February 3rd is supposed to be some kind of viral event in which female doctors give a nod to the first ever U.S. female medical grad, Elizabeth Blackwell, but since I loathe all things viral [especially when you have to update your profile picture with a generic stamp] and am somewhat mixed about "women in medicine" support groups, I figured I'd get ahead of myself a little. Besides I don't care what a meteorologist rodent has to say anymore now that I live in Endless Summer.
One of my favorite things about medicine, albeit creepy, is reading the sordid tales of historical figures and their now-extinct diseases and almost-forgotten cures that battle royale'd for worst ways to die. Even as an administrative assistant in undergrad, when my main task was to make copies at the Health Sciences Library, I was instinctively drawn to the oldest, dustiest, leatheriest volumes of medical journals, completely transfixed by their grim and often barely decipherable case reports. If it wasn't completely out of fashion, and against all HIPAA and OSHA rules, I would totally be a collector of medical oddities and anatomic specimens like the tragic early surgeon John Hunter who died a penniless failure because of his ghoulish collection [which of course Eliza and I visited at the Royal College of Surgeons].
During my brief and blatantly wikipedia-based research on Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, I learned a few facts that may help me on Jeopardy some day and have by no means been fact-checked or summarized according to importance.
1. Elizabeth was advised to wear a male disguise [since so many movies are based on this premise it must obviously work!] and/or study in Paris rather than apply in the United States. She was only accepted after the approval of every single one of the 150 males in her class [thanks boys!].
2. After she graduated in 1849, Dr. Blackwell was training in obstetrics but accidentally squirted herself in the eye with some infectious juice from a baby, losing sight in that eye which ultimately required its extraction, foiling her plans for a surgical career [yet another reason to always wear eye protection, even if it's over-sized boxy plastic safety goggles from the 90s that don't fit your face and weigh down your ears to the point of your staff laughing at you because at least no one got HIV that day].
3. In a potential catfight situation, Blackwell disagreed with the thousand-times-more-famous Florence Nightingale, who wanted to focus on training nurses and didn't see the point in female physicians. She apparently didn't win friends all over the place.
4. And lastly her younger sister was also the third female to get a medical degree in the U.S. [reminds me of some other medical sisters I know].
I don't care to comment on her epic singledom and lack of children, because it really wasn't relevant to the story of her life [and is reassuring in that sense].
I know I'm projecting, but I personally hate that stories about women's rights [and other oppressed groups] always feature the assistance of the power-wielding few to get their foot in the door. That it was such a foreign concept so relatively recently that ladies could have the same intellectual capacity as gents. That even now hashtags have to exist to remind you that not all engineers/scientists/surgeons are white middle-aged men. That surgery remains such a good-old-boys club that "Women in Surgery" groups still not only exist, but thrive at an almost congressional level in academic societies. I am on the fence about the role for such groups because I am too contrarian to be lumped into any category, or to be spoken about as a generality; and I especially revile the inevitable talk of family planning when it seems to have nothing to do with my job or my life [now and forever]. I cannot claim to represent [or even relate to] every woman or every surgeon, I'm just me.
While I owe some of my fledgling success to those early female physician pioneers, more immediate credit goes to my contemporaries. I was surrounded by men [and significant bro-jokes and sports chat] the first time I scrubbed in and fell in love with the operating room as a medical student, but it was the women I worked with after that made me realize it was a viable dream. From the old-school [tough to impress] pediatric surgeon who trained in the trenches under DeBakey and her equally intimidating fellow who trusted me to sew up the incisions on their tiniest most delicate patients, to the neurosurgery super-chief resident and 4th year elective student [also future neurosurgeon] who had seemingly limitless energy and enthusiasm to treat some of the bleakest diseases - I found role models in strong women who were doing what they loved, and it had nothing to do with them being female. Sure I would ask the inane question every lady doctor gets about work/life balance to try to justify my career choice, but in reality nothing could have convinced me to give it up and go into a field where I wasn't happy.
In 2016 there still is a dearth of women in academic surgery [suffice to say I am also not one of them with my lack of fruitful research], even fewer at my current hospital. However, the number of women in surgical training is approximately 50%. Unsurprisingly, all of my friends in residency were surgery girls like myself, and these friendships are potentially more fierce and loyal than all other friends-in-real-life, because we went through hell together. I'm not a naturally competitive person but working alongside these articulate, passionate surgeonesses, these firebrands, I felt compelled to keep up, to be more confident and capable in their eyes. The wounds of residency are still too raw to revisit, but I know our male brethren would never have been accused of being a "Mean Girls" clique for trying to uphold a standard of excellence. Even now we mostly pretend to embrace phrases like "resting bitch face" as positive, because [in addition to some amazingly bad candid photography] it's still unacceptable to be a woman in power and either show emotion [hysteria] or lack thereof [cold-hearted, perhaps humanless].
I could write volumes of anecdotes where I was underestimated for being a woman. Times when I had to roll in with extra bravado as "chief of all chiefs" or "el jefe/la jefa" to get the patient [and sometimes other doctors] to realize it was me in charge and not the inexperienced male medical student. Where accolades of my skills were immediately negated by references to my appearance. Being told you are "too pretty to be a doctor" is never a compliment. [Also it never comes from anyone under the age of 65]. But in the end, acknowledging those stories would just give them a power over me I refuse to accept. I am not a victim, just a cosmic joke.
One of my favorite things about medicine, albeit creepy, is reading the sordid tales of historical figures and their now-extinct diseases and almost-forgotten cures that battle royale'd for worst ways to die. Even as an administrative assistant in undergrad, when my main task was to make copies at the Health Sciences Library, I was instinctively drawn to the oldest, dustiest, leatheriest volumes of medical journals, completely transfixed by their grim and often barely decipherable case reports. If it wasn't completely out of fashion, and against all HIPAA and OSHA rules, I would totally be a collector of medical oddities and anatomic specimens like the tragic early surgeon John Hunter who died a penniless failure because of his ghoulish collection [which of course Eliza and I visited at the Royal College of Surgeons].
During my brief and blatantly wikipedia-based research on Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, I learned a few facts that may help me on Jeopardy some day and have by no means been fact-checked or summarized according to importance.
1. Elizabeth was advised to wear a male disguise [since so many movies are based on this premise it must obviously work!] and/or study in Paris rather than apply in the United States. She was only accepted after the approval of every single one of the 150 males in her class [thanks boys!].
2. After she graduated in 1849, Dr. Blackwell was training in obstetrics but accidentally squirted herself in the eye with some infectious juice from a baby, losing sight in that eye which ultimately required its extraction, foiling her plans for a surgical career [yet another reason to always wear eye protection, even if it's over-sized boxy plastic safety goggles from the 90s that don't fit your face and weigh down your ears to the point of your staff laughing at you because at least no one got HIV that day].
3. In a potential catfight situation, Blackwell disagreed with the thousand-times-more-famous Florence Nightingale, who wanted to focus on training nurses and didn't see the point in female physicians. She apparently didn't win friends all over the place.
4. And lastly her younger sister was also the third female to get a medical degree in the U.S. [reminds me of some other medical sisters I know].
I don't care to comment on her epic singledom and lack of children, because it really wasn't relevant to the story of her life [and is reassuring in that sense].
I know I'm projecting, but I personally hate that stories about women's rights [and other oppressed groups] always feature the assistance of the power-wielding few to get their foot in the door. That it was such a foreign concept so relatively recently that ladies could have the same intellectual capacity as gents. That even now hashtags have to exist to remind you that not all engineers/scientists/surgeons are white middle-aged men. That surgery remains such a good-old-boys club that "Women in Surgery" groups still not only exist, but thrive at an almost congressional level in academic societies. I am on the fence about the role for such groups because I am too contrarian to be lumped into any category, or to be spoken about as a generality; and I especially revile the inevitable talk of family planning when it seems to have nothing to do with my job or my life [now and forever]. I cannot claim to represent [or even relate to] every woman or every surgeon, I'm just me.
While I owe some of my fledgling success to those early female physician pioneers, more immediate credit goes to my contemporaries. I was surrounded by men [and significant bro-jokes and sports chat] the first time I scrubbed in and fell in love with the operating room as a medical student, but it was the women I worked with after that made me realize it was a viable dream. From the old-school [tough to impress] pediatric surgeon who trained in the trenches under DeBakey and her equally intimidating fellow who trusted me to sew up the incisions on their tiniest most delicate patients, to the neurosurgery super-chief resident and 4th year elective student [also future neurosurgeon] who had seemingly limitless energy and enthusiasm to treat some of the bleakest diseases - I found role models in strong women who were doing what they loved, and it had nothing to do with them being female. Sure I would ask the inane question every lady doctor gets about work/life balance to try to justify my career choice, but in reality nothing could have convinced me to give it up and go into a field where I wasn't happy.
In 2016 there still is a dearth of women in academic surgery [suffice to say I am also not one of them with my lack of fruitful research], even fewer at my current hospital. However, the number of women in surgical training is approximately 50%. Unsurprisingly, all of my friends in residency were surgery girls like myself, and these friendships are potentially more fierce and loyal than all other friends-in-real-life, because we went through hell together. I'm not a naturally competitive person but working alongside these articulate, passionate surgeonesses, these firebrands, I felt compelled to keep up, to be more confident and capable in their eyes. The wounds of residency are still too raw to revisit, but I know our male brethren would never have been accused of being a "Mean Girls" clique for trying to uphold a standard of excellence. Even now we mostly pretend to embrace phrases like "resting bitch face" as positive, because [in addition to some amazingly bad candid photography] it's still unacceptable to be a woman in power and either show emotion [hysteria] or lack thereof [cold-hearted, perhaps humanless].
I could write volumes of anecdotes where I was underestimated for being a woman. Times when I had to roll in with extra bravado as "chief of all chiefs" or "el jefe/la jefa" to get the patient [and sometimes other doctors] to realize it was me in charge and not the inexperienced male medical student. Where accolades of my skills were immediately negated by references to my appearance. Being told you are "too pretty to be a doctor" is never a compliment. [Also it never comes from anyone under the age of 65]. But in the end, acknowledging those stories would just give them a power over me I refuse to accept. I am not a victim, just a cosmic joke.
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