Vocation Story #2: Breaking Points

Western Medicine & Professionalizing Disaster

I arrived in New Orleans in 2007. It was still devastated from Hurricane Katrina. The high-rise next door to the Superdome still had whole floors of plywood windows. The St. Charles Streetcar was not running. I settled in hopeful. I found my people through the laws of attraction. I earned amazing professional experience helping to bring the city back to life. And I had a wonderful time doing it all. My intention was to grow old in New Orleans. I’d lived in and loved several great cities up to that point in my life, but I knew New Orleans would be my home since the first time I visited as a teenager.

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Western Medicine

But I also suffered from chronic back pain and it was becoming more difficult to ignore, and seemingly impossible to pin down. Jacques Whitecloud¹ was the doctor at Tulane who tried to help me. Of Native American decent, he followed his father’s legacy as a well-respected orthopedic surgeon in New Orleans. Dr. Whitecloud would suggest something and I would jump-on it: x-rays, physical therapy, painkillers, massage, MRI’s, nerve blockers, occupational therapy, strength training, kinesiology tape, orthopedic inserts….Daddy taught me that if I’m a good patient, the doctor will fix the problem—or at least have a pill that helps.

Dr. Whitecloud was an excellent doctor and a saving grace. He strictly monitored and limited my Vicodin intake to 3 pills a day cautioning me about the dangers of addiction. Three is a lot, by the way, and I was definitely addicted. This was 2009-2012, at the peak of the opioid epidemic. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr. Whitecloud that I did not join millions of other Americans and follow a very different, tragic path.

I remember a particularly hard-hitting appointment in which he candidly explained the limitations of Western Medicine. He said that we had reached a point of impasse and he had little more to offer in his toolbox. He apologetically suggested I lean into exploring alternative treatments rooted in Eastern approaches. I was angry on the one-hand but grateful on the other: I had the financial means and easy access to the best practitioners in New Orleans so it was just a matter of committing.

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Professionalizing Disaster

I was inadvertently climbing the ladder as I gained experience in disaster recovery work—like I said, a growth industry. The firm hired me in New Orleans was now sending me to other states after disasters struck, to help stand-up response programs. I technically resided in New Orleans but mostly lived in the Houston/Galveston area while doing recovery planning after Ike then on Long Island, NY while coordinating relief efforts after Sandy. I was a private consultant, but my public sector counterparts went from civil-servant-worker-bees to elected/appointed decision-makers. By 2012 the work felt hollow—I sensed the grift and couldn’t un-see the disfunction.

In late 2012, I was spending 3/4 of my time hotel-room-hopping in Long Island. I couldn’t shake the sense that we were failing to meet the needs of those most affected. For example, critical shortages of housing on the island meant that I had to compete with displaced residents for accommodations on a nightly basis. One particular meeting comes to mind in 2013 with my mentor and supervisor—I think it was my annual review.

Rick² understood what I had to offer professionally and taught me everything there was to know about the consulting world (I absorbed a third of it, at best). He was like a mad scientist consultant, relentlessly committed to making things work well. He took pride in being the fixer, the person called in to get things up-and-running in times of crisis. I half-jokingly referred to Rick as “The Velvet Hammer” and “The Executor”. He was on a personal mission to diagnose and fix broken programs or flawed processes.

At my review, Rick was all excited to share that he was seeing the opportunity presenting itself that would mean a serious promotion for me. He was ready to recommend me for the job, but it would mean taking it next level responsibility-wise. That’s when it hit me how deeply unhappy I was: mired in high-stakes dysfunction, doing work I no longer believed in, and suffering in pain. We were both surprised when I told him thanks, but no thanks. I would be going in a different direction professionally.

Instead, I’d be exiting the NY program for a leave of absence to figure it out where I wanted to take my career. Rick was kind and supportive and also clearly disappointed. He encouraged me to remember that there were other paths within the company since it was an international multi-sector firm. I knew that was true, but also sensed it still wouldn’t have what I was seeking. I was thinking of something way more drastic…like earning a PhD, or becoming an entrepreneur, or jumping back into international development work.

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The Break

I looked at the summer of 2013—June through August—as my DIY Sabbatical. Three months was the maximum time allowed for a medical leave of absence from my job. My plan was to use it to contend with my two problems: the debilitating pain and my professional future. I could only articulate them as problems to be solved, but there was a deeper awareness that I was beginning a journey. I promised myself that I would not prematurely discount anything on my radar that might offer my next career move or a key to managing the pain. I was so identified with the pain at this point that I couldn’t imagine daily life without it.

1. A few years ago when I googled Dr. Whitecloud to find some medical records I was heartsick to learn that he died 2017—he was only 47 years old. A little more digging revealed the disturbing story about a shitty Louisiana law (and there are many) that ultimately drove him to commit suicide. His death shamed state legislators enough to pass the Physician’s Bill of Rights in 2018. Dr. Whitecloud’s obituary haunted me. I was familiar with the “thoughtful and direct” practitioner, but the layers of depth and life reflected made me wish I had gotten to know him better. I wish I could thank him. May he rest in peace.

2. My company hired Rick at the New Orleans office at the same time as me—but as a senior engineer/program manager after a taking a decade hiatus from executive management to save his marriage and earn a second doctorate in organizational psychology. I had just completed my stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras. We spent our first week sharing the firm’s conference room while they finished up the firm’s additional office spaces in the building. I thought he was big weirdo, perhaps on the spectrum, definitely with some OCD tendencies—but generally a really nice guy. We became friends and he totally sold me on his Disaster-Recovery-to-Build-a-Better-More-Efficient-World Vision.