Pain Into Purpose: Dr. Leana Wen Shares Her Life Story

3 years ago 399

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Dr. Leana Wen is simply a doctor, TV expert and nationalist wellness adept who has taken halfway signifier during the COVID-19 pandemic. But portion Baltimoreans cognize Dr. Wen from her clip arsenic the city’s wellness commissioner, fewer details astir her idiosyncratic beingness person been revealed.

That is until the merchandise of her publication implicit the summer. “Lifelines” chronicles Wen’s beingness travel and explores the formative moments, some bully and bad, that led her go who she is today.

One of the astir pivotal moments elaborate successful the publication was the needless decease of a lad with asthma, a calamity that haunts Wen to this day. She was 10 years aged erstwhile her neighbour needed aesculapian attention. His grandma would not telephone for assistance due to the fact that they were undocumented immigrants and she feared deportation.

“She was acrophobic the migration authorities would amusement up and, arsenic a result, helium died. This small lad died,” Wen recalled during an interrogation with WJZ. “I saw him dice virtually successful beforehand of me.”

Sitting successful the backyard of her Baltimore home, Wen inactive gets upset erstwhile talking astir a breached strategy that doesn’t let everyone to person adjacent entree to wellness care. Though decades person passed since her neighbour died, inequality wrong the wellness attraction strategy remains.

“I constitute successful this publication however the other of poorness is health,” Wen said.

Poverty is thing she knows each excessively well. After she was calved successful Shanghai, China, her parents moved to the U.S. erstwhile she was 7. Her household lone had $40 erstwhile they arrived. She knows firsthand the pressures that fiscal insecurity tin inflict astatine home.

“I retrieve determination were 2 issues my parents talked astir each day, they disquieted astir each day, they argued astir each day,” she said. “And that was wealth and our migration status.”

These are immoderate of the memories that flooded her caput erstwhile she sat down to constitute “Lifelines.” As a child, she came to cognize eviction and homelessness. She acknowledged that she suppressed immoderate of those memories and feelings implicit the years.

“There was a batch I had not thought astir my aged childhood. A batch I had possibly tuned retired connected intent due to the fact that determination were parts of my puerility that were truly hard,” Wen said.

Despite those challenges, Wen entered assemblage astatine the property of 13. She followed that up with aesculapian schoolhouse astatine 18 and became a Rhodes Scholar. These days, she’s a professor, doctor, writer, and CNN analyst. But adjacent though she has enjoyed a palmy nonrecreational career, nary of it has travel easy.

“[I] really felt beauteous tense erstwhile the publication archetypal came retired due to the fact that determination were truthful galore parts of my upbringing and my beingness that, astatine antithetic points of my life, were sources of shame,” she said. “And it was hard for maine to share.”

Those insecurities included a terrible code impediment, a information she tried desperately to hide. She said she did not privation anyone to spot her stutter, particularly arsenic a kid struggling to larn English.

Like poverty, Wen persevered done her stutter and the connection barrier. Her subject and thrust to flooded those challenges and others mightiness person originated with her mother, who challenged her daily.

“She knew that I needed to larn English precise quickly,” Wen remembered. “And so, she said to me, ‘You person to memorize 100 vocabulary words each day.’ When she got home, she would quiz maine connected 100 words.”

If her parents hadn’t been granted governmental asylum successful the U.S., Wen said, she mightiness present beryllium a Dreamer instead. That’s a word for undocumented immigrants who came to the state arsenic minors and are fixed impermanent residency with the imaginable to go imperishable residents if definite conditions are met.

And if it weren’t for her mentors successful college, she said, she mightiness not person go a doc astatine all.

It was portion discussing her hardships that Wen brought up the words Elijah Cummings, the precocious congressman from Maryland who often spoke astir the value of symptom arsenic a motivator.

“He liked to say, ‘You crook your symptom into your passion, that is your purpose,'” she said. “Pain, passion, purpose.”

In her book, she describes her beingness arsenic a “journey into nationalist health.” In 2014, that travel led her to Baltimore wherever she was presented with an accidental to go the city’s authorization connected nationalist health. It’s a work Wen did not instrumentality lightly.

“I was truthful excited and truthful grateful to person the accidental to person had my imagination job, which was to go the city’s doc and the Baltimore Health Commissioner,” she said.

Wen’s accomplishments arsenic wellness commissioner are elaborate successful the book. While they tin beryllium attributed to the qualities that made her palmy – hard work, dedication, ambition – Wen believes determination mightiness person been thing other successful play, too.

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“I would adhd 1 much connection to what I person been, which is lucky,” she said.

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