We Survived

On Friday, June 27th, Rolf graduated from his internship year at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth. To say the least it has been a year filled with many challenges for the both of us but in the end we not only survived this year we thrived this year. Rolf was award "Intern of the Year" for Internal Medicine which was an amazing accomplishment given the competitive group of interns he was up against. The best part of winning the award was that he had no clue that he was going to be getting it until they called his name. In addtion to winning the award Rolf is also 1 of 5 interns selected to stay on at NMCP for residency, another great accomplishment from the past year and for Rolf a goal that he is very happy to have achieved.

Rolf with RADM Nathan (Commander of NMCP and a fellow IM doc)

I will have to say that after 4 long years of medical school with much of 3rd and 4th years spent with Rolf away for weeks and sometimes months at a time, to me internship really didn't seem all that bad because at least when he was off he was at home and even when he was at work he was just across the street. During the last year Rolf has spent many long days and a lot of long nights in the hospital. Internship year is set-up so that every 4 weeks he would start on a new rotation. During this past year he did several months of internal medicine or working on "the wards" as they call it, a month in the ICU, a month of orthopaedics, a month of anesthesiology, a month of dermatology, a month of ER, 2 weeks of psych, and 2 weeks of OB/Gyn. I think that just about covers it.

One of the ways we were able to keep our sanity this year was by still being able to eat dinner together most every night, one of the benefits of living so close to the hospital. I quickly became a pro at figuring out what meals can most easily be packed up and transported to the hospital for nights when Rolf was on call -- LEFTOVERS! And when I was feeling really lazy or Rolf had had an especially hard day -- pizza or take out. There were several nights when I would be pulling in the gate only to have Rolf call and tell me a patient had just arrived that needed to be admitted or that things had hit the fan and dinner would not be happening but for the most part we were able to enjoy a little time together most nights that he was on call.

Another way we were able to keep our sanity this year was by meeting a lot of great people and making a whole group of new friends. Rolf was able to meet a great group of guys mostly all internal medicine interns and I was able to make become good friends with several of their spouses.

With friends following the graduation ceremony

For us internship brings to an end a year of hardship and struggles but also great joy and accomplishment. We feel truly blessed to have been challenged both personally and professionally this past year and to not only survived but to have thrived! We will be saying farewell to many of our new friends but hold hope that being a part of this great Navy family our paths will soon cross again.

Residency here we come!!