The Rough Years 3

Now that I was in the recently completed house, things were a mixture of sadness and confusion. It was difficult living with a new wife and baby, my aunt and a teen ager, and trying to work with the fear that someone may be stalking me. I spent many a sleepless night hearing noises and seeing shadows in the woods around my house. Plus my aunt talked constantly about how my mother and she had planned something in the house and I was doing it all wrong. I had hired a nanny to care for Becky and my aunt had miffed her by assuming she was a housekeeper so I ended up paying her to keep Becky and her house. This did free Rena up but it did nothing to give me any space. I tried taking up golf as a distraction, but golf is a game that does not do well by being distracted and many a peaceful day was interrupted by a call about a perceived problem at home.
All this led to more frustration on my part and tension with Rena and my aunt. I finally persuaded my aunt to get an apartment right around the corner from where we lived to salvage our sanity and relationship. Right after that Rena decided she wanted to move back to Atlanta to pursue a “career”.
Now, only 4 years into the marriage and trying to deal with numerous financial and personal problems, I was essentially left to deal with all this alone. It was really a separation that allowed Rena to have space an no problems and me problems and no space. My spiral was tightening as I felt lower and lower emotionally.
The clinic was only doing fair now that there was more abortion protests and I was burnt out by medicine in general. I had nothing that stimulated me, surgery was to say the least easy for me and basically something I could do by rote. So all I did was go to the clinic, go to the office, go to surgery and to Red’s. and drink day after day after day. On this endless merry-go- round, I could not catch up……..debt increased and back taxes accrued with all the penalties and interest the government could apply. I saw no way out of this hole that I could not stop digging.
Then to my surprise Rena wanted Becky to come back to Indy and stay with me. To this day I have not be able to understand what she was searching for or why she wanted her to go back with me but I said yes and she brought Becky home and she and I set out to care for ourselves, something we have continued to do until this very day.
I was in deep tax debt and I chose to pay my alimony, child support and college obligation rather than the IRS….so as was expected the IRS forced me to sell the house for a portion of the back taxes.

My taxes were never going to get current because I was never able to pay my quarterly tax estimates. This not only incurred a penalty but an interest that accrued monthly each being 18% a year. I was drowning in a whirlpool of debt with no life preserver.
During all of these problems, I was badgered by my ex-wife about timely support payments. I was mentally exhausted and to top it all off the IRS forced me to sell the house.
Now, I had to find a place for Becky and I to live when Rena decided to return to Indy. We found a condo that only held about 1/3 of our things and put the rest in storage and started to regroup our lives. This I hoped would be a restart personally though I had no clue to how I would get right financially.
As the saying goes “ when it rains it pours” the landlord for my clinic lease which also housed my office cancelled renewing it which essentially put me in a situation where I had to lease another place under unfavorable terms ( a five year lease ). I was screwed but I fought thru that and after a year when I thought things could not get worse my landlord informed me that he was selling the condo he was leasing me and I had 1 month to leave. What else could happen? I still don’t know how I managed to survive all these reversals in my life……but I did survive. I found another place that looking back was what I really felt was ideal. It was a condo in a converted old factory building and it had exposed brick walls with floor to ceiling windows and hewn wood overhead beams. What I really liked was it had an underground garage and my unit was on the fifth floor with a view of downtown Indianapolis. All this was only 6 minutes from the hospital and 15 minutes from my office.
During my stay here I started exploring the possibility of relocating my practice to Atlanta, but since I was in so much debt it made no sense to move to another city in which I had no professional contacts.
Rena and I were going through some serious changes since I had made so many concessions and felt I was doing all that I could to provide a decent life.
She decided to move back to Atlanta, which was really an impulsive thing and I was glad to have some peace by being alone. She decided that Becky should go with her and I agreed. This impulsive move lasted less than a year and she was back again unhappy as ever. None of these moves helped any of the problems we were dealing with and only caused us more tension in our marriage.
I knew that the only way out of my situation was to try to get a job where I was salaried and my taxes were withheld at least this would allow me pay my current taxes in a timely manner and not pay estimates on income that I didn’t have.
I ran my dilemma by my friend Benson who was the Director of the OB/GYN residency at Methodist Hospital. And he said he might be able to hire me part time to staff the GYN clinic. He was able to do this and for about 4 months I worked not as a full time employee but at least I had my foot in the door.
The interaction with the medical students, interns and residents revived my love for teaching and I asked Benson how was the chances for full time employment and he said the OB/GYN education committee would have to approve the need and Dr Frank Lloyd the CEO of the hospital would have to approve the position. I told him I was really desperate and needed a job.
Then something occurred that changed my whole life. A seminar was being held in Miami where a new surgical technology was being taught by a leading pioneer from Germany. He, Benson, arranged for the two of us to attend this first course in what was called Pelviscopy. On the flight back to Indy, he asked me did I see this revolutionary approach having any validity and being integrated into our institution and patients. I said I saw some potential but would like to work with the teaching model trainers we used in the course to get a feel for how difficult the technique was to learn and teach. He gave me the go ahead and found some funds to buy the teaching model to practice on.
The path ahead is really one of the major achievements and contributions I have made in my medical career. The story of Pelviscopy and what was spun off from it follows. HospitalHo