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You do the thing you fear the most and face reality, process it and then, with hope leading you, you move forward on your path as a human being towards what’s next. So funny, more ironic than funny, that this Quora query shows itself on this day in my life.And… that’s because this is exactly where I am today, actually. Everything appears to being going so very wrong in my life. Perhaps it will all write itself with a little time and grace, mercy and light but in the meantime, I have children to still raise and life to experience, live and love. Having been down much darker paths before, I’m making a choice this time.I did not mess up the ‘write’ for ‘right’ above… I meant write. Perhaps writing will be a lost art eventually with artificial intelligences and advanced communications but writing for oneself is an art of self-discovery and perhaps, for me, in time, self-healing.So… instead of telling you this answer, I’ll show it to you all instead.“Closing a Chapter with What’s Most Important in Life” by Dr. Christopher Yerington on August 16, 2019When you fight for anything in life, if you go far enough and reach high enough, there will always be the failures and losses that forge future success. I took this picture of my youngest boys walking away from my wife and I at the USA Karate National Championships and US Team Trials this July in Chicago where they both competed with honor and lost. They did not lose their smiles, nor their vision for themselves in their futures, they lost some fights. Bruised and beaten, they returned to Columbus where we live and starting training again for 2020. They reminded me, through the lens of my camera that day and the love in my heart, always, that in the fractional moments of my extraordinary life what has been and always will be most important, family.When we humans tell stories, to explain, to teach, to enlighten or to frighten, it is almost always because we desire a piece of us to transcend our own lives and impact those we love and care about. Ultimately, we never truly understand the reach of our own history. We never live long enough to see our story really become his-story or her-story, we die before things we’ve said and done become part of the history for all.Almost ten years ago, approaching my 37th birthday, I sat in the gym alone in pain, wondering about the muscles and my strength on my left side; they were not used to be. I never would have guessed that a high forceps delivery on the day of my birth would secondarily cause declining function in the nerves of my left arm in my fourth decade of life. Inconceivable. Loss happens throughout life. The pain and suffering of those losses forge our characters. All of us. I knew something was wrong on that day, but despite all my education and experience I could not have fathomed my future, horribly wonderful and wonderfully horrible.Ten years later, that’s today, I approach my 47th birthday. Once again, confronting loss. Different this time, as it may be, I can assure you, learning to live with loss does not get easier with each iteration. There is no tolerance that the human animal can build up. In October of 2009, my left arm really failed me. Surgeons and Neurologists finally diagnosed the damage in my left brachial plexus. The median nerve below my left elbow barely functional. Signs of weakness and sensory loss were present in other neural distributions of the forearm and left hand. My career as an anesthesiologist, was over on December 1, 2009. I remember clearly seeing the results of the EMG and knowing, as a clinician, my time practicing clinical medicine was finished.That moment, I was sure, would be the worst of my life. As that human animal I am, I fought the inevitable consequence until the fight left me with one option, disability; no more intubations, no more anesthesia. From that point on I would feel the full force of pain, loss, misery and life. In many ways, I was my career, I mean, that career, I am no longer, but for a time in my life I could escape from everything in its pursuit of perfection and control. I know many doctors like me, those that are and become their careers.The loss of identity that accompanies the loss of a professional career is dramatic. Especially for those admired in our society, like physicians. I was reminded of this when I reached out two nights ago to a friend who lost her husband suddenly. He was only 56 years old. A doctor. He died two months ago in his sleep. Hypertension can be a silent killer. She was so happy I called just to check on her. Quickly the tears and sobs returned to her voice as she lamented. Her loss, his life too-short and the fact few of their friends really called and only a handful of people have visited since his passing. I was one of the very few who truly reached out to check-in on her. Still and ever, the Doctor… you cannot escape the training and drive to Heal other humans. That’s what I wanted to be, more than anything in this world, a healer. Perhaps selfishly, it was to heal from my own childhood, perhaps not so selfishly, in retrospect.It could be we are all guided to what we do best, even if that pursuit brings us equal parts victories and equal parts loss. A human thing to do, to overcome, to strive, to reach and to ultimately gain knowledge in the hopes it will create wisdom and a brighter future; I believe that was me, doing the human things expected of me, by me, for me but ultimately for others. When I went on disability, my friends stopped calling and visiting. The widow’s sounds on the phone, muffled as she tried and failed to smother them from me, they were there and hearing them partially hidden made them louder to my heart. Made me relive past loss. This, too, is human nature. Doctors do not want to remind themselves that losing their career and identity to disability can happen. Humans do not want to be reminded we all die.To compound my profound career loss and intimate loss of identity, one of my disability companies, Lincoln Financial, had miswritten my disability policy in a manner in which interpreting what and how I might be able to return to any gainful employment was impossible without their help. My Own-Occupation Period defined as “CUSTOM WORDING REQUIRED.” Not helpful. Lincoln took over all the group disability policies at my private practice group from MetLife only 19 days before my last day of employment. Lincoln rushed the paperwork. I got stuck on claim with a bad contract. “It happens,” I’ve been told too many times to count. That would have been okay had Lincoln selected to treat me with dignity and attempt to assist me in understanding the flawed contract language or offered to help me find a way back to gainful employment and purpose through working hard and producing resources. This is, in many ways the American Dream.Unable to get any answers out of Lincoln, I looked for other ways to make and grow my resources, investing what I had already earned and saved away. In 2012, my wife and I invested some savings and retirement in a new company in southern Ohio. This was a rural county with a 27% unemployment rate and a horrific opioid problem. I had assisted with the Narcan dosing studies back in the early 2000’s and had worked as a pain physician when needed at Ohio State University. I helped the DEA to close as many as three drug-pill-mills in southern Ohio during 2003–2005. Losing my own career made me sensitive to not working and the plight of the unemployed or underemployed. My wife and I thought the investment would be something that could satisfy many missing needs and a gaping hole in my purpose in life. This was the first company backed by Ohio’s new JobsOhio public-private partnership program for funding start-ups. A friend, another doctor, had made the introductions to the owners of this company. Over the years, my wife and I invested more as the company grew and expanded. Many others invested, more than sixty people. That doctor-friend, he’s the one who died in his sleep two months ago, too early in his life. I feel deeply for his widow. Part of me is glad he will not see the sequela of his introduction of myself and my wife to that company, it is maybe a mercy.Life moved forward and in the meantime, I grew increasingly agitated with Lincoln for not answering questions and only reading from my damaged disability policy when I was on the phone with them. They were awful but in fact they were just doing their jobs as directed by Lincoln’s disability claims department. I found legal counsel, an ERISA attorney, and proceeded to attempt to get answers to my questions from Lincoln via the judiciary process. I cannot stress in writing, nor can I adequately induce the emotion with words to have you understand the pain caused by the group of people at Lincoln. A group that myself and my family depended on and still depends on for income and resources. Dismissive, abrupt, callous, cruel, mocking and teasing and all apparently legal under ERISA law as long as they eventually pay up all that is owed by contract to you. No doctor should have Lincoln Financial as a group disability carrier. Don’t hate them and can’t blame them for their business decisions. Their stock has done well.In the back half of 2015, my wife and I find out that the investments and the company in southern Ohio has major problems. The two owners fight, file lawsuits and eventually one leaves, the SEC chasing him and fining him one million dollars. The other owner, the one with his name on the building, vows to repay everyone as he had personally guaranteed the principal investments, but then turns tail and hires an army of attorneys to get out of his responsibilities. All of it within the scope of human nature, at least the darker shades of mankind. Such are the risks of private investment. At the same time those investments enter limbo, my lawsuit against Lincoln to ‘know how my policy will function if I return to gainful employment’ is dismissed in Federal Court as Lincoln pays up what is owed. I finally learn and fully understand that ERISA law is for the insurance carriers, not the individuals insured. No answers, no anything… I stumble and fall all the way to suicidal ideation in 2016 under the pressures of loss of resources, all the unknowns, the loss of purpose, loss of direction, loss of the future(s) that I had dreamed for my life. You can always lose more until you just cannot. I connect with doctors going through issues where they believe suicide is an option because I have really been right there. I mean right there, not wanting to die, but being okay with it if it happened. I got help. My friends and family rallied to me and my wife far more than when I became disabled.By the end of 2016 I really felt far better than I had in years. I found a new passion, teaching and advising medical students and residents about proper income protection through disability insurance and risk mitigation in their financial lives. I’ve tried really hard not to bash Lincoln Financial, their term life insurance product is very competitively priced… but as a disability insurance carrier for medical professionals they leave much to be desired.Too many young doctors are saddled with incredible debt from their education and at the same time receive little or no financial training, not even basic financial literacy for their future incomes. Add to that, from 2000 to the Present there has been some 3,000%+ increase in the administration of American healthcare and graduate education for doctors. Then add the introduction of the electronic medical record at the same time which has stolen so much time from the practice of medicine, today’s medical practice does not resemble the institution I myself joined by donning my white coat in 1998. Yet, I had lived through loss, disappointment, a gigantic uncaring company. I had the experience and insight to help others. Lemons, but also, I knew the recipe for Lemonade. I began Physicians Income Protection, a company, in January 2017 to more formally educate and advise young doctors and dentists. Just a start, but with new hope in my work-life.I wrote online extensively, I met with medical students and residents, young doctors and dentists, commented on WCI and other medical finance blogs. I told my story again and again in hopes someone would do better or be protected better than I was in my own story, my own history shared and re-shared as a warning, as a story. Eventually, in 2018 clients asked me to help with navigating the purchase of homes, investment and benefit selections and I have steered nearly a dozen would-be-doctor-private-equity-investors into choosing more wise investments for their circumstances by thoroughly investigating the people involved with those investment selections. What I should have done far more thoroughly for myself and my wife in 2012. Last year, I reached a tipping point, I had to have more resources, more education and certifications and help in my growing financial education and advising business. I made the decision to merge my practice into Northwestern Mutual in Columbus, Ohio, at their invitation.My clients thought it was wonderful, my family thought it was fantastic and the White Coat Investor thought I was insane along with some other blogging-medical-financial voices. I thought it was a great opportunity to have a second career, another chance at the American Dream. I mean, really, how many of us ever get two chances at real professional career successes. An extraordinary life, I’ve had. Yet, almost ten years after the loss of one career, it seems life and time will once again choose for me to walk a different, unknown path along the journey. I’m mad about it. I’m sad about it. I have feelings that there are not enough non-letter characters on this keyboard to hide behind while bleeping out my true thoughts and emotions! Yet, I will choose to keep my smile and my vision of a better future for my life. That’s the choice here.Those investments in southern Ohio have finally reached the stage of everyone suing everyone to figure out what happened. In all that calamity, I’ve simply been astonished, and in the bad way, the really bad way, by our legal and justice systems. Wow. Disappointment is not a strong enough word. Dissatisfaction at the very least, but with extra displeasure, spicy distress, genuine organic disenchantment and full-flavored disillusionment in our American Justice System. I understand quite keenly and bitterly, I might add, the many injustices facing Americans within our own Court systems. I went to Law School for time and truly believed that ultimately, however messed up things get between humans and their endeavors, that at the end of the day, a few people would sit in judgement and figure out what happened and how to move those humans forward. Not true. I still want to believe that, but reality demonstrates something very different.The US Bankruptcy Court involved in helping to figure out what to do with the defunct company has now gone after the more than sixty investors in this JobsOhio backed southern Ohio company. The SEC wrote a scathing memo about victimizing the victims of fraud. The US Bankruptcy Trustee told the SEC to stay in their lane. The American Justice machine rolls onward. What a mess and I do mean it is a complete and utter mess. There’s almost no logic to any of it at this point but the ensuing disarray has ended up much like my left brachial plexus; broken, dysfunctional and once again robbing me of the capability to earn income in hopes of not being disabled one day. The increased stress and pain, suffering and worry of the last year has finally taken me to my breaking point… again. No suicidal ideation this time. Be thankful for small things in your life. Like, for instance, not wanting to kill yourself. Really, that is a step up from 2016 for me. Just profound dismay, sadness and hopelessness in reaching for my American Dream, grasping but out of reach in my life for now.I have really good lawyers. I know, I know, no one wants an attorney until they need one but having counsel, that one implicitly trusts, has been one of the highlights of the past year. I used to be that for other people, for other human animals. They would be frightened, sitting uncomfortably in the pre-operative area. I could take their pain away, lessen their worry and have them implicitly trust me with their life. Mastering that skill took everything I am. It was the most awesome of responsibilities and nothing in this life has come even close to the feeling at the end of a long day where everything went well, even more than right or good, approaching perfection a few times. You see, Lincoln’s behavior, JobsOhio secretive private-public partnership, the owners in southern Ohio lying, cheating and stealing millions of dollars from dozens of people has pretty much destroyed my faith in trusting human beings. The doctors and dentists I meet with… I mean… met with professionally, helping them to shape a better, safer, more secure financial future, helped rebuild trust in our species. On some days, I could feel balance returning to my life. A good feeling, that was. Northwestern Mutual seeing the value I had for others was very encouraging for a future that has faded now into an unknown… “for the foreseeable future” as an attorney would comment.I made the decision to merge my growing company, Physicians Income Protection with a wealth advisory from Northwestern Mutual and completed that by the end of May of 2019 to vastly increase the scope of services and products for my clients. Despite what some say online about Northwestern Mutual and their approach to medical and dental professionals in the world of holistic financial services, they are a fantastic company with unbelievable people whose goals align with making people’s lives better. They make doctor’s lives better. I got my office finally set up this June. My first real office. Hard to express the joy that brought me, but I tear up writing this line. Meeting new doctors and residents, teaching people again, working again, feeling alive and purposeful again has been one of the moments I’ll cherish from this past year as time passes once again for me in an unknown state of affairs.For now, I have had to make the unbelievably difficult decision to pause the work-part of my life so that I can attend to matters so ridiculous they bend credibility into a knot but attend to them nonetheless I must for myself, my family and my future. If you cannot tell, I’m as pissed as I am melancholy but unlike last time, I’ve seen loss before and the depths it can take one to… experience gives me an alternative to fighting for everything I want and thusly, the unbelievably difficult decision I’ve made.In concert with attorneys and my business partners at Northwestern Mutual, I have decided to mutually terminate my contract and step back from the world of financial advising, disability insurance and holistic life and financial planning. I hope not forever. As preposterous as it sounds, earning money may hurt the people I love and care for in my life. Sadness fills me most of the time each day. It is my sincere hope that once all the legal machinations with the US Bankruptcy Court and the great State of Ohio are completed in 2022 or 2023 that I will once again be able to attempt a second career in this life, this journey. My journey. I do keep in mind; it is the journey and not the destination that defines our human lives.I can be religious about it. I have many clients that are deeply religious and they are a joy to converse with for perspectives. I’ve always been drawn to the depiction of lost human soul walking with Jesus upon the beach in the sand; only one set of footprints. The implication that you are carried by a force greater than yourself when you think you’ve gone and done as much as you can in this life. The picture I see today, in my head, is of Jesus’ footprints and a long ragged gouged line in the sand trailing the dragging of a poor lost soul forward upon the sands of his life to where he is supposed to be. More precisely, to when he is supposed to be and do what it is the world needs within the tapestry of life that binds us all. I’m the dragged soul. That’s the feeling of today.Losing is difficult. I hated it as an anesthesiologist even when I knew death was inevitable. Knowing death is inevitable, really knowing it adds tremendous meaning to today, to this Present, to the right now, metaphysically. At least it is supposed to from all I know and have learned. Doesn't mean it always feels that way. When I was a resident doctor, I was at every code making sure everything was done that was possible to rob death of that one soul on that one day. I had never had to give up at anything so precious to me until my body failed and my career ended… and even that was not really a choice. I can’t fathom the loss of a spouse or a child. I still hear the smothered cries from the phone call.This time, imagining myself back in Chicago, walking hand-in-hand with my wife, seeing our boys, the young brothers, arm around one another, I am choosing to step-back, walk away and close the chapter from the life I want. Perhaps, what I want doesn't really matter to the tapestry of life. I’m sure it, this process of stepping back, will not be entirely gracefully. I will assist every client I have in meeting, networking and knowing great people to advise them and assist them in building their lives in the ways I’ve been privileged to experience with them over the past few years. Truly and utterly, an honor from my point of view.Thank you, each and every person, who took the time to read this. Sometimes I believe in all our modernity we humans fail to really communicate with one another. We fear speaking from our hearts and minds because of the ridicule we may engender. I’m more comfortable writing when my emotions are exposed, when they are raw and full of rage and loss, like now. I’m more comfortable writing than speaking one-on-one. For those of you know me well, I’m a talker, for sure, and I’ll be glad to speak to each and every one of you who calls or visits. I just wanted you all to have a reference first.Thank you to each and every person who educated and assisted me in attempting to reboot my professional life, even Lincoln, though their example was much like falling out of a tree I should never have climbed as a child. I owe you a debt of gratitude that is difficult to express, let alone repay. I hope you will reach out if you need something; clients, colleagues, doctors, dentists, friends and family. All of you are welcome in every way I can offer for everything these past years. I will still be an instant-friend and counselor to any physician dealing with depression, who’s lost or experiencing loss, disability or suicidal ideation as you are all far too important to us, the American Society, to lose this way in this time in history. As dark as some days seem, I am an unapologetic optimist about America’s Healthcare future and the future of medicine.Although I am terribly sad inscribing this communication this day, I have always done my absolute best to be honest and open in my life because I believe that the stories, our stories that we tell one another about life and love multiply, they seed and reseed to grow our species into what comes next.~ChrisDr. Christopher YeringtonColumbus, OhioLink: https://www.doximity.com/pub/christopher-yerington-mdLink: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisyerington/Bio: Retired from clinical anesthesiology by a disability in 2010, Dr. Yerington had turned his love of teaching and service to others to his family, colleagues and the medical community for years. Having attended law and business schools, Chris was and still is a perpetual student of life. Personal Note: I will dearly miss this chapter in my life but each of us never really knows where the journey leads until we are there.