WELCOME to The CENTERED SURGEON​

Yes, I think so.  I come from a place where my Ivy League rating as "middle half" put me at the apex of my intellectual world for the first 18 years of my life.  

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Being at the apex gives a human lots of confidence.  The confidence in the common surgical mantra, "sometimes wrong, never in doubt," applied to me more in high school than perhaps most humans ever experience.

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I have described the glass ceiling for women in agriculture.  I always knew I could have a career in ag as a woman.  I just never believed I could or should become a farmer, even though for the first near-decade of my life, I was the only potential heir to the family farm.  

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My exposure to the medical field came through my dad's best fishing buddy, our town doctor, Dr. Ragsdale.  Ragsdale was at the peak of his career when I was a child.  After his 1-year rotating internship he joined a practice in my hometown, where he soon became half-owner of the hospital.  After his partner died in a hunting accident, he was the only doc in town.  He delivered babies, did some surgery--everything.  He once flew a close family friend to Memphis in his private plane because her delivery was too complicated for him to handle.  Both she and her son still go to church with my parents.

 

Though the path to my family's business was not on my radar, Dr. Ragsdale was sure I could be a doctor.  The way people in South Fulton, TN, raved, I was going to be the only doctor coming from my whole generation of Americans.  It felt really special.  Like many physicians, my destiny to go into medicine was a foregone conclusion before I was old enough to vote.

 

I was late in my second year of medical school before I knew what it meant to be "on call."  That was before the 80-hour workweek restriction, so I got a clear understanding of call when I began clinical rotations in my third year.  I really liked surgery, but I really hated how being exhausted from call made me fail to show up as my best self.  I tried hard to convince myself to stick with family medicine, the specialty I anticipated, following in Dr. Ragsdale's footsteps.  However, I was hooked on surgery, hooked on tossing disease in the bucket, hooked on being able to provide definitive treatment to patients in need.  Once that decision was made, I pursued my surgical training with all the energy and certainty with which I had pursued my premedical studies.

 

Surgery residency was an uncomfortably comfortable rhythm.  In a 5-year training program, considerations of getting a real job were far in the future.  I made very few complicated decisions outside of the hospital, as there was never any time or opportunity for considering life outside of the hospital.  I worked constantly.  I eventually met my O.G. colorectal surgery mentor, Dr. Connie Pennington.  It was a relief to meet a surgeon who had a life I could imagine enjoying.  She had a lively home with a different mix of locals at the dining table every weekend, some in medicine and some not.  She had a whole menagerie of furry and feathered critters, and she was working on her Masters of Divinity in her free time.  Though I didn't name it at the time, she was--and still is--living a full and authentic life.  She knew what she needed outside of work to keep showing up as her best self every day.  Though I suspect she would have found this authenticity in any specialty, I think I pursued colorectal surgery because I had a real-life example of another young woman modeling this career option as a wholehearted human.  I wanted whatever magic Connie had.

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For the most part, I have retained the authenticity in my life throughout my career.  We are all under construction until we die, and like everyone else, I experience all the human things.  However, one experience shook my foundations, ultimately leading me on the journey to get coached, and then to become a coach.  

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In the spring of 2020, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Over the next several months, I underwent bilateral mastectomy and four cycles of chemotherapy, with expected, but devastating hair loss.  As if being in a private surgical practice in the middle of the pandemic wasn't hard enough.  As I think is the case for many young cancer patients, in retrospect, I think my cancer hurt me mentally more than it did physically.

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Though I had a great therapist during my cancer treatment, I never felt like my therapist could fully connect to what I was going through professionally, simultaneous to the cancer treatment.  Ultimately, to sift through all that rubble and find myself again, I had to engage in coaching with other female physicians who could see and understand my 6 years of training and nearly 15 years of practice in a 5 minute conversation.

 

The service my coaches provided me, they have also provided to all of my patients.  They helped me sift through the trauma of breast cancer to find the best version of myself, ever. 

 

Life pummels us with all kinds of curve balls.  It doesn't have to be a serious illness.  Sometimes it's death by a thousand charts.  Whatever the case, if you have lost yourself in the mayhem, please reach out to me.  I would be honored to be your navigator.  You stay at the helm.  You've got this! 

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I look forward to hearing from you!

 

Sincerely,

Jill

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