Life is not fair, and this past month has been extra hard for me.

Two brave patients and their loved ones have had to walk the final path together. And from both of them I have learned about the importance of love, resilience, and the higher power.

I’m sending you and your families love. Thank you to D.S. and D.W. for being a part of my life and the lives of those around them.

As a society I don’t feel we talk about death enough since none of us are immune to it. I am grateful for a high school class I took called Death and Dying where we learned about the Catholic belief around death and had discussions about death. For me, this class started a real dialog that needs to be talked about more in society. In Medical school, again, death was talked about, but this time in a clinical manner as in a disease equals this likelihood of survival, etc. Even on day one of anatomy lab we were confronted with death.

Talking about death and then seeing death are two different things, however. Losing family and friends is not easy. Being a doctor and losing patients gets your head spinning in different directions. I cry for my patients and their families. But then I also start re-reading their charts out of frustration as if there was anything that was missed or if there was something else that could have been done. “How do I know that I did all that I could do?” I ask myself. “Maybe if...if what?,” I continue. Really, though, I’m just trying to answer the “whys” in my head. It just always feels like there are countless things that I could have additionally checked, that I could have or should have demanded be looked at, but no matter what I do death can take the best from the world.

I don’t take it lightly when I say I am honored to walk this health path with you, my patients. I treasure our time together, our laughs, our tears, and I ride the rollercoaster of your ups and downs (sometimes visibly and other times not). There are days when I am flying high as it seems all my patients are doing well. Then there are days where I’m not doing so well because perhaps a patient is not doing well at that time. These low days, and the even the high ones, force me to research, learn, and fight harder for you.

I am grateful for the Naturopathic Medical School brochure I got in December, 2002 from SCNM as my life has been enriched from not only all I have learned in Naturopathic medicine, but also from all of my patients. Thank you, all.

Image Credit: William de Leftwich Dodge (WikiPedia, Public Domain)