MY FIRST DAY AT the University of Miami was stormy—literally. Freshman orientation was supposed to be Monday, August 24, 1992, but it was canceled suddenly and dramatically. Instead of picking up our class schedules and meeting our hall mates, we were dodging Hurricane Andrew, the most fearsome storm to hit South Florida in nearly three decades. It crashed into Miami with winds whipping up to two hundred miles an hour. The Category 5 storm, one of only four to ever make landfall in the United States, blew apart buildings, flattened houses, and obliterated the power grid, ripping power lines right off the poles and blowing up transformers. Twenty-six people lost their lives and more than 250,000 were left homeless. Fires burned around the city, but fire departments were helpless, as the storm surge had put thousands of miles of roads and highways underwater. Not only was freshman orientation canceled, but the whole university was shut down in a state of emergency and the administration was desperately trying to evacuate all sixteen thousand students. Many of the residence halls were official hurricane shelters, so students on or arriving on campus were being moved to these residence halls for the night. There were even local residents in the Coral Gables area coming to the residence halls for shelter.
Because it was going to be my first day of college and because I was so excited, that Sunday morning before orientation, I convinced my parents to keep driving south from Orlando to Miami despite the fact that the Florida Turnpike had a steady flow of traffic moving in the opposite direction.
Once we got to the campus, it was clear that the hurricane was headed our way. The college staff invited parents and students to stay, but because my dad had to work the next day, he wanted to head back. Of course, I wanted to stay. No matter where weather forecasters project a hurricane’s landfall, they aren’t always right, and there was no chance that I was going to miss my freshman orientation activities if Andrew happened to hit farther north, sparing Miami.
My parents spent the afternoon moving me in and then reluctantly departed. After they left, the resident assistants (RAs) of my dorm, Mahoney Residential College, called a meeting to discuss the hurricane plan, as it did indeed look as if the eye of the hurricane was making a beeline for Miami. We were asked to fill our tubs with water and move anything we didn’t want to get wet four feet off the floor. Everybody who was on a high floor or at the ends of the building was moved to lower and more centralized rooms, should the ends or upper floors of the building collapse. Looking back on it now, I can remember how scary it was to have my first night away from home at college in a terrifying Category 5 hurricane. At the time, however, I think I was just in survival mode once again, ready to take on whatever came my way.
It took my parents eight hours instead of the typical four to get home. By the time they got there and realized that Andrew was indeed headed directly toward me, my mother was furious at their decision to leave. But it was too late to change anything now.
Conditions on campus deteriorated as the night wore on. At about 3:00 a.m., we were all evacuated from our rooms to the halls to weather the storm, and we sat in the dark except for our flashlights until dawn. The entire residence hall, seven floors of concrete, shook four times in the severe winds. We were not allowed to open the doors to our rooms because the rooms had the old-school Florida crank windows, so they weren’t airtight, and we might be sucked out if a window had broken and we didn’t know it. When the actual eye went over us and the winds suddenly calmed, we were allowed to enter the RA’s room to use the toilet, so thirty of us used the toilet in twenty minutes, without the ability to flush—not pleasant! One of my fellow incoming freshmen was a girl whose father was a professor at the university. She had chosen to stay in the dorm while her family stayed in their home in Kendall, about fifteen miles south of us. We listened to some of the radio reports that Kendall was being hammered, and she essentially cried much of the night. I had spoken to my parents before we lost power, but now that talking to them was not an option, I imagined how very worried they must be at home. There were no cell phones in the early nineties, and no electricity meant no phones.
When dawn broke, the storm had passed, and we were finally allowed to return to our rooms. Even though my room was located on the fourth floor, it still had four inches of water in it from the sideways rain that had come through small leaks around the windows, even though no windows in my room were gone. My room was in good shape compared to most of those on campus. We had no running water and no electricity, which meant no air-conditioning. The storm left Miami in a more oppressive heat than usual for August, as it had deposited every ounce of tropical humidity it had picked up in its track across the Atlantic right on top of us. Food was being rationed, the toilets in all the dorms were overflowing, and there were no stores or canteens open to get supplies. With the elevator out of service, I had to walk up and down four flights of stairs in the dark, as there were no windows in the stairwells, and this was beyond challenging. My parents couldn’t come to get me because all the roads heading south were restricted to emergency vehicles. Thank God for my friend Chetna. Even though she was no longer at the University of Miami and she wasn’t my roommate as planned, she knew tons of people and started calling around until she finally found an upperclassman who was going to Orlando and could take me home.
Once there, I found out just how stressed my family had been. It turned out my mom had been up all night glued to the Weather Channel and on the phone with my aunts Chrissy and Barbara. I think that was the closest my mom ever came to wanting to kill my dad for leaving me there—yikes!
I started the University of Miami excited to be a “Hurricane,” the official name of the sports teams and, by default, the student body. Instead, I actually went through one! So, I was truly a University of Miami Hurricane!
As it turned out, the campus was shut down for two weeks for the massive cleanup. But once my fellow twenty-five hundred freshman classmates and I finally settled in, I liked what I saw. I was extremely happy there from the start. I became very active in student life and joined as many clubs and civic organizations as I could handle. When I wasn’t in class, my friends and I loved going out to the beach or dancing in South Beach. I became a big fan of reggae and loved going out to the Hungry Sailor for dancing on Thursday nights with my friends. I was active in student government and was in the Presidents 100 Club, which was a prestigious group of one hundred specially selected students who helped plan the events for the president of the college.
Early on in my freshman year, I applied for a sought-after RA position in my residence hall. To my delight, I was one of only a handful selected. It really was a wonderful position, and there was so much involved in being an RA at U of M. RAs started school two weeks early for leadership, diversity, and emergency-skill training. Not only was I responsible for supporting and overseeing a group of twenty or more fellow students on the floor, but I had to learn how to identify drugs and how to handle emergencies. RAs were often on night duty, so once every few nights it would be my turn to walk around the halls at midnight, looking for problems and making safety checks for working fire alarms and fire escapes. When on duty, I carried a pager and was on call for any emergencies. One night, one of my residents had a psychotic break and was circling the dorm, barely dressed, speaking nonsense, and threatening to hurt herself. I had to counsel her and keep her safe until campus police and the residence coordinator arrived. Fortunately, I knew her, and she trusted me and I was able to move her to the lobby until more help arrived. The benefit of being an RA was that my room and board was paid, and I also received a small monetary stipend, which was helpful for maintaining my social life and indulging my love of clothes and shoes.
I was an RA for two years before rising in rank to a PA (program assistant) position my senior year. There was one PA per residential college. It was a pretty competitive position that involved programming all residential college activities and social events, such as trips to the opera and the college’s participation in university-wide activities. I had an office in the college’s administrative area and really enjoyed this position. To this day I still love to plan a good party!
For my personal transportation around campus, I still used a scooter to get to and from classes. I had the “Rascal,” a motorized scooter that replaced my “Pony” from high school. I always had some assistive device for long distances, but I didn’t use it socially. I had a couple of good buddies who used to hijack it and ride it down the halls. On rainy days, there would always be two guys hanging on the back as I high-powered it at its fastest speed, five miles an hour, across the campus.
Being on my own for the first time in college was wonderful in the most extraordinary ways. I had reinvented myself and was becoming more self-confident, more outspoken, and happier than I had ever been. I had developed even closer friendships than I had in high school. I became a part of a close group of four friends, Sonal, Suketu, Walter, and myself. I first met Sonal in a biology class. Then we met Suketu and Walter, who both lived on my floor. The four of us became inseparable. We studied together, ate together, and of course went out dancing, to concerts, and shopping together. I had never felt so secure in friendships before, and thankfully, this foursome didn’t end until we started to lose touch long after college ended.
While things were changing back at home with my parents reuniting, I was trying to identify my career path. I was majoring in biology with a plan to double major in marine science with the goal of becoming a marine biologist. During the second semester of my freshman year, I had my own pivotal moment. I decided I would become a doctor instead. This epiphany came during a conversation I was having with my aunt Chrissy.
“What about medicine?” she asked one night while we were catching up on the phone. I trusted Chrissy’s opinion more than anyone’s. I was open to her suggestion, as she had faith in me, knowing me better than anyone.
Essentially, my whole family had wanted me to be anything but a marine biologist, and feared I would be eaten by sharks. On a field trip to the Florida Keys during my oceanography class, I had gone into the water to survey a one-square-meter area for the purpose of counting the fish and plankton. I had a rope tied around my waist, because my instructor was hoping to prevent my drowning, as I am not buoyant and typically sink like a rock. He succeeded, but I came to realize that it was likely not only physically impossible for me to be the next Jacques Cousteau, but in realistic terms, marine biology was not as romantic as I had thought. I would probably end up being in a lab all the time working with plankton, whereas I really liked working with people.
Medicine was definitely a more “people” career, and with that I changed focus. Because a lot of my classes counted toward pre-med, I was able to complete my minor in marine science and get a double major in biology and psychology. In the end, I realized that I was more of a people-person than a lab rat.
Aside from my academic decisions, my sophomore year was filled with more personal difficulty. My maternal grandma, one of my favorite people in the world, who had played such a huge role in raising me, died that year. Her medical crisis began in August, right before I went back to U of M. She had gone to the hospital for a routine colonoscopy when they discovered she had a few polyps. It was nothing too concerning. I had accompanied her to the procedure right before I went back to school.
Back at home, she had started experiencing fevers, chills, and blood in her stool. Because I was back in Miami, everybody kept me in the dark, thinking that she would get better and that it was better to not disrupt my studies or stress me out. It turned out the gastroenterologist had punctured her colon during the exam.
For too long, the doctor dismissed the symptoms when she called him. She had followed his advice and remained at home to rest. One day, about a week after the procedure, my mother found her lethargic and weak and rushed her to the ER, when she was found to be in septic shock. In the ICU, she arrested three times. The doctors noted that if she had remained at home much longer, she likely would have died.
Even though they saved her life, her condition was still really grave, and she was intubated in the ICU for months, suffering more complications from sepsis than I can describe. As soon as my family told me, about three weeks after she was admitted, I took the first flight back to Orlando to visit her.
By that point it was clear she would be in the hospital for some time, and I went back almost every two to three weeks to see her that semester. After a roller coaster of days in the hospital, my grandmother had a tracheostomy placed and lost digits from her hands, but was stable enough to be transferred to a nursing facility to continue to heal. It wasn’t until Thanksgiving weekend that she was actually coherent and able to talk with all of us via her trach tube. I remember telling her I just got 100 percent on my physics final, and she was happy and proud. I was very relieved to be able to spend time with her when she wasn’t sedated.
Unfortunately, Thanksgiving weekend was the last time that I saw my grandma alive. I was only going to be back in Miami for two weeks to finish final exams, and I had hoped and prayed she would be okay until then. However, one afternoon as I rode my scooter into the Mahoney lobby after one of my finals, my boss, Gay, the residence coordinator, saw me at the front desk and pulled me back into her office.
“I have really bad news,” she said, and I knew immediately what it was. She didn’t need to say anything else. With tears running down my face, I went back to my room, packed my bags, and flew home that very evening, December 5. I had one final left, organic chemistry, but that didn’t matter anymore. To this day, I have kept in touch with Gay. At a conference for student life that I recently attended, she told me how hard it was to deliver that news.
My grandmother’s service was held at a funeral parlor in Orlando. Between family, friends, and her coworkers from Disney, there were more than sixty people in attendance. Family I had never met traveled from all over the country to be there. My mom gave the eulogy as Chrissy, Barbara, and I comforted each other through our tears in the front row. I had the rest of winter break to mourn her death and spent much of that time with my aunt Chrissy. It was definitely the loss of our family’s matriarch. That Christmas was the worst I ever had. We didn’t even put up a tree.
The second semester of sophomore year came and went. I made up my organic chemistry exam and tried to keep up with my schoolwork, as I know my grandma would have wanted me to. At the end of the year, I had another surgery, this time on my knee. It took place in the early summer between my sophomore and junior years. I was laid up in my parents’ house in a leg cast for the entire summer. They were now living in Pensacola, where they had relocated for my dad’s work. Although I liked the house, a cute two-story traditional house on the intercoastal waterway, I was in no position to enjoy it. My brother, David, was now thirteen and had been dealing not only with the death of my grandma that year but also changing schools, a tough time for him as well.
From my perspective, being in a new home and recovering from surgery after what had been a few years’ reprieve without it was tough on everyone. After getting used to being so independent at college, it was hard to be back in the vulnerable and dependent position of being in a cast.
I had to rely on others for assistance again for everything, including using the bathroom. I remember one incident in which my mom was out, and I inevitably had an emergency. My brother was the only one home, and there was probably no worse age for a brother to be when he needed to help his sister with the duties I required—assistance getting into the bathroom and onto the throne. I was in a wheelchair, so I could get to the bathroom door, but I just didn’t have the strength to lift myself onto the toilet in a very tiny powder room, the only bathroom on the first floor. An argument between David and me quickly ensued, as he was so grossed out by the idea of lifting me onto the toilet, and he almost refused to do it. I was equally angered by the fact that I had no choice but to beg him for assistance. We were both yelling back and forth for what felt like hours. Finally, he did give in and helped me onto the throne. It was not a good time to have a battle of the wills between two siblings. In fact, it was torture.
My brother and I have always had a typical sibling love/fight relationship. David could treat me like a princess, as when he would help carry my books to school when we were in grade school together, but as a toddler, he could also destroy my bedroom during a temper tantrum. Of course we love each other and would do anything for each other, but we had our share of fights. I am sure it was hard for him growing up as a sibling of a child with such complex and frequent medical needs. I was almost seven when he was born, so we really grew up separately and very differently.
In my third year of college, I was already applying to medical schools and taking my MCATs, the standardized tests for medical school admission. My preferred fields of medicine going into the application process were pediatrics, maybe genetics, and maybe ophthalmology. I agreed with my parents that I needed something that would not wear me out physically. Pediatric orthopedic surgery was a thought, being so near and dear to me, but orthopedic surgery was an exceptionally physical field and likely not in the cards for me.
Like many of my other pre-med friends, I applied to thirty-plus medical schools, because it is such a competitive process. My application was strong, but I knew I was going to be in a pool of many talented and high-achieving students. I highlighted activities on campus, my involvement with student government, and my memberships in the Leadership Honors Society and the Presidents 100 Club. I had above a 4.0 GPA, and my MCATs were good, although not spectacular. In my essay, I wrote about the fact that I wanted to be a physician in order to give back, since the medical community had done so much for me as a Little Person. All in all, I thought I had a good chance. More than thirty applications was a lot.
After the initial application, the next step was to wait for secondary applications from the medical schools themselves. If your primary application had made the initial cut and the med schools wanted another level of material to keep you in the pool, meaning they were potentially interested in you, they would send you a secondary application. I received ten secondary applications and I was still feeling optimistic. Now came the wait for the third level of screening, the invitations for a face-to-face interview.
When my friends started getting invitations for these interviews and I didn’t, I became very concerned. Not one of the ten schools where I was still in the pool was reaching out to me. They weren’t rejecting me per se, but any med school applicant knows that no news is bad news. I knew the credentials of my friends were exactly on par with mine, so the only difference I could think of was the fact that in my essay, I had disclosed that I was a Little Person. I feared this might be working against me. Specifically, many of the schools’ brochures had a disclaimer—that they reserved the right to not accept any applicants who did not meet the physical, mental, or emotional requirements for practicing medicine.
I started second-guessing myself. Perhaps becoming a doctor was simply not in the cards for me, and I should consider another path. I even entertained pursuing a career as residential coordinator. I loved being an RA and given the fact that I enjoy working with people so much, that might be a really fun and rewarding career.
After a few weeks, Dr. Foote, the president of the university, came up to me at a Presidents 100 event. Aware that I was applying to medical school, he wanted to know how things were going. “Have you interviewed here yet?” he asked. When I told him no, he seemed surprised. I didn’t want to lie, but for some reason I felt bad telling him I never got an interview. In fact I had already received my rejection letter from U of M. “It’s okay,” I said, not daring to look heartbroken.
Two days later, I got a call from the School of Medicine offering me an interview, so obviously Dr. Foote had made a phone call. I had very mixed emotions about getting this interview. Although I greatly appreciated the effort and support I had from Dr. Foote, I wanted to get into medical school on my own merits, not because the president had made a phone call and brought me to someone’s attention. Because I didn’t want to disappoint Dr. Foote and because I had no other prospects at the time, I accepted the invitation to interview.
At the University of Miami interview, I faced the hardest set of questions I have ever been asked, but not for the reasons you would think. The two physicians conducting the interview, a trauma surgeon and an internal medicine doctor, wasted no time in addressing the elephant in the room, and the interview quickly became focused on my size, or lack thereof.
How, with my stature, was I going to take care of patients? How did I drive a car? If I became a trauma surgeon, how was I going to be able to do all the things required of me?
I actually felt under attack. “I am not going into medicine with any interest in putting a patient in harm’s way,” I replied. “That would defeat the purpose.”
I told them I didn’t want to become a trauma surgeon. I knew this specialty was the “it” field at that time, popularized by TV shows like E.R. In fact, my pre-med friends and I loved to get together to watch E.R. whenever we could, hoping George Clooney would save the day. In my mind, however, I knew that it might not be practical for me to crack open the chest of a fifty-year-old motor vehicle accident victim, but I never wanted to do that anyway. When a patient came into the ER, there were many roles for physicians, and no one person saved a life in a vacuum. These were well-coordinated, well-trained groups, and it wasn’t a single doctor (George Clooney, please) responsible for resuscitating a patient, like on TV. I had no doubt I could perform any one role with a step stool. I could manage the airway, get access, or even lead the code. I also explained that my interest was nowhere close to becoming a surgeon. I was envisioning a career in pediatrics, ophthalmology, or genetics.
The grilling didn’t stop there. If you get into medical school, you have to be in top condition, physically and mentally. According to the surgeon’s philosophy, to enter the field of medicine, all candidates should be physically and mentally capable of performing any role in any field. This idea that a medical student, a future physician, must be “pluri-potential,” capable of working in several different roles, is fortunately going by the wayside, and medicine is opening its eyes to the fact that many talented individuals are being overlooked because of this thinking. Now more than ever before I am seeing physicians with disabilities entering the field.
I never believed a doctor had to be capable of being every type of doctor there was—a neurosurgeon, an ER physician, a pathologist, a general practitioner, an endocrinologist, and so on.
When asked specific questions related to my physical abilities, I was honest and confident. I told them I could drive a car, I would carry my own step stool around, I have a scooter that I would use for distance. I felt that I could learn and participate in all fields of medicine during medical school, but that I would never want to choose a specialty in which my physicality could put a patient at risk.
By the time I finished my cross-examination, I was beet red, and not even sure I wanted to go to that medical school anymore, even if I did get in.
The following week, the unbelievable happened. I was invited to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine for an interview. This time it appeared to me that I was invited on my own merits. Not that I hadn’t appreciated Dr. Foote’s effort on my behalf. I thought he was a great president, and I absolutely loved the University of Miami.
Because I had been a patient at Johns Hopkins Hospital for ten years, from the age of two through the age of twelve, and still knew a few people, such as Dr. Victor McKusick, who had diagnosed my skeletal dysplasia, I didn’t tell anyone from there that I had applied. The only person from Hopkins I told of my visit was Donna, who had morphed from being my favorite nurse to being my good friend. I didn’t even tell her until after I received the invitation to interview. In fact, the reason I called her was that I wanted to see her while I was in town.
After my tumultuous interview at the University of Miami School of Medicine, I was nervous about my interview at Hopkins. However, much to my surprise, the interview was fantastic. I met one-on-one with a single physician, a pediatrician. He didn’t start interrogating me about my limitations. Instead, he asked me about why I wanted to become a doctor and things relevant to the study of medicine. He asked about my interests and extracurricular activities. He never even brought up my stature. At one point, I was beginning to wonder if he even realized I was a Little Person! Of course he did, but it felt strange that he wasn’t bringing it up. So I had to bring it up! I thought if he had concerns and was afraid to ask me about them, I wanted to address them head on!
“I will need a step stool to see patients,” I told him offhandedly.
“Yes,” he replied, “that makes perfect sense.”
“And I will need a scooter to make rounds,” I continued. “Is that okay?”
He said that a scooter sounded fine to him. The interview ended with him showing me pictures of his kids. Wow, what a different experience. The interview was easy, almost too easy. I thought it had either gone great or gone horribly, but I could not predict which. After the interview, I went on a tour with about twenty other applicants. We went all over the hospital. My favorite part of the tour was the “dome,” where our guide explained how Sir William Osler and other physician icons used to go around the dome, examining and discussing the patients in each of the rooms. That is where the term “rounding” that every medical institution now uses comes from. Doctors “round” every morning, seeing all their inpatients and making the plan of care. Because this practice began at Hopkins due to the circular configuration of patients’ rooms, the term “rounding” was born. After touring the hospital and remembering my experience as a patient there, I was in awe of the institution. How amazing would it be if I got to be a medical student where I was once a patient? As much as I wanted this, I truly thought that it was an unattainable dream.
Well, that is what I thought, but I guess dreams can come true. One week later, I got a phone call from the dean of admissions, offering me a position in the Johns Hopkins Medical School Class of 2000.Wow! A personal phone call and a spot in the School of Medicine! I happened to be with one of my good friends, Brian, when I got the phone call. He was so happy for me, he literally picked me up and we spun around my dorm room.
I learned, too, that my connection with the hospital as a former patient was irrelevant to my acceptance, thank goodness! Dr. McKusick didn’t even know I had applied or was interviewing until well after the fact, when he learned I had been to Baltimore from a colleague and heard that I “may have made it to the second step” in the application process. He must have found out the day I got the acceptance call from the dean, because when he called my house to tell my mother that he had heard I was interviewing there, he warned her it was tough to get in, because Hopkins only accepted the “cream of the crop” from a pool of applicants from all over the world. He said I should feel good about the interview, but not get my hopes up.
My mother knew I had already been accepted, so when she told me about this phone call, I knew that I had been accepted on my own merits. Dr. McKusick couldn’t have been in on it. It was an incredible confidence boost for me to know that the people who knew me growing up had nothing to do with my getting in. I hadn’t even seen Dr. McKusick since I was a kid.
When I started medical school, there were almost no physicians who were Little People. I knew of only two, one being Dr. Michael Ain, who started at Johns Hopkins Medical School two years before me as an attending physician. He is actually a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and specializes in patients with skeletal dysplasias. The other Little Person physician I know of is Dr. Kenneth Lee, a pediatric gastroenterologist. Both of these doctors are male and have achondroplasia, which is very different from my dysplasia. People with this type of dwarfism are often taller and can have fewer orthopedic complications. I might be the first female Little Person physician, but I cannot be sure.
It turned out that despite the stressful interview at the University of Miami School of Medicine, I was also accepted there. A part of me really wanted to go to the University of Miami, because so many of my close friends were going to medical school there. However, ultimately, I had to say yes to my dream school. I knew I could never feel good about going to a school where I believed that some of its faculty doubted my capabilities. I realized it would only intensify the feeling that I needed to constantly prove myself. Still, I had a little bit of anxiety telling the university I wasn’t accepting the offer.
There were about three thousand people in my graduating class that May 1996. There was a smaller, separate graduation ceremony for the individuals who were in the honors program. There, we each got to personally cross the stage and receive our diploma when our name was called. My parents were proud members of the cheering families in the audience. My aunts, my brother, and even Dr. Kopits had made the trip to see me graduate!
I was called up to the stage to be presented with my honors medallion by the vice provost, Dr. William Butler, whom I knew fairly well from my involvement in student life. He said “congratulations,” and then leaned down to give me this big, weird, awkward kiss, which was like on the top of my head. He then went on to laud all of my accomplishments, resulting in an enormous round of applause. He finished by saying, “The only mistake that Jennifer made at the University of Miami was not staying to go to our medical school.”