My Path to Self-Acceptance: Recognizing the Beauty of Asymmetry

At the age of 21, I was in my third year of medical school, living in my own house, feeling blessed to have a loving family and trusted group of friends. But whenever I had to face myself alone, a gross sadness would swell up in me because I was suffering from chronic arthritic pain in my left shoulder with no end in sight.

The arthritis cut like razor blades into my nerve fibers, which incessantly sent pain signals to my brain. I willed the pain to end but, of course, it never did. Sleep was a struggle – I could never seem to get more than a few hours of rest a night. When I was with family, friends, and even strangers, I tried my best to be present, but the fire I felt in my shoulder would inevitably distract me. I’d end up spiraling into depression, left to wonder if I could ever be truly happy while in a constant state of physical and mental pain.

For the first time in my adult life, I understood what it meant to feel hopeless. I started having dark thoughts about ending my own life.

I remember being so confused – I did not actually want to die. I loved my family. I had life plans. I wanted to be a successful physician. But somehow that wasn’t enough to deter the daily looping thoughts of stepping into the abyss. After learning that physicians are more at risk to commit suicide than the general population, I realized I was in a dangerous situation, extremely scared of myself, and needed to figure out what I could do to be happy.

Who is actually happy? I asked myself. Not superficially happy, but rather the quieter kind of happiness that exists when you are purely content. Does anyone have the inner peace we all wish for? From my cynical point of view at that time, it seemed like life was all about suffering.

I tried hard to distract myself – repeatedly battering my body with every sport that I loved, from hockey, snowboarding, dirt biking, and, worst of all, wakeboarding – but these distractions would only temporarily numb the pain, and then it would flare up with a vengeance. The combination of adrenaline and entering the momentary flow state was always enough to keep me turning back to sports no matter how much pain was guaranteed.

After these injuries, my shoulder would slide out of its joint whenever I would simply lie down. I lived in constant fear of when I would next dislocate my shoulder. I wanted it fixed but was intimidated by the thought of going under the blade at such a young age.

An orthopedic surgeon evaluated my shoulder then informed me of the risks of surgery. Because I had such faith in the medical system, I didn’t even question him, believing those rare complications would never happen to me. He scheduled me for the procedure date.

I arrived at Saskatoon’s St. Paul’s Hospital feeling anxious, excited, and nervous.

I underwent all of the nursing staff’s routine examinations, making sure my vitals were still within the acceptable range to undergo surgery. I changed into the patterned blue hospital gown and waited until the surgeon came to sign my left shoulder (to identify it as the correct one for surgery) before I was wheeled into the operating room.

When I woke up in the recovery room, I was informed that everything went according to “plan,” and a wave or relief swept over me! I wore a sling for 6 weeks and started full-time physiotherapy. I felt a greater sense of motivation than ever before. And the news was good: my muscles were healing faster than expected.

Then, 7 months into recovery, I felt a gnawing pain in my shoulder. At first I was merely frustrated by it, attributing it to overuse and committing to rest for a few days. But the next time I tried to actively use my limb the pain only grew worse. Immediately, I booked an appointment to see the orthopedic surgeon, who was at a complete loss as to why my seemingly successful recovery had failed. This was the first time I started to realize the limitations of conventional Western medicine that, until that point, had provided solutions to my asthma, allergies, and any other ailment I had successfully dealt with. From then on I experienced persistent and elevated levels of pain in my shoulder, not to mention continuing depths of depression.

Having increased limitations placed on my range of motion, I set out in search of an explanation.

In October 2006, a year after my surgery, I visited a shoulder specialist in Toronto. The surgeon, who was renowned for his shoulder replacements, informed me – in the most sterile manner I have ever encountered – that my options included a joint replacement, joint fusion, or nothing at all. He did not even venture to guess what caused the unexpected breakdown of my recovery.

Seriously? I thought to myself. I knew that surgeons couldn’t allow emotional connections with their patients lest they compromise their ability, but the distance I felt between his perception and my own left me feeling outright suspicious and distrustful of his opinion. I left his office feeling lost, wondering if I would have to forever live with the shoulder of a 95-year-old severely arthritic person.

I decided to keep searching. There had to be more options. At age 19, a joint replacement that would only last 5 to 10 years in an active person – if I were lucky – was out of the question. And I would not even consider fusion.

Still, no one could tell me what was wrong. It was like being in the Twilight Zone of orthopedics. Why was it that the best-rated surgeons in the country could not explain how a routine operation had resulted in such a ravaged joint?

The answer was finally given to me when I visited another orthopedic surgeon in Houston, Texas. After undergoing the full gamut of X-rays, I was brought into his office. The doctor had a gentle demeanor as he began to speak, which I immediately sensed would end in disappointment. When he finally arrived at the line that temporarily froze time, he was very direct: “You have a physical handicap that will live with you for the rest of your life.” My thoughts began to race. Did I hear him right? I looked at my parents for their reactions. The stunned looks on their faces told me immediately that they had heard the same incomprehensible diagnosis.

The surgeon told me that I had no cartilage in my shoulder, that he was not sure why but that potentially it was related to the pain pump used after my surgery, and that the risk to me during another surgical operation was too great. He finished off by saying that he wouldn’t attempt anything that could so easily damage nerves, leaving my arm paralyzed.

Walking out of his office, I felt trapped in the grip of despair. Tears started to stream down my face. The warm embrace of my parents helped to console me in that moment, but I knew my life had abruptly changed.

Despite the new diagnosis of my physical disability, I returned home to take on a full class load at the University of Saskatchewan. I clung to my dream of entering medical school the following year. Heartbreakingly, however, there was rarely a moment when my shoulder didn’t disrupt my ability to live a full and happy life. I prayed to find a someone who could offer an effective treatment.

In 2007, I was finally given an answer as to the cause of the death of my cartilage. A class action lawsuit was put forward in the United States. Thousands of cases just like mine were induced after the use of a device called the Pain Pump (PP). The PP, invented by Don Joy, had been employed for many years with nary a red flag raised: a small plastic cylinder was designed to sit on the sling and deliver a constant flow of medication (Marcaine mixed with epinephrine) through a thin plastic catheter for approximately 72 hours to alleviate the most painful part of post-operation recovery.

I vividly remember my orthopedic surgeon, meeting me in his office for one final consultation before the surgery, suggesting this device as an option for pain relief. According to him, there was no large risk to be concerned with, certainly nothing more than any other routine medication that would be used. The decision to use this expensive device was ultimately left up to me. Since I trusted the advice of my surgeon, who reassured me that patients had tolerated the device well, I decided to go for it.

When I look back, I want to shake my old self and scream: Anything that seems too good to be true IS too good to be true! Especially when it is making a large pharmaceutical company money!

I was left wondering: Do I blame the surgeon? Do I blame the pharmaceutical company? Do I blame myself? It’s a doctor’s job to know the risks of the medications they are using to treat their patients, but these risks are only communicated through the results of drug trials, and since these risks were not reported to the surgeons, it was obviously not the surgeon’s fault. The more research that I did into the product and its history, the more it became clear that nothing is transparent with medications.

In the class action lawsuit filed against Don Joy, of which I was a part, they were successfully sued in both Canada and the U.S. for not properly warning physicians and patients about the risks of their product. In Saskatoon alone, 26 people were involved in the lawsuit that was filed in 2012 and finally completed in 2017.

While it was satisfying to see a company being held accountable for their actions, the monetary payout couldn’t come near to making amends for the disfigurement it caused. More troubling was that surgeons across North America were still using the PP – I wanted to do everything in my power to help put a stop to it.

I was dumbfounded that even after all of this noise surgeons would still risk causing chondrolysis in their patients, especially young athletes, to prevent a few days of pain. The litigation cases weren’t enough. The medical community needed proof. In a world full of confounding information, trying to come to a conclusion about any cause and effect can seem like a philosophical chicken-and-egg debate. Think about it: How long did it take to prove cigarettes caused cancer? Technically, we can’t even prove they cause cancer because not everyone who smokes will get the disease, so all we can say is that smoking is highly correlated to an increased risk of cancer, among many other diseases. When fighting the power of deep pockets in a world dominated by the all-mighty dollar, one can become very cynical.

I was placed in a study designed to see if there was a statistically significant association between the PP and the arthritis in my shoulder and thousands of other people suffering from cartilage loss following use of the PP.

I contacted several other people whose lives had been changed by the PP. One man was forced into Workers Compensation because his limitation in movement as well as his chronic pain prevented him from continuing his trade as a welder. His sad voice on the phone sent a chill down my spine, making me wonder if it really was better to suffer together rather than alone. A 13-year-old girl had the PP inserted into her knee. My shoulder was bad enough; I couldn’t imagine how she would deal with this diagnosis so early in life.

I kept searching for answers and a possibility for change, which led me back to the U.S. for a meeting with two orthopedic surgeons, one in Chicago and one in Boston.

The surgeon in Boston had seen a few cases like mine but was reluctant to speculate whether the PP was the cause of the problem. He offered to open up my shoulder to replace the now jagged humeral head with a smooth metal cap. I would still be devoid of cartilage, but he believed it would help with the pain and potentially improve my movement. I wasn’t sold.

The surgeon in Chicago offered the most radical surgery, a biological shoulder replacement. This would require a two-part surgery: 1) he would go in arthroscopically and measure all parts of the joint and then enter the information into a donor databank; and 2) when a tissue donor – who had the same size of humeral head as my own – died, they would extract the bone, treat it so that there was no live biological tissue left in it, and then test it for possible transmitted disease. If all was well, the surgeon would saw off the top of my humeral head and replace it with this cadaver bone that was somewhere between alive and dead. To compensate for the loss of cartilage, he would take the meniscus (cartilage from the cadaver knee) and shape and suture it into the place of my glenoid fossa, where my native chondrocytes used to provide natural cushioning for my joint.

I underwent the first surgery that had relatively low risks, and thankfully it was successful. I was entered into the tissue donor data bank, and only had to let them know when I was ready for the second phase of the operation that would render me part Frankenstein.

My trust in the Chicago surgeon was based solely on gut instinct (the fact he cared for the Chicago Bulls and White Sox also helped). But he had also only done twelve of these procedures, and so he had no long-term results to reference. He was also only one of two surgeons in the country who had performed this radical biological joint replacement. I knew I would eventually need to get my shoulder replaced, so I went back to Saskatoon and pondered when would be a good time to put my life in this surgeon’s hands again.

I was in Chicago the night after my surgery when I received an e-mail informing me of my acceptance into the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine. I was ecstatic! Even though my own health was at an all-time low, I believed this educational opportunity would motivate me to power through my pain to help improve the lives of others.

The summer before I began my medical training, the limitations of my shoulder dragged me deep into a depression, as I quit lifting weights and most of the activities that I loved. My stubborn nature forced me onto a wakeboard, but the result was always an exacerbation of the pain that then led me to retreat inward. Questions swirled inside me: Could I ever forgive the Western medical system enough to be a part of it? Would my resentment hinder my ability to become a surgeon? I had dreamed of operating on people’s brains since I was 8. I decided that I was not going to let my physical limitations stop me now.

I started medical school optimistically expecting that the journey would allow me freedom from myself. Luckily, my physical limitations didn’t seem to inhibit my ability to work with my hands, and during surgery I could keep my shoulder in a comfortable position, tucked gently against my side. However, my life outside of school quite often felt like a struggle. As soon as my mind was not occupied, it would jump directly on the dark hamster wheel inside my head. The neurons inside my brain spun into a knot around caustic thoughts I desperately wished someone could help me untie. I tried to hide my pain, but those who knew me were able to see the sadness in my eyes.

In second-year medical school, it became clear to me that I could never be a surgeon. Even though I loved surgery, numerous aspects of the profession that did not suit me: the hours were onerous; there were constant battles with the system for O.R. time; and at times it seemed as though it would be impossible for me to stay healthy in the pressurized environment.

Instead of surgically repairing people, I decided that I wanted to help people optimize their health. I was motivated to help prevent people from requiring pharmaceuticals or ending up under the knife in the first place. This change in perspective was exciting but also filled me with more questions: Could I actually be a family doctor and eventually specialize in integrative medicine? The idea scared me! The diversity of knowledge required to become a general practitioner of medicine was daunting. However, the more I accepted that this path would best allow me to help people, the more I knew it would ultimately make me the happiest and, therefore, the most successful spiritually.

My shift in purpose made no difference to the pain I was suffering. I woke up several times a night, especially when I was laying the wrong way on my shoulder. I started to think more about the surgery that had been proposed to me in Chicago. When I brought the idea up with my parents, they were extremely nervous that I would be a test subject for a new operation. I went back to the orthopedic surgeon in Saskatoon whom I originally saw, and he warned me against the new procedure, citing the enormous risks. One of the worst complications included the possibility of “non-union” between the cadaver bone and my humerus bone. In other words, my body might reject the donor bone, and I would be even worse off than before.

I needed some aid to reduce the pain, but all Western medicine could offer was more surgery and medication, which was the original cause of my problem. There had to be some alternatives that had yet to be presented to me. What existed before this current insanity that’s seemingly removed the human part of health care? The more I researched, the more it became apparent that all other methods of healing would require long, dedicated work toward self-improvement. At this point, I was desperate to end the physical and mental torture I was experiencing.

Online searches revealed that yoga, meditation, acupuncture, and several other ancient healing practices had been working for thousands of years, but I was skeptical that they would have any effect on me. Why did I need to practice breathing? Wasn’t this something that the reptilian part of my brain had evolved to do subconsciously so I could focus on higher levels of cognitive functioning? It seemed like a huge leap of faith that I could learn how to “control” my reaction to pain, but there was only one way to find out.

One pivotal point of in my life occurred at Canyon Ranch Health Resort in Tucson, Arizona. This facility offered a “life enhancement course” that included a medical education credit, so I was able to attend it as part of my medical school training. The program taught the basics of integrative medicine, an idea that was, at the time, completely foreign to me. Integrative medicine is defined as “whole person healing” that considers physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being as the four pillars that equally affect your overall state of health. To put it simply: it is the combination of the best evidence-based healing methods combined from conventional medicine and complementary and alternative methods.

What did integrative medicine even mean by spiritual health? Spirituality is very different from religion. I interpret spiritual health as an understanding of what gives you purpose in life. What, and where, are your intentions? This could be your family, friends, religion, or whatever else motivates you to get out of bed and contribute to the functioning of the universe. My week in Tucson was filled with lectures from amazing healers that touched on everything from diet and exercise to understanding the importance of actively relaxing using a form of meditation during your conscious hours of the day.

That week I had the opportunity to meet with a yoga teacher and receive two lessons working on postures to help increase my shoulder movement while simultaneously decreasing my pain. These lessons made it clear that yoga can help every “body.” Several meditation classes introduced me to the practice in a way that excited me. I wondered what a new sense of “awareness” could do. I met with a “soul coach” who walked me through a Shamanic journey that twisted and turned through my consciousness, identifying events, relationships, and other sources of baggage that were preventing my personal growth.

At the end of the week, everyone who was in the coarse made a verbal pledge to enact the changes that would improve their quality of life. This act came as a surprise to me, but when it was my turn to give my pledge, my inner voice, prompted by the desire to gain peace quickly, prompted me to proclaim to everyone in my group: “I will meditate and practice yoga every morning and night before I go to bed.”

A simple statement but, for me, a major commitment.

At first, I felt silly repeating the mantra we learned in the course: “May I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be free from suffering.” I never believed in this type of self-help advice before, but my desperation motivated me to soften my ego and give it an honest attempt. When I returned home, I continued attending regular yoga classes, and it wasn’t long before I felt positive effects. For the first time in my life, I was making time every day to stretch my injured body, bringing increased blood flow to the areas littered with scar tissue instead of just pounding away at sports that inevitably pained me.

Practicing meditation revealed my “monkey mind,” something I had never noticed before. The difficulty of focusing on a single phrase without disruptive thoughts getting in the way was shocking to me. From where does a thought arise? Where does it go when you stop paying attention to it? I became even more frustrated when I practiced breathing awareness meditation. Why was it so difficult to simply observe my breathing? Why could I never stop thinking? Then it dawned on me that I was like a baby taking my first steps or, more appropriately, a baby learning how to crawl. Never before had I practiced slowing my thoughts. Why would I? What advantage could this offer me? School was always about learning something new; sports required constant analysis; in bed at night my thoughts would continue until dreamland took over. I wondered if I had ever experienced one moment of life without thought.

As my crawl into new territory turned into steps, I was able to maintain awareness of my breathing, or a focused stream of thought, for up to 10 seconds before something would pop up that was infinitely more interesting to my consciousness than my breath. One of the most important lessons I learned through books, teachers, and practice was not to react with frustration or anger when my thoughts would interrupt my focus but to simply shift my awareness back to my breathing without judgment.

The simple practice of breath awareness meditation for 10 minutes a day has now been scientifically proven to reduce anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, insomnia, and many other challenges we face. The benefits of yoga are very similar. And both of these practices gave me tools to look inside myself and see what was causing so much pain and suffering — to see how my focus on temporary illusions that would never bring contentment had left me feeling imbalanced. For the first time, I realized that I had developed a spiritual practice that gave me the pragmatic sense to know myself and understand the world.

I learned that I am the constant medium through which I experience the world. No matter where I go, there I am. All of my memories are just that: mine. The stories I created involving other people were written by me. From that point on, I knew that before placing blame on anyone else I needed to take a moment and assess what role I was playing in my problems.

After months of engaging in this new spiritual practice, the shift that occurred in me was no magical moment of enlightenment experienced by Buddha, or a path to silent meditation like Eckhart Tolle, but a sense that I could finally accept myself for who I am, decrepit shoulder and all. I was grateful to finally experience this type of contentment.

Once I was able to accept the pain in my shoulder, I started to approach my life differently. I began to think about how this injury, which I thought was ruining my life, was actually the catalyst that helped me gain a sense of peace and understanding. Without the challenge of this physical limitation, I likely would have remained ignorant of the importance of spirituality and spiritual practice.

Did my pain disappear? No. But for the first time since my arthritis started 5 years earlier, there were now moments throughout the day when I would experience a sense of awareness that was devoid of physical discomfort.

As I have continued practicing yoga – which for me is a form of moving meditation and encompasses breath awareness meditation, walking meditation, and daily prayer – I have come to recognize that, just like every other word or sound vibration, it carries a different meaning for everyone. I now think of meditation as anything that enables a person to feel fully present in the moment – in mind, body, and spirit. There is no single practice that will work for everyone, but every individual needs something in their life that allows them to obtain peace over past failures and future anxieties. Something that allows them to enjoy the present.

From my experience, in order to be able to evaluate whether or not meditation practice works for you, you will need at least one month of daily practice. Yoga is defined in so many different ways, but, at its essence, it means to unite mind body and spirit. It is so important to find a teacher with whom you can connect and a style that serves to heal your body. Whatever form of sacred movement you connect with will link your movements to your breathing and remind you that you are dependent on the surrounding spirit, God, universe, or whatever you wish to call the essence of life.

It can be so easy to worry about everything from what to eat, to the purpose of life, to what clothes to wear, to what the person standing next to us thinks. I try to let all of that go. For me, peace is now found in moments where life is simple and silence exists. (That silence exists in every one of us and can only be discovered through a dedicated search of our own souls. Once you experience it, that silence becomes a remembrance, rather than a search. But that’s a blog post for another day.)

My physical limitation, among many other lessons and experiences, has taught me the beauty of asymmetry. I can remember being a teenager in high school, staring in the mirror, criticizing the side of my face that had an eyelid that drooped a little lower, facial muscles that were lazy when smiling, and scars from past injuries. I didn’t like that it wasn’t an identical match to the other side, or my “better” side. Then, when I was 19 and could no longer lift my shoulder more than a few inches before feeling it grind to a halt, it was the atrophy of my upper body that tormented me whenever I had to face a mirror. I stopped this depressing and vain activity after I read an article on how asymmetry is not only synonymous to all people but that a lot of “the most beautiful people” (like the ones found on the cover of GQ or Vogue) have very obvious differences on opposing sides of their anatomical midline.

It dawned on me: if I was symmetrical, I would be boring. If I were perfect, there would be nothing left to strive for – I would have no purpose. I realized how ignorant I was in demonizing my flaws. They are the very characteristics that offer me opportunity for growth. Imperfections are what make us who we are. How we deal with the difficult parts of life is what will define our true character.

Fifteen years after being diagnosed with chronic pain I have come to realize that what I once felt was my greatest weakness has truly become one of my greatest sources of strength. My pain motivated me to complete the Integrative Medicine fellowship in February 2022 and to become a recognized pain specialist by the Saskatchewan Medical Association in October 2022. I now focus a large portion of my medical practice to creating personalized, evidence-informed treatment plans for my patients.

If I have learned anything so far, it is that life is one continuous lesson.