What if you lost the thing you were born to do?

I held hearts. I fixed hearts. Now I speak from the heart.

I lost my surgical career in silence.
Just whispers from my spine — and a silence that finally spoke in my car.
It ended the moment my right hand seized around a human heart.

Doctors know suffering — the kind we witness in our patients.
But what happens when the doctor becomes the one who suffers?
And worse — when they have to suffer in silence?

This is the part we don’t talk about.
The grief of losing what defined you.
The loneliness of pretending you’re okay.

I’ve never shared this part publicly — until now.
Maybe it’s time we started telling the truth — and speaking from the heart.

The courageous conversation is the one you don’t want to have.

— David Whyte

What if you found what you were born to do… and lost it?

Heart surgery is intoxicating. The focus. The precision.
The privilege of holding a life in your hands — and giving it back.

But the thing that intoxicates you can also become toxic.

I gave my career everything — my time, my family, even my body.

My kids waited for me to come home to open presents on Christmas morning. Vacations were rushed. I often left early.
I felt increasingly uncomfortable the further away I was from the hospital.
I missed birthdays, and I never knew when a long weekend was coming.

I told myself it was commitment. That it was noble.

But I was being pulled apart. And sometimes… it was lonely.

At first, the back pain was manageable.
Next, a three-alarm fire in the brain.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t focus. The pain had taken control.

I was cancelling surgeries. No one knew why.
I kept my pain hidden.
So I just kept going.

Until one day — while holding a beating human heart — my gloved hand seized.

That was it. It was over.
My right hand, the one I trusted, was lost.

The scans showed what I feared — years of damage from the work I loved.
Cervical spine degeneration, they said.

Now the surgeon needed surgery.

The unrelenting pain didn’t break me. I metabolized it.

But a slow unravelling did.

I came undone.

I cried alone in my car after every doctor’s appointment.
Not because of the pain — but because I knew what it meant.
I wasn’t a surgeon anymore.

I felt eviscerated. Hollow.

A surgeon friend had taken his own life not long before.

I didn’t want him to be alone.

In our world, you don’t talk about your pain.

You don’t risk the patient’s trust. Or the confidence of your team.

So, you push through — even when your body says enough.
I said nothing. I wore the mask.

I called it professionalism. I called it strength.

But it was fear — fear that if I stopped, I might disappear.

And when it ended, it ended in silence.
No ceremony. No goodbye.
Just silence and a slow fade — like waking from a dream that felt real.

I didn’t burn out. I broke down — physically and mentally.

And I didn’t know how to stop pretending I wasn’t broken.

We don’t talk about this part of practising medicine — the pain and the silence.

Maybe it’s time we did.

Many of us suffer through it alone.
Some medicate. Some detach. Most keep going until they can’t.

Like me.

I held hearts. I fixed hearts.

Now I speak from the heart.

We can carry our pain in silence for so long… it festers.
And then a moment comes — not to dull it, but to lance it.
To release the pressure. The truth. The grief. The part we’ve hidden.

Only when exposed can a wound start to heal.

Being a surgeon is about being brave.
But speaking up — especially against a culture of shame and blame — takes a different kind of bravery.

Not everyone will speak.

But someone has to go first.

What is the cost of silence?

What changes if we speak from the heart?

Sometimes you need to lose everything you thought you were to find out who you really are.

— David Whyte

I found something inside me — something soft.

It’s not brilliance, or resilience, or even excellence.

It’s warm.
Ancient.
A knowing without words.

I am home.

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