I occasionally hear this question, but I ask myself often. The interrogator needs a bit of my biography. I was an English major in college until I switched to pre-med (Zoology) my junior year at UCLA, inspired by the allure of my fiancée, who was pre-med. I loved literature classes so much that I continued to take them even amidst the challenges of changing majors and carrying a heavy load of science classes. By petition, my last semester I took English Lit classes in the Romantic Age and Shakespeare. I couldn’t quit.

It was great writing, and it prepared me for what I have experienced during nearly fifty years in medicine, the importance of the humanities to understand what I do. While it is essential for doctors to have a solid foundation in chemistry, physiology, anatomy, etc. humans aren’t just a bag of molecules. Their lives have meaning. They have a purpose.

During my internship, the daughter of a newly deceased patient asked one of my colleagues why he died. He answered with a discussion of disordered metabolism. Right question; wrong answer. It was a profound existential question, one that has puzzled great thinkers since the advent of human consciousness. Why do we live? Why do we die?

What my years of medical practice have given me is the privilege of bearing witness to the lives of thousands of human beings. I saw them at their most difficult moments and observed the quiet courage with which most people confront their mortality. The best way to capture this journey is to write about it. I have included some vivid medical episodes in my latest novel, The Drug Dealer, but the lessons go far beyond medical vignettes. It is a look into the heart of human experience.

Why Do I Write?