Acting Doctor

Photo Credit: AskmePC web design

“I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s ideas. The library was open, unending free.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me. I read these provocative words today while on a literary get-away to Barnes and Noble. I don’t know that I agree with Coates’ characterization of classroom as a “jail” as I actually find listening to other people’s ideas stimulating, but his challenge to chart one’s own path in seeking truth and knowledge, the “library path”, is important.

In Between the World and Me, Coates describes the vibrant yet turbulent tale of the African American experience in America. His whole book is written as  a letter to his teenage son with his best thoughts on how to live with dignity as a black man in an imperfect America. With my own son having just turned 13, I was interested to hear his thoughts. One question I wonder about is how to prepare my son for a environment in which race is still a controversial issue without making race color everything he sees.

It’s an unfamiliar challenge for many of us Generation X immigrants from Kenya, because we did not grow up with race being such a throbbing undercurrent to daily life. I am, in fact, biracial and grew up thinking it was quite natural to have a Scottish mother and a Kenyan father. It meant chapati and Scottish soup all in the same week and a common national fanaticism for football/soccer. What was not to love? I also grew up with a black (Kenyan) President, learning black (Kenyan) history.

I will pause here to say that in Kenya, we also had to learn the history of EVERYWHERE else as part of our highly ambitious 8-4-4 educational system at the time. When I say history of everywhere, I mean it. Basically if something had happened in the past, anywhere, whether that be in Northern Mongolia or Nebraska, we had to know it. But I’m not bitter . . .

What struck me about Coates’ words is how much change, of any kind, depends on our willingness to challenge the various scripts in our lives. I once tried to change the tired script and perception of Africa for my students as a vast “country” full of war, famine and poverty, but delightful animals . . . I decided to walk all around downtown Nairobi with my sister taking pictures of less familiar images, skyscrapers, fancy restaurants, malls. My mission was dramatically cut short when a few of our law enforcement officials detained me, quite concerned that I was taking pictures of multiple buildings, a suspicious act even at that time in a world of terror attacks. I was released once the confusion was cleared up, but it stuck with me that changing a narrative is not easy. It demands persistence, stubbornness, courage.

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I started a new phase in my medical journey this week as I began my Masters in Clinical Research, a 2 year leave, before returning to complete and graduate from medical school in 2017. My research will mainly be in Neurosurgery, exploring the following topics:

1. The effectiveness of electrical stimulation in treating nerve injury.

2. A rare complication of brain aneurysm rupture treatment, known as PRES.

3. Patient costs of Pediatric Neurosurgical care in Kijabe, Kenya

I will also be working with Pediatric faculty on data visualization and bioethics projects. The bioethics project will involve analyzing the differing experiences of minority and majority pediatric patients in our University Hospital when facing difficult medical decisions.

Research, either personal or professional, is unique way to change the script; you can use hard earned data to challenge nonsense. I look forward to that challenge.

For today though, I am glad I could walk into a  room full of books, choose the knowledge I would seek, and create a script on the spot. Whether the original script is a skewed conception of Africa, a narrow view of each other by race, or medical treatments with flimsy support, some scripts were made to be changed . . .