Dr Michelle Bailey – The woman’s doctor
SHE says her job is fulfilling — it allows her to care for women from birth straight through to menopause and beyond.
Dr Michelle Bailey, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, and an associate lecturer at the University of the West Indies (UWI), told All Woman that she enjoys taking care of women, empowering them to live healthy lives and be the best they can, mainly because of the impact women had on her own life.
Born to a teenage mother in Kingston, Dr Bailey recalls that she was raised by her grandmother who decided her mother was too young to raise a child and with the help of her aunts and uncles, she became a true product of the village as her values collectively came from her family members.
“Women have been the pillars in my life and when I reflect, it is really my grandmother and aunts who influenced me. I thought caring for women would be a good way to give back because women’s health is important as it is not just one stage of life, but from puberty to pregnancy and delivery, menopause and beyond,” she said.
The deciding factor for her career came at age 11 when the person she learnt discipline, hard work and dedication from — her grandmother — lost the battle to oesophageal cancer.
“I was very close to my grandma. I was my grandmother’s tail. Everywhere she went, I was there. She ran a grain store downtown and once I came home from school I was at the back doing my school work. She insisted I couldn’t do anything else before that. Even though they say grandparents aren’t strict, my grandmother was no-nonsense when it came on to doing work. She taught me to do a lot with very little,” she said.
And so, at that tender age, Dr Bailey said she made up her mind to become a doctor, “seeing the struggles she [grandmother] went through to fight the disease”.
But after she left Immaculate Conception High, Dr Bailey said she had a toss up between doing internal medicine and obstetrics and gynaecology; however, women’s health won on the basis of her grandmother’s fight and also the fact that she was born premature, weighing less than three pounds at birth.
“After birth I was in the nursery for two months and learning of it while growing up and being exposed to obstetrics and gynaecology as a medical student, I realised [many things] could be prevented if you had good antenatal care,” she said.
Today, Dr Bailey, who is a self-professed ‘endo girl’, is big on helping to educate women about endometriosis and treatments available for the disease.
“A lot of women don’t know they have it until many years after. One of my passions is to educate women about the disease and symptoms as unfortunately many women are diagnosed at the point of surgery and as an ‘endo girl’ myself, I understand the struggles,” she said.
Dr Bailey has done seminars with companies on endometriosis and infertility, and in May will present at UWI’s inaugural symposium on uterine fibroids, current research, modern management, and best practices. She said she intends to do further studies for minimally invasive surgery or laparoscopy in order to treat endometriosis by removing the lesions as well as do some work with infertility.
She’s also passionate about challenging women to take their health seriously.
“Unfortunately, some women don’t do their yearly check-ups until they think they have a problem. But it is important to see if your breasts are OK and to see what’s happening inside the vagina and treat it,” she said.
Confucius’s quote, “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential. These are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence” are words Dr Bailey lives by.
“It’s not every day you’re going to get up and want to do what you have to do, but you have to find the will and the inner strength. Also, hard work really pays off and the more you give, the more you receive. You might not get it back the same way, but you will get it back,” she said.
