How I nearly threw away Michael Jordan’s autographed photo
I am an emergency room physician working in a small rural Ontario ER. I am also a military physician in the Canadian Armed Forces. After some long and gruelling shifts, I go home and like millions of Canadians, lock myself with my family in the house to limit my outside contact during this pandemic.
Undoubtedly the “screen time” in our home has increased. One documentary that I am 100 per cent into is Netflix’s “The Last Dance,” which profiles arguably the best basketball player in history; Michael Jordan.
I am not comparing myself to him. I don’t play basketball and I am not even the best ER physician in my hospital, let alone the world. However, I feel a deep connection to MJ. First, I have his autographed picture.
How did I get that? As an immigrant kid growing up in Hamilton in the late 1980s, I used to go to my local bookmobile to borrow books as I loved to read. One summer, they held a contest on who could read the most books. I won and was given the prize of an autographed picture of some basketball player. I wasn’t overly excited as I didn’t know anything about basketball and almost threw the picture away. My mother, who also didn’t know anything about basketball, told me it would look nice on my bedroom wall. I did put it up but it wasn’t until a few years later that I learned who Jordan was and I couldn’t believe I had his picture. I even brought it to school once for show and tell and caught a classmate trying to steal it.
Fast forward 30 years, and I still have his autographed picture locked away, and shudder that I almost threw it away and it was almost stolen.
Watching “The Last Dance” has been quite nostalgic and makes me appreciate MJ’s extreme dedication, mental toughness and insatiable drive in winning six NBA championships. Becoming
Watching “The Last Dance” has been quite nostalgic and makes me appreciate MJ’s extreme dedication, mental toughness and insatiable drive
an ER physician is no easy feat and it took me years of hard work and studying to be where I am today. Also, MJ was his own team’s biggest critic and some of his own teammates even resented him for how hard he pushed them to give their very best. I can tell you during my medical training, some of my best teachers were also my toughest critics pushing me to improve in high-pressure situations. Medicine is definitely not for the faint of heart and although I did resent some of the criticism, I am a better physician as a result.
However, my own preferred approach when I teach is quite the opposite and I use “positive reinforcement” or a “carrot” rather than a “stick.”
Finally, being in the military can be compared to being on a professional sports team. Sure, we don’t make the millions elite athletes make. But, we do wear uniforms, have to be physically and mentally fit, even get “traded” (i.e. posted) from one unit/location to another, and must be able to lead and work in a team often in challenging circumstances. You don’t have to look very far to see dedicated members of my team like our military nurses and medical technicians serving in longterm care centres looking after our most vulnerable. I could not be more proud of them.
Watching this documentary has reenergized me to always give my patients my very best, especially during this tiring pandemic. I will work harder to “be like Mike.” And while I don’t play basketball, I do dance!