A novel about an old man who buys portraits and gives them back to the people in them, and what it taught me about the kind of practice I want to run.
I've been thinking about an old album lately. Cyndi Lauper's At Last. Not the record everyone knows her for, but the one I remember hearing and just knowing I was on a roller coaster. You could feel it in the music: you may go up, you may go down, but until you actually went through it, you couldn't know where you were. You had to trust the ride.
That's how I felt reading Theo of Golden.
I didn't know Allen Levi's novel when I started it. I just opened the pages knowing I was strapping in for something, anticipating the highs and lows. The story is simple: an old man arrives in a small Southern town and buys portraits of people from a local coffee shop. He tracks down the subjects and gives them their own portraits. That's it.
But the real story is what happens in those moments, when people are suddenly looked at. Really looked at. Not summed up or judged or fixed. Just seen.
By the end, when you get off the ride, you're speechless. Confused. Content. Consternated. Different.
A colleague gave me the best advice before I finished it: "You'll know when you're there, but enjoy the end alone, when you have time to process."
She was right.
What I Want This Practice to Feel Like
I'm sharing this with you because this is what I want our practice to feel like.
Not a checklist. Not a diagnosis. Not another number in a chart. You, being seen.
In the noise and speed of modern medicine, you learn to present symptoms, not stories. You compress yourself into chief complaints. You stop expecting to be known. And slowly, you stop showing up as yourself at all.
Direct care is different, or at least it's supposed to be. It's built on the radical idea that you don't need to earn being seen. You're not one of sixty patients in a day. You're not trying to fit your complexity into fifteen minutes. You come in, the time is yours, and you matter enough that I'm not managing you toward an insurance company's algorithm. I'm managing you toward you.
That takes vulnerability from both of us. You have to risk being actually known, not just diagnosed. And I have to actually look, the way Theo looks: with curiosity instead of answers already lined up.
If you've felt that difference in our time together, you know what I mean. If you haven't yet, I hope you will. That's the whole point.
Read It If You Can
Read Theo of Golden if you get the chance. You can read a few pages a day and take six months, or find yourself in front of a fire on a winter evening and devour it in six hours. Either way, you won't be disappointed. It's a book about what happens when someone actually sees you.
That's what we're building here.
— Dr. Brian
If you'd like a doctor who has the time to know you, I'd be glad to meet you. Book a free discovery call.
Brian Bost, MD, MPH, is the physician behind B2 Direct Care, a physician-led, solo DpC micropractice in Denver, Colorado.
