Monroe Pediatrics Inc / Andrea V. Hill MD

08/27/2026

08/25/2026

This summer has been a time of reorganization for our office. We brought in a new Nurse Practitioner, we changed some schedules, changed our phone system, just redid our website, hired back some staff and our NP Amber - who had all previously left our office, and the changes and work Antionette (my new office manager) and I put in over the summer just go on and on. We have been so happy with all the changes and I hope you all have noticed all the improvements.

I want to make you all aware of a change to our after hours service. After hours care is from 5-7. We accept walk ins but only until 6:30. This school year we will be offering after hours Monday through Thursday. Fridays our office will close early at 4pm so after hours will not be available. I want to let everyone catch their breath after a week of hard work.

Thank you to all the amazing new patients and old who have helped make this summer an amazing one for all. Now we are ready for a busy school year.

❤️Dr Hill

08/21/2026

If you have seen me for a depression visit, you know I always ask if you are exercising. Did you know that some research studies have shown that exercise can be as effective as antidepressants to treat depression?

Sometimes though, I think antidepressants can be the things that get you over a hump so that you can do all the other things - like exercise that help. In other words, sometimes you need both. But, there is no scenario where a pill should REPLACE exercise.

Let’s get moving!

PS: I love my America Top Team!!

08/20/2026

With measles on the rise and back to school prime for the spread.. I think parents should familiarize themselves with the symptoms of measles. If your child has a fever and rash - please inform us prior to the visit so we can take the necessary exposure precautions. If we believe your child might have measles, we will be doing your visit outside in your car (unless your child is so critical we need to provide more medical intervention) - like the good old (not) days in 2020.

Be aware. It’s not a question of IF it hits, it’s when. The vaccine for measles is truly the best way to prevent measles in your child. Any other care for measles is supportive only.

08/18/2026

Thank you to Georgia USA Boxing for giving me this award this weekend for my years of voluntary service to amateur boxing. I originally started working as a ringside doctor, over a decade ago, to help the kids who box with USA boxing. It has been an honor to work with so many great people over the years. Thank you also to SugarBert boxing for this beautiful belt.😍😍

08/17/2026

My weekend was jam packed. Some of you might remember my brother David Verburg. He ran a children’s fitness program at our office a few years ago and is kind of my coolest sibling (with an Olympic gold in the men’s 4x4 from Rio).This weekend he got married to an amazing woman and my house was full of family the entire weekend. My family is spread out all over the country and it is rare to see so many of us in one city at the same time.

In between boxing events, I spent so much time with everyone. And, David wasn’t even mad at me for missing the rehearsal dinner for Claressa Shields - he tried to skip it for the fights as well 🤣.

Pepper was a beautiful flower girl also and loved seeing her aunt and uncles. I’m sad to see everyone leave and already miss them. Congratulations David and Taylor. I know your love will go the distance. ❤️

08/16/2026

What did you do last night? I got chills watching Claressa Shields fight as her ringside doctor. I feel very blessed to spend my weekends doing my second job. If you like boxing and you didn’t see her fight last night - you should go watch it. Her precision and power are impressive. I was actually in awe and that rarely happens at a fight for me.

08/12/2026

I was thinking about something today. It’s actually been weighing heavily on my mind for a couple weeks. I was accused recently of being racist by someone on social media. It didn’t sit well with me. It made me very angry actually. Even by saying this here this person will know he got under my skin, so I probably shouldn’t even post at all. But, I’m going to post anyway. There are many things people can call me to put me down and I won’t say a word but not this. Not after the life I have lived.

I’m going to tell a story about me because that’s what you all seem to enjoy reading. . However, this story grabs a topic by the horns - a topic we in the South seem to think we aren’t supposed to discuss in public - so it might not be as well received as some of my stories. Nevertheless, here I go.

When I was a young child, I lived in Guatemala in a war torn country of executions and bombs. To say it was stressful for a kid would be putting it mildly.

We moved back to the US when I was in the 3rd grade and we moved to Birmingham Alabama. Now, my birth just seemed to hit some parts of our country’s history just right - for stories at least. And Birmingham was one of those spots. When I arrived in Alabama, the K*K literally greeted us as we excited the highway. The men in robes made me very nervous. We had come from a country where I ate in homes with dirt floors. My father was a missionary and he taught me to accept food graciously, even if it was cooked in a home with a dirt floor. He took me into these homes and taught me to be respectful and to say thank you. In Birmingham the men in white robes reminded me of scary things I had seen in Guatemala, a country that believed heavily in ghosts and spirits. Back then I didn’t really see color. I had come from a country of brown people. A little bit darker skin didn’t register with me. But things weren’t good back then in Birmingham. Black kids and white kids Weren’t really friends. Many times I accepted a birthday party invitation from a black classmate only to find I was the only white kid who showed up. I couldn’t understand why the color of someone’s skin mattered so much to the people there.

In the 7th grade, a black Muslim boy who was 10 years old came to our church. My dad was the preacher. He came with a friend and kept coming back. He said he wanted to know what Christians were like. The church board didn’t like this boy coming to our church. They told my dad he had to kick him out of the church. I’ll never forget.. my dad asked the head of the church board what he thought Jesus would do if he saw this young boy in church and the head of the board said,” Jesus would throw the N out.”

My dad refused to throw the boy out and he assigned me to guard duty. I sat with him in church to keep people from saying mean things to him. My dad knew that even at 12 years old I would have let an old man have it if he said something bad to this boy. Every Sunday I sat with him - usually I took him to play up in the balconies because it was easier to keep away from the racist adults that way. I did this every Sunday until we left Alabama. My dad said this was the last straw and we couldn’t stay in the Deep South anymore so once he found a new job, we left. And, I never lived in the Deep South again until I moved to loganville Georgia.

My parents went on to adopt 3 black sons and one black daughter. They are my family. The adoption of my siblings tore apart parts of my Virginia southern family. The rift was so deep and the pain was so significant that only death put it to rest. My siblings never knew one side of the family because they weren’t allowed into my grandparent’s home. I loved everyone involved and my heart hurt that I couldn’t fix things, even when I tried.

Things have come a long way in our world since I was a kid. My younger daughter’s best friends don’t have the same skin color she does. And I love that my daughter doesn’t see color - truly. Recently she said that she had just realized that one of her best friends since she was 5 years old was Latina (she is from Colombia). But I won’t act like things are where they should be. I look forward to the day white and black and brown can all be friends for real. A day when kids aren’t raised to see color.

When my older daughter married a Korean man, she brought him to a party at my home. He had never been in the South. He was amazed at all the colors of skin he saw in my home at a party and he said,”Wow I didn’t know the south was like this’” my daughter answered, “Oh this isn’t how the south is - this is how my mother is.”

If you want to know more about me - you need to understand that this is a very important issue to me and to our practice. The south is better but we need to do better.

Maybe you can start by sending your kids to birthday parties regardless of the classmate’s skin color. You would be surprised what a difference a little thing like that can make in your child’s mindset. We need to make the world a better place and acknowledge the issues like this that still exist, not just pretend like we don’t see them hoping they will go away. I hope for a better world. I’m raising kids who will make it better. I hope you are too.

Dr Hill

08/09/2026

We have some sad news’s to share. Our amazing Nurse Practitioner - Angelica is moving back to Texas to be with her family. Next week will be her last week. Angelica has been so loved and such a great provider that we are currently trying to think of ways to drive to Texas in a few weeks and drag her back 🤣🤣.

But, we have someone excellent stepping in. Please welcome our new PNP Abby. Abby grew up in Central and South America as a missionary’s kid before becoming a pediatric nurse practitioner in the US. She did her clinical training with us so some of you might remember her. She is coming to us now from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and is super excited to be working at Monroe Pediatrics.

Please give Angelica hugs this week if you see her. I personally am very sad to see her go. I think she is an extremely intelligent provider with a very uniquely beautiful spirit. She has been a blessing to me this year. Angelica - thank you, I love you and wish you all the happiness this world has to give. Ciao mi amiga y buena suerte en Texas .

Dr Hill

08/07/2026

My daughter and I took a vacation this summer with a couple of our best friends. We met these friends during 2020. We met outdoors at a restaurant in our neighborhood only to discover we lived about 7 houses away. My friend, the mom, worked at the CDC.

The years of 2020 and 2021 we spent a lot of time trying to help each other and our families feel like we were living a normal life - when we were living anything but a normal life.

I don’t know if you all have seen what’s happening regarding the pandemic in the news much, no doubt most of you (me included ) would be happier if you never heard the word pandemic again. And, I know what I’m going to say is not a popular topic and might not be recieved well in the Area of my practice, but I feel the need to tell a little bit of my story - maybe to help with my PTSD but also to enlighten some of you about what was going on behind the scenes.

In November of 2019 I heard about a virus in China that was killing people. At the time I thought, “yeah yeah ok .. another bird flu. But, I was asked to buy 1000 masks and send them to a friend in Taiwan because they were running out of masks. I bought those masks.. I have the sales records. NOW we all know the virus did start earlier than reported by China, but during the pandemic most people only had theories and rumors. I knew the rumors to be true.

I can’t say I prepared for it then. But suffice it to say it was on my radar. And in the back of my mind - I was paying attention. Next, from China, the first place hit hard was Lombardy Italy. Northern Italy had factories staffed by Chinese workers and that’s why epidemiologists think they were hit so badly so early . We only had a few cases in the US at this time (outside of New York which was just starting to get hit).

Doctors started private Facebook groups, groups that were US based and groups that were international. We started sharing the information we were getting based on personal experiences.. we were starting to see this had a possibility of becoming very bad.

I honestly thought people - even doctors were being a little hysterical in the beginning. I remembered how well Emory university had handled an Ebola patient a few years prior and I thought our President at the time probably had a plan to contain it and the government was downplaying it because they had a plan and weren’t worried about it and didn’t want to scare people.

But, then I heard rumors in the doctor groups about patients in Lombardy, Italy older than 65 who were being triaged in the waiting rooms and only given morphine to take home with them to take when they were dying - and then sent home. No medical care. They supposedly had no space, no ventilators. They were supposedly triaging large numbers of people in the waiting rooms like something out of a military movie.

I thought this couldn’t be true. Not in the modern world we live in. I had studied Italy’s health care system first hand in my health care administration MBA and knew Italian doctors were good, that their hospitals were good. I couldn’t write these rumors off as something that was just happening in an underdeveloped health care system.

Because of my ringside work, I know and work with doctors all over the world. So, I decided to call one of them in Lombardy. I remember I asked him, “Is it true? Are you really sending people 65 or older home to live or die without treating them?”

His answer was, “ As of last week the ministry of health changed that age to 60 years old but we aren’t supposed to tell anyone.”

I was shocked.

I went back to study all the medical information I could find in my doctor groups. I found autopsies from the first 3 people who died in the US. I wanted to throw up. Their lungs were completely eaten up with blood clots everywhere. I had this realization while reading the autopsies that, since I have asthma and a blood clotting disorder (and was once in the ICU for a week with blood clots in my lungs ) COVID was my perfect killer.

My older daughter who lived in New York started calling me terrified, sending me pictures of morgue trucks outside hospitals and of mass graves being dug. I started faking calm. Telling her she was overreacting, while inside I was beginning to be terrified.

I watched videos from China. They were wearing protective clothing for an airborne disease. I knew they had been dealing with it since 2019 and if they thought it was airborne - it was. There isn’t much defense against an airborne disease. I realized what was happened was inevitable. And then I cried. I cried because I didn’t have enough money to retire - I had to work, and I didn’t have a job from which I could stay home, I knew I had to go into a Building with people coughing - spreading an airborne disease that could kill me. I started wishing I had never become a doctor. I didn’t go to medical school thinking it was going to require me to risk my life.

The local health departments, the AMA the Academy of Pediatrics - no one had any advice for how a private practice should handle things. I knew we would run out of masks, after all, I had sent 1000 to Taiwan because they were out of them. So I got n95s for all my staff and I learned how to Clean them, bought a machine to clean them - anticipating we would reuse them for months. And I got glasses - protective eyewear for all my staff because airborne diseases love the eye and the nose.. the Hospitals weren’t even requiring protective eyewear in the beginning. (I believe protective eye wear was one of the reasons none of my staff got covid for over a year into the Pandemic, in spite of seeing patients with it every day).

Then I waited for it to hit Georgia - which didn’t take long. The second case In Georgia was someone who worked at an elementary school and had no foreign travel. As soon as this case hit the news - I knew it had arrived.

I remember going with a couple friends to hear a band the night that case broke the news. While I was there my older daughter sent me more pictures from New York and I told her to calm down - that everything was going to be ok. Then I looked at my friends and said, “We need to enjoy tonight, I think this is the last time we are going to hear a live band for awhile.” And I laughed - somewhat hysterically I think .. at myslef and at what I knew was coming.

Then I put on my game face. For all my staff and for all of you. Because, I knew if you knew how scared I was - there would be extreme panic. And I went into work.

My friend and I relive things from that time everytime we see each other. Even on this vacation we talked a lot about those years. We lived through trauma many can’t understand. And I get that others can’t understand it if they didn’t live it.. if they werent aware - like I was - about what I was trying to prevent from happening. If they didn’t know how bad things might become. I was trying to help prevent a repeat of Lombardy in my home.

Lately, there seems to be an attempt to revise our story. Revise what we lived through. And that I cannot stand. We all deal with anxiety in different ways. I do understand that. My way is to try to do everything I can to control and improve the situation. For some, DENIAL works better. But we all had anxiety back then - whether we realize it or not.

A couple years ago at Christmas I was visiting a relative who lives in a little village in Lombardy. The way of life in a little village in Italy is to go out in the morning and get bread and meat and cheese for the day and then grab a coffee at a cafe (or wine). While we were sitting drinking coffee, two old men walked by. “Do you see those two old men?” My relative asked me. “ They come here every morning. Have for years. There used to be 6 of them. 4 died from covid.”

We cannot forget and we cannot rewrite history. We can go forward, but we should never forget. We should be grateful to all health care workers who risked their own lives and who, while many still died in the US, prevented your experience here from being the experience had by those in Northern Italy.

Were mistakes made? Absolutely. But we were dealing with a novel virus, learning along the way, and we all did the best we could with the information we had at the time.

Most importantly for me, is that while my younger daughter doesn’t have a dad - she at least still has a mother, a mother who gets to take her on vacations with one of her very best friends. I survived. And so did all of those reading this. Be grateful.

Dr Hill