Bob Marley And Commitment To A Calling In Healthcare

I had a wonderfully fun dinner one recent evening in a bar in Newport, RI, while attending a Podiatry Institute meeting. There were about 20 of us, all podiatrists, and the diversity of backgrounds, schools and residencies attended and points in our careers spanned easily over 25 years and all corners of the United States. There were at least six distinct nationalities represented that evening among all colleagues.

While chatting with a resident of Jamaican descent, I asked her if she liked reggae music. She laughed and said “Yeah, tried it in our OR one day and it lasted about three minutes with my attending.” I commented I was a fan of Bob Marley to which she good naturedly quizzed “What would you know about reggae?!” We started to discuss some of his lyrics and the brief conversation died off as ping-pong games and the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight heated up.

The answer is “quite a bit.” Marley, Peter Tosh and later, UB40, were the soundtrack of my life mixed in with Jimmy Buffett from undergraduate school all the way through my residency. As a college soccer player in North Carolina with five teammates from Nigeria and others from Jamaica, Indonesia, Kuwait, Holland and Argentina and the rest of us with our own immigrant ancestral ties, music often unified where words could fail.

The common choice was Marley. His music constantly filled our locker room and travel bus on several hour road trips to away games. We knew every word to his Exodus album and often sang them in unison. Later at the Pennsylvania College of Podiatric Medicine/Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine, I was intrigued to learn that his premature passing was from acral lentiginous malignant melanoma of his great toe.

During one spring break, my classmates and I rented an RV from Philly to Key West, Florida. The road trip tunes? Marley’s greatest hits album. All day. All way. Every day. During my residency later in Atlanta, KC, the hospital X-ray tech, was a fan and a confirmed Rastafarian with dreadlocks to his waist. It was a challenge for KC to get all that hair within OR sterility protocols. We laughed at a lot of things there and the friendship has lasted for 25 years.

My co-resident Dave once exclaimed, “Hey, KC, I hear you are into reggae?!” A big, peaceful smile topped by a yellow, green and red Rasta hat. “No, no Dave. It is the reggae that is into me.”
It is quite easy these days to feel robotic and disillusioned by healthcare changes and bureaucracy, in some ways to feel oppressed as Marley did. Marley’s music and his lyrics were his response. It is easy to forget we are all individuals united by having chosen the same profession. We are all “into healthcare.” It was the calling of service to others, however, that was first “into us.” That is how we all know each other. Within our diverse heritages, someone made a stance to get us where we are.

Marley and his music stood for something. We all do as well. As physicians, our art and lyrics are us and how we each choose to spread some light and some love to others. How we all do that determines the quality of our lives. Everyone’s path can be different but how we each choose to live becomes the message of us. By reminding ourselves of our own personal stories prior to sharing this great profession, we each add our unique experiences and passions to the daily conversations. We may not be able to control the healthcare delivery system but we are still in control of our choices and what gets into us. “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds!” sang Marley. Yes! We can always elevate our minds.

None of us will count our bunion surgery successes and ankle fractures fixed in our final hours. The money will not count as it clearly will not have bought us an extra day. We will reflect on the relationships we had, those who helped us and those we hope we helped. Every colleague at that gathering in Newport has an individual story that, when shared and spread, enhances another’s life. It is a tremendous amount of fun and very healthy to spread those experiences around.

Bob Marley and his message still resonate today like each of us and ours can every day. A musical honoring his stance debuted in Baltimore last month. His final words were to his son Ziggy: “Money can’t buy life.”

Dr. Cicchinelli is a Fellow of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons. He is a faculty member of the Podiatry Institute. Dr. Cicchinelli is in private practice in Mesa, Ariz., and will soon start a practice in Spain.