Davis Thomas

Seven Things This 63 Year Old Surgeon Would Tell My 40-Year-Old Self I am 63 now, and I spend my days as an orthopedic surgeon watching how people's earlier choices show up in their bodies decades later. I see it in my college friends, high school buddies, and patients that I have known for 20+ years. If I could sit across from myself at 40, here is what I would want that man to understand. None of what follows is complicated, and all of it compounds over the decades… either against you… or in your favor. You are largely in control.

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"I’m 79. My name’s Agnes. I walk to Oakwood Elementary every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:45 p.m. Not for my grandkids, I don’t have any. I go for them. The kids waiting for parents who are late. Again. It started three years ago. I saw Miguel sitting alone on the school’s concrete steps, tracing math problems in the dirt with a stick. His mom worked double shifts at the canning factory. His homework was smudged with tears. I didn’t say much. Just pulled a folding chair from my tote bag (I carry it everywhere, bad knees) and sat beside him. "Show me where you’re stuck, mijo," I said. He flinched like I’d startled a bird. But he showed me. I was a teacher for 42 years. Fractions, state capitals, how to hold a pencil, I know them like my own heartbeat. That day, we solved 3 problems in the dirt. When his mom finally rushed up, breathless and apologizing, I just nodded. "He’s got a good mind," I told her. Her eyes got wet. Not from sadness. From being seen. Next week, I brought my old teacher’s stool and a clipboard. Set up under the oak tree across from the school gates. No sign. No fanfare. Just me, my red pen, and a jar of butterscotch candies. Kids started coming. Not all at once. First Miguel. Then Aisha, whose dad’s truck broke down again. Jamal, who whispered, "My grandma’s sick." I never asked why parents were late. I just opened my clipboard. Some days, I only helped one child. Other days, five crowded around my stool. I taught multiplication tables while braiding Maya’s hair. Showed Leo how to write his name in cursive on a foggy window. Never took money. Never called the school. This wasn’t their job. It was ours. Then came Mrs. Chen. She stood at the edge of the sidewalk for weeks, watching her daughter Linh hover near my bench but never approach. One rainy Thursday, Mrs. Chen finally walked over. Her hands shook. "I failed school," she admitted in broken English. "I can’t help her." I slid my stool aside. "Sit," I said. "Today, you do the math. I’ll hold the umbrella." Last month, the principal found me packing up in the rain. "We’ve had complaints," he said gently. "About ‘unauthorized tutoring.’" I braced for the end. But then Linh ran over, dragging her mother. Aisha brought her little brother. Miguel stood tall beside his mom, the one who once cried on the steps. Twelve parents and kids formed a circle around my soggy stool. "This bench stays," Miguel told the principal. "Or we all leave." Today, the PTA provides the folding chairs. Retired nurses check kids’ ears for infections. A barber gives free trims. But the homework bench? That’s still mine. Last Tuesday, Linh placed a college acceptance letter on my clipboard. "You taught me numbers," she said. "But you taught Mama something bigger." She pointed to Mrs. Chen, now helping a boy sound out words. "You taught us we’re not broken." I packed up my red pen that night, my hands steady for the first time in years. Here’s what nobody tells you about growing old, The world doesn’t need your savings or your spare room. It needs your stubborn, ordinary love. Show up. Sit down. Make space. The rest will grow around you like wildflowers through concrete.” Let this story reach more hearts.... By Mary Nelson

The cool weather is here to stay. Soon these red chairs will be stored away before the snow begins. Some parts of Newfoundland and Labrador have already seen snow. We get at least some here right around Halloween so it could happen and time now in low nighttime temperatures.

My dad left my mom for another woman on Christmas Eve when I was eight years old. This left my mom with three boys to raise. There was a small grocery store in our neighborhood owned by Mr. Thomas. My parents actually stopped at his store while bringing me home from the hospital and he weighed me on his butcher scales. When he heard that my dad had left, he set my mom up with a small charge account which she promptly paid on or paid off every payday. It allowed us kids to walk to the store and buy that baloney, milk, cat food or even cigarettes for my mom without having a penny in our pocket. As I got older, my brother worked for Mr. Thomas. He found out that Mr. Thomas and his wife were "accidentally" losing some of my mom's charge slips, which were just pieces of paper in a file. I later realized that this could be why we got a toy for Christmas or a new pair of pants every now and then. When I turned 19, I found out that Mr. Thomas was going to die soon. I made a point to go to his house and visit with him. I told him that I knew what he and his wife did to help my mom. He seemed embarrassed but humbly admitted to it. I walked over to his bed and hugged him for what seemed like several minutes. We were both crying at the end of it. But I never got a chance to tell him how much of a foundation that set for me for the rest of my life. I guess what I'm saying is that one kind action, one you have no idea is being observed, can change a person's life. And you don't even know it unless someone tells you. That's it. End of story.

From FB: I know the exact pressure it takes to crack a rib during CPR. But last Tuesday, I learned a patient’s silence can break a doctor’s soul. His name was David Chen, but on my screen, he was "Male, 82, Congestive Heart Failure, Room 402." I spent seven minutes with him that morning. Seven minutes to check his vitals, listen to the fluid in his lungs, adjust his diuretics, and type 24 required data points into his Electronic Health Record. He tried to tell me something, gesturing toward a faded photo on his nightstand. I nodded, said "we'll talk later," and moved on. There was no billing code for "talk later." Mr. Chen died that afternoon. As a nurse quietly cleared his belongings, she handed me the photo. It was him as a young man, beaming, his arm around a woman, standing before a small grocery store with "CHEN'S MARKET" painted on the window. The realization hit me like a physical blow. I knew his ejection fraction and his creatinine levels. I knew his insurance provider and his allergy to penicillin. But I didn't know his wife's name or that he had built a life from nothing with his own two hands. I hadn’t treated David Chen. I had managed the decline of a failing organ system. And in the sterile efficiency of it all, I had lost a piece of myself. The next day, I bought a small, black Moleskine notebook. It felt like an act of rebellion. My first patient was Eleanor Gable, a frail woman lost in a sea of white bedsheets, diagnosed with pneumonia. I did my exam, updated her chart, and just as I was about to leave, I paused. I turned back from the door. "Mrs. Gable," I said, my voice feeling strange. "Tell me one thing about yourself that’s not in this file." Her tired eyes widened in surprise. A faint smile touched her lips. "I was a second-grade teacher," she whispered. "The best sound in the world... is the silence that comes just after a child finally reads a sentence on their own." I wrote it down in my notebook. Eleanor Gable: Taught children how to read. I kept doing it. My little black book began to fill with ghosts of lives lived. Frank Miller: Drove a yellow cab in New York for 40 years. Maria Flores: Her mole recipe won the state fair in Texas, three years running. Sam Jones: Proposed to his wife on the Kiss Cam at a Dodgers game. Something began to change. The burnout, that heavy, gray cloak I’d been wearing for years, started to feel a little lighter. Before entering a room, I’d glance at my notebook. I wasn’t walking in to see the "acute pancreatitis in 207." I was walking in to see Frank, who probably had a million stories about the city. My patients felt it too. They'd sit up a little straighter. A light would flicker back in their eyes. They felt seen. The real test came with Leo. He was 22, angry, and refusing dialysis for a condition he’d brought on himself. He was a "difficult patient," a label that in hospital-speak means "we've given up." The team was frustrated. I walked into his room and sat down, leaving my tablet outside. We sat in silence for a full minute. I didn't look at his monitors. I looked at the intricate drawings covering his arms. "Who's your artist?" I asked. He scoffed. "Did 'em myself." "They're good," I said. "This one... it looks like a blueprint." For the first time, his gaze lost its hard edge. "Wanted to be an architect," he muttered, "before... all this." We talked for twenty minutes about buildings, about lines, about creating something permanent. We didn't mention his kidneys once. When I stood up to leave, he said, so quietly I almost missed it, "Okay. We can try the dialysis tomorrow." Later that night, I opened my Moleskine. I wrote: Leo Vance: Designs cities on paper. The system I work in is designed to document disease with thousands of data points. It logs every cough, every pill, every lab value. It tells the story of how a body breaks down. My little black book tells a different story. It tells the story of why a life mattered.

You have a soul