[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 108 (Monday, July 30, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Page S8394]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page S8394]]
                            DR. CAROLYN REED

 Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Dr. 
Carolyn Reed, director of the Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical 
University of South Carolina. The Post and Courier newspaper in 
Charleston, SC recently published a profile of Dr. Reed in a special 
Remarkable Women section. I have the great pleasure of working with Dr. 
Reed and can attest to the remarkable job she has done since taking the 
reins as director last year. She is a talented and compassionate 
surgeon and effective administrator who easily blends these two roles 
in mapping the Cancer Center's future. Her commitment to offer all 
South Carolinians state-of-the-art cancer care is unwavering.
  I ask that the article be printed in the Record.

            [From the Post and Courier (SC), July 25, 2001]

                    Surgeon Is Head of Cancer Center

                           (By Dottie Ashley)

       You might think a pall would hang in the air when you enter 
     the office of Dr. Carolyn Reed. She must deal daily with 
     deadly disease in her dual roles as thoracic surgeon and 
     director of the Hollings Cancer Center at MUSC.
       But, instead, you can't help but smile.
       Occupying one shelf, alongside a volume titled ``Thoracic 
     Oncology,'' is a large green jar with the words ``Male 
     Sensitivity Pills'' printed on the label.
       ``I doubt if that endears me to my male colleagues,'' says 
     Reed with a laugh. Wearing her white doctor's coat over a 
     lilac blouse, she buzzes around the office, filling it with 
     energy and optimism, even when she is viewing results from 
     radiology that reveal a patient has lung cancer.
       The surgeon, now 50, who won a thoracic surgical oncology 
     fellowship to the venerable Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer 
     Center, doesn't beat around the bush.
       She's a straight-talking Maine Yankee, and, on this 
     morning, speaking firmly into the telephone to a colleague, 
     says, ``This is absurd; the system is making us do 
     unnecessary procedures.''
       Accustomed to changing the system and cracking glass 
     ceilings, Reed is one of 4,000 practicing cardio-thoracic 
     surgeons in the United States, of which only 2 percent are 
     female.
       And she is the only female thoracic surgeon practicing in 
     South Carolina, according to state figures.
       Although Reed, who is single, has cut back to a degree on 
     the number of surgeries she performs since taking over as 
     director of the Hollings Cancer Center last August, she is 
     still very involved with her first love. She worries that 
     more women don't enter the thoracic surgery arena.
       ``It's true more women are getting into medicine, but not 
     really into surgery and especially thoracic surgery,'' she 
     says, noting that when she graduated from the University of 
     Rochester School of Medicine in 1977, only 10 percent of 
     those in medical school residencies were women. Today, that 
     figure is close to 50 percent. But she points out that only 
     about 5 percent of the residents-in-training in the field of 
     thoracic surgery are women.
       ``It's clearly a male-dominated field,'' she says. ``For 
     example, I use the nurses' locker room at MUSC because there 
     is no locker room for female surgeons. But it doesn't bother 
     me a bit because I respect nurses and view them as 
     colleagues, not as handmaidens.''
       ``The Heart is an Organ To Pump Blood to the Esophagus'' 
     are the words mounted on a plaque in Reed's office, 
     indicative of her fascination with the chest portion of the 
     human body.
       ``I perform operations involving lung and esophageal 
     cancer,'' says Reed, who assumed the position of professor of 
     surgery at MUSC in 1985.
       Always interested in science when attending high school in 
     rural Maine, Reed became aware of the devastating effects of 
     cancer when her father died of the disease when only in his 
     40s. At the time, she was a freshman at the University of 
     Maine, where she graduated in 1972 as valedictorian of the 
     class.
       She then went on to the University of Rochester School of 
     Medicine, where she received her medical degree in 1977, 
     graduating with honors and distinction in research.
       However, after working in research with her mentor who was 
     a specialist in leukemia, she learned that she vastly 
     preferred to work with patients than in a lab.
       ``I love my patients,'' she says. ``It has been said that 
     doctors should keep a professional distance, but many of my 
     patients have become my friends. The day that I don't cry in 
     my car on the way home when I have lost a patient is the day 
     I will quit.''
       And in the past, she encountered some who encouraged her to 
     quit.
       When she was a resident in general surgery in 1982 at New 
     York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City, Reed 
     was told by the center's leading teaching surgeon: ``Women 
     only belong in the kitchen and the bedroom.''
       ``Do you think I liked operating with him after hearing 
     that?'' she asked rhetorically. ``I told him I didn't agree 
     with him, but then I went right ahead and learned every 
     single thing I could from him, because he was a brilliant 
     man.
       ``And I think I eventually earned his respect because I 
     ended up being the chief resident that year.''
       She also faced other adversities: When she first arrived at 
     New York Hospital, someone referred to her as ``that poor 
     intern,'' and she learned that was because normally the 
     thoracic surgery floor has two interns, but this time it 
     would have only one. She was expected to work every night, 
     often going two nights straight without sleep.
       But the only time she almost gave up was when she had 
     returned to New York Hospital for two years of cardio-
     thoracic surgery after working at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. 
     ``I lived across the street from the hospital where they had 
     apartments for the staff, and after i had worked two days 
     without sleep, I was finally sleeping in my scrubs. At 2 a.m. 
     the phone rang. I had to get over there. When I ran out into 
     that empty street I was crying because I thought I just can't 
     do it. I just can't.
       ``But then I did it, and I saw what you can do when you are 
     dedicated, when you really love what you do. And to see the 
     immediate, positive results of surgery is my favorite thing 
     in the world,'' she says on this rainy morning as she 
     prepares to operate once more, hoping to give one more cancer 
     patient a chance at life.

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