Growing care

Zari Cain-Akbar, DO, seems to be a long, long way from home when you consider she was born and raised in the little Bayou town of Athens, Texas, near the Trinity River. She was born into a family that believed in hard work: “Salt-of-the-earth people,” she said.

But make no mistake, Harnett Health Neurology is home now, along with the rambling Agape Farm in nearby Wade that she and her husband, Oscar Martinez, bought last spring. Inspired by more than one epiphany and fueled by a heart for the weak and the weary, she’s a full-speed-ahead, North Carolina neurologist with beliefs and ideas that bring to mind an old familiar hymn.

“All things bright and beautiful. All creatures great and small. All things wise and wonderful. The Lord God made them all.”

Dr. Cain-Akbar has always been able to see the bright and beautiful in God’s creatures, a fact that led to an unlikely career path, along with three separate, exhausting moves between Texas and North Carolina. As a graduate of Campbell University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine and after having completed her residency at Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas, Dr. Cain-Akbar helped start Harnett County Neurology in August. Part of the Cape Fear Valley Health System, the clinic brings full-spectrum neurology care to Harnett County for the first time, including Cain-Akbar’s specialties of Alzheimer's disease, nutrition, memory care, ALS, migraines and epilepsy. The bonds she forms with her patients are strong. Her office walls include drawings that patients have sent her.

“When I began taking care of patients with dementia, I thought, ‘These are my people,’” she said. “I’m incredibly passionate about patients with cognitive issues and dementia. I’ve never met a patient in my clinic I didn’t learn something from. I’m honored to work with them.”

She’s also an advocate for excellent medical care for those who live off the beaten path and for whom trips to larger cities would present a struggle.

“I appreciate that population,” she said. “I remember being a kid and needing medical care.”

Her path to Harnett County has been circuitous. She was 31 years old and “happy as a clam” as a nutritionist in Austin, Texas when she felt pulled in a different direction. She applied to Campbell’s medical school, some 1,300 miles away, with the idea of helping children.

“I did not want to go to medical school,” she said. “But when God calls you to something, he’ll qualify you.”

She first considered pediatrics, but an instructor noticed her affinity for neurology.

“He told me that he could tell I loved it,” she said. “He said, ‘You know this is what you’re going to do, don’t you?’”

Her neurology training while in medical school, including a rotation at Duke University, proved vital in 2019 when her husband suffered a life-threatening rupture of a brain aneurysm. Oscar Martinez’s recovery from the rupture and from a subsequent craniotomy was thanks in part to his wife’s familiarity with his symptoms and getting him immediate emergency care. Ruptured brain aneurysms can cause neurological deficits, but Martinez leads an active life and especially enjoys the daily chores a growing farm requires. They found the farm at the end of her second year of residency when Harnett Health contacted her about the position. The land, punctuated with a large pond, includes a white farmhouse with a black tin roof and an expansive porch.

“The owner told us she had been praying for someone who would buy it and keep it a farm,” Dr. Cain-Akbar said. “It’s gorgeous. I love it. My husband is happy as all get out. He never meets a stranger. He’s a reflection of Jesus and has a heart for veterans.”

Together they hope to one day emulate the therapeutic Simple Sparrow Care Farm where Dr. Cain-Akbar volunteered during her residency. The experience inspired her belief in the power of farm activities to help those with traumatic brain injuries, as well as those with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The farm also sponsored her medical mission trip to Kenya in early 2023.

Simple Sparrow, located in Hutto, Texas, was founded on the belief that when people are taught to care for land, gardens, and animals, they are empowered to better care for themselves and others.

“Potato farms grow potatoes; care farms grow care,” reads the mantra of founder Jamie Tanner.

Though her Texas upbringing will always serve as a foundation, Dr. Cain-Akbar believes she is following a higher calling in establishing strong roots in Harnett County.  

She recalls a time during her residency in Texas when she noticed a patient’s weathered hands and the overalls he was wearing. Striking up a conversation, she learned he was a native of the Harnett County town of Angier, just a 15-minute drive from Campbell University’s campus in Buies Creek. He and his wife both needed neurology care but would have had to travel to Raleigh to find such a specialist. Because a family member lived in Austin, seeing a neurologist there made about as much sense.

Dr. Cain-Akbar shook her head. There she was, so far from her medical school alma mater, treating a patient who had come all that way for care.

And now, as their resident neurologist, she’s here to assure Harnett County that good care feels just like home, sweet home.