Dreams of Doctoring

Reprinted from the summer 2023 issue of The Ohio Family Physician

By: Annette Marie Chavez, MD, FAAFP, Carillon Family Practice

When my parents were alive, they often spoke of their childhood years in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. My mother enjoyed relating one memorable story of a woman, Enriqueta, who as a teen, had come to the conclusion that she wanted to be a doctor. Enriqueta formulated a plan to continue her education, but her father had other ideas. He had been approached by a young widower, Emilio, who wished to marry Enriqueta. She was by all accounts intelligent, pretty, and a skilled homemaker. However, she did not care for Emilio and asked her father to delay the wedding for a year. In that time she hoped to change her plans and her father’s mind, and become a nursing nun with the Sisters of Mercy in Denver, CO. Despite her protests, at the age of 17, Enriqueta married Emilio in 1910. She never became a doctor, a nurse, or a nun.

Instead, she started having children, eventually 13 in all. Three of her babies died of untreatable conditions of the time, such as pneumonia and congenital heart disease. She grew to love Emilio, raised her 10 surviving children, and ran the household and the village post office. She never relinquished her interest in medicine, and often studied the book, “The Home Physician.” She used her knowledge to help care for her family and neighbors when a doctor was not available. She was a trusted community figure, as well as a beloved wife and mother, and over time she had 50 grandchildren. In a fitting turn of events, two of her granddaughters became physicians. One of them is me.

I did not know these facts about my grandmother when I was young, but I somehow knew that I was destined for a life in medicine. We lived in Dayton, OH, where my father was a professor. Our parents did not teach us Spanish, so we spoke with an unaccented Midwestern cadence. We visited our grandparents out west and loved playing with our many cousins. Everyone in my extended family became teachers or ranchers, or both. There were no healthcare professionals amongst them.

My original plan, formulated in a 5-year-old brain, was to be a nurse. My intentions changed in elementary school when I realized that there was no nursing school at the University of Dayton, where my father taught. My mother suggested instead that I could be a physician. That was a rather novel idea in the 1960s. However, the unfulfilled dreams of her mother greatly affected her, and me. I cautiously changed my mind, decided to become a physician, and started reading books about doctors.

By high school, I became more certain that medical school was my path, but I remained unsure that it was possible for a girl like me. My father assured me that I could pursue my dream and I should not be deterred by the fact that I was female.

When the time came to complete my applications in 1980, medical schools were actively seeking to admit more women. It might have helped that I told them I wanted to be a family physician. At the welcoming convocation at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, my father ran into a colleague from another part of the state. This man excitedly congratulated my dad, “So your son is going to be a doctor!” My father proudly corrected him.

My medical school class was 28% female. I became acutely aware of these demographics when I started clinical rotations, and I often noticed that I was the only woman on the team. I was sent to the nurse’s locker room to change into nursing scrubs for surgery. One surgery attending beckoned to us with a hearty “Let’s round, boys!” I soon realized that medical school stratified students into three categories: genius, brilliant, and smart. I was merely smart. In my first two years of medical school, I swam in the bottom third of my class just trying to keep from drowning. I finally felt I was in my element as a fourth-year student because I greatly enjoyed patient care.

When I entered my family medicine residency program, five of the 30 residents were women. We had one female faculty attending. Every subsequent residency class added more women to eventually reflect near parity between the sexes. Fortunately, I was taught everything that the men were and had the benefit of a strong education in medical school and residency.

Now I teach medical students who do not find it remarkable that there are more women than men in their class. They know female orthopedic surgeons and they think it unusual when they encounter a male OB/GYN. In my practice, I have cared for generations of families who don’t mind that their physician is a woman. Many celebrate that fact. Some are proud to say that they were one of my first patients. One young mom once told me that her son asked her if boys could be physicians, too. I am sure that my grandmother would appreciate that perspective.

My grandma passed in 1967 of anemia caused by peptic ulcer disease, a life lost for lack of a blood transfusion.

She did not live long enough to see two of her granddaughters grow into young women and graduate from medical school. It took 75 years for her dream to become my reality. I will always be grateful for her example and her ability to see what could be.