I’m a Doctor… But I’m Also a Terrible Patient

People hear I’m a doctor and assume I’ve lived a clean, linear life. That I’m immune to the chaos, the ER visits, the bad luck. Truth? I’ve had more brushes with hospitals, injuries, and sheer madness than I can count.

And I’ll admit it here: I’m a terrible patient. Always have been. I argue, I resist, I think I know better (sometimes I do). But most of all, I hate being in the bed instead of beside it.

Cracked Head, Cracked Confidence

My first real brush with “maybe this is it” came when I was a kid. I fell out of a tree and split my head open. The scar is still there, faint but permanent. What people didn’t see was the aftermath: the learning deficits. I struggled in school. Concentration, memory, processing… all slowed, all frustrating.

There were plenty of reasons to give up, to take the easier road, to let that accident define me. But I didn’t. That head injury could have been the excuse, the out. Instead, it became the fuel. By the time I was accepted into medical school, I was already used to climbing uphill.

Still, med school nearly broke me. My first year was brutal. Sleepless nights, endless exams, and the gnawing voice that whispered maybe I didn’t belong. But I pushed through. I graduated with distinction. And then, for good measure, I went after a PhD. Same outcome: distinction. If my head injury was supposed to end me, it failed.

Life in the Ditch

Then came the car accident during med school. I was driving home late one Friday night, so bone-tired I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. I rolled my car into an overgrown ditch and stayed pinned there. Three days. Alone. Waiting.

When they finally pulled me out, I was dehydrated, battered, and deeply embarrassed. But that time in the ditch etched something permanent in me: how thin the line is between surviving and not. That time alone, wondering if I would die there, left me thinking about a lot about my life and the people in it. It changed a few relationships I had, in ways that would never had happened had it not been for that accident.

Surf, Scars, and Surgery

Surfing has been one of my lifelong passions. I’ve been doing it since before I could walk. Seriously. It’s also gifted me a collection of injuries: busted shoulders, cuts needing stitches, concussions, X-rays that lit up like a Christmas tree. I’ve surfed Jaws, Mavericks, and late last year bucket-listed my way to Nazaré. But it was in July 2013 that I got the scare of my life.

My dad died from an aneurysm. So when I started experiencing severe abdominal pain, the worst-case scenario wasn’t just possible, it was probable. We moved fast, right into surgery.

The verdict? Not an aneurysm after all, but a pancreatic pseudocyst. Still dangerous. Still terrifying. But survivable. Around that same time, I also developed bacterial endocarditis. I narrowly avoided valve replacement surgery. There was damage, yes, but I learned to control it, not with pills, but with lifestyle and diet. (That’s a longer story I’ll share one day.)

The Relationship That Almost Killed Me

Here’s the hardest part to write about, even though I have written a bit about it already. For nearly a decade, I was in and out of an abusive relationship. On the outside, I was the doctor, the professional, the one people looked to for advice. On the inside, I was being slowly dismantled. By a woman.

I brushed off the symptoms: exhaustion, anxiety, pain that wouldn’t go away. I chalked it up to stress, to bad luck, to working too hard. I didn’t want to admit what was obvious… that the relationship itself was poisoning me.

It wasn’t until it finally ended, once and for all, that I began to connect the dots. Almost overnight, many of my “mystery health issues” started to lift. My energy returned. My body healed. My mind cleared. Chronic stress is not just uncomfortable, it’s lethal. And I lived it firsthand.

But that chapter gave me one of the greatest lessons of my life: what real health feels like. And just as important… what real love feels like. The difference between being drained and being nourished, between being torn down and being built up, is night and day. The body knows. The heart knows.

Now, in a healthy and loving relationship, my health is the best it’s been in years. I don’t ignore that correlation anymore. In fact, it shapes how I treat my patients. Because medicine too often pretends that broken relationships, loneliness, and toxic environments don’t matter, as if only lab values and pills determine health. But I know differently. I’ve lived differently.

White Coat Culture

Part of why I ignored it for so long? White coat culture. Medicine drills into you early that your own feelings don’t matter. You push through. You don’t complain. You keep a stiff upper lip. And you certainly don’t admit that your personal life is tearing you apart.

In training, I learned how to silence my own needs. That’s the hidden curriculum of medical school: don’t show weakness. Don’t let them see you sweat. Work through the night, even when your body is screaming. Smile at patients even when your own life is burning.

It’s why I brushed off my health issues for years. It’s why I thought I could compartmentalize my relationship and keep it from bleeding into my body. I bought into the illusion that doctors are somehow above all that. But we’re not. I’m not. And I paid for that denial with years of suffering I could have avoided.

The truth is, medicine is still deeply uncomfortable with admitting that love, heartbreak, trauma, and abuse affect health as much as blood pressure or cholesterol. And yet every patient I’ve ever had proves it’s true.

The Ladder Curse

Last year, life threw me one of the strangest curveballs yet. I had just helped my brother and a friend record a voiceover for a book trailer, a thriller that begins with a man who fell off a ladder.

Hours later, I fell off a ladder myself. The landing was brutal: I nearly severed my ankle on a sharp farm tool, left battered and broken. Days in the hospital followed. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Sometimes I think the universe has a sense of humor… though not always a kind one.

Living Hard

Some people look at all this and shake their heads. “Careless.” “Risky.” “Unlucky.” Maybe. But the truth is, I live hard. I work hard. I love hard. I go big on everything I do.

That’s why I’ve been hurt. That’s why I’ve been broken. And that’s why I’m still here. Because I’d rather live fully, scars and all, than hold back out of fear.

The Bottom Line

Doctors are human. We bleed, we break, we get it wrong, we get humbled. And sometimes the lessons we need most come not from the textbooks or the clinic, but from lying in a ditch, from falling off ladders, from the relationships that almost undo us, at least in the wrong ways.

I’m not perfect. I’m not invincible. But I am proof that resilience matters more than clean records or perfect luck.

And if there’s one thing my story should tell you, it’s this: the human body and spirit can take a beating, but given the chance, they can also rise again.

And when I sit with patients now, I don’t just see symptoms. I see stories. I see the unseen stress, the heartbreak, the fear, the relationships that either heal or destroy. I see the scars people hide. And I know, because I’ve been there, that until those deeper things are faced, no prescription in the world will make them whole.

That is why I practice the way I do. Because medicine should be about more than just surviving. It should be about living. Fully. Deeply. Unapologetically.