Dr Bryant Lin | A Doctor's Journey as a Patient: Life, Medicine, and Mortality

Looking back, what was surprising or not surprising about the experience?

Yeah, I think, you know, I like to use this phrase, I knew, but I didn't know.

You know, I knew theoretically what a patient goes through, but I didn't know.

You never really know until you experience it yourself.

So I think that part about living in the shoes, you know, my own experience about what a patient goes through was very impactful.

I mean, I knew everything about it, but it really emphasized...

You know, how experiencing it is very different than theoretically knowing about the experience.

You know, I think the balance, of course, is different.

You know what the balance is as a doctor.

You know you only see the patient for, you know, 15, 30 minutes.

And they spend, again, small amounts of time getting treatment and imaging or, you know, other testing.

most of your times at home, you know, 95% of your times at home or at work and living your life day to day.

So, you know, it was really enlightening me to say, to think and to experience that, you know, really reality of living day to day with cancer.

Like, what is it like to live with cancer? So that was, you know, in particular, something I wouldn't say it was surprising, but I think I came to the realization of how that balance is very different than the doctor's perception where, you know, when we see a patient, that's the universe, right? It's our interaction, which there's obviously so much more beyond that.

So do you experience time differently now?

I wouldn't say so, no.

I think I... value my, what I'm doing, I assess what I'm doing differently.

So rather than taking open-ended projects, which I used to do, I really try to take on projects that have a more definite endpoint or, you know, some stronger motivation behind, like devoting a large percentage of my time to raise awareness about lung cancer and people who've never smoked.

Also, every day I ask myself, is this how I should be spending my day, right? Should I be spending an hour with Ivan doing a podcast? Is this how I should be spending my time? So

every day

I evaluate that.

Is this how I should spend my time? And sometimes I think, well, maybe I should change my schedule.

But fortunately, apparently, this experience has validated what I was doing before, and I haven't really changed much in my life in terms of scheduling and activities day to day based because of my diagnosis.

I still see patients day and a half a week, so three half days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

I still teach residents Wednesday afternoon.