Gundersen doctor traded in the big city for a small town – and loves it

While Colleen McCurry, MD, spent weekends camping in the Driftless Region, she never imagined one day, she’d call the area home. The Chicago native and family medicine provider at Gundersen Boscobel Area Hospital and Clinics first got a taste of small town life during college at Valparaiso University in northern Indiana. Her residency, however, was spent in the heart of Chicago – she and her husband loved that too. Until they had their daughter.

“Six months before the end of residency, I gave birth to our daughter,” Dr. McCurry says. “Having a baby in the city was really hard. We learned quickly that we didn’t want to raise our family in a big city.”

Dr. McCurry and her husband – who grew up in a small town in Texas – would find the right fit four hours northwest of Chicago in Boscobel, Wis. They loved that Boscobel, a town of 3,000, boasted a café, canoe rental shop (the town is perched on the Wisconsin River) and hiking trails.

“I realized I could have that peace – found while camping in the Driftless Region – all the time,” Dr. McCurry says. “I didn’t need to save that for a weeklong vacation or a couple weekends in the summer.” 

While she and her husband, a part-time Lutheran pastor who serves two churches in the area, have found their fit in the community, Dr. McCurry has also found her fit in the medicine she practices. She says during residency in Chicago, she was expected to see lots of patients during 15-minute visits. 

“We referred everything out,” she says. “That’s not the kind of medicine I wanted to practice. I wanted to use my skills, serve my community and build long-term relationships with families. Gundersen Boscobel is the perfect fit. I love being in practice here. And because we’re part of the Gundersen system, more extensive knowledge is just a phone call away.”

The couple now has two daughters – ages six and three – and lives on seven acres just outside of Boscobel. Besides their cats, dogs and bunnies, they also raise 12 chickens.

“In a time when we don’t know how social media is impacting our kids, I love the fact that my kids have a very tangible community. Folks in the community know our kids, they know their names, they watch out for them,” Dr. McCurry says. “It’s such a cool community. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”