It embarrassed me. I wanted to be a normal kid.

June 20, 2017 1:10 PM

Dr. Mary Austin is a pediatric surgeon in Texas who sometimes performs fetal surgery to correct a birth defect that she herself has.
posted by stillmoving (13 comments total)

Wow!
posted by bq at 1:23 PM on June 20, 2017

Awesome. My brother was born with this; it has not been an easy road for him.
posted by thelonius at 1:34 PM on June 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

There are good people in this world. It's important to remember that.

*sniffles*
posted by Fizz at 2:11 PM on June 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

One of my cousins has spina bifida. That shit's hard to deal with. Dr. Austin is doing good work.
posted by carrioncomfort at 3:17 PM on June 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Thanks for posting this.
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:17 PM on June 20, 2017

This is remarkable. Thank you for posting it.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:52 PM on June 20, 2017

What a beautiful story. Spina bifida was one of the things that most terrified me when my wife was pregnant. I had no idea they did in utero surgery for it. Also, thanks for introducing me to Stat.
posted by not_the_water at 4:15 PM on June 20, 2017

I'm thrilled she's doing this great work. I'm furious that our current medical system is so hostile to imperfection that she felt she had to keep her spina bifida a secret.

It's all down to pee and poop: adults seem to get unhinged by the thought of discussing it.
posted by Jesse the K at 4:52 PM on June 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

I really like crying over good stuff, instead of terrible stuff, for a change. Thank you.

(also, statnews seemed -- to me -- to come out of nowhere, but it has amazing content!)
posted by knownassociate at 5:34 PM on June 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

She's a very very cool person who had to walk that "you can be disabled if you prove yourself worthy and talented first" rigamarole that so many of us have to walk at work, and which is so incredibly complicated and difficult. Although it skirted the line, I'm glad her story wasn't turned into pure inspiration porn, even if some people are reacting to it like it is.
posted by colorblock sock at 8:07 PM on June 20, 2017 [8 favorites]

To be fair to medicine: all of society exerts the pressure to conform and not show weakness or difference and residency was just one of the many places where, according to the article, Dr. Austin sought to have her own medical history be invisible. One of my closest friends in medicine has a background similar to Dr. Austin and yes a lot of doctors have the potential to occasionally act like a kinda oblivious jerk about it but also so are a lot of people in her life who aren't doctors... humans and kinda awkward, flawed creatures regardless of their jobs.

Tangentially - this surgery is damn near the most exciting thing in perinatal medicine since surfactant and will probably remain the most exciting thing until we invent artificial placentas. I will soon work down the hall from an anesthiologist who has a decade of experience with these cases and that might be one of the coolest non-clinical perks about my job.
posted by midmarch snowman at 10:20 PM on June 20, 2017 [4 favorites]

I wish I could take this wonderful lady back in time to perform the operation on me in my mother's womb. But I'm alive, so I have that going for me, which is nice. #spinabifidasurvivor
posted by DrAstroZoom at 7:35 AM on June 21, 2017 [8 favorites]

Great article, thanks for sharing.

One of the scariest, terrible but also terrific and awesome hours in my life was being on the operating table with a fetal surgeon working on my baby, inside my belly. They gave me an epidural and I was awake for the whole thing, and let me tell you, I hope none of you have to live through something like this, but being able to witness a prodigy at work was amazing.

Fetal surgeons are doing, as people say, the Lord's work.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 12:42 PM on June 21, 2017 [4 favorites]