In Balance: A Family Affair
It’s not easy being a physician these days. But what’s it like being married to or the child of a doctor?
By Shirley Grace Mark Weadon doesn’t remember his father playing a lot of ball with him in the backyard when he was a kid, or many meals with the whole family around the table. He never saw his father putzing around the house on Saturday mornings because Dad, the only neurosurgeon in the Western Michigan area for a quarter century, always worked that day.
What he does remember, though — many times — is being stopped by people who would ask if he were Dr. Weadon’s son. “And they would say, ‘Oh, he saved my son’s life, or my daughter’s life.’ That’s an amazing thing to hear about your father,” Weadon says. “I was and I am very proud.”
Dave Gertler is proud, too, of his wife, Sue Kost — an emergency physician in Wilmington, Del. “I can’t tell you how many times people have come up and said, ‘Oh, [Dr. Kost] sewed up my son,’” he says. “There are worse things than strangers fawning over your wife.”
Still, it isn’t easy for physicians’ spouses and children. What do they have to say about it? And what can you do to make sure the time you have with your family is as good as it can — and needs — to be? Here are some solutions from some of those who know firsthand. Continued...
