You don’t have to (just) be a doctor

but it helps

Remember that time when you were just finishing high school and you didn’t know what you were going to be when you grow up so you kind of panicked and then your mom sent you to an occupational therapist so you could do a whole bunch of aptitude tests and still not have any clue?

Yeah, me too.

I went into basic sciences so that I could keep both of my options open. And I don’t really remember when I decided that I was pre-med, but I do remember an excitement about the prospect building. I also clearly remember my mom saying, “You shouldn’t be a writer yet. Go do something else and then write about it.”

I did a few things after that.

So now I am a Doctor Doctor. After earning an MD in 1999, a Masters in Education in 2011, I just finished my Doctorate in Transdisciplinary studies, which involved a lot more writing. But I’m also really happy to take on the full mantle of being a transdisciplinary practitioner.

I never really felt comfortable in a single box. And I’m not alone.

Yesterday, I just met a neurosurgeon who is learning how to be a book coach. She writes hope punk. It’s so flipping cool that I thought I would screech. Maybe I did.

When I was traveling last month, I met a physician that does belly dancing and martial arts. I know lots of other physician athletes, but I’ve also met physician astronauts and physician bakers and physician entrepreneurs. Inventors. Nomads. Dreamers.

Because we are all of these things too.

I’m really glad that I went into this profession. The amount of emotional and cognitive challenge is extreme. The level of intimate relationships that you have with so many other humans is humbling. And the fact that we get to facilitate absolute magic with the human body is unimaginably cool.

But it’s also really hard. It's especially hard when the government seems hell-bent on destroying primary care. The daily grind of the expectations and the administration and scheduling is awful, because so many of us are available far too often. Not to mention the vicarious trauma of witnessing some of the most horrifying things that the human mind-body system has ever had to endure.

All of this makes me a better writer. It makes me a better entrepreneur. It makes me a better human. A better person for having experienced the highs, the lows, the naked pain, the unimaginable courage of others.

What do I mean concretely? “Makes me a better person” is kind of cliché. Imagine meeting a refugee who lost their father and brothers in front of them. They were kidnapped and harmed for months. Getting to Canada made them physically safe, but the psychological safety took a lot longer. This is post-traumatic growth and I get to see it every week. (as an aside - please donate to our refugee clinic crowdfunder)

Or imagine telling someone bad news about an illness and then walking alongside them on their journey. You might even imagine the honor of being there as they die.

Medicine is a privilege. But it also gives me more stories to share.

While you may think that you have a profession, a career trajectory, what I encourage you - everyone - to do is to wonder… what else?

What else could I be try believe : dream : explore : imagine : embody : become

I never saw myself as creative. But I let myself crawl out of the box I put myself in. So now I’ve learned glass-blowing. I  made my whitewashed front bench with power tools. I have a pottery wheel in my basement. (I’m still horribly bad at it, but I love the practice of equanimity of being bad at something.) I have the most gorgeous hand-pan instrument, that I just tap randomly instead of creating actual songs. 

I never saw myself as athletic. But I leapt out of the box and climbed Kilimanjaro, Annapurna circuit, and Patagonia’s mountain ranges. I learned how to paddle-board, even surfing with one in Bali. I love skiing so much that I have five pairs, for different conditions and terrain.

All the ways that I used to see myself were really limiting. They didn’t encompass all that I was. But mostly, they didn’t dream big enough to know all that I could be.

Think of this from another perspective. The physician entrepreneur that I know is an athlete, who now designs orthopedic prosthetics because she knows how the human body moves at its best. The physician neurosurgeon can operate precisely on a spinal cord but also on a spreadsheet planning her fantasy novels on a tension-template. And this physician nomad took her love of travel and matched it with an academic interest that lets her build capacity in medical education in Laos, Nepal, Ethiopia, and Uganda. So far.

And me, this doctor+, I write. I write poetry as I cry my eyes out after a unexpected patient death. I’ve been writing a book about my great-great-grandparent’s journey from Ukraine with a cli-fi (climate fiction - iykyk) twist in the future where the protagonist is dealing with similar themes of hardship. And I writes short-form pieces that might help some other kid trying to decide what to be.

Mom was right. I didn’t have to make a final decision. We are all expanding.