Today I'm giving a shout out to to my favorite black person. (Although in my opinion, he's more of a chocolate brown.) Click here for a segment that Dallas News 5 aired today on Brian and the history of black men in medicine.
It's such a gift for me to be able to watch these brief videos. Brian and I have been together since July 4, 2001 (the first week of his surgical residency!) and up until last year, I hadn't ever seen him doing his "surgical thing." He works A LOT (when we first started dating he was working 120+ hours a week sometimes and no, that is not a typo or an exaggeration.) I've seen his various offices over the years, but I never saw him in the operating room or scrubbing in. To the people at the hospital, he is a big deal trauma surgeon. But to me, (for many years although not recently,) he was my husband who was never home. And that was especially hard when our daughter arrived two months after we moved across the country for his job and I was sans family support or my tribe.
Now, this next part is sort of embarassing, but I'll tell you anyway dear reader. Prior to last year's Black Men White Coats video, I would occasionally watch Trauma: Life in the ER, just so I could just get a sense of what his life was like in those many hours at work. I wanted to better understand him and the demands of his career. And I confess, I would watch the trauma surgeon on the tv show and think: Wow! It is so sexy how that guy is taking command of such a chaotic situation and is literally making life-or-death decisions while his hands are inside someone's guts. It allowed me to be more tolerant of his absences. It also helped to think about all the people he is helping everyday- not just patients but the underrepresented minority youths who see him and know that being a surgeon (even while being a first generation college graduate!) could be possible for them too.
So, here I am. SHOUTING.
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