#BlackInTheIvory is being a PGY2 ortho res in a nasty divorce & almost losing my kid. As a PGY4, my 7 yo son had an accident where he ran into a pole @ recess with his face (but made the catch!) I was conflicted btwn Mother’s instinct vs being seen as the ‘lazy’ blk resident. 1/
I got a call from my son’s school that he “probably” needed stitches on his face. I loudly repeated the school secretary’s words because I wanted people to know my son was badly hurt. #BlackintheIvory #BlackintheIvoryOrtho 2/
My Sports attending heard & said “I hope you don’t think you’re going anywhere, we still have patients to see in clinic.” She told me if I left clinic that “she would make sure I was disciplined.” Thankfully my live-in nanny brought my bleeding son to our Sports clinic. 3/
I couldn’t stitch my 1st graders’ face on my own. I was his Mom & he was scared, but thankfully our plastics fellow was a friend of mine and black. I called him to see if he was busy, asked him to come to clinic to evaluate and to sew up my sons face wound. #BlackintheIvory 4/
So while seeing patients complaining of pain when they ran 10 miles, I was code switching between my Mommy duties and my Resident role. I was already fighting the uphill battle of being the only Black female trainee @UCSFOrthosurg #BlackintheIvory #BlackintheIvoryOrtho 5/
I was faced with a lose-lose power dynamic that others have discussed...I was 1 year shy of finishing 17 long years of training. The attending knew that and she pounced. She knew the microscope that I was under as the only Black female trainee. #BlackintheIvoryOrtho 6/
She knew what it took to get me through those 17 years. She knew that my investment in being an Orthopaedic Surgeon would trump my instincts as a Mom that day. The burden of being counter to implicit biases is real, whether she consciously knew it or not. #BlackInIvoryOrtho 7/
My son and I were lucky that day....lucky that he didn’t have a head injury, lucky we had a good support system of fellow peers, lucky that I successfully completed the program a year later. The burden of #BlackInTheIvory. #BlackInTheIvoryOrtho #BLM #TellYourStory end/
