At the end of chapter IV on how I got into and through medicine, I was talking about a failure and also some difficulties in my romantic relationship as I came to the end of my medical school years. Of course, this was the big decision time as to what one would do in terms of postgraduate training. At the time, one could still do the traditional one-year rotating in ship which qualified one to be of General Practitioner. However, it was also the relatively new discipline of Family Practice.
There were several things that attracted me as possible residency choices. I liked kids so paediatrics seemed like an option. I like working with my hands and so wondered about surgery. However, I know I am also a bit clumsy when it comes to some things with my hands and somehow, tying knots had never become my 40. Just the same, perhaps already thinking of where my future was going to be, I had taken a short elective in Plastic Surgery in my fourth year, which I found very useful. I learned to remove small lumps and bumps as people refer to them, unwanted growths or early stages of things like skin cancer, doing biopsies and even z-plastys to repair scars or unwanted tattoos.
I was also interested in psychiatry. This stemmed back to my pre-university college days and an influential book by a Christian Swiss psychiatrist by the name of Paul Tournier, The Meaning of Persons, and another book by Lewis Sherrill, The Struggle of the Soul. Even through my university years, I maintained an interest in the biology-soul/spirit connection. Indeed, one of our psychiatry professors, who my class liked so much that they named him Prof. of the Year two years running, had encouraged me to go into psychiatry.
However, some of my earlier training and experience, along with some of these above influences, led me to choose an area where I felt I could relate best to a whole person: Family Practice. Others refer to this as General Practice, but this specialty was attempting to establish itself as one that focused on families as well as individuals, so I have always try to stick to the party line and refer to it as Family versus General Practice.
So, the summer of 1976, having just come back from some six weeks in Taiwan, visiting Anne, found me starting the Family Practice Residency Training Program at St. Boniface Hospital. I enjoyed this experience, my teachers and colleagues. We got to choose several electives along the way and I spent time in Neurology, Cardiology and Endocrinology.
I had been living in a house with several other students which was good for company and expenses. However, as a first year resident, I had the opportunity to move into an apartment on the St. Boniface grounds. This was convenient for my residency in terms of location. I was also thinking forward to getting married and having one's own place to live in.
Yes, marriage was the next big thing on the agenda. By this time, Anne had been granted the documentation necessary for this to occur, paving the way for her return to Canada. Thus it was, that my four week holiday, January 1977, was spent in Taipei. Anne was working but we spent a lot of time together. She arranged my stay in a small hotel not too far from where she lived and worked. I was able to contact the nurse who had been my interpreter when I was a medical student in Taiwan two years earlier, and she joined the two of us as our witness when we attended the Taipei District Court to get married. The three of us celebrated by
going out to dinner together afterwards.
However, the relationship was still going to be long-distance. We kept it up with letters and cassette tapes, many of which had poems and songs, including some that I had written and recorded with Anne in mind, or songs that had lyrics that seemed to pertain particularly to our situation, e.g. a hit of the Bee Gees at the time, "Come On Over."
Finally all the hurdles where overcome, and at the end of July, just at the beginning of my second year of the Family Practice Residency, we were joyously reunited. To facilitate this, and here is where one of those Christian and Medical Dental Society connections came in handy, I had spoken to one of its members who was one of the heads of medicine, to switch my rotations at the time from Health Sciences Center, which would have meant a considerable commute across town and staying over there to be in call, to St. Boniface, which was a five-minute walk from our door, and also allowed me to take some call from home. After 18 months apart, except for two visits, I felt my new bride needed me. Sometimes who you know helps, but you also have to be brave enough to speak to them, which can sometimes be intimidating for a junior resident vis-à-vis a department head.
So, Anne and I set out learning how to be a married couple, while I was also trying to learn everything that was entailed in second-year Family Practice residency. Since we were looking at establishing a home, Anne decided to take an interior decorating course and one evening a week found me driving her across town to a community college to facilitate that.
We had the support of our church and our family and carried out marriage ceremonies in both settings to make a new relationship seem more real than what just a court date does. Most of all, the uncertainty and stress of the long-distance relationship was over and I had the support of my new bride as I completed my residency.
