I Am Afraid of Young Surgeons

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

A few years ago, my wife and I faced the health crisis of our marriage. My wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor and she needed immediate surgery. I mean, immediate as in cancel your travel plans to China and get your affairs in order. Write a final letter to your children. Tell them how much you love them. That kind of health crisis was in our lives.

We met with the surgeon, highly regarded as one of the top brain surgeons in San Diego. His credentials were stellar. He spoke with authority. One wants authority before brain surgery. My wife and I never gave a nanosecond of thought to the surgeon’s ancestry or ethnic group. I refuse to so identify the man of medicine who saved my wife’s life on that October day.

 I am beside myself with fear when I hear that Social Justice has invaded the medical profession, particularly the delicate area of surgery.

Listen to me please, dear readers.

I do not care about Social Justice when my wife and mother of my children lies under the knife. When she is wheeled into the operating room and the door closes, I trust in one thing – competency. I want competency supremacy when a surgeon cuts into my wife’s skull. You can take your slogan words like white supremacy, oppression, marginalized, diversity, equity and inclusion and pound concrete-hard sand. Better yet, take a flying leap at the moon.

I am absolutely terrified to hear “America’s surgeons are not woke enough, according to the American College of Surgeons (ACS).” Do not treat my wife or me or my children as avatars for imagined oppression. We do not need your delusional pity and warped reality.

What is “a blueprint for implementing equitable practices” in medicine? There is no such creature. There is no such protocol. If I present with a brain tumor, assign me the best possible brain surgeon and let the surgeon work magic. I care not whether the surgeon shares my race. Why would I care? Please tell me. Does the tumor care whether my brain surgeon is the descendant of American slavery? I think not. It matters not to the tumor. Nor did it matter to my wife and me and our children on the date of my wife’s emergency surgery.

I would have lost my “retired from Blackness” mind if the exigent operation had been held up so that the hospital could locate a top descendant of American slavery surgeon in southern California. Or, shall I say the ACS has lost its mind to think equity matters in a time of life and death.

I try to imagine the madness away. I tell myself that the invasion of Social Justice into surgery is overblown hysteria by Fox News and white supremacists. My gut knows better. Any association that equates “micro aggressions,” “implicit bias,” and “White privilege” with care of my black American wife – well that is an association that has gone mad.

When a tumor occupies 1/3 of my wife’s cranial space, do I care about young surgeons trained in systemic and structural racism, disparities and black representation in the ACS? Please stop the world and let me get off. Now!

Do not do it, surgeons. Do not lump patients into racial groups. You are not a bean counter. Heal your patient, someone straining to be calm in the face of a dire diagnosis.

It is said that “Critical Race Theory-Related Ideas (are) Found in Programs At 108 of 155 Top American Medical Schools.” Thank God my wife had her emergency brain surgery in October 2016. The tumor is now gone and we bless the surgeon of authority who gave us a new lease on life.

As for today, I am afraid for my family, all descendants of American slavery, in the eyes of diversity, equity and inclusion training for surgeons. I am now afraid of young surgeons.