DR. WHO
DR. WHO
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
DR. NATALIE MILLER
AUTHOR Kathryn Vance
Growing up in Lexington in a family that bleeds Big Blue,
Dr. Natalie Miller never expected to end up in Cards
Country.
Her parents, high school sweethearts from Marion
County, Kentucky, married after graduating together
and moved to Lexington. Her mother went to school for
dental hygiene and her father worked his way up from
store clerk at Convenient Food Mart to sales manager
over the next 30 years. When she was a child, she had no inkling
that she would later find herself in medicine. However, her mother
was diagnosed with cancer when she was just 15-years-old and she
remembers those doctors’ appointments as part of what piqued
her interest.
“At that time, I was taking an anatomy class in high school and
I vividly remember meeting her doctors and they would say words
that I didn’t understand,” she said. “But every now and then they’d
say something that I did understand. So as a teenager, that gave me
a little bit of a sense of control in an uncontrolled situation.”
Though her mother passed away, sadly less than a year later,
those appointments marked a beginning in the search for her future
profession. She enrolled in undergrad at the University of Kentucky
and planned to pursue a degree in psychology, although she admitted
she had little to no idea what she wanted to do with that degree. One
of her uncles was a pharmacist and saw her potential and suggested
she look into medical school. After taking the prerequisite classes,
she knew he was onto something. She then began the search for
medical schools, trying to find a location that would allow her to
stay somewhat close to family while also letting her branch out.
The University of Louisville School of Medicine turned out to be a
perfect, if somewhat surprising, match.
“I interviewed at a few medical schools. I loved my interview
day at UofL, and I didn’t expect to,” she shared. “I am not a UofL
sports fan, so I had a little bit of preconceived notions before coming
here. I just loved the people and I knew it was time for something
different.” Once she moved to Louisville, things took off for her both
professionally and personally. She met her future husband, Dr. Sean
Miller, while they were both first-year medical students in 2004.
“It’s funny actually, my husband and I have two different stories
about how we met,” she said, laughing. “My husband’s story is that
he looked up during gross anatomy and saw a woman in a Notre
Dame [his alma mater] sweatshirt, and said he knew he had to talk to
her. It was my lucky sweatshirt and I still have it.” Her own memory
of their meeting was simpler. Her cousin and classmate introduced
them while walking to their cars one day after class. Dr. Miller still
remembers the funny t-shirt her would-be husband was wearing
that first day, and it hangs in their closet today (the Notre Dame
sweatshirt also had a star return at their wedding rehearsal dinner).
The two finished medical school and then applied for residency
with Couples Match; St. Louis would be their home for the next
five years. Dr. Miller matched at St. Louis Children’s Hospital -
Washington University in pediatrics, while her husband Dr. Sean
Miller matched in ENT at St. Louis University. “We looked at a
lot of different programs, and St. Louis was a bit more out of our
comfort zone. It wasn’t too far from home, but still a pretty big step
away,” she said. “But when we visited, we both fell in love with the
city and loved our respective programs, so we were thrilled when
we matched there.”
During her first month as an intern, she was on a rotation on the
pediatric pulmonary floor and found that she had a keen interest
in caring for asthmatic patients. Her Chief Resident recommended
her as a representative on an asthma care committee, attended by
physicians from various specialties. She had intended to network
primarily with pulmonologists, but an allergist at the conference
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