When I was learning to be a doctor, the focus was on making the sick well, but there was a huge piece missing from what they taught me in my medical education. Nobody ever taught me that, as doctors, it’s our job to help people become, not just well, but whole.

After all, our job is to help people heal - and “to heal” means “to become whole.” But what does that mean? Here’s what it means to me.

Do you ever wish you had more energy?  Ha. I know, silly question.  Who doesn’t wish they had more energy? Everyone I talk to, no matter if they are parents or single, working or living a life of leisure, ill or "healthy", they have the same goal: they want more energy.

Summer is over at the Rankin household. Siena’s back in school.  The long, lazy days of swimming at Mom’s lake house and riding rollercoasters at Cedar Point are behind us. And it’s almost past Labor Day.

So I find myself on this day, pausing to take a deep breath, to examine where I’ve been, to explore where I’m going, and to let you in on my process, since you’ve been watching me bumble along - plundering and strewing at times - as I figure it out.

When I decided to put my white coat back on, I committed to reclaiming what I love about medicine and ditching what I’ve come to despise. In fact, after leaving medicine - supposedly for good - I had to expand and redefine “health” and change the whole way I think about practicing medicine in order to feel proud of my MD title and rekindle my on-again-off-again relationship with health care. Now that I am working with patients again - in my own way - I remember how much I truly love medicine and how I felt the call to serve at the young age of seven.