Dr. Jordan Siewert never expected to write a book, but when his daughter was born in 2014 with a congenital heart defect, he found that he wanted to share his experiences.
“I felt that maybe my story could speak to someone,” said Dr. Siewert, a native of St. Joseph, Missouri. “I feel like the book has given me great insight into things – into life and taking one day at a time.”
He wrote “Fixing You,” a story about his 5-year-old daughter, Natalie, where he chronicled the struggles of balancing residency, fatherhood and her medical journey. In the end, Dr. Siewert said his daughter’s experience and her struggles made him a better doctor.
“I was able to see behind the curtain of medicine,” he said. “On the training side, you have no idea what people are going through – how a family will sit in the hospital with their sick child and wait all day just to see the doctor’s face and pray for good news. Or how it feels to talk about palliative care and end-of-life discussions. This is something I would not wish on anyone.”
Dr. Siewert’s story began when he enrolled at Missouri Western and wasn’t sure what he wanted for a career. He liked the sciences, so he decided to major in chemistry and see where it took him.
“I loved my time at MWSU. Looking back now, had I gone to a larger state school, I do not know if I would have been able to succeed. Personal attention was something that was likely very important to my overall ability to focus on the classwork and succeed.”
He graduated from the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2010 and went on to a Family Medicine Residency in Toledo, Ohio. Today, he is the medical director of the Adult Medicine Clinic for the Promedica Physicians Group in Toledo, a clinic dedicated to the underserved.
“I see patients who do not speak English, who do not have insurance and who have been turned away by other offices. I find a great deal of pleasure in helping those who have nowhere else to go,” Dr. Siewert said.
Along with their daughter, he and his wife, Kelly, also have two sons, Joey and Lucas. Dr. Siewert said Lucas has a chapter in the book; his birth was complicated because Kelly went into labor at 20 weeks when Natalie had to have emergency surgery.
Dr. Siewert said he first thought about writing a book about his family’s experiences when he read a book that was written by a high school friend, Johnny Cathcart. The book, “Hotpants: A Memoir,” chronicles Cathcart’s cancer journey when he was a teenager.
“It really touched me,” Dr. Siewert said. “It spoke to me and really brought me some unique insight.”
“Fixing You” started out relatively easy to write and was therapeutic, he said. He wrote
the end first, and then started at the beginning. However, the editing was a different story. On the third time through, his daughter had to have another open heart surgery, and “that brought back some very difficult feelings and made reviewing the book very hard near the end.”
Dr. Siewert hopes his book shows people that medical issues don’t always turn out the way you want them to, but maybe they turn out okay.
“I just want people to see how, if you take things one day at a time, no matter the struggle, there is always light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “I also wanted to give some insight into medical training. A portion of the book talks about what it is like to be a new doctor.”
“Fixing You” is available on Amazon, and all proceeds from sales of the book go to charity.