Behind The White Coat - Real Talk For Physician Spouses
Being married to medicine comes with challenges—long hours, relocations, and feeling like you’re navigating it all alone. That’s where this podcast comes in.
I’m sharing the things I wish someone had told me—how to survive medical training, juggle parenting, manage finances, and actually build a life you love. We’ll cover everything from making friends in a new city to understanding insurance, finding childcare, and staying connected as a couple.
Some episodes will be just me, sharing real stories and lessons learned. Other times, I’ll bring on expert guests—financial advisors, physician spouses, and those who’ve been through it all—to offer practical advice.
Most of all, this is a place for community. A space where you can feel understood, supported, and even laugh along the way. Because being married to medicine doesn’t mean doing it alone.
So grab a coffee (or wine!), and let’s talk about the real side of life Behind The White Coat.
Behind The White Coat - Real Talk For Physician Spouses
#22| When the Finish Line Isn't What You Expected: Navigating Post-Residency Reality
Bradie Fisher returns to discuss the unexpected challenges that arise when medical training ends and "real life" begins for physician families.
• Survival mode during training creates relationship patterns that don't automatically adjust when circumstances change
• Resentment often emerges paradoxically after training ends, not during the hardest years
• Communication about changing expectations is crucial but difficult when feelings seem unjustified
• Household labor division typically doesn't update automatically when physician schedules improve
• Night shift schedules create unique challenges requiring constant adaptation
• Financial expectations often don't match reality when training ends
• Professional therapy helps identify and address mismatched expectations
• Setting intentional expectations about roles, finances and schedules prevents disappointment
• Both physicians and their partners experience complex feelings during this transition
Follow Bradie on Instagram @bradiefisherinteriors or email her at bradie@bradiefisherinteriors.com to learn more about her services.
Hello and welcome back to Behind the White Coat. Do you know, when you have a guest that comes on the show and the conversation is so good, you immediately ask them to come back before the episode even airs. That is exactly what happened with today's guest. Brady Fisher is back with us and if you remember from her first episode, you know that this is going to be a treat. She is creative force behind a thriving interior design business right here in town and also lives with her family and fellow physician spouse. She is married to a radiologist who is in private practice, and last time we dove into the beautiful world of home design. But today we are getting real about something a little bit different what life actually looks like after training ends, after residency, after fellowship, after the constant chaos when that chapter finally closes and suddenly you have time again. So what happens next? What changes, what doesn't and why does no one prepare us for this part? So please welcome back my friend Brady Fisher. Hello, happy to be back.
Speaker 1:Yes, I loved our conversation before and we just ran out of time and we just had so much more to chat about. So I appreciate you taking the time to talk with us. I feel like a lot of our listeners maybe, are in the same boat of finishing with training and then wondering what do we do now? What does life look like? And so let me rewind back just a little bit to your training years, which probably, like most of us, you were in survival mode. What did that look like for you? Did you have a family at that time? And just tell us a little bit of your training journey.
Speaker 2:Sure, I believe I probably shared a bit of this on the last episode, but we got married immediately after college as little teeny, tiny toddlers at age 22, which I believe you got married young as well, right.
Speaker 1:I was a granny Well, I say that loosely, it's not old, but older, I think, compared to love. So I was 28, almost 29. Okay, okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, so we got married at the very beginning of the whole training journey.
Speaker 2:So we got married and then three weeks later started med school in Houston. You know living the newlywed life with $0 and you know negative bank accounts and spread super thin, just surviving. I was working again, making hardly any money but just trying to survive. So I mean we all know how that goes and didn't have any kids. Until we finished med school, moved back to Dallas where we were both born and raised. My husband did residency at UT Southwestern in Dallas and we knew that we would. We did med school in Houston. We knew we wanted to come back to Dallas so I knew that that would be kind of probably when we were going to start a family, because that's where both of our parents lived. Parents were close by so, thankfully, had a ton of support.
Speaker 2:Our first child, my son, was born during, let's see, the very end of his intern year and then so radiology residency. He did five years of residency and then a fellowship, so my son was born, you know the end of the first year. My daughter was born three years later, so still in training. By the time we had been married 10 years. So we celebrated our 10th anniversary and then him being done with training and that is what brought us to Nashville. He accepted a private practice job. Nashville wasn't really in the cards for us previously. We thought we were going to stay in Dallas, but just had a great job, a great job opportunity, and so that was in 2018. And he has been in private practice ever since. So we've lived in Nashville for coming up on seven years. So, yeah, and now my kids are back to school. This week I've got a newly middle schooler, so a sixth grader who's about to be 12 in a couple of weeks, and then I've got a third grader who is about to be nine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's. It's amazing when you look back at how quick time goes and what do they say? That the days are long and the years are short, totally. I think, especially during that training you feel it whether you have a family or not. But talking about how finances are limited, time is limited, sleep is limited, all the things, and so now let's move forward to being done with training, now that everybody kind of has an idea of what that looked like as far as your life during training. So describe how you felt when you were done with training. Was it like a now what? Were you surprised? How you felt? Did you think, oh my goodness, now it's going to be so much easier, we're going to have more time. What did that feel?
Speaker 2:like. So it's funny, I don't know that I necessarily had this like epiphany of like we're done, this is my new, you know, this is my new life, like it. Just, you know, I mean, I definitely did have a sense of like, oh, we made it. Okay, this is what we've. You know, this is what we've been working toward. You know, you have your head down for 10 years and you don't think that it'll ever come. And then one day you look, I'm like, oh my gosh, we made it.
Speaker 2:And so I didn't really give it a lot of thought beyond just, okay, life's going to get easier now. And I just assumed that everything would work out and that all of our problems would go away and the stresses that we had and yes, those exact, you know, specific stresses more or less went away. But I wasn't expecting the new like pain points that were going to come up. I just kind of thought that like, okay, it's all, every happily ever after, off we go and live our lives, you know. And so I never really gave it much thought. And it wasn't until years later like I'm talking at least two to three years after like we were in this quote, better life. But I finally named this like growing feeling of resentment that I didn't even realize had been slowly brewing under the surface, just because you know I wasn't thinking through the intentional shifts that we would need to make, and are now making, in order to fit and support our life now.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and I'm gonna talk a little bit for a second onto resentment, because I think a lot of physician families, physicians, physician spouses feel that way, but many times they don't know that's what they're feeling or they feel guilty to discuss it, because God forbid, if you're resenting Now, did you feel like you resented more of the situation, the lifestyle, your spouse's schedule? Was your life kind of put on hold, or he and his career kind of dictated your life? Where do you feel like that was?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what's funny is, ironically, I never felt any bitterness or resentment while while he was in training, because I knew that he was doing all he could to survive and his bandwidth was so limited and I was happy and willing to support him. However, I could shoulder whatever burden I could. Even when he had limited bandwidth, he tried to be as present as he possibly could with the kids. He's always been like a super present, you know, spouse and dad and so it felt much more like, even though it was stressful, I knew that there was nothing we could do about it and he was doing that, but he was just surviving and I you know me being like a supportive spouse I wanted to do whatever I could and I knew that that's kind of what I had signed up for when we got married and so there was no resentment. We were a team right. It was kind of like us versus the training or us versus the world.
Speaker 1:I guess, as cliche as it sounds, yeah, right, head down and let's get through this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was very clearly defined. I knew what my quote role was, if you will, and especially when we had kids and I didn't work, I didn't feel resentful about being the primary default parent or primary COO of the house and CEO and all those things, because he couldn't, he literally couldn't. We had to. So what I didn't realize is All along the way, you know, forming those patterns of how our household ran.
Speaker 2:Those continued into private practice when suddenly, overnight he went from having zero bandwidth like literally just surviving to. We are very blessed and fortunate that he got a phenomenal job with a week's of time off every year Phenomenal schedule, no call. With weeks of time off every year phenomenal schedule, no call. And yet I was still doing all the things like in terms of household labor. I mean, it was just a classic, you know, mental load, emotional labor, household, you know all of those things like that part was very unequal and didn't reflect like his ability to take on more, because I was basically still doing the same thing, the same roles that you guys had during training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it never. And we were operating you know, it's like we were operating on autopilot and muscle memory until one day I looked up and I was like why am I so pissed off that he's sitting on the couch, you know, watching TV or scrolling his phone or reading a book? And in his defense, like it's not like I ever was, like hey, a little help over here, right, but it was just. It never occurred to either one of us. Yeah, you're just going through the motions.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. So did you end up kind of having a breakdown? Or just one day was like, hey, we gotta, we gotta talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie, we're still working through it. And now it's a much more open conversation Because, like you said before, I felt guilty to voice, like I feel like I'm not allowed to be resentful because he worked so hard for so long. I just need to get over it. And so I spent years just trying to mind over matter it. And you know CBT my way, you know the cognitive behavioral therapy, you know make myself get over it and all the while, spoiler alert not working, and, you know, resentment and bitterness just keeps brewing.
Speaker 2:So it was like this vicious cycle of like me feeling resentful, me feeling guilty for being resentful, and trying to get over it, and it not working. And, you know, round and round we go, and along the way I would, I would bring up hey, I'm feeling this way, but I, but I couldn't, I could never fully articulate like what I needed from him or what the problem was, cause he would just say, well, tell me, what do you want me to do? And I'm like I don't know, I don't know, I just need you to kind of like be aware. And so it was this, it's, you know. So we went to therapy and you know, did you know, just because it was like it's a very, it was a very solvable, this is very we weren't having like existential. We see, you know, it wasn't like a crisis in our marriage and it was just these like stupid little, like kind of paper cut. You know, that just ended up like Over time, over time, yeah Well and we talked about this before marriage is hard.
Speaker 1:And then when you couple that with crazy schedules or you know financial issues with parenting, and it's hard. And when it's uncharted territory or when it's things that you have not dealt with before, as far as him being more home, or you guys talking about how do our roles look now that the situation has changed, and so when you don't know what you don't know, yeah, and it never occurred to me.
Speaker 2:It never occurred to me. I literally thought, like I said before, it would all just work itself out and like what you said about just having you know uncharted territory, and also like this medical journey is lonely but also it is unique, like I don't have any friends that could relate to what you know kind of like. I often refer to it as whiplash of overnight having a lifestyle look one way and then the next day having a lifestyle look wildly different, and so I didn't have anybody that I could talk. I mean, I could have girlfriends that I could vent to, but nobody could understand. They just don't even realize it and it's those daily kind of monotonous habits that will, over time, it will breed resentment if something isn't working.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and not having the right people to talk to, like you were saying, I think, makes such a difference. Because it's hard when, like you said, you have friends but they don't understand the behind the scenes. And it's hard when you kind of know what you signed up for, right, but you still don't know the exact path, you still don't know those feelings. And then also, I think, sometimes, when you're talking about having this resentment but then talking to people that don't understand, talking about having this resentment but then talking to people that don't understand, in their eyes it's like, oh okay, you're married to a physician.
Speaker 1:That must just be terrible, yeah, exactly. And it's such a bigger picture than that and all these different things that I do think you need to be able to find your people that you feel safe and to talk to this about. But then, like you said, making it your mission of, hey, we don't talk about this and here's how things are working now, but have a plan coming up with how those things are gonna look like and work out later and set those expectations or decide what those little habits are gonna look like and how changes will be made, because I think that will help those tough conversations earlier on as opposed to later, when those little things now have turned into something bigger because they've all paired together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they've turned into something bigger. Because you're just living life. You're just living normal life as you know it, right, and you're not consciously paying attention to that little feeling, like that little pang in your gut when you look over and you're whatever little irritant that just is like a tiny bit triggering. But you just move on because you're just living your life Right Over and over and over day, year after year, until all of a sudden you're like, ah Right, right.
Speaker 1:And yeah, nobody you kind of snap.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and nobody says, or at least said to me hey, your life is gonna change and in a lot of ways it's gonna be better, just like you hoped and thought it would. But here are some things that maybe you perhaps wouldn't have thought about and conversations that would be good for you to have. You know, either approaching, like, maybe as you're approaching the end of training, or if you've just started, if you've had a new move or a new job, it would have been great to have somebody you know, even like if you can afford going to therapy, just to like navigate. Hey, I anticipate that this is a change. This is going to be a big lifestyle change for us, and let's kind of get ahead of it and navigate the potential pitfalls with a professional.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it totally took me by surprise and it took me a very, very long time to figure out why I was feeling resentful. Because I was like but my life is so much better now, like, why am I feeling resentful? And it wasn't until we got professional help that, like, I was able to name the root. It was just a mismatched expectation, and it was expectations that I didn't even know that I had and so, therefore, I could never have even voiced them, and so once we could like get clear on the disconnect, then we could have a conversation about we've named it, now what can we do about it?
Speaker 1:Right, right and addressing it because, like you, weren't even sure what that was and then not knowing what it was, and then how to communicate that to him, and how do you even move forward to fix things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and also we had another kind of mark going against us or, you know, not working in our favor, in that we got married so young and you know, we got married without having any other. We had no life experience, we hadn't dated anybody else and so we had no kind of like trial run at like being grownups. We were forming habits that served us in the time, but they weren't the best habits. They anyway, we did the best we could, but we just we were so young, young, dumb and broke. As you know, I say often and it's just and again, like just thinking, like a lot of us do, a lot of us did like in residency, like it's going to be, oh, it's going to be so much better, just wait, it's going to be so much better, it's going to be so much better. And yeah, in a lot of ways it was. But you know, that's like my soapbox, I guess, is like okay, but there's also things that are hard, that I didn't see coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what was difficult, mm-hmm. We've got a set routine of how we have our mornings, how we get off to school and, for some reason, when he's home to help, oh man, those mornings are rough. We're usually late, we can't find stuff, and so it's just even small things like that, just how different life looks if they are home more or their schedule changes drastically, and being able to navigate that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I mean I'll tell you so, like in our current stage, so that the impetus, kind of the final straw that broke the camel's back for like, actually like, okay, we got to stop having these same conversations, these every six months, and you know we're not moving forward, we're not fixing anything. We got to actually like go to see a professional. About this was my husband accepted a new job at the beginning of this year and so prior to that he was in a group based in Nashville. He had great lifestyle, tons of time off, but now, as of January, he works. He's an independent contractor and he works only nights. So he is seven nights on and then 14 days off. So he works one week of nights and then he gets 14 days off. So that's a lot of time off.
Speaker 2:So talk about whiplash. You know, going from when he's on nights we're back to, okay, see you in a week. Like, I expect nothing from you. You are surviving. This is. It's very challenging, it's very demanding, it's very taxing on his body and he's exhausted. But challenging, it's very demanding, it's very taxing on his body and he's exhausted, but you know he gets to have two weeks off after that, and so it's like people laugh. They're like your husband, like what, steven? What does Steven do all the time?
Speaker 2:And so now we are kind of navigating this yet yet another kind of new territory of like, okay, what does our life look like when you're on and what does our life look like when you're off? Because when you're off, what I'm afraid and this is what I voiced to him, which is what we were talking about in our therapy sessions was like I am scared or nervous that in your two weeks off that you're going to see this as two weeks of Saturdays, like we were still treating his free time as like we had this scarcity mindset around his free time. And it's like, bro, you have so much free time you are drowning in free time we don't have. Your free time is not precious. So how are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what is this going to look like? What is this going to look like? And we still are figuring that out, we're still having conversations about it, but it's like and again that right there, like with his weird, you know, schedule, we're being like totally on or totally off. That is yet another aspect of like my friends. Just they're like golly, I can't even wrap my brain around like he's either fully gone or in my hair all the time. You know there's no in between.
Speaker 1:So on each side of the schedule it's getting back to a normal sleep schedule before he has to go on night shifts and then being able to help you and the family and then, okay, now I'm back on nights and so y'all are constantly having to probably shift back and forth with. What's working this week may not work for this week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, work for this week, yeah, and it's just, I think you know what it for this season of life. What it's boiling down to is just having open conversations and just being like, hey, you know which I wasn't always great about. I wasn't great about sharing, like my feelings, because I always felt like I had number one. I felt guilty for feeling how I felt. And it wasn't until we went to therapy that our therapist was like your feelings are your feelings. You don't have to justify them Like you need. You didn't you need to let your spouse in on your feelings because he has no idea how you're feeling.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, yeah, yeah, you're right, but I felt like I wasn't supposed to feel how I was feeling, or I or I needed to explain, yeah, and we've learned a lot just about healthy communication, like in just in general, not necessarily not only about like the household rules. Like the household rules, you know it's kind of the surface level issue, but really the deeper issue was just kind of not communicating and just getting into a pattern of just, you know, not not communicating like our feelings and our needs. I feel like it is a unique struggle just because of the constant change in lifestyle, like the constant, just the practicality, those logistics of daily life evolving, and it's like, okay, now we got to kind of reevaluate and reassess and be intentional when we weren't necessarily intentional before and I wish that I had you know pay attention and be intentional about all of those things.
Speaker 1:I think that's great advice, because we're in the midst of that training season for so long that it's like, okay, we're almost there. We're almost there Now we've made it to the finish line. But it's a big change, and not just for you, but the whole family, and so I think that communication is huge. So thank you for sharing that and also, like you had said earlier, those expectations setting those up, and I can say for us, the expectations that I had when we were done with training are definitely not what I thought they were, and for various different reasons. So, okay, we will have a higher paycheck, that is great. But on the flip side, I also feel like we have so many more expenses that we're paying the paycheck before we get it or spending the paycheck before we get it, whether it's getting out of debt if you've got med school debt or making up for lost time.
Speaker 1:If you haven't been able to put anything into savings, you haven't been able to put anything towards retirement. So I think having those conversations earlier on is helpful, at least what my husband and I I wish we would have done a little bit earlier is okay when that happens, and it doesn't mean we have to know what the dollars are going to be or dollar for dollar, but just when that happens, what are our expectations? And I've talked with a ton of physician spouses where a lot of times it's like for so long we had to put everything on hold.
Speaker 1:Well, we're not doing that now, and not to say that they aren't, as a family, deserving of it, but we still need to set those expectations of not just but how is this going to look? And actually kind of getting out of debt or making up for lost time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's kind of what it all boils down to Like. If I were to give advice to myself 10 years ago, or somebody in you know, somebody in training, maybe their spouse is in residency or fellowship, or they're kind of looking ahead to the next step, I would say talk about expectations in you know early and often because you know they say you know there's a saying something like disappointment is in, like the unmet expectations. You know if there's a disconnect in your and your spouse's expectations, and so I would say, be as proactive about that as you can. In terms of finances, in terms of you know lifestyle, and it's like you know what a lot of people go through. You were talking about the finances, like, okay, yeah, we're making, you know we have a bigger paycheck now, but hey, guess what? We've got hundreds of thousands of dollars in. You know student loans that we have to pay back, and so it's like just kidding, all of and you know student loans that we have to pay back, and so it's like just kidding, all of your money is going back, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's like having those conversations you know, just so that, and the goal is to prevent disappointment and to prevent resentment as best you can, and so, yeah, talking about, okay, here's how lifestyle is going to change. Here's how budget is going to change. Here is you know, here's what I see going to change. Here's how budget is going to change. Here's, you know, here's what I see. What do you see? What are we you know? What are you worried about? What are you excited about?
Speaker 2:Just like talking, being intentional, about talking through, just yeah, expectations and concerns, all of that Because so much of it changes in a blink, and if you aren't on the same page, or at least knowing what page the other one is on, you can be blindsided when you don't necessarily have to, just by being proactive.
Speaker 1:I agree and, like you said, having that open communication to discuss those expectations and what that's going to look like, because, like you said, things can change very quickly. So what your goals are and your needs in this relationship could change. Whether you have a family, you lose a job, you move, you have family that moves closer to you. That I think having those conversations often to make sure that you are both aligned in what that looks like and how you're feeling and those expectations, I think will be huge and make things hopefully a little bit easier as time goes on to have those difficult conversations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also don't feel like guilty, for I've talked to so many, you know, physician spouses and also just women that you know if they are the you know, if they are kind of the traditional maybe stay at home or part-time or primary caretaker of the home and the kids and the husband's work outside the home, they feel guilty voicing their frustration or their struggle because they're like, well, this is my job or this is my, he makes the money and and like I felt that way for a long time and so you know, I would say like no, like I mean, you're allowed to be upset, you know, and and maybe you have a conversation about it and maybe you bring it to your spouse and ultimately it comes down to like you just got to get over it because this is life, like that's fine, but like you have to have a conversation about it and you can't just, you know, stuff it down because that's, you know, ask me how I know it doesn't work out?
Speaker 1:No, and I think more than not physicians and their spouses or partners feel this way and then vice versa there may be resentment from the physician side of you get to be home, you get to be with the family, you get to see the kids making these first. And so I do think, like you said, having that third-party help with counseling, with therapy, helps you kind of voice your feelings and see both sides. But I think there's also a little bit of a taboo of you don't get the therapy or the counseling until there's a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I wish that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I agree that I think a lot of times, at least now, it's so much more accepting to be proactive and have it on the front end so that you can have that open communication and you can have those hard conversations of things that maybe we didn't even think about to discuss, or opening up the can of worms of having those feelings of resentment and fear and so forth. So this was amazing and I feel like so many listeners feel this way, I feel like so many physicians and physician spouses feel this way, and so thank you for just being open and candid and sharing your experience with everyone and I just appreciate you and I hope one day we get a chance to meet in person now that we've had a couple of these episodes. And good luck with middle school, good luck with third grade and all the emotions and changes there.
Speaker 2:Yes, lots of emotions from everyone, everyone.
Speaker 1:Everyone in the house Exactly Well to all the listeners, thank you. Please share with another friend physician spouse if you feel like this is something that they can relate to, and feel free to drop a comment or send us a DM for any other suggestions or questions you guys might have for a future episode. Thanks again, Brady, and until next time. That's a wrap on this episode of Behind the White Coat. I hope today's conversation left you feeling more understood and supported. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to subscribe, leave a review or share it with another physician spouse. Your support helps more of us to connect. Keep in mind this podcast is for you, so let's keep this conversation going. Dm me on Instagram at Amanda Barron Realtor, with your thoughts, topic ideas, questions or even guest suggestions. I would really love to hear from you. Thanks for spending part of your day with me and remember you are never in this alone. See you next time.