Dr. Carmen April always knew she wanted to work in medicine. She was in elementary school when she first started thinking about it and by the time she got to college at Mississippi State she had a pretty good idea of what her specialty would be.
“I was a student athletic trainer,” Dr. April said. “My whole college experience revolved around Mississippi State athletics and I saw a lot of injuries, specifically lower extremity injuries, career ending injuries.”
Now 10 years into her practice as a podiatrist, Dr. April still treats a lot of sports medicine injuries.
“I see everyone from weekend warriors who play flag football and basketball to marathoners, but I also have a lot of diabetic patients as well.”
As busy as her Nashville, Tennessee practice usually is, there were times in the last year when the steady flow of patients almost stopped completely.
“When the lockdown first started in March of last year, for two weeks straight I only had one or two patients a day and I was scared. It was very nerve-wracking,” she said. “The bills stay the same, my employees still have to be paid and then after that for five, six, seven weeks, it didn’t get much better. We got up to about five or six patients a day. It was very scary.”
She’s also seen several of her patients pass away due to COVID-19.
“It’s been hard. I had one patient in her 60s who’s been my patient for years. She passed away on the day she was supposed to be seeing me in my office. I lost two others, too. I can’t even tell you how many other patients have had it and thank God recovered.”
Dr. April is one of only two African American female podiatrists in Nashville and her office is based in what she calls a working-class part of the city. She’s made it her mission to serve her community both professionally and personally.
“I do a lot of work in the community with health initiatives with my sorority and then with Junior League of Nashville. It’s interesting because I get a lot of my African American patients who specifically seek out African American physicians because of the care they feel like they typically receive. I don’t want to paint everybody with a broad brush, but patients are more comfortable and actively seek us out. I’m really proud to be here and do what I do.”
That’s why she fought so hard to make sure her business stayed viable even through constant cancellations this past year.
“I’m lucky, I’ve always been a saver so I was able to keep my employees but it’s definitely been hard.”
The office is just now getting to the point where they are seeing about 60 to 70 percent of their patients return. “The cancellations still happen every day and it’s hard to run a practice like that but we’re doing ok.”
She says the Lowe’s Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) grant she received helped pay her rent, her employees and for some much-needed Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
“We started going through PPE like crazy and the prices went up dramatically – it was highway robbery."
I’m so thankful to Lowe’s for helping us pay for all of that. We can’t do our jobs without it. The money from Lowe’s allowed me to have a little security and not be so nervous. It was really a lifeline.