Dreams do come true. Just ask Dr. Angela Buonagura

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Monday, January 25, 2021

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Dreams do come true. Just ask Dr. Angela Buonagura

Mike Scott, mscott@stph.org

After going to school at William Pitcher Junior High School and Covington High, Dr. Angela Buonagura is back on the Northshore, rejoining the St. Tammany Health System family as a breast surgeon working with Northlake Surgical Associates out of its new clinic at the STHS Women’s Pavilion in Covington.  (Photo by Tim San Fillippo / STHS)

Long before Dr. Angela Buonagura earned her medical degree, she was a doctor – at least in spirit, anyway.

She can’t really put her finger on how she came to that calling. Nobody in her family practiced medicine. But for as long as she can remember, she had the heart of a healer.

“I knew I wanted to be a doctor since I was 3 or 4,” said Dr. Buonagura, a surgeon specializing in breast health. “It was my dream my entire life. It was in my inner core. I wanted to help.”

This month, that dream came full circle as Dr. Buonagura – whose first job out of med school was a decade-long stint at St. Tammany Health System starting in 2001 – rejoined the STHS family following a 10-year sojourn in northwest Arkansas.

And nobody’s happier about her return home than she is.

“I cried the whole way leaving, heading up there,” Dr. Buonagura said. “I never wanted to leave in the first place, so coming back is huge. It’s massive.”

Ask her what she missed the most, and she has trouble nailing down just one thing. There’s the food, the people, the architecture – just the everything of it.

She would know. She was born in New Orleans, where she lived before moving to the Northshore at age 12 – which happens to be about when, while still enrolled at William Pitcher Junior High, she began taking classes at Tulane University.

(“It’s kind of crazy,” she said. “I was a weirdo.”)

After graduating from Covington High at the tender age of 15, she went on to earn her undergraduate degree at Tulane. She followed that with some postbaccalaureate studies at UNO before earning her medical degree at the LSU School of Medicine.

If that’s not enough to establish her south Louisiana bona fides, there’s that last name – and to answer your next question: Yes, she is related to the late, legendary Tony Buonagura, the longtime eye-in-the-sky traffic reporter on WWL-870 AM and various other Southshore media outlets. He was her father.

(Also: Yes, she’s been up in her dad’s Cessna.)

I cried the whole way leaving, heading up there. I never wanted to leave in the first place, so coming back is huge. It's massive."

- Dr. Angela Buonagura

So, yeah. Dr. Buonagura knows what it means to miss New Orleans – and how.

Not that she’s got anything bad to say about Arkansas. It was while there that the former general surgeon honed her skills and took a particular interest in breast health. That will remain her focus with St. Tammany Health System, working as part of its Northlake Surgical team out of a satellite office within its Women’s Pavilion in Covington.

“It’s like a dream to be a part of the Women’s Pavilion,” she said. “Just look at the achievements it’s racked up: It’s a Breast Imaging Center of Excellence, it just won another Women’s Choice award as a 2021 Mammogram Center, it’s a nationally accredited breast center. I’m not sure people know what a jewel we have right here in our backyard. I’m really looking forward to working alongside these people every day.”

That includes specifically trained breast radiologists as well as an on-site patient navigator who, especially with the addition of Dr. Buonagura, offer patients a continuity of care from diagnosis to treatment.

That being said, Dr. Buonagura knows it won’t be easy. Breast cancer and breast health is a challenging specialty, she admits. Not only is there the physical component, but for many women there’s also a deep emotional component.

And, going back to those early dreams of helping people, that’s precisely why Dr. Buonagura does it.

“I find it rewarding in its own way,” she said. “It takes a huge emotional toll on the patient, and I want to be there for them, I want to explain to them what’s happening, I want to help them understand everything they’re going through.

“It just takes a lot of your core and your soul to give that much,” she added, “but that’s what it takes with these patients.”

The fact that she’ll get to decompress when she’s away from the office with a little Jazzfesting, Who Datting, Mardi Gras-ing and all the other things locals do (in non-pandemic times, anyway) makes her happier than ever to be back home – and back at St. Tammany Health System. 

“Everybody talks about how much St. Tammany Health System has grown, but to me it’s the same St. Tammany,” Dr. Buonagura said. “Great care, great people, and the nursing staff – everybody is family to them. It’s a great place to come back to.”

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