About the Author
Lawrence Mieczkowski, MD, (Dr. Mitch) is an award-winning physician, speaker, and author. Growing up in the gritty rust belt town of Steubenville, Ohio, he made his way through many obstacles to become recognized for his academic and leadership skills, including being rewarded with a full scholarship to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Through high school and college, his life experiences were broadened through working weekends and holidays as a nurse’s aide in the local hospital and working summers in a steel mill or as an iron worker in a chemical plant.
After graduating from CMU in 1978, he completed medical school at the University of Cincinnati before pursuing an internal medicine residency and additional research in heart disease prevention. Since 1988, when he was selected by the National Institutes of Health for a leadership role educating other physicians, Dr. Mitch became a sought-after speaker on a variety of medical topics in the US, Canada, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, and other lower Gulf nations. He is the author or coauthor of numerous scientific articles and op-eds, including a viral HuffPost piece that recounted his own near-death experience in the healthcare system. He lives with his wife in Ohio.
Where I Am Today
How the years fly by!
My long-term plan to retire at age 66 and sell my private practice was shattered by the hemorrhage I experienced after a colonoscopy on Friday, December 15, 2017, which nearly cost me my life. Being in prolonged shock and losing half of my blood volume had damaged my heart muscle, leaving me with heart failure. Despite the damage, over the months, I fought to maintain the same patient load in my practice, but the long days, worsening stress, and other responsibilities caused my health to deteriorate.
Consultations with cardiologists in Cincinnati and at the Mayo Clinic offered no hope of restoring normal heart function but doctors suggested the possibility of slowing or stopping the progression of the condition. When Dr. Kurt Fleagle, my primary care internal medicine physician, looked up from his computer during one of my visits and said, “Mitch, you need to stop working,” although crestfallen, I was too exhausted to argue anymore. It was a short drive back to my office where I shared the news with Joey, my wife and office manager. We both were tearful, not knowing what the future would bring and thinking of the unspoken—whether I would survive. I knew that 50 percent of individuals with heart failure pass away within five years. Would I be one of those? The fear, sadness, and anger over what had happened to me was overwhelming for both of us.
July 2024. Author and Joey on way to anniversary dinner.
October 2024. Beautiful fall landscape in Adams County, Ohio. Site of Murphin Ridge Inn, a wonderful B and B with cabins in the woods and amazing food in the old farm house.
The next six months were some of the most difficult in my professional career but also greatly affected my wife’s stress levels as we began the process of closing the practice, copying medical records, and finding someone to take over the lease for the office. I continued to see patients and transferred them to other physicians while also pursuing disability. There were many days when Joey and I returned home after 7:30 p.m. and collapsed from physical and mental exhaustion.
As difficult as the transition was, we completed all of the steps needed to close a medical practice by October 2018. To achieve some sense of closure, we decided to have a retirement party at a local venue and invited about 200 of my long-standing patients, some of whom I had treated for 20–30 years. Trying to greet everyone while standing was quickly replaced by my sitting in a chair because of my heart failure as the attendees stood in line for us to exchange regards for one another. Many of us choked back tears as I wished each of them goodbye. I could see and feel their warmth towards me as their doctor but also as a friend.
Fortunately, I listened to my financial advisor in 1990 and signed up for a personal disability insurance plan. When I was young and healthy, it was easy to pretend that I wouldn’t need it. Then, over the years when money was tight, I questioned whether I could save money by cancelling the plan and saving the monthly premium. But the nearly thirty-year-old policy provided the cushion that we needed to make it through the difficult time.
The first two years after the hemorrhage were difficult for us. The heart failure made everything challenging. I was balancing all the medications and constantly assessing how I felt and what I could do or not do anymore. Lifting eighty pound blocks of sandstone for a walkway in the yard was no longer possible. After a stent was placed to open up a blocked artery in my heart in 2022 and another procedure to correct a heart arrhythmia in 2023, I began to slowly feel better. My stamina improved and the brain fog that I had experienced for years improved.
As a result, Joey and I began to travel more frequently. Stress levels for both of us were much lower. Since I was able to do more for myself and had fewer health problems, Joey was able to resume volunteering for the Loveland, Ohio, LIFE Food Pantry, a volunteer organization dear to her heart. She is very involved with the organization and is now an administrative assistant for the pantry.
Loveland, Ohio, Food Pantry.
Typing away in my home office.
Since I began counseling in 2001, I have had a number of starts and stops in writing my memoir. I just couldn’t capture on paper the abuse and trauma that I had experienced in my life and how I thrived despite the challenges. In the spring of 2023, I decided to write an article about what happened to me in December 2017 when I nearly died after a hemorrhage. I was thrilled when Noah Michelson, editor of HuffPost’s personal section, accepted the article for publication. It was even more rewarding when the article became the top story trending within hours of its release, eventually reaching over 1.7 million viewers.
The response to my article propelled me forward on writing my memoir, The Room on the Right, working with Kevin Anderson & Associates in New York on the manuscript over a six-month period. I also began consulting with Renew Now CE, a company that develops continuing education for healthcare providers, on course planning, development, authoring, and updating existing courses.
I’ve been busy over the past two years with the book and working on continuing education courses, replacing my stethoscope with the computer and using the knowledge gained over the past forty years as a physician. Ideas for a second book percolate in my head as we work on bringing The Room on the Right to publication. So, please stay tuned to the website for additional blogs on various health topics, the newsletter, and events where I am doing book signings and giving presentations.
I hope you will travel along with me on this journey! It’s sure to be an interesting path.