Moving forward....

This past year Darin has been wrestling with the idea of doing a fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine.  I left it up to him but I really wanted him to do it.  He had his reservations for the fact you really do not get more pay, it is another 2 years and he was ready to be done with his training.  In the end it came down to what would make him the happiest and doing the fellowship would do just that.  He read somewhere that ER doctors rank highest for burn out but Pediatric ER docs rank the happiest.  Good choice Darin, good choice!  Because we all know a happy husband is a happy wife...haha.

Darin attended 8 interviews:

1. Augusta, Georgia

2. Orlando, Florida

3. Loma Linda, California

4. Kansas City, Missouri

5. Ann Arbor, Michigan

6. Jacksonville, Florida

7. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

8. Albuquerque, New Mexico

He also received interview invites from New Jersey, Delaware, Texas and New York.  But to be honest we ran out of time and money.  

When we started the interview process we were super excited about the New Mexico interview as we thought that would be great being so close to family.  The program ended up not being so great and it was put to the bottom of our list.  At that point Kansas City was looking good and seemed to be the right choice.

During hurricane Sandy Darin received a phone call from Loma Linda (who we thought there was no chance with) saying they would be ranking him high on their list.  He also got word from Orlando as well.  We were torn between the two as we already lived in California, knew the area have many friends there and it is close to home.  Orlando is new and exciting with Disney World.  (ya that was Darin's insight).  He had yet to interview in Georgia.  Because of the hurricane his interview was rescheduled.  I had been pro Georgia from the time we sent in our paperwork.  I really didn't have a reason why I was pro Georgia I just felt good about it. The interview in Georgia went awesome.  Darin was so giddy when he called me after.  The program had everything he dreamed of and more.  He really wanted a program where he could do service, gain a lot of experience and they also offered a dual fellowship in Ultrasound.  This program was only accepting 1 applicant and well Darin was their ONLY applicant.  WHY?  Because they only would accept ER trained doctors, when most of the applicants for this type of fellowship are Pediatric trained doctors.  So Darin had an edge and chose wisely.  This particular program also does a lot of service projects in other countries.  The ultrasound doctors who will be training Darin are the guru's of the field.  We were excited to get their phone call not long before the match to say Darin was their top pick (haha).

So on November 28th we waited for that email to come to tell us where we were going to be spending the next 2.5 years.

Congratulations Darin we are proud of you!  We are looking forward to our new adventure in Augusta, Georgia this coming summer.  (it seems like we were just doing this!)