A PIECE OF MY MIND

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A PIECE OF MY MIND

Time Is Finite

Jenna Taglienti, MD
Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, New Hyde Park, New York; and
Psychiatry Residency Training Program, Department of Psychiatry, Mather Hospital, Port Jefferson, New York

I’m going to start with something that might surprise you.

I look young. I look healthy. I look like there is absolutely nothing wrong with me.

I thought I was healthy—a lifelong nonsmoker. A wife and mother of 3. A psychiatrist and residency program director who loves her patients and her residents.

And then I was diagnosed with lung cancer.¹

When I went in for my lobectomy, I did not think I had cancer. Neither did my physicians. The lesion had grown, yes. But statistically? A 45-year-old who never smoked? It was still unlikely. I underwent surgery perhaps assuming the lesion might be inflammatory. Perhaps an atypical infection. Maybe something rare but benign.

The operation was not minor. Two nights in the hospital. A chest tube. Pain I was not prepared for.

The meaning of my work is profound.
The meaning of my presence at home is irreplaceable.

At home, I slept in a recliner because I couldn’t lie flat. My husband took over everything—the children, the meals, the logistics. Family and friends helped with after-school activities. I focused on recovery.

I was not anxious about the pathology results. Not even a little bit. Ten days later, I opened the patient portal.

The report was already there.

I read 1 word: adenocarcinoma. I remember thinking, that can’t be correct. My husband was sitting on the couch watching television. I said it out loud almost casually, as if saying that way might make it smaller. He took the laptop from me. “That’s cancer,” he said. I stopped reading.

I sat back in the same recliner and felt something shift that I did not yet have language for. The shock of that moment still feels physical. The week that followed blurred into appointments, scans, and treatment plans.

The fear every parent carries quietly moved into the foreground. The possibility of not watching my children grow up was no longer abstract.

Then came chemotherapy. I remember the first infusion; the quiet hum of machines, clear medication moving through tubing into my vein. Sitting there, I had the disorienting thought that I had spent years giving everything to my work. Now my body was asking for something I could not negotiate.

I loved my job. I still love my job. I poured myself into residents, into patients, into systems. Residents later told me they did not fully understand the depth and importance of our work together until I had left.

That mattered to me. And yet the program continues. The teaching conferences still happen. The clinics still run. The system adapts to absence.

That does not diminish the meaning of the work. It simply reminds me that institutions are designed to endure beyond individuals. On the other hand, families are not.

From the first day of medical school, we are taught endurance. Years of training with little money and long hours because eventually it will be worth it. Residency reinforces the lesson. Emotional depletion becomes normalized. Fatigue becomes proof of commitment. Delayed gratification becomes professional identity.

There is nobility in that commitment, but endurance has a quiet cost. The inbox fills. Meetings multiply. Small conflicts accumulate. Problems are constant and immediate. Not dramatic. Just steady. And steady depletion follows us home.

I believe in medicine. I believe in training the next generation. I believe in the meaning of this work. What has changed is my willingness to absorb depletion without question.

The meaning of my work is profound. The meaning of my presence at home is irreplaceable. I am confronted with the possibility that time is finite. The hierarchy becomes unsustainable. The tolerance for workplace drama drops. The energy once absorbed by “noise” becomes precious.

No professional title replaces watching your child grow up. Institutional loyalty does not protect you from what happens when you postpone your own care. Medicine asks a great deal. And we give deeply. But it cannot take everything.

I am being treated with curative intent. I am hopeful. I am strong. But I am different now. I am no longer willing to keep postponing life.

Medicine can have extraordinary meaning. But it cannot substitute for being present in your life. The world may need us as physicians. But the people who love us need us as ourselves.

And that is the role no one else can fill.

Corresponding Author:
Jenna Taglienti, MD
3000 Marcus Ave, Ste 200, New Hyde Park, NY 11042-1069
(jtaglienti@northwell.edu)

Section Editor: Preeti Malani, MD, MSJ
Deputy Editor.

Published Online: April 16, 2026.
doi:10.1001/jama.2026.3656

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

Reference

Murphy C, Pandya T, Swanton C, Solomon BJ. Lung cancer in nonsmoking individuals: a review. JAMA. 2025;334(20):1836-1845. doi:10.1001/jama.2025.17695

This is a powerful and deeply personal “A Piece of My Mind” essay from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association), written by psychiatrist Jenna Taglienti, MD, reflecting on her unexpected lung cancer diagnosis as a young, healthy, never-smoking mother of three and residency program director. It explores the tension between professional dedication in medicine and the irreplaceable value of family presence, especially when facing a life-altering illness.