told all through med school that your patients receive top priority for time and attention.  Throw some kids in the mix and that gets complicated, because of course, your children also get top priority for your time and attention.  The unfortunate result of all this is that, simply by a matter of triage, time alone with your spouse usually get shunted to a lower priority, simply because most of he needs of the relationship are not as immediate as those of your work and your kids.  But that doesn’t make it right.  We’re still working on it ourselves.

Michelle signs books for her adoring fans

Jess: You write a lot about your first son, Cal, who was born during your residency. How different was your experience when you had your second child while you were an attending?

Michelle: Well, first of all, I feel like the act of being pregnant in and of itself was less of a big deal once I was finished with my training.  Cal was born three weeks into my first year of anesthesia residency, and I think, whether it’s a fair perception or not, that very fact of me having a baby was viewed as much more of an anomaly or some sort of statement about my lack of commitment to my training and career.  I have had people tell me to my face that having a baby during residency means that you will be a mediocre resident and an inadequate parent.  How do you respond to something like that?  (Mostly I just stammered and changed the subject.)

In contrast, my second son, Mack, was born six months after I graduated residency, and it was just construed as much less of a political statement.  I was a 30 year-old married woman who already had one child, it didn’t seem like such a big deal to have another one, and the point I was at in my career seemed to people like much less of an impediment.  I want to point out that all these forces were external, however.  I loved having Cal when he came along, and we made it work, and our process for Mack was similar.

Jess: There are a few really prominent medical memoirs but they’re not too big of a genre. What made you decide you wanted to write your story? Did you know right from the beginning that motherhood would play such a big role in the book?

Michelle: I’ve always written, and my writing has always been in largely the same vein—non-fiction, humorous, experiential.  The first draft of my book was much more external (meaning more about the hospital and the patients, less about me), my editor forced me in my second draft to inject more of myself into the story, because, in her words, the manuscript felt like it was missing something.  I think I had deliberately tried to stay away from writing too much about myself, because I felt somehow like it would be an exercise in egotism, but I realize now that she was absolutely right.  The information about the individual informs the story of the development of the doctor.  Writing the book more as a memoir as opposed to a collection of discreet clinical stories also made it much warmer, and much funnier.

Also, in making my book more of a memoir (as opposed to straight medical non-fiction) meant that it was only natural to deal with a huge turning point in my residency, which was having a baby early on in my training.  As a modern medical resident, I have long grappled with the task of work-life balance when trying to juggle two all-consuming jobs—that is, medical training and parenthood. I’m pleased to be one of the few female medical memorists to dive into a topic that is only going to be talked about more and more.

I try my best to copy Michelle's no-smile smile. We are totally smize-ing, though. Tyra would be proud.

Jess: You’ve blogged for a really really long time. How have you made time for it?

Michelle: I think my blog is going to have its eleventh birthday this October, which is incredible.  My blog is older than both of my kids’ ages combined!  My blog is a sixth grader!  (Sorry, I don’t think of my blog as a child, but seriously—eleven years?  I’m old.)

But honestly, part of why I’ve been able to keep my blog up for this long, and why I keep making time for it, is because of my readers.  I have such a depth of archives now that I have people who have been reading since the beginning, or people who are new to the blog and are able to look back at the progress of my life over the past decade—fairly formative years, I daresay.  And I get a lot of e-mails—not even questions or requests or anything in specific, but just e-mails from people to tell me “thanks.”  Thank you for showing us that this is possible, that it is possible for a regular person to get through medical training and have a family and retain a sense of humor. People say that reading my blog makes them laugh, and gives them perspective and hope for their own paths for the future.  So that’s why I make time for the blog, even with the other thousand and one things I do every day.  Because I have the best readership on the internet.  I would never have written this book without them.

Michelle gave a great reading and lecture in Cambridge this week and I was thrilled to get the chance to attend. (Seriously. It wasn’t likely that Eric would be home by 6 pm on a weekday. This is exactly the kind of stuff residency usually makes impossible.) (If you’re in the ATL there’s one more tonight! Check her website for details.) While I was there I picked up a little prize for my darling readers:

That’s right, your own special signed copy of Michelle’s book!

Here are the official rules:

1. For an entry, leave a comment on this post. Make sure you fill in the email field, no need to put your email address in the body of your comment.
2. For a BONUS entry you can like Don’t Mind the Mess on Facebook. If you already like DMTM, you’re eligible. To get your bonus entry you must add an additional comment.
3. Only one entry and bonus entry per person.
4. Contest will close in 1 week on Thursday May 26 at 8:00 pm Eastern Time.
5. Winner will be chosen by my new giveaway plugin And The Winner Is unless I can’t get it to work, in which case the winner will be chosen by random.org.

If you don’t win or you just can’t wait, Michelle’s book is for sale in bookstores everywhere or you can find kindle editions at Amazon as well as in Nook format at Barnes & Noble or if you’re a hardcore indie bookstore supporter, get it at your local indie or Powell’s. (Hint: makes an excellent graduation gift for wannabe docs.)

This post is already pretty long, so I’ll give you a link to more info here where you can find my full review and my full Q&A with Michelle Au.

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