Making A World Of Difference

When Dr. Margaret Bowden moved to Sandpoint, she intended to stay only a couple of years. Eight years later she still delivers babies, cares for women during their pregnancies, and answers questions about menopause.

As an obstetrician/gynecologist, Bowden brings more than a medical degree to her patients. She brings a vision of health care that has been influenced by women she has known and treated around the world.

“I view it as a privilege to take care of women at times of crisis,” Bowden says. “Whether it be going through childbirth, losing babies, peri-menopause issues. My experiences (in other cultures) have been enriching and give me a tremendous respect for the diversity of people.”

Raised in New York City, Bowden attended undergraduate school at the College of William and Mary. She studied pre-med at Columbia University and attended medical school at State University of New York in Brooklyn. After she completed her residency at Kings County Hospital in New York in 1988, she began three years of overseas work.

In late 1988, Bowden traveled to Peshawar in Northern Pakistan to help treat Afghan refugees. She lived on a 10-acre compound that included a clinic.

Educating women about health issues was a difficult task in the heavily populated Muslim area. The Muslims there generally do not believe in educating women, who must seek permission from a male family member for most anything, she says.

“The educating process was three times removed from the women,” Bowden says. “I educated the men, who would in turn educate the male family members, who would then treat the women. It was very frustrating.”

Bowden trained young men to become paramedics so they could go back into Afghanistan and set up clinics for trauma care and primary health care. She taught them about malnutrition, typhoid and malaria.

Once, guards at her clinic in Northern Pakistan scared off antiAmerican attackers before they found Bowden.

“I don’t know what they would have done had they found me. They probably would have spared my patient (an elderly woman), but me, I don’t know,” Bowden says.

For six of her 18 months in Northern Pakistan, Bowden served as medical director to the clinic. She was managing and teaching more than practicing medicine. Frustrated, she left in early 1990 and moved to Mozambique. Hoping to practice women’s health care, she worked for the Ministry of Health in a government hospital in Inhambane, a city located 150 miles from the capital of Maputo.

“Living there felt like going home,” she says. Life for women in Mozambique was drastically different than in Pakistan. Women lived together and raised their children together. In Pakistan, people shunned her. In Mozambique, they welcomed her.

Then Bowden faced her own health crisis when she was bitten by a dog infected with rabies. She received treatment and vaccination 10 days later in South Africa. Rabies can have an incubation period of six months and, if contracted, is 100 percent fatal. After talking to her parents, she decided to return home. While recovering at her parents’ house, Bowden learned that Idaho had the fewest doctors per capita in the United States. Intrigued, she decided to investigate. Her plan was to work here a couple of years, get board-certified as an ob/gyn and then move on.

In October 1995 she met Steve Nickodemus, a Lutheran pastor in Sandpoint with three boys. They married eight months later.

Eight years after her arrival in Sandpoint, Bowden continues to care for the women of the community. She delivered Dawn Meyer’s baby girl last January.

“I knew who she (Bowden) was only by reputation. I never dreamed I would be lucky enough to get her, but I went into labor and guess who was on call?” Meyer says.

Today, Bowden assesses the primary health issue in the community as one of a social, rather than medical, nature.

Women are not treating themselves respectfully, she says. She views poor communication skills and poor relationships as the root of problems such as domestic violence and teen pregnancy.

“Each patient that I see, I take the time to ask what has been going on in her life and how things are at home,” Bowden says. “I have a growing awareness of how much value each person has. Everyone has a story to tell.”