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KEMAR Brown did not have a regular hospital birth. Instead, he was delivered by a 77-year-old man simply called ‘Mr Doctor’ by many in the community of Greenwich Town.

But ‘Mr Doctor’ had no formal training in medicine or midwifery. However, his skills have influenced Brown’s decision to become a doctor; and he is doing just that in New York City today.

Brown felt the urge to share his story with the Jamaica Observer after reading last Sunday’s centenarian feature on George Thompson, who is now 104 years old.

Brown, as it turns out, was one of the nine babies Thompson told the Sunday Observer he had delivered.

Brown recounted the events leading to him being delivered by Thompson, as told to him by his mother and grandmother, whom his family referred to as ‘Mama’.

“Like every other Jamaican mother, my mother had her bags packed and ready to go at the drop of a dime,” Brown said on Friday. “Well, on September 10, 1986, the dime dropped without warning. She was taking a nap in her bedroom when suddenly she felt the urge to use the bathroom… but when she got to the bathroom, she saw my head; I was crowning. She yelled out for my grandmother, and the first person Mama thought of calling was Mr Doctor,” Brown said.

“Mr Doctor (George Thompson, aka Papa) lived about 10 minutes away from our house on East Avenue in Greenwich Town.”

Brown said while his grandmother ran to get Mr Doctor, his mom lay in the bed with mild contractions. Before long, alone and afraid, she started pushing and the baby started coming out.

“Mr Doctor showed up just in time with various obstetric tools all wrapped up in a white towel,” Brown said. “‘Push’, he told her, and soon the delivery was complete.”

Brown recalled being told by his mother that he was born with a bubble over his face.

“My mother told me it was remnants of the amniotic sac,” he said. “She was frightened because she thought I wasn’t breathing with the bubble over my face. Mr Doctor buss the bubble and it come down like a bubble gum, my mother told me, and the worst part of the delivery was over.”

Brown said he was told that Thompson proceeded to quickly and effortlessly cut her navel string. Telling his grandmother to get a basin of warm water, Mr Doctor then wiped the newborn and wrapped him in a blanket which his grandma took from the packed hospital bag.

“After wiping me off and wrapping me in the blanket, he placed me on the bed on my side and then proceeded to remove the placenta. He then started to forcefully squeeze my mother’s belly. “‘Push’,” he commanded while pressing on her stomach, and the afterbirth came out,” Brown said.

He said his grandmother wanted to bury the placenta and umbilical cord. However, Thompson stopped her.

“Yuh waan dem lock me up?” Mr Doctor said with a laugh. “The placenta has to go the hospital to get measured.”

Brown said he was told that Thompson wrapped the placenta in several scandal bags and his mother was carried off to the Kiwanis Maternity Home at Industrial Park.

“When my mother came back from the hospital, Mr Doctor came to the house to look for me,” Brown said, adding that throughout the rest of his life, Thompson kept a watchful eye out for him, even attending all of his birthday parties.

“I fondly remember walking to school in the mornings when I was a kid and he would stop me and my mother and rub my head and say ‘Good bwoy, man, a good bwoy’,” Brown said.

“His daughters Pamela and ‘Biggie’ also took a liking to me ever since I can remember. I would spend months at a time with them when my parents were abroad to work, and at times they felt like a second set of parents. Unfortunately, they were both gunned down [while standing in their community nine years ago], and when I heard the news I was left heartbroken,” Brown said.

He acknowledged that not many young people from his community receive the opportunities that he has. Especially since youths in communities like Greenwich Town and others in downtown Kingston are expected to fail or go down the wrong path.

He, however, was determined to make a success of his life.

“Although I grew up in a poor inner city and faced many hardships, poverty did not steal from my childhood experiences. If I wasn’t running track and field or studying, I was developing my curious mind for science and medicine by exploring my surrounding,” he said.

Thompson, he said, was his real-life example of a physician. However, it was his grandmother who saw the doctor in him and nicknamed him ‘Dr Brown’ when he was a child.

“When I was about 10 years old, Mama caught me playing with her insulin needles. I would secretly use them on the ‘patients’ in the backyard. My first patient was the banana tree. I wanted to see how it would react after being injected with various substances… nothing! My grandmother saw in me a desire to become a doctor, and instead of being upset, she decided to teach me how to administer her nightly insulin shots,” Brown explained.

Brown became more and more curious about his grandmother’s illness and enjoyed taking care of her. But things went downhill for Brown the morning he found her mindlessly rocking back and forth on the edge of her bed. She was having a stroke, the result of years of unmanaged diabetes and hypertension.

In a matter of months, she received two more strokes.

He recalled her nightly cries of pain, saying that at those times he “felt helpless knowing I could do nothing to ease her pain”.

“Sometimes I woke up drenched in her urine, but I refused to leave her side. I knew from a tender age that I wanted to be a doctor through my interactions with Mr Doctor and my hunger to learn. But it was during the times of taking care of my grandmother that I truly realised my passion for service. After six months of feeding tubes and bed sores, Mama died,” he said.

Shortly after, Brown migrated to New York with the hunger to learn how he could have provided medical treatment for his grandmother.

After finishing high school, Brown was selected by Yale Medical College to join their Minorities Medical Education Programme. There he met resident surgeon Dr Hilary Brown, a Jamaican. Granted the privilege to shadow her, Brown viewed his first surgery, a colectomy.

He still recalls the coldness of the bright fluorescent-lit room and the smell of burning flesh.

“But I felt pure exhilaration when Dr Brown successfully removed the cancer-ridden segment of the patient’s colon. She was confident and committed, and I was captivated by the idea of also becoming a skilled surgeon,” Brown told the Sunday Observer.

“During and after my college years, I contributed my hands, mind, and spirit to volunteering,” he said. “I volunteered in the Centre for Special Studies at New York Presbyterian Hospital and observed a diverse array of HIV patients in a one-on-one setting. I became most attached to ‘Ms A’, an HIV patient who was also pregnant, diabetic, and on the verge of losing her right foot.

“I remembered the first time visiting her room and how sorry I felt for her. You should have seen the way she kicked me out. Instead of seeing her as a complete human being, I treated her like a victim of her disease. It became apparent that, like my grandmother, she wanted not only compassion, but to feel a sense of normalcy.

“On my next visit, I bonded with Ms A, and through her I gained a distinct outlook on empathy, while developing emotional poise.”

But Brown was faced with other challenges.

“On my 22nd birthday, I got a call from Jamaica saying that my father, Bertram Brown, a notable record producer in the Greenwich Town community, drowned. This was the lowest point in my life. I went to Jamaica the following year and that’s when I saw Mr Doctor for the first time since migrating to New York. He made it a point of duty to come look for me and we sat and talked for a while. I told him that I was studying to become a doctor, like him, and he had many words of encouragement. The following year, tragedy struck once more, this time my grandfather. But I got to see Papa (Thompson) once more.”

Brown said he strongly believes Thompson was put in his life by God, to be a healer, an inspiration, and an example of how persons should treat their neighbours.

“Mr Doctor personifies all the characteristics of a great doctor, characteristics that I hope to attain as a learning physician,” he said. “Confidence and competence, empathy with emotional poise, respectful yet forthright, and one who has a vested interest in community advocacy and education.

“I feel a renewed sense of motivation to continue with my medical career, now knowing how much it would have meant for Mr Doctor to do the same. It’s sad that he didn’t get the opportunities I did and I am forever grateful for this amazing soul. Happy 104th birthday, Mr Doctor! You are a blessing to us all,” Brown concluded.