“Mr. President, I’m Leaving The Medical Field”: Hanging Up The White Coat: A Letter To President Obama

Mr. President,

I was born at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. My mother would later take a job delivering babies in that same operating room only a couple years later. My parents got a divorce when I was young. There were many times during the summer when she would be forced to take my sister and me to work with her. I vividly remember the child version of myself walking the halls of the same floor I was born on in fascination as the years passed. The anesthesiologists used to bring us candy and watch movies with us. When the holidays came, a nurse by the name of Patty Vaughn (we called her Granny), would have bags of presents for my sister and me. Donna Smith, a surgical first assistant who came to America from Canada to work in a free-market healthcare system, use to babysit us.

Donna’s two-story town-home became a 3rd home (2nd was the hospital). We spent countless nights at her house.

Patty passed away when I was ten. I still remember the last box of moon pies she gave me for Halloween that year. To this day every time I see a moon pie I think of her. Donna helped me through my undergrad at Belmont University. With tuition at $30k/year money was tight. Donna never let me go without a meal.

You see Mr. President, the smell of sterile operating rooms, horrible coffee, crisp white coats, and cold metal was my destiny. The first time someone ever asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I responded, “Anesthesiologist”. I had no idea what they even did, but it was the first big word I learned to pronounce as a 6-year-old. The hospital is my family. It’s all I’ve ever known.

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