I Was Lied To and I Lied to You

I was told there was only one path to success in medicine: college, medical school, residency, and if you wanted to join the elite ranks, fellowship. I believed it. I lived it. And I repeated it — to students, residents, mentees. I told them, “Follow in my footsteps.” But it was a lie.

And I’m sorry.

I devoted 13 years of my life to this path — my prime reproductive years, when having children was as simple as a glance in my family. I traded the sound of laughter from a house full of children for the sterile halls of hospitals. I poured myself into service, healing, and a craft I was told would earn me belonging. I followed my passion and gift — hands once praised by a fellow pediatric surgeon as among the best he’d ever worked with. I still hold that compliment close. But now, in 2025, I see the brutal irony:

You can become the Nation’s Doctor — the Surgeon General — without ever completing residency, without board certification, without ever finishing the work.

When I dreamed of that role, I thought of C. Everett Koop — the 13th Surgeon General, a fellow pediatric surgeon, a giant who shaped public health and warned a nation about cigarettes and HIV/AIDS. Even in Canada, I felt his reach. When I walked the streets of Brooklyn while training at SUNY Downstate, I thought I was walking in his footsteps. I never imagined I could rise to his stature, but I tried to honor his path.

And yet here we are.

President Trump has nominated Dr. Casey Means to be the next Surgeon General. She calls herself a “former surgeon turned metabolic health evangelist.” But let’s be clear: she was never a surgeon. She never completed her residency—she left in her fifth year. She is not board-certified and holds no active medical license in any state. If, after being hit by the car, I had chosen not to return to my residency, I could not then call myself a “former surgeon,” I would have been a former surgical resident.

Dr. Means promotes functional medicine — a field with potential, perhaps, but not a recognized medical specialty. It’s concierge care with a holistic spin. However, she did not finish her journey to become a practicing physician in the United States. And yet she may now hold the title once carried by Dr. C. Everett Koop.

This isn’t about gatekeeping. It’s about honesty. It’s about integrity. It’s about sacrifice.

I did the work—all of it. I am twice board-certified and a practicing pediatric surgeon. I missed birthdays, weddings, and entire chapters of life to earn a title that now seems meaningless. I told others, “Do it the right way.” But what was the point?

I might have made different choices if I had known that titles could be claimed without discipline or hardship. I might have chosen joy, chosen children, or chosen rest.

To those I led into this profession under pretenses, I see you. I’m sorry. You don’t have to play by rules only meant to constrain some of us. You don’t have to sacrifice everything.

You can still choose life.

You can still choose for yourself.

You can make better choices than I did.