Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari

When I started the clinic, I mean, even now, not everybody understands what I'm doing in that clinic.

I've had people ask me if I was board certified, if for some reason I couldn't get a job someplace else.

There was

Just definitely the people on the outside looking in wondering why I was doing this.

I had somebody ask me if I needed a place to live, and that's why I built a clinic inside of an RV.

So those types of sort of skeptical questions, I mean, I take it all with a grain of salt.

I understand that we created a vision, and when you try to do something new, you're just going to have to be prepared that a lot of people aren't going to understand what you're doing or why you're doing it.

My parents were in the United States when I was born.

My father was recruited to complete his medical residency and training at John Hopkins University and then again in Illinois.

And I think the intention was to return back to Iran in order to be with family and to provide his medical service in Iran.

I think that was always the goal.

And so we moved back when I was young and we spent about 18 months

This was the late 70s.

And at that time, there was a real undercurrent of regime change and the Iranian revolution.

And so my parents made the decision to leave the country like, you know, thousands of other Iranians sort of anticipating what that might look like for life in Iran versus, you know, raising children in America.

And they made the decision that they wanted to raise their children in America.

You know, I do talk about being five, six, seven years old.

And because we had so much family in Iran, we had the television on, the Iran hostage crisis was occurring.

That led to the Iran-Iraq war.

I had cousins that were at that point still, you know, living under the threat of bombs.