I have been a practicing physician since finishing medical school in 1986. The year after that, I started my internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital on the Osler medical service. I remember how excited I was about my salary of $17,000 that year. I called my mother. She was so proud. It was plenty to cover my food, apartment, gas for my VW Rabbit and essentially nothing else since I worked all the time. By the time I finished my medical residency I was 28 years old and lived in Seattle where I was able to buy a house with my boyfriend (now husband) who was a scientist in a company that paid him a decent salary. My first job out of residency was with a healthcare cooperative, doing primary care and consulting internal medicine. After 4 years of that, I moved to rural Idaho where I have been ever since. For 17 years I was a "traditional internist" meaning I took care of my own patients in the office, took care of them when they were admitted to the hospital and provided some ot
It was a beautiful early spring day. I was working in a little patch of native plants, clearing away some pine needles and pulling dandelions. It was pretty much perfect weed picking soil, moist with spring rains but not muddy. In order to avoid stepping on the plants, I grabbed a vertical handrail support and swung myself up to the sidewalk and directly into the end of the rail. I felt and heard my rib cage crunch. Ow. When I could breathe I found that, although it was painful, I could still do some things around the yard. I was pretty sure that it would get worse, so I worked a bit and then rested inside. It did get worse. Daily it became more painful so that on day 3 almost anything I did was excruciating. Twisting, leaning over, taking a deep breath, yawning, sneezing, coughing and taking a shower. Lying down in bed was a trick. As the song goes, the rib bone's connected to the everything else bone. There was no really pain free way to lie down, though there were positions that