Why I Was Emotional Saying Goodbye to My Cardiologist After 23 Years
- maryrburrell
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Why Was I So Emotional? (It Wasn't Goodbye After All)
Our house closes Wednesday. In a week and a half, we'll be in the Seattle area, starting over in a new city after more than 25 years in the same home. There's a lot to feel about that on its own. But nothing prepared me for what happened on the drive to see Dr. Beglin.
This was supposed to be my last visit with him...my cardiologist for more than 23 years, the one who has pulled me out of some of the hardest chapters of my life. Most recently, hospice. Torrential tricuspid regurgitation that nothing in medicine could touch at the time. There simply wasn't anything available to help me.
And now, driving to see him, it hit me, the reality of it. Really hit me.
I knew exactly why I was emotional. Twenty-three years, hospice, a heart that had nothing left to give until he found a way. Of course that's emotional. What I couldn't figure out was why it was hitting me now, like this, all at once, in the car on the way there. Why not months ago when we first started to pack for the move? Why did it wait until I was actually driving to him?
I parked, and sat there drying my tears before I could even make myself walk in to check in for the visit. And that's when it hit me: this doesn't have to be goodbye.
There's no rule that says moving away means walking away from the person who has known my heart literally and otherwise for over two decades. So I made a decision right there in the car: I'll find a general cardiologist near Seattle for day-to-day care, and I'll still make the trip back to see Dr. Beglin every six months. Two-plus hours one way, twice a year, to sit across from the doctor who has never once treated me like a chart. Why wouldn't I?
I took a deep breath in. Let it out slowly. I could feel my heart settled down just in time to actually hear what he was telling me.
My heart is doing spectacular. His word, not mine. The man who once had nothing left to offer me is now using the word spectacular. No heart failure. No symptoms. And this is a heart that's been carrying more than usual lately...selling a house we'd lived in for over 25 years, packing up an entire life to move to a new city, all while I'm in the middle of planning international advocacy trips to Australia and Ireland. My body handling all of that, workouts included, without blinking. We even talked about which medications I might get to drop, because that's how good things look right now. He congratulated me on staying consistent with exercise. I sat there thinking: this is the same heart that once had nothing left to give. Now it's outperforming the room.
For a moment, all that panic in the car felt almost silly.
Except it wasn't silly at all.
I think what I was really grieving wasn't the loss of a doctor. It was the fear of losing a witness, someone who has seen every version of me through this journey, from the sickest I've ever been to the strongest I feel today. Twenty-three years is a long time to be known that well by anyone, let alone by someone whose job was literally to keep me alive.
Moving is full of these moments nobody warns you about. It's not just packing boxes and closing on a house. It's realizing how many invisible threads are tied to a place a doctor who's been in your corner for decades, a drive you've made a hundred times, a version of "home" you're about to leave for good.
I don't have a neat lesson to wrap this up with. Just this: sometimes the goodbye you're bracing for isn't actually a goodbye. Sometimes it's just a change in distance and you get to decide it's still worth the drive.
See you in six months, Dr. Beglin. Same as always. Just from a little further away now.