Abstract
A personal account of a married couple who faced the challenges of medical training and how it shaped their relationship and roles. Until exploring this experience through the writing of a narrative medicine piece over a decade later, the wife and physician, had not fully grasped the impact of her career choices on her husband’s life. The authors share their perspectives on how they navigated the demands of medical school, residency, and hospital medicine, while raising two children and maintaining their marriage. They reflect on how they both experienced loneliness, stress, and hopelessness during the "dark days" of residency, but each felt isolated from the other during this time because of misaligned assumptions about the others’ experience. A stay-at-home father describes how he chose a role that was not defined by traditional expectations or others' perceptions, but by his own values and vision for his life. He concludes by expressing his gratitude, fulfillment, and pride in their family and choices, and how they continue to model for their children what it means to think for oneself and challenge the status quo.
Recommended Citation
McEntee, Jesse PhD and McEntee, Rachel K. MD
(2025)
"My Startup Wife: How Medical Training Shaped and Challenged Our Marriage,"
Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine: Vol. 10:
Iss.
1, Article 6.
Available at:
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/survive_thrive/vol10/iss1/6