As we travel through life we’ve had mentors, people who helped us find our paths –- perhaps a favorite teacher or friend. Their interactions might have been prolonged, years of tutelage, like an acharya. Or maybe just a momentary event, a brief interaction where the fellow gave advice that fortified our soul.
Over the past several months I’ve been writing the memoir of my career as an emergency medicine physician. As I look back over the years, I’m remembering some of these inspirational interactions. This is a story of one of those moments from an instructor during my residency, forty years ago.
More than just pudgy, Dr. Mejia’s waist measurement almost matched his height. He smoked Cuban cigars and pontificated about the virtues of various blends of Scotch. When I would run into him at the hospital cafeteria during lunch, he’d have a tray full of fried food and desserts. Sometimes he’d have his family with him, a shy but ever smiling wife and a squadron of kids, stepchaired up in yearly ages. Fun and knowledgeable, he loved cardiology and the many pleasures of life.
One day he didn’t show up for rounds, and word spread that he’d had a massive heart attack. I checked in on him, finding him intubated and sedated in our hospital’s quiet six-bed ICU, a somber place where Dr. Mejia had so often been the physician looking down on the patient instead of the other way around. As I held his hand his eyes flashed open, their look of terror haunting.
I’ve known many a patient who quit smoking after they’d developed lung cancer, or diabetics who gave up desserts only after their pancreases gave out. The shock of a health crisis often creates a catalyst for change.
Dr. Mejia took a leave of absence from the hospital and it must have been a year before I saw him again. Trimmed down to 120 pounds of solid muscle, it took several minutes of conversation to convince me it was truly the same man.
“It’s wonderful to see you again, Dr. Mejia. How are you feeling?”
He spread out his arms in his characteristic welcoming gesture. “As you can see, never been better.”
The change was so remarkable I couldn’t help but ask how he managed it.
“I eat only one meal a day, usually a salad for lunch, and work out for two hours each morning,” he told me.
“Do you miss your old life?”
A wry grin settled on his face and he gave a snort. “Oh, I suppose I still salivate a little when I see a thick juicy steak or a whipped cream topped pie. But, no, I don’t really miss it. Every day we make choices in our lives, Philip.”
He paused to check the reading on his beeper that’d just chimed. Looking up, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t let it take a near-death experience to inspire you into making the right ones.”