It is not a secret that my ambitions lie well beyond surgery. I chose to go into clinical medicine partly because I loved the job of being a physician, but mostly because I thought there was immense value in intimately understanding a system so broken. I also thought there was immense value in caring for individuals while fixing the system. And ultimately I love what I do. I find taking care of patients stimulating and fulfilling. I haven’t really questioned my decision to become a doctor until today.
I’ve always focused my efforts and ambitions on health care reform because a system so fundamental to human dignity and so critical to a functioning society cannot be so utterly cruel. I thought that perhaps in my lifetime, or perhaps with the efforts of my life, this country could be ready to find a way to take care of each other. I saw becoming a physician as part of that journey and part of the education I would require to make real change. I assumed that my experience with business and economics and that my clinical credentials would be enough to make change in this electoral oligarchy.
But perhaps I’m too late. Maybe I should have been a lawyer. Maybe I got ahead of myself when I decided that our health system was a fruitful place to make change. Perhaps the political, social, and economic divisions, the enormous and expanding poverty, and the completely disintegrating community in this country should have been my focus. But how can one even call that focus when it attempts to fix so many things?
When counseling folks about their health care decisions we often say that we can’t help them change until they are ready. Whether it’s smoking cessation, addiction, or participating in treatment, the healing can’t start until we want it to. And right now, we do not want healing. We want vengeance. We want the righteousness of an old testament God. We want to win.
Up until today, I was often softened by arguments for healing and unity and forgiveness. I thought that maybe, just maybe, if we could come back together over our fundamental democratic values, we could fix this electoral oligarchy. Somehow, despite all of the terrible things this country has done that make it so incredibly hard to defend, I was swayed by these calls to higher ideals.
Not today. Today I want vengeance. Today I have the righteousness of an old testament God. And today we did win. Yet still, here I am, after a 14-hour day taking care of people, sitting in my car on the verge of tears, because white supremacists and traitors carrying confederate flags stormed and occupied our Capitol building. There is no coming back from this. There was no sacred peaceful transition of power. We are not a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world, we are officially an embarrassment and a warning to every other so called self-governed nation.
I don’t think I’m feeling fear. I don’t think it’s frustration. I don’t feel vindicated after so many warnings. I sit here helpless and powerless and sad because maybe I should have been a lawyer. Maybe by the time our health care system is ready to be fixed and by the time I’m prepared to make this stupid and terrible world a little better, it will be gone. I can’t fix any of this with a medicine or a scalpel. How can I keep going to work and believing that what I do matters when clearly it doesn’t? Are the lawyers in this country crying too? Are they wondering if they should have been doctors?
What can I do? What can I do from 2,000 miles away, working 80 hours a week? Do I lash out and demand allegiances? Do I refuse to care for traitors? Do I continue to hide my feelings so as not to give credit to this coup? All of those might feel better. But these raw and poorly written words are all I have to give. So let it be known that I did not hesitate, I did not pause to edit or polish, I called them traitors. And let it be known that the day our Capitol fell, when so many of our elected representatives spit on their oaths, I upheld mine. And let it be known that tomorrow, I’ll keep taking care of everybody anyway, and I’ll keep trying to make this world less cruel, even if it’s one person at a time.
Nobody asked me... 
There will always be those days when life, and work, seems futile. But then you may recall something you did really well, and maybe even the appreciation you received in return. And on this recent event — I think the mob in DC has bloodied the nose of the MAGA crowd, not of the country. Hope so anyway.
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Know you will be a force of change…as a doctor, as an activist, as a member of your community, as a sharer of your thoughts. We are each only one and rarely does one person bring about significant change though there are many examples of some that have done so (good or bad). I believe all our collective effort – as doctors, as teachers, as cooks, as servers, as nurses, as factory workers, to do the best we can to make the world a little better and to work at righting the wrongs of the world add up. It’s a lesson I indirectly learned from Nonna that little things do add up to big things (like that $3000+ of loose change tucked here and there:).
But you will do big things, A, and it doesn’t need to be as a lawyer. There are doctors who become politicians you know. Sending my love. R
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Long ago, I worked for the Rat Eradication Program for the Baltimore City Health Department. It was my hope that through my efforts as a health inspector, educator, and community organizer, I could bring a change to the most rat-infested parts of Baltimore. After five years, I left that job, largely because I was losing hope that any real change could take place without sweeping changes in law enforcement, education, and employment for the residents of those areas.
Did it do any good? There seem to be as many rats there now as there were before. But I adjusted my thinking from “I will change this world” to “I will banish rats from this household today. I will help clean up this alley today. I will talk to these schoolchildren today.” I decided that I would not hold myself responsible for tomorrow. I would fight each battle as it comes, and not judge myself by the outcome of the war.
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