Couples Matching, Residency, and Parenthood with Dr. Kirbi and Andrew Bain

Yeah, we knew there was going to be hard aspects of having a kid while you're in training, but we're like, if we want to have a big family and we want to start having.

Kids, never shied away from a challenge.

Hi, everybody, and welcome to the podcast. My name is Stephanie. I'm joined here by my colleague, Dr.

Sarah Davis, who's also my mother.

And do you want to give them an intro?

And we are also here with some very exciting guests, Andrew and Kirby Bain. And, Andrew, tell us just like briefly who you are.

Yeah, I'm Andrew Bain. I am from Dallas, Texas, and I am a surgery resident at UT Southwestern. And I'm married to Dr. Kirby Bain.

And I'm Kirby Bain. I am from South Lake, Texas. I am currently in my residency. We're both PGY5s and at UT Southwestern, I'm a radiology resident.

Technically, Dr. Kirby Sullivan.

I have not changed my last name socially. On social media, I'm Kirby Bain. But it's very complex to change your last name. So I haven't gotten into all of it yet.

Are you going to change it? You don't have to.

I keep saying that. I'm going to. And now especially that we have Lucy. So we have a three and a half month old little daughter. She was born on March 31st of this year. But now that we have Lucy and like, I'm writing Bain on all of her stuff, I don't like that I'm different on all of her legal documents and stuff. So I will change it eventually. But I just took boards and I feel like I've been doing all these certification things. So when I wrap everything up, I felt like it might be easier to change it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think you did make a comment once that I thought was pretty valid, which is you were like. I became. I had envisioned myself becoming Dr. Sullivan, not becoming Dr. Bain.

That is true.

This was after. When we were finishing medical school.

There was a feeling of like, I earned this, you know, and wanting to be, you know, Dr. Sullivan. And I am very used to saying, you know, because they call you all the time on the phone and they're like, who is this? And you're like, sullivan, Sullivan. So it will be a little bit of a weird transition to introduce myself.

As Dr. Bain, but nobody's asked me to change my name, so I'm doing whatever.

I'll change it. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

No. That's so valid, though.

It really is valid. I think you gotta do whichever name you like better. My maiden name was Blom. B L, O, M. And I introduce myself and say, hi, I'm Dr. Blom. And people would say, Dr. Blah. Dr. Blah. And I was just like, that's a terrible name. And then I got married during residency and upgraded to the name Davis, which I just like so much better. So it was really more like a practical thing.

There's already so many Dr. Davis in my family that I feel like it's not special, so.

So you want something else?

I want something.

Yeah.

More unique, like, more different than just.

Well, if you marry your current boyfriend, your name would be Dr. F. Feely.

Yeah. Which way?

So you gotta be really careful.

Imagine, like, if it's special. Exactly. Like, if I was an OB GYN and like, Dr. Feely, like.

Yeah.

For a dude, you could not. I mean, you'd have to change something else. Yeah.

One of our good friends, Last name is Dr. Weiner, and he said when he goes to the pediatric hospital, all the kids.

It's only at the children's hospital that he gets.

Oh, man.

What specialty is he at?

He's a general surgeon.

Okay.

Well, I feel like it depends on the type of person. Either you can run with it and, like, make it kind of, you know, a joke, or you can just. I don't know.

I mean, people aren't gonna forget it.

Yeah. No. That's so dazzled out. So the current plan is to change it once all the credentialing and stuff gets wrapped up. Did you do it in the middle of. I guess it was.

Yeah, I think I did do it, but I did it before I finished my residency, I guess so. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did do it. And so there was a little bit of transition in there. But then by the time I finished and started in practice, I started as Dr. Davis, so then that was kind of easier.

Clean slate.

Clean slate.

Yeah.

And we moved from Florida to Dallas, and then Dr. Blah was just a thing of the past.

There you go. No one knew Dr. Blah.

I was just gonna back up and say, so both of these Doctors graduated from McGovern, which is where Stephanie's heading in a few weeks. So that's very exciting.

Yes.

And so, well. Wait, what were you guys.

I was just gonna say I like backing up a little bit. Do you guys each want to talk about, independently, a little bit of your story of how you ended up at McGovern? And then I kind of want to talk about, like, your trajectory from, like, once you met until now?

Yeah, for sure. I can go first. I. So I Went to Clemson for a year.

Right.

And then I transferred dt I decided I didn't want to be so far from home and I always kind of wanted to go to ut. So I kind of figured I would apply and see if I got in. And I did. And so I made the transition sophomore year. Clemson was great though. It's beautiful. And I had always wanted to go into medicine. Can't really say why. I think when I was a little kid I said like I wanted to be a veterinarian when people asked me what I wanted to be. And then I was the oldest child and always kind of like wanted to do something that was challenging but also wanted to help people. So I always wanted to be on the medicine trajectory even though there's really not too many people in my family in medicine. No one's a doctor or anything. And so went to Clemson, then transferred to ut, was on the pre med track. And at that point it's kind of like whichever med school you can get into. Right. So we both were really excited to get into McGovern and had met each other when we were at UT. It was the summer between sophomore and junior year. I had just studied abroad and one of the guys in my study abroad group was a old six year Sigma Chi. So afterwards we were like all friends. And when we started hanging out Sigma Chi house afterwards. So then we had like mutual friends. We hung out a lot junior senior year.

Wait, were you dating at this point?

No, not dating at this point we were just friends. So we had a lot of shared classes. What was it? We took like oceanography, one of the just like blow off senior year classes. Marinacology. That's what it was. He like still remembers facts from this class and we'll say them again. Sometimes I'm like, I nothing. But he got really excited about it. But so we had some trigger classes and Stuart friends and we would like hang out and then we both got into McGovern on the same day on like the pre match day. It was in November.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it was on November 15th I think was. I remember the date really well for some reason in our senior year. So then all of our friends went out that night and it was really fun.

So then did you start dating?

So so we didn't start dating until the beginning of fall of first year. Yeah, whenever we got to med school.

You pester someone enough in the library and then they give in.

Good strategy. But we kind of had like, it was fun because we had the two of us and then one of our good guy friends all were going to govern together from college. So then, like, I made friends with some girls and they made friends with some guys, so we kind of, like formed a little group together, and it was great. And we loved McGovern. It was so much fun. It was great school. There was a lot of really cool people that we met, and the med center offers so many wonderful opportunities. So it's great.

I think by the time so I went to UT for undergrad, was pre med, got into McGovern, and I think even starting medical school, I wasn't even sure exactly I knew I wanted to be a doctor, but who knows what a doctor actually does day to day? So, Stephanie, you may have a better idea of. Of what being a physician is than I did when I got to medical school, but, yeah, I just had a blast. I think growing up, I had liked my science classes and I thought, doctors do science. That's a science job. But without doing that much science. In high school, there was a medical society where we mostly, we dissected cats and cut class on Friday afternoons to shadow a wound care doc at Presby. But that only lasted like 45 minutes, and we just cut school the rest of the afternoon. So by the time, by the way.

I think he was, like, valedictorian of his high school. So let's just clarify.

But I think that it's interesting because I don't think I really. I don't think I really knew what being a doctor really like, entailed, you know, on the day to day level, on the more existential. I just knew that it was something I wanted to do. And then once you get there, you figure it out. But yeah, loved Houston, loved McGovern. It was a fantastic place to be a medical student.

Good.

I'm sure all of that sounded a lot different when you were interviewing to go to medical school.

Yeah, Yeah, I definitely thought I knew what a doctor was.

But, yeah, during your med school interviews, you were a little more polished, is what she's saying.

Do you feel like when you got to med school, and I mean, I know you started off just like, just in the books and all of that, but did you feel like you really had a realization of, like, oh, this is what medicine really is? And how did that feel?

Well, I don't think that the first two years really felt every stage is so different, and the first two years felt a lot more similar to college, just a lot harder and a lot more material because you're still in these big, huge classes with a Bunch of people. You're still meeting a bunch of people and making a bunch of new friends. And then like, you know, after tests, everyone goes out and having a good time and whatnot. But you're still like a student. So much so the first two years I thought that the subject material was so hard. Like the first test was such a wake up for me. Like, oh my gosh, this is a very, you know, difficult thing. And then eventually we got the hang of it and stuff. But I feel like not until we got to third and fourth year did you kind of feel like you're actually figuring out a little bit of what it's like to be a doctor.

I think you realize too that being a doctor can look like thousands of different ways.

Like what we do on a day to day basis is extremely different right now.

It's so different. Yeah, we don't really do. Maybe there's overlap, but we have a very different day to day life for sure. So I think that is a big realization too that I think you have in your mind what a doctor is. But really the world's kind of your oyster once you get into medical school.

Yeah, well, right, because you can figure out whatever. There's a lot of different paths that you can do. And you decided you loved surgery.

Yeah. So I thought I was going to be a pediatrician probably because, well, I liked working with kids. There were some teaching, mentoring, kind of experiences I had in high school and college. And I really liked working with kids. I thought that was going to be what I was going to do. And that was also really probably the doctor I had spent the most time with, my own pediatrician who would see me once a year. So I thought like, this must be what you do. You go to medical school. Medical school, you become a pediatrician.

By the way, that pediatrician was at Lucy's pediatric office.

Yeah. So we're going to the same office. And he's still there, which is great. And I saw him, I don't think he remembered who I was, but he.

Stopped in the hallway. I was like, I'm a doctor now.

I'm a doctor now. And he goes, well, hey, you're still alive. That's great. That's my job. And I was like, yeah, made it through childhood.

So.

There'S an interesting pressure during that first year of like, you got to figure out what you'll do with your first summer. Because I think they still have the same thing. But there's a general two or three month summer break that ideally you use to get Some sort of experience, whether it's research or shadowing. And there's kids that are like, from the first week in medical school, they're already spending their Friday nights in the trauma bay or they're already working on a research project. And that's too much too fast. You need to figure out how to be a medical student. There is an opportunity to do something in that first summer. So I had really liked my experience in the anatomy lab. I thought dissecting the cadavers was really fun. I really enjoyed it. So I thought maybe surgery could be on the table. I spent the first summer doing this program at MD Anderson where I got to work with a orthopedic oncologist and a pediatric surgeon kind of together. And then mostly with shadowing a very minor research project. And then I get to third year and I really had no idea what I was going to do. I thought every rotation was really fun in its own way. And towards the end of third year, surgery was where I felt the most at home and where I had the most fun and where the day seemed to kind of fly by and also felt like very. Everything was really tangible. You know, when you were seeing patients as a student, you were like doing their wound care and changing their dressings or you were helping in the operating room. Like, you were. It was so much more hands on than a lot of the other rotations where you talk about patients and you decide to do things. But as a student, you're mostly just. It's all like more of an academic exercise. You may go examine some patients, but it doesn't feel maybe as tangible. And so. But I was pretty worried. I remember talking with Kirby about it that I was like, I don't general. Everyone's always so. They make surgery sound so scary. They're like, oh, you shouldn't. You don't want to do that. You'll hate your life.

You're too nice.

Yeah, you're too nice. You'll hate your life. You'll never have time for a family. You want to have time for your friends. You want time to do the things you like to do. And so then I was like, okay, maybe I'll be a pediatrician, but I'll do something interventional, like a pediatric cardiologist or pediatric gastroenterologist and do procedures. Those. The pediatric interventionalists are not as busy as a surgeon would be in terms of like, the amount of procedures you do or as busy as. Like a pediatric GI doc does less scopes than an adult GI doc because there's just less scopes to be done. There's less reasons to do these interventions, so. But I finally just had to accept my fate and do general surgery because it was really what I wanted to do, and I just had to let myself do it.

And so now you're so glad.

Oh, it was the right decision. 100%. Yeah. It's been a really enjoyable experience. Really fun, and plan is still to take care of kids in some way. Hopefully I will be able to match and hope. The plan is to apply to pediatric surgery fellowship. So do pediatric general surgery as a career.

All of my, like, colleagues will be like, oh, your husband's surgery, isn't it? That must be really tough. And I'm like, I think it would be. But he, like, really actually loves it so much and like, comes home and is so excited about what he does and like, what kind of operations he got to do that day. Like, he's one of the. Not that there aren't a lot of people like that, but I feel like there's different personalities and the people that are so excited about what they're doing every day and like, jazz, to get up and go to work get through it a lot better.

Surgery residency is really hard, and I think it's exponentially harder if it's not also fun in the process. You know, like, if you don't embrace the challenge of surgery residency and don't really, like, enjoy the things that you're doing on a day to day basis, it's gotta be exponentially harder. But there's no easy residency and there's no easy, you know, path. So I think you just gotta do what you do.

You gotta do what you wanna do.

Yeah.

And then it'll be much more fun.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Really.

I think there's some people that like the idea of surgery. You know, I think they want to say that they're a surgeon. And I think that those people are the ones who really get into trouble because they really. Sometimes they're not very skilled, but they just, you know, that's what they heard or they had this glamorized vision of that. And I think if you're like that, then you really are miserable.

I think. Yeah. And I give credit to my experience as a medical student on the surgery service, where they gave the students a lot of responsibility and opportunities to do things that felt that they were, you know, meaningful for the patients. And I think that if you are a student that is maybe less exposed to what the residents are really doing and what the faculty do day to day, maybe like at an arm's length or your schedule is not mirroring what a residency is, you may not really truly understand what day to day is like or what, what, what a career looks like. So I think some, I think you just want to make sure that you have a really deep understanding of, of what the day to day is.

So even though you're at such a huge institution and a huge hospital system, you still didn't feel like you were like 10 people back from what was actually happening?

Well, yeah, I think, yeah, I think that the other good thing about being at a big system, about being at like Memorial Herman or at LBJ that are really busy, is even if you have big teams, there's so much stuff to do. So I think that there is opportunities. I think that the med students that thrive have, you know, a little bit of a self starting streak where they're, they are getting themselves involved and that's I think, where you learn the most and also where you probably have the most fun in the process. But yeah, I think that I, I really enjoyed the process there. I think it was great.

Good. Yeah.

Well, yeah, and it also sounds like you just had some perspective and were able to like decide what you wanted to do rather than what everybody else was talking about and stereotypes about maybe certain specialties and stuff.

So. Yeah, and there's stereotypes. Yeah. In every specialty.

So yeah, just going off of that. Kirby going into radiology, like, what was the. That like?

So similar to Andrew, I didn't really, I kind of liked everything. My third year, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I really enjoyed all of my rotations. I don't remember if we had any rotations together during third year. We might, I think. So you like get assigned different groups of people that rotate through different ones. I don't recall. I don't think we had any together, but we still saw each other a lot. Third year, that third year you feel like you said see your friends less because some people are working nights and days on all different stuff. And it's not just like you're all in the same classes anymore. But going to med school. I didn't have anyone in the family that was a doctor, so I didn't really have any influence like this person does this or that. So I'm interested in it already. I interestingly enough, out of my friends that parents were doctor, there was a lot of them are radiologists, which it's like not the most prevalent field or anything, but a couple of them were interventional radiologists. So I had heard about that, knew about it, knew it was like a good field. I also was kind of trying to keep in mind. I mean, I didn't completely rule out surgery because of it. And not that you can't be a surgeon mom or anything, but I was just sort of trying to keep in mind fields that I was like, okay, I could easily do family stuff at the same time. Like, I'm not gonna sign up for something that's gonna be too much or anything.

Something that could have flexibility.

Yeah.

In a practice.

And that was part of what I was thinking about. Things that I considered were radiology, anesthesia. What else did I look at? I'm not sure, but it feels like it's been such a long time. But radiology, I was interested in interventional at first, so I was like, I'm going to be doing all these procedures. Radiology in general, you get to deal with all different types of pathologies and kind of keep all of your knowledge very active. Like, you learn so much in med school. And I was like, this is cool that I can keep it super broad and still get to know a lot of stuff and interact with all kinds of different fields. I was not that interested in diagnostic at first. So I. We were couples matching. And then I applied to interventional and diagnostic radiology. So when you're applying like radiology, derm anesthesia, and it's either opto or pmnr, you're applying for a full year out. So you're doing. And you're also doing.

It's called an advanced position because they don't. A lot of these programs don't have an intern year built in. They start as a PGY2.

So you're applying for like your PGY2 year, a full gap year out, and then you're also applying to all of these different intern years. So our application was kind of complex because it was like all of his down the line were just surgery. And then I have interventional radiology, diagnostic radiology, and all of these surgery and medicine intern year programs going on.

Yeah. And you rank these paired outcomes and, you know, the advice was to interview at as many places as possible and then to consider them all on the rank list.

So our rank list was we maxed out at 300 because you ran.

Oh, my God.

But that's like 300 iterations. I think I interviewed 18 people.

We both did about 18 all over the country.

Let's say there's three surgery programs in Dallas and there's three radiology two or three radiology programs.

Yeah.

So, like, there's like, nine combinations or 10 combinations.

So then you move on to the next city. And then once you run out of all of your cities that are matched.

Up, you gotta say, what's the best long distance we could do?

Yeah. So you say, like, okay, if you're in Dallas and I'm in Houston, and then if you're. I'm in Houston, you're in Dallas, vice versa.

And then you get to the very bottom of the list where you say, well, if one of us goes unmatched, the other one still wants to be matched. Because what could happen is if you don't rank that option where if we don't rank. Okay, Kirby matches and Andrew doesn't. We don't put down the rank list. If I go and match, it would. Kirby wouldn't match anywhere because that option wasn't on the rank list.

Oh, my.

It really adds it because the more you rank, the more it costs money.

Like, per application submitted.

So, like, for.

And it was all in person. So six of my surgery interviews were in Texas, and then 12 of them flew all over the country, surfed on somebody's couches to see. Save money. It was really fun.

It was cool because we got.

It was really stressful because you got.

To see all these other random cities. And we did have a decent amount of friends in cities. Like, one of my best friends was in Boston, and I went and stayed with her for a couple of days. And you got to. That was the first time you met her?

Yeah, I stayed a different weekend.

Yeah. So we didn't see each other for a long time because we're going to all these different places at different times. But that was a whole other crazy thing. But our rank list was made very complex because mine was ranking interventional and diagnostic radiology program. So we actually ranked for him Southwestern first for surgery, and then me, interventional radiology at Southwestern, and then diagnostic radiology at Southwestern. So I didn't get the IR spot and I fell to the doctor spot. Which I was like, eh, whatever. Because it's usually pretty internally easy to.

You could do an IR Fellowship after doctor.

Yeah. So I was like, okay, great, fine. We'll just keep going on, and I'll get into IR later. Since it's technically kind of a fellowship. It's a new thing that. It's a integrated residency spot. So then we did our surgery intern year together. So I was a surgery intern with him. We were together on our first rotation of intern year, which was hilarious. Neither of you know what you're doing. And it was very stressful. And then we were, like, stressed at each other. I was probably more stressed at him, but it was really fun. And then we got to do the whole year together. So now, like I said, know everyone that he's working with for the most part, unless they're new. And I know all of his co residents really well, which has been fun. So I still, all throughout that year, thought I was gonna switch over to interventional radiology. And then I got to diagnostic, and I was like, wow. I didn't know what diagnostic radiology was at all in med school. Like, it's very. Like he was saying, whenever he's doing surgery, it's pretty easy to get to do or see what you're gonna be doing as a resident. Whereas radiology, I mean, sitting behind someone and watching someone else read, it's like watching someone else read a book. It's not interesting or fun at all. Yeah.

Play a video game.

Yes, it's watching. Yes, exactly. Watching someone else play video games. So once I actually got in there and was doing it, I was like, okay, this is actually really interesting and fun. It's like solving a puzzle all the time. You're constantly like, when we work over at Parkland, we're running the er, essentially, and we're sending people to surgery, and we're, you know, doing all of this really cool, complex stuff overnight. So I ended up having a lot more fun with it than I thought I was going to. And I did my IR rotations and, like, didn't love it as much as I remembered loving it. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna stay in the diagnostic path. So I did never end up trying to transfer.

Yeah. And then after residency, you have one more year.

Yeah. So we're both in our fifth year. I'm in my last year of residency, and then I'm matched to breast radiology fellowship now.

And how long is that?

That'll just be a year. So I'm about two years from now. Yes. At Southwestern, so. So breast radiology is cool. Cause it's one of the. You interact with patients more. Like, you have diagnostic clinics where you're working up everyone that you've called back from their screening mammograms and stuff. And then you do a lot of procedures and biopsies and stuff, so. And it's women's health, which is really fun and cool. So I'm really excited about it. I've really liked my breast radiology rotations. That I've done so far and I'm excited to get to stay. That's great. I'm kinda getting finished on.

Yeah, you're close to the end.

I'm close to the end. He's. You.

You stuck out a ways.

Yeah, so I. So general surgery residency is five years of clinical training. There are some programs that are seven years where you have two years of like now it's termed like professional development time, but you know, colloquially or research years where you just. You're essentially either after the second or the third year, you step out of residency and do two years of research and then you go back into residency at whatever position you are in when you go back.

Why?

It's a really good question. So there's purely academic or they're really academic focused surgery residencies that are required seven years. Some are community, more community oriented and they are five years and they really challenging to get time off to do research. And then there are some programs and Southwestern is really great about it. They're optional seven years. So you have the flexibility to either do a five year path or a seven year path place like Baylor and Houston, you have. You can apply to either option. So some of the residents are on a five year track, some are on a seven. But you make that decision before you start.

Oh, I didn't realize that where.

At Southwestern you can change your mind, which is I think beneficial because residents will start with one idea and then their interests change and their career plans change. The reason to do seven years and to do two years of professional development or dedicated research. I think just like you need to spend a lot of time operating to become a good surgeon, it's hard to become a good academician or researcher without spending dedicated time doing it. I have, I didn't have any. I had worked on a few projects but had not had a real robust research experience. Some residents get PhDs during medical school. That was definitely not me. But I want to be an academic surgeon long term. That's how I envision the career. And so as part of that you have an expectation that you're doing some meaningful research. And I don't think that you can do that well without spending a lot of time learning how to do it.

Did you always feel like you wanted to do academic surgery or did you drink the Southwestern juice?

No, actually. So Southwestern as a program with the. It's a very academic place. As a medical center, you know, it's like the top three in NIH dollars. But the surgery residency having an optional track and a really clinically busy residency. There are a lot of residents that go through Southwestern and plan to do either private practice, general surgery. We still have some that graduate and don't do a fellowship because they've got a robust enough clinical experience, which is not always the case at academic programs where they just may not have the volume to feel comfortable at the end of five years to go straight into practice. And then even those that do fellowships, a lot of them, some of them are interested in academics, some are not. I actually wanted to do academic surgery primarily for the teaching side. I thought that that would be a really meaningful way to contribute to medicine or surgeries. Not only you take care of your surgical patients directly, but if you teach other people how to become surgeons, then you've now affected all this. It's like cascading effect of the impact you can have on the field. And then I think from the research standpoint, it's kind of a similar idea. Like if you put out meaningful research that affects the way people practice surgery, then you've had again, a big effect on. Yeah, a big impact on surgery as a whole. But I really got. I wanted to do it for the teaching aspect. I think teaching is really fun and I love working with the medical students. And it's been fun as I've progressed in residency to work with interns in more junior residents and help them kind of figure it out as I'm figuring it out.

I bet you're good at it.

You know, a lot of people do this two years also. Not that it's not busy and like it takes up a lot of your time, but it's a break in clinical residency as well. Yeah, all these 24 hour shifts all the time and. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's definitely a shift back to a more normal lifestyle in terms of. Yeah, you work more like during, you know, the day. I take two calls a month, sometimes three, like night shifts a month. You do a little bit of clinical time. But yeah, then the other reason as well is some of the more competitive surgery, general surgery fellowships. There are other residents that do two years of research. So when you apply, you're competing against these residents who have done two years of research. So you want a CV that is. That has the similar academic merit that theirs does. So it's not required for any of these fellowships. But for, you know, pediatric unrequired for. So pediatric surgery is always has more people applying than there are fellowship spots. So inherently competitive surgical oncology, most of the residents applying to that fellowship will do research time and Those are really the. That's some of the people that are in my cohort that have taken time out for research, but other people just, they. They want to be kind of good surgeon scientists. And, you know, they. They are doing it without necessarily that as a motivator of one of the, you know, quote, unquote, more competitive fellowships.

Now, how long is the fellowship fellowship?

It's two years.

Two years?

Yeah. He just started his second year of research. Then he'll go back to clinical residency for two years.

Yeah.

And then we'll go somewhere for his fellowship.

Yeah, if I can match, then we'll do two years of fellowship.

So I'll be practicing for three years before he is done. Okay, great.

Well, yeah, I like that perspective of, like, teaching other students and then like, your impact being kind of like magnified. Magnified, yeah, exactly. I think that's a really interesting perspective to think about teaching. And I don't know, it's very.

That's.

I don't know, selfless of you to, like, want to magnify what you're doing.

So I don't know if it's necessarily that, but I think that it's just like, whatever you're interested in.

You've always liked teaching a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think some people would say, I don't want to spend my time with, you know, they'd rather spend their time just directly with patients. If they. If they're going to have any time working, they'd want to have it all with patients or without spending time doing research or, you know, working with learners. Because it does, in theory, take away some effort from your patient care. There's the idea of, you know, triple threat, where you can do all three really well. And that's really hard to do. Yeah, I think it's really hard to be really good at clinical care, really good at teaching and really good at research. Now I think most people will focus on, like, two of the three, and I think a good career. You do two of those things really well and maybe the third thing you do a little bit. Yeah, like. But you spend less effort in that third area. But, yeah, so I think it's exciting, but I don't think. I don't think there's a right or wrong way.

No.

Yeah, definitely understanding, like, what you're good at, understanding what you want to do.

Like a lot of.

I mean, that definitely takes a lot of time and a lot of introspection.

But yeah, and all that intention is really. I think that's what makes the difference. If it's something that you really want to be doing then. Then you devote that time to it. Okay, but I want to talk about this having a baby thing.

Yeah.

Also, like, timeline. When did you guys get married? And do you get married before you couples? And can you explain a little bit to people who might not know what the couples match is?

The end of second year, beginning of third year is kind of when they start talking to you about your application. Or maybe it was the beginning of fourth year, whenever it was.

Well, you submit your application at the.

Beginning of fourth year, so maybe it was towards the second half of third year, whenever we were really seriously deciding what we wanted to do. We had to kind of. We had. Only we hadn't been dating that long, but we kind of had to be like, okay, do we see ourselves getting married like this? You're not proposing right now. We're not gonna, like, say we're for sure getting married right now, and we're not signing any contracts. But, like, we have to seriously have this conversation if we're going to couples match with each other.

Yeah. So couples matching is. You link your application with another applicant.

Yes.

There's no. There's no actual rules on who can and can't couples match.

Yeah. You can technically do it with a friend. I mean, you have to sell yourself whenever you're doing these interviews. You really could. Yeah, I don't think anyone's ever done it, but yeah.

So most of the time, people are doing it if they're married or planning to get married or have some other reason. They want to make sure they're in the same place with another person.

But basically, you link your applications in this match system, and then it. So you make this whole rank list together, kind of like we were talking about earlier. And so the system will try to put you in the same place on your rank list. So say Andrew gets his number one spot, but I don't. Then it automatically just starts considering us both for the number two spot, et cetera, et cetera, until it finally finds a match that you both have matched at that spot. And then we go around the country and we're telling all of these interview programs like, hey, my significant other is also applying at this point.

And sometimes. I mean, some people. Sometimes. I think it's definitely a challenge and more complex, but there are, like, little ways that you can make it work for you. You know, if you're.

If one of us wouldn't get an interview somewhere, we would just let the.

Other person know or the other program say, hey, actually, my couple's matching. They've got an interview. We would love to. You know, we were considering this place highly. Yeah, you know, I would definitely come to interview because they're. Every program is also trying to figure out if we extend these invites, who's going to come, because not everyone you invite is going to come. So if they have more assurance that you're going to come take their interview seriously, then it can be advantageous.

Yeah. So it helped us in some ways, I think.

But it's much more complicated than applying by yourself.

And then I was also applying to surgery intern year, so sometimes I would interview with people that had already talked to you, if I was talking to people with the intern year and stuff. So it was easy to talk about each other, I think, in the interview process. But it was funny that early on in a relationship and a lot younger than any of your friends are really getting engaged, having to be like, okay, so do we see ourselves marrying each other? Because this is a big, serious decision that we're making. And a lot of people that we know that did couples match and did up staying together, but there's some people that don't really like the couples match.

But then didn't get married.

Yeah, things happen once they get to residency and they don't end up staying together. So a lot of it was they would tell people or they wouldn't necessarily tell us this, like, oh, tell people you're engaged or married. And we never lied at all. I think we would just say my significant other. And then if someone directly asked, then you would say, he's my boyfriend.

Or if someone said, oh, your wife is applying to radiology, you'd be like, yes. You don't have to get into the weeds. It's technically illegal for them to ask if you are married or if you are who you're married to or whatever. So, you know. But it does happen. And so you just kind of roll with it.

Yeah. So that was kind of our strategy.

You don't have to be married, though. I think you should be planning to get married. I don't think that it's something to.

And we like to date that. But then we also had to have these big conversations because, like we said, we were interviewing all over the country, and we knew that for him, likely wherever we were gonna go, it was gonna be seven years. So he. Much more so than I was, like, let's go here, let's go there. There's all these crazy, awesome places that we're interviewing at. Like, this would Be so fun to go live somewhere else. And I'm like, realistically, we would want to have a kid in residency. And there's a lot of things to think about. Like, if so his. Both of our first year, we got three weeks vacation the whole year. And I was like, if we're, say, in Michigan or so, we're gonna use all three of those weeks to come back to Dallas. We're not gonna be going on any actual vacations. And it's gonna be really nice to have family around. I'm from South Lake and his parents are still here in Lake Highlands. All of our. Most of our high school buddies are all back here. We both have friends that are here. So Dallas made a lot of sense and we had to have a lot of conversations to get that. But I was like, if we wanna have a kid.

I interviewed ET Southwestern. I loved it.

Yeah, that's true too.

It was my one program, kind of regardless.

It wasn't just Dallas.

It all worked out actually really well.

But we had to have like.

I think that I did not place as much weight on having a support network where you do residency. And it's actually been really nice. Kirby was right, as usual.

And it's so nice. Cause, like, it's been fantastic.

You have friends that are not in medicine that you can spend time with where you don't talk about work or residency. And then you have your parents, they've been incredibly supportive through everything and it's really nice.

And nights that he is taking call or whatever. I have other friends I can go hang out with. We're not just somewhere else. Or I can go hang out with my family.

Not as isolated. Sometimes people, you end up someplace that you don't know anybody. And it may be isolating well, just.

Like Sheila and Jim. When we interviewed one of my other friends, they were both in Michigan. They weren't from there. And ended up, you know. Yeah. She said it was really once she finished residency and they started their family and he was still finishing his surgery residency. And then it did because she was like, okay. And then they started a family and they're, you know, she's like, it was really isolating. Yeah.

And it would be really tough. And so then now it's been amazing. Having Lucy and having both of our moms help has been like, absolutely incredible. She's the first grandchild on both sides and dads, but she's the first grandchild on both sides. And so she's way too spoiled. But they love helping out. And so we did. We Both got six weeks of maternity paternity leave and I did mine six weeks straight. And he like split his up where he did three with me and then three back at work and then three off. Oh, nice. And then our moms alternated like every other day after that for three weeks to help get us to Lucy being three months before she started daycare. So like we wouldn't have been able to do that. And there's been so many nights, like last week, I think it was Wednesday that we both. He worked overnight and I realized I worked till midnight and it was like three days before and we were like, oh my gosh. So we just called his parents. We're like, are you guys free on Wednesday? So we couldn't have done so much stuff like that if we weren't in dfw. So it's been really great to be back home especially. Cause we knew we wanted to have kids probably in residency was the plan whenever we kind of started talking about all that. So we got engaged during our PGY2 year.

Very beginning of PGY2.

Yeah. And then during PGY3 year we got married and then had Lucy. About a year and a half after we got married, we had Lucy.

Okay.

Okay. Yes, that's.

And so. So you always had it in your mind that you would. That you kind of needed to get going on this family thing, you know, before finishing residency.

Because technically I'll be 32 when I finish. And we both have always said we want like three or four kids, but we both always said we wanted three or four kids. We knew whenever we were gonna to do it, it was going to be really hard, but we were just going to figure it out. And we actually had the timing whenever we got pregnant with Lucy. So she. I had her nine weeks before taking my boards and my boards are a like three day, all day exam that I had started studying in like October. And whenever I like found out the timing of that, I was like, oh my gosh, it's going to be so stressful. And it was really hard, but we had family around and you just do it. And we knew there was going to be hard aspects of having a kid while you're in training. But we're like, if we want to have a big family and we want to start having never shied away from.

A challenge, that's for sure.

But it's. No, it's been good so far and that's why the family support and everything has been wonderful and so helpful to help us get through so much of it. Even like Kathy coming and picking up Lucy right now while we were going to come do this, she could have come hung out, but then she might have gotten hungry or fussy or something and interrupted us a little. So. But yeah, it's been great.

Well, I was just reading something that said and this statistic killed me that 40% of female physicians will either quit or go part time after five years after training.

Oh, wow. What?

That's crazy, right? And so I guess I just kind of want to like, just throw that back at you or like maybe ask Andrew, like, what are you going to do to help Kirby's career so that she doesn't have to go part time? If she wanted to go part time or quit, that's up to her. But how are you going to manage that?

Yeah, I think that's a very challenging aspect of a two physician family. I think that there's luckily a lot of, there's surgeons in the department that are, are married to physicians and have kids and have successful family lives. People that you can kind of look to, to how to navigate that. But I think that it just is, I think it kind of starts from a shared understanding that you both have career goals that you want to accomplish and you just support each other however you have to. I don't really have an answer of what exactly it looks like. I mean, I know that if I can make it to pediatric surgery fellowship, that'll be incredibly busy and that, you know, a surgical career is not, is not usually the. You don't have the most time off. But I think that luckily Kirby supported me this far and it's been really great about that and I plan to return all the favors for sure.

Well, and he's been, I mean, while I was studying, I literally like, we came home from the hospital and I would like hand off the baby to him so I could study all the time. So he has been very supportive so far in like what I needed to do. So I think we'll just switch off and whoever's going through something really needs it, kind of figure it out.

But he's on the support network, like the like grandparents and.

Yeah, yeah. But he's also like been wonderful at home. I mean, he's definitely doing just as much as I am with cleaning bottles, changing diapers, doing whatever. So I think going into it we were like, we just both have to be equal parents in this. That's how we're gonna work it out. And then when one person needs more support than the other, then we'll kind of Switch off and we'll figure it out as we go. But I also have heard, like, similar statistics, and I. There's, you know, women in medicine groups and stuff whenever you're in med school. And I remember one physician, I don't remember what field she was in, but it was probably my second year in med school, and she was speaking to us, and she was like, I have a husband who is a statistic, stay at home dad. He's the most, like, wonderful, supportive, awesome dad in the whole world, but I still do 80% of the child care. Like, she was just like, you know. And so it was. That always kind of stuck with me a little bit. Like, wow. And it has not been like that with us at all. But as I was going through and even thinking about different career paths and stuff, I was like, okay. Like, I really like working, but I want to choose something that also has some flexibility where I can make it into an 8, 5 if I want to and not have to be on call all the time. And you can totally do it. And the women that do it and are surgeons and are incredibly busy or amazing, and I look up to them. I just didn't think I would be able to handle that. So I was like, okay, what can I do realistically that will give me, you know, the best of both worlds in my career and being able to be a mom in the future whenever I was deciding what I wanted to do.

Well, I love that outlook and everything. And, like, I don't know. That's a super inspiring story. Obviously, both my parents are doctors, so, like, I've seen it.

You turned out great.

It worked out.

It worked out. But I definitely think I had an unrealistic viewpoint of it until I kind of got into even the position that I'm in now and just seeing, like, how much work all of this actually is. And I'm sure I'll have a different perspective once I get into med school and residency. I kind of just, like, saw them and I was like, oh, well, what do you mean? Like, it looks easy.

Yeah, it looks easy. They did it.

But I'm realizing the sacrifices that they had to make and everything in order to make that happen. But success story right here.

And, like, congratulations to you. You've made it so far. Like, you know, an incredible accomplishment to have gotten in and everything, and.

Yeah, I appreciate it. As we're kind of, like, wrapping up right now, I ask this to all the guests that we have. Do you have any advice for me as I kind of start this journey and about to start classes in, like, two weeks, less than two weeks.

So it's gonna be really hard. But, like, anything that is worth doing, you know, it's really. Anything that's worth doing is really hard. So, like, you'll any. There's been so many challenging steps, I would say, in this process so far, and there will be so many more, but every time you accomplish it and get past it, you feel so good. So, like, you. Whether it's, you know, taking step one or just getting through your first round of classes or whatever, like, just know that there's another side to it and you will get there eventually. And, like, it's gonna feel so good once you accomplish that next step. And no matter how hard it gets, like, you. You'll make it through it, and you'll be better for. It was kind of something that I wish I would have kept as an outlook as I went through. And then keep an open mind about what you want to do. Don't rule anything out along the way, because you never know. And choose something kind of like he was saying, that is really what you want to do, not like what the stereotype of what people think that one field is like versus the other. Yeah, that's good. Thank you.

Yeah, I think just embrace the process.

It's fun. Every step of the process is really fun and really awesome. And if you just, like, have a timeline for how long it's going to be until you end, then I think that it would be really miserable. But we've really made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun through every single step.

Yeah. Yeah, you embrace the process. I think that it's a challenge, and the challenge can be met with a bad attitude or a good attitude. And it's definitely a lot more enjoyable to go through it when you just are kind of. You fully immerse yourself in the struggle. So it's good.

It's.

It'll be. It'll be hard. It'll be fun. It'll be great days and bad days, but.

But you'll feel super accomplished, just like you do right now. Like, you got to an awesome step. You, like, are going to med school. You're going to be a doctor. That's incredible. You know, and so, yeah, every hard step pays off, and it's all, like, worth it in the end.

Well, you guys know where to find us. Generations MD on Instagram. Generations MD on TikTok. And we will talk to you next week.

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