Michael Linenberger , MD

What was your first job ? I grew up in rural Kansas , so there were plenty of opportunities for employment – most of them were in agriculture . When I was 13 years old , though , I worked in a usedcar dealership , detailing cars . Cars would roll into the lot , and my job was to wash , wax , steam-clean , and vacuum them , and basically get them into good shape for resale . Believe it or not , I worked 50 hours a week . At 13 years old , I learned responsibility and accountability , and – most importantly – I got to drive the cars around the lot .

Did you think about sticking with it and becoming a used-car salesman ? No , that was a short-term job , but I did appreciate being in that environment . Since most of the jobs for kids my age were working on the family farm or , if you lived in town , babysitting or delivering newspapers on a paper route , the car dealership was a different setting . And , actually , I ’ m one of the best carwashers I know . If you have a dirty car , I know how to get it clean !

The next summer , when I was old enough to work in the

cornfields for a seed company , I detasseled corn . I walked down each corn row , reached up to the top of the stalk , and plucked out the tassel . That was the job that convinced me to rule out farming and follow my passion for science . Many of my friends ended up working on farms or in agriculture-related businesses , but I never saw myself going into any of those careers .

What other non-medical careers did you imagine yourself going into ? I grew up in a strong Catholic family , and a few of my family members were in the clergy ; two aunts were nuns , and my father ’ s cousin was a highly ranked priest of the Precious Blood order . He would come home for visits and tell great stories about the work being done in the Vatican in Rome . I was impressed by his intellect and worldliness . Also , the nuns at my school were the smartest people I knew ! I always had a desire to do service of some sort , so , up until about seventh grade , I thought I might become a priest . Then I hit high school …

What – or who – led you into medicine ? I was always interested in science , but I had no idea what a career in science could be . My father was the first to pique my interest – he was an electrician and knew a fair bit about electronics – but I gravitated more towards biologic sciences . I even loved microscopy as a kid . But , again , I had no idea how I could translate that passion into a career .

When I went to college , I thought medicine might be a good fit for me , but I wanted to check it out more and see if I could relate to folks struggling with illness and uncertainty . So , I became an orderly and worked in the intensive care unit ( ICU )

of the hospital in my small hometown . After a couple of summers working there , I knew that medicine was the career for me .

This was about 40 years ago , when being an orderly was a hands-on experience . At that time , orderlies ( and nurse ’ s aides ) were responsible for assigned patients , which meant handling everything from answering call lights and giving bed baths , to cleaning bedpans and giving backrubs .

Being an orderly was also a great experience because , while I learned about anatomy and physiology in college ( the aspects of biology that drew me to medicine ), I also learned about service . The head nurse of the ICU was a friend of my older sister – who also was a nurse – and they taught me compassion and the humanistic side of medicine . Of course , at the same time , I learned how to read electrocardiograms and observed procedures in the ICU and operating room . It steered me toward medical school and away from considering graduate school and a research career as a technologist or PhD .

When did you know you wanted to specialize in hematology ? After graduating medical school at the University of Kansas , I did my internal medicine residency at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence . I was a naïve midwesterner at the time , and the East Coast was an exciting , but very different , place – culturally , socially , and politically . Brown University ’ s medical school was still relatively young when I joined in 1982 ; it had an outstanding academic primary-care internal medicine training program , but much of our teaching and patient care experiences in categorical internal medicine came from