Bryce, head soccer coach at the high school where I taught health and served as assistant soccer coach, paused our sideline assessment of practice to address my just declared ambivalence toward physicianhood (four months later, I would start): “Ryan, if you get a few years into medical school and hate it, you can always leave.” Before continuing, he blew the whistle, then barked instruction for crisper passing and better touches. Not convinced it resonated, he marched across the field and showed our players the appropriate form, intimately, spitting commands laced with colorful language. Returning next me on the sideline, drill resumed, he continued his counsel, short of breath, while I watched our players appear more scared than improved. “You can always leave,” Bryce said, piercing eyes shifting from players to me, “because man, life’s too short to get stuck doing shit you hate.”
That conversation was nine years ago. Seven years ago, Bryce died from brain cancer.
I respected Bryce because you knew where he stood. Ardently, he wanted what was best for me, always. Regarding my medicine choice, he thought it simple—get out if you hate it.
I had great difficulty trusting that advice. My “few years” turned out to be eight years. Throughout, I wanted to leave, remembering his words often, but did I really hate medicine? Not all of it. I cared for my patients, loved learning, and revered my classmates. Medicine was altruism, service, healing. How could I hate that?
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What I hated was the dread; that gnawing sense my life went by unseized. If I could fix that dread, me and medicine could jive. I tried hard too, mountain biking and surfing my ass off. I got into the hospital earlier. Committed to becoming the best physician I could. I emptied the tank. But like a gps tracker hidden under an adolescent’s car, dread would always find me, on the chillest of rotations and the sunniest of vacations. It was inescapable.
This week, a friend asked me if things were better now or had the shine had worn off since leaving medicine. Was I still dealing with the same issues, regardless?, he seemed to ask.
To his point, the shine has dulled. Dreams of achievement paralleling medicine’s prestige are dead. Student loans are very much alive. Making money selling furniture is hard. The sun burns bright outside the medicine umbrella.
But the dread is gone. And that’s what matters.
The things I’m working on, furniture and writing, make me more… me. The work does not detract.
Today, the person I am, not by title or accomplishment, but sensed and resonated by myself, is more vibrant and easier to be around. To my eyes at least (and hopefully my wife’s). I feel more dynamic, not in the sense of “what a dynamic person Ryan is”, but in the sense of being more malleable. During residency, if my pager went off at home, I’d fume and see red. I needed every second outside the hospital to recover what I lost in the hospital. Now, if I need to do something at night, like a furniture delivery, I do it without residue. No dread residue. My work does not detract.
As a measure of our aliveness, dread residue is worth our attention and warrants the question: what residue remains from the way we live?
You know the answer. I always did. While I thought I was fooling my friends and family, the residue doesn’t work like that. If we’re indeed stuck, doing shit we hate, they know too.
The Patty Wagon serves gourmet burgers to Oklahoma City. Located on May Avenue, just south of 36th St, it’s got four and a half stars on Yelp and receives nominations yearly for OKC’s Best Burger. The restaurant’s black and orange logo, seen atop a twenty-foot sign streetside, is a mustached and portly man, serving burgers on a silver platter. This logo man looks familiar.
Being an avid Oklahoma State fan (for those unacquainted, orange and black are OSU’s colors), Bryce had a vision. He was also intense, so intense that his conversational style wasn’t for everyone. But from this intensity, not only did he serve as volunteer head coach at a school in his community, he served a damn good, affordable burger from great ingredients. At practice, I would hear, constantly, about the importance of the bun. About why fresh cut fries bring customers back. About how he wanted to operate a restaurant with excellence. He didn’t hate what he did, and he wasn’t stuck. He was alive.
When Bryce passed away, The Patty Wagon carried on. It’s still serving great burgers as portly logo man abides. And if you read through the Yelp reviews, the bun gets mentioned, a lot.
That’s the residue we’re after.
From eight years of inauthenticity, I learned 32 lessons I’ll never forget. Get the whole list today by joining my weekly newsletter, here.
I’ve been following your story. Can I ask how you approached your exit with your employer? And what their reaction was?
I was honest, telling them I needed to take care of myself and practicing medicine wasn’t the best way for me to do that anymore. I told them I would fulfill my contract and responsibilities with my patients, which meant I’d stay on long enough to arrange follow-up details. They were receptive and open to helping me exit as soon as possiible. Overall, it was smoother than I could have imagined. Very grateful.