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The Heart of the Story
My Improbable Journey as a Cardiologist
Joan L. Thomas, Sandra J. Parker
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eBook - ePub
The Heart of the Story
My Improbable Journey as a Cardiologist
Joan L. Thomas, Sandra J. Parker
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About This Book
The Heart of the Story: My Improbable Journey as a Cardiologist is an examination of the struggles and successes of one woman cardiologist. The story initially focuses on the unlikely path Dr. Joan Thomas took to become a cardiologist - a specialty still dominated by men.
This inspiring memoir encourages the next generation of young women, whether just entering or already working in the medical profession, to understand not only the risks and sacrifices made by the women who preceded them, but also the positive changes that have been achieved by breaking through many barriers.
Dr. Thomas' astute observations infuse this memoir with topics such as:
- The importance of transparency in all aspects of healthcare.
- The importance of improving negotiating skills of women physicians regarding contracts, salaries, and benefits.
- Equal recognition for equal work in both clinical and research arenas.
- Inequality in the promotion process in academic medicine and what it takes for women to be promoted.
- The ongoing, although less-obvious, prevalence of gender discrimination.
- How and why women are still penalized in the workplace for taking maternity leave and raising a family.
- The importance of persevering and having the courage to take risks.
This memoir chronicles the challenges the author faced, the glass ceilings cracked or broken, and how Dr. Thomas' efforts along the way resulted in her professional success.Her inside perspective as narrator documents the discrimination she endured, but also her gratitude to the male mentors who were ahead of their time, recognizing Dr. Thomas' potential, irrespective of her gender.
Dr. Thomas's life story should give women the courage and excitement to think big and pursue their career dreams.
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Chapter 1
A Broken Heart
I was four years old when my heart threatened to break.
At that age, I expected life to be the same every day: Get up, play outside, eat, and watch Lassie on the familyâs black-and-white television on Sunday nights. It was 1955. The war was over, and, as a post-war baby, I assumed that each day in Manorhaven, a subdivision of Port Washington on the northern shore of Long Island, New York, would carry on without interruption.
Then my brother, Bob, contracted strep throat that soon resulted in acute rheumatic fever. I, too, contracted the disease, which inflamed our joints, blood vessels, and, more seriously, our hearts. For nine months, we lay in our beds, forbidden even to walk.
Periodically, we were given painful injections of penicillin and steroids, both novel treatments at the time. I didnât know it then, but my parents were told that we had only a 50% chance of survival. Iâm sure they were terrified that we would both die, but I donât remember sensing their fear.
My lifelong desire to be on the go all the time was apparent even as I struggled with rheumatic fever at age 4. In her detailed memoirs, Mom wrote:
Joan insisted on being active â standing up in her crib, hanging on to the rails and jumping and rocking the whole bed. Dr. Jenkins said if we couldnât keep her inactive, he would have to put her in the hospital until the temperature came down to normal. So I made a sheet cover that wouldnât let her stand up â just a hole at the top that snapped shut around her neck, but she could still roll over. She was active all night, screaming and yelling, so I would get up and rock her until she calmed down or went to sleep. She reminded me of myself at that age.
On the plus side, we were allowed to watch a lot of television, typically only an occasional treat. We watched Howdy Doody, a freckled, gap-toothed, red-haired puppet in a plaid shirt, jeans, cowboy boots, and with a red bandana around his neck. His handler, Buffalo Bob, also wore a Western-style getup even though the show had a circus theme as well.
It seems confusing and corny now, but we loved the antics of Howdy Doody as he battled the villainous Phineas T. Bluster, mayor of Doodyville. Every show opened with Buffalo Bob asking, âSay, kids, what time is it?â Then a cluster of little kids sang, âItâs Howdy Doody time, itâs Howdy Doody time.â Bedridden and with inflamed hearts, Bob and I sang along in the living room of our little Sears Roebuck prefabricated house.Â
As we recovered, my parents stopped hauling us around and taught us to walk again. Thankfully, my heart wasnât permanently broken, though for years afterward, I received penicillin injections and had to rest after school so as not to tax my heart. It was then, at age 5, that I decided to go into medicine and take care of people in the way that I had been cared for.
Girls at the time dreamed of being a nurse â becoming a doctor was a career path for boys. My parents and I were accepting of this bias and assumed that girls would become nurses and teachers while boys would become doctors or even the U.S. President. For Christmas a few years later, my parents gave me a stethoscope and a nurseâs cape (navy blue with a bright red lining) and a little white hat. Satisfied then with the idea of becoming a nurse, I listened to my family membersâ hearts through a plastic stethoscope.
Eventually, I traded in my cape for a white coat, but it took decades for me to believe in myself enough to figure out how to pay for medical school while working and, eventually, to continue on into a specialty. There would be many struggles along the way. There were successes, too. I earned an RN degree and was a well-respected nurse for six years.
I continued working while earning a bachelor of science degree in biology from Syracuse University, taking fewer courses some semesters when my funds were low. I moved directly into a nurse practitioner program and was one of the pioneers in the field in the 1970s. Even before I went to medical school, I delivered a presentation to cardiac surgeons at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association.Â
I followed my heart and my dreams, and in 1990 became a board-certified cardiologist and eventually the stateâs first female chief of cardiology. My journey was improbable, made even more so by being born into 1950s America, when college for many young women was focused on earning an âMRS degree.â In other words, it was primarily about finding a husband rather than about stimulating oneâs intellect and embarking on a fulfilling career. Girls were expected to become stay-at-home wives and mothers. If they decided to work, they were funneled into the professions of nurse, secretary, or teacher.
Now it is generally accepted that women can enter any profession, though it is not always a smooth path. A sign of progress is that there are female role models in every profession save one: our nationâs leader. However, Kamala Harrisâ rise to vice president in 2020 shows that one day a woman will be president, an unimaginable goal when I was a girl.Â
My path to chief of cardiology did not begin with earning my medical degree or contending for my first job and subsequent promotions, as many similar stories today begin. My story is deeply rooted in the past, when our post-WWII society pressured women who had been invited into the workplace to return to home and hearth. Women who refused to return home, and those of us who grew up with the dream of pursuing a career, faced a fierce backlash and heard a constant refrain during college and in our professional life: You are taking up space that should have been given to a man.
Fortunately, my upbringing provided me with the stamina I needed to accept the challenge of succeeding in a field in which I was often the only woman. I smothered the voices of indoctrination that threatened to infiltrate my thinking, defied societyâs expectations for women in life and the medical field, and powered through discrimination from those who did not welcome women into this male-dominated profession.Â
Nevertheless, I persisted and fixed thousands of broken hearts during my 31 years as a cardiologist.
Chapter 2
How It All Began
World War II brought my parents together. After finishing high school in Port Washington, my father, Harold, was hired by a local boatyard and learned to build boats. He eventually enlisted in the U.S. Army and was shipped off to New Guinea to build landing boats. My mother, Virginia Parker, grew up in Ohio and was playing semi-professional softball when she decided in 1942 to enlist in the Womenâs Army Corps. Had she not enlisted, she might have been one of the women depicted in the womenâs softball film A League of Their Own. Mom was proud of her military service, especially of participating in a top-secret mission evaluating whether women could handle firearms and defend the country while men fought the war overseas.
Mom asked for and was granted an overseas assignment and headed to Georgia for basic training. She did everything the men did, climbing cargo nets and marching for miles with a heavy backpack. In 1944 she boarded a ship to cross the Pacific to Australia. She wrote in her memoirs that the trip was âlong and a bit scary, zigzagging to avoid Japanese submarines and no lights at night so we wouldnât be an easy target.â
In the middle of her three-year stint, Mom was stationed in New Guinea in 1944 as a clerical worker under General Douglas MacArthurâs command. It was hard to keep up morale, she wrote, as she and the other women tried to sleep in the steamy heat while listening every night to Tokyo Rose threaten that the Japanese were on their way to bomb them.
Just after the Americans drove the Japanese out of the Philippines in 1945, U.S. Army headquarters was moved from New Guinea to the only large building still standing in Manila, a Catholic College. Mom and the other women had the gruesome task of scrubbing the walls and floors of their new barracks at the college, which were covered with the blood of the nuns massacred by the Japanese.
Although she worked in headquarters, Mom rarely saw MacArthur, but recalled encountering him one day:
I was on the elevator, it stopped and MacArthur stepped in all alone . . . no guards, which was surprising. We nodded and spoke and my mind started to race. Does the lady or the General get off first? When we stopped at the bottom floor, he looked at me, smiled, bowed from the waist, extended his hand for me to go out the door. I touched my cap and said, âThank you, Sir,â and laughed. He read my mind. I would love to have known him better.
Although Manila was mostly quiet, Mom was of course nervous just like everyone else. One morning she was awakened at 6 a.m. by gunfire and grenades exploding as a group of Japanese soldiers descended from the mountains and attacked the womenâs barracks. The women were trained but unarmed, so they could not assist the male soldiers in defeating the Japanese that day. Although Mom was frightened, she was also feisty and a crack shot; she probably wished she could have defended herself. She recorded the aftermath of the horrific event in her memoirs:
After it was all over and we got our breath back, I said, âI much prefer being awakened by Reveille,â and all the gals burst into nervous laughter. No one was hurt and we were very proud of our guards.
She recalled another important moment that occurred a few weeks later â this one joyous:
The news came that the Japanese had surrendered and the War was over. We all went crazy with happiness, evacuated the building, cried, danced, hugged and kissed everyone, and celebrated for hours.
Mom was awarded th...