One More River to Cross—Looking Back, Moving Forward

INTRODUCTION

I am humbled and honored by your vote of confidence, and I am immensely proud to accept my charge as the 106th president of the National Medical Association. My warmest and most heartfelt gratitude to all of you.

Across the years—during jubilant and taxing times—some of you here this evening have lifted me to heights unthinkable to a young girl growing up in the deep South. The vast distance between yesteryear and this moment signifies a blessing of exceptional magnitude. Your life is worth living. Buy lamictal online

Tonight, I would like to first tell you about how the young girl from the deep South found her way to this podium—and a few important things she learned along the way. I will then share with you my perspective on the challenges we face in our nation’s health system here at the dawn of the 21 st century. And I will tell you about my vision for the National Medical Association for the coming year and beyond.

PERSONAL JOURNEY

It is a long way from 128 Fletcher St. in Spartanburg, SC to the New York Hilton Towers. I was raised by my mother and father and a snug circle of aunts and grandparents on the red clay foothills of Spartanburg. During elementary school, I moved to Warren, AR to live with a great aunt and uncle whose family made good on the local tomato fields and lumber mills. Even in the toughest of times— and there were plenty—there was no shortage of hard-working role-models. My mother and Aunt Ida were both nurses. Aunt Ida worked at a colored hospital on the 1 l-to-7 graveyard shift.

There was also no shortage of high expectations from my circle of elders. Great Aunt Minnie—a high-school principal and swift disciplinarian— would say, “Bring home anything less than a “B” and you’re disqualified for dinner.”
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“There is no “C” food,” my Aunt Minnie would say.

By the late ’60s, I was on a bus bound for Hampton University. Images of family, community service and leadership were firmly etched in my mind, but I was still youthful and clueless about what I wanted to do—some of you remember those days. All I knew was that I enjoyed learning, I loved science passionately and I wanted somehow to help others.

In my junior year as a chemistry major, I seized an opportunity to join a premed summer enrichment program at Georgetown University. It was there that I fell deeply in love with medicine—with its alluring complexity, its aura of scientific mystery and its extraordinary human possibilities. I was hooked.

I came back to Hampton with clear aspirations to become a physician, and I walked through the welcoming doors of Meharry Medical College the following summer.

In retrospect, I have learned that being reared by a circle of elders validates your sense of place and purpose in the human family, affirms your own link to legacy and allows you to imagine yourself into the future. I’ve also learned that being nurtured in two historically black institutions of higher learning lays a solid foundation of excellence for which I am forever grateful.
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But these were not the only lessons from those early days …

After Meharry, I did residency at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago, and then I took a year off to work in the emergency room at Methodist Hospital in Gary, IN. I was deeply troubled to find that Gary—a predominately African-American city clobbered by joblessness and poverty—had a chillingly high prevalence of kidney failure and no dialysis center. I had found my specialty!

But even as I entered my nephrology fellowship, my own body began to send alarming signals—lower back pain, weight loss and extreme fatigue. I went to my doctor and braced myself for the untimely verdict.

It was the “C”-word—cancer. Tests showed a well-differentiated adenocarcinoma of the colon. I underwent a high resection. A fervent marathon of prayer and support from my minister and family carried me through those uneven days. Today, I am thankful for healing, and I know that God is not through with me yet. There is more work to be done!

But there was a lesson for me here: I learned empathy for the patient. Today, when my patients grapple with NG tubes, curse a rising wave of pain, struggle to comprehend the wild storm of a deadly illness or try to give voice to their silo of suffering, I understand because I’ve been there.

It has been a long road from Spartanburg to the Hilton Tower … and history is a harsh but splendid teacher. When we know it best, history is not a clock but a consciousness. It is a small voice reminding us where we have been and how to get movin’. donepezil drug

The Akan people of West Africa use the word “Sankofa” to capture the idea of “looking back in order to move forward.” I ask that we hold fast to that powerful notion this evening as we consider the many challenges and heavy work that lie ahead.

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