Memorial Day: WHAT I’M STILL FIGHTING FOR
Memorial Day: 26 May 2025
By David E. McCarty MD FAASM (but you can call me Dave)
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“Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.”
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
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I didn’t carry a rifle. I carried a reflex hammer, a stethoscope, and a prescription pad. Didn’t jump out of helicopters, but I did jump out of bed at 2 a.m. when the call came from the flight line, or when one of my hospitalized patients in my busy Internal Medicine practice was crashing.
From 2000 to 2003, I wore the uniform of the United States Air Force, reporting for duty at Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana, just across that rusty Red River from Shreveport — my first assignment after residency at Boston’s Mass General Hospital (just across that iconic Charles river from Cambridge), and our new home for the next 15 years. My wife Emma and I were just starting our lives together, and Uncle Sam had given us a front row seat to history.
I volunteered for active duty in my second year of training — back when it seemed like peacetime, but the dust of 9/11 wasn’t far off the horizon. I stepped in not just to practice medicine, but to serve a country built on ideals:
Freedom…Liberty…Justice.
The kind of words you don’t usually hear in the ICU, but they were always humming beneath the surface…that’s what I was shooting for…at the time, my lens was that I was going off to join one of the best teams on the planet, and I was ready!
Now, all these years later, I’m still serving. No uniform. No salutes. Just a different kind of frontline.
So…this Memorial Day, as I cast my memory back, I’m not just remembering the fallen. I’m remembering what they fell for — and what I’m still standing for.
Because the fight didn’t end when I hung up my BDU’s.
It just changed theaters.
Now I fight for autonomy — the right of a patient to know, to choose, to refuse, to understand the whole story…so that all individuals can choose—with agency and empowerment-- what’s right for themselves…
I fight for justice — not just in courtrooms, but in exam rooms, where coverage often dictates care…
I fight for veracity — the courage to tell the truth, even when insurance rules tell us to speak sideways…
I fight for beneficence — the sacred duty to help, even when systems make it harder than it should be…
So…this Memorial Day, as I remember our brothers and sisters in uniform who gave everything, I ask myself: what am I willing to give?
The answer is: still more. Still always.
Because freedom doesn’t just need soldiers.
It needs truth-tellers.
It needs healers who remember what we were sworn to protect — not just lives, but the dignity that gives those lives meaning.
So, Happy Memorial Day, Life-Fans! Give the folks in uniform in your world a hug today. And let’s have a group Huzzah! about all the stuff that makes it all still worthwhile!
Huzzah!!
Huzzah!!
Huzzah!! :) :) :)
Excelsior!!
Dave
David E McCarty MD, FAASM
Boulder Colorado 5/26/25