"That's why you married me!" ;-P

It's no joke that the number one question I've received in that last nearly 2 months has been "So, how's married life?" I can't really even say it's always inspired by a genuine *need* to know exactly how "married life" is... even married people are asking it. Due to my aversion to questions I can't answer easily, I feel almost "pimped" (med school term for getting grilled by the faculty, often in front of patients, to prove they are superior to you) by that question, because there's no simple answer.

For better or worse, most things have stayed the same (we're still in separate cities, we still see each other once a week and talk most nights, I still think he's the most handsome man on earth, it still irritates me when he's right about things, and I STILL have not let Frank live down the fact that he had our Catholic priest read his personal statement "...and then Lynsey *seduced* me with her nerdiness" to a church full of our wedding guests!!).

Besides Frank's embarassing disclosures, the wedding was wonderful. We both had friends and family who braved the rains to join us (both at the church and at the reception at Daily Review Cafe, which was across the city). I love looking at all the photos and seeing so many beaming faces and happy people (guests and me and Frank). Most of the photos are available at http://www.ProctorTamborelloWedding.com, although I will be adding more of the professional photos that my friend, Alex, took... probably when I add the honeymoon photos (and since we won't have the honeymoon until early September, the whole lot will be up in mid to late September).

I have to admit, the photos I love the most are the spontaneous ones - like shots of our proud parents, the picture of me and Frank feeding cake to one another while his little cousin laughs and points as us in the background, pictures of my friends going crazy with the fake rings we left around the restaurant, me hoofing it into the getaway car, or kicking Frank... wait, that last one was an accident... just check his expression in the garter photo ;-). Even though, for the first time in my entire life, *I* wasn't the one taking the embarassing/ candid photos of people (believe me, that was a hard reality for me that day ;-) ), my friends captured so many great memories that I know I'll always laugh and enjoy the photos for years to come. :):)

So, yeah, onto my second year of medical school...it sucks!!! I didn't know how good I had it last year. I finished first year/ neurology on such a high note in terms of grades and enjoyment of material... and then they drop us into the fiery hell known as CVP (cardiovascular pulmonary course)! ;-P

Cardiology itself is fascinating...I LOVED learning all the clinically relevant information, telling people (even if they didn't ask) how good it was for them to start their hypertension meds early in life because they were saving their heart from permanent, chronic damage down the road, spending an entire evening listening to my heart to figure out if that strange sound I heard was a murmur (a LOT of us did this, etc), and I was totally expecting the midterm we took last week to be as clinically oriented as last year's exams (after all, that's what they are supposed to be preparing us for).

So, imagine my surprise when the cardiology exam was *completely* didactic and physiology-based... the closest clinical question we got was on a toxin we had not even studied (and that question was later thrown out). I thought 2nd year was supposed to be more clinically-based to prepare us for our all important board exams next summer?!? As one gal put it after preparing for the test "When will we ever get the chance to tell a patient 'I saved your life because I was able to calculate the Fick Equation!' !??! ;-P

For the rest of the course I'm just going to basically memorize everything I read, not think of any possible patients I might have to treat, and make certain I never have to take this again. When I griped about this course to one of my favorite lecturers (from first year), his response was "Well, what do you expect... it's taught by physiologists!"

The material is interesting, but this class makes me wish I'd gotten an engineering degree in college...maybe that would have helped me.

So, as for the question of how's married life... I can say that the main difference I've noticed so far is that our favorite phrase to one another now seems to be "That's why you married me!"... in a smarmy tone. :)