I did not want to let February end without highlighting an African-American professional.
In the past year, I have bought some really great children’s books to introduce my own kids to a wide variety of characters and also real life heroes that we don’t typically talk about. We have read Baby Goes to Market, All Are Welcome Here, Anti-Racist Baby, A is for Awesome, and Dream Big, Little One to name a few. This last one became my son David’s favorite book to read for a little while and it showcases Black Women in American history. Every time we got to Ella Fitzgerald, he told me she was a doctor (like me) because she is wearing a beautiful, long white jacket that he thought was a doctor’s coat.
Reading these books with my children allowed me to learn about many women I had never heard about before and I wanted to learn about a physician I hadn’t heard about before for this month’s blog post.
Alexa Irene Canady was the first African-American neurosurgeon. She achieved this milestone in 1981. This date was not too long ago. Prior to becoming a neurosurgeon, she also was the first woman and African-American person to obtain a surgical internship at Yale-New Haven hospital in 1975. Alexa was discouraged from going into neurosurgery but luckily she persisted. She completed her neurosurgery training at the University of Minnesota and then did a pediatric neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Before she even got into medicine, Alexa faced challenges and prejudice, which is no surprise unfortunately. She was born in Michigan in the 1950s. She was very bright but her performance in school was average and her family later discovered that her teacher had been switching her test scores with a white student to cover up her intelligence. She eventually graduated from the University of Michigan, where she did both undergraduate and medical school training. She almost dropped out when she started her undergraduate career as a mathematics major due to a crisis in confidence. Even when she got to Yale-New Haven hospital she faced racism and she overheard a hospital administrator say “Oh, you must be our new equal-opportunity package.” I am proud to say that she was voted one of the top residents by fellow physicians while working at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where I work today.
She was the chief of neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital of Michican from 1987 until she retired in 2001 but ended up practicing part-time when she retired to Florida. She officially retired in 2012. She has received many awards and honors throughout her career.
When asked what was her biggest obstacle, she mentions convincing the neurosurgery chairman that she was not a risk to drop out or be fired but most importantly, she mentions that her other greatest obstacle was convincing herself that someone would give her a chance to be a neurosurgeon. This is an important lesson as we all live in a world where we are still dealing with racism, sexism, and all the other -isms. We always have control of our thoughts and no one can take that away from us. Dr. Canady is an amazing example of how important it is to believe in oneself and trust your gut.
References
Shaw, Glenda. Black History Month Honors Alexa Canady, MD: First African-American Woman Neurosurgeon. https://medicine.iu.edu/blogs/women-in-medicine/black-history-month-honors-alexa-canady-md-first-african-american-woman-neurosurgeon. February 24, 2020.
NIH. Changing the Face of Medicine. https://cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov/physicians/biography_53.html. June 3, 2015.
Wikipedia. Alexa Canady.