It's important for me to learn what I can do to better take care of myself and my children. While advice from individual practitioners varied somewhat, there was similar advice throughout the field, all around different parts of the country.

Everything is different now, and there is far too much uncertainty
This year everything changed. Mainstream media says one thing; the people I know in medicine have various things to say. Some agree with everything on the news, while others disagree. In fact, one day they agree, the next day they don't.  There has been doubt about the numbers from the very beginning.

Private ownership has been decreasing for years but markedly reduced during the years between 2012 and 2018.  Physicians began moving away from offering their services privately to providing services at larger institutions. Hospitals and larger groups of physicians can more easily shoulder the burden of high overhead costs.

The voice of humankind no longer belongs to us

I have worked in a variety of settings. When I worked for a privately owned burger joint in high school, I dyed my hair orange and purple and had five earrings. The customers did not care. My boss's opinion was all that concerned me. His only concern was whether it affected revenue. It didn't. My boss was cool with my being a strange-looking teen.  

After college, I worked for a large consulting firm. My hair was back to its natural color, and most of the piercings were gone. My more heavily tattooed coworkers had to dress very modestly. We represented a business with dozens of offices around the country and were expected to conduct ourselves in a certain way.