Doctors in the House -- Day 16 of 25 Memories -- A Countdown to Our 25th Anniversary Gala by Dorothy Gibbons

Visitors to The Rose -- either the Featherwood or Galleria location – often comment about the beauty of the facilities or how bright and cheerful they seem. And they are … except where the doctors reside.


The small offices where they read mammograms are dark, very dark. They have to be. Backlit light stands for films and large computer screens for the digital images are best utilized in the dark.


That lack of light poses a stark contrast to the men staring at those screens. The Rose is fortunate to currently have two fulltime radiologists on staff, allowing us to provide a speedy response to the woman who may be stressing about what the doctor will find. Not every cancer center in the Houston area has on-site dedicated physicians. We’ve had them for quite a while.


Dr. Ward Parsons came to us in July 2003. Dr. Parsons is an internationally known educator in Breast Imaging. Since 1992 he has been a regular speaker at Dr. Laszlo Tabar's Advanced Screening and Diagnostic Mammography Courses in the U.S., Canada, and overseas. And that’s where Amy Rigsby (you’ve read her story already) found him.


In typical Amy style, after one of his workshops she said, “Some day you’re going to come work at The Rose.”


When she told me this, my thought was “Yeah right. A world-renowned educator is going to join our little staff.”


Amy kept saying it, every year, every conference. Then when we were ready to hire for a fulltime position, she did it again. At this point, Dr. Parsons who had been in academia had left the classroom for private practice. Surprisingly, he came down for an interview.


Even though Amy had always described Dr. P. as a “big teddy bear,” I still remember the day he stepped into my office—all 6 feet 4 inches of him. My first thought was “That man? In our little bitty rooms? How are we going to get this to work?”


He knew what I was thinking by the look on my face, I’m sure. Because he told me, “Whenever I do an ultrasound on a woman, and I like to do my own, I come in and sit down and now I’m eye to eye with her. Because I know it’s scary to them and I don’t want to do a thing to add to their stress.”


Dr. Parsons did turn out to have a teddy bear personality, he’s all heart and he even has a collection (more like a menagerie) of stuffed animals. He brought so many positive changes to The Rose that it would be difficult to list them all.


At the top of the list though has to be his insisting on separating screening from diagnostic services so that every woman who had a diagnostic examination would know her results that day. He could not abide by the “old” system of having a woman wait for results, so his first change was one that immediately brought our services to a higher level. Eight years ago that was a big deal and a system not many used. I was always amazed at the number of women who made a point to tell me that the doctor at The Rose actually took the time to explain their results that same day—something they felt was pretty incredible—which it still is today.


As you might suspect, of our current 90 employees, the majority of them are women. In fact, we only have three men. One of them is Dr. Parsons, the other Jerry McGee, our IT manager, and man number three is Dr. Daniel Roubein who came to us in 2009. But if our headhunter at the time had followed her gut, and he hadn’t been listening, we might have missed having another great guy on our team.


We knew when we opened the Rose Galleria that we would have to have a fulltime on-site doctor at that location as well. Opening the Galleria was actually a result of outgrowing our Joan Gordon Center on Bissonnet. The relocation to the Galleria area meant we could double our physical capacity, equipment capacity, staff capacity, and now we had to increase our physician capacity. We had just enough funding to started looking for part-time but none of the resumes we were getting from the headhunter seemed right.


Then one day she called and asked, “I want to know if you will talk with someone who has his own neuroradiology business.”


Once again, my reaction was in the category of “yeah right.” I couldn’t imagine why the founder and president of Radiology Reading Centers of America, who had been practicing radiology for 18 years, would want to work at a part-time position.


But Dr. Roubein came for the interview. He was all business yet his passion for mammography was pretty obvious. Our agreement was struck and the first time he met with the Board of Directors over lunch, I described the recruiting process as I understood it had transpired.


That’s when he said, “That’s not how it went.”


He continued: “The headhunter called me about another job, a neuroradiology job. I told her no because I have all I want to do with that with my company. Then I asked if she had anything else? She listed a few then added, ‘there is just a little bitty job for a part-time mammographer. That’s ALL they do.’”


Dr. Roubein said that’s when he told her he’d really like to explore the position with The Rose. Seems that for 15 years he was the lead mammographer for Beaumont and really wanted to get back to it -- just not in a hospital.


As he told the story, goose bumps traveled over me. “What if he had not asked?” I thought, amazed once again at how people are brought to The Rose.


Now fulltime with The Rose, Dr. Roubein has made a place for himself in our Galleria location. He incorporated his high standards of care into his work with us. The staff reports that corny jokes and compassion are what this dedicated family man, father of three boys, also brings to his job. Always respectful, he is noted for being “patient with his patients.” He takes the time to ensure the Veteran knows she or he is appreciated for their service to our country and he brings a special sense of spiritually to his care that is so appreciated by the women we navigate into treatment.


Recently, TV personality, Deborah Duncan, sat in that small dark room with him and interviewed him for a spot on Great Day Houston. He spoke of the technological advances that brought him to The Rose and the level of care we are able to provide because of our on-site physicians. Deborah, like many of our other clients, jokingly reported that she’d fallen in love.


The staff wasn’t surprised. “All the patients fall in love with him,” they reported. “They want to kiss him … and sometimes … they do!”


Doctors that care do make the difference.






This memory is one of 25 short stories written by Dorothy Gibbons, the Co-founder and CEO of The Rose, a nonprofit breast cancer organization. She and Dr. Dixie Melillo received the 501C3 documents for The Rose in 1986. A memory will be shared daily, culminating with number 25 on the day The Rose celebrates its 25th anniversary November 10.


© 2011 Dorothy Gibbons. All rights reserved.