Trailblazers & Trendsetters: At 8, Solomon Ondoma treated wounds. Now he's a neurosurgeon.
Rachelle Chase shines the spotlight on Iowans who are taking charge and making a difference in their own way in Trailblazers & Trendsetters, a weekly feature in the Des Moines Register. Know someone who should be featured in this series? Contact Rachelle at rchase@registermedia.com.
Solomon Ondoma always knew he would become a doctor.
During holiday breaks from kindergarten through first grade, he'd hang out with his mother at the military hospital in Uganda — where she was a psychiatric nurse who headed the military unit servicing psychiatric patients and performed general nursing — and watch what everyone was doing.
Now, he’s living his dream and more, working as a neurosurgeon in Mason City. According to the American Board of Neurological Surgery, Dr. Ondoma is one of 28 board certified neurosurgeons in Iowa and perhaps only one of two Black neurosurgeons in the state.
His long trek from a child helping his mother to becoming a neurosurgeon included 13 years of school, post-high school.
“Unlike other medical subspecialties, you don’t get board certification until you work for at least three years,” Ondoma said. “Then you have to submit at least 125 patients to show you're a good surgeon, then take the oral boards.”
Then there’s the continuing education. “Exams don’t end,” Ondoma continued, “Tests don’t end. Becoming better does not end. Learning doesn’t end."
He’s fascinated by the complexity of the brain and spinal cord and the intricacies of how they function. He’s in awe at how delicate the operations are, how being just two millimeters away from a major structure could be life-changing if a surgeon injured it. He loves working in a specialty that not only requires a profound amount of knowledge, but also requires extensive skill and very steady hands to do very delicate work.
At 8 years old, he became a nursing assistant
When Uganda’s 1981-1986 protracted guerilla war by President Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA) ended, hospital staff and supplies ran short. Nurses and other health-care providers became the public’s point of contact for medical aid.
Neighbors started coming to the Ondomas’ three-bedroom house in Kampala, Uganda’s largest city and capital, to see his mother. “If neighbors had an infection and they needed IM (intramuscular) injections, all they needed to do was find (buy) a syringe and a needle and then my mother would send me to the nearby shop to buy water for injections so she could mix up, you know, the penicillin injection.”
More: Trailblazers & Trendsetters: Basi Affia launches Iowa's first Black comic book company
Ondoma explained that in those days (and in some instances today in rural areas of Uganda), pharmacies were not seriously regulated. Thus, a small grocery store attached to a house could sell sealed syringes and needles, along with basic medical supplies, without a prescription.
Ondoma didn’t give injections but, after training with his mother, he provided basic care and treated wounds.
Then, he started honing his other medical skills.
His parents had bought him a 16- to 32-page notebook for school. “I'd get a pen and scribble from beginning to end of the book. Nothing was legible,” Ondoma said, laughing. “I'd tell my mom, ‘I'm practicing how to be a doctor because this is how doctors write. You're not supposed to figure out anything they’re writing.’”
Ondoma thought he’d become a pediatrician
“I've always had a fondness for children,” he said. “I think that's partly because I've never grown up myself.”
His first job after his residency was at Cure Children’s Hospital, in Mbale, a town in eastern Uganda.
“Within a short time, I realized it was a pediatric neurosurgical hospital and 80% of the work was surgical, which I didn't expect to be doing,” Ondoma said. “I never wanted to be surgeon in all my life.”
But, within six months, Ondoma was the chief surgical resident. After another six months, he was essentially by himself as the only medical/surgical officer at the hospital. About a year or two later, he tried recruiting other doctor friends he knew wanted to be neurosurgeons, but they declined, as they were headed to China for training. All the while, Ondoma's mentor kept telling him he had good, steady hands and would make a good surgeon.
“So there I was, and I think it was during that transition that I said, ‘Maybe this is what God wants me to do.’ I've tried to recruit people, I’ve tried to do all these things," Ondoma said. "I think I decided then that I'll become a neurosurgeon.”
Ondoma loves his neurosurgery practice in Mason City with his partners Dr. David Beck and Dr. Sandeep Bhangoo, whose father, coincidentally was born and raised in Uganda. Ondoma also tries to go to Uganda every year to practice neurosurgery — including pediatric neurosurgery.
“Not to brag,” he said, which made me smile because he is so down-to-earth that one would never accuse him of bragging, “I always wanted something that would engage me both intellectually and also physically and neurosurgery meets that demand a little bit more than other surgical specialties.”
Patient care is about more than brain surgery
Ondoma feels that the ability to make a significant improvement in restoring function is rewarding. “You know, if someone comes and they can't walk or can't use their arm either because of pain or weakness, to be able to help and see that change and see them recover, especially for the pediatric population, is just incredible.”
But restoring function isn't the only important thing. As a third-year medical student, he learned something that remains with him today.
He was assigned to care for a young woman with renal failure.
“It got to the point where she was in complete renal failure,” Ondoma said, “and we all knew she was going to die. I’d come and place her baby on her bosom for the baby to nurse because she couldn't do it.”
More: Opinion: A year later, Rachelle Chase has new feature and reflects on what's next
In her final days, there was nothing more that he could do. Since nursing duties are part of a medical education in Uganda, Ondoma decided to bathe her. She hadn’t had a bath in weeks so he figured he could at least provide that small comfort.
He brought a basin of water, drew the curtains and gave her a bed bath.
“I remember her father breaking down and starting to cry. Of all the things I’d done all those weeks, this was what touched him the most. Not the vital signs. Not the maximum doses of Lasix I’d been giving. Not all this, but just because of giving his daughter a bath.”
This showed Ondoma one of the things that's important to patients — and to him.
“We do all these great things, great surgery, but I think for people to know that they are respected and their dignity is respected at the very end and for you to care for them as another equal human being is probably what I found to be the most satisfying part of my career."
For more information
To learn more or book an appointment with Dr. Ondoma, visit MercyOne North Iowa Neurosurgery or call 641-428-7487.
Watch How to Make a Neurosurgeon to learn more about Dr. Ondoma's medical journey from Uganda to the U.S.
Rachelle Chase is an author and an opinion columnist at the Des Moines Register who hopes to never need a neurosurgeon but plans to visit Dr. Ondoma if, unfortunately, she does. Follow Rachelle at facebook.com/rachelle.chase.author.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Young Solomon Ondoma wanted to be a doctor. Today he's a neurosurgeon.
