coping with death as a physician

How I Lost my Covid-15 pounds

People much wiser than myself recommend picking a word for each year. After the dumpster fire of 2020, I decided the word I needed for 2021 was HEALTH. I even wrote it across the top of our wall sized, yearly planner in big, block letters.

At the start of COVID, I stress-lost weight, then immediately gained back more than double. Going into 2021, I was determined to fit back into my clothes again (it’s frightening how living in one pair of yoga pants (or scrubs) lends itself to not realizing you can’t fit into the rest of your wardrobe!).

Here’s the list of things that helped me finally lose weight by the end of 2021. I hope you can find some helpful tips in case, like me, you’d prefer to start using the rest of your wardrobe again:

An Inpatient Palliative Medicine Physician’s Experiences on the Front Lines During Covid-19

This 3 part blog series explores the experiences and thoughts for the physician FIRE community on why I left FIRE to return to work due to Covid. (FIRE=Financial Independence Retire Early/Recreational Employment)

In the first blog, I wrote about the difficult decision to come out of early retirement as a Hospice and Palliative Care physician to work on the front lines during a global pandemic. This 2nd blog post details what that return felt like and what I found when I went back into the hospital.

How COVID Made Me Not Go Gently into My FIRE Goodnight

Part One:

Difficult Decisions at the Start of a Global Pandemic:

I want to share with the physician FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early/Recreational Employment) community what my thinking was to leave FIRE and return to work.

In 2019, I resigned from the VA when we moved to Medellín, Colombia, for the summer. After we got somewhat settled in Gainesville in August of 2019, I half-heartedly applied for a part-time position at a local hospice.

But after exploring it, I sensed it was a chaotic work environment and knew my heart wouldn’t be in the job. For that reason, I ended up turning the position as a Hospice and Palliative Care physician down.

I intended to let my medical license lapse while I walked away from medicine completely. One thing made me renew my license, though. Now, this next bit sounds a little woo-woo, but in the interest of authenticity, I’m going to tell you.

What Financial Freedom can do for you

“We’re in this stage of life where we’re supposed to have flexible time because we’re raising children, yet none of us have this time we need because we’re all working. It doesn’t make sense.”

One of my friends from Germany recently wrote this to me in an email and I agree wholeheartedly with him. So many of us are doing life backwards : having kids and working full time, but after the kids move out, then we retire or change to working part-time.

If people were financially free Continue reading “What Financial Freedom can do for you”

Why Do Doctors Write?

He died mid-sentence. Eight years old and talking to me.

“My belly hurt, so I took some pepto from mom and-”

Eyes rolled up before they closed, his head lolled to the side, neck pulseless. Dead before we could hit the code button. An hour later, still dead. Continue reading “Why Do Doctors Write?”