Super-subspecialist

Illness and injury can cause losses that make it impossible to continue your chosen career. If your work was not just a job but the fruition of your dream, the loss can be especially painful.

Some Healthy Survivors continue in the same field, only in a different role. For example, some athletes who can no longer play their sport become coaches. In my case, when ongoing illness forced me to hang up my white coat in 1993 I continued to help patients through writing and speaking. It's not the same as clinical medicine, though.

Last week I was talking with my younger daughter Jessie, a first-year medical student. I said something about no longer being able to help someone suffering a heart attack, diabetic coma or sickle cell crisis. 

She must have heard the sadness in my voice. "You know," she said, "specialists who are in active practice today can't treat patients suffering from problems outside their area of expertise. Many doctors who are wearing a white coat can't help those patients either."

She pointed out how progress in science and technology has given rise first to specialists (such as cardiologists and psychiatrists) and then to sub-specialists (such as interventional cardiologists and psychiatrists for adolescents) and even sub-subspecialists (such as pediatric cardiologists for children with rhythm problems and psychiatrists who treat adolescents with eating disorders).

"Mom, you know what you are?" she asks. Without giving me time to answer, she says, "A super-subspecialist!"

Thanks, Jessie.

Comments

[Lisa]

Always knew Jessie was smart! :)

[Debby]

I love this one, Wendy. You have taught Jessie well to rethink, reframe, repurpose! Love, Debby

[Felicity Lenes]

Jessie's brilliant, and she came by it honestly via genes and upbringing:-) Love it!