Tasheema Fair, M.D., F.A.C.O.G. is a renowned physician, lieutenant colonel, and health & wellness coach and enthusiast. She has deftly combined all of these areas of interest into one highly accomplished career. This is her story, in her own words.
MARYVILLE, TN, March 22, 2021 /Neptune100/ — At the beginning of the year, the first part of the following interview was published right here in the online news press. This exchange took place with Tasheema Fair, renowned medical doctor, nutritional expert, and spiritual practitioner. She is driven by her faith in God, and she believes in the importance of a healthy body, mind and soul. Some might say this is unusual for a person of science, but in Dr. Fair’s case it has made her a trusted, reliable force in the lives of her patients and their families. She is a board certified obstetrician and gynecologist, as well as an accomplished surgeon—and an all-around interesting person to talk to! Clearly, others throughout the country agree with his sentiment, because the previous article was picked up nationally throughout the mainstream media.
Now, the conversation continues.
“When I came out of active duty, the [Affordable Care Act] was kind of already in play,” explains Dr. Fair. “So as an active duty doc, we only deal with one insurance carrier and that’s Tricare. That’s sort of the ACA itself! But then that came out in 2014 and you’re dealing with different insurance carriers. I will say my bottom line is this: practice world class care. It can get a little tedious when you know the right thing to do for somebody, but you have a third party saying, ‘Can we talk about it? It’s going to be too much money.'”
She discusses insurance company denials and the struggle to do the right thing while contending with the cold, hard reality of dollars and cents. As she explains it, it is a tedious process dealing with a third party versus simply doing the right thing.
Throughout last year and ongoing, COVID-19 has plagued us medically, socially economically… you name it. Naturally, its arrival has meant an overhaul in healthcare on every level from treatment to office hygiene. It is a concern that regularly comes up now for Dr. Fair:
“I’ve been following the numbers. But what I tell people is that I deal with pregnant patients, so the thing we care about as an obstetrician is, can a disease hurt the baby? And no, COVID-19 cannot do that. It can’t cross the placenta. There’s a placenta blood barrier that it cannot cross. So there are no issues with the baby. As long as they know that, they are okay. And then I still tell them to make sure they’re eating the right kinds of foods, taking their vitamins or supplements, and protecting themselves.”
As a traveling doctor, Tasheema Fair does not have an office, therefore she has not been affected in the same way as stationary practices. In her own experience and words, though, the practices Dr. Fair works with “powered through” the dark days of COVID, and continue to do so now.
Dr. Fair is in the trenches. She is on the front line. A hospital medic. With her military healthcare background in some ways it’s really the only place for her to be. She is used to high pressure, high stakes, no-nonsense medical care. So something like new guidelines for COVID isn’t exactly going to slow her down or impede progress in any way. She is literally trained to do her job in battle.
“Obviously, there is the mask mandate, which means wearing a mask while you’re in the hospital, in the office and at all times unless you’re by yourself somewhere,” she explains. “In the waiting room area of the office, it’s like: you can sit here but don’t sit here! And then the amount of people that can come in is limited. So I’ll say on labor and delivery you can have one support person come in, but once they’re in, they’re in, and if they leave they can’t come back until after they’re discharged.”
Regarding the future of COVID and the uncertainty surrounding it, Dr. Fair says, “Think about polio. Was it, like, super eradicated when the vaccine came out? It may have taken some time to kind of slowly go away. Or even the measles, mumps, rubella—they probably didn’t go away overnight. So I would compare it to the Spanish Flu. It took the Spanish Flu a couple of years to die down. And, they were able to develop the flu vaccine. It’s probably going to take a couple years, based on the history of diseases and vaccines. It won’t be overnight.”
This can be disheartening to hear from a medical doctor as expert and direct as Tasheema Fair, but she is unmistakably relaxed and measured and, above all, professional with her approach to discussing the pandemic and anything else. Dr. Fair places most, if not all, of her trust in God’s hands. With that peace of mind and spirit, it’s much easier to keep oneself balanced and calm.
This conversation with Tasheema Fair will continue in the next article coming soon, where she will discuss nutrition, spirituality and stress maintenance.