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The training wheels are almost off for Dr. Rhonda Gentry. After completing her hematology/oncology fellowship at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences this June, Gentry will join the private practice of hematologist/oncologist Brad Baltz in Little Rock.

Though she’s been studying medicine for the past 10 years, going to medical school was an almost last-minute decision.

“I was going to be an artist,” Gentry said. “I did a little acrylic painting, but my passion was drawing — pen and ink, charcoal, or pencil. I love to draw.”
After graduating from Lake Hamilton High School just outside Hot Springs, Gentry, née Williams, started college at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR). “I never meant to stay at UALR initially,” Gentry said, explaining that she had scholarships all over the state but really wanted to leave Arkansas. It was a great school for me. “I figured I’d go there for a year, and then transfer out of state somewhere. But I liked my classes, and made good friends, so I ended up staying.”

The physician said that though she loves art, she is not a “true artist like some people are.” Three years into college, one of her professors seemed to agree. “I think her way of challenging you to grow and motivate you to do better was to be extremely critical,” Gentry reflected. “But it got to the point that I decided not to take another art class.”

Instead, she loaded up her senior year with science classes, a field she’d never really thought about until then. It was a whim, but a smart one. Gentry found she had a real knack for science and found her classes immensely interesting.
Gentry enjoyed chemistry so much that she started thinking about going to pharmacy school and took a job at a local pharmacy. A physician she met there encouraged the former art student toward medical school instead.

For close to nine years, through college, medical school at UAMS and into her internship year, Gentry also worked part-time waiting tables at a local Italian restaurant, Bruno’s Little Italy. There, she met and fell in love with another server, Jay Gentry. The couple married during her senior year at UAMS. Jay now works for Northwestern Mutual, and the couple has a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Madeline or “Maddie.”

“My poor husband...Our entire relationship has been my medical training,” Gentry laughs. “Fortunately, he’s a very patient man.”

Gentry quickly settled on internal medicine, enjoying the internal focus and the patient interaction it offered. One of her early rotations was in oncology. The rotation occurred at a significant time in her life. “Just around then, Jay’s father was diagnosed with lung cancer metastatic to his brain and his grandmother was battling two cancers,” Gentry said. “We lost both of them within about three months. Working with the patients during that time and seeing the peace and guidance that physicians gave through that process is what tipped me over into doing the fellowship.”

Gentry now draws on her creative side in her interactions with patients. “It sounds corny, but there really is an art to medicine and to working with people,” she said. “Artistic people are somewhat right-brained. I do think being in tune with the right brain balances that strong, left-brained analytic quality that is so often in medicine. I think it makes me at least a better physician.”
Too often, people who hear she has gone into oncology find it a “dismal career choice,” she said. “They say, ‘Oh how depressing!’ Having cancer is an awful process, yes, but if I can be there to in any way make that better, what a fulfilling job and life that can be.”

She said part of doing her job well means helping patients and their loved ones redefine success and set realistic goals based upon the patient’s prognosis. “Obviously, curing a patient is the ideal, and what a joy that is to know you had a hand in giving them more time to do whatever it is they want to do,” she said. “But a patient with terminal, metastatic disease — which is still somewhat feared in the medical community — needs a doctor to give them insight into what to expect and help make it better.”

That’s what’s really fulfilling, she said: “Whether we improve their symptoms or just buy them some time to be with their loved ones longer, we’re still accomplishing goals for those patients. You just have to redefine those goals.”
Part of what Gentry brings to the doctor-patient relationship is a willingness to create a bond with her patients. “From a spiritual perspective, you can get to a deep level with patients who are in that situation,” she said. “And an extra hug at the bedside, or sitting down in the chair and listening to them just a little bit longer, it means the world to those patients.”

Gentry said working with her patients keeps her grounded and continually renews her appreciation for time with her family. “I can get caught up in the craziness of life and superficial things. But oftentimes, I come away from my day feeling very blessed that I’m healthy and that I have the family that I do and the opportunities in life that I do,” she reflected. “It’s a built-in way to keep a person thankful and grateful for being alive.”



May 2008

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