1944-
Surgeon General of the United States

Difficult Childhood.

Antonia Coello was born 23 August 1944 in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, to Antonio Coello and Ana Delia Coello. She suffered from congenital megacolon, and her difficult childhood experiences with this disease, resulting in her being hospitalized every year. She was supposed to have surgery to repair her colon when she was eight; however, she lived thirty-two miles from the hospital, and her mother, a school principal, could only take her on a Saturday. Her father died when she was eight and her mother remarried. She was finally able to have the surgery when she was eighteen, but she had to miss a semester of school and then wore diapers for the next six months. Through her health difficulties she developed a positive attitude that she could do anything, as well as an extraordinary sensitivity for patients. In 1970 she married...