Are You In The Right Place?
By
Leonard Zwelling
I am currently in Mt. Pleasant, Pennsylvania, a small town outside of Pittsburgh. This is the hometown of my daughter-in-law. She moved here with her husband, my elder son, and their two kids just over a year ago. I feared they would feel too isolated compared with their life in Sugar Land and before that in Brooklyn. I was wrong. They seem quite content and happy here, even if I wouldn’t be.
This has got me thinking about where we find ourselves at any given moment in our lives. I have found myself in the darndest of places throughout mine.
For example, I was in Durham, North Carolina for college when I thought New Haven, Connecticut would be the best place for me. Yale thought otherwise. Boy, was I wrong and Yale right about that. Living as a Jew in the South taught me a great deal about people—really kind ones, and really bigoted ones. Meeting both kinds of people was a powerful lesson.
And had I not gone to Duke, I never would have met Genie, been a Duke internal medicine house officer, or known a physician could have a career in the laboratory. During the nine years I was at Duke, I was in the right place, but I had to leave. I was never going to be a real medical oncologist staying there. Medical oncology as a separate discipline was something relatively new in 1975 and not at Duke at all. If I stayed at Duke where hematology and oncology were not differentiated yet, I would never have been a real cancer doctor.
So, why in the heck did I go to Bethesda, Maryland? I was mainly serving my country there in the US Public Health Service instead of as an Army medic in Vietnam. I was also being trained as a true medical oncologist. I was in the right place, but not doing the right thing initially. I was not a good medical oncologist, at least at the bedside. I was good enough to pass the boards, but I really did not like it at all. I loved the mystery of the patient with an internal medicine diagnostic challenge. That was not life as a clinician at the NCI. All my patients at the NCI had already been diagnosed with cancer. Not much mystery there. I was a detective where the whodunit was already known and many of whose patients would succumb to their disease. This was not for me.
Then I found myself sitting across a small office from a mild-mannered, slight, balding man. I was seeking a place in his laboratory. He gave me a chance. I owe Kurt Kohn a great deal. He had a project he wanted done and I wanted to do it. After a bit of a struggle, I was in the right place again. I made the most of it and did the work and published it. It gave me a career in molecular pharmacology, but after seven years, I was no longer in the right place because I wanted to run my own lab and the one I was in was Kurt’s.
Finally, I got to Texas and I thank my lucky stars I did because Houston has been the right place for me for 41 years. As a physician-investigator, teacher, business school student, and vice president, each time, I was in the right place until I wasn’t any longer. I resigned the oversight of clinical research in 2004 and then, three years later, Ray DuBois fired me.
Again, I was thrashing about trying to figure out where I needed to be. I never would have guessed it was Washington, DC. Then, it was. Working on Capitol Hill during the opening days of the debate about ObamaCare as a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy fellow was definitely the right place to be. My book, Congressional Malpractice, tells that tale. Please read it if you want to know how impotent a physician can be on Capitol Hill. Was I frustrated? You bet. Was I surprised? Not really. I loved the experience of being at ground zero during health care reform and gaining a host of new skills. I was definitely in the right place.
Now I am retired after trying to find a new place for myself at MD Anderson and Legacy Community Health Clinic following my return from Washington. I never really found it because I had completed my academic career and my service to Anderson was no longer wanted. Besides, I had a book or two to write. My “keeping busy” jobs were not really challenging, and they kept me from full-time writing. With my retirement, I had the time to finish two versions of the first book and two additional novels.
In retirement I also know that even during my worst day on the golf course, I feel clearer than on my best day at work at Anderson after Washington.
My message is a simple one. If you do not feel that you are in the right place, think hard. Are you sure? Maybe fate has put you where you are exactly because it is the right place for you and only you even if it all feels too difficult. But, upon reflection, if you are absolutely certain that you are not in the right place, change the place you are in. I had to do that many times. I had to leave Duke. I had to leave the NCI. I had to go to DC and I had to leave MD Anderson and then Legacy. At each juncture, first I was in the right place, then I was not.
Oh yes, as I started by saying, I am in Mt. Pleasant, PA visiting my son and his family. One thing of which I am quite certain. Mt. Pleasant may be great for my son and his family. It would not be for me. I thank my lucky stars I live in Houston, Texas. It’s always the right place to be for me.
