Proof of how a degree in English can take you anywhere, Dr. Jay Wellons is now the Cal Turner Chair in Pediatric Neurological Surgery and Professor of Neurological Surgery, Pediatrics, and Radiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He has been a pediatric neurosurgeon for 20 years and in medicine for over 31 years. Dr. Wellons currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee with his family, but he is no stranger to Mississippi. He is originally from Columbia, Mississippi and he received a degree in English from the University of Mississippi in 1991 and a medical degree from UM Medical School in 1995.
Wellons speaks highly of his time as an English major at UM. He was able to take courses on John Milton, William Shakespeare, James Joyce, William Yeats, literary criticism, and creative writing while fulfilling pre-med requirements for his minor. He remembers English professors such as Dr. Colby Kullman as a “great example of a positive influence and positive energy in academics.” He says that despite being at a university known for its Southern literature, he enjoyed learning about Anglo-Irish literature from Dr. Gregory Schirmer the most. Creative writing courses also stand out in Dr.Wellon’s memory. He described a class taught by Barry Hannah as “a once in a lifetime opportunity.” Ultimately, Dr. Wellons is very grateful to all of the people who have taught him over the years. “It’s such an important investment that you don’t really know about until years later. You realize what a part of your life education is and how important it is.”
To Dr. Wellons, his English degree has been important in more ways than one. His advice for those interested in a similar career path? “Medical schools are starting to understand the importance of communication with patients.” To Wellons, a diverse background is important all around, but especially for the path to curing cancer, creating vaccines, and understanding literature that’s written scientifically. For people specifically going into medicine, Wellons says that there is a lot that students could do to expand their horizon. Studying language helps for communicating and delivering news that can be hard to hear. “At the end of the day, your job is to sit down next to the bed and talk to the patient about what they have and what their choices are moving forward.” His advice for people in the humanities is to “recognize that as an English major there is a wide range of things that you could go into because of the ability to better understand the human condition and also evoke compassion.”
Now, as a pediatric neurosurgeon, Wellons says storytelling and writing have been an immense part of his journey in the medical field. “Having a background in the humanities really helps to communicate with patients,” he said. “Having a sense of commonality with one another is, I think, what good writing is all about.” Moreover, he sees a connection between what writers and doctors do in their work—“writers, not just medical writers, really do attempt to shine a light on and understand better the human condition, whether that’s through a medical diagnosis, love, suffering, experience, travel, or a story.”
In addition to contributing to medical research, his stories about his life and work have been published as op-eds in various publications, including The New York Times. More recently, Wellons published his memoir All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience (Random House 2022). In his book, Dr. Wellons draws on his literary background and uses a favorite quote from James Joyce’s The Dubliners as his epigraph: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” Dr. Wellons admires James Joyce’s short stories, and believes they are “the best written in the English language.” Among his favorites from The Dubliners are “The Dead” and “Araby.” Dr. Wellons says that his book, All That Moves Us, is one of his greatest achievements: “it was an opportunity to reflect back over all the years in medicine and reflect back on the joy, and the grief, and the happiness, and all points in between. I think it’s an attempt to talk a little bit about my dad, a little about mentors and mentees, but also just to honor the field that I have spent my life up to this point being involved with.”
Article by Andie Ferniany
Twitter: @jaywellons5
IG: @Allthatmovesus_official
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Book link: All That Moves Us by Jay Wellons: 9780593243367 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
Fresh Air link: Fresh Air for July 6, 2022: Pediatric neurosurgeon Jay Wellons : NPR
New Yorker review: Why Storytelling Is Part of Being a Good Doctor | The New Yorker
Goodreads reviews (4.54): All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and
Their Stories of Grace and Resilience by Jay Wellons | Goodreads
Publishers Weekly review (starred): All That Moves Us: Life Lessons from a Pediatric Neurosurgeon
(publishersweekly.com)
Audible review (4.9): All That Moves Us by Jay Wellons – Audiobook – Audible.com: English