The International Tinnitus Journal

How I Came to Be the Dizzy Doctor of New Orleans

I grew up in an Eastern European ethnic neighborhood in Chicago. I decided to become a physician because, while hospitalized at Cook County Hospital in Chicago for viral pneumonia at age 4 ½ , I was fascinated by what I saw doctors and nurses do. My parents had never gone to school and I didn’t know any doctors, so I waited until I was in first grade to ask my teacher, “Miss French, how do you get to be a doctor?” Her advice to me is paraphrased in these four important lessons: (1) You had better like people, listen and pay attention to what they say, and plan to work long hours. (2) School is an obstacle course. Forget whether you like the teacher or the subject. Get the best grades you can on the exams because if you don’t, you’ll never get to be a doctor. (3) It will take you 30 years to get where you want to be from where you are now. (4) I know you come from a poor family, so you had better get a job and start saving your money, because grade school and high school will be free, but you will have to pay for college and medical school. That summer I got a job selling ice cream bars on the streets of Chicago and made as much as a dollar on many days.