Donna Nelson: ‘Being the science advisor to Breaking Bad was so much fun’

My childhood in a small Oklahoma town was happy. My father was the only doctor in the town, as was my grandfather before him. Our town was at a fork of a major river which, when dammed, created one of the largest man-made lakes in the world at the time. There was boating, fishing, water skiing and other lake activities. I learned how to slalom and to ski backwards.

I had planned to be a doctor since grade school. However, when it was time to declare myself a pre-med major, my father discouraged it. He told me to think about the sacrifices he made to be a ‘good’ small-town doctor. He delivered babies in the middle of the night in the country where walking to the house one might see a wolf, a snake or even an occasional bobcat or cougar.