The Secret Life of a Doctor’s Wife

My husband is an Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist—and he is a surgeon. I never knew ENT doctors were surgeons until I married a guy who became one. Ian operates on thyroid glands and sinuses that are chronically infected; he takes out tonsils and puts in ear tubes. Ian also happens to be a great listener, which I think is the best quality a doctor (or any human being) could have, and from the many gifts he brings home from the office, I gather that he has many adoring patients who love and appreciate him.

Ian has a few older women patients who are not-so-secretly in love with him. I get it—the man is good-looking, he’s smart, he has crazy man muscles. One of his lady patients runs a business where she sells pure oil and vinegar products from Austria. She has given my husband no less than ten bottles of massage oil made from hemp seed. OK, quick poll of the audience here...When is the last time you gave your doctor massage oil as a thank you gift? Whatever happened to the good old days when you gave your doctor baskets of fruit or homemade pies? Ian actually came home the other day and made me close my eyes, telling me he had a surprise for me, and I was so mad when he placed yet another bottle of hemp massage oil in my hands. I’m ready to go toe to toe with this woman if she doesn’t get a little more tactful, or at least creative, with her gift giving.

Then there is an older woman who works with Ian—I’ll call her Ms. C—and she brings him gourmet lunches all the time and leaves them in his office, hot and ready for when he comes out of the operating room. Ian’s co-worker, Dan, was at our house recently and he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “God forbid anything should happen to you, but if it does, Ms. C will be knocking at your door before Ian finishes taking his coat off from the funeral.”

What happens to certain women as they get older—do they just get so desperate that they have no sense of dignity and self-respect; they just go around hitting on married men who show them the least bit of kindness?

Recently, Ian took a temporary moonlighting job in the small town of Franklin, VA, where he sees mainly an older African American population. These black women love my husband so much I may have to go down there and beat them off with a stick. They come in dressed up in their hats and their pants suits, and they try to get more appointments with him than they actually need. One of them called in and asked to make an appointment with “Dr. McHottie”. Another commented to a staff member when he walked out of the room: “Ooohhh…he FRESH!”

I’m just waiting for the massage oil to start rolling in from Franklin.

I have to admit, there are several perks to being married to Dr. McHottie. First, he can fill out all of our school physical forms. This is a good thing when your middle school son comes home and tells you he can’t play ball unless he has a physical by tomorrow. Second, I have major inroads through the nightmarish web of military healthcare. I’ve tried working the system like a regular military spouse, but I always end up having Ian call in a favor to another doctor friend so that I don’t have to wait a month to be seen. Ian calls in all of our prescriptions when we’re sick, which is why my kids hardly ever go to the pediatrician. But last, and most importantly, Ian is calm in a crisis. I have two stock responses when the kids get really hurt—complete paralysis and total panic. When Skye was 18 months or so, there was an incident that involved her running away from me with a bag of rice, with intent to spill it all over the living room carpet; I ran after her, and she fell right into the corner of a wall and split her forehead wide open. Thankfully, Ian was upstairs when it happened because I went directly into panic mode. Skye’s head was gushing blood and I don’t know who was screaming louder, her or me. Ian kept saying to me, “I need you to calm down. You’re scaring her. I do this stuff every day.” We ended up driving to his clinic where he was able to apply some skin glue and put the pieces of her forehead back together.

Having a doctor for a husband can also save your life if, say, you happen to be dying, like I was back in 2003. Seriously, I could have been a goner. I had a life-threatening bacterial infection of the epiglottis, which is way down in the throat (It’s what they think killed George Washington, back before antibiotics could be pumped into your veins.) It’s an illness that can only be diagnosed by an ENT doc, and thankfully I married into the right specialty. I had fever, chills and the worst sore throat of my life, and it was a Monday; Ian was a resident at the time and was slammed in clinic. I paged him, and I was crying on the phone, and my voice was sounding a little funny (that was actually my throat beginning to close, which is how you can die within 48 hours of contracting this illness). Long story short, Ian told me to come in, he scoped me with this super long tube down my nose and, upon viewing my epiglottis, pretty much ran out to get the attending doctor who rapidly admitted me for IV antibiotics and really good pain meds.

Ian has great stories to tell at parties too. I mean, when I’m not telling the story of how I almost died. We’ll have to save those for when you come to our house for dinner, though, because some of them are truly disgusting and he tells them best.

For all you single ladies out there, I would not recommend marrying a man in the process of becoming a doctor, because that mainly entails a lot of long, lonely nights without any money to spend to comfort you. But I would definitely recommend jumping in after the residency is done for maximum benefits.

And for all of you older ladies making extra appointments with my husband just so you can smell his cologne while he looks in your waxy ears: Stop it. Really. Just stop it.