What I Lost
And What I Found Instead

When I decided to leave clinical practice for medical education, I braced myself for loss.

I thought I knew what it would cost me.

I was wrong.

The Loss I Expected

I had built relationships over years of practice. Patients who trusted me. Patients who had shared their stories, their fears, their small victories and setbacks.

I expected anger. A sense of abandonment. I thought I was leaving them behind.

It's a general understanding in medicine: if you leave clinical practice, it's hard to go back. You lose your skills. Questions arise about why you left. Was there a problem? Are you not capable? Are you unsure this is for you?

Some people echoed this warning out of concern for me. Some of them felt a sense of loss themselves. They had gone on this journey with me, cheered me on the sidelines, taught me. To them, my changing felt like failure.

They didn't see how medicine was a stepping stone and a spark that started a new fire in me.

They didn't understand that I wasn't truly leaving medicine.

I was just changing my balance to do something that made me feel whole.

The Surprise

Here's what I didn't expect:

My patients were the ones cheering me on more than anyone else.

They were happy for me. They celebrated my move. I thought there would be anger, abandonment. They wanted to continue on the journey with me.

And some of them did.

Several came to my classes to tell their stories, to share with students what the doctor-patient relationship means from the other side, and the vulnerability that is needed to create it.

I still keep in touch with some of them and their families. That connection helped me feel even more certain that this was the right decision.

I never really lost them.

The Real Loss

What did I actually lose?

A community of colleagues at my old institution. Some relationships built on daily collaboration have faded since I physically distanced myself.

That's real. I won't pretend it doesn't matter.

But here's what I've come to understand:

Every interaction, every patient, every relationship I built is part of who I am today. Those experiences didn't disappear when I changed roles. They live in how I teach, how I think, how I connect with students and colleagues.

The loss wasn't as total as I feared. The loss I did experience was the price of becoming something new.

The Road and the Regret

Robert Frost wrote about two roads diverging in a yellow wood.

Most people think that poem is about choosing the unconventional path, the one "less traveled by." But here's what most people miss: the narrator admits the two roads were "really about the same." He couldn't see where either one led. He chose anyway.

Standing at my own fork, I was suffering in advance. Rehearsing failures that hadn't happened. Pre-living regrets that existed only in my imagination.

I've written before about the difference between productive discomfort and borrowed suffering. Discipline is present-tense. The courage to act, to take the step. Worry is future-tense fiction, suffering for events that may never happen.

Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

When I stopped worrying about which road was "correct," I realized the question I needed to ask:

Which regret could I not live with?

I could live with trying and failing.

I couldn't live with never knowing.

What I Found

On the other side of the leap, I found something I didn't expect.

Not just a new career. Not just new skills and challenges.

I found continuity.

The nine-year-old who wanted to help scared kids understand what was happening to their bodies? She's still here.

I'm still working on how we explain things to patients, improving health literacy, practicing communication in class, receiving feedback, reflecting, doing it again.

I'm still building relationships that matter.

I'm still learning and growing, which means I'm still losing and finding.

That's the nature of change. It's not a single cost you pay once. It's an ongoing exchange. Letting go of one thing so you can pick up another.

The question is whether what you're picking up is worth what you're setting down.

For me, it was.

If you're standing at your own fork, weighing what you'll lose against what you might find, that's the work I do with clients every week. Coaching can help you tell the difference between what you'll actually lose and what you only fear losing. Book a free discovery call if you'd like to talk.

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