Jean-Phillipe Austin, M.D., copes with long commute

BY KATHY HAGOOD       

            Jean-Philippe Austin, M.D., didn’t intend to find a job that would require him to commute from Miami to Orlando each week, leaving only his weekends to spend time with his wife, Magalie, and four daughters, Stefanie, 19, Jessica, 18, Adele, 12, and Natalie, 12.
            “As my parents always told me: ‘You do what you have to do.’ In this economy most of us are stretching ourselves a little farther for our families,” said Austin, a radiation oncologist with Florida Institute of Research, Medicine & Surgery, which has offices in Orlando and Ocoee.
            Austin has been commuting for a year now, and has learned how to successfully balance juggling his work and personal lives in cities about three and a half hours away from each other without totally stressing out.
            “Between work and exercise, the week is a blur, then my weekend is devoted to my family,” said Austin, who talks twice a day by phone to his wife and daughters.
            Compared to the stress and uncertainty of his boyhood and what his parents went through to support he and his siblings, this challenge is relatively manageable.
            Austin, who is 50, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. When he was only two years old, his twin uncles spoke out against the government of President François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and were taken into custody. They died in jail.
            Austin’s father, an executive with the Haitian American Sugar Co. who had never publicly questioned the Haitian government, was targeted because of his brothers. Austin’s father had to go into hiding to escape capture by the Duvalier’s private militia, the Tontons Macoutes.
            “They used to come and search our house in the middle of the night for him. I remember always being scared,” Austin said. “That experience of feeling uncertain shaped me and has caused me to be cautious in my life.”
            The next year his father was able to escape Haiti and move to New York City. His mother followed in 1965, leaving Austin, his brother and sister with his mother’s sister. Several years later his parents finally were able to afford to send for their children.
            “It’s a common immigrant story. We had to leave everything behind. Our family, our friends, our possessions, our language,” Austin said.
            While the family had enjoyed an upper middle class lifestyle in Haiti, things were very different as they started over again in New York. Austin’s father, who initially knew little to no English, was only able to find janitorial work at a hosiery shop and distributorship.
            “My father had come to work in his suit, and when he was handed a broom, he went to the bathroom and cried,” Austin said. “Then he dried his tears and went out and swept the floor.”
            Austin’s mother, who had been raised in a wealthy family and worked for a university, had little choice but to become a maid and nanny for an upper class family.
            “My mother told me about how one time she was in the park with the little girl, and for some reason that four-year-old child slapped her right in the face,” Austin said. “That was her moment of truth, when she felt completely broken hearted because of how far she felt she had fallen.”
            As Austin’s father learned English and proved himself to be a hard worker, his boss mentored and promoted him. Eventually his father saved enough money to be able to open his own hosiery shop in the Bronx. His old boss supplied the store.
            “My parents taught me the value of hard work and making sacrifices for your family. My father worked 10 to 12 hours a day six days a week at his hosiery store,” Austin said. “We waited (in Queens) to have dinner with him every night at 8:30 p.m. That was our family time, when our parents would listen to us and make us feel important.”
            After high school Austin attended New York University at first majoring in business because he planned to work in his father’s business. But then Austin, an avid soccer player, began getting to know several players on his team who were planning to be doctors. None of them were mental giants.
            “I would have never dared to think I could be a doctor before, although the idea of that profession always appealed to me. You’re helping people. You’re well respected in the community. And you’re a independent, like my father was as a business owner,” Austin said. “I knew if they could do it, I could do it.”
            So Austin changed his major and began bearing down even more on his studies, taking classes in the summer so he could still graduate in four years.
            Around that time Austin began dating his wife to be. Her family had also emigrated from Haiti and knew of Austin’s family. Her brother was in one of Austin’s pre-med classes.
            “Juggling it all was stressful, but I was determined to become a physician,” said Austin, who was accepted into medical school at the State University of New York Health and Science Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
            During his medical training, Austin did an internship in internal medicine at Orlando Regional Medical Center. After completing his residency in New York and his fellowship in Boston, Austin’s medical career took him to Louisiana State University and the University of Illinois.
            How did the family end up in Miami?
            “My father died about five years ago. My mother had died several years before. Suddenly it hit me that we were all alone in the Midwest and that we needed to be near our family,” Austin said.
            His wife’s parents lived in Miami as did his sister. So the Austins moved to Miami. His wife soon found a job as an administrator in the University of Miami’s school of law.  He focused on their real estate investments, including building homes for the disabled, and support of a Haitian nonprofit organization.
            “Like so many other people, we were hard hit when the real estate bubble burst,” Austin said.
            So Austin began looking for another radiation oncology position. While attending the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago fourteen months ago he was introduced to Carlos Alemany, M.D., one of the partners and director of clinical research at Florida Institute.
            “Carlos was a great guy and it sounded like a wonderful opportunity for the right person, but there was no way I thought I could take the job because I was living in Miami,” Austin said.
            Austin knew the time wasn’t right to relocate his family. His wife had left her friends and a great job in the Midwest just a few years before for the Miami move, and had re-established herself in Miami. Although Stephanie was in college and was fairly independent, Jessica was about to begin her senior year of high school and was deeply involved in school activities and commitments. The twins were popular and happy at their middle school.
            “I also knew that it takes awhile before you know for sure a new job is right. I couldn’t yank them out of their environment for something that might or might not work out in the long run,” he said.
            Austin did offer do some locums for Florida Institute, filling in temporarily until the practice was able to find the right physicians.
            “Temporarily commuting and working in my field. That seemed like a win-win for everyone,” Austin said.
            But after working for the practice from August through October, bonding with the staff, getting used to the commute, and coming to an agreement with his family, Austin agreed to sign on with Florida Institute permanently.
            “If you told me I’d be doing this insane commute a year and a half ago, I wouldn’t have believed it. But here I am,” Austin said.
            He said he feels fortunate that he doesn’t have an even longer commute as he knows professionals who travel much farther distances each week to support their families.
            How does Austin do it?
            One thing that has helped was shifting from flying to driving. While it typically can take three or more hours to fly, it takes three and a half to drive.
            “Driving is much better. You’re not waiting in line. You have much more control of your time,” Austin said.
            He often listens to books on tape to pass his time on the road productively. Recently he’s listened to Barack Obama’s books, “From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” and “The Audacity of Hope.”
            “His story really is an immigrant story, so it resonates with me,” Austin said
            He schedules his appointments so he can leave a little early on Friday afternoons and get to Miami in time for a family dinner.
            “Eating dinner together has always been our special family time, just like when I was growing up,” Austin said.
            Saturday mornings he typically takes a Bikram’s Yoga lesson with his wife. She introduced him to Bikram’s a number of months ago, and now he swears by it as a stress buster. He takes several classes during the week in addition to working out at his local fitness center.
            “It’s changed my life. My chronic headaches are much less severe,” he said.
            The rest of the weekend Austin and his wife spend time attending the twins soccer practice and indulging their daughters’ fascination with musical theater. The twins both want to be actors when they get older.
            “Stefanie spends a lot of time with her college friends, and Jessica is busy enjoying her last summer before college. We see the older girls when they are around, but they’re at that independent age,” Austin said.
            Austin doesn’t plan to keep commuting forever. He’s on track now to become a partner in the practice, and when that happens, his wife and two young daughters will know that Orlando is a sure thing.
            “I’ll have a lot more security as a partner, which is important to my wife who’ll have to find a new position when she moves here,” Austin said. “You don’t want to be in a situation where both parents have jobs that are up in the air.”
            And it doesn’t hurt that Orlando is becoming even more of a performing arts Mecca with the upcoming construction of the world-class Dr. P. Phillips Orlando Performing Arts Center.
            For more information on Florida Institute of Research, Medicine & Surgery, visit http://www.flainstitute.com/