Imagine you’re a performer, a classical singer, experiencing increasing hearing loss in one ear and you go to a doctor and he says, “No problem, you still have the other ear.”  Such was the non-empathic bedside manner that set the tone for the career of Suzannah Bozzone, M.D., who has recently joined the family practice of Dr. Brian Sebastian, in Sonoma.

She was at the time a pre-med student at Davidson College, in North Carolina, and had suffered a skull fracture.  “I’d been unconscious for four days. And I lost my hearing. I went to this doctor in Charlotte and he said, “A lot of people lose their hearing, but it’ll come back.’” But it did not. When she went back to him, he dismissed her concern.  He had no idea that she was a musician or what loss of hearing in one ear would mean to the young singer. She was crushed.

“So I thought, if you’re going to go into a healing profession and want to treat people, you need to know where they’re coming from.”

Bozzone went on to continue singing, despite the handicap, and to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Davidson and go on to the University of Tennessee to earn her medical degree. From there, she went to Colorado Family Medicine Program as chief resident, and in 2009, they honored her with the 2009 Family Medicine Award for Scholarship. During the course of her training, she worked intensely with immigrant and under-served populations, both in the Spanish community in Nashville, and in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

She continues working with diverse cultures here in Sonoma, dividing her time between Dr. Sebastian’s family practice and the Sonoma Valley Community Health Center. “I like learning about other cultures,” she says. “It’s so important to understand somebody’s culture and know where they’re coming from.” Understanding the other is, to her, a constant refrain. “It happens so frequently that you go to a doctor, and they don’t have time to know who you are.” She, however, spends a lot of time with her patients. “Until you find out what they understand and what they know, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

For example, she explains, in some cultures, bigness is good. So a parent might say, of her roly-poly child, “She doesn’t eat a thing!” But the result, down the road, may be obesity and diabetes. “So we have to adjust the perception of what we mean about health.”

The Sonoma Valley community is refreshing to her, for the health-oriented attitudes she finds here. “I have gotten a lot of patients who are interested in natural approach to things. Which I really like.” Here, people don’t so much just want to get a pill and go home fixed.  They seem to be looking for more involvement in their health. “People will ask, ‘what else can I do in my life?’  It’s so refreshing to have someone motivated to actually go back to the basics. If you can go back to the basics, you can get rid of a lot of problems.”

And what are the basics, to this person who looks a picture of perfect health?  “I’m a yoga fanatic. Yoga and fish oil,” she laughs. “Oh, and Vitamin D!”