As I’m sitting at my desk excited about the opportunity to write this article “from her perspective,” I’m pondering what does her perspective mean for me?
Is it my perspective as a wife? As newly pregnant with my first child? As a friend? As a daughter? As physician? As a facial plastic surgeon, in particular? As a new business owner and CEO? Each one of these individually could easily be a point of view and story in itself of how I’ve not always so gracefully navigated the journey to get where I am today. It causes me to reflect on all the challenges and doubts I’ve overcome and how blessed I am to be where I am today.
On my journey to medical school:
“Aren’t you engaged to a medical student? Why do you even want to go to medical school so badly?” Biochemistry Professor University of New Orleans
On my decision to become a surgeon:
“Do women even do that?” My Father
“it’s the most competitive specialty, people spend years preparing, there’s no way you can try now.” Medical School Advisor
On my journey in residency:
“You’re still in school?” every family member on my husband’s side at every family function or holiday
These are just a handful of things that have been said to me at very pivotal points in my career path when I was reaching out to people in positions of advisement and hopeful support. Lucky for me, I didn’t believe them, well at least not completely. The part that dawned on me as I aged was that a lot of these people really thought they were helping or protecting me.
My biochemistry teacher in summer school and those family members really thought they were saving me the hassle and potential heartbreak of applying to medical school by giving me this advice. They just knew that even if I got in, I’d just drop out after getting married and pregnant down the road, so why waste all that time and energy.
Although motherhood is certainly a noble profession on its own, the independence of my own career is something that will always be very important to me. I wanted to be a doctor like my mom and dad since I was a little girl. I wanted to interact with people everyday and help them at their most vulnerable. I knew I would forever regret not trying to achieve that. So I heard them, acknowledged them, then ignored them and stood firm in my values.
Medical school did eventually arrive with dreams of altruism and service and rural family medicine in Louisiana. At the end of my third year rotations, I accidentally discovered that I loved surgery though!
When I told my medical school advisor and my father of this decision, I was met with a surprising amount of resistance. Again, both of them cared about me and thought they were helping me out by pointing out what they thought would be a fatal flaw in my plan. I was a female determined to hang on to those qualities in a very rigorous, competitive, and largely male-dominated field. But everything they pointed out as weakness, I just knew deep down could only make me that much better at what I would do when I achieved it.
After convincing them that it was the best fit for me, they moved to plan B and I was then told bluntly that I wasn’t the standard applicant for Otolaryngology and Facial Plastic Surgery. I never wavered. I worked harder at my goal and did numerous rotations traveling around the country and working as a mock intern my fourth year of medical school at a time when most medical students have lots of vacation and down time. While many of my classmates did not do a travel rotation at all or at most one, I did 4 outside of my home institution in Albuquerque, traveling to Memphis, Norfolk, New Orleans, and Shreveport. All my hard work again paid off and I matched at my number 1 choice, right here in Shreveport, in one of the top 3 most competitive medical specialties.
Residency again came with its challenges and I dealt with feelings of failing as a friend, wife and daughter while working so many hours. As the missed holidays, family vacations, and nights out accumulated, I had to constantly reassure myself that I was doing all of this for myself and my future family, and that it would be worth it.
I had plenty patients not take me seriously. At all of 5’2” (which may be a little generous) and 100 pounds, I can have less “presence” in a room than the “standard” male surgeon. What became so satisfying was that after a few minutes of speaking with the patients and their families once they got over their initial shock of me being a petite woman, you could sense the almost immediate trust that developed as I worked through the treatment plan. Then, when I visited these patients after surgery, they would brag and introduce me to any family and friends I hadn’t previously met as the “little lady” who saved their lives, or the one who “did all this” as they pointed to the large incision.
The most difficult thing I went through and the only time I almost lost all of those cherished values was dealing with my father dying of cancer in New Mexico, while I was living here in Louisiana. I saw my father and I saw my family in each cancer victim I treated, and it took an extra burden on me. I used all of my vacation and the program allowed me to use some sick days to travel back and forth to see him and help my mother when she was becoming overwhelmed caring for him. The majority of my co-residents were very supportive and did their part to help me how they could. The cutthroat nature of the profession I chose, the one that my father warned me about, certainly presented itself at this opportunity though. Some residents were not shy in telling me, and others whispered to my advisors that I was using my father’s cancer as an excuse for special treatment.
Now as I’m starting my own solo private practice and people keeping asking me who I’ll be working with or for, I say, “It’s just me,” and I watch as the majority of people who don’t know me well pause with jaw dropping, and stand silently for what feels like forever trying to find the right way to express their concern, which is that familiar scenario I’ve now seen my whole adult life. They want to know how I’m going to manage a new business and a baby, or who’s going to advise me, or how I’m going to get patients. As I start this new venture, I agree it’s daunting and scary and I have moments of doubt, but I know that I’m going to be successful because I’m doing what I love, and I know who I am.
So in any difficult journey where you are told you can’t, believe in yourself more than anyone around you, do not let anyone change your core beliefs, and certainly don’t accept no for an answer even when facing the so-called impossible. It’s up to us to pick our own destiny and prove the doubters wrong.
