DR. WHO?
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
KAREN ABRAMS, MD
Aaron Burch
D
r. Karen Abrams, a pediatrician with the Kaplan Barron
Pediatric Group, came close to being predestined for a
career in Louisville health care.
Born and raised in the city, Dr. Abrams is the oldest of four
siblings, two brothers and a sister. Three of the four would go into
medical fields, in part thanks to influence from their father, Dr.
Berel Abrams, a lifelong general surgeon at Jewish and St. Mary
and Elizabeth’s.
“My dad would leave me at the nurses’ station as he’d make rounds.
I always thought hospitals were really interesting. They never scared
me. It wasn’t until years later as a resident that I realized I’d have
to sleep at a hospital when I was on call, and often be up all night,”
Dr. Abrams laughed. “My dad and his partner also hired the first
female general surgeon in Louisville, Dr. Martha McCoy. I was
really proud of him.”
just three years, she then took a few months to backpack through
Europe and Israel before living in London for eight months.
“Backpacking in Europe made me very independent. There were
no cell phones back then and calling home was too expensive to do
often so my family and I mostly communicated through letters. My
friend and I started in Denmark, which was beautiful, then visited
Munich, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Paris, all through Italy,
Greece and then finished with two weeks in Israel,” she recalled.
An early fascination with health care was accompanied by an
ingrained love of Louisville Basketball. She attended the games
starting in third grade and even snagged tickets to two of their
three championships, the Final Four in 1980 and the entire March
Madness run in 2013.
Back before the days of rolling luggage, Dr. Abrams carried her
life on her back for those 10 weeks before heading to London where
her uncle had set her up with a job. “I knew I wanted to go to med
school, so I wanted to come back with something that would help
my resume. It turns out the job he got for me was in the gift shop!
He didn’t know, but I thought, ‘I can’t work at the gift shop.’”
“I’m a rabid fan. The team is like one of my kids,” Dr. Abrams
said. “When you’re middle aged, you don’t care about embarrassing
yourself. I was lucky enough to get to go to the Muhammad Ali
Memorial and the team was there. I know it’s not appropriate, but
I was like ‘Hi! I’m your biggest fan!’ I’ve been going to the games
since I was 8-years-old.”
After a week of hunting, she found work in the Immunology Lab
at the University College of London, but not before worrying her
parents. “My parents said, ‘Call us when you have a job,’ and I took
them literally because my dad grew up in the Depression and it’s
expensive to call. When I finally got the position and told them,
they were like ‘You haven’t called us!’ - ‘Well, you told me!’”
After graduating from Ballard High School, Dr. Abrams pursued
undergraduate education at Tufts University outside of Boston,
fulfilling a childhood dream to live in New England. Graduating in
London for Dr. Abrams was both exciting and quiet. Not being in
college and spending each day at the immunology lab, there wasn’t
a lot of time to meet new friends. “It was very independent, but it
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Editor’s Note: Welcome to Louisville Medicine’s member spotlight section, Dr. Who? In the interest of simply
getting to know each other as a society of colleagues, we’ll be highlighting random GLMS physicians on a
regular basis. If you would like to recommend any GLMS physician member to the Editorial Board for this
section, please e-mail [email protected] or call him at 736-6338.
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