I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, riding around farm fields on my beloved pony,
Alfie. After earning a BA in Fine Art (Studio) at Muhlenberg College in Allentown,
PA, my career goals were a bit fuzzy, and I was thinking of applying to a medical
illustration program. While on a study trip to what was then the Soviet Union, I had
a sudden epiphany that the next step in my art career was to become a physician. I
returned to the US and studied in premed courses at several local colleges and then
matriculated at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA, which was also the
alma mater of my eldest brother and my father, who you will often hear me mention
when I pass along his life advice and physical examination tips.
Upon graduation in 1989, my artistic leanings led me to match into a General Surgery
residency at the Medical Center of Delaware; the ensuing two years proved to be very
difficult for me, as I experienced much harassment and bullying. After a brief respite
from medicine, I began working for the Indian Health Service in Arizona. There, my
decision to go into medicine started making sense again, as I loved learning about
Apache culture while providing caring general medical services to our patients. There
I also met an adventurous pharmacist by the name of Brian Cross; we were married in
Prescott National Forest in 1993. After 3 years, we moved to Jacksonville, FL where
I was able to complete a Family Medicine Residency at the Mayo Clinic. Following this,
we moved to rural Mississippi, where I worked for 7 years in a federally funded community
health center in the town of 2,500 people where we lived. My clinic was five minutes
on foot from our house, and I achieved the lifelong dream of having a horse in the
backyard. Additionally, our lives were enriched by the birth of our dear precious
daughter in 2001.
In 2005, we moved to northeast Tennessee for Brian to take a position with the University
of Tennessee. By this time, our unique daughter was ready to start school, and we
made the decision that the best educational option for her was to be homeschooled.
I took another hiatus from medicine to operate what we sometimes referred to as the
world’s most exclusive private school, with doctoral-level, one-faculty-to-one-student
teaching ratio and a tuition of, well, whatever my salary would have been if I were
working as a physician. We identified butterflies, recited poetry, took as many field
trips as possible, and annually blew up a papier mache volcano.
In 2013, the opportunity arose for me to teach part time at Quillen, which I loved
doing. After we recognized that it was time for our daughter to attend a school with
an enrollment larger than one, I gradually increased my hours. Eventually I became
the course director for what is now the Doctoring II course and will soon become semesters
2 and 3 of the new Trails Doctoring curriculum. I additionally serve as the Grievance
Officer for the College of Medicine, which gives me great satisfaction, which gives
me the opportunity to prevent the kinds of adverse experiences that caused me such
distress during my surgery residency. I have an interest in health care outreach
to people experiencing homelessness, and have developed a “Street Medicine” elective,
and work with an interprofessional team to help students interact with our neighbors
who lack housing.