Dr. Vilay Saysoukha: Facing Down Adversity

By Selena Haynes • Photos By Ashley Callahan-Payne Photography

If you had asked a young Vilay Saysoukha what she wanted to be when she grew up, she may not have had a solid answer. She was interested in the arts — drawing, singing and playing guitar. Fast forward 30 years and she is a successful foot and ankle surgeon who has recently opened her own practice. A first-generation American-Laotian, Dr. Saysoukha’s parents moved to the states shortly after the Vietnam War. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Memphis and attended Barry University for her Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences and Barry University School of Podiatric Medicine for her Doctor of Podiatric Medicine (DPM).

While being a doctor wasn’t a lifelong dream, it was something she became interested in when taking her first health sciences course in high school. It was in that class she saw the movie “Patch Adams.” It illustrated something to which she could relate. 

“I was dealing with depression at that age, you know, struggling with who I was sexuality-wise. In the early 2000s there wasn’t really any faculty or anyone that you could feel like you can trust to talk to you about that,” recalled Dr. Saysoukha. It resonated with her because, while the main character had depression, he still had a purpose in life and made some good to help other people and became a doctor.

While Dr. Saysoukha struggled with her sexuality, she knew early in life she was attracted to girls. “I would say I definitely knew for sure when I was 12. That’s when I had my first girlfriend, but you know, we were kids,” she said. 

As many of us may experience, her coming out story wasn’t exactly in her control. “It happened. I was dating someone in college [when I was] 20 or 21 years old. Before I could tell my parents, their parents found out and then called my parents. It wasn’t a good experience,” she revealed.

Dr. Saysoukha explained her parents weren’t really that accepting for a while. As the oldest of four siblings, she took the brunt of unacceptance from her parents. However, she led the way for her siblings to live their lives to their fullest. She explained, “It’s kind of ironic now because, as I said, I have three younger siblings. My sister that’s a couple of years younger was male at birth. So she first came out as just gay. And then eventually, five-plus years ago, came out as transgender. My next sibling down is straight and then my youngest sibling is a gay male.”

She notes there are still some struggles within the family but at the end of the day, their parents essentially do accept and love all of them.

Motivation

It’s her background that motivates Dr. Saysoukha to do the things she does and continue to break barriers. “I think, with the struggles and challenges I had growing up being [a] female, being a person of color, obviously, being a lesbian, you know, all these things I’ve never really had mentors that could relate to me in that level,” she said. 

Being a first-generation American, and figuring out how to apply to college and navigate through life prepared her for the challenges she might face being a minority going into the very homogenized field of medicine. “So what motivates me to help people — not just in my profession but just in general — is not having that myself growing up. It also helps [that] I’m the oldest with the younger siblings, so I kind of have that caretaker mentality, if you will,” Dr. Saysoukha remarked. She is happy to have the ability and flexibility to make time to help people navigate through similar things that she’s gone through in life.

It’s that motivation that led to her starting her own practice, Premier Foot and Ankle Centers of Tennessee, last year in McMinnville. She practiced foot and ankle surgery in Murfreesboro from 2018 until 2021. During the pandemic, she was laid off which she says was unsettling. “I thought as a physician and surgeon I would have job security. From there, it kind of opened my eyes to wanting to have more autonomy and control my schedule.”

Sixteen months into owning her practice and she’s looking to expand back into Rutherford County. It’d be closer to home for her and she wants to hire passionate, good doctors to work alongside her. She plans on opening a Murfreesboro location in the near future. 

The physician becomes the patient

Growing up Dr. Saysoukha played basketball and soccer. Along with sports, she also started weight training in high school. For someone who’s been pretty active, when the pandemic hit, it affected her as well. 

“I was pre-diabetic for about a year, year and a half [at the start of the] pandemic. More stress, obviously, longer hours, we all reach for convenient foods that aren’t healthy. It was also during that time period when I was the least physically active. I finally got the diagnosis of type two diabetes in October 2022,” recalled Dr. Saysoukha. 

Being a foot and ankle specialist, she sees the long-term results diabetes can have on the body. “Seeing what I see every day, I mean, it just really, yeah, honestly, scared me,” she shared. Her grandmother passed from complications from diabetes as well and she didn’t want that to happen to her. 

Even as a physician, there’s definitely still learning with a new diagnosis but she says it allows her to relate to patients on a personal level. She uses her personal story to encourage patients who might be having a hard time or feeling discouraged. She explained, “Sometimes when patients are a little discouraged or say that it’s difficult, you know, I tell them, ‘Hey, I’m diabetic, too. And I know, it’s hard. But these are things that I’ve done and have helped me.’” 

She has one patient in particular that found comfort in starting a new medication because Dr. Saysoukha shared it was something she was going to try. It gave the patient confidence with information coming directly from her doctor. 

“Same thing when it comes to being a lesbian and seeing patients from the community. Feeling comfortable, even on our patient paperwork, we make sure to include preferred names, how you identify and all that,” she noted.

Dr. Saysoukha says she is generally a private person but doesn’t hide being a lesbian. If it comes up, she will answer honestly. Like most people, she’s forthcoming, but in a sense trying to separate personal life from work.

Thankfully, she says she hasn’t had any issues with discrimination in the more rural areas. She was cognizant of her name because, even though she’s American, her name is “foreign sounding.” She says she looked for it. “Are they going to think I don’t speak English? And then obviously, there was my appearance, my demeanor. Are they going to be worried or homophobic or whatnot? And honestly, I’ve had no issues with that,” said Dr. Sousouka. 

She believes a lot of that might be because of the field she is in. When patients come to her, they are in pain. She has to gain their trust within 10 to 30 seconds. “After talking and explaining things, I think they feel comfortable, and they kind of forget about anything else.”

To book an appointment with Dr. Saysoukha visit premierfootdocs.com. To see some pretty cool (and sometimes graphic) videos follow @footanklesurgeon on TikTok.