Hi, I'm Gooby from Gooby and Dooby. So I used to be a neurosurgeon. I went to college at MIT and did four years of medical school and six years of neurosurgery training.
And I was a neurosurgeon for almost 10 years after all of that. So that's 20 years of my life. And I quit. I quit last year. And nobody understood why I quit.
People would ask, but, you know, a decision that involves 20 years of your life, you can't really answer in a couple minutes. And most people don't have time. to sit and listen to a 10 or 15 minute story or however long it takes to explain why someone's doing something that most people would never do and they don't really understand why i would do that so that's why i'm making this video First, to help sort my own thoughts out about the whole thing, because there's a lot of factors.
But also to maybe help somebody else who's in a tough spot. If they're in a tough spot like I was, maybe hearing my story will help them get out of that tough spot. I'm gonna put my hood on because there's some mosquitoes out here so I can think without being distracted by them.
So I became a doctor to help people. And I remember at the beginning of medical school, when I was just starting, there was a ceremony, and we all took a Hippocratic Oath. I remember there was one of the older faculty docs, and he said that your job as doctors is to relieve suffering.
It's not to... It's not to... do a surgery or give a pill it's to relieve suffering that that might be from doing a surgery or a pill but it might be just listening acknowledging what someone's going through that stuck with me all through medical school and residency and afterwards How I became a neurosurgeon is, well, I've always been interested in how the brain works, how consciousness works, how our brain and body is able to perceive this mountainside, the stream that's nearby. We have so many choices in life. Is there such thing as a good life?
And if so, how do you live that? Those are all questions that I was curious about. And that led me to... be curious about the brain and at that time at my medical school there were some researchers and they're still they still are working on this working on connecting brains to computers through a brain machine interface this was this is like science fiction um like uh creating A robotic arm or leg that's controlled by a person's thoughts. That was really interesting to me and there were people working on that.
So I wanted to go into neurosurgery and learn about that and do research on it and maybe one day do a surgery like a Luke Skywalker replacing his arm kind of surgery. So I went into neurosurgery training, I got in, and I spent six years learning how to do brain surgery. And most people don't know that neurosurgeons spend half their time also learning how to do spine surgery. Because spine problems are more common than brain problems. So I spent six years learning how to do both brain and spine surgery.
And I did some research working on rats and putting electrodes in their brain. And I was slated to go up to Toronto to work with the guru of brain machine interfaces. But as I did more research into the problem, I found that... This dream of being able to give people robotic arms or legs, I don't think will ever happen. And that's because the brain knows that these small electrodes that listen to the brain are not part of the body.
So it rejects it, builds up a wall of scar. Then the electrodes, they can't hear the neurons, the little tiny cells in the brain that send the signals. So the goal that I wanted to accomplish, which was to become a neurosurgeon who specializes and does research on brain-machine interface work. I thought that that would not work out in the end because of those limitations.
And after putting in four years plus, at that time, five years of my life, that's nine years of my, from 20 to 29 years old. That's like the prime of my youth. I had invested it in doing medical school and learning how to do brain and spine surgery.
At the age of 29, I realized that where I wanted to go, I would never be able to make it. It's just not possible. And after putting nine years of my youth into that job, I didn't want to throw that away.
So in my last year of residency, I learned how to do spine surgery, because that's what most neurosurgeons do. It's the most common thing, it's what a regular neurosurgery job is, is fixing people's worn out necks and backs. And I had good teachers to do that, and I graduated.
Got my first job and, yeah, I knew that something was not right right away. I had good partners. I had good hospitals that I worked at. But something was not right. I was very unhappy.
I, on the surface, it didn't make sense. I had, I was getting paid very well. It was a very well-respected job. I had good colleagues, had good support.
But I was the most unhappy that I've ever been. And I couldn't really figure it out for a long time. I had gotten married just before getting the new job, and that's the best decision I've ever made.
My wife is so understanding and supportive. She tried to help me out, but really I didn't know what was the problem. I couldn't describe it, but now I know what it is. So it's really complicated and I'll do the best I can to explain it.
Going back to medical school, when I took that oath and I had that older professor say that your job is to relieve suffering, that's what I understood of what it means to be a good doctor. And I had learned all these fancy spine surgery techniques to do all this incredible surgery work through tiny cuts. It's called minimally invasive spine surgery.
It's the latest technique. technology we use navigation like a gps inside the operating room like all all the latest techniques you know i learned and i learned how to do well and i i did them and i i helped i helped a lot of people out but there were way more people that i couldn't help and that's because Surgery, like if someone's got what's called a degenerative spine, that means their spine degenerated, it wore out. It could be a bulging disc pinching a nerve, or a disc is just worn out and bones are rubbing on each other, or there's a loose joint and the joint is banging on nerves causing pain.
I can do surgery to cut out like a bulging disc to remove something and make more room for a nerve. Or I could do a surgery where I put titanium screws and rods into the spine and lock it down and remove motion. It's all removing things. The only thing that was adding things was putting in a little electrode tip. to block pain signals if there was nothing else you could do.
But those were the tools I had, and I learned to use them really well. But what I realized later on is that those aren't fixing the problem. There's so many people with back problems, neck pain, back pain, nerve pain down their arms and legs. Surgery might make them better for a little bit, but it didn't address what caused that disc to wear out, or the disc to bulge, or the joint to get loose.
Or the disc in between the bones to disappear and then the bones are rubbing on each other. Those surgeries, they don't address that. So what I was doing...
So what I was doing was, um, there's a lot of mosquitoes. So what I was doing was I was doing the surgeries that I learned how to do. I was trying to help people, but these surgeries, they weren't fixing the problem. They would help some people feel better. Some people would feel the same.
Some people would be worse. A lot of people I saw in clinic, I had to tell them that, oh, surgery's not going to help you. And of course they would be devastated because I was sort of their last hope. That all weighed really heavy because I thought I was going to relieve suffering.
I did relieve some suffering. But I saw so much more suffering that I couldn't relieve even if I tried. Even if I tried to do surgery. I'm going to change the battery. So a PA, a physician assistant that I worked with, he made a good analogy that the surgeries we're doing is like this.
It's like you have a house and the roof, the top of your house has a leak somewhere. And rain water is coming down into the house and it's ruining the drywall. And you can see it.
You can see water damage. The surgeries that I could do were like going into that house, tearing down that drywall, ripping out the moldy insulation, putting in brand new insulation. and rebuilding the wall but not not fixing the leak in the roof that's what i was doing and the way i i realized that is that I could do a perfect surgery and some people would get better. Some people would stay the same. Some people would get worse.
Even though I did the exact same perfect surgery. And some people would get better before I could operate on them. Even with gigantic bulging discs, they would get better.
If I scheduled the surgery a month out, sometimes they would call me a week before surgery and say, Oh, hey, Doc, you know, my nerve pain's gone. Do I still need to do surgery? Yeah, I got a big disc in there, a big bulging disc, right? And, you know, that was very confusing to me. You know, I had learned some of that in residency, but actually being out there and practicing and seeing what happens to people, I realized that, whoa, wait a second.
Wait a second. This isn't quite... What I thought it was, I thought that if I do a perfect surgery, people are going to get better.
It wasn't always the case. Over the nine years that, nine to ten years that I was a neurosurgeon, I, it really bothered me. It really bothered me. I felt that, I felt that, wait, there's something missing here.
You know, I, my surgeries are not, they don't seem to be... They don't seem to be addressing what's causing people's health problems in their spine. I mean, they sort of do, but not in the way that I thought. Not in the way that I thought when I was training. And so over nine years, I did everything I could try to do to try to figure out, how do people actually get better?
And how do they get worse? And I had help along the way. I had a really good partner who was a pain management doc at my first job. And he really clued me into a lot of the things I'm going to explain here.
But I just started asking patients. like everything i could think of what do you what do you normally do what's your job what do you eat what do you drink do you smoke do you do you elicit drugs do you uh you have a lot of friends do you how's your family are you stressed out do you sleep well i i just would ask all my patients just kind of this you a whole bunch of questions about their life. And what I found was that patients that did certain things would get better, and patients who wouldn't do those things would get better.
things would get worse. My surgery might help them out a little bit, but they would get worse after that. And those things that I saw were the following.
It's people that got better, people that healed, they were doing the following. And not exactly, but in general. And this is my observation. They were having a diet.
Well, diet seemed to be the most important. The food that people ate and the liquids they drank. The ones that would heal up, they had a low-salt diet. It wasn't really salty.
And most of them ate mostly plant-based foods, you know, like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans. And this is not like a vegan rant or anything. I'm not vegan. I enjoy a steak or sushi every once in a while. I'm just describing what I saw over nine years of doing spine surgery.
People that got better were having a mostly plant-based diet. They weren't eating too much animal foods. And they were definitely not eating salty.
And they would do things that would make them sweat. Like exercise, being outside, hiking like this, going to a sauna. Or they live in a warm place. They didn't smoke.
They didn't drink much. They usually had a good social support. Like loved ones, family members, children, friends.
like a way to socialize they would sleep they would sleep like eight hours every day and they weren't stressed out or they if they had a stressful job or something that they they found a way to be mindful or meditate or just be present and release the stress back into the universe that's what i saw And I saw that the people who did that, they would heal so quickly that I couldn't operate on them. I mean, sometimes I could, but if I was booked like three or four weeks out, a lot of times people that were doing that, they would heal before I could do the surgery that I thought would fix the problem. And the opposite was true. Patients that, patients that, so they smoked like a chimney, they sat on the couch and they ate hot dogs all day, they had no friends, they were super stressed out, and they didn't sleep well. Those patients, I could do a really good surgery.
I would get them temporarily better, but six months, a year later, the same part of their back would have a recurrent problem or a different joint in their back would have a similar problem. And I would operate on them, and they might get better for six months. And then... Yeah, then the same thing would happen.
It's the leaky roof problem. So that was my aha moment. It's like, oh, I know what's going on. To actually heal, you need to eat a certain way, sleep a lot.
Not be stressed out. Have a good social network. Exercise. Move your body.
Stretch. If you do all those things, you heal. And when your body heals, it doesn't just heal. A worn out joint in your neck or your back, it heals everything.
It heals a worn out joint in your neck, your back. It heals a skin problem. It heals your digestive tract problem. It heals your hair issues. When your body heals, it heals everything.
And that actually became a huge problem. And let me explain why that's a huge problem. Because most people will say, wait, how is that a problem that you figured out how people are healing?
It's a problem because our medical system isn't set up this way. I'm not knocking any hospital or group that I worked with. I had the privilege to work with really amazing people and amazing hospitals, amazing institutions. But the way that everything is set up in the whole country, it's not any particular hospital. The way things are set up is that the hospital needs to make money.
They need to make money, they need to grow economically. They need to grow economically. And the problem there is that if you figure out a way to help patients heal, and that way doesn't include a pill or a surgery, well, then the hospital and the doctor are in big trouble.
If you figure out a way to help people heal and you can't charge them for it, well then you've just worked yourself out of a job. Let's just say, like for example, there's a hospital in a town. And, you know, there's an X amount of people with back problems. And the hospital, there's a doctor, say, it was like me, Dr. Gooby, was doing, we'll just say, a hundred spine surgeries in a year.
to fix the people in the community's backs. And the hospital got paid. Dr. Gooby got paid. And it continued. Every year, 100 people needed surgery from Dr. Gooby.
Well, the hospital's happy. Dr. Gooby gets paid. Dr. Gooby may not be happy with his life, but...
He's getting paid and the hospital is getting paid. But if Dr. Gooby figures out, hey, yeah, you know what? This surgery can help some people, but really the best thing that people can do is eat a certain way, exercise, sleep, meditate, be mindful.
and not be stressed, hang out with their loved ones and friends, and then their back problems will get better. And if Dr. Gooby actually recommended that to his patients, and they actually did get better, well, it's a big problem for Dr. Gooby's paycheck and the hospital. Because let's say in that town, let's say everybody ate more veggies and fruits. They really watched the salt intake.
They did things that made them sweat, like being outside in the summer, exercising, enjoying fresh air and the nature, and spending time with their loved ones. They slept eight hours every day. They meditated, and they weren't stressed out.
Let's just say everybody who had back problems in that town, Did that and they got better. They healed. Then nobody needs spine surgery anymore.
In fact, they probably don't need a lot of things anymore. And then Dr. Gooby's office is empty. And the hospital's operating room is empty, at least for Dr. Gooby's surgeries.
Now, I'm not saying that that's exactly what happened, because not everyone's going to do all those things that I talked about, but I had a lot of patients that did do those things, and they got better. I never had to operate on them, and they were very happy that they never had to be operated on. And they got better. The pain went away.
And, yeah, so that was what I figured out over nine years. And I still did surgery because, you know, not everybody can do all those things I talked about, I mean, just practically speaking. And so I still did surgery. But I really felt like the focus of medicine wasn't in the right place.
It wasn't in healing. It was in making money from surgeries and pills and images. Whatever you can make money from.
Again, I'm not knocking any particular place that I work. I work for very good hospitals. People have good intentions.
But the incentives are not right in the whole system, in this whole country's medical system. Probably not just this country, but most countries. It's not about prevention.
It's about therapies. So, yeah, once I figured out this problem, figured out what was going on it was a huge problem for me ethically i was doing surgeries that i knew weren't fixing the underlying problem they may be fixing the drywall and taking out the insulation and putting in brand new insulation and putting a brand new drywall and some pretty color of paint on the wall but it wasn't fixing the leaky roof And so I didn't know what to do. I was doing a job that I didn't believe in anymore. It was the way I was getting paid, and I don't know how to do any other job. At that time, my wife wasn't working.
I was the only paycheck. We don't have kids, thankfully. It makes things a lot easier.
We have Doobie, our doggie, our doggie child, and she's seven years old. But yeah, we don't have a human child. And I was thinking, well, I'm the only paycheck.
I need to keep working. I need to keep going to this job that I don't believe in anymore. And that tore me apart.
I gained 40 pounds. I was really sad, I was really angry, frustrated, didn't have hope. I thought I was stuck.
I was stuck. And then, this was the year before last. Maybe before last, I was like, I don't know how I can do this for the rest of my life. Most surgeons, they keep operating until they're 60, and at that time I was 38. I was like, I don't know, I don't know how I can, I don't know how I can operate doing this, doing surgeries I don't believe in. Even though I can do them, I can do them very well, and I can help some people out.
I helped out a number of people, but it was a moral dilemma or moral injury. I think there's the term moral injury. It was a moral injury, and it devastated me. And I kept going to work, and I kept doing my best to do a good job. But, yeah, it tore me up inside.
And I knew that if I kept going back to that job every day for another 20 years, I would die before 20 years. My body and mind and soul, they would have... They would have just broken down and I don't think I would have made it.
I wouldn't have made it to 60. So I knew that something had to change. I was stuck. I was the breadwinner.
I think a lot of people can relate to this. I think a lot of people may feel this way. And I knew that I was dying. I was dying inside and my body was dying. So, you know, I talked to my wife and I said, well, you know, would it be okay if I just work part-time?
Maybe I'll cover the ER neurosurgery job for a couple weekends a month or a week or a week and a half each month and do something else, something that makes me feel good, like being out here, being out in nature. The rest of the time. My wife, I said earlier that she's amazing. She said, I see what you're going through. I've lived with you through it.
You should just quit. And I said, what? How can I quit?
You're not working yet. She was going to school for a second career. And she said, well, we'll be okay. We've saved up some money. It's not enough to retire, but it's...
Something to live off of for a few years. Why don't you just quit? And I thought about it, thought about it really hard, and I knew that I couldn't keep going back. But I didn't know what I was going to do instead for work.
But I knew that I would die if I kept going back. So, with my wife's support, I went to my job and I said, Hey, I can't do this anymore. I will do it for another, I think it was nine months at that time. I'll do it for another nine months until you can find someone to replace me so that that hospital still have a spine surgeon.
So I just worked another nine months and I quit. And nobody understood why I quit. I would try to explain but this video is probably already 40 minutes long and people don't have 40 minutes to listen to me explain why I quit. So I would tell them oh yeah I was burnt out or it's just too stressful I just want to take a break.
I said all kinds of things like that. I mean, they're all true, but they weren't the full picture. And yeah, at first I was like, I was really embarrassed to say that I'm quitting and that I have no plan of what to do afterwards. That was embarrassing, too. But after some time had passed and a lot of people had asked me that question and I told a lot of people I have no idea what I'm going to do afterwards.
It actually felt good. It feels good to not have a plan. It's freeing.
Because I don't have a plan, I don't have to be anywhere. I don't have to do something at a certain time. And then I just kind of like leaned into it.
Someone asked me, oh, what's your plan? I said, I don't know. And I felt good about it.
And I could tell they felt embarrassed for me. They felt uncomfortable. I was feeling uncomfortable initially saying that.
But, yeah, over time, you know, I... I just accept it. I know I can't do no- neurosurgery anymore and I don't have a plan and I'm quitting and I won't have a paycheck I got I got some money saved up and I can live off of that for a while but I've got to work again at some point I can't retire but yeah no I need to do this I knew I needed to do this and I and I did it that was last September I quit haven't gone back and you know at first Well, so, you know, this is, I think, what most people call a midlife crisis.
I would say the crisis part was really the nine years that I was super unhappy. That was the crisis. So I think that's what most people call a midlife crisis, is what I would say was those nine years I was really unhappy.
I knew something was wrong and I knew I couldn't live like that but I felt stuck. I felt stuck in that situation. I felt like I couldn't escape it.
That was a crisis. Now that I've left, I haven't been this happy in my whole life. It does not feel like a crisis right now.
I mean, maybe financially it might be a crisis at some point but I... I've never been this happy before, ever. It feels right.
So what I did when I quit is I just walked a lot outside because I had gained 40 pounds, like I said earlier, and I ate healthy. I slept a lot. Because a neurosurgeon, they don't sleep very well because they keep getting called about emergencies. Nobody was calling me. I slept every night for a really long time.
And I walked, and I spent time outside, spent time with my dog. I did the things that I wanted to do, which would be out here. Um, my dog, she's Doobie, she's seven years old. And for the majority of her life, she, um, unfortunately had a very boring life because I was so busy.
My wife was busy and we'd take her out for a walk every day for half an hour to an hour. And then she would just lay at home the rest of the day and, uh, made me sad. It made me sad that that's her life, or that was her life.
And so I wanted to spend time with her and spend time with her outside because she loves being outside. And so it first started out, I want to lose weight, get back to a healthier weight. I want to...
help my dog live a full life you know the way she's having fun she's smelling things she's experiencing things outside that's kind of where things started and i um i made that made this youtube channel gooby and doobie to to um record the experiences I have with Doobie because she's not going to live forever. If I live a full-length life, she's going to pass away before I do. I wanted to be able to remember the times that I've had with her and so that's that's why I made this channel and recording our hikes where I'm going with this is is that you know I didn't have a plan but so where I'm going with this Where I'm going with this is, yeah I quit.
I quit. I had no plan. But when you let go of something that you're holding too tightly, even though it's hurting you, and you let go of it, then you're able to pick up something else that hopefully is better for you.
I wanted to spend time outside. I wanted to help my dog live a full life by being outside with me. And then I wanted to record those moments so that if I live longer than Doobie, I will have those memories. And I can look back at them and appreciate the time that I have with my dog. That's how this channel got started.
Being outside with her, I started taking video of these pleasant nature scenes, and I found them very therapeutic for myself. There were a couple stressful times over this past year due to family health issues. I found that hearing those nature sounds really helped me feel better, helped me process what was going on better, be more present and aware and release that stress and anxiety. And so, yeah, that's how I am. I came to where I am now.
By letting go of neurosurgery, I am able to be outside, be healthier. My dog is able to live a fuller life. And I figured out a way that I can help relieve people's suffering by sharing nature scenes with them.
It's not a surgery, but it definitely works. to at least one of those several things that help people heal, which is to relieve stress. So, yeah, that's my story.
That's how an MIT-educated neurosurgeon got to the point where they're unemployed. And out in the mountains by themselves. Well, that was really long.
It was really long, and I hope that that might help somebody. I hope that you have a wonderful day if you're listening to this. And, you know, trust your heart.
Trust your heart. Lean on the people that love you and do what you need to do, whatever that is.