The Day Medicine Became Personal
FOUNDER SERIES
Part 2 of 4
People often assume I always knew I wanted to become a physician.
The truth is, I almost became a lawyer.
As a young man, I was fascinated by both professions. I enjoyed science, but I was also drawn to justice, advocacy, and helping people navigate difficult situations. After leaving the University of Michigan football program, I continued my education, studying both pre-medicine and pre-law. I eventually applied to both law school and medical school.
At that point in my life, I could genuinely see myself pursuing either path.
Then everything changed.
Shortly after I graduated from college, my mother called and asked me to come to Kentucky, where they were living at the time. My father had been suffering from severe headaches, and she was worried.
When I arrived, I found my father in immense pain. I took him to the emergency room, never imagining how quickly our lives were about to change.
About a week later, doctors told us he had advanced cancer. They believed he had only about ten days to live. He was just forty-seven years old. I was twenty-two.
One of the memories that has stayed with me all these years is my father looking at me and asking, over and over, “Is this true?”
He wasn’t asking whether he was sick. He was trying to understand how life could change so suddenly.
Ten days later, he was gone.
Losing my father changed me in ways I couldn’t have understood at the time. It wasn’t that I blamed any particular physician or hospital. I had tremendous respect for medicine, and I could see how dedicated all the healthcare professionals were.
But I couldn’t stop asking questions.
How had such an advanced illness gone unnoticed until it was too late?
Were there warning signs?
Could anything have been done sooner?
Could someone have recognized the problem before my father reached a crisis?
Those questions stayed with me.
Around that same time, I had a decision to make. I had been accepted to law school. I had also been accepted to medical school in Michigan. Unfortunately, I could not enter either school on schedule because I needed to help my mom secure the family. I knew, however, that medicine was now strongly in my heart.
Looking back, I don’t think I chose medicine simply because I wanted to become a doctor. I chose medicine because I wanted to understand.
I wanted to help families facing the kind of fear and uncertainty my own family had experienced. I wanted to be the physician who not only cared for the illness but also cared for the people living through it.
I was eager to begin my next level of studies, and so as soon as I was able, in June of 1983, I accepted an invitation to attend school at the Technical University of Santiago School of Medicine (UTESA) in the Dominican Republic. I missed being able to go to a U.S. school, but I was so happy to be able to do all my clinical rotations in Michigan. I’m deeply grateful for the conventional medical training I received. It taught me the science of diagnosis, treatment, emergency care, and the countless ways modern medicine saves lives every day.
But years later, life asked me those same difficult questions again.
This time, it was my mother.
After helping raise my children and supporting our family through many seasons of life, she began showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Watching someone you love slowly lose their memories is very different from losing someone suddenly.
With my father, everything happened in a matter of days. With my mother, it unfolded over years. Both experiences were heartbreaking in different ways.
As I cared for her, I found myself asking many of the same questions I had asked after my father’s death.
Could we have recognized risks earlier?
Were there lifestyle factors we didn’t understand?
Could nutrition, sleep, stress, or metabolic health have played a role?
Would knowing what I know today have changed anything?
I can’t honestly say.
No physician can promise that disease can always be prevented or reversed. But I do believe families deserve more than waiting until illness becomes advanced before they begin asking questions.
I often say, “I wish I had known then what I know now.” For me, those words aren’t about regret.
They’re about purpose.
My parents’ illnesses taught me that medicine is at its best when it combines excellent treatment with education, prevention, and compassionate listening. They taught me that behind every diagnosis is a family searching for answers and hoping someone will take the time to see the whole picture.
Those experiences changed the questions I asked as a physician.
Instead of asking only, “What disease does this person have?” I found myself asking, “Why did this happen? What might have contributed to it? And what can we do to help before someone reaches a crisis?”
Those questions would eventually lead me on a journey that transformed the way I practice medicine—a journey I’ll share in my next post.
CONTINUE THE FOUNDER SERIES
Next: When the Physician Became the Patient →