7 DPIUI #3 and not obsessing...YET!

I'm 7DPIUI, but maybe only 6 DPO based on my temp rise. Hmmmm. Wow, this 2 week wait is flying by! No symptoms whatsoever to report... but I wouldn't expect them yet. My temps look nice, but they always do at this point in the 2ww. And I'm not using progesterone, so I'm not dealing with the vaginal irritation that plagued me for the last 2 months.

Today was a huge day for me, career-wise. I did an all-day interview at my current workplace. I will be completing Hematology/Oncology fellowship at the end of June, and I'd like to join the breast oncology program as a junior faculty member.

I know that not everyone is familiar with the terms hematology and oncology, so here's a brief explanation:

Hematology is the study of blood disorders. This may include benign conditions like anemia (iron deficiency, sickle cell, thalassemia, etc), bleeding disorders (hemophilia, von Willebrand disease, etc), clotting disorders; as well as malignant conditions such as leukemias, lymphomas, Hodgkin's disease, myelodysplastic syndrome, aplastic anemia, etc.

Medical oncology is the treatment of cancer using chemotherapy, and when appropriate things like hormonal agents and biologic therapies. The surgical oncologists do surgery, the radiation oncologists administer radiation, and the medical oncologists administer the chemotherapy and/or hormonal/biologic therapies. We also tend to do a lot of the long term followup of cancer survivors.

My training includes a lot of time in both hematology and oncology, but I would like to focus on one specific field (breast oncology) and develop an expertise in that area. The opportunity for focus on one subtype or group of cancer is one of the advantages of staying in an academic center.

For this one position, I had one interview on Friday, and seven more interviews today (what a whirlwind!), followed by dinner. I was a little nervous about it. I personally knew most of the people who were going to be interviewing me, but I don't know all of them well, and I wasn't sure how it would go. I was expecting difficult, pointed questions with themes like, "why should we hire you as opposed to so-and-so who has twenty years of experience?" and "how are you going to benefit our institution?", etc, but really everyone just chatted with me. In some of the conversations, it felt like they were already kinda assuming that I will be joining them in July, so it was a great feeling. Wow!

I don't know when I will find out "for sure" about whether I will be working with them, but hopefully it will be soon. If everything goes well, I may need to choose between an exclusive position at the university (breast cancer only, or possibly breast/GI or breast/lung), and a position in which I would split my time between there and our affiliated VA facility (where I would need to be a jack-of-all-trades hematologist/oncologist). Each scenario has certain advantages and disadvantages.

No one asked me about any plans for babies, etc. I'm sure that they can guess given my age, relative newlywed status, etc, but they really can't ask those questions during an interview anyway. Besides, most of them are women.

I was talking with our fellowship program director yesterday (pre-interview) and she made me close her office door so that no one would hear, and she whispered, "I know you're planning to have a baby pretty soon..." I had hinted to her about this a few months back. Luckily I do trust her not to use this information against me in the hiring process. She brought it up yesterday in the context of wanting to "protect me" from being stretched too thin when my "real job" starts.

Now that this big interview is over with, I guess I'll be able to start obsessing about symptoms (or lack thereof) now!