You also lost some sensation in your left side, is that correct?
Yes. So I have left arm weakness. I can’t feel my left fingers yet. My left leg is starting to come back a little bit, and so I can walk. I’m back on my Peloton and doing my physical exercise. I see a cognitive therapist one day a week to help me regain my time management, my executive function, my ability to tell time, logic, visual scanning.
Well, you said in your audio postcard that when you were a patient these alarm bells went off for you. You started to think about what doctors say to patients, and you were surprised by some of the things doctors said to you that didn’t make any sense, like they might say, “Hey, see you later!” And you were like, “I say, ‘See you later,’ to patients all the time.”
My doctor brain was alive and well. So when my team would say, “Oh, we will see you later,” my doctor brain was like, “Yeah, right. You’re not coming back anytime soon. You’re coming back tomorrow when they do rounds.” The comment that I made in my Penn Listening Lab postcard was that I think we do a poor job as physicians, comprehending that patients are not as medically savvy as we think they are. I remember thinking when I get out of here and I heal, I need to be a better physician and maybe alter what I do with the construct that patients might be interpreting this a little bit differently.
You have had so much loss on many levels. Physically, you might not operate again. You have said you’re going to have to reinvent yourself.
There’s a Japanese concept that if you’re broken and you get put back together, you get put back together stronger and better. And there’s an artist who interpreted that by taking her pottery pieces, which are very beautiful, and she breaks them purposefully and she puts them back together using gold leaf and she creates a much more beautiful piece of pottery and artwork. This has broken me and I’m dealing with loss. But I’m actually like, “You know what? I’m going to be better than I was. Maybe I won’t be a better surgeon, but I will be better in some ways.” And that’s really what gives me the strength to push on.