{"id":5038,"date":"2020-09-18T14:46:11","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T19:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/?p=5038"},"modified":"2021-08-18T09:49:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T14:49:00","slug":"dr-jordan-siewert-08-chronicling-the-unexpected-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/2020\/09\/18\/dr-jordan-siewert-08-chronicling-the-unexpected-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Jordan Siewert \u201908: Chronicling the unexpected journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fixing 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI felt that maybe my story could speak to someone,\u201d said Dr. Siewert, a native of St. Joseph, <\/span>Missouri. \u201cI feel like the book has given me great insight into things \u2013 into life and taking one day at a time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He wrote \u201cFixing You,\u201d 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 <\/span>said his daughter\u2019s experience and her struggles made him a better doctor.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was able to see behind the curtain of medicine,\u201d he said. \u201cOn the training side, you have no idea what people are going through \u2013 how a family will sit in the hospital with their sick child and wait all day just to see the doctor\u2019s 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Siewert\u2019s story began when he enrolled at Missouri Western and wasn\u2019t sure what he wanted for a career. He liked the sciences, so he decided to major in chemistry and see where it took him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Dr. Siewert said.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Siewert said he first thought about writing a book about his family\u2019s experiences when he read a book that was written by a high school friend, Johnny Cathcart. The book, \u201cHotpants: A Memoir,\u201d chronicles Cathcart\u2019s cancer journey when he was a teenager.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt really touched me,\u201d Dr. Siewert said. \u201cIt spoke to me and really brought me some unique insight.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFixing You\u201d started out relatively easy to write and was therapeutic, he said. He wrote<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201cthat brought back some very difficult feelings and made reviewing the book very hard near the end.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Siewert hopes his book shows people that medical issues don\u2019t always turn out the way you want them to, but maybe they turn out okay.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d he said. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFixing You\u201d is available on Amazon, and all proceeds from sales of the book go to charity.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u201cI felt that maybe my story could speak to someone,\u201d said Dr. Siewert, a native of St. Joseph, Missouri. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5092,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5038"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5340,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5038\/revisions\/5340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}