MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST--Other than a minor blip in 1999 as the calendar flipped to a new century, everything was going according to plan for Beth Burns, DO.

 

After earning a biology degree at Baylor University in Texas, graduating with honors from medical school at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, and finishing an internal residency program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Fla., where she was named Internal Medicine Intern of the Year, Burns joined a private practice with her good friend, Valerie Lenox, MD, at Gulf Coast Internal Medicine in Biloxi, Miss. 

 

Burns' husband Dan, formerly in the U.S. Army, was working as a police officer and had decided to go back to college. The couple had settled on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, ready to start a family.

 

In 2001, Burns gave birth to quadruplets very prematurely at just 23 weeks gestation—three boys and a girl. Sadly, one of the baby boys died after just two weeks in the NICU. The other three—Jack, Alana and Leland—had long, complicated hospital stays and have varying degrees of cerebral palsy and vision problems. 

 

"It changed everything overnight," admitted Burns. "We had to sacrifice, hunker down and do the best thing for our kids. My husband became a stay-at-home dad, and we ended up having to leave the Mississippi Gulf Coast because we needed special schools for handicapped children and group health insurance."

 

The Burns family relocated to Florida, where Burns took a position at the V.A. Medical Center in Orlando doing internal medicine/primary care and spinal cord clinic primary care. "The federal job provided insurance and benefits that we needed," she said.

 

Burns served as SCI (spinal cord injury) team leader, chaired the major prosthetics/electric mobility committee, and served as medicine preceptor for the Wound Clinic. She also taught ACLS and served on the Code Blue Team. In 2007, Burns was selected Orlando VAMC Employee of the Year. 

 

When a hospitalist position opened at Florida Hospital East Orlando, Burns had an opportunity to meet the physicians on the east side of the metro area. In September, she joined the Florida Physicians Medical Group (FPMG), a large multi-specialty group that was looking for an experienced, motivated internal medicine physician to start a new solo practice in downtown Avalon Park in East Orlando. On Sept. 14, Avalon Park Internal Medicine opened for patients in newly constructed Class A medical office space in the Avalon Park suburban lifestyle community.

 

Avalon Park has been aptly described as "the epitome of small town America," which Burns finds nostalgically appealing. The only child of Howard Mitcheltree, a tool and die maker for Ford Motor Company, and his wife, Bessie Lois Cranford, an elementary schoolteacher, Burns grew up in Chicago, but spent a lot of time in the Deep South.

 

"My mother grew up in rural Mississippi, in a little town called Seminary," explained Burns. "Most of my childhood vacations were spent in Mississippi, and I felt it was such a friendly place. I was drawn to Mississippi to live two different times in my life."

 

After graduating from college, Burns worked for the renowned physiologist Arthur Guyton, MD, and John Hall, PhD, as a research technician in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics of the University of Mississippi Medical Center. "I felt the PhD route was not for me because I preferred interacting with people," she recalled.

 

In 1998, Burns went into practice with Lenox on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. A year later, Hurricane George, a category 2 storm, dumped water in the couple's Biloxi home. "When Katrina hit the Gulf Coast after we had moved back to Florida, I recalled so well losing all those keepsakes, and having to rip out flooring and walls and refinish furniture. It really hit home when I watched some of my friends lose everything they owned," she said. 

 

In 2006, Burns moved her parents to Orlando to help care for her mother, who was suffering from recurring cancer. She passed away in 2007; Burns' dad died in March. "I was so glad that we'd moved them so that they were right down the road," she said. "Families need to bond together at times like these. I was an only child so it was challenging to take on, but I have peace about how things went."

 

Despite life's challenges, Burns remains perpetually upbeat. She plays hymns on the piano with her children, and modestly says she "tries to keep up" with the choir at Eastland Baptist Church in Orlando. Her husband just graduated with high honors from Florida A&M Law School in Orlando, and is working for the state attorney of Florida in Brevard County. "Since he was in law enforcement, this is the job he's always envisioned himself doing," she said.

 

The family recently added a small, in-ground pool to the back yard for longer outdoor play in Central Florida's subtropical climate. "It's so therapeutic for the kids," said Burns, of the 9-year-old triplets.

 

As Burns sits on the pool deck talking, she lovingly shoos the family dachshund, Joey, from drinking the pool water. Nearby is Scootie, the 10-year old homeless cat that Burns found wandering the Mississippi woods following a storm.