In the beginning...

I'm scared shitless of death and disease. I say this as a practicing physician. Mortality is a bug up my ass that won't go away. Why am I so afraid? There are probably a million reasons but one stands out, mainly because it is an intriguing sob story that may lure you in if only out of pity.

My parents divorced when I was five. I am an only child so it had to be my fault. I must have done something heinously wrong to drive the wedge between my parents. I didn't know what that thing was, so everything I did or felt was subject to scrutiny. If I was to prevent them from the obvious next step - divorcing me - I had to change. Whatever concerns or emotions I had needed to be kept in check.

The problem was that I was a stressed out 5 year old who was sad as hell. I don't have the emotional maturity now at 35 to make sense out of my feelings. How could I possibly do so as a 5 year old? But as far as I could tell, I was being blamed for my emotions so I must have control of them. I didn't feel like I did, but I must given the catastrophic consequences (I was a bit dramatic as a kid) my emotions elicited. Although I was confused about my ability to control the health of my emotions, I was astute enough to realize that I definitely did not have control over the health of my body. When I got sick, I got sick. There was nothing I could do about it. So instead of being sad, I became sick. My body became my emotional dumping ground. Aches and pains in lieu of tears, fear of death in lieu of fear of abandonment.

Like all healthy American males, I chose not to address this quirk in my being and chose instead to pretend it did not exist. So it grew like the nasty emotional fungus it was into a near hypochondria. (Although an anesthesiologist and not a psychiatrist, I know enough about psychiatric diseases to hide behind technical definitions: I don't meet all the criteria to be considered a true hypochondriac. Of course, tell this to my pediatrician wife who will follow with eye rolling acrobatics.)

Today I have an enjoyable yet stressful job that resides in an enjoyable yet stressful life. Stress is an emotion we all have difficulty dealing with, both psychologically and physically. So, as you can imagine, when the pressure builds in my head, I displace it on my body. When I'm stressed, your disease becomes my disease. Whatever medical or surgical dilemma my patients face, I worry about having the same. And unfortunately, I take these "diseases" home with me.

It is time for me to face mortality; to understand it as much and to fear it as little as one can. It is time to be what I truly believe a doctor should be: a guide, leading patients through the seemingly conflicting meanings in objective disease and subjective illness. I have been doing my patients a disservice by not coming to terms with my own being and the inevitability of its demise.

So here it is. My journey to understanding my mortality. I'm not a religious man although I appreciate the philosophical aspects (not the dogmatic!) inherent in the major religions I have encountered (all seem to have as their goal a loss of self, the pinnacle in coming to terms with mortality). Nor am I a traditional scientist. I believe science to be a habit like religion with as much dogma and politics. I will primarily look to philosophy, the tradition that asks the same questions as religion, but uses the techniques of science. (It, of course, has its own bullshit too but I enjoy it's brand of bullshit.) But, in the end, what the hell do I know (that's the point isn't it?). I'll just figure it out along the way.