COLUMN: The future will be in good hands

I visited Annsley Haynes Fox the other day. We had some catching up to do. After all, I had not seen her in 18 years.

She has been busy, though. In the past year, she has gotten married, bought a house and started medical school.

She will celebrate her 25th birthday on Friday, Febr. 11. She already has accomplished plenty in her young life, and she’s just getting started.

Annsley is not one to brag or boast, but she was rightfully proud a few weeks ago when she posted a rare selfie on social media.

“Friday I finished 3 weeks of a general surgery rotation,’’ she wrote on Facebook. “I saw 274 patients at the clinic, scrubbed in to 36 surgeries and sutured an incision closed for the first time. Yesterday, I learned how to place an endotracheal tube. Today, I performed a craniotomy and held a human brain in my hands. It’s safe to say … med school rocks!’’

I first wrote about Annsley in February 2005 when she was in the second grade at Springdale Elementary. It was six weeks after the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean, one of the deadliest natural disasters in history. It killed an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries.

Wanting to help with the humanitarian efforts, the little girl with the big heart knocked on neighbors’ doors, approached local businesses and even set up a donation box at her cousin’s birthday party. She raised more than $1,000 for the Red Cross and wrote thank-you notes to everyone who contributed.

It was not a one-and-done enterprise. She organized a canned goods campaign for the Macon Rescue Mission and collected aluminum pop tabs for the Ronald McDonald House.

Her compassion for helping others continued as a teenager. She did volunteer work at local hospitals and assisted living facilities. At Howard High School, she graduated 10th in her class of 384. She was president of the school’s key club and vice-president of student council.

One of her proudest achievements was coaching the Lego team at the Methodist Home for Children and Youth. (In the eighth grade, she was a member of the Howard Middle School team that won a first place for teamwork at the LEGO national convention in San Diego.)

Her name – Annsley – is the union of her grandmother’s name, Annette, and her father, Wesley.

Growing up, she sat in her highchair and squished jello with her fingers, as if she were performing brain surgery. As a youngster, she watched surgery documentaries on Georgia Public Television. Her grandmother would take her to the Washington Memorial Library, where she looked through medical textbooks on anatomy.

She nursed her dolls back to health. She converted her playhouse into a laboratory – complete with a microscope. Her mother, Tracy Haynes, once discovered jars filled with bugs and leftover bread experiments in Annsley’s closet, as if she were growing penicillin for a science project.

“We used to say she was either going to be a surgeon … or Jeffrey Dahmer,’’ Tracy said, laughing.

Annsley married her husband, Will Fox, last March during the Cherry Blossom Festival. Will is a mechanical engineer with Andrews, Hammock & Powell in Macon.

Although they grew up only about a dozen houses apart on the same side of Timberlane Drive, they did not meet until middle school. Will proposed in March 2020 next to the pedestrian bridge at Mercer.

Annsley is in her first year at the Mercer School of Medicine. She hit the ground running after her white coach ceremony last fall. In her anatomy lab, she has done everything from drilling into a cadaver’s skull with an autopsy saw to cracking open ribs with scissors.

“Ever since I was born I have wanted to be a doctor,’’ she said. “I find the human body fascinating. Medical school is everything I thought it would be and more. I am just so proud. Everything I’ve been working for is now leading up to this. I am finally learning the skills I’ve wanted to learn for so long.’’

Annsley is one of those young people who give assurance the future is going to be in good hands.

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.