Louisville Medicine Volume 63, Issue 5 | Page 39

DR. WHO? MEMBER SPOTLIGHT DEEPAK AZAD, MD Aaron Burch Deepak Azad, MD, spent the first 28 years of his life in India and was 36 before he visited Louisville for the first time. Now that he’s spent 20 rewarding years here in Kentucky and Indiana, it’s clear Dr. Azad calls both sides of the Ohio River his home. Growing up in the small town of Kadod in the state of Gujarat in India, Dr. Azad’s parents practiced health care together for a community of just 500. “That’s where my dad grew up and he wanted to give back. My mother was a nurse and they had a small clinic. In monsoon season, Dad would drive to patients on his motorcycle when they couldn’t reach the clinic,” Dr. Azad said, also recalling the moment he realized how deeply his father cared for the town they called home. “I was seven or eight-years-old. I can see my dad in our living room with a big pile of papers. I asked him what it was. He told me we need roads so Kadod could connect to the bigger city. He prepared these papers at his own expense. It was before an election and they said ‘No road. No vote.’ And the road happened. He was always interested not only in the practice of medicine but also in making a better life for the people in the area.” From an early age Dr. Azad, along with his older sister and younger brother, were exposed to social causes from both parents. “If we traveled by bus to go to a different town, my mom would stop the bus if someone was smoking. She’d make the person get out and finish the cigarette outside. That was many, many years ago when there were no rules or regulations about smoking. But she was so proactive,” said Dr. Azad. “Now I can look back and see how it was a maternal instinct for her to protect her children.” When Dr. Azad’s sister, Ilea, finished high school, the family moved to the bigger city of Surat to live while Ilea attended arts college. For a time, Dr. Azad wasn’t planning on being a doctor at all. Instead, he wanted to follow his sister into an art related field and then perhaps into law as a judge. He wrote short stories and poems, and still has a passion for it today. It took one of his father’s patients to make him reconsider the health care field he would grow to love. “I went to my dad’s clinic one time and one of the patients waiting asked me what I was going to do. ‘When your dad retires, who is going to take care of us?’” Dr. Azad recalled. “That’s how I began to think that being a doctor was a very noble profession. The patients were happy. My dad was happy. I saw that I could make a difference.” After high school, the young would-be doctor attended Government Medical College in Surat. It was a difficult time for Dr. Azad, as his mother, Vijayalaxmi, was suffering from schizophrenia. “She wouldn’t go to her treatments, but she listened to me so I was the one to take her. She died during my time in medical school.” Still, Dr. Azad persevered. After medical school, he stayed in Surat working at local hospitals until he could start up his own practice. It was there he met his future wife, Vyoma, and his world irrevocably