“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”


We all are the sum total of our genes and our environment. We are pre-disposed to certain genetically inherited personality traits. However, circumstances may force us to find a way to overcome those inherited dispositions.

I have always had a tender heart that can be easily bruised and broken; I have always been an extremely private person who bears my burdens alone and disguises my pain to the world; I believe all people are good and truthful with no ill will in them until they prove me wrong; I am shy; I have a fiery temper that can flare and control me at times. Those are things I can not change. They are inherently in me.

Life experiences, however, have forced me to have to try to overcome some of these. The most notable one is "shyness." Because I had to rear my girls alone, I had to compete in a man's profession to make enough income to support us. But, the real challenges I faced came in personal situations with men taking me lightly in such matters of health care for the girls, buying them cars, and educating them.

I had to fight battles with doctors and nurses who thought they could intimidate me with their knowledge. A nurse once made a mistake with Holly's medication that she was receiving through an IV piggyback. She immediately began tossing about, moaning and breaking out in a rash. When I asked the nurse to stop the medication because Holly was getting it too fast and reacting, she refused, stating that the medication became unstable if she did not receive it within 15 minutes.

I looked her squarely in the eye and stated, "Either you stop that IV right now, or I will jerk it out!"

She stopped it; then she turned to me and said, "The doctor's going to hear about this in the morning."

To which I replied, "You bet he is, because I am going to meet him at the door!"

She left the room and I shook for thirty minutes, because it had taken every single ounce of courage I could muster to overcome my natural inclination just to give in. This happened about 2 a.m. one morning. She came back before dawn to apologize. Instead of adding IV fluid to dilute the medication from the piggyback, she was giving it to her straight.

I also once had to throw a doctor out of Holly's room who had made a misdiagnosis that cost us an ambulance ride from Clinton back to the hospital (100 miles). I knew he was wrong when he said she only had an ear infection; but I let him convince me. He knew her history, though he was not her regular pediatrician. But he refused even to do a urine test when I suggested that I thought it was her kidney problem.

The next week when he stopped into her room, I told him that his services would not be needed again. When he tried to get smart, I calmly said,

"Your superior attitude cost us an ambulance trip back to the hospital from Clinton and a lot more suffering for my baby. I tried to tell you what was wrong; but you wouldn't listen. Now, get out of this room, and I never want you to darken this door again." Again, I had to fight to get those words out; but I was furious at the time.

My final altercation came when I took Holly into her regular pediatrician when she was about four. He could find nothing wrong; then he decided to give me a lecture about being too overly-protective, throwing in such platitudes as 'you're going to turn this child into a hypochondriac if you don't quit thinking she is dying every time she gets the sniffles.' This child and I had been to hell and back her first two years of life, so I probably was a bit "overly-protective."

I listened to his little lecture before I responded. Then, I said very calmly,

"I'll tell you what! You be the doctor, and I'll be the mother. You don't tell me how to be a mother, and I won't tell you how to be a doctor, and we should get along just fine." He remained Holly's pediatrician until she came into his office at age 23 with a diamond on her ring finger.

"Holly, it's time to find you a new doctor," he joked. "I don't treat old married women!"