Let me begin with my plug and with full disclosure: I have published my first novel, and it is available for sale on Amazon.
Now, onto the big question: how to live the rest of my life. I reiterate. This is a REALLY BIG question. I have lived already at least 80% maybe 90% of my life. The fact is, no one knows, not me, nor anyone else. And I haven’t had to make a decision about my life’s direction in half a century.
There were other goal-guided decisions in our early careers. My husband Laurens and I have two full-time, different academic professions. He is a molecular biologist and a University of Chicago professor currently working on alternative energy through a microorganismal system. I am an academic pediatric ophthalmologist. We had to figure out how to move around the country and still be in the same place at the same time throughout my training.
Dr. Mets and her husband, Laurens.
We met in Boston after I graduated from Wheaton College. He was getting his PhD at Harvard, and I was at the Harvard School of Public Health. Then, he had a position at the National Institutes of Health, so I applied to two medical schools, both in Washington, D.C. I went to George Washington University for three years and was able to trade most of my fourth year with a student from Case Western so that I could live in Cleveland with my husband who had been offered a faculty position at Case. I trained at the Cleveland Clinic for my internship and residency. We moved to Columbia, Md., for my ophthalmic genetics fellowship at Johns Hopkins with Irene H. Maumenee, MD, followed by my pediatric ophthalmology fellowship with Marshall Parks, MD. Laurens spent the time at the Carnegie Institute at Hopkins. From Columbia, we could commute to both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Following this, we settled in Chicago, a big enough city for both of our careers, where we have been for the last 43 years.
We have three children, three wonderful children. One was born in Maine (Lancaster course, I took one week off, and my fellow residents taped the lectures) and is a pediatric ophthalmologist in Colorado Springs, Colo.; one born in Cleveland is a molecular biologist at a startup in the Bay Area; and one born in Chicago, an RN and MPH who stayed in Chicago at the American College of Surgeons. Now we are blessed with five grandchildren.
Back to the issue at hand, I repeat, there have been many decisions to make all along, but not this decision. How to live the rest of my life? That is, my life after my career in academic medicine, my building a division, my friendships with my colleagues, my surgical time, my time taking care of children’s eyes in so many other ways, my long-term relationships with my patients.
How do you let this go? When do you let this go? Should you let it go at all? We don’t live forever. No one can be a microsurgeon forever. For me, I can’t linger. I’d rather leave at the peak or close to it when things are humming. Of course, not everything was humming. There were some difficulties. The corporatization of medicine. Working as an employee not a physician of the hospital as a “provider” was offensive. It was clear that the direction medicine was going was not only negative for physicians, but also for patient care, for health care. Then COVID-19 reared its ugly head.
A transition was inevitable. What do I do when I have transitions coming? I read, and I read. The stack of books on my bedside table grows and grows and topples. Sorting them from the scramble, I note one in particular that I like, “Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life” by former television host Jane Pauley. This is less an endorsement and more a statement of fact. I like Jane Pauley, and I like her book.
On to action. I never jump into cold water. I ease in. I envy those who can jump, but I know myself. I ease. So, I set up a staging process to step out of what I consider was my great privilege to enjoy my fantastic profession as a pediatric ophthalmologist. Daunting though it was, here it is: cutting back on intraocular surgery and then extraocular surgery, then one year of half-time work, then one year at one-fifth time and then full retirement.
So, at that point, my colleagues and the staff had a party, a lovely party, a “rounds” party. I had said I didn’t want a party, so they planned rounds. We had patient presentations, just like our usual rounds. Good discussions were had as always. We took photos. Everybody smiled. Then, they put a tiara on my head that said “Retired,” and I was.
Back in my quiet house, the specters began to appear.
Respect. Physicians are generally respected members of society. Do you give that up when you retire?
Impostor syndrome. As physicians, we, or at least most of us, all have this to some degree at some point in time. Almost all of us can remember that first day in the emergency room. A trauma patient arrives and the thought flashes through our minds. “This guy is really in trouble! He needs help! Where’s the doctor?”
This syndrome applies especially to women. Now, less so, but in the past, certainly, we were not supposed to be there wearing a white coat in the first place. We were supposed to be nurses. Although now that we are all “providers” (I hate that designation), the waters get further muddied.
Identity. Who am I? Dr. Marilyn Mets, Marilyn, wife, Mom, Grandma, author. Your life is calling. You’d better answer the phone. Time to pull it together.
There are broad goals that need to be addressed. Attention should be paid to mind, body and soul. Mind and body are pretty obvious, soul less so. I’m not speaking in a religious sense but I think we can all agree that mind and body aren’t enough to describe the human experience. There is something else; in life and for my purposes, I’m designating the word “soul” to cover that “something else.” We must nurture these three things.
There are tools for this purpose.
The first tool is purpose. We each need a sense of purpose to feed our minds and souls. Taking care of patients has provided that. Now we need a replacement.
We also need a schedule. Our schedules have been very full with patient care. As a matter of fact, most of us are pointed from room to room, all day, by our staff. Now, we need to organize our time on our own. Our minds are so used to this that they require some kind of structure.
Exercise, bodies require physical exercise. We, of all people, know this. However, often we have been too busy to take proper care of ourselves. Now we must.
Our minds need exercise as well. Our profession has been providing this. Now, we’re on our own. social interaction. We humans are social beings. We need other people with whom to interact. Family and friends feed both our minds and souls, cherish them.
I have always wanted to write. I took a fiction writing course for physicians taught by Tess Gerritsen, MD, and Michael Palmer, MD, about 15 years ago. However, three children and an overflowing, full-time career was all I could manage. Now, in retirement, I can move forward with writing! My tool for purpose and exercising my mind has been writing my first novel, “Code Pink.” It’s a medical \thriller about a Chicago medical student who becomes embroiled in a search for the culprits of a baby-stealing ring targeting under-privileged women. My goal is to entertain and inform with an insider’s view of the challenges of coming of age in medicine, loaded in a medical thriller with a twist of historical fiction. It turns out, the process is complicated, more complicated than I imagined. There’s the writing itself, editing with a developmental editor and a copy editor, getting on social media, making a website, publishing and marketing. Significantly more steps than I anticipated, but for the novice — me — it was a learning experience throughout, which is a good thing.
On to body maintenance. For me, physical exercise comes mainly in the form of pickle ball, which also provides social interaction.
Let’s face it. If the sport that you like best is called pickle ball, then you can’t take yourself too seriously which is probably a good idea in retirement. In pickle ball, if your opponents have 11 points and you have zero, you have been “pickled.” Serious competition aside, when that happens, you go home and vent by writing a poem about them:
Power Couple
She with black hair
Dyed
Big, buxom, but buff
A big diamond.
He burly, bearded
Gruff and brusque.
Both
Banging away at the
Ball
Mercilessly.
Pickle ball
Power couple.
Heh, heh. Don’t take yourself too seriously, but …
One more thing I’ve been stewing about lately, is uncertainty. It’s out there and is compounded with additional worries, like death and illness, that are realities at my age. I spoke to my daughter who assured me that uncertainty has always been there, but I was too busy. My life was too crammed to notice it. Now that I have time for more existential thoughts, she encouraged me to develop another method for coping with life’s unpredictability. Leave it to the next generation to get to the essence of dilemmas in short order.
So, you need purpose, exercise of mind and body, a schedule, social interaction and, as always in life, a sense of humor. On the upside, there’s an immediacy about this retirement time. If not now, then when? Put aside delayed gratification to which we, as physicians, are particularly prone. This time is a refreshing rocket booster to decision-making.
One person’s thoughts. Marilyn here, signing off for now.