Hi there!
I’m Ifeoma (pronounced phonetically in English: ee-foam-ah). Thanks for visiting my personal blog/website, Miles of Courage! I am so glad that you are here. Welcome!
A bit about me: I am a Christian Nigerian-American physician living in the Mile High City of Denver, Colorado with my wonderful husband Tim and our amazing two-year old daughter and one-year old son.
Skin pathology (dermatopathology) is my clinical specialty so I spend hours (upon hours) a week looking through a microscope and diagnosing skin diseases. This includes everything from common inflammatory conditions like eczema and psoriasis to tumors like melanoma and other rarer skin cancers. Honestly, working alongside my colleagues in pathology, surgical specialties, oncology, and dermatology in being a part of people’s healing story has been incredibly rewarding and one of the greatest honors in my life so far… plus it’s pretty FUN, maaaaybe just a little bit nerdy, and incredibly interesting of course!
As a pathologist and a physician, I spend much of my time examining details (facts, symptoms, and images)… details that I subsequently use to construct a multidimensional picture of the suspected disease process in question. This examination process allows me to get closer to the most correct and truest diagnosis. And the right diagnosis is important as even life-saving treatment often times can be harmful in medicine if the diagnosis is incorrect.
Similarly, as a lover and follower of Jesus Christ for the past 20+ years, God has been helping me to take the same examining spiritual eye towards my own heart in my walk of faith with the God of the universe. My life journey in medicine, marriage, and now motherhood has felt like a marathon of sorts. It has been a course marked by incredibly rich (sometimes painful) growth and self-discovery. But if I may be honest with you, as in most marathons, these middle miles in life, while satisfying to the distance runner in me, have not uncommonly left me feeling overwhelmed, defeated, discouraged, and disillusioned. I have shed many tears in each of these areas, sometimes from joy and other times from heartache that has felt utterly suffocating.
But it is in these middle miles, where I have felt the least seen by even friends and family and the most overlooked, that I have discovered the depth of the Father heart of God for ME. It is also in these middle miles where He has helped me to shed the things that have weighed down my heart and my spirit for decades, and to walk in the freedom and confidence that is my inheritance as a child of the living God. I may be bruised but I am a better doctor, wife, and mother because of Him, and I am better able to love others with earnest deep compassion and empathy because of Him.
Miles of Courage is a space where I hope to share elements of this run of faith with Jesus in my own life story, specifically as it pertains to marriage, motherhood, and medicine.
Thank you for joining me. I hope my story will encourage you in your own spiritual journey no matter where you may be in that process.
With love,
Ifeoma
Disclaimer: The thoughts, views, and opinions expressed on this website are my personal views alone. They do not represent that of any of the medical institutions with which I have a professional relationships. This includes but is not limited to the hospitals where I currently hold practice privileges, the pathology and educational institutions where I am currently employed, and the professional organizations that I have a professional and academic relationship with.
Miles of Courage 