Finding My Rhythm: Healing, Leading, Becoming

This past year, I experienced one of the most profound losses of my life—I lost my best friend, Bess Marshall, to pancreatic cancer. Walking alongside her during her final chapter was both a sacred privilege and an emotional challenge. As a physician, I found myself constantly navigating the tension between…

When Leadership Chooses Silence Leadership is not ease or accolade,Not titles etched on polished grade.It is the weight of seeing clearWhen others turn from what they fear.It’s standing firm when others fall,Answering a deeper call.To raise your voice, to hold the line—For patients, for truth, for what is right in…

I remember the day I opened my patient experience scores for the first time. I was a surgeon, confident in my training, deeply committed to my patients, and convinced I was doing everything right. So, when I saw my overall score placed me in the 5th percentile nationwide, I was…

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…

I was no longer a trainee. I was an attending surgeon now, experienced and confident—at least on the surface. When I was referred a young man in his early twenties with recurrent testicular cancer, I approached the case with both skill and caution. He had already undergone orchiectomy and chemotherapy…

I remember that afternoon clearly — the fluorescent lights casting a sterile glow, the post-call haze hanging in the hallway, the squeak of clogs on tile. I was a Fellow, rounding with my third-year resident. We stepped into the room of a post-op patient who had just been transferred out…

I walked into the room, introduced myself clearly: “Hi, I’m Dr. [Last Name],” and proceeded to take a thorough history and perform a physical exam. I explained the differential diagnosis, reviewed the plan, and outlined next steps. The patient nodded along, asked a few questions, and then, after all that,…

In many complex cases, patients undergo multiple procedures on the same day — often requiring two surgical teams from different specialties. That was the case one morning as I walked into the OR. I was still a Fellow, assisting my Chair as well as a second surgeon. The latter was…

CARING “for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs as heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” Milan Kundera I was a urologic oncology fellow, rounding early one morning with…