About
From “Without Using the Word”
I walked into a single bathroom off the hallway and locked the door. Lay down on the tile floor. Stared at the ceiling. Breathing.
Thinking this might be the day I cancel the next case with no explanation anyone would believe.
At 22 I took the process engineer job at a vinyl siding plant in Jackson, Michigan. Within weeks, the two men at the top were gone.
From “Go Make Things Better”
I was the newest person in the building. No mentor. No boss who knew my name well enough to back me up. A glass desk. A role nobody understood. And one instruction.
Go make things better.
Nobody was going to stick their neck out for the new kid with the fancy desk. If I failed, there was nobody between me and the door.
Years later, Southern California. First of seven cases on a Tuesday, her femur fractured during the surgery. I fixed it and did six more cases.
From “Care Louder”
At the end of the day, I opened the box. And I went back to her room.
I didn't stand in the doorway. I pulled up a chair. Sat down next to her bed. And I walked her through everything.
What happened. Why it happened. What I did about it. What the next steps would look like.
She listened. Her husband was there. She took it all in.
Then she said something I wasn't expecting.
“I am so sorry this happened to you.”
Then: “And I was your first case of the day. You must be so tired.”
I didn't have a response ready for that.
For years I carried a diagnosis and told almost no one. Then one Saturday morning, outside a coffee shop, I told my senior partner.
From “Let Them In”
I asked if we could sit outside.
He walked to a bench away from everyone. I sat down next to him. The bench was cold. I shivered. Even though the air wasn't that cold.
I looked him in the eyes and got straight to it.
I walked through everything. The difficulties in the OR. How things were progressing. How I didn't know how long I could continue. How I hated to ask but I needed help with the ER add-ons and the weekend cases. I kept talking because I knew if I stopped I would just start crying.
For the first hour it was slow tears. His eyes welled up as I kept going. He didn't interrupt. He just sat there on that cold bench and let me get through it.
Then he told me, you can look at me like your brother.
I started crying. He gave me a big hug right there on that bench. Two orthopedic surgeons on a Saturday morning outside a coffee shop.
He said Matthew, you have sown so much goodness. It is time you reap what you have sown.
A case that year marked the beginning of the end.
From “Without Using the Word”
I walked into a single bathroom off the hallway and locked the door. Lay down on the tile floor. Stared at the ceiling. Breathing. Calming each muscle one at a time. Thinking this might be the day I cancel the next case with no explanation anyone would believe.
Then a message came through.
That case couldn't go.
I lay on that floor and felt relief wash over me. It felt like God looking out for me. And like an answer to a question I had stopped asking.
November 2024. A hip and knee meeting, and a keynote I watched from my hotel bed.
From “Without Using the Word”
The keynote speaker was a man named Damon West. He had been to prison. Now he stood on stages telling his story. It was remarkable.
Put a carrot in boiling water and it goes soft. An egg hardens. A coffee bean changes the water around it.
A man who had been to prison, reaching back to a surgeon who couldn't walk down to a conference floor. The bean changing the water.
December 17, 2024. Six cases. Nobody in the room knew it was my last day.
From “The Last Day”
I changed into a fresh pair of scrubs one last time, the way I always did. Kept my last head cover on instead of tossing it in the trash. Walked out slow, taking it all in. Through the parking lot. Stepped into my trusty Civic and pulled out of my spot for the last time. Drove the five minutes home in silence, deep in my own head. Unsure of what was coming next.
The house was full.
Fight Song was blasting through the open door before I made it three steps up the walk.
Brita gave me a relieved hug, so happy I was home. She was already in tears. Briar pulled me into a hug. A bear hug by a brother who had no words to offer, and none were needed.
And I let it go. All day I'd carried it. For years really. Held my body together. Kept a whole room from feeling anything. Staying strong. Now I was home, with everyone I loved around me, and the finality hit all at once.
The sobs came up loud. Wailing. Racking. I didn't recognize the cry. Didn't recognize the sound coming out of me.
I cried harder and longer that night than I think I ever have.
Two weeks later, Brita and I were alone in the car for once.
From “Letting Go”
Brita drove. I watched the road go by. For a long stretch neither of us said anything.
Then somewhere along the way I finally said it.
I'm done operating.
I'd thought it a hundred times. My last surgical day was already set months back. But I had never once said it to her, not in those words, and the words made it true in a way the date never did.
Brita wasn't surprised. She'd known where this was headed long before I could put it into words.
My OR team found out after I left.
From “Let Them In”
The entire OR put together a card. Every one of them signed it.
I spent four years bracing for pity. What came was a card.
Now I write. Good Thing Monday goes out every week. City Boy, a novel I started in seventh grade, finally came out, and every dollar goes to the kids' college fund. Lampway started on an Easter morning when I couldn't find an app to walk a family through the Bible. I had never written JavaScript. The first working version took nine days. My memoir, The Good Thing Is, is written. I'm adding essays now.
Brita was there for all of it. She preheated the car in the Michigan cold and drove leftovers to the hospital when I could not get out for dinner.
She was always home. Now so am I.
You can lose what you planned and gain more after the loss. Go make things better from right where you are.
A diagnosis changed the plan. These are the moves I make to keep going, mostly from The Roadmap, the last section of my book.
In the operating room I traded one continuous motion for two controlled motions I could make consistent every time. On stiff days at the park I rebounded and played defense instead of shooting. Most of what I loved survived a redesign.
Set a level below which you do not drop, no matter how bad the stretch gets. Mine right now is walks, shooting around, and the hill behind the house. Bad weeks go down to the floor, never to zero.
I trained myself to be fully present in whatever room I was in. To put everything else in a box until I was ready to open it. I couldn't control how often it came into my mind. I could control how long I let it stay there.
My mom's old rule was I have a good attitude, even when you didn't have one. I kept the structure and rebuilt the rule. True thing first, then go looking for the good one. On my worst recent day the true thing was a fever and a dead battery. The good thing was Tylenol and a decent night of sleep. Where somebody can hear it.