A Father's Example

Ben Bryner -- My dad has a problem. He accumulates books like nobody I've ever seen. I guess this is an occupational hazard (he's a professor), but it's still frankly out of control. When I was growing up I always liked going over to his office. It's always been full of books piled literally from the floor to the ceiling; shelves all the way up one side of the narrow office, file cabinets full of articles, and bookshelves above the cabinets on the other side. And always a couple of rows of books on the floor, lined up with their spines facing the ceiling, and cardboard boxes full of more books stacked up behind the door so it only opened about 45 degrees. I remember when I was a kid he would sometimes hire me to try to organize the books on a Saturday. I realize now that this must have been a ploy to humor me since I liked going there, because by the end of the next week he'd have more books and any system to organize them would be overwhelmed. That office was also where I first used this crazy thing called the Internet, and although my dad has embraced the digital age, he keeps amassing books.

Perri Klaas, the noted pediatrician, author and founder of the Reach Out and Read program that distributes free books to kids at their well-child exams, has said that she can always tell when a kid in her office has been raised in a home full of books. Needless to say, I was very much shaped by the many books I grew up with, not just by the ones I read but by the fact that my parents had so many books that were prominent in the house and they clearly valued them. You can tell something about the people in a house by what's most prominent on the walls, whether it's antique china, old photographs, or taxidermied moose heads. At my parents', besides art that's been made by people in my family, the dominant objects of decor are books, because my dad's book collection has spread from the office and invaded the house.

As my dad took on more and more different projects, folding what most people would consider a second career into his existing one, the book collection expanded. This photo shows my dad's home office when I went to visit a couple of weeks ago, but the "playroom" where my brothers and I used to build Lego castles and pretend to be ninjas is also now full of bookshelves and small book-piles as well. My mom seems to be OK with (or at least resigned to) what others might consider a biblical-scale plague of books. Once you consider the books part of the furniture you can sort of ignore them; if my brothers and I were still kids we'd probably just be playing Ninja Librarians around them ("Are you returning this book late? No, no fee... just a katana-battle to the death!!").

What does medicine have to do with all of this? Well, doctors are surrounded by piles of information, new evidence that piles up daily all around them and never gets any smaller. Much of it is useful, much of it can be summarized, but there's no getting around the fact that there is more information than anybody can ever hope to categorize and master. This lesson gets reinforced every time I undertake a literature search before starting another research project. All of us in medicine are surrounded by heaps of information, and while we can hopefully convert some of that into our own actual knowledge, there will always be another heap waiting.

As much as I make fun of my father for this seemingly uncontrollable propensity for collecting books, I love books as well. Another trait I inherited from him is that I'm only really satisfied with work when I have too many things to do. My dad thrives on the challenge posed by juggling several projects, researching and writing so much that it amazes me, while traveling around to dozens of conferences and meetings and still staying very involved in our lives. This year I've tried my hand at juggling more projects than before, and in doing that I've recognized that my dad must have truly amazing time-management skills. Time management is probably the most important skill you learn in medical school, because without it you don't have enough time to learn the other ones.

More importantly than a love for reading, though, was the emphasis my dad placed on the need to stand up for the disadvantaged and to be a responsible citizen. I've gone into a different line of work than he did, and while I never felt any pressure to go into any particular field, it was always clear that I should pick a career that allowed me to make a difference in people's lives. I certainly hope my career will do that -- my choice to be a doctor had something to do with him anyway, since it was on a trip to northern Mexico with one of his classes when I realized I wanted to be a doctor. I was 15 years old, and the trip both opened my eyes to the reality of poverty in other countries, and showed me the need for physicians who are passionate about global health. So hopefully, twenty years from now when I'm neck-deep in clinical duties, research projects, conferences, and work on global health issues and trying to balance those with family, I'll still be inspired by my dad’s example. By then the books will fill their entire house, so I’ll picture my dad looking up from his typing, searching up and down one of many imposing nine-foot pillars of books for the right volume, and then forging ahead with his work.

Obviously my dad's got a large backlog of reading to do, and he may not get a chance to read this for a while. Anyway, Dad, when you do get to this, Happy Father's Day 2015, and thanks for everything.

Love, Ben