The teenager and the 60-year-old talked for an hour. At the end, the woman said, “How did someone so young get so wise?”
“What mattered to me,” Humbert says, “was that I could be present for her. I could hear what she had to say about her situation and be there for her. I decided then that as a doctor, I could make a difference.”
She graduated medical school in 1999 from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and began the search for her field. Having fainted her first time in the OR, because she felt so claustrophobic in the mask (and had not eaten in 18 hours), “took out a few choices, including orthopedics and delivering babies,” Humbert says.
Then six months into her residency at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, she found her answer. “I had the opportunity to see a patient in her 80s who was dying from kidney failure,” Humbert says. “My attending held her hand and told her in a sensitive and honest way that she was dying and time was short, and asked how she wanted to handle that. He showed me how powerful palliative care is when it’s done right.”
She attended that woman’s funeral. “It was important to me to meet her family and celebrate her life and see her legacy.” Humbert had found her calling.
Humbert saw how her talent for communication served to help heal the emotional and spiritual stress of those requiring end-of-life care. “By the time a patient reaches palliative care,” Humbert says, “they can lose their identity of who they are and become only a person with a disease. In palliative care, we restore that identity. That’s the healing.”
At the time of her decision, palliative care was an emerging specialty with few training options available. She found a dual fellowship in palliative care and internal medicine with the Medical College of Wisconsin, and walked out three years later with an MS in epidemiology as well.
Recruited by UAB in 2006, Humbert spent two years serving in their rapidly developing palliative care unit.
During that time, Humbert came across a 53-year-old woman battling metastatic lung cancer. The disease had left her with a distended belly, bald head, and wasted, hollow face. She felt only the effects of the disease.
While easing her physical discomfort, Humbert’s talent for connection brought forth the woman’s memories of when she had seen herself at her best. “She said to me, ‘you know, doctor, you see me the way I see myself. You don’t see the fact that I don’t have any hair or look like this’,” Humbert says. “I felt like I’d given her a gift. That defines the point of it all for me.”
That interest in knowing people more deeply surfaces in every aspect of Humbert’s life. “After parties, I’ll tell my husband stories he’s never heard about people he’s known all his life,” she says.
After two years serving at UAB’s palliative care unit, Humbert had her second child. “The work-life balance became more prominent for me then. I felt like I was spending too much time away from my family, although I loved the work I was doing and I was part of something growing exponentially,” Humbert says.
She spent the next three years working at the Veteran’s Administration primarily performing disability physicals for compensation and pension protocol. “It’s important work, and it gave me a predictable work schedule,” Humbert says.
But in February, palliative care called her back with a nearly ideal situation. She became medical director of the Balm of Gilead inpatient palliative care unit at Cooper Green Mercy Hospital. “I wanted to be sure it would fit with my home life, and that’s what makes this more ideal. UAB had 900 beds; our unit has 15,” Humbert says.
Being a county hospital, Cooper Green harkens back to her residency where she found her calling. “It’s appealing because it’s missionary at heart. I appreciate that I can give my best and offer excellent care to folks no matter what their insurance level,” Humbert says.
Just as importantly, running the Balm of Gilead leaves time for Humbert to dance in both her Zumba classes and in the kitchen with her two sons as they make dinner. “I’m not great at it, but I sure do enjoy it,” Humbert says.
With Cooper Green’s future on the rocks amid all the Jefferson County debt issues, Humbert says she’s still found her way again, no matter the hospital’s uncertainty. “Happiness is about being true to oneself, and palliative care is where I belong, whether that’s within this program or another setting. This is the field for me.”
