Life & COVID-19: Ain't No Fairy Tales

I have to feel sorry for Donald Trump. I mean it, he is so wrapped up in himself he'll never know the simple pleasure of people being nice to each other. 

He can't experience the pleasure I felt this afternoon when, idling in line at the recycling center, the person ahead noticed I'd arrived and pulled away. He was done, apparently, and since no one was behind him, was probably texting. I caught his attention as he passed, waved and smiled in thanks, he smiled and waved back. 

Opening the back window on my CRV I reflected on the simple kindness people seem inclined to show each other lately. We smile more easily, we're more considerate, we're more thoughtful. I wondered if it's because we don't know which of us is going to get COVID-19 next. Which one of us will go into the hospital and never go home again.

Not knowing who's next, we want to be kind to everyone, just in case. It's tragic it's taken a pandemic to get our attention, but at least it did. Not that we're all going around thinking about dying and asking, "What's it all about, Alfie?" 

I do think most of us are aware life has become more tenuous the past few months, though. A new microbe has ridden into town, gunning for all of us and the best we can do is try to stay out of its way. You can take my word for it, coronavirus is not one bit intimidated by liberal gun laws. Smith & Wesson can't protect anything from this outlaw.

But we don't need Smith & Wesson, anyway. If we can keep our heads long enough to smile and joke with strangers about being mistaken for robbers because we're wearing masks into Walmart, that's a good sign. If we can batten down the hatches on our pride, use some good sense and wear masks, wash our hands, and practice the pure human decency of social distancing, it's an even better sign we might help each other have half a chance.

It may not seem like a lot but at the moment it's what we've got, so let's use it with impunity. We're not talking about snake oil or something Trump has pulled out of his backside and tried to pass off as a miracle. 

The true fact is, we don't need a miracle. What we need is a healthy dose of reality. Take a spoonful every hour until this is all over and then keep taking it. Don't let some reality TV character sell you a story about a handful of magic beans and a goose and a golden egg. That only works in fairy tales and life and COVID-19 ain't no fairy tales, no matter who says they are.

(Creative Commons Image)

Virus Like Confetti

It is alarming, if not downright frightening, that in the midst of a crisis affecting the nation and the world, listening to the White House is not such a good idea.

I say that because the White House has developed the nasty habit lately of being less than reliable about passing along the best that medical science has to say about COVID-19. As a matter of fact, the daily White House briefs often as not reveal the President and his chief coronavirus expert at odds with one another. Of all the times to make sure you listened to your scientists and followed their advice, now would be the time, but it's not happening. 

I'm a psychiatrist, not an epidemiologist or politician, but I know enough about all three to know it's wise to recognize your limitations. If Dr. Fauci advised me to be cautious when it came to "opening up" the country, you can bet your life I'm going to be cautious. The last thing I'm going to do is play "guess who's smarter" games while your life is on the line.

The coronavirus health crisis is not make believe. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is not the flu. It is a virus-borne illness that has resulted in the deaths of over 40,458 Americans as of this moment. Over 762,690 cases have been confirmed, by the way, as of this moment. To those who dismiss it and insist on going to church or crowding around protesting, when you get sick, when you need an ICU bed, when you're  desperate for a ventilator, when you'd sell your soul for a doctor and nurse, just remember:  You were warned. 

A flattening of the bell curve as we've started seeing in New York doesn't mean we've got coronavirus on the run. It means what we've been doing to try and reduce its extent appears to be working. That's all it means. 

The good news is, we can still screw this up. All we have to do is lie. Close our minds and lie like our lives depended on it because they just might. Distort reality, deny the truth, and brag about being invincible. See? We still have time. We can still screw this up. 

When COVID-19 reruns hit the theaters this fall, tell you what, let's all go. It's all a hoax, right? Nobody at the White House wears a mask (at least in public) why should we? Forget social distancing. Let's cozy up and cough, sneeze in each other's faces, splattering virus like it was confetti at New Year's. Let's all get sick this time. Maybe even die.

Won't that be fun?


(Image by Mark Waugh and www.cartridgesave.co.uk)

The Uncarved Block

 
In your heart, you already know.~ Zen saying

Depending on the space we happen to be in, the heart's knowing can be a curse,  blessing, or one more unanswered question. The hard part is getting our head into alignment with what we already sense, intuitively, to be true. A Zen master would probably suggest meditation might help, but that just puts me to sleep. Besides, I'm more an uncarved block kind of guy.

The uncarved block is a concept expressing naturalness and the oneness with nature embraced by Taoism. You may be familiar with the delightful book, The Tao of Pooh, in which the author, Benjamin Hoff, describes Winnie the Pooh as the uncarved block. Simple, uncomplicated, genuine -- these are words that describe Pooh. A complex bear he'll never be. His most severe problem involves getting his head stuck in a honey jar. Unlike me, unlike most of us.

Getting to the lowest common denominator in my own life has been a challenge and continues to be. Circumstances don't always cooperate with the effort and making a move in any direction can stir up a beehive of complications. The uncarved block, fortunately, isn't a way of living as much as a way of being. It's who we are more than how we live, though right being ought to result in right doing.

Living on this farm the past five years has been an exercise in simplicity and one that I've cherished. I've learned to consolidate errands because "town" is twelve miles away, down a curvaceous country road. Walking my dogs around the hayfield is a pleasure I can scarcely describe and gazing out the front window at a barn dating to the late 1770s is a childhood fantasy come true. I've never gotten past the sense that some late night I'm going to encounter the shimmering remnant of a colonial someone who lived here long before me.

When a person's focus is directed externally, it's difficult to be simple. The world does everything it can to tell us we've got to keep busy lest we be left behind. Complexity isn't the template for the uncarved block. A piece of wood that has yielded to knife and sandpaper no longer depicts its untouched state. The uncarved block must be seen with the mind's eye.

It's like that with people, when we intentionally overlook skin color, clothing, distinctions, differences -- foreignness. When we allow the potential for relatedness to take precedence over presumption. Turn on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) sometime when The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming (1966), is on the schedule, as it was last evening. It's a comedy depicting a Soviet submarine that runs aground in a small, New England harbor. The residents of the town are up in arms because it's the era of the Cold War and instead of the British, the "Russians" have arrived at their doorstep. Townspeople and Russian sailors forget national pride to help rescue a child and suddenly, they're no longer enemies. 

A year ago, when bombs went off in Boston, Islamic-American doctors risked their lives alongside European-American doctors and first-responders to help everyone they could. The uncarved block was all that mattered. Getting simple enough to see that, all the time, is hard, especially when the voices of paranoia crowd the media, warning us one false step is only a single step away. Paranoia isn't a guide; it's psychosis, it's madness. Taking each other as we are is a better one. I'm quite certain, Pooh would agree.


(Creative Commons image "The Uncarved Block" by Beth Hoffman via Flickr)

Students With A Past (The Mythology of Medical School)

 
The things I remember. My childhood address, phone numbers for my dad's saddle shop, my aunt's for emergencies, the digits on my first driver's license. Considering my conflicted relationship with math, beginning with elementary school arithmetic and culminating in high school algebra, it's hilarious that I remember numbers so easily. Maybe it wasn't the numbers themselves, but their use that was a problem -- no pun intended.

I also remember a little sing-song ditty I made up during high school biology for the elements of taxonomy: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Spee-sees (species). For someone who's mental hard drive has always seemed a few megabytes short of RAM, it's intriguing how bits and pieces of this and that are dredged up with ease.

It's encouraging, too, because I've never had a talent for memorizing. Spelling Bees were fun because I'd been taught the lost art of Phonics as an elementary student. Sounding out a word was as natural for me as mentally associating guitar chords with a song on the radio. It irritated other students because I spelled slowly and deliberately, rather than fire off the words from memory, but I frequently won. So, there. 

While memorization sometimes seems like my "Voldemort," learning has proven my magic wand. I'm mentioning this today because occasionally, someone who's contemplating medical school contacts me with concerns about their personal calender. Since it's turned over more often than other applicants', they're wondering how it might affect them or their performance. The doubts and fears that race through your imagination at times like this are so prolific it feels like you're possessed. The solution to possession is exorcism, but we don't need Richard Burton (The Exorcist, 1973) to banish our tormentors, instead, we need to re-tune our reality-testing skills to gain a different perspective.

There's a mythology associated with medical school, composed of assumptions, perceptions, and beliefs, some which are true, others partly true, and some downright false. Take, for instance, the notion of the "typical medical student." It's more accurate to say there is no such thing; there's only those who obtain admission and among them, you'll find so much variety you need a taxonomy to categorize it. Though still a minority "species," for several years nontraditional students have been the fastest growing one in the medical student populace. Women used to be the nontraditional applicant, now it's the student with a past.

Another assumption is medical students must be capable of memorizing vast quantities of material. I believed this once. There was also a time when I believed Viet Nam was a just war, so what does that tell you? It's true medical school does expose us to a great deal of information. That it all must be memorized is not true. Thanks to the demythologizing efforts of Dr. Francis, founder of the PASS Program in Champaign, Illinois, I came to realize how incorrect my beliefs about memorization had been. They were sincere, yes, but they were mistaken -- as mistaken as Linus, spending Halloween night in the pumpkin patch. Memorizing is important but it's not all-important. It's a useful tool but there are others that may be better.

The trouble with memorization is, it relies on short-term memory, which I called RAM (random access memory) earlier. Some students' short-term memory capabilities resemble the biological predisposition necessary for a runner to be a good sprinter. Distance runners don't sprint well because their muscles are built for endurance, not the short burst of speed. Many of us, particularly liberal arts majors, are "distance" rather than "sprint" learners. Our minds are more efficient at encoding material into long-term memory than an overloaded short-term memory. Dr. Francis taught me how to decipher the conceptual framework underlying medicine and use it to facilitate long-term memory storage. Learning 10, memorization zip. So, there.

A third popular false belief is medical students rarely sleep, nor do they have to, since they worship regularly at the Church of Starbucks. If you can't keep up with your bleary-eyed, robotic, hyper-active lab partner who gets perfect exam scores, you may as well forget it, or so goes this urban myth. Medical school is demanding, that's true, and sleep gets short-shrift now and then, but guess what? Who sleeps when they have babies waking them up every two hours? You get up, change and feed junior, then go to work. Students with a past are no strangers to the routine. 

The belief that medical students must be able to go on and on like the Energizer Bunny is a twist on a partial truth. Medical school is physically, as well as mentally, challenging. What the "bunny belief" doesn't tell you is how challenging it is for all students. By the end of each term and even before, everyone is weary. Younger, older, and those in-between. Those who graduate with their health intact generally eat (fairly) well, exercise (fairly) often, and do their best to get at least six hours a night -- the minimum for a full REM cycle, the key ingredient for effective learning. Energy is no more a gift than a silver spoon. It results from the desire to achieve and is maintained by common sense self-care. Students with a past can do this as well as anyone else.

Lastly, there is the assumption about flexibility. By this, I don't mean the fellow who crawls into a milk crate on Saturday afternoons on the Downtown Boulder Mall for dollar bills tossed into his tip jar. He's the only person I know who can do this and whatever he does the rest of the week, I'm sure it's not studying medicine. Flexibility as an urban myth concerns being set in one's ways and hints the less we've experienced, the more adaptable we are. Of course, that runs directly counter to nature's insistence that exposure is essential to adaptability. Exposure is how we develop an immune system. Exposure drives adaptation. Exposure motivates us to evolve.

Persons acclimate to rigid patterns of thinking and behaving in response to fear and uncertainty. Those who are resistant to new information are less likely to step outside their comfort zone and pursue medical school than those open to new ideas. Becoming entrenched is like psychopathology, it can happen to anybody under the right conditions. It's like falling back on memorization in a crunch. Students with a past may have to unlearn a few things, but that too, is part of being adaptable. Because you have a past doesn't mean you can't let it go.

There's more to medical school than its mythology in the same way there's more to us than appearances. Demythologizing is critical for evaluating one's potential realistically. Viewing yourself as capable is as important as envisioning the outcome as obtainable. Students with a past are as capable as their fellows. They just have to believe it. I'm living proof. 


(Creative Commons image by bfi Office Furniture via Flickr)

Mission Impossible

It started out a typical morning -- Oh, you'd rather it was a dark and stormy night? Good idea. I like that; here goes...

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was howling, trees swayed like hula girls (hula girls? In Maine? Maybe on a fuzzy dashboard.) and rain lashed my windshield as I pulled out of the parking lot. Eager to get home, I didn't notice the cassette lying on the seat next to me until I reached over for my gloves. It couldn’t have been mine; I hadn't listened to a cassette recording in years. Who's been in my car, I wondered, when, and why?

I pulled onto the shoulder and gave my discovery the once over. There was no label, it didn't smell like gasoline, gunpowder, or anything obviously lethal. I hadn't dallied with anyone's girlfriend, wife, or ex, and besides, the local boys wouldn't use a tape; they'd run me down with a really big truck and then shoot me for good measure. Thinking I was fairly safe, I inserted it into the player -- with my hand on the door latch, just in case. 

A dispassionate male voice I might have accused of belonging to Lawrence Fishburne under other circumstances, said, "Good Evening, Mr. Beggar. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to answer the question, 'What is a D.O.?' in 140 typed characters or less. Whether you include spaces is entirely up to you. For what it’s worth, your team suggested we do something physiologically impossible with this, so you're on your own. This message will self-destruct in 5, 4, 3, 2...hiss, whirrrr, click."

Acrid grey-black smoke billowed from the CD/cassette player and I swung the door wide, leaning out into the rain and coughing like Doc Holiday in Tombstone (1993) or Wyatt Earp (1994). Somebody from the AOA with a taste for cloak and dagger, I thought, who else? Talk about Mission Impossible. Wait a minute, isn't there supposed to be theme music playing? Where's the thump-thump, thumptha thump-thump signaling I'm about to do something really cool? Mmph. Budget cuts.

What made my task resemble Tom Cruise leaping from a speeding train was the subject matter. It's hard enough to express meaningfully when you've got all night. My "assignment" -- in reality, a sort of contest, but it's more fun this way -- was going to present a challenge. How can we explain the "DO essentials" to the average person for whom "doctor," often as not, refers to an MD? It's like trying to fit an elephant comfortably into a box designed for an engagement ring and expecting it to be recognizable as an elephant when the box is opened. At this point, 140 characters started to resemble the penance given a petulant soul doing time in Purgatory. And then it got worse.

Pretty much everyone agrees, the care and feeding of both types of medical doctor is virtually identical, with the exception that DOs are also trained in the delivery of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine. On that basis, the question might be raised, why not have the same degree? By itself, is OMM sufficient reason to warrant separate licensing, specialty boards, and so forth? In other words, why not just make all physicians DOs and be done with it? I have a sneaking suspicion the American Medical Association might have something to say about that. Not to mention my best friend who is an MD and one of the most osteopathic of physicians I've ever known. Yet, even he will admit that he and I, MD and DO, are better together than we are separately, and that is due to the differences in our training, not the similarities.

Our training is the overall critical factor and if the training received by DO and MD physicians were truly mirror images, an identical designation would make lexicographic sense. Despite appearances, they are not, however, and not merely because of OMM. Osteopathic medicine is oriented differently and this takes us to the heart of the matter.

Hippocrates said, "It's more important to know what sort of person has a disease than which disease a person has." He could have been speaking as a DO because osteopathic medicine focuses on persons, both as individuals and as members of a community. It conceives of them as complex entities who experience themselves and their environment in ways inclusive of cognition, emotion, and physical embodiment. Their behavior is goal-directed and they are prone to regard the search for meaning as a sublime pursuit. Their bodies are a model of integration in which the part affects the whole and nothing affects the whole without also affecting the person whom it visually represents. Ultimately, the person is everything.

Person-centered care has become a hot topic lately, especially at medical conferences. For osteopathic physicians, however, person-centered is far more than a hot topic, it is a pervasive and all-inclusive, soul-deep conviction that conditions every aspect of the doctor-patient relationship. It isn't a practice emphasis, it is our defining feature. It isn't something we do, it is who we are.

I'm way beyond 140 characters and we haven't even hinted at the role played by OMM or the osteopathic preference for finding and treating the cause of disease rather than symptoms alone, whenever possible. See what I mean? The elephant is so big and the box so very small.

Still, I did accept this mission, so I'd better get cracking. You'll forgive me if I keep one hand on the door latch. Maybe the tape wasn't a "bomb," but that doesn't guarantee my solution won't be. A D.O. is a medical doctor, dedicated to the care and treatment of persons, in sickness and health, of all that they are and wish to become, and a great deal more, besides. 140 characters without spaces. You know, I think I'm starting to hear music.

Thump thump, thumptha, thump thump...

(Creative Commons Image by Baptigrou via Flickr) 

Nowhere Else But Here

 
In recent months, I've been preparing for residency interviews, thinking about questions I'd likely be asked and those I should ask of programs. One question sure to come up is, Why do you want to be a psychiatrist rather than some other kind of doctor? I've thought a lot about this, especially in light of third and fourth year rotations, the medical school version of a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop (or any other, since I've discovered we don't have B-R in Maine) where you get to sample the flavors before deciding to buy.

Prior to rotations, my heart was set on psychiatry. I'd worked and trained in the field, coauthored a book related to a psychiatric sub-field, and truly loved every minute of it. My background set the stage to do well in residency; why do anything else? 

The trouble was, it was like being raised on chocolate ice cream (not a bad thing, by the way) and considering it my favorite. Never having tried any other flavor, how could I be so sure? Maybe it was just familiarity. Medical students often find their plans for residency change after third and fourth year rotations for that very reason. 

In order to deal with the matter fairly, I decided to approach rotations with the intent of evaluating them on their individual merits. If I still loved psychiatry best, by keeping an open mind I'd learn more and be better able to make an informed choice, come Match time. 

The outcome was surprising. I liked surgery, as do many psychiatrists, and I encountered nearly as many surgeons who'd seriously considered entering psychiatry. Why this was true and whether there's a connection between surgery and psychiatry, is unclear. Maybe that would be a good topic for a psychiatric residency research project? 

So, that was surgery. Being involved in delivering babies was wonderful and pediatrics was every bit as enjoyable as I expected it to be. Rural family practice was a warm, nurturing experience and emergency medicine was hard work and a ton of fun. A fourth year sub-internship in internal medicine showed me how much I had yet to learn and at the same time, gave me a boost of confidence about beginning residency. They were all great in their own ways, but eventually you have to make a decision. You can only sample so many flavors before the person behind the counter gets impatient.

What do you want to spend the rest of your life doing? I asked myself. This is not a casual question. No one knows how long "the rest of your life" is going to last. Could and hopefully will be a long, long, long, long time, but none of us is born with a warranty. For me, the various considerations boiled down to a second, more important question, Where have you been the happiest?

Coming up with an answer wasn't as easy as you might think. Never having had children, obstetrics and pediatrics teetered close to the front burner. But obstetrics entailed short-term relationships with patients and my interest in pediatrics was mainly directed toward child/adolescent psychiatry. Reflecting on my experiences, there was only one rotation where it was impossible to contain my enthusiasm about getting to the hospital every morning. It was the same one that made it ridiculously easy to ignore the clock at the end of my shift and the only one I had no reservations building a life around. Turns out, "chocolate" really was my favorite flavor, after all.

A few years ago, after a long day at the hospital in Denver, I took the dogs out and looked up at the stars. It was a chilly fall evening and after finishing their business, I'm sure they were both wondering why we didn't rush back inside to get warm. It had been a good day and at the moment I was caught up in the sudden awareness I was better at psychiatry than I'd ever been at anything else. What I mean is, I worked harder, felt like a better person, was more fulfilled, and more effective. More than anything, I was happy, truly and deeply happy, from the top of my head all the way down to the holes in the heals of my socks. That feeling has never gone away, it's just gotten stronger.

There are a lot of reasons to love something and I don't fault anyone for not loving psychiatry, though I freely admit when someone says they don't like chocolate ice cream, that does give me pause. Continuing to love it, after third and fourth year rotations, probably makes me a hopeless case, which is okay because I'm a happy one. And for me, happy like this is found nowhere else but here.  

 (Creative Commons image "Happy" by Rickydavid via Flickr)

More Than Just a Piece of Paper

 
That's what we say, sometimes, when we're tired, when burning the candle at both ends seems to have done little to bring the end of a long academic journey into view. "___ more months, ___ more rotations," we say, "I'm going to get my piece of paper and I -- am -- gone."

I've said it. After slamming into another obstacle that meant I'd graduate another year later than my entering classmates, I've said it. On good days, I tried to act a reasonable approximation of my age and call such things "character-building." On bad days, they were miserable. The truth is, the good ones really did outnumber the bad by several factors of ten, no whitewash -- except on bad days and then they seemed to multiply as fast as zits on a teenager's face.

Medical education is a group effort and a personal one. We begin in community, like runners in the Boston Marathon, and we string out along the way. I lived off Beacon Street in Boston for a while and stood within inches of the Marathon as it passed by. First came elite runners, like the Kenyans I got to know in Boulder while walking my dogs, some in training for Boston. Long after they were out of sight, came local runners, wheelchair athletes, and those for whom a personal best was the point.

Every year there are runners who, for reasons of their own, cross the line at Boylston Street, where the bombing occurred, way late, maybe after midnight. A father, pushing his wheelchair-bound son, someone else who was injured and refused to quit. It could be anyone. There have been times in this process, when I felt like that, hell-bent on crossing the line whether anyone was there or not, and not really expecting anyone to be, certainly not at that late hour. The virtual presence of more than a hundred cheering friends on Facebook showed me how wrong a guy can be and how amazingly good it feels to discover them waiting for you.

But that's how things can go. All the potential in the world can't ensure the medical education master plan is carried out without a hitch. Something happens, then another, and before you know it, you've had to stop and regroup. Most students make it by the clock (four years), some say they made it by the grace of God and maybe they did. Maybe that's how all of us make it, even when it seems like sheer, dumb luck.

Anyway, yes, I called it a "piece of paper," especially when circumstances and/or my own frailty conspired to raise the bar -- and right when I was starting to get good at reaching it! One of my favorite Robert Browning lines goes, "A man's (person's) reach should exceed his (their) grasp." Well, gee, thanks, Bob, bet you never went to medical school, huh?!

Eons ago, when I was a kid watching classic movies about doctors and psychiatrists on our black and white TV, medical school was something other people did. To me it was as far away as growing up. Eventually, however, I did grow up or at least got taller, and found my way to medical school. When my diploma finally came in yesterday's mail, I can tell you, it was much more than just a piece of paper.

A friend, on his graduation day in 2010, waved his diploma in its protective cardboard mailer and shouted to me, "Don't forget, Beggar, there's one of these with your name on it!" I thought about him as I walked back to the house, carrying mine the same way he had. I thought about him again, opening the package and seeing my name. He was right; there was no mistake.

How does it feel, having finally crossed the elusive finishing line with my diploma in hand to prove it?  It feels empowering. Better than all those other times the bar was raised and I cursed and swore and stretched and strained and reached with all my heart and realized I could reach higher and farther still. It feels right. Residency is fast approaching (Please, God, let it be psychiatry) and it feels like I'm in the starting grid at Indy, waiting for that cute little country singer to finish the National Anthem so I can hear the words I've waited a lifetime to hear: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!"

Varoooooooooooom! 

(Photo copyright 2013 by the author)

Contraception and the New Fisherman

 
What's going on in Rome, lately? Is there a new voice crying in the wilderness? Pope Francis declaring the Church has become obsessed with birth control, abortion, and gay marriage? Shades of Anthony Quinn.

Who's Anthony Quinn? He was an actor probably best known for his roles in Zorba the Greek (1964) and The Guns of Navarone (1961). He was also cast as the first Russian pope in the film, The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968). What brings him to mind was his character's willingness to drain the Vatican of its wealth and holdings in order to feed a starving Chinese nation and stave off World War III. For him, charity took precedence over tradition. I wonder if that may be true for Pope Francis as well.

Whether it is or it isn't, he's certainly not afraid of going out on a limb. In an interview published in September, 2013, he stated: "A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: 'Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?' We must always consider the person."* This is fairly radical, it seems to me, bending Church doctrine around the needs of people rather than the other way around. 

Such a pope might prove to be a powerful ally at a time when faith-based groups are arguing for exemption from the stipulations of the Affordable Care Act regarding coverage for contraception. Bearing in mind their legitimate concerns about conscience, it helps to bear in mind another, equally legitimate concern, namely, of the four million births in the United States in 2011, 393,772 were to mothers ages 15-19. What is that, about 10%? The picture is complicated by the fact that teen pregnancies are associated with greater risks for low birth weight, preterm birth, and death in infancy.

How many of these births could have been avoided had their mothers had access to contraception? All of them, potentially. What if one was your daughter or mine? Which would we prefer, to discover she was having unprotected sex whether we approved of it or not, exposing herself to sexually-transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy? Or to be assured that even if she was having sex, her future (and ours, by the way) was far less likely to be altered, negatively, by an unwanted pregnancy? 

I don't think there's a parent on the planet who welcomes the thought of their daughters or sons being sexually active teenagers, but it happens. It happens to the best of families in the best of communities. It happens to families of faith as well as families with no faith. It happens to Democrats and Republicans, Whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, and everyone else. It just happens.

Effective parenting is not ideal parenting because there are no ideal parents. There's only us and we try to do rightly by our children and sometimes that's not enough. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Admitting the truth is hard, but the consequences of denial are much harder. Preparing our children for adulthood entails protecting them from the impact of their own impulses. I can't be with my children 24 hours a day and expect them to grow into independent, functional adults. I've got to give them a measure of freedom and that means taking a few risks. Of all the ones I must take, an unwanted pregnancy is not one of them. I hope it turns out, the New Fisherman agrees with me.

*Citation from The New York Times, 9/20/2013.

(Creative Commons image by twm1340 via Flickr)

Scientific Myth-Busting and The Hearing Curve

It is a little known otologic fact that hearing improves with age. 

You don't believe me. 

You've heard and read and perhaps even experienced the opposite. Well, I'm sorry to tell you this, but hearing loss in adulthood is an urban myth desperately in need of busting and we're going to do that, right here and now.

The truth is, hearing develops, declines, and recovers in a manner comparable to an inverse bell curve, a phenomenon known as The Hearing Curve. We start out hearing rather well in our elementary years as evidenced by the fact that our parents can't open a can of pop on the other side of the house, quietly as a mouse, with the barest hisssss of carbon dioxide escaping, without us hearing them and calling out, "I want some!"

With the onset of puberty, hormonal changes occur, resulting in observable physical changes such as increased vertical growth, the appearance of secondary sex characteristics, and gradual hearing loss that peaks at about age 16, usually coincident with the passing of one's driving test. We know this to be true because teenagers listen to LOUD music, particularly in the car. They talk LOUDLY and make LOTS of noise doing absolutely nothing.

Adulthood is marked by the gradual recovery of hearing acuity, accelerated in some cases by childbearing and child-rearing, and becoming most noticeable in the mid-40s to 60s. Adult hearing can actually become highly sensitive to the most subtle of sounds. For instance, the creek of the front door when teenaged son creeps in past curfew can awaken the soundest of sleeping fathers more readily than a gun fired off beside the bed. The best medical evidence for hearing improvement in adulthood, however, derives from the observation that parents the world over shout at their teenaged children who, naturally, are listening to LOUD rock and roll, "Turn that crap down!" It's obviously painful, otherwise why say anything at all?

So much misunderstanding and familial conflict could be avoided if parents only knew the truth. When asking, for instance, if their teenaged daughter or son was "deaf" when told to take out the trash, help with dinner, or clean their room, what a great thing to know that, yes, their teenagers were in fact, quite deaf or so close to it as to make no difference. Furthermore, that it's only temporary, literally "a stage" they're going through. On the other side, just as it takes becoming an adult to realize one's parents aren't stupid, it takes becoming one to be able to hear what they're saying without misinterpreting their shouting as expressions of anger or frustration. Everyone benefits.

It's really quite amazing what the teensiest bit of scientific myth-busting can do to improve our lives and relationships. And we did it all without mentioning "evolution." Isn't that amazing?

(Text copyright 2013 by the author -- written with tongue firmly planted in cheek)

(Creative Commons image by Rob Gallop via Flickr)

Doc Bugs and Me

One of my favorite places to shop is anywhere Christmas decorations are sold. When I was growing up, my mother instilled in me a real love for rare, unusual, or antique ornaments. Thanks to her, the drawers of my ornament cabinet contain bells and glass bobbles that date from her childhood before the War (as World War II was known in our house). Over time I've added my own preferences for traditional wooden soldiers, dogs, moose, and cartoon characters, notably Snoopy and Woodstock.

One ornament has special meaning for me -- the one in the photo. I picked up Doc Bugs, as I call him, in a little out of the way place called The Spruce House, in Estes Park, Colorado. It must have been late fall, during my first year of premedical studies, when I found him hanging on a rack all by himself. Lone ornaments are hard to resist, especially if they stir up an emotional connection and you realize leaving the store without them is a mistake. 

Well, Bugs Bunny and I go way back. Tall, wise-cracking, with big feet, like me, he was my favorite cartoon character when I was a kid. Only this time, instead of his trademark carrot, he was holding a stethoscope and smiling as though he knew a secret I didn't. Right off I was certain he'd been "waiting for me" and took it as a sign that someday I'd be in his shoes, or paws, as the case may be. The next year, I came upon another version of the medical bunny, a ceramic Bugs looking rather distinguished in a long white coat holding a hospital record, another portent (except for the "distinguished" part). 

It's funny how, when pursuing a dream, you latch onto things that symbolize its fulfillment to give you hope. I'm not superstitious, but I definitely believe in the power of images to fuel our ambitions and sustain us spiritually. When such things hang on a Christmas tree, itself a very rich symbol of life and new birth, they take on deeper significance. It's as though they participate in all the tree represents and pass it along when we're most in need.

Doc Bugs has done that for me the past fifteen Christmases. Each year, taking him out of his box and hanging him in plain view has been an act of faith and each year I promised myself my time was coming. Last night, bringing Doc Bugs out once more, I said to my long-eared alter ego, "Well, Bugs, this is your first Christmas as a real doctor." It just so happens, it's mine, too.

May you have the most wonderful and joyous of Christmases and the happiest of Holiday Seasons.

(Photo copyright 2013 by the author)
   

Healthcare Without Politics: The Future is Now

Is it even possible anymore, healthcare without politics? 
I don't know, but I hope so. I'd hate to think the only place it could exist was Disney World. I hope we can reach the point midst all the  maneuvering and jockeying for power and influence where our concern for those who need healthcare exceeds its value as political capital. Sadly, we're not there yet.

Back in the day when, for the average person, Blue Cross/Blue Shield was pretty much the only health insurance game in town, coverage protected in case of catastrophe, i.e. hospitalization. I've described in other posts my own experience of kidney stones necessitating two major surgeries. My family paid out of pocket for outpatient doctor visits and prescriptions, grateful our Blue Cross policy meant the cost of my hospital stay wouldn't hit us with the force of a tsunami carrying the threat of bankruptcy in its wake.

At the time I was recovering from kidney stones and for a few years thereafter, doctors were reimbursed by insurance for services rendered. It was called a fee-for-service system. More services meant greater reimbursement. Eventually, managed care firms came into existence and in the effort to control the costs of operation, they established criteria that must be met, justifying tests and procedures, before  insurance claims would be paid and doctors reimbursed. Soon it became necessary for providers and/or policy holders to obtain authorizations for treatment before managed care considered itself obligated to pay. If you think about it from a business perspective, this makes sense. A company can only pay out so much before it is unable to pay at all.

The road to hell is lined with good intentions, as the saying goes, and while management of healthcare costs was doubtless a factor in the evolution of managed care, we have to remember, healthcare insurance is still a business and the first priority of any business is to make a profit. To accomplish this goal, a business has to increase revenues and/or reduce expenses. Determining which procedures or medications were clinically indicated, ostensibly based on empirical evidence, was one way of setting limits on expenses. Refusing to cover pre-existing conditions was another. Over time, decisions of medical necessity were taken over by managed care and stories of treatment denial, some of them truly horrible, started surfacing. You've heard them on the nightly news as have I.

Despite public outcry, doctors' frustration with a growing insurance beuracracy, and the efforts of congressional leaders like the late Senator Ted Kennedy, insurance reform lagged. Ours is a free-market economy, it was argued, competition lies at the heart of the American Way. Socialized medicine in Canada and Europe, opponents declared, provided poorer quality care and ours was the best in the world. The reality, however, failed to live up to the evidence even as the arguments proliferated.

Families on the verge of collapse because of alcoholism or drug abuse may resort to performing an intervention, confronting the substance abuser who is unwilling or unable to get treatment themselves. Not dissimilarly, someone had to intervene if healthcare insurance was going to obtain the "treatment" it had long needed. Relying on competition to even the field failed to yield more affordable coverage and the number of uninsured Americans continued to grow. Either free-market theory was wrong or the industry discovered how to prosper in spite of it. Although many believed there were good reasons for reforming the system, there was insufficient motivation for the system to reform itself.

Enter the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act, the function of which is to enable one to obtain affordable healthcare insurance and provide protection against potential abuses by the insurance industry. Under its umbrella, patients can no longer be denied coverage because of preexisting conditions. The determination of medical necessity has been placed back into the hands of those who are committed to serve the needs of patients. Doctors now have the right to review private insurance company files that identified physicians with high utilization patient populations and directed new referrals to those whose patients were regarded as healthier and therefore cheaper to insure. 

It's not a perfect solution but imperfection doesn't automatically render it a bad one. If anything, we're discovering it's a work in progress and we'll need to adjust and adapt it as we go. I don't think it represents a step toward socialism anymore than the Selective Service represented a step toward a police state. Most of us are too smart to believe that line, even if politicians aren't smart enough to find a better one. 

The Affordable Care Act is an attempt to reform a system sorely in need of reform, not only for the sake of patients and policy holders, but for its own sake as well. As with any intervention, the insurance industry finds change painful and naturally responds with anger, disbelief, and a desire to bargain, hoping to retain something of the status quo. Over time, acceptance will ensue and the industry will find itself better off for the changes that have been made. In the meantime, we're past the point of no return; pretending the good old days were the best days is a fantasy and Fantasy Land is for cartoons. We live in Tomorrow Land and the future is now. 


(Creative Commons image of Walt Disney Politics by sbwoodside via Flickr)

Doctors and Spirituality: Nothing is Etched in Stone

On the premise one agrees spirituality is important to medicine, as I argued in yesterday's post, that's only where the story begins. There are even more questions to be raised about its management in the clinical setting. For example, who is best qualified to inquire about spirituality and, besides, isn't it an end-of-life issue? What if a patient asks their physician to pray with them and s/he is an atheist? These are real concerns and as a minister on the cusp of medical residency, I'd like to offer a perspective.  

Customarily, religious or spiritual preference is noted in the intake interview and becomes part of a patient's chart. Whoever does the intake should ask, at least generically, about the significance of religion, faith, or spirituality. During times of stress, changes of life, or when treatment decisions can be affected by religious beliefs, it's especially appropriate for the physician to broach the subject. When patients come to the clinic, they anticipate seeing a doctor they know and have come to rely on. The doctor-patient relationship provides an ideal basis for talking about what health or illness means to them, personally. As I define it, such conversations reflect "spirituality" in its most basic sense.  

Naturally, you'd assume spirituality to be an end-of-life concern but it surfaces at other times as well. For instance, couples who have been relatively uninterested in religion often express a desire to reconnect with family religious traditions when a newborn enters the picture. As a first-time pastor, I discovered young children in the home was associated with parents attending church regularly. Family atmosphere, the potential for children to learn moral principles, and social contact with other parents were important factors in the decision to become involved. Midlife is another time when spirituality may take on new significance. The point to remember is, spirituality and relating -- intrapersonally and interpersonally -- go hand in hand, and most of us are best at both while we're still breathing.

The question of qualifications is one that has far less importance for spirituality than the practice of medicine. Doctors are accustomed to referring patients when a specialist would be better qualified to be of help. Spirituality, however, doesn't require technical expertise to be addressed meaningfully. Patients don't expect their physician to be a theologian. What they expect is consideration, respect, and empathy. If we can't provide these qualities, we've got far bigger fish to fry than whether we can explain why bad things happen to good people. And for the record, even ministerial folk have a hard time with that one, if they're honest about it. As long as we stay in touch with our humanity, we've got all the qualifications we'll ever need.

Well, then, what about physicians counseling with integrity when their own convictions concerning spirituality are at odds with patients'? While statistics indicate physicians who are fairly comfortable bringing up spirituality tend to be persons of faith, there's absolutely no reason why this should be considered necessary or even advantageous. For one thing, it's not about what we as physicians believe or disbelieve, anyway. For another, there are a number of potential points of disagreement with patients, including music, politics, caffeine or decaf, none of which require us to alter our convictions to be medically effective. In any case, introducing spirituality into the conversation is never an occasion for us to persuade, convert, or pontificate.

Admittedly, possessing a spiritual orientation may seem helpful, but it can also create problems. The innocent presumption that you know what a patient is talking about since you're able to identify with their experience may result in failing to ask follow-up questions. Conversely, patients may withhold information believing a common experience tells you all you need to know. In situations like these, having no spiritual orientation or one that differs from your patient can be an advantage because it requires us to explain ourselves rather than err by relying on assumptions.

Finally, in the matter of praying with patients, I'm reminded of a wonderful line from the film, Oh, God (1975). John Denver's character asks God (George Burns) if they might just talk now and then, to which God says, "You talk, I'll listen." If a patient should ask their doctor to pray with them, whether or not they are persons of faith, offering to listen reverently while the patient prays is spot on. If they should ask you, as their doctor, to pray on their behalf, there is no harm in gently explaining your convictions should they differ from your patients'. By telling the truth you maintain your integrity and confirm your trustworthiness. Furthermore, your honesty tells your patient that you value them too much as persons to pretend to be someone other than who you are. The result could very well be a much stronger bond between you.

Admittedly, in this essay I haven't gone anywhere near the truly difficult and painful spiritual/ethical issues of blood transfusions and Jehovah's Witnesses, abortion, or faith-based objections to teenage birth control and HPV vaccination. My interest has been on what you might call "bread and butter" spiritual concerns, but demonstrating respect, empathy, and truthfulness is essential in any situation involving religion or spirituality. We struggle, do our best, make mistakes, fall down and get back up, mindful that where spirituality is concerned, nothing is etched in stone. 


(Creative Commons image by john-norris via Flickr)

Why is Spirituality Important to Medicine?

 
That's a good question. Why is it? Well, to try and formulate what I hope will be an equally good answer, we should begin by defining our terms, though I'll tell you right off, precise definitions are elusive. "Spirituality" can suggest devotion to a particular religious tradition, but often as not, it refers to something that has little or nothing to do with organized religion. It may signify a feeling of relatedness to something and/or someone greater than ourselves or express the way a person conceives of their life unfolding. It may describe a personal sense of meaning and purpose or the conviction there is no purpose, that life is a series of random events possessing no more significance or predictability than the numbers drawn in the lottery. "Spirituality" literally can mean almost anything; it all depends on how we use the word.

Sigmund Freud called religion and by extension, spirituality, a "universal obsessive neurosis," inferring it was associated with psychological ill-health. His most famous student, C.G. Jung, disagreed and considered spirituality essential to a patient's well-being. Individuation -- the process of achieving fully conscious self-realization -- could be nurtured by a spiritual orientation as well as psychotherapy. But instead of relying on the doctor and patient relationship, spirituality activates archetypal images residing in the unconscious that enable us to feel grounded and genuinely connected with the deepest aspects of ourselves, a process some call "soul work." Unlike Freud, it wasn't the practice of spirituality that troubled Jung; it was its neglect that created problems requiring psychiatric help.
 
Jung gave considerable attention to Christian images and theology in the development of Depth Psychology, but he also drew on other forms of spiritual expression, including Hinduism, Islam, and the study of alchemy. In the I Ching, for instance, Jung discovered a useful instrument for revealing his own unconscious motivations. He regarded the symbols that recur throughout the I Ching, religion and mysticism as comprehensible images of a mature and fully integrated self.

If we think of spirituality, therefore, as the expression of a powerful desire or need that, when adequately addressed, leads to a feeling of wholeness, we can begin to let go the notion that spirituality must be opposed to science and reason. True, spirituality is irrational in the sense that it's an intuitive process, but irrational doesn't equate with anti-rational. It simply means spirituality "knows" in a way that sidesteps reason or logic. We call this relying on "flashes of insight."

You could say, intuition operates like saltatory conduction in the brain and spinal cord. Some nerves, particularly the longest ones, are wound about with a substance called myelin, making them look like a string of hotdogs placed end to end. An electrical signal travels along a nerve by leaping between the spaces between one "bun" and the next until it reaches its target. This type of signaling is much faster than the stepwise transmission employed by nerves that don't require "rapid transit" for communication. Similar cognitive leaps characterize intuition, though we may have to retrace our steps in order to explain to others how we "arrived at the station," so to speak.

Quaker philosopher Elton Trueblood described post-WW II America as "the cut flower generation," and identified its critical existential problem as disconnection from its psycho-spiritual roots. Cut flowers look very nice in a vase, but they don't survive very long that way. Spirituality can be understood as an intuitive effort to find one's place in the universe, to put down roots and establish a sense of belonging.  

Although most people probably think about seeing a doctor or psychiatrist when they feel ill or they've got a problem, medicine is moving toward a model that promotes health and wellness. You take your car to the mechanic for regular maintenance, why wait until you're sick to see your physician about health maintenance? If your doctor is an osteopathic physician or psychiatrist, attending to the mind-body-spirit triad lies at the heart of their medical philosophy. "Spirit," like "spirituality," can mean many things, but as physicians, recognizing and cooperating with its presence means we wish to promote wholeness, a type of wellness that touches a patient through and through, that improves their quality of life and the lives of those around them. 

(Creative Commons image by NA dir via Flickr)

Osteopathic Psychiatry, the Forest, and the Trees

You remember the 1998 film, The Horse Whisperer, don't you? Robert Redford riding the range of Montana. Kristin Scott Thomas the intense New York magazine editor. Her daughter, Scarlett Johansson, reeling in the aftermath of an accident involving her, her horse, and an 18 wheeler. Music by Thomas Newman, recalling redemption at Shawshank Prison, sets the tone (no one scores redemption like Newman).

Kristen Scott wants Redford to fix her daughter's horse. It's pretty simple, she says, do whatever it is you do, take my money, and I'll be on my way. I'm busy, my life is full, I don't have time for distractions. He's an animal, not a person, fix him, like my car. You live on a ranch, you fix things, fix this.

But Redford can't and neither can anyone else. Not with a snap of the fingers, anyway. Some things take time, he replies, and your horse is one of them. You should also know, I don't treat symptoms in isolation. Your daughter will be involved and very likely, so will you, before all is said and done. The forest is as important as the tree.

Osteopathic Psychiatry is like that, or it ought to be. 

When I published Osteopathic Psychiatry: Time to Smell the Roses, I had no idea it would become as popular as it has, suggesting other people are as interested in the subject as I am. Curiously, that particular post was inspired by a problem I had researching osteopathic psychiatry. Apart from chapters in the seminal osteopathic textbooks and scattered journal articles, there wasn't much out there. Google "psychiatry" and you'll be busy reading til the next millennium. But a body of literature, devoted specifically to the theory and practice of osteopathic psychiatry, eluded me. I was reminded how unexplored territories are labeled on old maps. No roads or rivers, just the phrase, "Beware, there be dragons here."

Sometimes I wonder if this "empty book shelf syndrome" stems from uncertainty about whether there is such a thing as a peculiarly "osteopathic" psychiatry? What if psychiatry is nothing more than a purely allopathic endeavor that osteopathic physicians practice in imitation of their M.D. colleagues? If that were truly the case, we could stop right here. End of discussion. 

On the other hand, what if the diagnosis and treatment of mental distress and disease, its biophysical underpinnings, and behavioral expression, is a sub-field of medicine, independent of theoretical orientation or professional degree? I believe this is precisely how we should think about psychiatry, much as we do with the other forms of practice that make up the fabric of medicine as a whole. 

Now we're in the position to ask, is there any justification for an osteopathic approach to psychiatry? Are there identifying marks rendering it unique? Suggesting clinical activity is "osteopathic by association," i.e. osteopathic by virtue of being practiced by a DO, doesn't work as well as it sounds. That's too much like saying a wedding ceremony is Baptist (or Jewish or anything else) because a Baptist minister performed it. You can take my word for it, I've performed enough weddings to know, the minister's denominational affiliation means very little. The character of the rite itself must reflect the tradition the minister represents. 

Taking a clue from DOs who practice physical medicine, one of at least two key elements in the "rites" of osteopathic psychiatry should be the insistence upon a person-centered framework for diagnosis and treatment. In my experience, MD physicians almost universally describe DOs as whole-person oriented in contrast to their own problem-based focus. Put simply, and perhaps too simply, MDs are trained to evaluate the tree; DOs to evaluate the tree and the forest as a single entity. Superior is not how I'd describe the difference; complimentary is far more accurate. Our medical house is big enough for each of us to have our own room and share the common spaces without feeling cramped.

A second key element, which could actually turn out to be the defining feature of osteopathic psychiatry, is the way it attends to the mind-body interface. We're physicians, not psychologists. We learn how to perform physical examinations, treat physical illness, and use Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM) in patient care. Whether we do these in the clinical setting or not, the training and experience are still there. At the core of osteopathic medical training is the explicit understanding there is no artificial distinction -- no disunity -- between mind and body. If the triad of mind-brain-behavior represents the tree, the body, at bare minimum, represents the forest. Mind-body integration lies at the heart of everything we do. How this will work out in terms of philosophy and psychiatric practice guidelines is the direction I think we're moving.
 
The way we're accustomed to thinking about medical practice is changing rapidly. Integrative care, involving psychiatrists who function as consultants within primary care settings, may become increasingly common. A new generation of osteopathic psychiatrists has begun applying OMM to alleviate the somatic dysfunction accompanying, compounding, or in some cases, even leading to symptoms associated with psychiatric illness. DO and MD psychiatrists alike may find themselves monitoring medical conditions their instructors customarily referred to the Internist. Our generation of psychiatrists -- particularly osteopathic psychiatrists -- may eventually be known as the one that took the stethoscope out of the desk drawer and placed it back round our necks, where it belongs.

(Creative commons image by takomabibelot via Flikr)

Medical School at My Age

 
A week ago, a few days before graduation, I was asked the question I hear more frequently than any other: "Why did you choose to attend medical school at this time in your life?" My questioner went on to say, he'd graduated in the late 70s and couldn't imagine doing it "at my age." 

You'd think I'd have gotten enough practice, after six years, that answering questions like his wouldn't require much reflection. To a certain extent, that's true, except that over time my understanding of why I undertook this process has grown, and along with it, the way I respond to questions related to age. 

Now, to be fair, some of it does have to do with how I read the the other person. What do they really want to know and how much time have they got? Is it polite cocktail party curiosity or are they contemplating a course correction in their own career? In this case, the question was posed by an attending anesthesiologist I'd just met and we scarcely had any time at all, so I talked briefly about pursuing a dream. As I walked to my car a bit later, it occurred to me how impossible it is to imagine myself not  being a medical student at this point in my life and how very little age has, or has had, anything to do with it.

Admittedly, that isn't entirely true. Before I undertook medical school, I argued vociferously against it, considering age my most salient point. I wanted to become a doctor and, particularly a psychiatrist, I always had, but the circumstances of life took me in other directions and it seemed ridiculous to suppose anyone would take me seriously now. Obviously, I eventually lost that argument and what I've realized over time is I never had a chance of winning in the first place. Something was afoot in my life that neither reason nor common sense nor anything else had the power to effectively counter, as I hope the following story reveals.

It was a Sunday night and my shift as a substance abuse therapist at a Boston hospital was 30 minutes away from being history when I was paged to the nursing station to handle an admission. My patient was an older, intoxicated gentleman, accompanied by his adult son. They were pleasant, intelligent, lived out on the Cape (Cod), and despite grumbling to myself about having a new admission so close to sign-out, I immediately took a liking to them both. A few moments later, while meeting with the father to sign his paperwork, he said to me, "Doctor, I want to tell you how all of this began..."  I ought to have told him I was only his therapist, but hearing the title, "doctor," honestly it felt so good, I just couldn't. 

I told myself I'd explain the next day and I did. I wasn't trying to mislead him, but it felt like unfaithfulness to something I didn't quite understand, to correct him. You might say he was under the influence and simply mistook me for his physician because I was an older male. I say in vino veritas. Unknowingly, and probably unconsciously, he saw into a deep and private place and called me by the name nobody, not my parents, my friends, or anyone else, had ever spoken. For the first time in my life it seemed as though someone knew who I was. How could I deny that?

Back then I wasn't so much thinking as feeling. Drawing near the end of this leg of the journey, I've done a great deal of thinking and I've begun to realize how very much it's been like growing into a father's shoes. When we're young, we slip into them and they're huge, so huge we can't walk without stepping out of them. One day, they've grown smaller and then smaller still until they fit us as well as dad. Why attend medical school at my age? I guess you could say, that's when the shoes finally fit.

In another life, to borrow from Katy Perry, whom I love, I might have gone to medical school "on time." The tricky thing about other lives is they don't come into being unless we find a way to make them. I didn't have the keys to a Delorean (Back to the Future) in my pocket, so reversing the time-space continuum wasn't an option. All I could do was be like the proverbial turtle, who never gets anywhere unless he sticks his neck out. Yes, I was older and by definition, that meant attending medical school as an older, rather than younger, adult. Age was a piece of my puzzle. But it was only a single piece and nowhere near my biggest one. Had I been born someone else, it might have been gender, race, or national origin. We all have something we can't change.  

George Eliot (pen name of Mary Anne Evans), author of Silas Marner, said, "It's never too late to be who you might have been," to which I'd add, until it's too late for everything but that final breath.  What has become clearer and clearer to me is how much medical school and now, residency, have come to mean immeasurably more than simply fulfilling a long cherished dream. They mean being true to what I've learned about myself as this process has unfolded and there really are very few things quite as important. They mean acting on the freedom to make choices of my own rather than making up excuses for denying them and then, trying to live with the consequences. They also mean, considering everything that lies behind and whatever lies ahead of me, there isn't anything to make me regret coming this way.


(Photo copyright 2013 by the author)