Finding My Rhythm: Healing, Leading, Becoming

It Wasn’t Brilliance. It Was Listening.

It wasn’t the first time I had to fight to be heard.

She was young. Quiet. Wasting away in our ICU.
By the time I came onto the service, she had been admitted for weeks. Consult after consult. Test after test. Each new team trying something — then quickly moving on. Another day, another rotation. Another patient lost in the shuffle.

She had no family by her side. No visitors. No one to advocate for her.
An indigent patient, passed from resident to resident, each one inheriting the unsolved puzzle — but without ownership, without continuity, nothing changed. Slowly, silently, she was fading. Shrinking away under the fluorescent lights of a system that didn’t know what to do with her.

One night, long after rounds were done and the wards had quieted, I sat with her chart. I reread every note. Every lab. Every vital. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

She had come from Mexico. Her labs showed persistent low sodium, low blood pressure, fatigue. It all began to line up — adrenal insufficiency. Rare, but not impossible. In someone from her region, tuberculosis was the most likely culprit.

When I raised it, the skepticism was immediate.
TB causing adrenal failure? That’s too rare.
It felt like shouting “zebra” in a room full of horses.

But something inside me didn’t let it go. I pressed on. We ordered the tests.
adrenal insufficiency from TB.

We started steroids and anti TB treatment. And within days, she began to recover.
Weeks later, she walked out of the hospital.

That wasn’t brilliance. That wasn’t some diagnostic magic trick.
That was diligence. Persistence. Trusting my gut.
And maybe, just maybe, it made a difference in her life.

She was nearly forgotten. But not by me.
And I will never forget her — or the lesson she taught me: every patient matters.

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It happened again years later.

A man came to my clinic, smiling ear to ear. He had just seen his hematologist. “All clear,” they said. The surgery had worked. The cancer was gone. Now, life could move forward again.

He was radiant — joy bubbling over. Grateful. Excited. He gave me a hug, his eyes bright with hope.

But the moment I walked into the room, I felt it. Something was off. He looked pale. His breathing… shallow. It tugged at me. My gut whispered, check again.

I didn’t want to rain on his parade. I even questioned myself.
How could I think I saw something everyone else had missed? A PE? Really?
But I couldn’t let it go.

I checked his oxygen — it was low.
I sent him for an emergent CT scan. Before he was even off the table, the radiologist called: multiple pulmonary emboli. A miracle he was still standing.

We admitted him immediately. He survived.
And from that day forward, he became my champion.
He returned to clinic with hugs and warmth, always lighting up the room.

Years later, after being taken off anticoagulation by a well-meaning doctor, he suffered a massive PE. This time, I wasn’t there to catch it. I didn’t know until it was too late.

He died. And my heart still aches.
I miss his hugs. His joy. His gratitude.
But I remember what we shared — and what that moment taught me.

Diagnosis is more than logic. It’s listening. It’s intuition. It’s heart.

And sometimes, it’s the quiet voice inside — the one we’re taught to question — that saves a life.