It was a cool morning in New York City on March 27, 1970, and I had gone into labor. As a staff RN at Brooklyn’s Brookdale Hospital, I went to my workplace and was checked into the maternity ward with Dr. Sidney Silverman, my OB-GYN.
There was trouble.
My soon-to-be-born baby was showing signs of distress as labor progressed. It was evident to Dr. Silverman that the umbilical cord was wrapped around my baby’s neck.
“This is going to be a bit tough, but of course I’ll be careful,” Dr. Silverman said as he reached inside to turn my baby.
Dr. Silverman knew what he was doing. Gently, carefully, he turned - three turns.
And soon, my baby son Kenny was born into this world, healthy! Thank God and thank Dr. Silverman.
But what kind of technology did Dr. Silverman use? Did he do scans and blood work, all with an eye toward what could be billed out?
Actually, he had very little “technology” compared to today. But what Sidney did have was amazing skill, a keen instinct, and years of experience. And those priceless attributes saved my baby.
The delivery and maternity stay, by the way, were courtesy of the hospital because I was an employee. No mounds of insurance claims, codes, denials, and counterclaims.
And this was typical of American medicine back then. I’ve worked in different aspects of medicine ever since — first nursing, then later in pediatric dentistry and orthodontics, practicing and teaching around the world.
To introduce myself, I would like to say Chris Joy Baker here, aka Dr. Chris. For many years, I’ve been called that by patients, their parents, and staff. “Dr. Chris,” they say, as they begin a question or comment — the beginning of many relationships of love that follow the salutation.
The best physicians, like Dr. Silverman, are instinctual healers who don’t fret over what insurance or Medicaid will or will not pay. The Hippocratic oath was not some quaint relic. It was a commitment to the patient. It was a commitment to Moral Good.
And while technology is fine, my passion is to see American medicine re-learn how to treat patients — with medical professionals guided by skill, instinct, and a commitment to healing. These have been mostly lost in this third decade of the 21st Century.
When I was in junior high or maybe early high school in 1960s Houston, I had a conversation with my mother, Joy. “I want to be a doctor,” I told her.
Mother’s answer disappointed me. As a stay-at-home mother of six children, Joy encouraged me to become a nurse or teacher with an eye to raising children one day. I paused. I did want children, as the oldest of the six I had some idea of what that meant.
But somehow, little by little, the prospect of nursing school came to delight me.
I became an “old school” nurse. When I say old school, I mean back before “old school” was even a saying. I went to a diploma nursing school. Imagine, if you will, imagine an intensive Boot Camp, with eagle-eyed, nursing instructors in white caps and stockings looking for absolutely anything that was not perfect. They didn’t teach us to type into a computer and have it spit out what to do. We were expected to figure it out, based on our training and our good brains.
They taught us how to think critically.
As the oldest sibling of six children, nursing school was an excellent continuation of my home life lessons. I grew up in a three-bedroom home with my five sisters and a brother, one bathroom and the only air conditioner in the house being in my parents’ room. We didn’t have a TV. We had books. And we had music. We had to learn to think.
We practiced our music - half hour per day per child — did assigned chores, then played outside all day until the street lights came on. The insane number of hours people spend on screens today was totally unknown in the world at that time.
And for that, I will be eternally grateful.
Following Mother‘s advice, I began practicing as a Registered Nurse, moved to New York, got married, and had a baby, Kenny. But I still wanted to learn more. On my son‘s first day of kindergarten, I walked into class for my first day of dental school. We had moved from NYC so I could attend the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry.
And you know what? The excellence in nursing education at Memorial Baptist Hospital (Lillie Jolly) Nursing School in Houston, followed by the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry, my residency in Pediatric Dentistry at University of Connecticut, and further Orthodontics study both at UConn and under Royal Society member Dr. Walter A. Doyle, all gave me a better medical education than most doctors get today.
Why do I say that? Because I was constantly challenged to think for myself, not to think for the insurance companies, not to think about what other people might think, and not to think about what will make me the most money. The right perspective is to figure out what will help my patient the most. It’s the Constant And-Never-Ending-Improvement (‘CANI’ — hat tip to motivation guru Tony Robbins) all moving toward the greatest awareness, understanding, and knowledge possible.
And during the past years, I have seen how far things have declined since my nursing and dental school days.
And vaccines? The system changed from seemingly benevolent to rapacious. As a schoolgirl in Houston in the 1950s, I helped administer polio vaccines on sugar cubes as a volunteer candy striper in the schools. The thinly veiled evil of more recent vaccine efforts is very disturbing.
Trauma care has changed as well. As Assistant Director of Nursing at Brooklyn’s Brookdale Hospital, when victims of gang violence were brought in, every imaginable kind of medical emergency came our way.
Among many other patients in my nursing education, I was assigned to care for Joe DiMaggio, and as a nurse, I’ve cared for people from all walks of life, from CEOs to infamous mobsters. I’ve had a heck of a lot of fun doing it. Taking care of every patient required my use of the instincts I’d been taught, first learned at my childhood home, then at boot camp (ha!) — I mean, at my diploma nursing school.
Diploma Nursing Schools preceded B.S. programs, and were tightly clinically focused. Because my school had coordinated with at first, the University of Houston, then with Houston Baptist College, I had a year of sciences and nutrition, with just a bit of preclinical training, and three more years of a diagonal mix of the sciences and clinical training.
At the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry, as newly graduated dentists, we took the Hippocratic Oath. I still believe in it. We meant business then, and that Oath stands as my standard today.
I’ve witnessed the evolution of phony excuses for big corporations to rake in the money of patients and patient families, using phrases like “Evidence-Based Medicine” (mostly fraudulent), payer or payee, and health care rather than “medicine.” The pervasive problems of manipulated Randomized Clinical Trials (RCTs), always fine-tuned to squeeze money out of the patients without substantially improving their health most of the time, have been a nightmare.
When’s the last time you’ve heard a doctor referred to as a Healer?
When’s the last time your doctor did his or her own research and worked up your diagnosis, instead of checking the computer to see what their employer (hospital corporation) tells them to diagnose, or what the insurance company, or pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) would pay for?
Being a doctor, nurse, dentist, and orthodontist is a commitment to heal. The goal should not be that it is a great way to buy a yacht, join a country club, pay for that expensive car, and take long vacations. Being paid well is a blessing, but not the underlying goal or day-to-day directive.
A healer must have a passion for healing to be successful in any of these professions. Before I went to nursing school, my mother taught me this, and then nursing school ground it into my brain, and the gloriously dedicated and knowledgeable dental school faculty at the University of Kentucky demanded it of all of us. I was one of only six women in my dental school class, though today women outnumber men in dental schools. So, I’m a pioneer in that area.
I’ve watched doctors go from treating patients in their own office to being corporate slaves, albeit well-paid ones — seeing each patient just a few minutes each, and rushing off to the next one, while a PA, nurse, or bookkeeper deals with that patient for the rest of the appointment.
I’ve watched patients getting trained to believe it’s normal to wait to see the doctor for two hours, but if they are late, their appointment gets rescheduled.
This is no way to take care of people. This is no way to heal.
I’ve watched government fear real research.
I’ve watched big pharmaceutical companies dominate policy and OWN the research, rather than having a commitment to help doctors fulfill their calling as healers. (BTW - if the research study is paid for by a corporate grant, they can change the results any way they like, and they do!)
There is a better way. We’ve had that way all along.
So, my calling as a healer, to be one, to help re-awaken medical professionals — and patients too — to the facts that “healthcare“ should be HEALING, that pharmaceutical chemicals should not be a lifetime experience, that the savings of the ill and elderly should not be drained by a system dominated by huge corporates in medical care, insurance, and pharmaceuticals.
My career has been amazing. I practiced in the United States, mostly Kentucky and Connecticut, then a little in Texas, before spending almost a decade in the United Arab Emirates. I’ve seen healthcare in many different cultures, and for many different income groups, and for all ages. My perspective is unique. My goal is to use those experiences to continue to heal a system that itself has serious signs and symptoms of illness.
A few personal notes: Back in the days when my mother told me I should probably go to nursing school instead of med school, I planned on having four children. I gave birth to Kenny and later in life, after losing my husband to lung cancer, met a man with three children, one of whom was autistic. (His autism diagnosis, by the way, was followed by his losing all speech and eye contact just before age two, after his MMR childhood vaccination.) This, my second-oldest son, came into my life at age 10, along with his siblings and his father, with whom I fell in love.
So my desire to be the mother of four children came true. God has blessed me all throughout the way - blessed when I watched my once-autistic son graduate cum laude from university and become a productive, absolutely happy member of society.
So, what happened to baby Kenny, who was saved by the brilliant Dr. Silverman? He is now Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry. I am blessed with these children and have been able to practice my beloved professions all along. Now my passion is wrapped in study, research, writing, sharing/getting information out there about true health and true healing.
I look forward to sharing lots about healing and how we rethink, retrain, and recover our system of healing rather than the high-priced “healthcare“ that is making so many ill.
Leading teacher of Orthodontic Continuing Ed., former faculty member of three dental schools, American Orthodontic Society Past Pres., Speaker, Author, RN, DMD, Dentistry: Pediatric & Orthodontics.
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