Woman surgeon defies all odds
Article Source: HealthSnare.com
A greater part of people during the 1940s thought that women shouldn't be surgeons, but it didn't stop a certain woman from wanting to be one. Even as this lady's medical school dean advised her that no one would be up for the task of training females to become surgeons, he still wrote her a recommendation certificate.
During the lady's first three job interviews, the surgeon she met seemed to suppress their hilarity after reading her recommendation letter until she finally finds out why when the last interviewer read the lines that made him crack to her. The words in the letter, To whom it may concern, this woman is large, powerful and tireless, and this was what made them laugh. Amazingly, she got all four jobs! Since this time, the admirers of this woman saw that she has lived up to become greater than these words that defined her.
During her meaningful life, she has founded an Africa-based volunteer group that helps alleviate and prevent disease and death in that country, run a laboratory on research, go around third world countries with medical relief organizations, and on top of this, she was able to do her private practice without allowing the patient's ability to pay dictate on her service. To prevent cancer of the skin, she developed a line of excellent skin care products.
She recalls that people from the northern New York suburbs gave her the most challenging cases she has ever handled in her life as a reconstructive and plastic surgeon who truly cares for anyone who is badly injured and burned. Being mother to 8 rambunctious kids, she merits the ultimate working mother title. This is a doctor known for her wonderful accomplishments but beyond that, she is able to adhere to her best qualities such as her utmost humility, compassion, dedicated, and industriousness, which were all seen even with how she handled the painful time of her two sons' death from a fatal blood ailment.
The lady doctor was the middle daughter of a doctor, surgeon and sculptor. She never practiced singing but her mother hoped that she would be an opera singer. She describes her father a the sort of physician who just took care of people whether or not they had money. She frequently accompanied him on rounds and watched him during surgery.
Very early, she already knew that she would be going down the path of medicine. She recalls about her father's reaction, which seemed like there was nothing unconventional about it. Thanks to these reasons, she had never doubted her own capabilities or felt discriminated in any way. Being a rarity was something she has always admitted to. She seems to be biased over her time, saying it was way easier for her then than it is now for most women. The male doctors never saw her as a threat. She states that she went way out of the place she was contained in.
Her first love were animals. Her youth was spent in Maine and during the summer she dwells in tents with a few dogs. Helping her find her way in a great medical university in the big apple was a small all girls school that transformed her from wild wood dweller to a smart pretty girl. But then she could not resist taking her crow and two beagle puppies along whenever she goes to school.
During her time in medical school, she fell in love and married a fellow medical student and together, they had two daughters and she went through all these prior to becoming the first female surgeon to graduate there. Later, she was as tireless in pursuit of her specialty. Making her speak up about her work and how it blossomed was a hard task. She is reluctant to address her achievements but at times, she does allude to how hard it was to balance work and a large family.
She fell in love and got married a second time to a doctor and had five kids with him but she also got his kids and adopted them. Many wonder how life was like growing up with a whirlwind of a mother whose day begins at the wee hours or morning, would work all day and then be found in the bedroom reading until 1 am. Even as her daughters do not share the same opinion about this, one thing holds true, they all found it very difficult to be in this situation most of the time. Seeing our brilliant mom in action was the usual thing for us, shares one of her daughters, the one who is now an oncologist. Bringing her work and children together was something she was always keen upon. Over the dinner table, we had conversations about some people's misfortunes.
A critical task was given to her adopted daughter. She was assigned the task of raising her siblings since she was the oldest child. She feels so weary when made to abide by her motherly duties as she is barely even at home. Since she was so dedicated in her job, she rarely had time for us. She shares that they had a standing joke in their family back then, that whenever people would ask where their mother was at, they would all say that she was not there for she was out somewhere saving lives. Another one of the daughters reveals her mother's sense of fun. She has crazy means to surprise her kids such as showing up in their sports matches with pompoms and megaphones and even going out of her way to drive with the local parade in a fire vehicle.
Two of her three boys were born with a congenital blood disease, Fanconi's anemia, which required frequent blood transfusions. Both contracted AIDS through transfusions before anyone really knew what AIDS was. Only one year separated them from their deaths as they died very early one being 13 and the other 17. The night her second male son met his last breath, her husband left and around this time, her youngest girl left for college too. Her busy practice was not enough to fill the void inside her.
Things in her life fell apart. Seeing how she moved from full house to empty shoved her to fly to Africa. This place mesmerized her as a child even when she has never set foot in this place before. In order to learn about animal problems she boarded to her first flight to Kenya. She then visited the hospital known to have the highest infant death rates as well as the gravest AIDS cases in the world.
A nonprofit group set for bringing in medical training, treatment and equipment was set up for the people in Eastern Kenya during her return. To study the complication of AIDS there, she takes new doctors with her. She and a medical student were taken out of their car and beaten up by some robbers in their final trip to Kenya.
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Fred Ramirez
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Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 Time: 2:38 AM
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