A Blast from the PA School Past ~ Revisiting PA School

I have access to stock photos. That's what this picture proves.

An email arrived last week that took me back. This wasn't a pleasant reminiscence. I wrote a blog a few years ago for spouses of PA school students, trying to help them through and let them know they're not alone. More than a few people have commented or emailed me to check in. What you say on the Internet lives on forever, they say, so here was the start of an email I received from a PA spouse whose husband had just started rotations.

"My husband just started his clinical rotations away from home and I thought I had a handle on it, but I don't," it started.

Immediately, my heart breaks. I know that feeling, except I never had the illusion that I had a handle on it. I definitely lost all my handles as the spouse of a PA student. That's just what it is. I know of not one single spouse that spent two years with a self-absorbed PA student and thought, "That really wasn't so bad." It was bad.

The letter went on.

"I'm going crazy being at home with nothing to do and having only about 10 percent of his attention over the phone for about 10 minutes," she wrote.

This is the part where all the veteran PA spouses nod. I could have written that sentence. Anyone I know could have written that sentence.

You're not going crazy for going crazy. And I don't have any revelatory new information for spouses.

"It breaks my heart to hear your story because it's exactly what I went through and what every other spouse went through in my wife's class," I told her. "Knowing it's normal doesn't help, I'm sure, but my point is simple. Trust that your husband, as you know him, is going to come out of PA school and be his normal self. That's really all you can do.

It's a little surreal now to talk about this era of our lives. We have an amazing home. We live in a city we are proud in and in an area that we revel in being a part of. We have great friends, we have family that put up with us, we're saving for retirement, and there are seagulls that fly into our windows on a regular basis. That last part's not great, I'm just trying to keep it real here.

But that PA school era ended less than three years ago. There is an emotional databank that is still full. Was it worth it? Absolutely. No question. But I never doubted that was true, even in the depths of PA school. Knowing the situation is going to get better doesn't make today any better.

There's only thing I would do differently – other than maybe not give up my career so readily. I would have focused more on making myself better. Maybe I would have learned a foreign language or worked out more or volunteered my time somewhere, but I would have done something for myself. You feel trapped, but you aren't. Your marriage is in limbo, and there's nothing you can do about that. Don't give up on it, but don't depend on it as a source of happiness.

I have loads of other advice, but I don't like repeating myself. Check it out here if you want to hear more. And please, keep those emails coming. Anything I can do to help is a bonus for me.