"There's something in me that just won't allow me to give up"
Whether it’s whipping up her specialty (red velvet cake) or pursuing a long-held career dream (medicine), Ariane S. Crabb has always had preparation and hard work on her side. Call them her super powers.
“I’ve always been the type of person who never takes ‘no’ for an answer,” says the soft-spoken University of Toledo medical student, one of two DEI interns working at the Emory Eye Center this summer.
“And even when it feels impossible, there’s something in me that just won’t allow me to give up.”
Crabb knows of what she speaks. Since joining the Emory Eye Center in late May, she has dived head-first into a fast-paced schedule that has her shadowing Dr. Jacquelyn O’Banion at Grady Hospital two to three days a week and working on AMD research with Dr. Sayantan Datta two to three days a week. All of this while her husband, Callum, is working hundreds of miles away in Michigan for the summer.
“When I finish up here, next month, I will begin my second year of med school,” she says. “We’ll be back together then. We have an apartment in Toledo.”
If you think this relentless schedule might crack her resolve, don’t. Ariane and Callum Crabb are on a joint mission to realize the best in each other’s potential. They mapped it out a few years back, and are steadfast in executing. He is pushing through a degree in kinesiology while Ariane works her way through medical school and residency.
Thus far, the summer internship at Emory has confirmed her decision to pursue a career in medicine. Every day she has learned something new about the eye, its conditions, and its treatment. Will this lead to a career in ophthalmology? Ariane smiles. It has certainly checked a lot of boxes.
“What draws me to being a physician is the opportunity to build relationships with my patients, to be there for them over time,” she says. “I’ve seen that with Dr. O’Banion at Grady. She goes the extra mile. [For instance] with one patient, she prescribed a medicine that can cost a lot, depending on where you get it. So she called two pharmacies to find out where he could get it cheaper. That’s the kind of physician I want to be.”
Another plus? As a DEI intern, Ariane has been able to suit up and observe ophthalmic surgeries.
“I love working with my hands, so surgery is something I’ve looked forward to doing,” she said. “I was fascinated by what was going on during the buckle surgery that I observed. It involved a lot of manipulation of the ocular muscles that was so interesting to watch. I hardly noticed the blood.”
Ariane will be the first to tell you that her journey to this point had some challenges, but she retains an almost regal confidence in the telling of her story. After graduating with honors with an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, she didn’t get into medical school on her first try. She was flummoxed.
That 59 percent of all medical school applications are rejected every year did not comfort her one bit. Ariane Crabb was not preparing to be a statistic.
“Those were my ‘unintended gap years’,” she explains. “I had to step back and evaluate: what did I really want to do? And why did I want to do it?”
Not surprisingly, she answered those questions by plunging further into the field of medicine – working as a medical scribe, shadowing an OB-GYN doctor, and earning a master's degree in biomedical science. All the time, she was absorbing new information about her chosen field, analyzing her life story, and, importantly, she was praying.
“Faith has always been a big part of my life. It had always given me a place where I could find hope, where I could remember that I was capable of working hard and achieving, even if I was afraid of failing.”
She also found inspiration in her mother, Caroline Greenidge, MD.
“I think it was Marian Wright Edelman who said ‘You can’t be what you can’t see’ and that is very true. Representation is huge. My mother is my representation. I grew up knowing that medicine was a possibility for me because my mother is a family practice physician. She and my father told me that if you are blessed with the ability to pursue medicine, you will need to make sacrifices. Sometimes that scared me, because I knew she had to make a lot of sacrifices. But she showed me it could be done.”
And Ariane Crabb is doing it.
--Kathleen E. Moore