In 1981, while I was trying to breast-feed my first child full time and simultaneously work sixty or more hours a week, I developed a severe mastitis that eventually led to the loss of function of my right breast. Instead of taking a day or two off from work at the first sign of infection, which is what I would have told any patient to do, I neglected myself and continued to work. I did this because I was torn in two directions. I believed then, and I still believe today, that breast milk is the best food for babies, and I was determined to feed my children optimally. I treated myself with antibiotics because I was sure I'd be told to stop nursing if I went to another doctor. At the same time, I knew that women doctors had been accused by our male colleagues of being weak or incapable of pulling our weight, and I didn't want that label. At the time, I was working in a well-respected group OB/GYN practice. At the age of thirty-one I had made it in a male-dominated field of medicine, and I worked among colleagues I respected. I did not want to jeopardize my career path. So I neglected myself and continued working-and I got sicker and sicker.

Though I took medication, my infection was severe enough to be resistant to common antibiotics. My condition progressed over several days until one night I began running a high fever and had shaking chills and delirium. During this time, I found out later, the infection was walling off in my body as an abscess deep in my breast. Even then, I went to work and continued to perform my duties. Being both a mother and a doctor, I felt I had no choice. All my years of training had taught me to put my own needs last.

After several weeks of trying to treat myself, I finally called a surgeon, who agreed to meet me in his office after I finished seeing patients (while popping Tylenol with codeine throughout the day to fight off the pain). That same evening I ended up in surgery-the very thing that I had been determined to avoid.

The surgeon told my husband, who is also a doctor, that the abscess cavity under my breast was so large, it was penetrating into my chest wall-the worst he'd seen in thirty years of practice. He didn't know how I had managed to continue working in spite of it. I had ignored the age-old teaching "Physician, heal thyself." I was embarrassed that I had not successfully treated myself as a doctor, that I had myself become an ill person, a patient. I also felt my self-esteem as a mother was threatened if I could not breast-feed. (By this time my milk supply had dwindled significantly anyway from stress.) Yet I remember thinking that night in the hospital that I had to get back to work as soon as possible.

When my second child was born two years later, I assumed that the old damage had healed. Although I'd had to supplement the breast milk for my first child with formula, I figured I wouldn't have to do that again. But no milk could get out of my right breast for my new baby daughter, even though the milk came in on schedule. The prior infection had destroyed the duct structure of that breast. I was again afraid that I would be unable to nurse my baby. I had paid a price with my body for trying to prove myself two years earlier. Though I took full responsibility for this situation, I could see how I had learned to neglect myself. Ignoring my own physical needs and my own body was built right into the fabric of my life.

On the third postpartum day, in the depths of despair about my situation, I called La Leche League International in Chicago to ask for advice. The woman who answered the phone had had the same problem and informed me that I could nurse from only one side, as long as I nursed more frequently and didn't mind being lopsided! Following her advice, I was able to nurse enough to maintain my milk supply. Though I had to supplement with formula when I was away from my daughter at work, my milk was adequate for her needs whenever I was with her for long periods of time. I will be forever grateful to this grassroots organization of women, which was started in Chicago by a group of homemakers who wanted to nurse their babies in an era when the medical profession was Jess than supportive. (To this day, most OB/GYN residents are not given a formal course on breast-feeding and are therefore not as knowledgeable as they could be about this important function.)

Although I knew that the breasts are often the physical metaphor for giving, receiving, and nurturing, in my rush to nurture everyone else I had left myself out. My body, however, would not let me get away with my neglectful treatment of it and had communicated an important lesson to me: Our body symptoms have meaning beyond the immediate health problem they are warning us about. Carl Jung said that the gods visit us through illness, and I've come to believe that we can benefit emotionally, physically, and spiritually by paying attention to our body's messages.

While I had always believed this intellectually, to become effective as a healer I had to experience it personally. Only by living through a serious health problem did I become understanding of what other women with health and life problems are living through. As long as I was an overachieving, never-sick white female fully living inside the male-dominant worldview, I was not able to see the patterns that are so commonly associated with women's health problems. As long as I saw myself as separate from other women, I could never understand that these patterns were part of many women's struggles to be whole.