The Doctors
Guest Stories Vol. 3
In our 5 years at the hotel, we met a lot of interesting guests. Not everyone was strange. As Mark has said, we also met enough doctors to fill a stadium, but not all were like the ‘interesting’ Iranian doctor, Farhad.
Here are a few interesting stories about some other really cool doctors we met! (At least I thought they were cool and interesting!)
Dr. Vicky
One of the 1st guests I remember was a couple from Canada who came to the hotel in early 2018. Every morning, they would be sitting by the pool reading books. I asked them if they had any plans for their stay. Did they want to hike? Zipline? ATV? Nope, they were content reading.
They told me they just wanted to relax for the week. Their jobs were quite busy, and they just wanted to read the books they brought. They apologized for not “wanting to do anything”.
I don’t remember his name, but he had a quiet personality and a taste for craft beer. He was some sort of farmer. When I asked what she did, she seemed to skirt around the answer.
As an avid reader myself, each day I’d ask Vicky what she was reading. After a few more days, she finally shared that she was a breast cancer oncologist and that she had been very busy. She said that she was seeing a trend of much younger patients and that she needed a mental break. She was content to spend her vacation reading and looking at the beautiful ocean.
I asked her how she got through hard times with patients.
She told me about a book that a friend had gifted her awhile back. She told me that she reads this book each year because it keeps her moving forward. Reading this book helps remind her to be grateful each day as she is surrounded by suffering and challenges with patients. It had changed her perspective.
The name of the book is the Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan. Vicky told me in each chapter the author chooses something different to focus her gratitude on and spent a year being consciously grateful for things that she might have overlooked or taken for granted before.
Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. -Marcel Proust
I downloaded the book immediately! After moving to a foreign country, experiencing a perfect storm, and getting ready for the hotel remodel - I needed it!
In the book’s epilogue, the author was asked what she hopes readers will take away from her book. She says, “Life is random, and we can’t control the events that occur. But we can control our own attitudes, moods and perspectives - and that makes a bigger difference than almost anything else. Gratitude gives you the ability to find good even in situations where it’s not obvious.”
Thanks Dr. Vicky for sharing this little nugget with me! I sure hope you and your craft-beer-loving hubby are doing well and you are saving many lives in Canada!
Dr. Billy
Another interesting couple we met was Dr. Billy and his wife Kimberley from a small town in South Carolina. We found out that Billy grew up in this small town and after completing medical school, he returned to be the rural town’s local doctor. Maybe not so unusual, except for what they told us next.
About 20 years ago, Dr. Billy and Kimberley founded Memorial Ecosystems and the Ramsey Creek Preserve, the first conservation burial ground in the United States. (A what? Yep, that's what I asked!)
Conservation burials offer an end-of-life alternative in which the body is buried in its natural state in a protected natural area. No embalming chemicals, no casket, no burial vault, no tombstone, no wasted land or other resources. The preserve was formed to harness the funeral industry for land protection and restoration, and to provide a less expensive, more environmentally and socially responsible burial option.1
This was new to me. As they described in more detail what it was, the returning of the body to the earth in this burial process was incredible. I was amazed! It didn’t sound creepy or weird. It sounded beautiful.
Conservation burial is natural burial that serves a higher, significant conservation purpose - one that makes a significant contribution to conservation and sustainability. Dr. Billy developed the standards for conservation burial.2
Think of it not like a traditional cemetery, but a nature preserve with trails, ponds, forests, and flowers that is protected in perpetuity and is used to restore the earth using our natural resources-ourselves!
“A rock decays and forms soil. In the soil grows an oak, which bears an acorn, which feeds a squirrel, which feeds an Indian, who ultimately lays him down to his last sleep in the great tomb of man - to grow another oak.”
—Aldo Leopold
Since I now lived in this beautiful Costa Rican landscape, I was more appreciative of the natural surroundings around me. I never understood the expansive use of land for traditional cemeteries, so I now could see how this burial concept and the preservation of our natural resources was so important!
This may or may not be for you, but as stewards of our earth, we were happy to find out about this.
Thanks Dr. Billy and Kimberley for being forerunners in this important conservation initiative! I hope you are continuing your wonderful work to save more resources and show people that there are other burial options.
Dr. Nick
In January 2021, reopening the hotel post-covid (more on that to come!) was a challenge in its own right, but for people on the front lines they really needed a vacation. Just like Dr. Vicky and her husband, Dr. Nick and his wife Nicole were quiet.
Because of the pandemic, they had to postpone their initial trip to visit the hotel and were just now getting the chance for a vacation. She told me that he had been very busy during Covid, and they were hoping his schedule would settle down so they could start a family.
Sitting at our hotel’s bar for happy hour was always an enjoyable time for me and Mark (and not just because of the incredible cocktails!). We consistently heard amazing stories about the lives of our guests. After a few nights at happy hour, Dr. Nick finally let his guard down and relaxed a bit. He told us that he worked as an ER doctor in the south Bronx (NYC) where Covid had hit hard early.3
In early 2020, he was working round-the-clock seeing hundreds of patients who were in acute respiratory distress. Because of their low oxygen levels, many of these patients needed to be put on a ventilator. And once they were put on a ventilator, many never recovered.
Dr. Nick’s team followed 50 patients who were admitted to the hospital with low oxygen levels. Their team was the first to discover (and publish the research) that showed by proning patients (turning them on their stomachs) that they could delay or even prevent patients from being put on a ventilator.4 What? Wow!
Proning is now a standard treatment for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome who have low oxygen levels.5 During lockdown, I had read about this development, but to meet the doctor who made this breakthrough discovery - so amazing! I could see why he wanted a restful vacation!
Thanks Dr. Nick for this discovery for patients everywhere and I hope in these past few years you and Nicole have been able to start a family!
I think about these 6 people (3 doctors and their 3 spouses) often and I hope they are continuing their amazing work.
People often ask us if we miss owning the hotel. I tell them there are things we miss and things we don’t. One of the things we miss a lot is meeting interesting people from all over the world and hearing their stories. They truly inspired me. I hope these stories inspire you too!
https://www.atria.org/institute/nicholas-d.-caputo/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7283629/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7652705/