8 | NEWS ON TOP OF THE WORLD
North Shore doctor climbs Mt. Kilimanjaro — a year after her husband ascends Mt. Rainier
■ by sam eichner At an hour or two past sunrise, Dr. Deeba Masood stood above the clouds. She had just reached the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro — the tallest freestanding mountain in the world — and though her muscles ached after the two-and-a-halfday ascent and her limbs shivered in the cold, she felt a massive wave of accomplishment and pride.
“I've been in high heels for the last decade, so I had to learn to walk in hiking boots.” | Dr. Deeba Masood It’s just this adrenaline rush,” she remembers. “You’re just like, ‘Wow, I made it.’” Today, closer to sea level, Dr. Masood — an allergist/immunologist for the NorthShore University Health System — looks nothing like the type of person you’d envision standing atop a mountain. In fact, she looks quite the opposite, sweeping into her office wearing a sleek black dress and stylish flats, her face dolled up
in pink lipstick and mascara. “My idea of ‘roughing it’ is not having room service,” Dr. Masood admits. “I’ve been in high heels for the last decade, so I had to learn to walk in hiking boots.” Dr. Masood was inspired to make the climb this summer after her husband, Dr. Farhad Abar, climbed Mt. Rainier last year, during what she jokes was his “mid-life crisis.” Though not as tall as Kilimanjaro, Rainier is a much more technical climb; as part of his training, he had to climb 200 flights of stairs with a 40-pound pack. While Dr. Masood had porters to carry her pack, she still had to work tirelessly with a trainer to build up the cardiovascular and muscular strength necessary to make the trek. Eventually, she was ready to join her husband, as well as her two sons (one, a sophomore at the University of Michigan, the other, a junior at Johns Hopkins) on the voyage. “I told them I wanted to go,” Dr. Masood says of the initial decision. “And they said, ‘No mother, you’re frail and feeble.’ Then I really wanted to go.” More than just an unorthodox family vacation to Tanzania, Dr. Masood and her family used the climb to raise money for several charities. Dr. Masood herself has raised close to $10,000 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Arzu, a char-
ity that empowers Afghani women by providing them with a market for their hand-woven rugs and bracelets. The organization was founded by Lake Forest resident Connie Duckworth. “That was the extra push,” Dr. Masood says, recalling how she was forced to overcome a bout with altitude sickness in order to reach the summit. “I could not disappoint them.” This same drive was what pushed Dr. Masood to become a doctor in the first place. Born in India, her family immigrated to the United States when she was just eight years old. “My father said we came here for a purpose,” she says. Though she initially wanted to be a writer, and her sister (now a pediatrician) wanted to be an artist, her father worked three jobs so that they could both go to medical school. And there was a caveat: when they finished medical school, they had to fulfill their civic duty. To this day, Dr. Masood still volunteers at an underserved clinic on Dr. Deeba Masood photography by joel lerner the South Side of Chicago. “We just didn’t want to disappoint him,” she explains. “We’re writing a memoir,” she says. Following the climb, though, Dr. “Hopefully, we’ll publish it as an e-book, Masood has found a way to couple her and the proceeds will go to Arzu.” ■ passion for the arts with her charitable Ravinia North Shore 8-29 Flooding ad_Layout 1 8/20/14 8:45 AM Page 1 inclinations.
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