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WHEN DOCTORS
SAY ‘I DO’
Problem-solving skills honed
through two careers, family
By Bruce Akright, MD, and Laura Akright, MD
Our journey together began at Southern Methodist University in gether provided a strong bond, as we shared both the excitement
1975 — meeting in a complex variables math course. We were both as well as the frustrations of being medical students. We do not
pre-med math majors, and had decided to head into the profession miss having to scrape ice off a car at 4 a.m. to get in for surgery
of medicine without any real idea what that entailed. rounds, donating blood for spending money, or having to go to
laundromats.
Both of us really enjoyed being math majors, and with hindsight
we believe what it gave us was an ability to problem-solve that has After we married in 1977, we shared the same last name. This
served us well in our marriage and our medical careers. We do not proved difficult during internship and residency in San Antonio with
remember ANY of the complex math we learned, but we do have the overhead paging and operators who got us mixed up. We have stories
ability to work through difficult and complex situations and prob- from working at the Robert B. Green and the Bexar County Hospital
lems. Raising three boys and maintaining two careers has provided that only those of our age would understand. We forged close friend-
an adequate number of problems for us to work with! ships with fellow interns and residents, and always enjoy catching up
and re-sharing those stories.
SCRAPING ICE OFF A CAR
We graduated from Washington University School of Medicine The years of early private practice and raising small children were
challenging ones. We always seemed to be “juggling.” A major house
in St. Louis in 1980. The experiences we had in medical school to- fire in 1993 and relocation for a year helped to put things in per-
12 San Antonio Medicine • June 2015
