Those words ring loud and true when you work in healthcare. You’re always trying improve people’s lives, but what you’re really doing is postponing the inevitable–death.

While losing someone in their golden years is hard, it’s much easier to accept as part of life.  They’ve enjoyed life and now it’s time to move on.  However, subtract a few decades from someone’s life expectancy and things get harder.

I lost my mom to cancer when I was 16. She was only 44. As a teacher, pastor’s wife, and mother of 2, she was exactly the type of person others admired.  I was always amazed by not just the difference she made in my sister and I’s lives, but how many other lives she touched through her teaching, mentoring, and friendship. She actually kept teaching fulltime about one month until her death, which shows just how much she enjoyed teaching. People always ask, “Why does someone that young have to die?” We don’t know.  Having studied cancer for many years, I know why on the molecular level but I don’t know why on the spiritual.

These questions hit me hard again this past Friday.  I found out that Dr. Hartigan, the surgeon who had repaired by collarbone after my crash in May (you can see his handiwork on my blog’s background), passed away this week from adrenal cancer.  He was only 40. I was very shocked since he had looked to be doing fine during all of my visits with him.  In fact, he usually had 1-2 surgical residents in tow and was very animated explaining my case to them. You could tell how much he loved teaching.  It’s amazing how you would never have expected that this was a man deep in the throes of fighting cancer. However, I knew someone wrong when I went in for my final followup last week and the staff said he was on indefinite medical leave.  The look on their faces told me everything. Sadly, he lost the battle.  The similarities between his life and my mom’s was very similar, which is probably why learning of his death hit me.

I’ve posted a copy of his obituary below from the Chicago Tribune website and remind you to enjoy life while you can, because we all know that Life’s Too Short.

Dr. Brian J. Hartigan 1968 – 2008
Orthopedic surgeon, teacher
Northwestern University medical school doctor was president of his practice in Chicago and an award-winning educator

By Trevor Jensen
September 25, 2008

Dr. Brian J. Hartigan spelled out his desire to be a doctor in crayon when he was just a boy. Drawn to the complexity of hand and wrist surgery as a medical resident, he was a popular teacher at Northwestern University’s medical school and president of a Chicago orthopedic practice.

Dr. Hartigan, 40, died Tuesday, Sept. 23, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after a yearlong struggle with adrenal cancer, said his wife, Pamela. He lived in Glenview.

After receiving his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Hartigan completed his internship and a residency in orthopedic surgery at Northwestern, where he was a chief resident in 1998. He then attended a fellowship in hand surgery in Cincinnati.

The 27 bones of the hand and wrist were compelling material for a physician of Dr. Hartigan’s meticulous nature, said his wife and a colleague.

“It allowed him to do things to reconstruct and help people,” said Dr. Charles Carroll, who taught Dr. Hartigan at Northwestern and was a colleague in his practice, the Northwestern Orthopaedic Institute. “The complexity of it, that attracted him from a thought process.”

“He always said ‘Everybody needs their hands,’ ” his wife said.

A teacher at Northwestern since completing his fellowship in 2000, Dr. Hartigan was patient and compassionate with students and residents, and developed a curriculum in hand surgery that Carroll said will probably be used for years to come.

“He was able to make topics come alive,” and he spoke to fledgling physicians in a manner “appropriate to their level of understanding,” Carroll said.

Dr. Hartigan was given the James K. Stack Teacher of the Year Award at Northwestern’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery in 2004. Last year, the group of nine residents he worked with gave him their Tenth Man Award, presented to the doctor who they felt best helped them through their residency.

Dr. Hartigan was born in Evergreen Park and grew up in Olympia Fields before his father, an executive with Amoco, was transferred to the East Coast. He was barely in grade school when he decided he was going to be a doctor.

“We have him writing in crayon that he wanted to be a doctor,” his wife said.

Dr. Hartigan went to high school in Maryland but returned to the Midwest to complete a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

As an intern and resident, he volunteered on the medical staff for football at Evanston Township High School and North Shore Country Day School, as well as at the Midlands Wrestling Tournament at Northwestern.

Dr. Hartigan also is survived by two sons, Connor and John; a daughter, Hannah; his parents, John and Cecelia; a brother, Michael; and a sister, Laura Lukas.