Being a child of the depression I couldn't afford to live near the college.
So I was on the New York subways a lot. Carrying bone boxes as well as these
huge medical texts.
My mother was an RN in the OR in the days of very rapid surgeries because the
anesthesia wasn't very good and it sounded very exciting
You became an RN with a three-year course in these nursing schools that
were associated with most big hospitals. My mother discouraged me saying that
nursing was very hard work and since I like to read I should go to college.
So I went to college and I took a pre-med course not because I thought even at
that point that I would be a doctor but it was sort of a very diverse set of
requirements and I thought I might be a social worker or something like that.
I was sent to Wheaton College in Illinois which is a very evangelical
college. There was a lot about being missionaries and just trying to persuade
us to go to the mission field, etc. I wanted something much more practical.
So I thought taking care of people medically was more practical.
I entered medical school in 1951 and the Journal of the American Medical
Association had an educational issue every year and it showed that there was
6% quota for women in most all of the medical schools. Prior to that quota
there were fewer than 6%. So I was in a class of 150 and there were nine of us
young women. By 1951 the veterans from World War II had gotten their GI bill
and gotten through college. They were all, I mean all that were, looking forward
to a medical career. So there was tremendous competition to get into
medical school with all the veterans, plus all the other people. So 6% I
think was very good advantage to me.
When I was looking for fellowship some endocrinologists in the residency where it was at Long Island College Hospital
suggested that if I went to Joslin for a year and came back that I could be a
part of their practice. That appealed to me very much, being on my own as a
woman in an age when they weren't very many women physicians. But of course when
I came to Joslin I never got back home.
I had no mentors before I came to Joslin, and then Dr. Priscilla White. The fact that here there were the two of
us for a while and then later more, it was still difficult. I recall in the
first few years that I was here when a new patient would come in who was a man,
they mostly all would explain that, they were asked at the front desk would they
be willing to see a woman physician. And they of course said so I'm broad-minded
and I'm here. And I'm glad to see that. I don't know about all the ones who
said no. In fact in the first decades that I was here, I had patients
who didn't have diabetes, who were referred by their physician because they
were women who wanted a woman physician. It was the opposite of the men who
came it so I did but it was that they couldn't find any other woman except a diabetic specialist.
I do consider that one of my significant contributions to
Joslin is that I insisted that they have pediatricians, and so now we have a
wonderful pediatric department that does wonderful things for kids.
Later in my career I was taking care of people I had known since they were 5 or
12 or whatever and here they were adults with full lives with all the things that
go on - education, career or family and so forth. With the patients that I
had taken care of the medical aspects during their pregnancy,
we would sit and ask about their grandchildren so that was a very
complete way of relating to people long-term. Having the opportunity and the
longevity to be a part of this field that has led in general medicine in the
care of chronic disease, that's been my main satisfaction is to be a part of all that.
Personally involved myself in that that's why even though I'm not seeing
patients, I still come I still think that being a part of it is important to me personally.
When I started many women were told elsewhere, not here, that they
couldn't have a family. That they shouldn't have a family. That is
dangerous risky whatever and now care is widely available the
obstetricians can do much more than they could do and that was part of the
advance and the outcomes for women with diabetes as well as the general
population. They can have a full life as far as the family life and
educational or academic goals or career goals or you know they want to be an
artist with a irregular life. You used to have to be on a very rigid time schedule
to manage diabetes successfully but with the continuous glucose monitors and with
the insulin pumps and so forth, people, women as well as men, can
adapt the treatment to their preferred lifestyles.