Chapter
27

After two and a half weeks, I returned back to work. The ER where I was working in Breaux Bridge was small, but relatively busy at that point. I first started to work there “moonlighting” when I was an anesthesiology resident in order to make some real money outside of my resident’s salary with LSU. The people there were special and obviously sent to me by God. I learned to be a complete physician there in Breaux Bridge. LSU gave me a doctorate in Medicine, but Gary Memorial made me a caring physician. After I finished my residency, I eventually became a board-certified Anesthesiologist and worked at a fancy hospital in New Orleans. My boss at that hospital and I didn’t see personal life or work life in the same way. I was working all the time, and I almost never got to spend time with Elna, Jackson, and Alex. We had only three anesthesiologists in our group. This meant that I was either working late one night, spending the night at the hospital all night on call, or exhausted the third day after being on call the day before. On the fourth day, the cycle would repeat over and over. Our home was too far away from the hospital for me to sleep at home when I was on call. Therefore, Elna and I came up with a solution. We bought a boat for me to dock at South Shore Harbor, and I slept there every third night.

 

This didn’t work either. I was still away from my family the same amount of time. I also did not agree with the medical choices that my boss was making for our patients. This reached an apex of disagreement one day. When I came home from work that day, I remember dropping my keys in front of Jackson while I was in the kitchen. My keys had a floating device on them so that if I dropped them in the water, they wouldn’t sink to the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. When Jackson saw that I bent down to pick up the keys, he said, “Daddy, you going to the boat?” and then he just bounced off happy, cheerful, and singing something.

 

This devastated me. If I were going to the boat, that would mean that I would be sleeping there while being on call for the hospital. It meant that if I were going to the boat that Jackson wouldn’t see my face for another 36 hours. The problem for me was that Jackson was perfectly fine with that. Jackson’s life was one with me barely in it. This made me so mad. My job sucked, and my family was doing quite well without my presence.

 

So, I ran after Jackson and picked him up in my arms. I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “No, Buddy. I’m not going to the boat. Don’t you worry. I’m going to be with you all day.”

 

He gave me a look like, “OK, Dad, Chill. Whatever.” I put him back down, and he ran off again happy, cheerful, and singing something. My son appeared to be way too comfortable with me either staying or going. It didn’t faze him either way. I wanted it to.

 

That very day, I received a phone call from my old scheduler, Tammy Lynch, from the ER staffing company that I used to work for. Tammy was and is an awesome friend. She had previously quit that company, but then found herself back working with them. On her first day back, she called me to ask me to come back to work in Breaux Bridge as their ER medical director. This just happened to be on that apex day at my anesthesia job. I surprised her right then and said, “Yes. I’ll take it.” The next day after discussing everything with Elna, I turned in my thirty-day notice at the fancy hospital. My thought was that I would stay in Breaux Bridge until I could find another job as an anesthesiologist somewhere.

 

When I first started working at “The Gary,” it was a different time in medicine. St. Martin Parish was designated by the Federal Government as an “underserved” physician area. This ended up meaning that many people used the ER as their primary care physician. I knew many patients by their first name. I did emergency deliveries of several babies in that ER. My co-workers were part of my family. In the beginning, the ER volume was slow. This meant that when I worked, I would be at the hospital for 60 hours straight. This may sound like a lot, but it was such a better lifestyle for me and my family. I would arrive at the hospital at 6 pm on a Sunday and stay there until Wednesday morning at 6 am. This was my schedule every week. This allowed me to have every Sunday morning for church. This allowed me to sleep Wednesday morning while Jackson and Alex were at preschool and then wake refreshed by the time they came home. We would then have Wednesday afternoon until Sunday afternoon as a family. It was awesome. I’m confident that God allowed this to happen so that I could spend high density important family time with Jackson, Alex, and Elna. My son got to know me, and I got to know my son.

 

As time went on, Gary Memorial asked me to not only be their ER director, but to also be their anesthesiologist. This allowed me to change my schedule to just work two 24-hour ER shifts a week, plus do the anesthesia for the surgical cases when I wasn’t doing the ER. This was the case on the day of the accident.

 

My work family was so incredibly good to me. I had been born in Opelousas which was about 30 minutes from Breaux Bridge. This was all the heart of Cajun Country. Many if not all of the older patients spoke Cajun French as a second language. They would often look at me as the young little doctor and wonder if I even knew how to tie my shoes. Often, they would lapse into speaking French in an attempt to talk behind my back. I couldn’t speak many words in Cajun, but the few I did know how to speak I perfected. I would let them go on speaking about the “La merde petit doctor” (the little shit, doctor). I would then start my examination by saying in a perfect dialect, “Ouvrez la bouche, s’il te plait” (Open your mouth. Please.)

 

They would stare for a minute dumbfounded and wonder if I understood everything that they had been saying about me. I would just smile. Again, they became my extended family.

 

Proverbs 19 NIV

 

21 Many are the plans in a person’s heart,
   but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

 

 

1 John 3 New International Version

 

3 See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.