On January 1st of this year, I hunkered down in my basement to put a plan in writing. I knew I was going to open a Direct Primary Care practice. Being a family physician at a large health group wasn’t satisfying anymore, and my practice style and the things I cared about increasingly felt like a square peg that would never fit a round hole. I logged into a live class on building a master plan and started writing.
An hour later, my wife came in to tell me the sewer had backed up into the room next door.
The next four hours were a frenzy of calling plumbers, getting quotes, and learning that we’d need to spend about $20,000 to tear the rotten pipes out from under the foundation of our 1970s home and replace them. There would be jackhammers and dirt, and everything in the basement had to be moved, including my music studio: 20-plus synthesizers and bundles of cable feeding a master desk that had been growing, unchecked, like a tumor made of circuit boards for the better part of five years.
I stayed in the class, mostly writing, occasionally asking a question or listening to someone else chime in, and afterward spent hours gutting the basement. Our water was shut off, so nobody could shower. The next day I went to my clinic and hit the staff showers next to the workout room, amenities I’d never once used. I sat in my office in that empty building and finished the class over the next two days while a dozen guys with work buckets hauled dirt out of our basement, dug out the cherry tree we planted the year we moved in, replaced the plumbing, and poured new concrete. It would be months before I put my studio back together, but when I did, it was better organized than before, easier to move around in, and built for inspiration.
Massive inconvenience, then rebirth. That sums up my career in medicine, maybe even my whole damn life, where every hurdle has signaled a transformation.
The medical career started with the MCAT. I remember taking night classes while slogging through undergraduate science prerequisites at the University of Colorado Boulder at the ripe old age of 34, surrounded by 22-year-old future doctors. We were told the exam was a marathon, not a sprint, and the only way to train was to take it over and over. So for five months I took a practice MCAT every Saturday and kept hammering away at physics, chemistry, biology and a smattering of calculus, all while raising four kids and playing the occasional piano gig for extra cash.
Then you get told a lie: that this is as hard as it gets. Once you’re through the MCAT, med school is actually easy, because you’re finally learning medicine, and organic chemistry was just needlessly obtuse.
The lie gets retold in a different form at every stage. “Nothing is harder than anatomy.” You believe it while you’re struggling to name nerves your classmates have meticulously dissected, in a room full of people who donated their bodies to science. The start of medical school is a special time, when a group of lifelong high achievers starts getting Cs. Then you hear that Step 1, the exam that in my day marked the end of the classroom years and the start of the clinical ones, is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.
Of course, it isn’t. Then comes intern year. The scarcity of training spots meant moving to a town three hours away from my daughter the year she started middle school. I worked an average of 80 hours a week (some weeks 100, others 60). You think it can’t get harder than that, and you’re wrong. Every trial brings its own chance at metamorphosis. Every step chipped away at a lifetime of believing I knew who I was, only to show me that I didn’t, and that a different version of me was right around the corner.
That’s what happened when I stopped being a touring musician to become a father. After years of believing tenacity was the key, that all I had to do to become who I wanted to be was keep playing piano, I landed in a new life where, for a while, nothing mattered more than my kid’s wellbeing. Then, after a stretch of believing success was a steady gig playing covers and selling booze, I lost my job at the piano bar and finally considered the idea that I could become a physician.
Deciding to pursue medicine was one thing. Then I noticed I was starting to understand what they were talking about on Scrubs and House. Medical school is a language lesson, it turns out, and learning the language reshapes you into a new person. That kind of change is too much for some relationships, including mine. In retrospect, the split from my daughter’s mother during my third year was inevitable.
I thought that breakup would be the hardest thing I ever did. What I’ve learned since is that the hardest things I do are inextricably linked to the easiest decisions I make.
Splitting with my daughter’s mom opened the door to meeting and marrying the love of my life. Losing the job I thought would make me a professional musician for life kicked me onto the path that made me a doctor. Leaving the security and safety net of a corporate job gave me control over my own destiny and the freedom to build the practice I always wanted. Caring for patients who bring medical mysteries requiring special attention also makes room for patients who simply need a doctor they feel comfortable with and can text with a question every couple of months.
And getting the plumbing replaced while I was trying to plan a new life literally cleared the crap out from under my house so I could build on a new foundation.
What’s next for my family practice in Longmont
Look for Metronome Family Medicine to become more than a one-man shop in the next few months. I’m not likely to be working here alone for long, and I can’t wait to share what that looks like with you :)
In the meantime, if you’re looking for a family doctor in Longmont, Colorado, or want to learn more about Direct Primary Care, call or text me at 720-856-4058, or book a free 15-minute call.
