Today was a pretty good day for me. I went to some lectures for CME, sat on the beach with some sangria, felt the sand between my toes, and felt the waves crash upon my skin. After dinner, my husband and I had ice cream, and as I’m writing this, I can hear the Gulf of Mexico sing its song.

However, today was not a good day for many of my former colleagues. And those would be journalists.

You see, I was one of those latecomers to the medical party. I decided to become a physician after I’d already been to college and graduate school and had a job in a completely different field.

I was a journalist – a photojournalist by training and desire.

Before you go thinking I was chasing celebrities around, that is NOT what a true photojournalist does. In fact, I decided to pursue medicine while covering tornado damage for a newspaper.

Visual journalists tell stories – not with a pen or keyboard, but with the eye and the camera. Nowadays, everyone who has a camera thinks they can do what I did, or what my former colleagues do, but that isn’t the case.

You can teach technical skills and pound basic science into someone’s head, but the art of medicine is a talent, a gift, just like the art of photojournalism. Photo­journalists tell stories not only with their cameras, but also with their hearts.

They sacrifice to bring the truth to light. And isn’t truth what we’re all seeking for our patients? For our readers? The truth about their world, and how it will change, and how we are going to help them through it.

A few weeks ago, I found out that the Times-Picayune (New Orleans), The Birmingham (Ala.) News, The Huntsville (Ala.) Times, and The Mobile (Ala.) Press-Register were going to be publishing 3 days a week. That meant massive layoffs.

Now, this has been happening at the newspaper my husband (who is also a photojournalist) worked at for the last couple of years. Every quarter we would hold our breaths to see if he would have to take a furlough (week off without pay) or just be let go. Luckily, I was out of residency when he got his pink slip.

Today I found out that many of the photographers and writers that I hung out with at football games, big courthouse scenes, and elections – and many who I idolized – were laid off. At the Times-Picayune, half of the newsroom staff was given a buyout or a severance package.