Answering our calling

Even recognizing that poetry is among the most useless and least loved of the arts, I’ve come to feel that my work as a poet is a calling. Thinking about this, I asked a doctor I’d recently met if her work was a calling.

“I was 8 years old,” she said. “One afternoon while swinging with a friend, we started talking about our future and that’s when the inaudible suggestion came to me that I ought to be a doctor. This ‘calling’ got a lot of positive reinforcement, such as when Aunt Milly would ask, ‘And what are you gonna do when you grow up?’ I would say, ‘I’m gonna be a doctor.’ That went over pretty well.

“I made it through undergraduate college and into medical school. My residency for rural medicine was done in Wyoming. In an attempt to be better, I trained another optional year in a fellowship. Then I went home to practice and bloom where I had been planted. But it was suffocating. Every turn in life was met with, ‘Doc, I know that you aren’t working right now but …’ I didn’t feel much like blooming. I’d loved my time in the Rocky Mountain Region and prayed for an opportunity. I was given one and I found a new home where I could truly bloom.

“Now, after many decades of practicing, I worry about people’s ability to pay for health care. I feel that medical care is a right.

“I’ve never thought much about income, as I’ve been paid a salary. Rural physicians make a good living, yet will never become rich. I have thought a lot about the risk of losing money, credibility, and self-respect, though. That occurs when we break the prime directive: ‘Do No Harm.’

“I’ve applied my whole being to becoming a well-educated, trustworthy doctor. Along with God and family, my job is one of the major purposes of my life. I did well in med school, was a chief resident, and had success in my fellowship, receiving offers to practice in all of those settings. I began to agree with people who said I was a pretty good doctor.

“Twenty-six months before a planned early retirement, I made a misdiagnosis. To have failed in such a way was a tragic blow. I’d given all I had to make sure that this didn’t happen. Twenty-four months later, I was sued.”

Hearing her say this, I thought surely we all make mistakes, and asked, “Are you saying that you could have stopped this from happening?”

“Hindsight is 20/20. The delay in treatment caused by the inaccurate diagnosis was associated with severe morbidity and long-term suffering. The condition was ultra rare — I’d not even heard of it — and presents with symptoms of something very common. Common things being common, one suspects that the common diagnosis is correct, but treatment for that is not helpful for the actual ultra-rare condition.

“Initially, I thought, well ok, I got sued because I wasn’t perfect. Nobody’s perfect, but shouldn’t I be so close that I’m never associated with harm to a patient? Then I started thinking that I just wasn’t a good doctor. When you have given medicine all that you have and harm has occurred, you think that you just didn’t make it to the level of doctor you should be.

“Then the lawsuit. My insurance company provided a wonderful lawyer. We agreed on the medical facts and he led me to believe that we could pursue justice. Then he told me the prosecution would be ‘all about the money’. He was right. It was many millions of dollars, more money than I could ever make. This was driven not by the patient or family, but by the prosecution. Because Wyoming has no limits on what can be asked, it can be a haven for unjustly large awards for trial lawyers who receive 40% of the ‘winnings.’ And if I was not adequately insured, they would go after both my assets and those of my immediate family.

“After 18 months of gruesome litigation, my trusted lawyer told me he was hired by and must protect the insurance company. He suggested that I get a personal lawyer. Abandoned and devastated, I felt that death would be a relief.

“In medical education, no one teaches you how to be sued. I felt betrayed by my education, abandoned by my institution, and deserted by my insurance company and the lawyer they provided. Everyone involved was hurt, yet no one was getting justice. Where was compassion for the patient? To whom should I ask for forgiveness? It was all about the money.

“In Matthew, Chapter 5, Jesus talks about compromise among people. He says to ‘settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do this while we are still together and, on the way.’ That was the advice of my personal lawyer and the lawsuit was settled out of court for a very large but more realistic sum.”

Wondering how much this experience had influenced her thinking about practicing medicine, I asked, “Did you ever think, ‘I made a mistake, I’m done?’”

“Yes,” she said. “But there is that calling. I stopped my practice. Then came the Coronavirus epidemic. The medical system needed all hands on deck, so I got involved. It felt good to be back on a medical team helping people. That pandemic caused endless suffering, but helping gave me a chance to heal.”

I asked, “In medicine, people can die if you make a mistake. After your experience, how do you have the confidence to take such a risk again?”

She replied, “When I was sued, I wondered how could I have let this happen? Then I determined that I couldn’t go in thinking I was going to make another mistake. The risk is always there, but I’m willing to take the risk to answer this calling to service, made by faith.”