What is your hometown?
I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but I spent most of my childhood outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado near Fort Carson Air Force Base. I came to Iowa from Baltimore, Maryland.
How or when did you become interested in science and medicine?
I became interested in science when I was a fairly young child, when I attended Head Start. The teachers there encouraged us to ask questions about our surroundings and I was pretty much interested in everything at that age. In high school I had the most remarkable science teacher who taught us so much science by having us do everything. He taught us the muscles of our body by getting us limited memberships to the local Nautilus facility. We calculated horsepower and work by running up stairs with packs on our backs. We learned about genetics by reproducing Morgan’s fruit fly experiment, and we took field trips in which the Colorado Rocky Mountains became our text. Mr. Burnham saw and encouraged greatness from everyone and made science accessible. I became interested in medicine after I was critically injured in a car accident a week after my seventh birthday. I spent many weeks in the hospital, and the consistent positive aspect of the long hospitalization was the kindness of the doctors. My surgeon in particular was kind and gentle, and every time a new complication arose, he was there to explain things to me in a way that I could understand. I remember a great deal of white coats swirling in and out of my room, doctors explaining procedures that they were about to perform, and the constant encouragement of my surgeon to get well.
How or why did you choose the UI to attend medical school?
The “How I chose the UI” is remarkably quite a long story. The “Why” is a bit easier. After several conversations with Barbara Barlow and Cathy Solow here at the UI, Mary Beth Davis, the pre-medicine advisor at Bryn Mawr College, and some friends who are physicians, Iowa became my medical school of choice. Iowa has an excellent reputation that reaches across the globe. Most of my advisors told me that I would like it here because the environment was supportive and communal, much like that of Bryn Mawr. Several friends told me that attendance at Iowa represented a better chance for me to gain admission to a top-tier residency closer to home, than any of my other choices. I chose Iowa because I have always tried to push myself, to choose the challenging path because each challenge means greater opportunity for learning. In the end, I came here because of the intellectual rigor, support, and established excellent academic reputation Iowa holds. I felt it was the best place for me to pursue my undergraduate medical education.
Is there a teacher, mentor or Carver College of Medicine faculty member who has helped shape your education?
This is difficult because I have only been here since August. I am grateful and feel exceedingly blessed to have the support of Virginia Woodard, Dr. Jill Endres, Barbara Barlow, and Cathy Solow. Their support has helped to make what for me has been a difficult transition, easier. In terms of academics, Dr. Val Sheffield and Dr. Douglas Behrendt have provided invaluable support and academic challenge.
What kinds of opportunities or advantages does being a medical student at Iowa provide? What about challenges?
For me, at this time, the greatest opportunities are those I have with each class, lecture, and simulated patient interaction. Becoming a physician represents a career change for me. Since 1993, I have primarily been a teacher of English, so each class, with its compendium of notes and information is an incredible opportunity for my knowledge base to grow. However, the most tangible advantage of being a medical student at Iowa is knowing that a degree from Iowa will place me as a competitive resident applicant with programs in which I have interest back home.
The challenges are many – however I have always thrived on challenge. It has been a while since I was primarily on the other side of the teacher-student relationship. Having spent most of my adult life as an independent, self-supporting person, trying to fit my life’s possessions in a room at the medical fraternity is quite the challenge! Adjusting to the medical student budget, creating a new social structure, and learning to live without many of the comforts of Maryland have all been challenges. Some of these challenges are more easily tempered than others, but each one has lessons from which I shall gain much.
Please describe your professional goals and interests?
I intend to pursue career in adolescent medicine. I worked primarily as a middle school teacher for 10 years before coming to medical school and I really like the age group. Ideally, I would like to work in a hospital setting, perhaps working with medical students, working in clinics, and making periodic house calls for teens with chronic illness. Most teenagers feel invincible and the adolescent period is one in which they are trying to define themselves as unique individuals. Teenagers with chronic illness are no different and issues such as compliance with medication regimes, doctor appointments, or general health considerations may lose importance to them. Being able to visit these young people outside of the constraints of an office or hospital setting, I believe might improve their compliance. I am also interested in health care for underserved populations, particularly Native Americans and rural Black populations. I would enjoy serving with Médecins Sans Frontières or other humanitarian aid programs such as the USNS Comfort.
What are some of your outside interests?
I enjoy writing, reading and listening to music. I love word games, especially Scrabble®.
Do you have an insight or philosophy that guides you in your work?
Listening is key to all I do. I believe that one must listen to oneself, to the people with one interacts, and to the voices that wage both consent and dissent. It is through listening that one begins to understand. This understanding leads to empathy, and through empathy healing begins. Children’s poet Shel Silverstein, sums this the best.
Listen to the MUSTN’TS, child
Listen to the DON’TS
Listen to the SHOULD’NTS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON’TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me-
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.
If you could change one thing about the world (or the world of medicine), what would it be?
I would make medicine accessible and affordable to everyone regardless of his or her ability to pay. This seems intuitive to me. When I speak of access I don’t necessarily mean a person’s ability to go to an emergency room, but of patients having family doctors who know the families and the circumstances of each. I speak of physicians who are personally invested in the lives of their patients because they share a community, and of excellence in care for everyone, not only to the highest bidder. Sometimes when I think of medicine and what it can do, I think of Charles Dickens’s tale A Christmas Carol and the scene in which the Second Spirit appears with two children under its cloak. Dickens describes the children in the meanest of ways, and the Spirit answers Scrooge’s inquiry about the children in this way: “This Boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy. For on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” The Spirit calls for all of the community to renounce both ignorance and want. My life has taken many twists and turns and I believe that God has helped me to see that I can be instrumental in: education, the cure for ignorance; and generosity, the cure for want or lack of bare necessities. I believe that medicine is instrumental in heeding the call. Medicine must be not only about healing the ill or fixing the broken, but also about preventing illness, providing well-patient care, and helping people understand how behavior affects their health and ultimately their lives.
Do you participate in any community service/outreach projects? If so, what are they and what have your experiences been?
While there are many worthwhile activities in which I would like to engage, this first semester has been for me a period of major adjustment. I would like to be more involved in working with Shelter House, the charity with which the Bean Community has aligned itself and I would also like to spend sometime working with adolescents in some capacity.
What one piece of advice you would give to students who are interested in applying to medical school?
Take some time to do something else first. It certainly doesn’t have to be 15 years, but any life experience that places one out of the familiar will be one that has an impact on what and how one learns medicine. The experiences I have had in the intervening years between my undergraduate college and undergraduate medical educations are ones that I know will have a positive impact on my practice of medicine.
What do you see as "the future" of medicine?
In the long term, I believe that medicine will become more personalized in the way of individualized genetic medicine. In the short term, I believe that medicine will see a rise in concierge care and fewer family physicians. Unfortunately, that will mean a larger gap between access to care and quality of care. The United States is destined to convert to some sort of universal healthcare, especially in response to rises in health care costs that are directly linked to behavior and an aging population. Finding a way to create universal access and to continue to support novel, affordable therapies will be the conundrum of the century.