New dimension in neurosurgery: Dr. Deborah Hyde is one of four black women in elite specialty

Ebony, Oct, 1995 by Aldore Collier

WHEN Deborah Hyde decided in the early 1970s to apply to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, she was strongly discouraged. After all, a White professor told her, she had attended predominantly Black Touglaoo College and she probably couldn't compete with "better prepared" students from larger and Whiter schools. Hyde ignored the advice and graduated in the top 25 percent of her class.

Several years later, when she decided to become a neurosurgeon, the naysayers came roaring back. After all, there were few women--Black or White--in this elite specialty, which was dominated by White males. Again, she persisted. And today, Deborah Hyde, M.D., and diplomate of the American Board of Neurological Surgeons, is one of four Black women neurosurgeons in the country. She has a thriving practice in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, attracting patients from all races and socioeconomic backgrounds.

"I think maybe I'm a little hard-headed," she says with a laugh. "But the professor there [at Case] who discouraged me believed he was right .... Because I had attended a small Black college, he didn't think I had adequate training to compete. A lot of people believe that. But I think the extended family that I experienced at Tougaloo made all the difference in my being able to do anything. I wouldn't have been able to make it had I not been so grounded and nurtured."

The nurturing started at home where she was the oldest of four children--she has a sister, who is a member of the Mississippi legislature, and two brothers--raised in a Laurel, Miss., home by parents who had little formal education but who had abiding faith in the power of education and the vote.

Education was constantly stressed by her parents and her grandmother, and young Deborah excelled in the Laurel schools and went on to Tougaloo. She hoped then to become a teacher, and when she graduated from Tougaloo in 1969, she decided to get a master's degree in biology, at Cleveland State University so she could teach on the college level.

"I didnt know what else to do," she says. "Nobody had ever said to me, `You can be a doctor." A lot of the guys in my master's program were applying to medical school, and I thought, `Well, goodness, my grades are better than theirs and medicine sounds exciting, and I think I'd rather do that than teach.' That's how I ended up in medicine."

She ended up in specializing in neurosurgery because even as a child she bad been interested in the nervous system. "My graduate research," she says, "was in the nervous system. I thought I'd probably go into neurology once I decided on medicine because it seemed logical. And I fell in love with surgery. Even on my days off, I'd be in the operating room."

Shrugging off doubters, she became the first Black and the first woman to train as a neurosurgeon at Cleveland's University Hospital. "I was becoming thick-skinned by then," she says.

Neurosurgery, one of the most detailed and demanding of all medical specialties, deals with the nerves of the body and the spine and brain.

Dr. Hyde recalls that her longest and most demanding surgery occurred during her residency in Cleveland when she operated on a Vietnam veteran's grapefruit-sized brain tumor for 26 hours.

"I took a break at the 18th hour," she recalls. "I was in that patient's brain for 26 hours. It was [difficult], because we spent hours trying to stop the bleeding. We thought we were going to lose him."

During this demanding episode, Dr. Hyde and her instructor learned a lot about persistence, faith and themselves. "My professor said, `You've got to stop. Face it, he's gone. Let him go. We can't stop the bleeding.'"

But having made a commitment to the man's family to do everything she possibly could, she couldn't let go. "I remember crying and cursing. And I prayed," she says. "But I couldn't just walk away. it took so long because we'd take a bit of the tumor and spend 10 to 15 minutes drying blood." On that day, the resident and her professor learned a lesson about not giving up. Even now, when she sees her former professor, they still talk about the operation.

Faith and science are major pillars in Dr. Hyde's world. On a number of occasions, she has gotten down on her knees and asked God to help her when she was about to begin a difficult surgery. "I believe God uses me," she says. "It's faith and a lot of persistence and determination. On some cases I will not go into the operating room if I don't get down on my knees and pray. I feel I am an instrument, and I try so hard to be deserving."

After working briefly in Upstate New York in the early 1980s, Dr. Hyde moved to Los Angeles and started practicing with another neurosurgeon. Since 1988, she has been on her own. Before the rapid growth of Health Maintenance Organizations, she was on the staff of 10 hospitals in the Los Angeles area. Some of the medical centers have merged or closed since then, giving her more time to herself. She still works hard but earns less money and is glad to have more leisure time.