Sabrina Phillips was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on September 3, 1968, and grew up in Cleveland, Oklahoma. Both she and her older brother were adopted by loving parents who created a warm and enriching home. From early on, Sabrina was curious about how things worked. She won a full scholarship to Oklahoma State University and studied electrical engineering. After marrying her sophomore year, she transferred to Wichita State University where her husband, also an engineer, was employed. She graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's in engineering from Wichita State University in 1990. After working for 3 years in Dallas at Texas Instruments, she enrolled at The University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical School in 1993 and graduated first in her class of 210 students in 1997. Her training in internal medicine and cardiology was at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas (BUMC), and after completion of the cardiology fellowship in 2003, she did a year-long fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in adult congenital heart disease. In 2004, she returned to Dallas as a member of the cardiology staff of BUMC. Within a year she was offered a staff position at the Mayo Clinic in the Division of Cardiovascular Disease, specializing in adult congenital heart disease. Since returning to the Mayo Clinic, she has become an international leader in the field of adult congenital heart disease. She has published 31 articles in peer-reviewed medical journals and 8 chapters in various books focusing on congenital heart disease in adults. Since 2002, she has given over 120 talks at various meetings around the world. She has received two outstanding teacher or educator awards at the Mayo Clinic. We here at BUMC are very proud of Sabrina's success in light of her 6 years of postgraduate training at this institution. Sabrina and her husband, Nathan, are the proud parents of two daughters. Sabrina is an absolute straight shooter and a pleasure to be around.
William Clifford Roberts, MD (hereafter, Roberts): Sabrina, thanks for revisiting Baylor Dallas. We have missed your presence greatly. Your presentation earlier today at medicine grand rounds was wonderful. Could you talk about your upbringing and what your childhood was like?
Sabrina Dean Phillips, MD (hereafter, Phillips): I was born in a small town outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and was raised in Cleveland, Oklahoma. My mom was a secretary for an oil company and my dad was a lineman for the rural electric cooperative, the local power company. I have one older brother. We had a blue-collar upbringing in a small community. Our upbringing was a Norman Rockwell type, with a good solid community and a wonderful school experience in which I got involved in many activities.
Roberts: What activities were you involved in?
Phillips: I played some basketball and softball early on. By the time I got to high school I much preferred being a cheerleader, being on the student council, or other activities that involved the school.
Roberts: Did you work during summertime or after school?
Phillips: Yes. During the school year my mom did not want my brother or me to work. She thought our job was to go to school and learn. I agree with her. I did clean houses one summer. I worked at the rural electric cooperative one summer filing papers. I occasionally helped the florist in town deliver flowers during busy special days.
Roberts: How big was Cleveland, Oklahoma?
Phillips: About 2000 people. The high school was relatively big for that size of a town because there were only three high schools in the county and we pulled in a lot of rural-area students. There were 100 students in my high school class. My husband grew up in a town just 10 miles away and had 32 students in his graduating class.
Roberts: What was your home life like? Did you all have dinner together?
Phillips: Yes. That was expected. Ours was a very traditional family environment. Mom was in charge of the household. When I was older she worked outside of the home as a secretary, but when I was young she was entirely a homemaker. She was a very strong woman. My dad worked very hard during the days but at night he was a family man.
Roberts: What did you talk about at the dinner table?
Phillips: I don't remember much about that. We didn't have a television for many years, not until I was in elementary school. We did a lot of outdoor play activities.
Roberts: Was there much encouragement for you and your brother to do well in school, or did that just come naturally?
Phillips: My mom wanted us to do well but she was certainly not a “tiger mom.” I don't remember her having to tell me to do my homework. I just did it.
Roberts: When did you realize you were smart?
Phillips: That's an interesting question because there was a moment. In fourth grade in our science classroom, the teacher did an experiment in which she made a vacuum in a canister which then crumpled from the air pressure. She asked why that happened. I knew immediately why it happened. I wanted to learn how the world worked.
Roberts: Did you have hobbies?
Phillips: I did a lot of reading.
Roberts: What did you like to read?
Phillips: Anything and everything, mainly fiction, but I wasn't into science fiction.
Roberts: Did you read fast, several books a week?
Phillips: Yes. My mom was a big encourager of reading. Even when we were little she was either reading to us or giving us things to read. My mom saved Green Stamps and with them got a set of Collier Encyclopedias. My brother read all of them, starting with Volume A. Initially, I had no interest in doing that, but I liked reading and learning about different worlds.
Roberts: Did you travel in your imagination?
Phillips: Yes. Even though they had limited means, my parents considered vacations to be very important. Every year my dad would take a week of vacation. It was an event. We planned this time for weeks in advance. My brother and I were involved. We got a map and studied where we would drive, what we would see, and where we would stay. It was the greatest thing. We have albums and albums of our travels in the US in an old Chevrolet (Figure 1).
Figure 1.
Traveling as a child: (a) at the Blue Ridge Parkway and (b) in Texas with her brother Matt and father Dewayne, approximately 1970.
Roberts: Where do you remember going?
Phillips: My mom once wanted to go to the Blue Ridge Parkway area in the Appalachian Mountains. I don't remember which state we were in, but I do remember camping out and getting rained on.
Roberts: Did you camp out most trips?
Phillips: That was the only trip we camped out. It rained and that changed our minds forever about camping. My mom burned the tent. After that we stayed at a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn. I always hoped for a pool at the hotel.
Roberts: Was your home a happy one? Lots of laughter and not much arguing?
Phillips: It was a very happy home. My parents are still married after 58 years (Figure 2). We had a great home life, and I have a great relationship with my brother. One interesting story: When we finally got a television, the TV show we liked in the 1970s was “Emergency.” It followed two paramedics in Los Angeles, CA. It also included their experiences in a hospital setting that involved a couple of doctors and nurses at Rampart Memorial Hospital. My brother and I loved the show. We just had to watch it. I really liked when the show transitioned back to the hospital. My brother liked it when the paramedics were out doing the rescues. He is now a paramedic and a fireman! When he graduated from the fire academy, I sent him a card saying, “I knew Mom let us watch way too much ‘Emergency.’” Because of this show we made our own defibrillator. Many of my dolls got defibrillated. We used an old diaper bag as our emergency medical bag and reenacted the scenes of “Emergency.”
Figure 2.
With her parents, Dewayne and Carolyn Powers, at her medical school graduation.
Roberts: When you were young, were you interested in medicine or becoming a physician?
Phillips: My mom was very curious about medical issues, and her interest probably prompted my medical curiosity. Neither parent had a college education. My mom was the one in our family who could drive the car. Neither my grandmothers nor paternal aunts drove—something not uncommon in that era—so my mother became the de facto driver for medical appointments. There wasn't much medical care in our little town, so if a specialist was needed a drive to Tulsa about 1 hour away was necessary. Mom, as the driver and the medical translator for our family, became the central person who took care of the grandparents and the elder aunts. As a small child I went along. I can remember thinking at one point, while sitting in a doctor's waiting room, what was going on behind the door. Because of such experiences, I recognized how important the doctor visit can be in a patient's life. For the physician, a single patient is just one of several that day, but for the individual patient seeing the doctor was a major event. The family may have waited many days or weeks for the appointment, and getting to the appointment might have been quite an undertaking. Witnessing those visits set the foundation for my medical curiosity.
Although I developed a strong respect for the medical profession, I really didn't think about becoming a physician. I'd never seen a female physician locally. Our small town doctor was a man. When I got ready to go to college, I was still very curious about how things worked. I decided to study engineering. I really enjoyed engineering and got a bachelor's of science and practiced engineering for 3 years.
Roberts: Where did you go to college?
Phillips: I went to college at Oklahoma State University on a full scholarship and then midway through I got married. My husband is a couple of years older than me, so he was graduating with his engineering degree and had gotten a job at Boeing Military Airplane in Wichita, Kansas. After much deliberation as to what this would mean to me, we moved to Kansas and I transferred to Wichita State University, where I had no scholarship. Thus, I went from a big state university to a much smaller state university. Like many things in life, there were unexpected opportunities and unique experiences. Wichita State University offered a much more intimate one-on-one interaction with the professors. I ended up having a fantastic experience there. After graduation, I was offered a position with Texas Instruments in Dallas as an integrated circuit designer.
Roberts: Your husband was working for Texas Instruments also?
Phillips: No, my husband was working for Forney Corporation, also in Dallas. They did control systems for large-scale power plants. He had a master's degree in control theory, which is a subset of engineering.
Roberts: When you graduated from engineering school, there weren't many female engineers?
Phillips: Correct, especially in electrical engineering.
Roberts: That's the hardest type of engineering?
Phillips: Chemical engineering is very difficult but electrical is a taxing program and there are very few women in the class. In the group I was hired into at Texas Instruments, I was the only woman. There were other female engineers in the company, but not in my group. Engineering is definitely a male-dominated field.
Roberts: You must have enjoyed mastering your initial career choice.
Phillips: I loved getting to figure out how things worked and loved math. That's almost a dichotomy when I think about what I do now, because one of the things I loved about math was it's a perfect universe. If you follow the rules you get to the right answer. Math is a perfect world of rule following and getting to a solution. I really liked that. Some of that is why I liked engineering—not only figuring out how things worked but that there was a set of physical rules to apply to get to a point. That's the interesting thing about medicine. Outcomes are stochastic. In medicine the rules can be followed and still the outcome can be bad. That's difficult for someone who has a background or ideology like mine. That's the difficult part of medicine to handle. I want to follow the rules and have good outcomes. That's not always the case. For one to love math so much, I have wondered how I ended up in the area I am in.
Roberts: It seems to me that engineering is brain only, whereas medicine is both brain and heart.
Phillips: Right. I love the contact with patients. The engineering world is very isolated, unitary, and I love the interaction with people. I'm kind of nosy too. I like to hear about what people do. I enjoy talking to my patients about their lives.
Roberts: How did it come about that you switched to medicine?
Phillips: I started my master's degree at Southern Methodist University, a program through Texas Instruments, where I could take the class on a video monitor on the TI campus. I did that for a year. At the same time I was trying to understand more about what I wanted to do. I think being independent and living in a new city provided opportunities to reevaluate things. While studying for a final, I had an epiphany: I didn't think electrical engineering was the path for me. I really wanted to study medicine.
Roberts: This was how long after you had started with Texas Instruments?
Phillips: About 2 years.
Roberts: Did you take the final?
Phillips: Yes. After taking the final I went to the advisor's office and told him that I had an engineering degree, had just finished a year towards a master's degree, but wanted to go to medical school. I asked, “How do I do that?” He told me what I would have to do to change course. I thanked him for the roadmap, went to the library, and picked up an MCAT book. I took the MCAT the next time it was offered, simultaneously taking a night class in organic chemistry at the community college. That worked because I had to work during the day. Then, I found a biochemistry class over the noon hour at the University of Dallas.
Roberts: You had not taken either of those classes in college?
Phillips: Many classes that I needed as prerequisites for medical school I obtained through my degree, but I did not have any organic chemistry or any higher-level biology. I had to complete those classes. My MCAT scores thankfully turned out to be pretty good.
Roberts: What were your MCAT scores?
Phillips: I don't remember, but the best was reading comprehension and the worst was organic chemistry; I was still taking the class when I took the MCAT.
Roberts: But you did extremely well on it?
Phillips: I did well on it. I applied that year to UT Southwestern Medical School. In my interview they asked if I was applying to only one medical school. I said yes. Because I had no background in medicine—no one in my family was a physician, and I didn't know anyone who had trained to be a physician—it just didn't strike me that applying to only one medical school might not be sufficient. I just laid out a plan and was accomplishing the plan.
Roberts: What year did you start at UT Southwestern?
Phillips: I was supposed to be in the class of 1992, but the week after I got my acceptance letter to UT Southwestern I realized that I wasn't feeling well. I wasn't sure what was wrong, but I did a test and found that I was pregnant, something unexpected. When I talked to the dean of student affairs at Southwestern, I told him that my baby was due in November 1992. I was supposed to start classes in August 1992. I asked him what he thought I should do. He suggested that I defer a year and start in August 1993, and that's what I did.
Roberts: By that time you were 25 years old?
Phillips: Yes.
Roberts: Do you regret that you delayed a year before starting medical school?
Phillips: No, I think that was perfect advice. The delay gave me the first 10 months with Victoria, and that was good.
Roberts: How many classmates did you have in medical school, and how many of them had children while in medical school?
Phillips: I had 210 classmates, and two other female medical students began medical school with children. A few had pregnancies during our fourth year. There were not many women in my medical class—maybe 25%. Now, it's about 50%.
Roberts: How did medical school strike you?
Phillips: I loved every moment. Because I wanted to do it and had already experienced something else, I don't think there was any of that angst about it being hard or being unsure I was in the right place. Every day was exciting. I had a fantastic experience at UT Southwestern. I thought that it was the best medical school experience one could have.
Roberts: When you told your husband that you would like to go to medical school, what was his reaction?
Phillips: He was a little bit taken aback, but he knew that I wasn't completely professionally satisfied in engineering and was still searching and trying to understand what I wanted to do. He was very supportive.
Roberts: How did you take care of your baby during medical school?
Phillips: My daughter was 10 months old by the time I started medical school. There was a day care on the north campus at UT Southwestern, so I would drop her off in the mornings and pick her up in the afternoon. The traditional medical school model was very helpful in that regard. There was classwork and homework, and as long as you attended class, you could decide when to do the homework. The first 2 years I was in classes and taking tests. The day care was excellent.
Roberts: When you were in medical school, did you have difficulty deciding which specialty you would go into, or was it easy for you?
Phillips: It wasn't easy for me because I liked all the clinical rotations except psychiatry. I did surgery first; I wanted to be a surgeon. By the time I did a third-year rotation here at BUMC in medicine, I thought medicine was the place for me. By the end of that rotation, I knew I wanted to do something in internal medicine. I was heavily influenced by the hematology and oncology group at Baylor—Dr. Marvin Stone and Dr. Robert Mennel. I thought oncology was the area for me. That was my plan. When I began my fourth year of medical school, I knew that I was going to go for a medicine match, thinking that I would do oncology. But, I got pregnant again the first part of the fourth year. By January 1997, I was 7 months pregnant. All I had left to graduate were two electives, and I had to pick something out of surgery or pediatrics. I selected a surgical rotation but my advisor thought that surgery was the wrong choice since I was 7 months pregnant. He suggested that I find something else, but there wasn't really anything else I liked. He indicated that there was an opening in pediatric cardiology. By that time, I didn't like pediatrics and didn't want to do it. He said the pediatric cardiologists were really good guys, that I could sit down in the clinic and not stand in the operating room in surgery. He thought that would be a good choice for me, so I agreed.
I embarked upon the rotation at Children's Hospital and it was life changing. I realized that this specialty was really interesting. There were so many different cardiac anomalies, and each patient was different. One had to sit and sort out the physiology and the treatment plan. I never liked the algorithmic idea of being a provider. I wanted to think through a problem and come up with a solution. I didn't want to check any boxes. Thus, this area was perfect for me. I probably liked it from an engineering perspective as well. It really resonated with me as an interesting field. I turned out to have very good mentoring relationships with the pediatric cardiologists in that group who were very helpful in talking about what the future could be for a nonpediatrician who wanted to deal with congenital heart disease. That was the first time I had heard about adult congenital heart disease as a specialty. Dr. David Fixler, a fantastic mentor, said to me one day, “You know, these kids grow up and we need some adult cardiologists who know how to take care of them.” So this rotation introduced me to a new idea of what I could do in adult medicine. That rotation really opened my eyes.
Roberts: As you look back over your education, are there certain mentors or teachers who had a tremendous impact on you?
Phillips: During medical school and residency, I encountered a number of teachers I wanted to emulate. There was no single person that impacted me. A composite of people along the way were important for me to understand how to be a doctor and what good practice is like. From a bedside manner standpoint, Dr. Marvin Stone set the best example.
Roberts: You graduated from medical school number 1 in your class?
Phillips: Yes (Figure 3).
Figure 3.
At her medical school graduation with Amanda and Victoria, May 1997.
Roberts: Why did you pick Baylor Dallas to do your residency and cardiology training?
Phillips: I learned during the medical residency at BUMC that there was an amazing group of cardiologists there to learn from. Not only was good medicine being practiced, but they were transferring that knowledge to the housestaff. I learned to do complicated procedures, not from some resident a year or two older, but from a staff member with lots of experience. And, all the staff was committed to teaching. The noon conferences and grand rounds always provided fantastic clinical information. I was always very interested in being a clinician, and BUMC just fit me and gave me that nice comfort zone. The medicine residency experience was unbelievable, with a small group of residents and a great group of attending staff committed to medical education.
At Baylor, I was able to learn about Carol Warnes and her practice at the Mayo Clinic. There was a conference at the Mayo Clinic each year on adult congenital heart disease, and Carol Warnes was one of the program speakers. I used my conference time to go to Rochester, Minnesota, and see what it was all about. I really liked it. I told my husband that I was going to do an adult congenital cardiology fellowship with Dr. Warnes. It just seemed like part of my plan. I got the cardiology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic and it was fantastic. A pathway that I never would have imagined opened up to me, caring for adults with congenital heart disease in a great setting, doing what I wanted to do.
Roberts: You were on staff for a while after you finished your medical residency and cardiology fellowship here at Baylor?
Phillips: I finished my cardiology fellowship at BUMC and then did a 1-year fellowship with Carol Warnes at the Mayo Clinic afterwards. I came back and was here at Baylor for less than a year. Then the opportunity arose for me to join Dr. Warnes' group at the Mayo Clinic. I wanted to pursue a career in congenital heart disease. I felt that coming immediately out of fellowship one needed the support group of experienced clinicians around, and the Mayo Clinic provided that for me.
Roberts: How many are there in that group at the Mayo Clinic?
Phillips: Full-time there are Dr. Warnes, myself, Heidi Connolly, and Naser Ammash. Martha Grogan splits her time between us and the heart failure clinic (she is an amyloid expert), and we added a new staffer this year, Crystal Bonnichsen, a trained imager in computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging who also completed a clinical fellowship in congenital heart disease.
Roberts: What is a typical day for you now?
Phillips: I spend half of the day reading echocardiograms on patients with congenital heart disease and half the day in the clinic seeing patients.
Roberts: A half day is 4 hours?
Phillips: Yes. I start my appointment slots at 12:30 and end at 4:30 pm.
Roberts: What time do you wake up in the morning?
Phillips: Between 5:00 and 5:30 am.
Roberts: What time do you get to the hospital?
Phillips: Around 7:00 to 7:30 am.
Roberts: What time do you leave the hospital?
Phillips: About 6:00 usually.
Roberts: You work half day!
Phillips: It's not a bad life.
Roberts: Are you called back very often at night?
Phillips: I have a couple of nighttime call responsibilities. Four weeks a year, I do all adult echo call, not congenital heart disease. Often we are split into transesophageal echo or transthoracic echo because the volume is so big even at night. On that call one can count on being in the hospital most nights of that week. If on transesophageal echo call an aortic dissection patient arrives, one may spend quite a long time at the hospital. I am on night call for the general hospital service, but because we have many medicine residents and cardiology fellows, I infrequently have to go back to the hospital. Occasionally I receive calls at night asking for advice, but I am able to pull up the electronic record at home so infrequently have to go in.
Roberts: What time do you go to bed at night?
Phillips: Before 10:00 pm.
Roberts: You get about 7 hours of sleep?
Phillips: I need closer to 8 hours. I like to sleep.
Roberts: What about weekends? Do you go in?
Phillips: I will often go in, even though I am not on call, to complete clinical duties—signing off on notes, making sure letters are completed to referring physicians—and then I try to keep some part for academic activities such as writing a textbook chapter or a manuscript for publication in a medical journal.
Roberts: Everyone at the Mayo Clinic is on salary. Do you like that?
Phillips: Yes.
Roberts: You were in private practice for a year. Did you like that?
Phillips: There are aspects of private practice that are nice in terms of being in control of your schedule. In a large multispecialty group like the Mayo Clinic, a physician has little autonomy regarding scheduling. Vacation requests are put in 15 months in advance. There is some flexibility if something comes up, and the clinic does work with you, but you can't decide the next week you want to take Friday off. That just doesn't work. Private practice might give you that opportunity to be somewhat more flexible, though I think there are other constraints that keep you tied down as well.
Roberts: How many cardiologists are at the Mayo Clinic?
Phillips: About 110.
Roberts: Has the number of patients at the Mayo Clinic held up pretty well with the economy changes?
Phillips: We had a decline in patient volume when the economy was bad. We seem to be rebounding now and demand seems to be up again. Patients come from the local community and from the surrounding areas, and many patients travel long distances to see us.
Roberts: Has the Mayo medical school worked out well?
Phillips: It's a nontraditional medical school model. I'm involved in the circulation block, teaching cardiac physiology. It's a comprehensive block where the students learn everything from pharmacology, anatomy, physiology, and physical examination packed into a very dense course. It's an interesting way of learning.
Roberts: How much time do you spend teaching?
Phillips: My part of the circulation block is 3 weeks long. In the morning the students may do a clinical rotation or be in the simulation center. The afternoon is lecture or small group discussions.
Roberts: Do they have anatomy classes?
Phillips: Yes, but only a short course. In our group, we see hearts with pathologist William Edwards, who demonstrates normal and abnormal anatomy. It is very good. His lectures are very good. He has a nice way of presenting the material so that one understands the anatomy.
Roberts: When do you have to retire at the Mayo Clinic?
Phillips: There is no set time if you aren't a surgeon. For medicine physicians, we can continue on as long as we want. I hope to practice into my late 60s at least. I definitely don't foresee retiring early.
Roberts: How do you handle those freezing winters in Rochester?
Phillips: At first I didn't know how we were going to cope with it. My first winter, I could not believe how cold it was. When I was a fellow, my husband stayed in Dallas and the kids and I went to Rochester. We thought it was to be a 1-year gig there. My husband traveled quite a bit and saw us in the summer and fall and we spent the holidays—Thanksgiving and Christmas—in Oklahoma. Thus, from early November through mid January he had not been to Rochester. I kept telling him how horrific the cold was, that I did not want to take the trash out because I did not want to go outside, and I tried to avoid the grocery store for the same reason. He thought I was exaggerating and that it could not be that bad, but I was not exaggerating. He visited on a weekday in early February. Before I came home he had gone to Target and he said his eyeballs froze on the way out to the car. He couldn't believe how cold it was. That first winter was very surprising to us. Then we realized that if we wore appropriate outerwear and learned how to get in and out of places, it was doable. We learned to embrace the winter. We began participating in winter sports. Our youngest daughter took up slalom ski racing for the high school. We've learned how to stand out in subzero weather watching our kid come barreling down a hill.
Roberts: Somebody told me that you were adopted.
Phillips: That is correct.
Roberts: Do you mind talking about that?
Phillips: No, not at all. I was adopted as an infant. My brother also is adopted. We are not genetic brother and sister. My parents couldn't have children. Although my parents never made me feel like I had to earn my place, I always sort of wondered if that was part of my always trying to do well.
Roberts: Did you feel that you were always loved, just as if your adoptive parents were your biologic parents?
Phillips: Definitely. My mom would always say, “I chose you.” I have actually now met my biologic parents. Interestingly, my biologic mother lived only 8 miles from me my whole life and that fact was not known to my family or to her. I don't think the state meant for that to happen. My biologic mother had no other children.
Roberts: Was meeting your biologic parent hard to do?
Phillips: It was hard in the sense that I had built up a fantasy of who I was, of what it was like to be placed for adoption, of who my biologic parents actually were. The reality was hard to accept that my biologic mother couldn't raise a child so she did the next best thing—put me up for adoption.
Roberts: How old were you when you met your biologic mother?
Phillips: I was in my 30s.
Roberts: You met your father too?
Phillips: Yes. I met him shortly after meeting my mother.
Roberts: How did you find her?
Phillips: It was very hard to actually find her. I initiated the contact but had to use a private investigator to find her. She of course knew the name of my biologic father whose name was not in any records. He had an unusual name and still lives in the same place he had grown up in. I've had a really nice relationship with him. He has two other children, so I have two half-siblings, whom I have gotten to know and have a relationship with. Although I was the youngest in my adopted family, I am the oldest sibling of my biologic family. My biologic father is a fantastic guy and is married to a wonderful woman.
Roberts: What does he do?
Phillips: He is an engineer.
Roberts: Wow. Great story! How did your adopted parents handle your desire to meet your biologic parents?
Phillips: They were very supportive. They know that there is no doubt in my mind that they are my parents. My search was not ever about finding my biologic parents to replace my adoptive parents. My relationship with my adoptive parents is too solid.
Roberts: It sounds like your biologic mother and father were not very close?
Phillips: Correct. Not at all. They had met in college. My biologic father was drafted and went to Vietnam. I was born while he was in Vietnam. My biologic mother made the choice to not get married and to put me up for adoption.
Roberts: Did he know that she was pregnant?
Phillips: Yes. He had wanted to marry her!
Roberts: She sounds as though she was a very independent woman.
Phillips: Definitely!
Roberts: You must have gotten some of that independence from her.
Phillips: Right. I think that is a good observation.
Roberts: Both of your biologic parents sound like they were very intelligent people.
Phillips: Yes, I think that both of them are quite smart. Both of them went to college. I think circumstances were such that neither was as successful as they could have been.
Roberts: Are you glad you met your biological parents?
Phillips: Yes. It gives me a little more understanding of who I am. That's not the case for every adopted person. My brother has no interest in knowing his biologic parents. It's not something that he needs to fulfill.
Roberts: Do you have hobbies? Do you and your husband do a lot of things together?
Phillips: We like to travel. Those early family vacations got me going. I like to see new places. We have been very blessed to get to travel to different parts of the world and to see some great things. We both enjoy that quite a bit. We try to stay sporty and active. Especially during the last 5 years, we've tried to make being physically fit a priority with the understanding that “putting health in the bank” is the way to enjoy retirement. It's not a guarantee but it certainly makes it better if you don't develop coronary disease at 50 and keep your weight under control and don't get diabetes. We pursue our fitness separately. He and our youngest daughter have joined Taekwondo together. They both have black belts. We snow ski as a fun family thing.
Roberts: Do you still read a lot?
Phillips: Yes.
Roberts: What do you read now?
Phillips: I still read a lot of fiction. I love political thrillers—Daniel Silva, very low-brow reading. I rarely read the classics or contemplate Shakespeare. One of the best presents I ever got was a Kindle. I now read a book every other week.
Roberts: What about meals when you get home? Who does that?
Phillips: Over the last couple of years, that has been Nathan's responsibility. He's really taken that on and has been very enthused about trying to find healthy meals. We're not vegan or vegetarian but we try to incorporate a lot of healthy food into our meals. He's really into finding healthy recipes.
Roberts: He works where now?
Phillips: He's a field application engineer. When we moved to Minnesota he was working for a company called Intersil. He is now working for International Rectifier. His work is very technical.
Roberts: What are your daughters' names, and when were they born?
Phillips: Victoria Elaine was born on October 28, 1992, and Amanda Leigh was born on March 4, 1997 (Figure 4).
Figure 4.
Portraits from 2012: (a) The Phillips family and (b) Victoria and Amanda.
Roberts: How many more kids are you going to have?
Phillips: Unfortunately, that's it. Life kind of passed by while I was training. I love my family! I would have liked to have more children, but two is good.
Roberts: Neither of your girls is interested in medicine?
Phillips: Correct. I think our oldest daughter would be a good physician, not a one-on-one physician, but a good researcher. She's very artistic. She is studying architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. Amanda toys occasionally with the idea of medicine but she really likes the idea of physics and engineering. My husband keeps hoping my oldest will change her mind and go to medical school.
Roberts: Is religion a major part of your life?
Phillips: Yes. I consider myself relatively religious, a Protestant. Having a faith-based aspect of my life, I think, helps me in medicine.
Roberts: You have got a great story. Any additional comments?
Phillips: At a meeting in Chile a few weeks ago, I commented that I didn't know how I got such a good life. It's a pretty darn good life, and I am very thankful to have gotten the opportunities that I have.
Roberts: Sabrina, you are great. Many thanks for sharing your life so openly with our readers.