A Mentor

and an unsung hero

It is great to be back and working again. I almost didn’t return.

My wife has been my anchor and has put up with me - for better or worse. Without her and the children, I would lose any purpose.

To make important career decisions in the depths of struggle, is to tread very carefully. To leave my specialty, or even medicine entirely, might have been a short-term relief, but there would have been enormous regret long-term. It took time to feel grounded, and I owe that in many ways to somebody else too – a colleague and friend, who went out of his way to help.

I have known him a long time, over a decade. I worked for him when we met, and we now collaborate as colleagues. Early on that felt like a strange dynamic – the hierarchy of age in the medical world still exists. As the years have gone by the relationship has changed, but I imagine there might always be a trace of father and son in it.

And it is because of that dynamic that I feel guilt. Guilt that I didn’t recognise his help many years ago, and guilt that I didn’t listen more recently. Perhaps if I had, the stream of events over the last year wouldn’t have happened.

But to regret is futile.

Of course, I will not name him – as an anonymous contributor, that would be ridiculous. Instead, I will tell you about him.

Despite knowing him all this time he remains an enigma. I suspect he may be the most intelligent person I have met. Though he is a surgeon by trade, his life holds much more. A sailor, skier, entrepreneur, husband and father. The kind of guy that fixes things he has no right to fix – a boat’s engine being the most recent endeavour.

He’s opinionated, that much is true, but I have not once seen him angry. He may ruffle feathers politically at work, but I’ve never once seen him confrontational.

Many people will console you, listen, and share their stories, and I have truly appreciated all the conversations over coffees and beers through this time. But outside of my own family, nobody has stepped up as much as he has.

He has gone out of his way, and is one of the few people to whom I have divulged my newfound passion for writing. My own parents don’t even know what has happened over the last year; the transformation I have undergone; the new person that has appeared.

On his insistence, we went skiing with another friend at the end of February. I wrote about this in an earlier article. It was a chance for a change of scenery, and some fresh mountain air. This short break turned out to be a watershed.

During the trip I experienced a particularly poignant moment:

One morning the visibility was awful, no more than a few metres, so we ducked in for an early lunch in a basement restaurant on the slope. The rich, authentic Italian offerings were perfectly matched by a particularly good red wine. Run by three generations of the same family, the atmosphere was welcoming and homely. We sat in the corner and chatted with some Swedish ski guides on the adjacent table.

When we finished, with slightly unsteady legs, we ascended the restaurant steps bracing for the white-out once again.

But to our surprise, on emerging from the low light, we were greeted by beautiful sunshine and and an impossibly blue sky.

It was glorious.

I do believe this was the inflection point for me – the turning of a page. Since then I have not looked back.

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My experience has made me think more about how I treat others, particularly resident doctors and my trainees. To have the confidence that someone is there looking out for your best interests, is a feeling that cannot be easily quantified.

There aren’t suitable words that will do his kindness justice.

I can only say thank you.

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