Racine woman had to overcome her fear of doctors.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

As appeared in the January 1, 2007 Racine Journal Times
By Paul Sloth

MOUNT PLEASANT - Thinking back, Carolyn Haman doesn't know exactly when she developed her fear of doctors.

For the longest time, Haman, 46, feared anything medical.

The thought of hospitals made her queasy. She got clammy thinking of doctor visits. She trembled at the thought of getting routine check ups, so she didn't.

Her mother survived breast cancer. Her father recovered from open-heart surgery. When Haman was older and they were in the hospital, she barely made it into the hospital to visit them.

By then, her fear was well-established.

Haman was the youngest of five girls growing up in a family of six children on Racine's north side.

Family dinners were non-negotiable and as a young girl, Haman listened as her older sisters shared stories. Two chose medical professions, and talk at the dinner table often included some of the gory tales from their studies.

"They were always talking about just the grossest stuff," Haman said. "All the time, and I would ask my dad to make them stop. I don't know if I associated doctors with fear of death, I don't know. Fear is hard to explain."

On her own As a child, Haman had no choice but to visit the doctor.

After graduating from UW-Milwaukee, she worked as a special education teacher in the Racine Unified School District. Once she was on her own, Haman chose to stay away from hospitals and clinics. She was fortunate enough to remain relatively healthy.

As she got older, nearing the age when women are encouraged to get routine health check ups, her family gently nagged her, in that loving way, to go to the doctor. It didn't work.

Then Haman leaned on her faith, something that had always played an important role in her life. Haman, a member of Racine's Fellowship of Christian Believers, helps run a citywide prayer ministry and works with organizers from local churches to use the power of prayer to help bring about positive changes in Racine.

Now she used her faith and her belief in prayer to help understand why this fear of doctors controlled her life.

"I couldn't just focus on conquering the fear," Haman said. "I had to have something to replace it."

Two years ago, she started to work on overcoming her fear, by gradually making appointments, first to the dentist then the eye doctor.

Her husband, Peter, and the rest of her family encouraged her to keep going. Haman finally went in for a mammogram and decided that 2006 would be the year to visit the gynecologist. She couldn't make the call. Her sister asked her to come with her to meet her gynecologist. That was January. Haman finally had her first gynecologist appointment in April.

That's when she got the shocking news.

Zip in, zip out. At her first appointment, all Haman wanted to do was zip in and zip out, she said. When her gynecologist, Dr. Sandra Earle at Columbia St. Mary's in Milwaukee, felt her stomach, she knew something was wrong.

Haman thought she was gaining a little weight and tried to work it off. What she considered "tummy fat" turned out to be uterine fibroids, which are noncancerous tumors that develop within or attach to the wall of the uterus.

All four of Haman's sisters had the tumors and had them successfully removed. But there was a problem. Haman's were unusually large - so large they pressed on a kidney.

"They usually don't get that big, (because) they get caught earlier," Haman said.

Earle referred Haman to Charles Koh, MD, a laparoscopic surgeon at Columbia St. Mary's. Upon further examination, Koh realized Haman's tumor ranked among the largest he had seen in his practice, and certainly one of the largest removed laparoscopically, at least as reported in medical literature.

"Carolyn's fibroids weighed about 5 pounds, which is more than 30 times the size of a normal, healthy uterus," Koh said.

Haman's doctor prescribed a three-month course of a drug called Lupron, which helped to shrink the tumor and would help reduce bleeding during surgery, but it caused early menopause and delayed the surgery. All along, Haman relied on prayer to help her through, especially the long wait for her surgery.

Doctors scheduled her surgery for Nov. 15, and it was to be a long one.

Before starting the 5-hour surgery, Koh developed a plan to remove the huge fibroid tumor without a large incision by using a special technique using five tiny incisions, the largest of which was half an inch.

If performed by the usual "open" technique, doctors would have needed to make a much longer incision, perhaps as long as 12 inches, to remove the fibroid.

God's goodness Haman's surgery was a success. She said she is now more confident about visiting the doctor, including check-ups following her surgery. Trust replaced her fear.

"I'm happy when I go. My blood pressure is normal when they take it, instead of through the roof," Haman said.

Haman realizes that her surgery could have been much more traumatic, considering her unusual situation. She believes there's a big reason that everything worked out for her in the end, from overcoming her fears to recovering quickly from her successful surgery.

"I was so amazed again at God's goodness. I think, all along, in that still, small voice in your heart, the Lord wants you healed," Haman said. "He really is there for you."

For more information on the Milwaukee Institute of Minimally Invasive Surgery and Dr. Charles Koh, please visit, mimis.us.