Introduction

Defying expectations of a woman growing up in Arizona in the 1960s, Patricia Grayhall fled Phoenix at nineteen for the vibrant streets of San Francisco, determined to finally come out as a lesbian after years of trying to be a “normal” girl. Her dream of becoming a physician drew her back to college, and then on to medical school in conservative Salt Lake City.

Though Patricia enjoyed a supportive friendship with a male colleague, she longed for an equal, loving relationship with a woman. But her graduate medical training in Boston, with its emotional demands, long hours, lack of sleep, and social isolation, compounded by the free-wheeling sexual revolution of the 1970s, made finding that special relationship difficult. Often disappointed but never defeated, Patricia—armed with wit and determination—battled on against sexism in her male-dominated profession and against discrimination in a still largely homophobic nation, plunging herself into a life that was never boring and certainly never without passion.

A chronicle of coming of age during second-wave feminism and striving to have both love and career as a gay medical doctor, Making the Rounds is a well-paced and deeply humanizing memoir of what it means to seek belonging and love—and to find them, in the most surprising ways.

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Excerpt

Lead in: David, a fellow medical student. is my best friend and roommate. We’ve just found out we matched at the same hospital in Boston for our internships. We are just finishing up our fourth year of medical school with one more rotation to go.

I gasped and shouted my delight. “We matched together at Boston University Hospitals!” I turned to hug David.

Rather than elation, his face showed disappointment.

“I’m happy we’ll be at the same hospital,” he said as he hugged me back, perhaps more for comfort. “I’d just hoped to match in San Francisco.”

His disappointment was understandable. It had been only a few months since David had finally come out, and San Francisco was the mecca for gay men.

Regardless of our pending move to Boston, we still had specialty rotations to finish up in Salt Lake City. In April, the medical school assigned me to Holy Cross Hospital for my pulmonary elective. Dr. Ted Nelson was a pulmonologist with an office on the first floor.

Slouching in his beige office, jiggling my foot up and down, and enduring a boring monologue on pulmonary sounds, I tried my best to stay awake. After all, I had committed to the internal medicine honors program track, and this was my last rotation before graduation.

As I was about to nod off, the office door opened abruptly and in walked Dee, head of the Respiratory Therapy Department—without even knocking. She was a short, slim, sharply dressed woman. She appeared to be in her early thirties, every hair in place, makeup perfect, with an imperious bearing, and intelligent brown eyes. Despite her feminine appearance, she bristled with confident butch energy. I snapped to attention; that alluring mixture of butch and femme piqued my interest.

“Mr. Jordan’s blood gases are back, and his tidal volumes are inadequate. You need to change your order to wean him off his respirator today,” she instructed her boss, thrusting the patient’s chart toward him on the desk.

Wow, that’s gutsy, I thought.

Dr. Nelson, however, seemed unperturbed; he nodded and signed the order she’d written for him. Then, he introduced me.

“Dee, this is Patricia Grayhall, a fourth-year medical student who will work with us for the next six weeks.”

Dee looked me over quickly, and I felt self-conscious in my corduroy jeans, a shirt that had never seen an iron, hiking boots, and wrinkled white coat. If I’d known I was going to meet this interesting woman, I’d have taken more care dressing that morning.

“Hi,” I greeted her, heat rising to my face.

Dr. Nelson waved his hand in my direction. “Dee, why don’t you show Patricia the pulmonary lab and go over its functions the rest of the afternoon.”

And spend the night with me, I thought, then checked myself.

Suddenly full of energy, I sprang from the chair to follow her as she strode out the door.

Over the next few weeks, I found every excuse possible to visit the pulmonary function lab or to accompany Dee on her rounds of patients on ventilators. Dr. Nelson was more than happy to turn me over to her.

Dee was teaching me an enormous amount about pulmonary physiology. In those days, even some of the cardiopulmonary surgeons didn’t understand how to monitor their patients on a ventilator or to interpret blood gases and other measurements of pulmonary function. Dee intervened, made suggestions, and stood up to them, including Dr. Nelson, when she thought they were jeopardizing patient care. I was in awe of her.

One April morning, Dr. Maize, a cardiovascular surgeon, entered his post-op patient’s room, turned various dials on the ventilator, and walked out. The alarm sounded, alerting Dee and me to return to the room. We found the patient thrashing around in his bed. Dr. Maize had already left the Intensive Care Unit.

Dee frowned. “No wonder he’s agitated. Maize upped the pressure to 90!” She readjusted the dials to the proper setting.

I followed her around like a puppy, absorbing her knowledge and admiring her chutzpah in standing up to her superiors in the medical hierarchy. Sometimes we had lunch together. I was dying to find out about her personal life. Two weeks into the elective, I decided to probe.

“What do you like to do on your days off?” I asked, turning the saltshaker around and around on the table between us.

“Run up and down the hills on our snowmobiles, travel in our RV, play with the dogs,” she said.

“Are you married?” I noticed she’d used the plural.

“No, but I share a house with Brenda,” she told me pointedly. She rose and picked up her tray. “Shall we go upstairs and see how Mrs. Levin is doing?”

I mulled this over as we rounded on patients. I still had no straightforward answers. She lived with a woman—what did that mean? Was she interested in me? Or could she ever be? view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

As a teenager, Patricia researched homosexuality in the public library and read that homosexuals were mentally ill, could not hold down jobs, sustain relationships, and were doomed to lead unhappy lives. How are things different today? How are they the same in parts of the country?

At age 17, Patricia had a relationship with a much older man, a teacher at her high school. Do you think she was purely a victim of a sexual predator?


At age 19, Patricia becomes pregnant after one incident of unprotected sex. She felt pregnancy would ruin her education, her life, and her plans to become a scientist. If she had been forced to bear the child--as millions of women in the US will be now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe--how might her life have been different?

How are things different today compared to pre-Roe for women who experience an unplanned pregnancy in states that have banned abortion for any reason?

Why do you think 21% of young women today believe that abortion should be illegal?

In medical school, Patricia was one of only five women in a class of 100 and the only woman intern at Boston University Hospitals. There were few women physician role models and other women were often not supportive. How did Patricia adapt to this environment?

How did male domination of the medical profession before Title IX influence the culture of medical care?

How has the increased number of women in medical school, residency and practice changed the culture of medicine today? As a group, do women physicians have better health outcomes for their patients?

What were feminists telling women about the heteronormative model of relationship in the 1970s? How did that affect Patricia’s search for a satisfying relationship?

Throughout her twenties, Patricia had several relationships with women, some brief and some lasting 1.5 to 5 years or longer. Do you think it was more difficult to sustain a fulfilling, monogamous same-sex relationship in the 1970s than it is today? Why?

Do you think people in same-sex relationships today struggle with the same issues as heterosexual couples? For example, fidelity, money, children, equality in household responsibility, work-life balance?

How did second wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s contribute to the rights and freedoms for women and LGBTQ people over the past 50 years?

We are going backwards in the US regarding human rights for women. Do you think the pendulum will swing backwards for LGBTQ human rights also?


Did you learn anything relevant to your own life after reading this book?

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