Remembering why I decided to be a doctor

Part 1

This week, while I spend some time at home with my kids on spring break, I have been thinking about writing a book. The plandemic shook my faith in the medical establishment and everything I have learned to a point where, at times, I have thought about quitting. When I think about how I got here in my medical journey, I realize there is a story that other people might enjoy or at a minimum might learn from. I’m hoping by remembering what led me here, I will determine why/if God wants me to continue this work. A book sounds daunting, so I will start with a series of “memories.”

While I did not save my medical school personal statement (my mother probably has it somewhere), I remember the experiences that led me here. As a child, I was rather sickly, some might say. I had asthma, allergies, and terrible gut issues from a young age. My mother worked for a family physician, who eventually became my personal doctor. While I say I was sickly, my parents did not take me to the doctor often. I was hospitalized once at age 4 for a severe asthma attack, but otherwise we dealt with most issues at home, and I never missed much school due to these annoying, but relatively mild medical problems.

During college, I struggled with depression (most likely due to horrendous lifestyle choices) and alcohol abuse. In hindsight, I started self medicating with alcohol in high school. In Loudoun county, most of my peers partied on the weekends, and I welcomed the numbing of personal pain that alcohol provided. My parents had been struggling in a bad marriage for years, and as the youngest child and a natural “fixer,” I thought I could fix their problems. They divorced in 1988 as I headed off to college (remarried each other in 1992, but that’s another chapter). In the background, I was involved in an unhealthy relationship, involving emotional and physical abuse. As I ended my freshman year of college, I was a mess and I became physically sick with a severe infection. My doctor, who was also a family friend, saved my life during that time. After a short hospitalization, he helped me regain my physical and mental health. By my junior year, after changing my major twice, I felt called to go to medical school. God’s timing often does not align with our own, and I was not accepted to a single medical school after graduating from college in 1992.

In an effort to prolong college, I stayed in Blacksburg, VA and worked a temp job for several months after graduation (honestly, I stayed because I was in love…another bad, one sided relationship). In December 1992, my friend and college roommate called me to tell me that she had applied for a position at the NIH as a biologist, but she had already accepted another job. She was letting me know that she gave the lab Chief my name, because they were under a time crunch to hire someone before an expected hiring freeze once Clinton entered office. I called Dr. Dean Metcalfe at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, interviewed a few days later, and I was hired on the spot.

To shorten the story, I applied to medical school again while working in the “mast cell lab” and was rejected again. Between 1993 and 1995, I took some courses at GWU (thank you taxpayers), transferred to another lab, where I sequenced DNA and studied T cell receptors, and ultimately decided to pursue a career in public health. I enrolled in Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health as a part time student in 1996. Later that year, I accepted a position as a policy analyst in the Office of the Director at NIAID, where I helped prepare Dr. Anthony Fauci for various meetings and hearings, including quarterly NIAID Council meetings.

While at NIAID, I learned many life lessons. I learned that scientists fudge data in order to be published, and I learned that the Federal government is inefficient and stifles innovation. I learned that special interest groups and lobbyists have enormous influence on scientific guidance. I attended a consensus conference on breast cancer screening, where scientists decided unanimously that mammogram screening should be postponed until at least age 50. After an outcry in the media and among cancer special interest groups, the lobbyists won the argument, and the guidelines did not change. Within one year of public health school, I felt called again to be a doctor and took some steps to learn more about patient care, including volunteering in the ER and at a clinic in DC called the Whitman Walker clinic.

In 1998, my uncle (father’s brother) became ill with brain cancer. Prior to his cancer, he had been healthy, and he did not have a primary care doctor, because he traveled often and worked in the nuclear power business. His end of life care was fragmented and chaotic. Each specialist focused narrowly on the applicable organ system. No one seemed willing to state the obvious—that my uncle was going to die at a young age (in his 50s). At the time, hospice was not as well known or utilized, and unfortunately, severe family dysfunction and denial combined with an impersonal, cold hospital experience left everyone involved feeling somewhat traumatized. The experience solidified my resolve to be a family doctor who would be available for families in similar situations. Little did I know that our healthcare system (i.e. cartel) would ruin the iconic “family doctor” of the 1970s and 1980s and push doctors to choose between an outpatient and inpatient setting.

My personal statement for medical school applications was based on my uncle’s tragic story. In March of 1999, I was accepted to University of Georgetown and Eastern Virginia Medical School. Since I knew I would focus on primary care, I chose to start medical school at EVMS in Norfolk, Virginia. I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with an MPH in May of 1999. I was 28 years old.

When I entered medical school, I had been sufficiently brainwashed by JHU that a single payer healthcare system was the only way to provide affordable, excellent medical care for everyone in the US. Stay tuned for my awakening…