I'm thankful nobody told me my career would end at 39

Fired and blacklisted. That's what it felt like.

What if somebody told you, on day one, that everything you'd spend the next fifteen years building would be taken away before you really got started?

Fifteen years. Engineering school paid for by framing houses. Medical school. A residency. Fellowship. The first years of practice, where the speed and the skill finally came together.

Then a beach walk with my kids. My foot locked up in the sand and wouldn't release. Just over a mile to go. I smiled and kept the conversation going the whole way. At the top of the stairs Cameron noticed I was walking funny. Brita covered for me.

My last day in the operating room was December 17. Six joint replacements.

If someone had handed me that ending before I ever applied to medical school, would I have gone?

My guess is no. And that would have been the wrong decision.

I would have missed the patient who came back to every follow-up visit and said the same words every single time. Thank you for helping me, doctor. Would have missed the Saturday mornings standing over fractures. The fellows I taught. Teams we built. Thousands of people back on ski hills and tennis courts.

You never really get the full picture. Maybe that's for the best.

This condition has cost me a lot. It has given me a lot too. I never pray for it to be taken away. That call is not mine.

Well the good thing is, you don't have to see the ending to start. If you could, you might trade away the years that defined you to dodge the hardest ones.

This week, start what you've been putting off because you can't see how it ends. Nobody can.

Tell me your good thing this week. I read every one.