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Ashley McMullen

You're listening to The Nocturnists: Black Voices in Healthcare. I'm Ashley McMullen.

As Black healthcare workers, we are so diverse. Some of us are descendants of slaves. Some of our families came to the US to escape violence. And some of us came looking for opportunity. But no matter where we came from, the legacy of anti-Blackness runs deep. And while Black pain may be what others see when they look at us, we know that we are so much more. We are strong, we are creative, we are exuberant, and we are doing great things. After taking a moment to honor our collective grief in last week's episode, we wanted to focus this week on what makes us come alive. Here are your voices. This is “Episode Two: Joy."

Kimberly Manning

I am sitting on my porch right now. And it's Juneteenth, actually. Juneteenth is all about celebration, man. And to me, being Black every day is a celebration. I do like to make sure people don't get it twisted that with all the pain and all the things that make it heavy. I've yet to meet somebody who would trade it, you know? Who would trade being Black. And it's good to love who you are, right? One of my favorite things about being Black in Atlanta, in the safety-net hospital where I work, is the way Black people talk. I love it. I love how comfortable and easy African American vernacular is for me. Now, I recognize that every Black person was not, sort of, raised on African American vernacular, but I was. My parents are from Alabama. They both went to historically Black colleges. I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood and for college and medical school I attended historically Black institutions. And if I know you well, and you are fairly comfortable with African American vernacular, I am likely to speak to you with that. And particularly if you Black.

So when I'm walking in into Grady’s some mornings, man, I'll be pulling into the parking garage. The security officer'll look at me and I can't find my badge. And he'll be like, "You always can't find your badge. What you be doing with your badge, Dr. Manning?" I'm like, "I don't know! Like I get home and I don't know, I just take it off and I end up just forgetting it, man. Hook your girl up." He's like, "Okay, you know, I got you. Uh, you know, I got you." And that's that. And then I walk out of the parking garage into the elevator and I'll see somebody and they'll say, "Hey, what's up, Dr. Manning, what's up Dr. Manning? I ain't seen you in like a minute!" And I'll be like, "I know right?" "Where you been Dr. Manning?" I'm, like, "I been here, man. I been right here. I mean for like a hot second I was, you know, on quarantine. But, you know, I been around." "Oh, that's what's up. That's what's up. So, uh, how the boys doing?" "Aw, them boys doing good. They big, though. They gettin' big and they eat me out of house and home." "They out of school?" "Yeah, they out of school. They need to get back in school." "Naw, naw, don't hurt em, Dr. Manning, don't hurt em." "I'ma try, I'ma try. Might have to send him over there with you." (LAUGHS) And you know what? That, that just makes my heart soar. So because I am comfortable, you know, with, with African American vernacular, I use it liberally, every day at work.

And why would I not use something that I know can make my patients more comfortable? I start off formal but by the second time or third time that I've seen you if I see that it's more comfortable for me to relate to you in the, in this language that we relate in? Oh baby, that's how I'ma talk to you. So, your last day in the hospital: "Ay there Sir, what you know, good? You ready to get up out this hospital?" "Aw, Miss Manning, if it was, if I was any better I'd take two of me." "Oh, Lord, okay, now who comin' to get you?" "Oh my son, he gon carry me home." "Now your son, he stay wit' you?" "No, my son don't stay with me, he stay about a block away. He's the one coming to get me. Has a wife. So she's doing good. She's doing good." "You got all your medicine?" "I got everything I need, Miss Manning." "All right, then, Sir. I'ma talk to you later. Alright. And let me know if you need anything and you just have a nurse page me if there's anything else you need." "Will do, will do, I appreciate you." "Appreciate you too, sir." And that will be the end of the encounter. (LAUGHS) And you know what? Calling me Miss Manning is actually a term of endearment. My patients know I'm a doctor. So I'm not even offended by that, in that setting. So, yeah, that is my big joy about being a Black doctor in the hospital, where I primarily take care of Black people–the way we talk.

Tseganesh, Primary care physician

I love being a Black physician. I always say I became Black thirty years ago, when I came to the United States. I lived in Ethiopia. And there, I was Ethiopian, or I was–I was all sorts of things. But I was never, ever Black until I came here. And at first it was this slow-growing realization of what it means to be Black in the United States, and what White was, and where privilege is, and how so many things that I took for granted, and how I interacted with the world, completely changed and made no sense when I came here. But I've also been here long enough–I've been here for thirty years–and in the thirty years, every time I gained education, every time I went to college, then I went to med school, then I went to residency, my circles of Blackness got smaller and smaller. When I was in residency was the first time I practiced with other Black women. And what is amazing about being a Black–I mean, we say, like, a Black woman physician, but a Black physician in general–is how Blackness is transcendent. That it becomes this unifying thread between, not just us as physicians, but with us and the cafeteria worker, and with us and our patients, with us and our nurses. I remember practicing in residency with Haitians and Ghanaian Americans and from the South Americans and Black people from Atlanta and Black people from Minnesota, and we were, we were together. And I love that. I love how the diaspora is so broad, and I just keep discovering more and more facets of this multidimensional, multicolored Blackness that we all share. And it is so joyful. It creates this space where I can breathe, and I can talk how I talk, do what I do, just get to be myself and not have to put on all these different suits of armor and ways of talking and being and interacting, and I can stop self-editing. I can just be.

We used to have these things in residency, called "Blackouts," where we would invite all the Black residents to come over to my house. We would cook and sit around and talk and share and just literally be, just be in a space together. And it was amazing. I think we all struggle, living in this country, with our skin and our culture. And many of us have struggled with loving it. And I think in moments like that, in the moments when I'm connecting with patients, that I am so grateful, so grateful that the universe saw fit to make me Black. That the universe saw fit to give me this amazing covering over my, over my skin that lets me sit and be with, and unite with, and sing with, and cry with, and laugh with other Black people across the diaspora. And I love, love being a Black woman physician.

Ashley McMullen

So there was this day back in February, 2018, that I swear was just the Blackest day I had in possibly my life, definitely in residency. There were a group of maybe fifteen of us. Black residents in medicine, internal medicine, OB, pediatrics, just across the board, decided to just grab brunch on this random morning where we had a bunch of us off. So I met up with a couple friends, We drove across the bridge to this Cuban restaurant out in Oakland. And all of us just sat at this long table and we were just laughing and vibing. The music was dope. And we weren't even the loudest people there. There were just a bunch of other beautiful Black people and just enjoying this day and this music and this food. And it was so dope. That was also the year that “Black Panther” came out–the movie. And so anytime more than two Black people got together we had to do the Wakanda sign. So we took maybe three of those photos. Then it happened to be the same day as the inaugural Black Joy Parade that was in Uptown. So it's one of those beautiful days in the Bay Area that makes you forget about how much you're hemorrhaging in money for rent, because the sun is shining, the weather is perfect, and, you know, it's February. And we're walking outside across the lake to get to Uptown. And all down Broadway is the Black Joy Parade. Well, actually, we missed the parade part, and it's just the festival. So you got booth after booth of Black culture, Black clothing, Black jewelry, like, Black business owners, Black food. And the vibe is just real. Everybody's out there, like, with their kids, with their families, with their partners, with their friends, literally just celebrating being Black. And it was phenomenal.

But I had to bounce early. I hopped on the BART because I was going to meet up with my brother and his family for dinner. And so it's, you know, my, my big brother, my sister-in-law, their two beautiful Black kids. We eat dinner and then we decide to watch a lecture, of course, on Post-Traumatic Slavery Syndrome, of all things. But the speaker was dope. And we ended up talking about it afterwards. And it was just like, you know, this very real conversation around blackness and intergenerational trauma and kind of, like, how that pertains to our own family. And so we did that. And then I left again, back over to Lake Merritt to watch “Black Panther” for the second time, because I wanted to see it in Oakland. And this time, I met up with my friend from residency, one of my co-chiefs. And I saw her when I walked into the bar, and I was just like, Chloe, you are the first white person I've seen all day. And it was amazing. And she just started laughing. But you know, she, she, she knew what the deal was. So after that, we watched “Black Panther” in Grand Lake Theatre. And, needless to say, it was nothing short of magical, just this incredible superhero movie, centering Black culture across the diaspora. And it just brought me so much joy in that day. It is one that I will never forget.

Adegbemisola Daniyan

When I think about a moment when I felt really just proud and joyful to be Black, a Black woman in medicine, I think that's an experience I had during residency. I'd been taking care of this elderly Black woman in the cardiac care unit. I, not even, I don't even remember what she came in for, to be honest. But I just remember taking care of her for a few days in a row. And she was such a sweet lady. Every day I would go in there, she'd be so happy to see me. She would just always smile and just be so happy to see me and say, "I'm just so glad that you're my doctor. This is just so amazing that you're my doctor." She was like, "I'm so proud of you." She was just always so happy to see me.

And I remember the day she was going to be discharged, her children came to pick her up, actually. There was, I think, about three or four people in the room, I think, all her children and maybe a grandchild as well. And they were all just, like, "Oh my goodness, you're right, your doctor is Black!" I'm guessing she'd been telling them that her doctor, one of our doctors, was Black. And they were just almost astonished, like, "Oh, my goodness, your doctor IS Black." They were like, "Thank you so much. We're so proud of you. We're so happy to see you." And they were, like, "Can we please take a picture of you with our mom, if that's not weird?" But, you know, it was just one of those moments where it's, like, wow, like, it makes a difference that I am here in this space. You know, this group of people I'd never met before–and I never really even saw them after that day–but just to feel their pride and joy in me being the physician was, man, it's one of the, was one of the greatest experiences I had throughout my residency. And reflecting even now it's just bringing me so much joy and reminding me of the importance of the space that I occupy in medicine.

Erica Farrand

My mother was fierce and phenomenal. Love for her was, um, it was a choice. It was a choice that she made every day. It was an action. And my sister and I knew it. We, we knew that the extra jobs she worked after teaching every day, that the parent-teacher conferences and plays and performances that she never missed, was her way of saying, “I love you.” But actually saying the words was hard for her. It was something that we had to teach her over years. The exception to that was graduation, any graduation. Whatever verbal block she had on a day-to-day basis was just magically lifted, and the woman's pride and joy just bubbled over. You know, there would be comments about, "Ladies and gentlemen, please hold your applause to the end." And, you know, she just, she couldn't, she couldn't, she'd jump up and yell, "That's MY child," with such unabashed enthusiasm. And any cues that I got from peers that this was something to be embarrassed about, I just, I wasn't, I couldn't be. I mean, her, her joy was, it was everything.

When, when she passed, I learned for the first time how complicated and iterative grieving is. And it was months after, and I'm sitting with my infant daughter, applauding, you know, her reaching some milestone that only a new first-time parent is going to think to celebrate. And it, sort of, it hit me that with my mother gone, that level of celebration and joy, those moments were also, they were gone. And that was a grieving process in and of itself.

When I, when I finally returned to medicine, because I took some time off, there was a woman I met, a patient, weeks into getting back into the hospital, and I will carry that experience with me to the grave. She was fierce and phenomenal. She was a Black woman with two daughters. And the parallels were just impossible to ignore. And I took her illness and her death really hard. And I remember, when we had reached the end of treatments we could offer and, in honoring her wishes, we went in to talk to her about transitioning to hospice care–privately, before we had a family meeting. And after we were done talking through everything, she put her hands on mine and said, "Your mama would be so proud." And I was just overwhelmed with thanks and joy, in that moment, for having had a parent who spent years teaching her children their worth, to own excellence, and using every opportunity she had to celebrate that and amplify that on any stage. And for a stranger to remind me that I didn't have to have my mom next to me to hear that message.

Utibe Essien

Just got back from a run. And during the run, I was listening to a podcast where an African American historian reported that a lot of her students have been asking her, in her classes, where's the Black joy? And that's a real sentiment, one that I've definitely been feeling over the last few weeks, last few months. It's difficult to find the joy in spaces where there's so much hurt. But I'm really also an eternal optimist and, so, try to find those pieces of joy. You know, joy in the fact that ten years ago I was sitting in a classroom, taking a remake for a genetics exam that I failed in medical school. And today I get to round on the floors as the attending on medical service. There's so much change that has come over the last ten years of our lives, though it feels like there's also so little that has changed. But without the opportunity to look back on history, look back on time and see how far we've come, sometimes these acute pains, acute hurts, makes it feel like there is no Black joy, and that pain is all that we have.

Today is Juneteenth, 2020, and one-hundred-fifty-five years ago there was even a little less to be joyful about, when people of African American, or African American descent, or African ancestry, were still shipped around as property of white landowners in our country. And here I am sitting in my backyard, about to go upstairs into my own home and have a life that I could have never dreamed of fifteen years ago, much less one-hundred-fifty-five years ago. In a couple of days I'll be celebrating Father's Day with my father, another Black voice in healthcare who raised me to be who I am today, along with my beautiful mother. Their lives remind me of a lot that I have to be joyful for, thinking about their journey from villages in West Africa to where they are today.

Lawren Wooten

I think every time that I have encountered an elderly Black person while I'm wearing my white coat has really just been like a treat. A nice, like, little gift of joy. They always get so excited and want to talk to me and tell me how proud they are of me, especially since I'm in school, in this, in the city where I grew up. I tell them I'm from here and they always get very excited. And, like, "I'm gonna come see you, honey." Like, it makes me so happy. I was with pediatricians since I'm thinking about going into peds, and spending time with the kids, like, it just made me so happy. Whenever I see a little, a little Black girl, and I talk to her about what she's doing. And I am always very intentional about saying, like, “Oh, you're so smart,” or, like, “I love your hair.” I always try to compliment them because I feel like they will, that will help build up self-confidence. I feel like I always, I had, I actually had a Black pediatrician, female pediatrician, and I absolutely loved her. I loved being around her and talking to her. And I think I really would love to have those kinds of relationships, where the kids are excited to come and see their doctor.

Stephen Noble

The moment I realized I love being a Black person in healthcare was my intern year as an undesignated preliminary surgery resident. The first rotation was pediatric surgery. I tried to prepare myself as much as possible the night before, talking to my senior resident as to what I need to do to prepare. The first operation that I remember scrubbing in with my attending for, was something that I'll never forget. It was going to be a pretty straightforward case. I looked up the, the individual the night before. It was gonna be an umbilical hernia. Pretty straightforward case, I had seen many of these done before, but I wasn't prepared for what I was going to experience. The young man was a young Black kid about four or five. And I could tell he was nervous. And I could tell that him–and his parents were with him, and they all seemed to be pretty nervous as my attending and I approached the patient. The attending explained that we were going to be the surgeons taking care of him. Of course my attending had previously met the patient and his family in clinic. However, this was the first time that the patient and the family were meeting me. And my attending introduced me to the patient and his family as a young doctor that was going to be assisting him and performing the operation. And more importantly, I was going to be the one that was going to be doing–that he was going to be assisting me in performing the operation. And it was at that moment that the young kid just kind of sparked up. His eyes lit up, bright-eyed, and he looked at me with amazement, saying, "You're going to be my doctor?" To be able to provide that sense of, of satisfaction and gratitude and, and relief as the patient realized that he was going to be able to have someone that looked like him actually operating on him and taking care of him was really the moment that I realized that I love being a Black person in healthcare.

Christopher Jackson

I can distinctly remember growing up in my grandmother's home back in Georgia, sitting in her living room right in front of a brown Wurlitzer piano, playing this piece over and over and over again. And I remember this piece, specifically, from my childhood, because of the words of the song and how they really relate to the experience of being a Black person in America. I remember my music teacher, Miss Hobbs, you know, telling me that this song will be more than the chords that I play if I really dug deep and tried to understand what the song communicates. It communicates to me how far we have come. I certainly don't face the same challenges that my grandmother did, growing up in the 1930s, and deciding at that time that she wanted to pursue being a nurse and wanting to pursue being a nurse challenged the status quo for a female and a Black woman in the 1950s to go to nursing school. I certainly then face the same challenges of my grandfather who grew up poor in the backwoods of South Carolina, not even getting a chance to finish high school, but knowing that he wanted a family and wanted to be able to provide for those around him. And that drive, that push made him go and join the army to make a life for himself. And even though my challenges aren't the same as theirs, I certainly can appreciate their journey. Oftentimes, we feel that our voices are not heard, that our voices are not appreciated. Even in the first stanza of this song, “Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, with the harmonies of liberty,” is this call–that we should lift up our voices, that we should not be silenced, (PIANO MUSIC ) that what we have to say and what we feel matters, even in a world that makes us feel like we don't matter, always. (PIANO MUSIC CONTINUES)

Max, Medical Student

So last year, at the AMA conference, I had a moment that was just like, “Oh my god!” So if you've been to AMA before, you know that there is usually, like, a big party every night. And so I was a little apprehensive. You know, I bought tickets to parties for every single night. But the night prior to this one, you know, the club owners and the bouncers, they made us stay in line for so long that I came to the party already ready to be upset. But it turned out, you know, I got to the party, went up the stairs, there was this kind of, like, stairway that led you to where the main party was at. And when you got up there, wherever you're first standing, there are tables kind of surrounding what is the dance floor, and you actually had to go down the stairs. There was a little bit of a crowd to get through, and so, eventually, my classmates and I, who had gone to the party together, made our way to the dance floor. And I froze because everyone was doing the Electric Slide to Cameo Candy. I was just kind of like, “Oh my god, wow! Look at this sea of just beautiful blackness!” And, you know, everybody just kind of knows what to do when that song comes on. It's just, kind of, those, very like Black family reunion moments. And we just kind of know, we all know what to do. Everybody lines up the same way. And we do the same thing. And it's just, kind of, it's magical. I don't know how else to describe it. (ELECTRIC SLIDE MUSIC, CHEERING CONTINUES)

Ashley McMullen

This has been The Nocturnists: Black Voices in Healthcare. I want to thank our core team, executive producer, Kimberly Manning, The Nocturnists' founder, Emily Silverman, podcast producer, Adelaide Papazoglou, sound engineer, Jon Oliver, and medical students, Lauren Wooten and Rafae Posner. Thanks also to executive producer, Ali Block, and program manager, Rebecca Groves. Our illustrations are by Ashley Floréal. Our theme song is by Janaé E.

Black Voices in Healthcare is made possible by the California Medical Association, the California Health Care Foundation, and people like you who have donated through our website and patreon page. Thank you for supporting our work in storytelling. If you'd like to add your voice to our project, visit our website at thenocturnists.com. We'll be back next week. Until then, remember: Black lives matter. Black health matters, and Black stories matter.