By Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
If selling residential real estate these days is like pulling teeth, then Amy Bryant’s the right person for the job.
She’s a dentist. So, why she a Realtor with ERA Fernandina Beach Realty?
It’s a sad story that, unfortunately, is true.
“I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was then unable to practice dentistry full-time so I had to look for other alternatives,” she said. “All of these alternatives were going to require traveling and I did not want that.”
So she chose real estate.
“It allows me to work closely with people,” she said. “It allows me to be in my hometown which I love. I love to work with people and help them find the perfect place for them to call home. It is truly a rewarding field.”
Her path to dentistry was the traditional way. She got undergraduate degrees from Jacksonville University in biology and chemistry, then went through dentistry school at the University of Florida and then did one year of residency at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune disease that attacks the joints in 2001 but continued on with school and a residency until she could see that she no longer would be able to handle the precision work that’s needed when you’re working on someone’s teeth.
With rheumatoid arthritis, often called “RA,” the immune system loses its ability to tell the difference between foreign invaders and the body’s normal cells. It begins to attack those normal cells, too.
The damage starts when the immune system begins to weaken your joints. Unlike minor injuries that heal over time, the deterioration of bones and cartilage within the joints caused by moderate to severe RA does not go away. Even without serious symptoms, RA could be irreversibly destroying the joints.
“When you have an auto-immune disease, the chance of getting other or developing other auto-immune diseases is pretty high,” said Bryan. “You just have to stay on medication and stay monitored by the doctors.”
Bryan tried to continue with dentistry, but it just got too hard.
“We tried to control it as much as we could with medicine and I wanted to finish dentist school,” she said. “Dentist school was not like real life dentistry. You see two patients a day instead of 20 a day. It was a lot slower, so I could work at that pace. When I went into the residency, it was a lot more difficult to practice. I was having a lot of problems and major issues and knew that I was not going to be able to continue doing what I was doing.”
Needless to say, that was hard to realize.
“Basically, the doctors said that if I wanted to have any kind of normal lifestyle, I didn’t need to practice dentistry,” she said. “It was my own decision to quit dentistry. The reason I did is that if I was to practice, even part-time, I would probably have only one to two years to practice. By then I would have major problems with my hands that would prohibit me from doing everyday things like putting on clothes, brushing my hair and driving.
“I would just cause so much damage from using my hands over and over all day long. I just really loved dentistry and everything about it, but I didn’t feel it was worth giving up the rest of my life.”
There is no cure.
“Once you have problems and deterioration, it doesn’t get better,” said Bryan. “It stays the same or gets worse. You just control it with medicine. There is a huge chance that it will get worse, but there’s also a chance it can stay the same.”
She moved back to Amelia Island in 2004 and went into real estate.
“It wasn’t something I ever thought I would do, but I love this area,” said the stepmother of two who’s married to Greg Peters, a supervisor in the mounting department at the Smurfit Stone Container Corp. in Jacksonville. “This is where I was born and raised and I didn’t want to be anywhere else. Everything else I had the opportunity to do was overseas. With dentistry, most of the products they make are international. All the companies that make the products are international like Japan, Germany and Sweden. They produce a lot of dental products so if I wanted to do dental education or dental sales, I’d have to go overseas.
“One of the options was to live in Japan for eight months out of the year. That was not an option for me and I don’t think I’d be happy living in Japan or Germany. Traveling is not super easy, either.”
Steve Simmon’s, her broker, was a family friend and introduced real estate to her.
“He’s kind of like a second dad to me,” said Bryan. “I was looking at options and decided to get my real estate license and see how it goes. It’s a great profession to be in because if I’m having a horrible day and can’t do anything, I can work from my bedroom. I can also call the office and say ‘I’m not going to make this, can you cover for me?’ It’s the best of both worlds.”
Bryan is very involved with her community. She serves on the McArthur YMCA Board, is president of the Fernandina Beach High School Foundation, chairs the Activities Committee of the Amelia Island/Nassau County Association of Realtors and is on the board of the Amelia Island Chamber of Commerce.
Selling real estate does not affect her rheumatoid arthritis. She just has to deal with the everyday effects of the disease such as pain, which can slow her down sometimes, but not enough to keep her from doing her job.
“I think it’s one of those things in dealing with pain management,” she said. “It’s hard, but you just come to terms with this is how it’s going to be and you come to terms with it. Mornings are the worst. It’s harder for me to get going in the morning. You just have to make adjustments.”
Bryan was a top producer last year, so obviously real estate agrees with her.
“It works,” she said.