Stupid/Clever/Brave

A wise man once said, "there's a fine line between stupid and clever."  Oh wait, it was Nigel from Spinal Tap.

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When I tell people that I left the practice of medicine, many respond with a comment that I was brave, or courageous, or some similar descriptor, to make that decision. I always wonder if "brave" means "stupid," and they're just trying to come across as positive... but they're really thinking, "why would she go and do a dumb thing like that?"

Why would someone voluntarily walk away from a lucrative career, especially after spending years (and a small fortune in loans) getting there? I am sure the answer is slightly different for anyone who has made such a move, so I can only answer for myself. And my answer is that I was deeply unhappy (that's the very short version). And I think it was both stupid and brave of me to make that decision and to act on it.

Stupid because I have loans to pay back. Stupid because I have a hefty mortgage on a house that's taken a nosedive in value since I bought it. Stupid because there were parts of my job that I loved. But brave for all those reasons, too. Brave because I made the decision to get out, rather than spending the next 30 years in unhappiness, feeling trapped, counting the hours until retirement. Brave because I decided to take my future into my own hands instead of letting the medical culture, society, or anyone else tell me what I "should" do, what was expected of me. Brave because I chose not to listen to people who thought I was stupid. (mostly they were too polite to tell me to my face, but come on, you can tell when people think you're off your rocker...)

I would like to appropriate Sir Nigel's (surely he must have been knighted by now!) statement and claim that there is a fine line between bravery and foolhardiness. Perhaps it was foolhardy to take on the financial risk of quitting my career. But I feel that the foolhardiness would have been greater in staying. My mental health, my soul, is worth more to me. I have had more than one person tell me that they "lost their soul" somewhere along the path to practicing medicine. More than one person used those identical words. And so I chose to stop. To find my soul again. To find my sanity again. To cherish my marriage. And I think that was rather clever, if I do say so myself.

Beautiful Mistakes

Once in every "generation" of doctors, however long that is, someone comes along who is a true risk-taker, who breaks the rules and comes up with a revolutionary way of doing something - of treating a disease, of thinking about wellness, of making a connection between concepts that had been considered unrelated.   That person is often branded with the "quack" or "renegade" label, until history takes a look back with the benefit of perspective. How whacked-out do you think people thought it was when Edward Jenner was injecting people with cowpox, based on the observation that milkmaids who recovered from the disease were immune to smallpox?

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As recently as the 1980s, people were calling for the firing of C. Everett Koop when he was advocating sex education in the schools and the use of condoms to protect against HIV.  Nowadays it seems that changes in paradigms of medical thinking are coming along faster than we can keep up with  (Coconut oil is the devil - no, wait - coconut oil is good for you!).

Sometimes these revolutionary changes come about because of mistakes, or accidents. Take penicillin, for example... if Fleming hadn't left that orange sitting out... However, the current culture of medicine pretty much actively discourages these mistakes. Taking chances, depending on the context, can be tantamount to malpractice, and there are legions of lawyers out there just waiting for you to step into their clutches (for those of you who think I'm lawyer-bashing, maybe I am just a wee bit, but I also freely doctor-bash as well. See Why Doctors Suck for equal opportunity).

I am a recovering perfectionist, and medicine at first seemed like a perfect fit. How better to beat yourself up over every little mistake, if that mistake might kill or injure someone?  But as I have come to learn who I am deep down, and to forgive myself for falling short of perfection, I have realized that I want to have a job where it's okay to make a mistake.  Where it's okay to prioritize myself and my family. I want the freedom to be human. I want to be free to take chances. I want to be present for my life, rather than perpetually exhausted and stressed out. I realized that I wanted a Medical Divorce. And it really is a divorce - walking away from the investment of years of my life, and hundreds of thousands of my dollars, not to mention my outward identity and the respect and/or censure people attach to physicians in this culture.

My previous way of life devalued mistakes, chances, and evolution. I chose to step away, and to allow myself to evolve into the person I was truly meant to be. That person is still a work in progress, but at least I'm free now to make the beautiful mistakes that will get me there eventually.