Dr. Andrea Palmer moves forward after her husband, Dr. Blake Palmer, took his own life
On Sept. 8, Andrea Palmer posted a photo of herself with her husband, Blake Palmer, from a summer festival in Crested Butte, Colorado, on Facebook with the caption, “10 years ago. I miss you, your picture face, and doing life together.”
She doesn’t need to go to Facebook to remind herself of Blake. There is a reminder of Blake every time her eyes open.
On June 23, Dr. Blake Palmer took his own life. He was 44.
Andrea asked that how her husband died by suicide, as well as a few other details, remain private.
The purposes of this interview is to make public the need for people to be aware. Aware of the pressures that hounded Blake, and doctors all over the U.S.
Aware of the need for anyone to acknowledge potential signs if a person is struggling, specifically to prevent anyone from taking their own life.
In the week leading up to his death, nothing was out of the ordinary. Nothing suggested Blake would do this.
“He was maybe a little cranky. He was a little grumpy,” Andrea said in a recent interview over coffee. She is an OBGYN in Fort Worth.
Blake was a pediatric urologist and transplant surgeon.
“He had been a little sick. I thought he just had a ‘Man Cold,’” she said. “He went to work on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.”
On Wednesday evening, Blake told his wife he planned to take off work the next day.
On Saturday, their son, Wiley, was scheduled to celebrate his 10th birthday. The family was scheduled to take a vacation in Colorado the next week.
On Thursday, Blake Palmer left the house, ostensibly to work.
A few hours later, Andrea was working at her practice when she learned the news from a family friend.
Blake was gone.
Even with hindsight’s 20/20 vision, Andrea can only guess why he did it.
Blake Palmer was a brilliant doctor whose intellect, professionalism and bedside manner made him in demand.
He was funny. He was not above making fun of himself, right down to growing a terrible mustache he wore for a few months.
He was sincere, generous, friendly, and someone you would have requested to be your kids’ doctor. He wasn’t a drinker, a smoker, or even much for caffeine.
He was a pleaser who worked.
You would never know he was carrying, and felt, all of it.
Suicide in the medical profession
September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month (SPAM). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the last 10 years America has seen a nearly 40 percent rise in suicide between the ages of 16 to 64.
The CDC reported this week that suicide is now the third leading cause of death among people in the U.S. ages 15 to 24. It said that since 2019, the number of teenage girls who have been suicidal has increased 50 percent.
Health care professionals are hardly immune.
Mental Health Daily reported that doctors are “1.87 times as likely to commit suicide than those working in other occupations.”
Long before Blake died, Andrea knew the numbers. Or at least had a good idea of them.
They both did.
A 2019 study by the Missouri State Medical Association said that more than 300 doctors die by suicide each year in the U.S.
According to the CDC, health care workers “have elevated suicide risk with specific pressures that put medical providers at greater risk.”
Andrea is well aware of the paradox that a profession that is about good health and well-being is often anything but for the providers.
“Usually physicians are overachieving people-pleasers. You put people like that in a situation where they are here to help people, but so little of what they actually do in their day is about helping people,” she said.
Increasingly, it’s more about paperwork. About administrative responsibilities, about finding I’s to dot and T’s to cross, about appeasing insurance companies and filling out the never-ending list of codes.
About appeasing patients who are 30 minutes late, but cramming it all in regardless for fear of an angry review on some website.
A lot of doctors dread even taking a vacation; they cram it all before leaving, only to be backlogged upon their return.
“We have issues of expectations of perfection, and we don’t have any place that really accommodates rest or down time,” Andrea said. “With (cell phones and computers), we’re expected to be immediately responsive to the demands of the world.
“As humanity, we have to come to a point where we respect other people’s boundaries so they aren’t ‘on’ all the time.”
Andrea said Blake worked most evenings, after the kids went to bed. Inevitably, he worked weekends.
The profession had become his identity.
In the early days of quarantine in 2020, Andrea contracted COVID and the family had to stay put. That meant Blake was not at work for 24 consecutive days.
He vowed to never be away from his patients that long again.
Exercise was his release, something that in recent months he had less time to do.
Doctors don’t seek assistance
As far as help, Blake didn’t ask for it, much less seek it. Andrea knows only now that he needed it.
Doctors typically are the last people to ask for help.
“On nearly all state medical applications and most hospital credentialing forms there is a question that asks if you have had a mental health diagnosis that would impair your ability to take care of patients,” Andrea said.
No one answers yes.
“Blake cited that to me that question as a reason not to seek help because, if he did, he’d have to answer yes on that form,” she said. “Anyone who has had significant anxiety, or depression, can probably absolutely say at some point they were not making the best decisions.
“The question is, do you have the diagnosis that would impair your ability to take care of patients? There is no caveat. It would make it seem that they are not equipped to do the things that you do.”
Blake Palmer was one of the most respected professionals in his field.
He was human, too.
Life after Blake Palmer
Andrea will be the first to admit that while not perfect, they were the couple that had it “figured out.”
They were the family, and the couple, who lived closer to the picture than most do of the Christmas cards that they mailed every year.
That card will look dramatically different now.
For the first few weeks after his death, she was angry. She was so mad at Blake for their kids, as much as for herself.
For leaving the life that they built, and they planned, together.
Those feelings surface occasionally, but now it’s mostly just sadness.
“I’m sad for him because he felt the way he did and he didn’t say anything about it. I feel sad that he felt like this was his only solution,” Andrea said. “I think he was in a great deal of pain, and I think he thought he was not living up to his own expectations of what he thought he should be as a father, or physician.
“Now, I’m mostly just sad that he’s gone.”
She said that they were in a good place, another detail that makes his death all the more difficult.
Andrea Palmer is a pragmatist to the bone, but emotionally she can’t help but blame herself.
She’s played the “If only I had ...” countless times, and the results are still the same. She knows there was nothing she could have done, but those left behind in these situations fight that reality for a long time.
She and their two children are now part of a club no one wants to join.
As far as those who are struggling, “Remind them that there are people in their life that want them to stay. That the way they are feeling right now doesn’t have to be forever,” she said. “Help is available. Don’t be discouraged if something hasn’t worked in the past doesn’t mean it won’t work.”
She figures Blake made an impulsive decision, one that if he had been in a decent place, he never would have done.
“He made plenty of bad decisions,” she said with a laugh and a smile. “Some of his fashion choices over the years were highly questionable. That mustache.
“I have to have compassion for him. If I spend the rest of my life being mad at him, what does that do for our kids, or me? They are going to remember (that he died), but I don’t want that to be the overriding memory of their dad.”
Andrea and Blake were married for 17 years. Their son, Wiley, is a fourth-grader and daughter, Lorelei, is in eighth grade.
“I want people to remember that he was funny. He was so funny. He cared so much about everybody else other than himself,” she said. “I’ve thought that suicide is a very selfish act, but he was not a selfish person.
“It’s why I have to believe he genuinely thought, in that moment, he was doing what he thought was the right thing.”
There are questions that will never have answers.
After well over a month off from her practice, Dr. Palmer returned to work. Her kids are in school. There is a new routine, and order.
Amid moments of tears and sadness, she has had times when she knows that it will be OK, and they can all “do this.”
There has been laughter since June 23. There have been good moments.
“We have to go forward. Life has been going on without us since June 23, and we have to re-enter that,” she said. “I know for a long time that’s going to be the first thing that people associate with me. I hope they’ll say, ‘She’s doing a pretty damn good job.’”
She is. So is their son, and their daughter.
Blake would be so proud.
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If you or a loved one needs help, the Suicide and Crisis Center of North Texas offers a 24-hour crisis hot line, 214-828-1000 or 800-273-8255.
Other services for those who are at risk include the Texas Health and Human Services. Dial 988.
The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation in Fort Worth offers a variety of services for suicide prevention: 682-207-5250 or info@jehfoundationfw.org.
