Alabama Rock Star Turned OB-GYN,

continued from page 1 gigs, but because Yarbrough wasn’t old enough, his mom drove when his turn rolled around

“When it was my week, my mother would drive us. So we would unpack our trailer and play, but my mother would visit with the fraternity house mother upstairs. It was hilarious,” Yarbrough said.

In the Summer of 1969, Chapter Five opened for The Bob Seger System. With a lot of confidence in themselves, they decided to play one of Seger’s songs, Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man. Yarbrough said the booking agent told them, “I came to see two good bands tonight and I only saw one, and it was you.”

“The Bob Seger System performance was okay, but they were not 100 percent that night,” Yarbrough said. “We were just a little band that went to church together and none of us smoked or drank, but the Seger band was pretty stoned. You could tell the only serious one who wanted to make something of themself was Bob Seger.”

Two years later in 1971, the bass player in Chapter Five was drafted into the Vietnam War, and the band broke up.

“We sort of expected it,” Yarbrough said. “We were sad that the band broke up, but since the rest of the band members were four years older than me, who knows how long it would have lasted with them being through with high school and getting out into the world. Of course, we were little bit nervous for our bass player. Fortunately, he didn’t have to get into any kind of action.”

When the band split up, Yarbrough had three more years left of high school and he spent that time getting good grades and becoming the class valedictorian. He later attended the University of Alabama for his undergraduate degree and the University of Alabama at Birmingham for medical school.

“I originally wanted to be in internal medicine, but when I started doing clinical rotations, I discovered that it wasn’t like House or The Good Doctor where you’re diagnosing someone with a rare disease every day,” he said.

After trying his hand at cardiac surgery, radiology and other fields, Yarbrough decided on a career in Obstetrics and Gynecology. “Because UAB Medical School had a good rotation in OBGYN, I got to do a little bit of surgery, and it’s not super-long like cardiac surgery. Plus, the patients are usually pretty healthy and you get to do some endocrinology,” Yarbrough said. “It’s turned out to be great because you still get to help people and make their lives better.”

After choosing a specialty, Yarbrough’s mom, a former nurse, said she would rather have her son play the drums because the hours were better than an OB/GYN doctor. Luckily, he can now do both because after five decades, Chapter Five is back together with three of the original bandmates. The group plays a couple of times a month locally.

“It’s a big part of my time-off life,” Yarbrough said. “It keeps you youthful. The band still plays music from the 60s and 70s, but we’re not a tribute band. We’re a transport band.”

Reminiscing on his life choices that led him to a wife and two children, Yarbrough is proud of himself for taking the “easy way out”, and attending medical school. “I ended up choosing the more rewarding route and had the best of both worlds,” he said.

How Physicians Can Help Their Dyslexic Patients,

continued from page 7 from out of state, making regular trips impossible. AGC has drawn children from 16 states and as far as Brazil. In the last two years, AGC has provided 32,724 individualized 45-minute instructional dyslexia interventions.

“As a state-of-the-art interventional treatment center, therapy follows a neurodevelopmental hierarchy so that skills are built from the foundation up, across all disciplines,” Denton says. Specialty therapeutic services are geared to combat the individual’s learning struggles, while also addressing the associated medical and mental health conditions. Some of the session might look like playtime, as a child swings facedown in a pseudohammock while carefully moving plastic blocks into position.

“It is never too late to change the trajectory of a child’s scholastic course,” Denton says. “But it is easier and more costeffective to address the struggle early on, rather than later. Research has shown that dyslexia can often be prevented in at-risk kindergarten-aged children and that large gains can be made in children ages eight to 10 years who struggle with reading. The evidence indicates that these results can be achieved by using a transdisciplinary team of educators, neuropsychologists, psychologists, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physicians.”

Clinically, Alabama Game Changers providers have seen major improvements for individuals from the ages five years old to over 60. “Through early identification and intervention, pediatricians and family practitioners can serve as the first line of defense against preventable, lifelong struggles related to dyslexia,” Denton says. “Thus minimizing or even eliminating its effects entirely.” To refer families for early identification and intervention, call 205-364-2347 or email IntakeCoordinator@AlabamaGameChangers.org.