Whether you subscribe to fate, or religion, or coincidence, or some sort of other celestial spiritual connection, it is inevitable and continually consistent that there is some sort of unseen web that ties each of us and our experiences together – sometimes, you need to take a break to identify the threads of the tapestry, and other times if you’re open to the revelations, it’ll show itself. So has been my life, and it has been substantial.

One of the things that has allowed me to find these connections all over the country and likely some day around the world is openness. I have opened my mind and heart to serendipity and had my eyes opened to accept the unlikely and the common all together. I am time and time again awestruck by how small the world is and always questions if there is a path that is “meant to be.” In a somewhat metaphysical lost conjecture, I don’t personally subscribe to religion or the fact that there is a path in isolation from point A in our lives to point B. Rather, my personal thoughts are that we all have multiple endings that already exist, and just as those “choose your own ending” books, we don’t know at the present which way we’ll go. However, one part that’s missed in thinking about those books is that, regardless of the path you choose, the endings already exist, even if you don’t know when you start which one you’ll get to.

So, why talk about this here? Because of locum tenens and my traveling as a Nomad all over the country. Here are the concrete examples of my life that I have identified in the world of medicine that just shows you, as I was explaining to a learner, on how small the world truly is. I haved loved every minute of building connections throughout the country and developing the web as I uncover further parts of this unwitting tapestry...

From Missouri to California, From Maine to New Mexico

Once I met Pediatric Hospitalist in St. Louis, Missouri that trained in Albuquerque, New Mexico and graduated close to the same time that I did from training. It turns out that her ex Program Director was now the director of a Children’s Hospital in California. Coincidentally the exact one I had simultaneously taken a job at as a part time worker… To fill in the gap when their Pediatric Hospitalist had left to head to the same placed I happened to be at in St. Louis. We met on my last shift in St. Louis and one of his firsts as I planned to accidentally switch roles with him.

Another New Mexico timeline, which on further inspection might tie the above together as well, I happened to start a job in January of 2022 in Maine and coincidentally the Pediatric Hospitalist had trained with the director of another locum I was to work in March and April in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

California Commons

At my very first Locum Tenens job, I met Dr. M in a small town north of Houston called Huntsville, TX. My Sensei as I call him, as he trained me in circumcisions, I found out that he had gone to Medical School in San Diego at the same place I had gone to Undergrad, later worked and trained in more northern California and found himself in this small place, all meant to be so that he could teach me… From my vantage point.

And then, while working a night shift in Maine, I discovered that one of the rotating medical students not only was also from California, but grew up less than 1 mile away from where I did. The kicker? It was the neighborhood where my mom and dad had their first little starter house. We reminisced on our far away suburban remembrances.

A Case Report in the South, Lost in the Midwest

Saving the best for last on a surprising situation. In February of 2020, as a Pediatric Resident Doctor, I joined our Neonatology group to go to a conference in New Orleans to present a rare Newborn Tumor. It was fun, i got to stand up in front of a crowd and actually had to defend some questions by the moderators which I answered competently as I had over prepared. Afterwards, a gentleman with a mustache and glasses came up to me and introduced himself to me and said that he really enjoyed my talk – on his badge it said, Mayo Clinic. I will never forget because I felt so honored that someone associated with the prestigious Mayo Clinic had enjoyed my talk. Well in the fall of 2022, a new locum tenens gig surfaced in a small Wisconsin town of 50,000 people for a relatively small hospital needing a new provider. I looked at the initial paperwork for the schedule and saw I had been given a chance to spend a few days orienting for the job. The Neonatologist I’d be orienting with was none other than the man that I met in New Orleans almost 3 years before. Mind. Blown.

I share as the above, only a small fraction of any of the intertwinements I have come across in the last few years – there are even crazier ones that would take too many words to write. The larger picture I have been piecing together for years and one day hope to publish in a more defined rendition, but the point is the same: We are all somehow tied together visible strings, regardless of how they got there. Coincidence and serendipity or fate and god, whichever you choose, bring us all close together but only if we are open and ready to receive them. My bridges keep growing and the world keeps shrinking, one thread at at time.

Image Credit: https://phys.org/news/2013-02-network-theory-expert-web-pages.html