Welcome to FRESH AIR. Dr. Michele Harper is a female African American emergency room physician in an overwhelmingly male and white profession. She went on to attend Harvard, where she met her husband. The end of her marriage brought the beginning of her self-healing. And you had not been in the habit of crying through a lot of really tough things in your life. So in that way, it's hard. I mean, she said that she had been through a lot. Michele Harper was a teenager with a learners 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 on his left thumb. They stayed together . Her story begins with an introduction to her dysfunctional family, her childhood of physical abuse, and her . There are limitations in hirings and promotions. You grew up in an affluent family in what you describe as some exclusive neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. You went to private school. Dr. Michele Harper sheds light on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected health care workers and the virus's impact on vulnerable populations, and discuss. They are allowed to, you know, when certain criteria are met. Growing up, it was. And there was - there was just something about it that made me more concerned. she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. Do you think of police in general as being in the helping fields? 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. Her behavior was out of line.". This Week on The Literary Life Podcast. Situations, experiences, can break us in ways that if we make another set of decisions, we won't heal or may even perpetuate violence. And so when I was ordering her tests, I didn't need to order liver function tests. Michele Thomas, MD, is board certified in colon and rectal surgery . 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. Well, she wasn't coming to, which can happen. She has a new memoir about her experiences and how her work with patients has contributed to her personal growth. That's depleting, and it's also rewarding to be of service. Michele Harper writes: I am the doctor whose palms bolster the head of the 20-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his brain. Until that's addressed, we won't have more people from underrepresented communities in medicine. She really didn't know anything about medicine. She was there with her doting father. She looked fine physically. DAVIES: You know, you write in the book that you navigate an American landscape that claims to be post-racial when every waking moment reveals the contrary. She and I spoke for a long time about how she had no one to talk to, and now because of coronavirus, she was even more alone than she used to be. Share this page on LinkedIn. I could wrap this up in 10 minutes, and then I could go home. Because if the person caring for you is someone who hears you, who truly understands you thats priceless. The past few nights she's treated . Heather John Fogarty is a Los Angeles writer whose work is anthologized in Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing and by Joan Didions Light. She teaches journalism at USC Annenberg. And I was - the only rescue would be one that I could manage for myself. Certainly it was my safe haven when I could leave the home. In a new memoir, Dr. Michele Harper writes about treating gunshot wounds, discovering evidence of child abuse and drawing courage from her patients as she's struggled to overcome her own trauma. HARPER: Well, it's difficult. Nobody in the department did anything for her or me. I felt Id lost the capacity to write or speak well, but there were stories that stayed with me this sense of humanity and spirituality that called to me from my work in the medical practice. NPR's Scott Simon speaks to Dr. Michele Harper about her new memoir, The Beauty in Breaking. The past few nights shes treated heart and kidney failure, psychosis, depression, homelessness, physical assault and a complicated arm laceration in which a patient punched a window and the glass won. She writes that she's grown emotionally and learned from her patients as she struggled to overcome pain in her own life, growing up with an abusive father and coping with the breakup of her marriage. You got into Harvard, did well there and went to medical school. You want to just tell us about this interaction? She was young. Written By Dr. Joan Naidorf. The Beauty In Breaking is a memoir of her work as an emergency room physician in some of the . Whatever their wounds, whatever their trauma, it can make them act in this way. No. Fax: 1-512-324-7555. And apart from this violation, this crime committed against her - the violation of her body, her mind, her spirit - apart from that, the military handled it terribly. She loves following patients through different phases of their lives, helping them to stay healthy and fulfilled. So, you know, initially, he comes in, standing - we're all standing - shackled hands and legs. What was different about me in that case when my resident thought I didn't have the right to make this decision was because I was dark-skinned. Working on the frontlines of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, in a predominantly Black and brown community, Ive treated many essential workers: grocery store employees, postal workers. Please register to receive a link for viewing this online event. The Beauty in Breaking is Dr. Michele Harper's New York Times-bestselling memoir of service, transformation, and self-healing.Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Nonfiction, The Beauty in Breaking explores the meaning of healing at the physical, psychological, and societal levels.Through intimate stories about the healing process, Dr. Harper emphasizes the . I will tell you, though, that the alternative comes at a much higher cost because I feel that in that case, for example, it was an intuition. And I didn't get the job. The 52-year-old, best known for her appearances in Embarrassing Bodies and on ITV's This Morning, has moved out of the . I feel people in this nation deserve better.. It involves a 22-month-old baby who was brought in who apparently had had a seizure. Whether you have read The Beauty in Breaking or not there are important lessons in self-healing to take . So the experiences that would apply did apply. She was rushed into the department unconscious, not clear why but assuming a febrile seizure, a seizure that children - young children can have when they have a fever. And they get better. Share this page on Facebook. So I explained to her the course of treatment and she just continued to bark orders at me. Tell us what happened. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. If the patient doesn't want the evaluation, we do it anyway. That is my mission. And I don't know whether or not he took drugs. Still reeling, Harper moved to Philadelphia to work at a hospital where she was eventually passed over for a promotion by an apologetic (white, male, liberal) department chair who said: I just cant ever seem to get a Black person or a woman promoted here. And I should just note again for listeners that there's some content here that might be disturbing. She was healthy. Dr. Harper received her BA in Psychology from Harvard University . She looked well, just stuporous. Michelle Harper was born on the 16th of March, 1978. The Beauty in Breaking is the true story of Michelle Harper's journey toward self-healing as she embarks on a career in emergency medicine. 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. The curtain was closed. He didn't want to be examined. I mean, I've literally had patients who are having heart attacks - and these are cases where we know, medically, for a fact, they are at risk of significant injury or death, where it's documented - I mean, much clearer cut than the case we just discussed, and they have the right - if they are competent, they have the right to sign themselves out of the department and refuse care. Apparently, Dr. Michele Sharkey has found love with none other than the brother of a fellow coworker, Dr. Emily Thomas. And so I left because that was too much to bear. This conversation with ER doctor Michele Harper will cover many of the lessons she's learned on her inspiring personal journey and the success of her New York Times-bestselling memoir, The Beauty in Breaking. One of the gifts of her literary journey, she says, are the conversations she is having across the country and around the world about healthcare. And that was a time that you called. So it felt like there was nothing left to do but continue to live in silence because there was going to be no rescue. After a childhood in Washington, D.C., she studied at Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. I support the baby as she takes her first breath outside her mothers womb.. Emergency room physician, Michele Harper, grew up in a complicated family. she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. These aren't - the structural racism isn't unique to the police, unfortunately. It certainly has an emotional toll. Join us for an enlightening discussion with Dr. Michele Harper as she highlights the lessons learned on her inspiring personal journey of discovery and . And it was impetus for me to act because it's one thing to realize. . So they're coming in just for a medical screening exam. Dr. Michele B. Harper is an emergency medicine physician in Fort Washington, Maryland. So the only difference with Dominic was he was a person considered not to have rights. Harper shares her poignant stories from the ER with Mitchell Kaplan. She was saying, "Leave. It's emotionally taxing. Harper shares her poignant stories from the ER with Mitchell Kaplan. I asked her nurse. There was nothing to complain about. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she attended Harvard, where she met her husband. Its not coincidental that I'm often the only Black woman in my department. She spent more than a decade as an emergency room physician. And I remember one time when he was protecting my mother - and so I ended up fighting with my father - how my father, when my brother had him pinned to the ground, bit my brother's thumb. I mean, it's a - I mean, and that is important. And it's a very easy exam. Dr. Harper has 25 years of experience in obstetrics and gynecology. Share this page on Twitter. Well, as the results came back one by one, they were elevated. HARPER: Yes. And apart from your many dealings with police as a physician, you had a relationship with a policeman you write about in the book, an officer who was getting out of a bad marriage to a woman who was irrational and very difficult. Angelina Jolie 's ex-girlfriend Jenny Shimizu also got married recently, tying the knot last week to socialite Michelle Harper. Nobody went to check on her. The other part of me was pissed off that she felt so entitled to behave so indecently. I had nothing objective to go on. In one chapter, she advocates for a Black man who has been brought in in handcuffs by white police officers and refuses an examination a constitutional right that Harper honors despite a co-worker calling a representative from the hospitals ethics office to report her. We're only tested if we have symptoms. Email this page. When we do experience racism, they often don't get it and may even hold us accountable for it. This is her story, as told to PEOPLE. micheleharpermd. DAVIES: You describe an incident in which a patient was brought in - I guess was handcuffed to a chair, and there were four police officers there who said he swallowed a bag of drugs, and they wanted him treated, I guess, you know, the stomach pumped or whatever. And that gave you some level of reassurance, I guess. We need to support our essential workers, which means having a living wage, affordable housing, sick leave and healthcare. She casually replied, "Oh, the police came to take her report and that's who's in there." I didn't know why. What she ultimately said to me after our conversation was, I just wanted to talk and now, after meeting with you, I feel better. She felt well enough to continue living. . Am I inhaling virus? In this gutting, philosophical memoir, a 37- year-old neurosurgeon chronicled what it is like to have terminal cancer. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Washington University School of Medicine, MD. Her physical exam was fine. Michele Harper is a female African American emergency room physician in an overwhelmingly male and white profession. And I think that that has served me well. And my brother, who was older than me by about 8 1/2 years - he's older than me. He graduated from UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE in 1995. DAVIES: Yeah. 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. But I always seen it an opportunity. Theyd tell me the same thing: were all getting sick. The end of her marriage brought the beginning of her self-healing. HARPER: Yes. "You can't pour from an empty cup.". Each step along the way, there is risk - risk to him being anywhere from injured, physically, to death. 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. She's a graduate of Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at . www.micheleharper.com. Her cries became more and more distressed. She's a veteran emergency room physician. His office is not accepting new patients. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. It relates to structural racism. The Beauty in Breaking tells the story of Dr. Harper, a female, African American, ER physician in an overwhelmingly male and white profession. 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. Let me reintroduce you. (An emergency room is a great equalizer, but only to an extent.) Then I started the medical path, and it beat the words out of me. They're allowed to do it. HARPER: That's a great question, and I am glad we're having the conversations and that there is space for the conversations. You know, ER doctors and nurses have a lot of dealings with police, and there's a lot of talk about reforming police these days, you know, defunding police in the wake of protests of police killings of African Americans. That's what it would entail to do what the police were telling us to do. Is that how it should be? DAVIES: What was going on when you - what made you call that time? Print this page. Theres a newborn who isnt breathing; a repeat visitor whose chart includes a violent behavior alert; a veteran who opens up about what shes survived; an older man who receives a grim diagnosis with grace and humor. And then there's the transparent shield. Michele Harper. 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. 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. She went on to work at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Philadelphia. The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir. He didn't want to be evaluated. 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