Author Article: Why I wrote A HEART TO SERVE

What I knew to avoid: a typical retired politician writes a (usually boring) political memoir. Not me. As a heart surgeon jumping into politics and then making an exit consistent with my unwavering pledge of term limits, I was never typical. Thus, my goal in sitting down to write this book was to unveil useful leadership and service principles through storytelling the up and down experiences of my life in the South,  in the surgical operating room,  in the Senate chamber of the U.S. Capitol, and in primitive medical clinics throughout east Africa. Service wears many hats; there are lots of ways for every one of us to serve.

I knew there were a number of action-centered and emotional and inspirational stories that had never been accurately written about and shared. I witness people’s positive and sometimes surprising reactions when I share these anecdotes orally. My listeners routinely say, “Put it in a book for me.”

So that’s what I have done.  And the product is a call to action for all those with a heart to serve.  The dramatic juxtaposition of being a senator and doctor (the last senator-doctor had been elected in 1928) played out when I was among the first medical responders on the scene when a deranged man assassinated two Capitol police offices; when I shocked a dying man's  heart back to life in the Dirksen Senate office building, when I opened General David Petraeus’s chest in an emergency operation to control the massive bleeding from his being shot with an M-16,  to being the first to respond medically to a multiple fatality motor vehicle accident on Alligator Alley outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

No, this is not a political memoir.

But I do take the reader deep into the inner workings of how the Senate really works (yes, like a sausage factory – but I hopefully make it easy to understand).  How did Trent Lott really fall from being Majority Leader – it has never accursedly been told from the inside.  Perfect for today’s discussions, the reader is taken on a journey of how we passed the last major health bill (prescription drugs for seniors) on contrast to the stumbles and roadblocks health care reform is taking today.  What is different? And, yes, I describe what I think should be done to reform health care, which is colored by my spending almost a year working for the socialist system of the British National Health Service (That will shape your opinions!).

At the end of the day, service is about healing – in one’s family, community, state, country or globally. My purpose to show how passion for healing brings real hope and change to better the world – and it can be done by a doctor operating around the world or a senator who becomes majority leader, but more importantly by the teacher, the clerk, the fireman, the banker,  the preacher, the mom and dad, and the small businessperson in their everyday lives who just get out and do it.