KCUMBmagazine - Kansas City University of Medicine and ...

Rahmaan interviews a patient recentlyat the Kansas City Hospice House whileon one of her third-year clerkships.time didn’t mend the holes in her life, at least notimmediately.She enrolled in community college classes, lived athome and got a job.But again, her academics faltered in the face of waningmotivation, a stumbling block on the way to finding along-term career and plan for her life.“It was absolutely apathy,” Rahmaan said. “I didn’thave a plan. I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I failed all my(community college) classes. And why? Because I didn’tgo. I wasn’t ready for (community college), either.”However, a swell of awareness and that missing ingredient– desire – soon came into her life, at a time whenshe most needed it. It was a transformational shift thatRahmaan, now 31 years old and a third-year osteopathicmedical student at KCUMB, credits with helping get herback on track.At 19, she was pregnant.She called the little girl Karma, a fitting name for thepositive life changes the baby would inspire in her mother.“Karma,” Rahmaan said recently while betweenclasses at KCUMB, “was what changed everything.“The day she was born, there was this awakening thatI had to do something with my life. That next week I (re-)enrolled in college.”And so began the reemergence of Kameelah Rahmaan,a single mother and a reinvigorated student.Her path, once littered with academic surrenders andfailures, would soon be decorated with years of successesand triumphs, her potential tapped and utilized, her roadeventually winding its way from the suburbs of Los Angelesto the Midwest’s heartland at KCUMB.She spent three years at Mt. San Antonio CommunityCollege in Walnut, Calif., knocking out the now seeminglysimple GED, recording a 3.7 G.P.A. in her collegecourses, and participating in student government andvarious clubs.rahmaan then transferred to the University of California,Los Angeles, where she spent two-plus years andmajored in anthropology.A summer trip she made to Honduras, with Karma at herside, provided another milestone experience for Rahmaan.Mother and daughter visited the Central Americancountry to volunteer at a nutrition center and orphanagefor women and children.There, Rahmaan worked with American doctors andmedical students, providing care to impoverished people– people she identified with because they, too, had oncebeen overlooked and allowed to slip through the cracks.“It was that trip when I said, ‘Oh, my God,’ I’m supposedto be a doctor,” she said. “This is what it is. This ismy calling.”Following the trip, Rahmaan set a goal: be enrolled inmedical school and on the way to becoming a doctor bythe time she was 30.She started at KCUMB at 29. She’s on track to graduatein 2014.Aleen Rahmaan, 65, is Kameelah’s father, a retiredhigh school art teacher and football coach for 33 years inthe Los Angeles area. He often flies from his Californiahome to Kansas City to help Kameelah with Karma, now11, and her youngest daughter, Laila, 2.Aleen said his daughter’s success isn’t a shock to himor to their family. He, like Kameelah’s mother, Alma, and herbrothers and sisters have always believed in her, knowingthere was a person deep down who could change the world.“I’m surprised, but not that amazed because I knowmore about struggling and what it takes now,” he said. “Ithink she has the right stuff to move forward in her life.She’s never been afraid to test different waters.“I’m not surprised how her life is going now becauseI know who she is.”He said it was difficult learning his daughter haddropped out of high school.“I was concerned all around, but our family supportsystem, we were pretty solid,” he said. “And, it’s not likeshe was a bad, arrogant kid.“I believe high school, for her, was something sheneeded. It was just that time; it was her going through therites of passage. She was searching, trying to find out howshe was going to change the world.”At school, Aleen’s students would lend insight into ateenager’s world and potential thought processes.“They really supported me and helped me with someof the behaviors I was seeing (with Kameelah),” he said.“It gave me a little more patience.”Despite some of her questionable decisions, Aleenknew his daughter well, and was wholly aware of what shecould offer when the time was right.Kameelah, he said, was always deeply compassionate,best exhibited by her attempts to regularly help friends inneed and try to find homes for stray animals.“There were so many (kids), my wife and I startedconsidering ourselves community parents,” Aleen said.He also remembers the time when Kameelah, whowas volunteering at a local Humane Society shelter, led amovement among classmates to adopt unwanted and discardedcats, an effort that was highly successful in findingnew homes for the pets.“That’s when I realized she had good leadership qualitiesat a young age,” her father said.Another memory is when Kameelah, older sister,Jamila, and Alma volunteered to help Hurricane Katrinaevacuees in the Los Angeles area.“She was a handful, but whatever she did, it was usuallyto help,” Aleen said. “If it wasn’t her peers, it was animals.If it wasn’t animals, it was her friends.”Alma, Aleen said, is the family’s “cornerstone,” theparent Kameelah takes after most.A registered pediatric nurse since 1980, it’s likely Kameelah’sdesire to help others came from watching Alma,he said.“She’s the one I think Kameelah got the system ofhelping and caring for people from,” he said. “She’s justgot an inner strength.”Kameelah and Jamila are Aleen’s and Alma’s biologicalchildren, but the family expanded over the years toinclude four adopted sons, three of whom have medicaland developmental issues.Kameelah helped care for the three boys at the family’shome, tasks that were an example of her abilities.“She always had ability, but she was one of those kidswho didn’t believe in herself,” Alma said.Like Aleen, Alma isn’t surprised by Kameelah’s turnaround,the success she’s now having, or that someday inthe not-so-distant future she’ll be a doctor.“She could always do whatever she set her mindto, and we always wanted to support her as much as wecould,” she said.At KCUMB, Rahmaan said, she’s found a quality institutionwith well-respected teachers she trusts. In Kansascontinued on page 24“I won’t be valedictorian, but I will be adoctor … It will be amazing, like a dreamcome true. The completion of a dream.”Kameelah Rahmaan22 WINTER 2012 WINTER 2012 23