Reading Sophie Currier's blog
I've been following the saga of Sophie Currier with interest, since Currier attended the same Minnesota high school as I did. Today--in a Globe story
reporting that a Norfolk Superior Court judge won't give Currier extra time to pump breast milk during her doctor's licensing exam--we, the reading public, learn that Currier has started a blog to discuss her situation.
She may regret this decision. Right now, comment on
accomodatenursing.blogspot.com is overwhelmingly anti-Currier, with posters 1. noting that Currier already gets to take the test over two days rather than one, because she has dyslexia and ADHD and 2. hammering her for not just
dealing. One example:
All I have to say is that you need to grow up. First of all with the
learning disabilities you used to get more time for tests during school
and to take the boards is shameful.
Why because your using an
excuse and saying poor me I need more time. Suck it up and this is
coming from another woman who feels you are making the rest of us look
bad.
Seems to me you always have an excuse and I feel bad for
any place that hires you. You will be that one woman who always has an
excuse why things are not done.
Yeah, there are nursing-mom martyrs out there. They're the ones who suffer because some people get
inexplicably freaked out if they glimpse a woman's breast in public. But Currier doesn't want her nursing to be treated as unexceptional. Instead, she wants special treatment--and, it seems, a whole lot of attention.
I don't know Currier, but here's some friendly advice: Sophie, it's time to take it down a notch.
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I know if she were my surgeon and wanted to stroll away from the operating table to nurse her child, I'd ask for a new surgeon. I'm surprised the backlash didn't start sooner-- in my opinion, when this story first broke, the media very much downplayed the fact that she's already receiving huge breaks to take the test.
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First the Southwest thing and now this: has the Taliban infiltrated flight crews?
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Reilly, you're dead wrong on this one. I'm no lawyer, but it strikes me that blasting Currier for being a whiner because she already gets to take extra time on the test is missing the main point.
Main point being: Breastfeeding isn't covered under the ADA, and there isn't any other law that deals with it--so people who habitually leak milk all over the place every two or three hours do so entirely at the whim of their employers, and can be legally made to choose between breastfeeding and working. Sophie Currier could be the biggest, most self-entitled bratfrau on the face of the earth, and it wouldn't change the fact that the exam board expects med students not to breastfeed their kids.
(I find this totally brilliant. Let's hear it for the medical profession tacitly encouraging parents to raise a bunch of sickly, weedy little formula babies who will become their next generation of cash cows. Hooray, rising healthcare costs!)
Matt: There are some jobs you can't do while you're a nursing mom. "Brain surgeon" might be one of them. I doubt GP is.
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Lissa, the exam board *didn't* say Currier shouldn't breastfeed her kid. It just refused to give her extra time to do it.
They do wonderful things with breast pumps nowadays, let me tell you. Currier could have bottles aplenty waiting for her tot AND gather still more in the 45 minute break all the young docs get. Instead, she's looking for still more extra time--after already getting two days instead of one to take the test due to her sundry issues. This is not the kind of PR nursing advocates want.
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Agreed, it's not good PR. The Goodridges weren't good PR for gay marriage either. So it goes. You don't always get to pick clean sparkly plaintiffs to argue your big precedent-setting cases.
I think it's bogus to play off the learning disability against the breastfeeding. The only reason she's getting a break for the former is because she's legally required to under the ADA, not because it's more debilitating than nursing a baby.
Anyway, Currier's problem isn't her kid eating--to put it bluntly, it's her tits. If, as you suggest, having to drop whatever you're doing every couple of hours because you're in pain and leaking fluids everywhere doesn't rise to any seriously worthy level of inconvenience, why did Judge Brady suggest she finish nursing her kid before she tries to pass the test?
Apropos of nothing--any nursing moms currently in the Phoenix newsroom? Just curious.
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Lissa: Apropos of your question, I'm happy to report that the Phoenix is a nursing-mom-friendly environment. Just so you know.
Re: Currier's physical needs, I was going to quote from one of the "I'm a breastfeeding mom and you're giving me a bad name" comments at Currier's blog, just to show that your own sense of what breastfeeding entails may not jibe with other women's. But Currier seems to have deleted the comments that were there last time I checked in.
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Re: the Phoenix: Good on ya.
I think I've seen comments to that effect on other blogs. As to whether she's making a big deal out of the physical experience, I wouldn't know first-hand, but I like this blog post on the topic, from an anesthesiologist who's been there:
//anesthesioboist.blogspot.com/2007/09/medicine-hates-moms.html
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Most popular soft for youtube video.
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As a nursing mom (who got her PhD in Organic Chemistry two years ago), I just wanted to say that EVERYONE who takes the doctoral exams is given a 45 minute break from the tests, not just folks with a disability. Plus, there are short breaks in between the tests themselves.
Ignoring that Sophie is getting to take her exams over two days instead of one because of her disabilities, 45 minutes is plenty of time to pump milk for a baby even if you don't use an electric pump, especially considering that Harvard provided Sophie with the opportunity to pump in a private room and even to go off campus during the breaks in the tests. Frankly, Harvard already went out of its way to accomodate Sophie, and Sophie is being a brat, pushing for more special treatment.
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The nursing thing doesn't bother me at all. What bothers me is the special accomations for dyslexia and ADHD. Do you really want someone who has difficulty reading accurately and paying attention treating you. "Whoops, sorry, my mind wandered and I didn't hear that last sentence. Maybe you should have scheduled your appoinment earlier in the day so I didn't misdiagnose you." What's next, pilot's exams in Braille?
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Am I the only one who has noticed that the father of Ms. Currier's children is an MIT professor? I think that answers the question as to how she was able to graduate from MIT with so much extra help, extra considerations and extra attention paid to her at all times.
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Some facts:
1) She failed the same test in April.
2) The NBME already went out of their way to accommodate her. They are giving her twice the time to complete the test and a private testing room. Try taking a 9-hour intense exam with other people taking typing tests around you like the other 3000 of us did.
3) The USMLE is a STANDARDIZED test to assess a minimum competency to assure that you have enough base knowledge to practice medicine and not harm your patients. If you don't pass, then the exam is doing what it was intended to. Preventing somebody without a core knowledge of medicine to practice medicine on people who’s lives depend on your knowledge.
4) This test can be taken anytime during your 3rd and 4th year of medical school. You schedule when you take the test. Students have 2 years to schedule it and fit it into their "mom" schedule. She chose to procrastinate until it left her in this predicament. Most students take it during the end of their 3rd year to avoid this exact problem. Failing and not being able to start a residency in July. Yes, most residency programs start in July, not November. Did MGH already accommodate her by pushing her start date back by 4 months?
So when the surgeon can't get a pathology report on the margins of a cancer they are resecting and the patient dies on the table, who is going to be supporting her when her excuse is "I needed to breast feed at that moment, otherwise my engorged breast would hurt and I could get mastitis."
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Did she finally pass the test after all this uproar?