Hear Our Cry

By Aletha W. Tippett MD

Hear Our Cry is about a twenty-year journey of this physician through the world of wounds, amputations, and limb salvage, always trying to serve and show compassion. This book has been a dream, wanting to tell the story of wounds and amputation and how they can be treated and healed. The idea started when confronted with the horror and desperate grief of amputation. It seemed to be a hidden problem, not easily seen or understood by others, something that was happening behind closed doors. Most of the people lived in nursing homes or hospice, not seen outside the rooms they lived in. It is Hear Our Cry, because the people living this horror are crying out, begging to be heard.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796017779

Aletha W. Tippett MD

Dr. Aletha W. Tippett, MD received her BS in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri in 1975 and her MD from the University of Cincinnati in 1997. Dr. Tippett has done wound care for 20 years and has treated over 15,000 wounds. Her main areas of focus in wound care are limb salvage and pressure ulcer prevention and treatment and she brings a bio-engineering approach to these. She has been honored with numerous awards in the healthcare community and is a published author and international speaker and teacher on wound care topics. She was president of the Hope of Healing Foundation, dedicated to limb salvage and novel wound therapies. She is a member of the International Biotherapy Society and is an active “biotherapist”, using maggots and leeches in her wound care practice. Dr. Tippett is also active in hospice and is a certified hospice medical director . Dr. Tippett got her degree in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri, worked for five years as an engineer, then left work to stay home and raise her three daughters. Later in life, inspired by Dr. Albert Schweitzer, she went to medical school and became a family physician and wound specialist. This book is the odyssey of her twenty years in medicine and wound care.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Called by God

Ah, the exhilaration of starting a new field, a new arena that is yet unknown. I was a newly minted doctor even though I was an older woman with a previous career in chemical engineering. The way I got into medicine is different than how most get there. When I was young, just out of high school, I was smart and signed up for college with no career counseling. I took the usual first-year college courses, English, history, but after my first semester, I left and married my high school sweetheart. We then ran a small business, a butcher shop, for three years until we divorced. After that, I was alone and penniless, still wanting to go to college, now wanting to major in biochemistry, since I thought I wanted veterinary medicine. Accordingly, I marched into the veterinary medicine office and told the burly man there I wanted to be a veterinarian. He laughed heartily and told me, You can’t be a veterinarian—you’re a girl. Since I had watched a TV show about Dr. Dixie Cline, a woman veterinarian, years ago, I was stunned by this. Maybe medicine would be a way after a biochemistry degree. I still had no money, and no scholarship money was available, so I was at loose ends. I considered joining the navy but didn’t do that. My younger brother called me; he was in engineering and asked me to see the dean and find out what his status was. Not having anything better to do, I walked to the College of Engineering and asked to speak to the dean. I asked about my brother, and the dean told me he had just written him that he was done there because he was failing. I said, Too bad he has money but doesn’t have grades, and I have grades but don’t have money. The dean got a very excited look on his face and asked what my courses were. I told him lots of chemistry. He then walked me to the head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and we talked, and I was offered a scholarship that would put me back in school. My thought at the time was Just do the chemical engineering, and then later, you can do medicine.

While in engineering computer class, I was called out to an office to meet a man from Procter & Gamble. We talked, and he offered me a summer job as an engineer for $1,000 a month. That was more money than I could imagine. I had only worked secretarial jobs that paid a couple of dollars an hour. So I took the job and had a fabulous summer doing things I never knew had existed. It made me very excited to go back to chemical engineering to finish my degree.

Thus, I went back to chemical engineering. I met my future husband in class, and he and I studied a lot together and worked on homework together. He graduated first in the class, and I was fifth. It was a small class of thirty-five. After we finished school in December, we interviewed companies for jobs. At that time, chemical engineers could write their own ticket; they were in such demand. We were a matched set when we interviewed. My husband was the top, but I was a top woman, very desirable at that time. We flew all over the country interviewing, were wined and dined, and, finally, decided on working for Phillips Petroleum in Borger, Texas. We worked in different plants. I was in the copolymer plant. It was chemical engineering work. I climbed columns, and in Texas, the wind does blow and the columns sway. My fingerprints are still on one of the columns. One of the products made in the factory I worked in was black rubber like used in tires. I was working on that when we decided we didn’t want to work for Phillips anymore. After one year, we decided this wasn’t our cup of tea, so we called Procter & Gamble and asked if they were still interested in us. We had turned them down. They were excited and said yes, come right away. So the petroleum company let us go, and we went to Pennsylvania to go to work at the Mehoopany complex, again each in a different plant. My husband was in the paper mill, and I was in paper products—Charmin, Pampers, Luvs.

I worked there for five years, a wonderful, challenging job. Then I got pregnant and had my first baby. With her, I decided to quit Procter & Gamble, much to their distress. But it was the best decision I ever made. I had a wonderful time with my new baby, and three years later, I had another girl, and then three years after that, a third girl. My husband was still with Procter & Gamble and beginning to look at how he could move ahead with the company.

The years of having and raising children were filled with other activities too. My husband and I sponsored twelve foster children. I was active in our local church and was the lay minister, director of education, and director of council on ministries. I was also active in clinical ecology, understanding how the environment affects your health. I taught a lot of courses and counseled a number of patients.

After staying home with my children, I had decided to do something, and my calling from God was to go into medicine. It was like hearing God speak to me, Go into medicine. I thought I was too old and argued with God, but He led me to read an autobiography of Albert Schweitzer. I was so impressed with the story and realized your age had nothing to do with what you should do. Dr. Schweitzer was in his thirties when he started medical school and was fifty when he first started his clinic in Gabon, Africa, and he was answering a call from God. One of his most famous sayings is The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others. This became my mantra of how I would live my life.

With God in charge, everything happened smoothly. I signed up and took the MCAT. While sitting for the exam, I talked to the girl in front of me during break. She said her friend was twenty-eight and taking the MCAT and that amazed her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was thirty-eight. The MCAT people had sent me a packet and told me that’s all I needed to know, so I took them at their word and did no additional study. My MCAT scores were very solid and would be a help in applying for med school.

I researched the statistics and found that an in-state resident, first-time applicant on the early decision plan had a 70 percent chance of being accepted. So that was the plan.

My husband and I studied where we could move and decided Cincinnati would be the best—it was headquarters for Procter & Gamble (which my husband still worked for), and the College of Medicine was looking for alternative students. We sold our house in Pennsylvania and found a nice place in Cincinnati in a good school district for our girls. A year later, I applied to medical school, and since I was a state resident, first-time applicant, on early decision, I was accepted. I had taken the MCAT two years before, and my scores were very good, which helped. So I did go to medical school, which was fun for me and much easier than chemical engineering, and much to my surprise, graduated first in my class. It was all God’s plan, and it worked well.

The first weekend we were in Cincinnati, we went to a local Methodist church, and that day, they were collecting funds for a program that involved serving homeless in Cincinnati. I met the doctor who was doing this work and spoke with him. He and a couple of nurses were doing foot care among the homeless. He invited me to join and watch, so I did. Another sign of God’s work in hand. How could one refuse to work with the homeless in our new city? I started going every week to the homeless in a shelter downtown Cincinnati and helped where I could. Because of my background, I was a good candidate to set up and organize our foot care clinics. Therefore, I did that plus recruited about one hundred volunteers. Our foot care clinics were really growing and doing well. I went every week and did that for almost twenty years. When I got to medical school, I realized there was an opportunity to involve medical students as well. We had always thought the people coming for foot care would benefit from some medical attention such as blood pressure or measuring blood sugar.

So medical students were recruited to go to the homeless shelter. It turned out to be the most popular extracurricular activity in the school. We had dozens of students sign up each week to go to the shelter. One of the most valuable things we did was give flu shots. At first, we were last on the list from the state to provide flu shots, so we gave shots in January, almost after the flu season. After a few years, I owned a vaccine company and donated flu shots every year. Of course, now we had shots at the beginning of the flu season, in September and October. The impact was visible. So many fewer people had respiratory illnesses once we started vaccination early in the season.

CHAPTER TWO

Medical School

Going to medical school for me was just like technical training I had done in my engineering jobs. I received a pamphlet when starting school that explained how to study in medicine. I followed the rules precisely. I read every assignment ahead of class and then took notes in class. After class, I combined my notes with any handouts for the class. I did this for the entire time I was in medical school, amassing twenty-five large three-ring binders of notes. I only missed one class the entire time, and the lecture I missed there always came back to haunt me.

My husband and I first tried doing medical school without child care, but that wouldn’t work, as we found out when our eight-year-old got pneumonia. Once that happened we settled on getting au pairs for our girls. That was a busy but enjoyable task. We had a total of four girls, from France, Spain, and England. It was enriching for us and hopefully good for all the girls. Our Spanish au pair came back to the United States and married a man she met here. We were at their wedding, and my husband gave her away. She is still my Spanish daughter.

I was the same age as all my professors, and we got along great. Sometimes, I would be assisting in surgery, talking about Procter & Gamble. My professors were very interested in my life before medicine. Because of my age, patients often looked to me, causing me to be embarrassed in front of my team. But I worked carefully and diligently, helping some of my patients to deal with their circumstances. One woman was very depressed, but she was able to gain hope and come back to life. The surgeon brought me in front of the team to say what a good job I had done.

My surgery rotation was very demanding. I started at 6:00 a.m. and went until midnight. The last few hours each night would be spent visiting and counseling a patient in the hospital. During the rotation, one of the transplant surgeons, very highly respected in the department, held weekly teaching classes. In the class, he would pose a question and then point to a student to answer. He always started on one side of the room and then went one by one asking students questions. I remember once, it was my turn, and I felt like melting into my chair, but I somehow rallied and answered the question correctly. Now it turned out that these lectures coincided with clinic time in surgery. I refused to miss clinic time, and for some reason, we had to all agree one way or the other. I held my ground even though some of the other students were very angry. I would not miss making rounds with a surgical resident—that was how I would learn. It was fortunate I was in the clinic because one day, I was supposed to do a rectal exam on a large man. I asked the chief resident, a small woman, how to do it, and she very carefully taught me how to do it, so even for a small woman, it was easy, and I continued doing it that way throughout my medical career.

The training in medicine was so easy compared to chemical engineering. I was amazed that math did not exist in medicine when advanced mathematics was the norm in engineering. Definitely, my training in engineering and my work in the field helped me a lot in medicine. I think all doctors should have an undergraduate degree in engineering. While medical school was easier than chemical engineering, that is not to say the coursework was not demanding. Gross anatomy was one of our first courses, and I, to my regret, thought, Why would I ever need this? Boy was I wrong. In my muscle work and in limb salvage and wound care, anatomy was very important. I did well on all the exams but struggled with the labs, ultimately getting a B in gross anatomy, my