Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story (17 page)

The more we read, the more Candy and I liked the idea. Before long we were getting excited. Next we discussed Australia with friends. With few exceptions, our well-intentioned friends discouraged us. One of them asked, “Why do you want to go to a place like that?”

Another one said, “Don't you dare go to Australia. You'll be back in a week.”

“You wouldn't make Candy go through that, would you?” asked another. “Why, she's had such a bad time already. It'll be worse for her down there.”

I couldn't help smiling at this friend's words. His concern was our joy—and niggling worry. Candy was pregnant, and it did seem foolish to fly to the other side of the world at this time. The problem was that in 1981, while I was chief resident, Candy became pregnant with twins. Unfortunately, she miscarried in her fifth month. Now, the following year, she was pregnant again. Because of the first experience, her doctor put her on bed rest after the fourth month. She quit her job and really looked after herself.

When the question about her condition came up, Candy smiled each time but said firmly, “They do have qualified doctors in Australia, you know.”

Our friends didn't realize it but we'd already decided to go, even though we didn't consciously know it ourselves. We had gone through the formal steps of making application to the Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital of Queen Elizabeth II Medical Center, the major teaching center in Western Australia and their only referral center for neurosurgery.

I received a reply within two weeks. They had accepted me. “Guess that's our answer,” I said to Candy. By then she was almost more excited about our going than I was. We would leave in June 1983 and were fully committed to the venture.

We had to be fully committed because it took every dime we had to buy our tickets—one way. We wouldn't be able to come back even if we didn't like it. I would be doing one year as a senior registrar.
*

Several reasons made the venture attractive, one of which was the money. I would be getting a good salary in Australia—
a lot more money than I'd ever made before—$65,000 for the year.
†

And we badly needed the money.

Although the racial issue was settled, Candy and I still flew to Perth with a great deal of trepidation. We didn't know what kind of reception we'd receive. We had legitimate concerns because I'd be an unknown surgeon entering a new hospital. Despite her brave talk, Candy was pregnant and the possibility of problems stayed in our minds.

But the Australians received us warmly. Our being affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church opened many doors. On our first Saturday in Australia we went to church and met the pastor and several members before worship began. During the service, the pastor announced, “We have a family from the United States with us today. They're going to be here for a year.” He then introduced Candy and me and encouraged the members to greet us.

And did they! When the service concluded, everybody crowded around us. Seeing that my wife was pregnant, many women asked, “What do you need?” We had brought nothing in preparation for the baby, since we were limited in the amount of luggage we could carry from the United States, and those wonderful people started bringing in bassinets, blankets, baby strollers, and diapers (which they called nappies). We were constantly receiving invitations to dinner.

People at the hospital couldn't figure out how, within two weeks of our arrival, we had met a lot of people and were receiving a constant stream of invitations.

One of my fellow residents, who had been there five months, asked, “What are you doing tonight?”

I mentioned that we were having dinner with a certain family. The resident knew that only a few days earlier a different family had taken us on a scenic trip outside Perth.

“How in the world do you know so many people?” he asked. “You've only been over here a fortnight. It took me months to meet this many people.”

“We come from a large family,” I said.

“You mean you have relatives here in Australia?”

“Sort of.” I chuckled and then explained, “In the church, we think of ourselves as all part of God's family. That means that we think of the people where we worship as brothers and sisters—part of our family. The church people have been treating us like the family members we are.”

He'd never heard such a concept before.

F
rom the day we arrived, I liked Australia. Not just the people but the land and the atmosphere. Being hired as a senior registrar also meant that I got to do most of the cases. That responsibility boosted my appreciation for being in the land down under. Even Candy became really involved, as a first violinist in the Nedlands Symphony and a vocalist in a professional group.

A full month hadn't passed when an extremely difficult case came to our attention and changed the direction of my work in Perth. The senior consultant had diagnosed a young woman as having an acoustic neuroma, a tumor that grows at the base of the skull. It causes deafness and weakness of the facial muscles, eventually resulting in paralysis. This patient also suffered from frequent and extreme headaches.

The tumor was so large that, with the consultant's decision to take it out, he told the patient that he wouldn't be able to save any of her cranial nerves.

After hearing the prognosis, I asked the senior consultant, “Do you mind if I try to do this using a microscopic technique? If it works, I can possibly save the nerves.”

“It is worth trying, I'm sure.”

While the words were polite enough, the real flavor of his feeling came through. I knew he was saying, “You young whippersnapper, just try, and then see yourself fail.” And I couldn't blame him.

The surgery took 10 straight hours without rest. Naturally, when I finished I was exhausted, but also elated. I had completely removed the tumor
and
saved her cranial nerves. The senior consultant could tell her she would likely enjoy a complete recovery.

Within a short time after her recovery, the woman became pregnant. When the baby was born, in gratitude she named the child after her consultant because she thought he had taken out her tumor and saved her cranial nerves. She didn't know that I had done the delicate work. Actually, things are done that way. In Australia, the senior registrar works under the auspices of the consultant and he, as the top man, gets the credit for successful surgery, no matter who actually performs it.

The others on the staff, of course, knew.

After that surgery, the other senior consultants suddenly showed me enormous respect. From time to time one of them would come up to me and ask, “Say, Carson, can you cover a surgery for me?”

Eager to learn and anxious for more experience, I don't recall turning down a case—which gave me a tremendous load, far more than a normal case load would provide. In less than two months in the country, I was doing two, maybe three, craniotomies a day—opening patients' heads to remove blood clots and repair aneurysms.

It takes a lot of physical stamina to do that much surgery. Surgeons spend hours on their feet at the operating table. I could handle lengthy operations because while training under Dr. Long, I had learned his philosophy and techniques, which included how to keep going, hour after tedious hour, without yielding to fatigue. I had carefully watched everything Long did and was thankful he had removed a lot of brain tumors. The Australian neurosurgeons didn't know it, but I had brain surgery down pat. The consultants increasingly gave me a freer hand than they normally would have given a senior registrar. Because I did well and was always eager for more experience, I was soon scheduling brain surgeries one on top of another. It's not quite like an assembly line because each patient is different, but I soon became the local expert in the field.

After several months, I realized that I had a special reason to thank God for leading us to Australia. In my one year there I got so much surgical experience that my skills were honed tremendously, and I felt remarkably capable and comfortable working on the brain. Before long, the wisdom of spending a year in Australia became increasingly clear to me. Where else would I have gotten such a unique opportunity for volume surgery immediately after my residency?

I did a lot of tough cases, some absolutely spectacular. And I often thanked God for the experience and the training it provided. For instance, the fire chief in Perth had an incredibly large tumor involving all the major blood vessels around the anterior part of the base of his brain. I had to operate on the man three times to get all the tumor out. The fire chief had a rocky course, but eventually he did extremely well.

O
ne other highlight: Candy gave birth to our first son, Murray Nedlands Carson (Nedlands was the suburb where we lived), on September 12, 1983.

And then, almost before we realized it, my year was up and Candy and I were packing to return home. What would I do next? Where would I work? The chief of surgery at Provident Hospital in Baltimore contacted me soon after my return.

“Ben, you don't want to stay over there at Hopkins,” he said. “You could be so much better off with us here.”

Provident Hospital concentrated on medical services for Blacks. “No one is going to refer any patients to you at Hopkins,” the chief of surgery said. “Why, that institution is steeped in racism. You're going to end up wasting your talents and your career in that racist institution, and you'll never go anywhere.”

I nodded, thinking,
Maybe you're right
.

I listened to everything he had to say but had to make my own decision. “Thanks for your concern,” I said. “I haven't been aware of prejudice toward me at Hopkins, but you may be right. Anyway, I have to find out for myself.”

“You might have to go through a lot of rejection and pain to find out,” he countered.

“Maybe you're right,” I repeated, flattered that he wanted me to come to Provident. Yet I knew Johns Hopkins was where I wanted to be.

Then he tried another tactic. “Ben, we badly need someone here with your skills. Think of all the good you could do for Black people.”

“I appreciate the offer and the interest,” I told him. And I did. I didn't like disappointing him. And I didn't have the heart to tell him that I wanted to help people of all races—just people. I did say, “Let me see what happens during the next year. If things don't work out, I'll consider it.”

I never contacted him again.

I'm not sure what I expected to happen when I returned from Australia to Johns Hopkins, but it was the opposite of the prediction of the other doctor. Within weeks I started getting a lot of referrals. Soon I had more patients than I knew what to do with.

After returning to Baltimore in the summer of 1984, it quickly became evident that others accepted me as a doctor competent in surgical skills. The primary reason, for which I often thanked the Lord, was that I had been blessed with more experience during my one year in Australia than many doctors get in a lifetime of medical practice.

Within months after my return, the chief of pediatric neurosurgery left to become the chairman of surgery at Brown University. By then I was already doing most of the pediatric neurosurgery anyway. Dr. Long proposed to the board that I become the new chief of pediatric neurosurgery.
*

He told the board that, although I was only 33, I had a wide range of experience and invaluable skills. “I am fully confident that Ben Carson can do the job,” he later told me he said.

Not one person on the board of that “racist institution” objected.

When Dr. Long informed me of my appointment, I was overjoyed! I also felt deeply grateful and very humbled. For days I kept saying to myself,
I can't believe this has happened
. I think I was something like a kid who'd just had a dream come true.
Look at me, here I am the chief pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins at 33. This can't be happening to me
.

Other people couldn't believe it either. Many parents brought very sick children to our pediatric neurosurgery unit, often traveling great distances. When I walked into the room, more than once a parent looked up and asked, “When is Dr. Carson coming?”