Dr.  Bertron Brown was introduced by Dana Timaeus of the Timaeus Law Firm.  Dana let us know that Dr. Brown was a gifted story teller and that we would be inspired by his tales.

 

Dr. Brown is board-certified in Internal Medicine and has provided medical care to patients of this community for more than 26 years.  Brown is a graduate of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Texas.  He completed his internship and residency at Louisiana State University Medical Center, Shreveport, Louisiana.

 

Dana was correct that Dr. Brown could capture our imaginations with his stories.  He told of his grandfather’s “firsts”.  The first time he saw an automobile and the first time he saw a light bulb at the age of 13.  He jokingly said that his grandfather tried to blow it out but was of course unsuccessful. 

 

Who would think that the metronome would be the forerunner of today’s pacemaker?  But Medtronic PLC was founded in 1949 with the help of Dr. C. Walton Lillehei and Earl Bakken an engineer.  Bakken found a way to transistorize a metronome to solve a problem and revolutionized the way cardiologists save lives.  Bakken died in October of 2018 but his discovery continues to provide the electrical impulses that keep hearts beating.

 

Tipton Golias didn’t set out to change the world but that is exactly what he did – right here in Beaumont.  Dr. Brown explained how difficult it was to diagnose a heart attack.  Patients would come in with symptoms of a heart attack but at the time there was no definitive test to provide a differential diagnosis.  A cardiologist entered the room one day and said that if they would draw blood samples from their patients that he could use his new equipment to identify the protein that is present during a heart attack.  This equipment was developed by our very own home town company – Helena Laboratories.  Tipton Golias has developed many ways to identify proteins as markers of a variety of diseases.  Through his ingenuity he transformed the field of protein analysis and provided a way to look at proteins as an address book. 

 

The final story involved a patient with Trigeminal Neuralgia.  Patients with this condition experience intense pain around the cheekbone and nasal area.  In the early days the condition was considered incurable and untreatable.  The only way to ease the pain was with narcotics and even that was not effective in most cases.  A patient of Dr. Brown had symptoms so severe that he had to take early retirement and was left unable to function due primarily to the pain medication.  Dr. Brown heard of a physician who had developed a surgical procedure that had a reduced mortality rate (the current was 50%) and a high success rate of 90%.  The patient had the surgery and was pain free for the first time since his first attack.  That surgeon was Dr. Ben Carson, a gifted pediatric surgeon, at Johns Hopkins University Medical School.  But that is not the best part of the story.  The patient was aware of a toddler who was taken from a family home by Child Protective Services.  He became a foster parent to this child and later adopted the young boy.  He was able to give the youngster a stable home and loads of love because he found a surgeon with Gifted Hands.