I was born in a rough part of Detroit to 14 and 17-year-old parents. My father joined the Air Force to support our family. We moved around a lot, but I spent many of my formative years in Turkey until we returned to the US when I was 12.
As a long-haired and free-thinking teenager, I never planned to follow my dad’s footsteps into the military. I applied for several scholarships after high school, but as fate would have it, West Point offered me a spot at their prestigious academy and thus my career in the military began.
It was a difficult transition. After the very first day, I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror after tradition demanded that my long hair be completely shaved. The lack of privacy was hard enough but changing my individualistic mindset to a more collective one was my true challenge. With time, I learned to focus on the parts of the military that made me a better person.
I first became interested in Medicine because my mom was often very sick when I was young. I wanted to be able to care for her as well as others. When I selected West Point, medical school was an option, but the rules changed after I started, and I was then limited to selecting only fields that involved combat arms. As a result, I was initially commissioned in the Corps of Engineer with a plan to build bridges, so medicine seemed to be off the table. Nonetheless, I took the medical school prerequisites with the hope of being able to eventually pursue my dream. Fortunately, the rules again changed and the restriction to combat arms was lifted. Medical school selections had already been made, but through an exemption and because of my strong academic record I was accepted as an alternate and was able to enter school.
I attended the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland as part of their 3rd class ever. During one of my summer rotations as a first-year student, one day at lunch, a black OBGYN faculty member offered to have me rotate with him in clinic. I had envisioned pursuing a career in neurology or neurosurgery, because I was fascinated with the brain, but after performing 9 deliveries, procedures in the clinic and assisting in the operating room, I was hooked. I tried to like other specialties, but always came back to OB/GYN- which I decided to pursue.
After my residency at Walter Reed in D.C. I became interested in the long-term care aspect of GYN; especially oncology-related cases. This required fellowship training, and at the time, a service tour was required prior to additional training. I then served as a General OB/GYN physician and I was relocated to Augsburg, Germany as a result. There, I met my wife who also worked at the hospital as emergency room physician.
From the start, we had a lot in common. Her family is full of classical musicians and she plays the piano and her brothers were professional musicians with world class orchestras. My Dad was a musician himself and I grew up playing piano and guitar, although I consider myself more of a novice. In stark contrast, my sister is a well-respected (almost famous) touring with the likes of Harry Belafonte and Dianna Ross, Rob Thomas and Steely Dan and has released her own Jazz albums. Music and medicine brought us closer.
We married and relocated back to the USA. My wife had to re-do her training and decided to pursue a career as a pathologist with a fellowship in pediatric oncology. I ended up finishing my 3-year GYN oncology fellowship at Walter Reed and was then assigned to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. I was the only GYN-oncologist during my first 2 years on call working 80-100 hours a week. With 2 young daughters at home, it hard to keep a good work life balance but we made it work.
I retired in 2003 after 28 years of service and decided to move to UTHSCSA. During my first 8 years here, I built and ran the Gynecologic Oncology program alone taking call 24/7. As the practice grew, we hired 2 partners to help me run the service and continued to grow our practice and are hiring a fourth partner. We were recently approved as a Gynecologic Oncology Fellowship training program and have accepted our first fellow. We now also have Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants, so the staff is growing which is exciting. The teaching aspect of this program is very special to me. It’s so satisfying to watch the light bulb turn on in a student’s head as they finally fully grasp a difficult concept or procedure. My greatest compliment was when one of my former residents called me 10 years after training. He thanked me for the training I had given him and told me he could still hear my words ringing in his head while operating on a difficult case. This program feels like my baby. I feel incredibly proud to have overseen this program’s birth and expansion and fully expect it to be special. I hope that when I retire, I will have left a legacy of outstanding patient care and education and have contributed to the growth of our profession.
Story: John Kouam, Photos: Sujaan Lal