A doctor in the house : my life with Ben Carson

179 Pages·2016·4.37 MB·English

SENTINEL
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Copyright © 2016 by Carson Family and Cerise B. Rustin Foundation Penguin supports copyright.
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Photographs courtesy of the author unless otherwise indicated.
ISBN 978-0-69841181-4
Version_1
This book is gratefully dedicated to Sonya Carson, Ben’s mother, and
to my parents, Samuel and Cerise Rustin, who through their sacrificial
and loving guidance used their knowledge, wisdom,
and experience to shape Ben and me into who we are.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1
College and Meeting Ben
Chapter 2
Falling in Love?
Chapter 3
From Long Distance to Marriage
Chapter 4
Internship and Residency
Chapter 5
Australia
Chapter 6
Growing Family, Growing Career
Chapter 7
A New Home
Chapter 8
Family Travels
Chapter 9
Instilling Values in Our Children
Chapter 10
Being the Doctor’s Wife
Chapter 11
New Perspectives
Chapter 12
Retirement?
Acknowledgments
Photographs
Introduction
“Wake up! Ben! Ben! Wake uhhh . . .”
Horrific pain shot through my midsection, abruptly silencing my frantic cries.
It radiated to the extremities of my thirty-nine-week-pregnant body as I tried to
breathe. It was two a.m., and Ben, coming off another rough week, was sleeping
deeply and not responding to my desperate pleas. Prior to this particular night, I
had found it amusing that he could wake from a sound sleep at a single ring of
the telephone or beep of a beeper, but with any other sound, even when our first
baby son would cry, Ben would be the one sleeping like a baby! He called it
“selective hearing for medical survival.” I’m not sure I believed him, but it
sounded good.
Only it didn’t sound so good as the pain started up again. The contractions
were unexpected because I still had one more week to go and the first baby had
taken a full forty weeks. Yet here I was in the midst of what I knew had to be
labor, and because the contractions were just under two minutes apart, I was
thinking this was, to put it mildly, not good!
On the next break from the pain, I managed to make my way to the bathroom,
getting there just before another contraction hit. Calling out from the well-lit
bathroom to the still-darkened bedroom, the message finally reached Ben’s
subconscious.
Once awake, Ben went into doctor mode, though he didn’t yet realize how
advanced my labor was. “Are you sure the baby’s coming? How close are the
contractions? When did they start?” he called from the bedroom. Still trying to
catch my breath, I couldn’t answer right away, but thank God for Lamaze! The
breathing rehearsals from those classes kicked in and did their job! When I had
breath enough to answer, I realized that not only was the baby coming, he was
actually here!
“Honey, I think you better check,” I replied. And sure enough, little BJ was
there. Ben dashed into the bathroom just in time to catch BJ before he fully
emerged, holding the baby in one hand while he caught the afterbirth in the
other. The emergency was not over yet, though, because the umbilical cord
needed to be clamped. Ben literally had his hands full, so he told me to find
something to clip off the placenta.
Considering I had just given birth, this might be considered a bit much to ask,
but it had to be done, because the placenta contained the baby’s wastes, and it
would be unhealthy for that to flow back to the baby. Fortunately, since the labor
had taken less than an hour I was able to move around without too much
difficulty. I ran up and down stairs looking for anything that might work, peering
into drawers, checking on shelves, using my imagination to conjure up an
answer to the problem as I searched the entire house, along with Ben’s mother,
who was staying with us to help. Ben was calling out potential solutions,
suggesting clothespins and other items—but I knew there weren’t any
clothespins in the house, because we had a clothes dryer even back then.
Suddenly, rummaging through a drawer, I found a roller clip, the kind that is
shaped like a bobby pin, only with straight shafts. I ran back up the stairs to
where Ben had the baby, and he clipped off the umbilical, gave a sigh of relief,
and must have cleaned the baby up. I don’t know exactly what happened next,
because by that time the fire department had come and I had to answer the door.
The startled firemen instructed me to take my place on the stretcher. I politely
told them I’d been up and down the stairs several times and really didn’t need
one. “I can walk just fine,” I said. They countered with “This is ‘procedure,’
ma’am,” but they finally offered an alternative: a seated stretcher, much like a
sedan chair that carries royalty in the old films. It was great fun being carried
around like a movie star!
In one sense, BJ’s birth is the story of our life in a nutshell. From the day I
met Ben, he has come through for me in difficult situations. The life of a
neurosurgeon isn’t an easy one, and like others he has been called to go above
and beyond the call of duty almost constantly. The life of a neurosurgeon’s wife
isn’t much easier, and I’ve had to put up with challenges that most wives don’t
face. But it’s all been worth it. Together, we’ve been through poverty, tragedy,
disappointments, joy, successes, and wealth. Even when things have been hard,
we’ve had each other’s backs. I can’t help but admire and cherish a man who
always puts others first. I love this guy.
Chapter 1
College and Meeting Ben
When I left home after high school graduation, the anticipation of new learning
experiences thrummed through my veins. The excitement of going off to college,
of being on my own, thrilled me. What freedom to make decisions all on my
own, what power, answering only to myself! But it was a bit scary, too, no
longer having the immediate gentle counsel of my parents! What if I made a
mistake?
• • •
I had no plans to marry a doctor when I headed off to college. As a kid from
inner-city Detroit, I had stayed pretty close to the neighborhood I’d grown up in
before going to New Haven. When I first arrived on Yale’s campus in the fall of
1971, I was amazed, astonished, filled with wide-eyed wonder. I dutifully read
all the handouts for new students to make sure I was up on things and had an
understanding of what was required, but the sheer magnitude of this adventure
was somewhat mind-boggling! But I kept my astonishment to myself. As a
freshman, I wanted to act cool, like this was everyday stuff.
It wasn’t that my parents hadn’t tried to give me a breadth of experience, but
we were from a pretty humble background. The daughter of a Floridian
physician and nurse, my mother was orphaned at age twelve and was raised by
her great-uncle and -aunt in Detroit. She had finished high school at fifteen and
started college right away, becoming a teacher and later marrying my father,
who worked in an automobile factory in Detroit.
Born Lacena Rustin, I was the third of my parents’ five children. Linzy was
the oldest, followed by Cerise, then came me, and Del was the youngest. I
arrived at a time when my mother was working to provide a stable home life for
her family. My father was an alcoholic, something Mom wasn’t aware of when
they married, because during their dating period she saw him only when he was
on leave from the army and he was on his best behavior. Dad’s addiction forced
him to drop out of pharmacy school, but by the time I was two years old, he had
realized how destructive alcohol was and joined Alcoholics Anonymous. We
hosted AA meetings at our home regularly and Dad never took another drink.
When I was three, my baby sister, Sinena, a year younger than Del, died in a
fire, a tragedy that must have really shaken my parents, but my childhood was
pleasant despite the tragedy, and the addiction issue had been resolved by the
time I might have noticed. Dad was a family man who didn’t mind playing with
us and made us kids all feel special. He would hold our hands as we attended
parent/teacher conferences while Mom was involved in her own at her school.
And Dad was a great cook. He could take chicken and make it so tender and
flavorful it would make you cry for mercy. Best of all, Dad was my hero for
sneaking me candy. Mom didn’t like us having too much, but Dad would
provide me with treats from time to time because he knew how much I liked
them. He started calling me his “candy,” and the name stuck.
The sweet tooth that earned me my nickname didn’t change. From the time I
was about eleven on, as one of our chores, my sister Cerise and I would take
turns baking cakes for the AA meetings. I liked baking but didn’t appreciate my
mother’s rule that we couldn’t eat the fruits of our labors. I realize now, and
probably knew subconsciously back then, that she only had my best interests at
heart as I was a chubby kid. But it just didn’t seem fair that we had to go through
all that work baking from scratch and mixing the icing from powdered sugar and
butter and not even getting a little taste. We were obedient kids, though, and the
rules ruled.
In fact, Cerise was always willing to do whatever helped to keep the peace. I
recall one time when we were being babysat at the home of some of our parents’
friends, and the lady of the house required that we go to bed by seven p.m.
Cerise wasn’t my senior by much, but she was allowed to stay up a whole extra
hour later than our little brother, Del, and me. The injustice of having to go to
bed an hour earlier than our sister (when we usually all went to bed at the same
time) seemed so unfair. And because we were allowed to watch television,
something that was a very limited treat at home, it simply didn’t seem right that
Cerise should have an extra hour to watch while we didn’t. Del and I of course
protested our bedtime quite vigorously, but our hostess was firm in her decision.
So Cerise, with her giving, sacrificial spirit, said she would go to bed at the same
time as we did even though she could have watched TV an hour longer. That