When did you first think about writing a book? Did you always know what you wanted to include in the story?
Years ago, I wrote about being a patient and a surgeon, my experience as a patient. As surgeons, we try to be compassionate and empathetic and explain things, but when you’re a patient, it’s completely different. And so, I started writing about that a lot. And I’m a writer, so I wrote a lot of things down.
I had probably written about four chapters, and I sent them to [a publisher] and he said, “This is strange.” And we talked about what the book was going to be about.
I started talking about growing up in Philly, doing mission work in Haiti, about how Will Smith decided he was going to jump from a helicopter over the Grand Canyon for his birthday. 50 how I was responsible for building this. [medical] triage in the middle of the desert. I had to go out, check the area, see what the terrain was like, how close we were to the water, how close we were to the hospitals, what things we would have to bring.
So, you have these two different places – one where everything I needed as long as I could confirm it, I had it,’ and one where all the tools we had, we brought from America to this developed country. [Haiti], and yet we could take care of everyone. Those experiences, I didn’t realize at the time, were preparing me for COVID.
It was things like that that I said, “This would be a good kind of story.”
And then all the perils of being a doctor, and then becoming a surgeon, and then becoming a pediatric surgeon, which there are a small number of, even a small, small number of women who pediatric surgeons, and another small, small number. of Black women pediatricians. I needed to tell that story.
Usually, when things happen to people, they never talk about them. When people talk about “microaggression” and unconscious bias, it’s all these words, but it’s not the real story or the story that goes with it, so I said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what happened in me.”
Some of the things that have happened in my life are unbelievable. And people live day by day. That’s why attrition rates tend to be so high, especially for Blacks in medicine. That’s why the percentage of Black doctors in the United States is still 5% or less because of some of these things. Being a doctor and a surgeon is challenging enough, so to add that on top of that is just, it’s a lot. And I wanted to talk about that and say, “But you can finish it. Don’t give up.”
In your book, ‘Take Care of Them Like My Own: Faith, Fortitude and a Surgeon’s Fight for Health Justice,’ how important was it to choose this title and its meaning?
I wanted the title itself, even if you don’t read the book, to send a message. So, “Treat Them As Mine,” to me, is how we get equal care for everyone. How you treat your customer, how you treat your co-worker, how you treat someone who works for you or who works for you, is that the way you want your daughter to be treated by your husband or wife, someone someone you care about, someone in your family?
I think of other stories of how I know young women who have been arrested in emergency departments, and like, “Would you have done that if it was your daughter?” I know they wouldn’t have done it.
And then faith [part], everything in my life, I believe, my steps are ordered by God. My life has been saved more than once. The times when something bad could have happened to me, it didn’t, and every time I needed something to happen in a certain way, there was a solution. I do not believe that things happen by accident or chance. For me, it is faith.
And now the power, it’s Philly. The fortitude is Philly. It’s about sticking, it’s useless, it’s Philly all day.
“Take Care of Them Like My Own: Faith, Power and a Physician’s Fight for Health Justice” is on store shelves at supermarkets, bookstores and online starting Aug. 6. Book launch event with Dr. Alas Stanford will be arrested. Tuesday, Aug. 6 at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. Tickets are available at ensembleartsphilly.org.
#Phillys #Doctor #Ala #Stanford #Releases #Memoir #Care