ColorofChange.org works to make government more responsive to racial disparities. Series Image. Dr. Michelle Oakley and her husband, Shane Oakley, are still married. HARPER: Yes. And so I left because that was too much to bear. I mean, mainly we get that to make sure there's no infection causing the fever. I suppose it's just like ER physicians, psychiatrists, social workers and all of us in the helping fields. Michele Harper was a teenager with a learner's permit when she volunteered to drive her older brother, John, to an emergency room in Silver Spring, Md., so he could be treated for a bite wound . And I remember thinking - and it was a deep bite. Or was it a constant worry? Theres no easy answer to this question. He graduated from UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE in 1995. And I was - the only rescue would be one that I could manage for myself. HARPER: Oh, yeah, all the time. We learn names and meet families. This is FRESH AIR. D.C., in a complicated family, she attended Harvard, where she met her husband. DAVIES: And we should just note that you were able to calmly talk to him and ask him if he would let you take his vital signs. Dr. Michele Harper is an emergency room physician and the author of The Beauty in Breaking, a memoir of service, transformation, and self-healing. . Dr. Michele Harper is a New Jersey-based emergency room physician whose memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, is available now. She is an advocate of personal wellness and evolution as a foundation for collective liberation. Her book is called "The Beauty In Breaking." But you don't - it's really the comfort with uncertainty that we've gained. She was cast by Lady Gaga in the Elle magazine series The New Muse. Once I finished the book, I realized the whole time Id been learning.. That takes a little more time, you know, equitable hiring, equitable pay. There were other popular employees like Dr. Sandra Wisniewski and Dr. Elizabeth Grammar who also left the show. Her story begins with an introduction to her dysfunctional family, her childhood of physical abuse, and her . She received a Bachelor of Science at Bowling Green State University and a Masters of Human Science and Doctorate from National College of Chiropractic. So I ran downstairs and called the police. It was fogging up. And so it was a long conversation about her experiences because for me in that moment, I - and why I stayed was it was important for me to hear her. I was the one to take a stand, to see if she was okay and to ask him to leave the room because she didn't feel safe, and she wasn't under arrest. Theyd tell me the same thing: were all getting sick. The popular couple has been together for over two decades, and . She wanted us to sign off that she was OK because she was trying to get her her career back, trying to get sober. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia when he told her he couldn't . She says writing became not only a salve to dramatic life changes but a means of healing from the journey that led her to pursue emergency medicine as a career. You wrote a piece recently for the website Medium - I guess it was about six weeks ago - describing the harrowing work of treating COVID-19 patients. I didn't know why. And that was a time that you called. And you're right. She just sat there. She loves following patients through different phases of their lives, helping them to stay healthy and fulfilled. Brought up in Washington, DC, in an abusive family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. And my mother said, well, she didn't want to pursue charges if it meant my brother was going to be incarcerated. What's it like not to have follow-up, not to know what became of these folks? I love the discussion. Harper, who has worked as an ER physician for more than a decade, said she found her own life broken when she began writing The Beauty in the Breaking. Her marriage had ended, and she had moved to Philadelphia to begin a new job. And in this case, the resident, who kind of tried to go over your head to the hospital, was a white person. Be it Mr. Spano, my ex-husband, my . She was being sexually harassed at work and the customers treated her horribly. She now works at Virginia Warren County Veterinary Clinic. But I always seen it an opportunity. My guest is Dr. Michele Harper. You were the attending person who was actually her supervisor, but she thought she could take this into her own hands. And he apologized because he said that unfortunately, this is what always happens in this hospital - that the hospital won't promote women or people of color. So I didn't do it. You know, there's no way for me to determine it. And they brought him in because, per their account, they had alleged that it was some sort of drug-related raid or bust, and they saw him swallow bags of drugs. During our first virtual event of 2021, the ER doctor and best-selling author shared what it means to breakand to healon the frontlines of medicine. So the only difference with Dominic was he was a person considered not to have rights. And you give a pretty dispiriting picture of the place in some ways. From there, Harper went to an emergency room in North Philadelphia (which had a volume of more than 95,000 patients a year) and then across town to yet another facility, where she had fewer bureaucratic obligations and more time for her true calling: seeing patients. I feel a responsibility to serve my patients. I mean, yeah, the pain of my childhood in that there wasn't, like you said, an available rescue option at that point gave me the opportunity as I was growing up to explore that and to heal and think to myself I want to be part of that safety net for other people when it's possible. "We met when we were 15," Mr. Leeb recently recalled . For me, school was a refuge. Her vitals were fine. And also because of the pain I saw and felt in my home, it was also important for me to be of service and help to other people so that they could find their own liberation as well. And then I got a call from the radiologist that while there was no pneumonia, she had several broken ribs, different stages of healing, so they happened at different times. Michelle Harper's age is 44. She was a Black patient. So I call the accepting hospital back to let them know that. As an effective ER physician, br. Accuracy and availability may vary. And their next step was an attempt to destroy her career. Not only did he read his own CT scans, he stared unflinchingly at his own life and shared his findings with unimaginable courage. But your childhood was not easy. In her memoir of surviving abuse, divorce, racism and sexism, an emergency room physician tells the story of her life through encounters with patients shes treated along the way. She has taken on many leadership roles . Cookies collect information about your preferences and your device and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. "Medicine is fraught with racism," Harper said by phone. HARPER: Yes, 100%. I mean, you say that her body had a story to tell. Michele Harper grew up in Washington, DC, knowing from a fairly young age that healing would be in her future. Dr. Michele Harper has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade at various institutions, including as chief resident at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and in the emergency department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia. (SOUNDBITE OF THE ADAM PRICE GROUP'S "STORYVILLE"). And in that moment, that experience with that family allowed me to, in ways I hadn't previously, just sit there with myself and be honest and to cry about it. 304 pp. And I felt that, in that way, I would never be trapped. Harper shares her poignant stories from the ER with Mitchell Kaplan. She went on to work at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Philadelphia. ( 2014-04-12) Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet is an American television series on Nat Geo Wild. Each milestone came with challenges: Harpers father tried to pass himself off as the wind beneath her wings at her medical school graduation, and her marriage to her college sweetheart fell apart at the end of her residency in the South Bronx. Washington University School of Medicine, MSCI. Clinically, all along the way - I prefer clinically to work in environments that are lower-resourced financially, immigrant, underrepresented people of color. Even before writing her powerful, exquisitely written memoir about the healing of self and others, the extraordinary Dr. Michele Harper was noteworthy: she is among the mere 2% of doctors working in America today who are Black women. Then I started the medical path, and it beat the words out of me. DAVIES: And what would they have wanted you to do, other than to evaluate his health? Residency/Fellowship. I drove a cab in Philly in the late '70s, and some of the most depressing fares I had were people going to the VA hospital and people being picked up at the VA hospital. It's your patients. The Beauty In Breaking by Michele Harper, 9780525537397, available . DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Dr. Michele Harper. So the experiences that would apply did apply. Harper's first 10 years practicing medicine from an ER in New York City to another in Philadelphia have taught her the . The bosses know were getting sick, but won't let us take off until it gets to the point where we literally can't breathe. August 28, 2020. Touching on themes of race and gender, Harper gives voice and humanity to patients who are marginalized and offers poignant insight into the daily sacrifices and heroism of medical workers. And you wrote that before the recent protests and demonstrations, which have prompted a lot more focus on the nation's experience with slavery and racial injustice. 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