INSIDE WVSMA
Message from the President
To the Mountain State , With Love
Suzanne Gharib , MD
One of my last childhood memories in my native country of Lebanon was the tear in my paternal grandfather ’ s eyes as he waved goodbye to my family and me . We were leaving our home with a very slim chance of ever returning — after all , it was the ‘ 80s and the world was much bigger in those days . FaceTime wasn ’ t really an option and , once you left , it was often forever .
Coming off the plane that brought us to America as a young girl of 5 years old was a jarring experience . Stepping foot on a land that was not my own with an unfamiliar language being spoken and looking into a sea of foreign faces , the only thing that kept me grounded was the mighty grip I had on my mom ’ s hand and the tiny speck in the distance that made himself known as another important figure in my life — my maternal grandfather . He had stayed with us frequently in Lebanon and was a reassuringly familiar face in a scary new world .
Navigating our new home brought our family very close together . My father had to travel back to Lebanon nine months a year to finish out his teaching obligations . That left my mother the single parent to six children . We quickly formed an incredibly tight bond and learned that only by a great work ethic and being supportive of one another were we going to survive in this new land . I remember my mom using an Arabic-English dictionary to help us to read the “ Little House on the Prairie ” series as a way to teach us English .
However , the old adage is true that the days go slow but the years go fast . Those first few months seemed to last forever but before we knew it , all the kids were speaking English fluently and thinking of the Mountain State as home . Our paternal grandparents eventually immigrated to Canada , and we were reunited once again .
I have always counted myself blessed to have an amazing family — supportive parents and grandparents who placed immense value on the importance of academic success set the tone . My three older siblings paved the path ahead of me by attending medical school at West Virginia University ( WVU ). That , much more than being a child of a physician , drove myself and my younger siblings to follow the same path and eventually led me to WVU for both my undergraduate and medical education . I was able to complete my training and further grow with an internal medicine residency at the University of Kentucky followed by a rheumatology fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh .
Upon completing the fellowship , I was torn as to where to practice , but my heart led me back home . I moved back to the Charleston area in 2008 and did what few doctors do in this day and age and started my own practice . To say that was an interesting experience is an understatement . Nothing in my many years of education had prepared me for the complexity of learning to run a business while practicing medicine . I had to learn all the details of labor laws , overhead , the intricacies of billing , and negotiating contracts — all with little to no guidance . The mistakes I made became educational opportunities and over time , I was able to build a large practice . Eventually , I merged my practice with two of my colleagues to establish the largest rheumatology practice in the state .
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