When you face a serious medical diagnosis, it changes everything…your perspective on health, time, and what truly matters in life. As a financial planner with over 25 years of experience helping people prepare for their futures, I never expected a health scare would teach me the most valuable lesson about living in the present.
What started as a simple loss of smell turned into a brain tumor diagnosis that fundamentally changed how I approach not just my own life, but how I guide my clients in making financial decisions.
The lessons I learned from navigating the medical system, advocating for myself, and ultimately recovering apply directly to financial planning in ways I never anticipated.
This experience reinforced something I tell my clients regularly: you can’t always rely solely on experts, whether they’re doctors or financial advisors. Sometimes you need to take control, do your own research, and make decisions that align with your values—not just defer to authority figures who may not have all the answers you need.
What a Health Scare Taught Me About Experts, Money, and Time
My Unexpected Health Scare: Diagnosis and Treatment
In May of 2022, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. While there’s a happy ending to the story, there’s also a lesson—several lessons actually—that I feel like everyone can learn from.
Earlier that spring, I had lost my sense of smell.
A series of specialist referrals led to imaging that would reveal something far more serious than I anticipated. When I saw the way the MRI technicians were acting, I knew the news probably wasn’t going to be good.
Very thankfully, the shape and location of the growth indicated it was benign. But it was also large—the size of a plum. The doctors presented me with a choice that many people face after a health scare: take immediate action or wait and monitor.
With a tumor that had taken 20 years to grow, they suggested I could choose either path. They felt it could successfully be removed, but they also noted it was close to a lot of nerves, which meant surgery carried significant risks.
This is the kind of decision that keeps you up at night. On one hand, the tumor was close to critical nerves and surgery carried risks. On the other hand, doing nothing meant living with uncertainty and potential progression.
I spent hours researching brain tumors, surgical outcomes, and long-term prognosis. I read medical journals, looked at success rates, and tried to understand the trade-offs.
My wife and I discussed the possibilities endlessly—what if the surgery went wrong? What if we waited and things got worse? This period of decision-making taught me something crucial about risk assessment and taking action despite uncertainty, concepts that directly parallel financial planning decisions my clients face regularly.
The decision to proceed with surgery wasn’t just medical—it was philosophical. I realized that choosing action over passivity aligned with my values of not letting fear control my life.
This same principle applies when people avoid making necessary financial decisions because they’re afraid of making mistakes. Sometimes the risk of inaction is greater than the risk of taking an imperfect action. I walked out, talked it over with my wife, and decided to have the surgery. It was scheduled for July 2022.
Unfortunately, I ended up having complications. The most disturbing one had never even come up among the risks when they were disclosed to me. I had double vision that didn’t clear up after a few days.
After six weeks, an eye specialist told me the surgeon might have nicked one of the optic nerves. My surgeon denied this, saying “I do 1000 of these a year.”
I was given steroids for swelling, but the drugs had difficult side effects. I was told to “wait and see.” Wait and see? I couldn’t see. And not being able to look at a computer was making my work nearly impossible.
Taking Control: Finding the Right Treatment
After the surgery left me with double vision that wouldn’t resolve, I found myself in a frustrating position that many patients encounter: being told to “wait and see” when your quality of life is severely impacted. I couldn’t work effectively because I couldn’t look at a computer screen.
My surgeon, who performed over 1,000 of these procedures annually, denied that he could have caused the nerve damage. The steroids they prescribed had side effects that were almost worse than the vision problems.
This is when I learned the most valuable lesson about expert limitations. My surgeon was undoubtedly skilled and experienced, but his knowledge had boundaries. He was so specialized in surgical technique that he wasn’t aware of rehabilitation options like hyperbaric oxygen therapy. This wasn’t incompetence—it was simply the nature of medical specialization.
Surgeons focus on surgery, not on every possible post-operative treatment modality.
One of my friends is a coach, and her daughter is a naturopath. Her daughter suggested trying hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT). I was skeptical but desperate enough to research it thoroughly.
I discovered that hyperbaric oxygen therapy has been used successfully for nerve damage, wound healing, and various post-surgical complications. The mechanism made sense: increased oxygen delivery to damaged tissues can promote healing and reduce inflammation.
Yet my surgeon had never mentioned it, and likely didn’t even know it existed as a treatment option for my specific complication.
I began a HBOT regimen in a full-size hyperbaric oxygen chamber—the kind used to treat decompression sickness in scuba divers—every day of the week for 90 minutes.
The results were remarkable. I noticed a difference after five days. After 20 treatments, my vision was 100 percent restored.
I couldn’t believe my doctor hadn’t brought this up and offered it as a possible treatment. But when I pressed him about it, it turned out that he didn’t even know about it. This experience was transformative not just medically, but philosophically.
It taught me that even well-credentialed experts working in good faith can have significant blind spots in their knowledge. The solution to my problem existed, but I had to find it myself through my own research and by being open to suggestions from unexpected sources.
Lessons From a Health Scare: What Experts Don’t Tell You
I realized that this is how it is sometimes with “experts.” We do need help, but we also have to sometimes take matters into our own hands. No “expert” knows everything. Many experts have gaps in their knowledge—not because they’re incompetent, but because their expertise is necessarily focused in specific areas.
The challenge is that patients and clients often don’t realize these limitations exist until they encounter a problem that falls outside their expert’s knowledge base.
This is true for health—and it’s also true for finances. Many financial “experts” won’t give you information you may need to know—sometimes because they themselves aren’t aware of it.
Some advisors only know about products their firm offers. Others are specialists in one area like investments or insurance but lack comprehensive knowledge about tax planning, estate strategies, or retirement income optimization.
Do your research, and sometimes you’ll find answers—and other experts—who can help you differently.
How a Health Scare Changed My Financial Priorities
The parallels between my health scare experience and what I see in financial planning are striking and important for people to understand. Just as my surgeon didn’t know about every treatment option that might help me, many financial professionals operate within narrow lanes of expertise. Some advisors only know about products their firm offers.
Others are specialists in one area—like investments or insurance—but lack comprehensive knowledge about tax planning, estate strategies, or retirement income optimization.
I’ve encountered countless situations where clients came to me after receiving incomplete or even incorrect advice from other financial professionals. One client was told by their previous advisor that they should never pay off their mortgage early because they could earn more by investing the money.
This is a common piece of advice, but it completely ignored this particular client’s psychological need for security and their low risk tolerance.
The advisor was applying a generic rule without considering the individual’s values and life situation—exactly like my surgeon applying standard post-operative protocol without considering alternative treatments for my specific complication.
Another client was advised to keep a huge portion of their wealth in high-fee actively managed mutual funds without any discussion of lower-cost index fund alternatives. The advisor wasn’t necessarily acting maliciously—they simply didn’t know or believe in passive investment strategies.
Their knowledge gap cost the client hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years in unnecessary fees and underperformance.
These financial parallels to my health scare taught me that true expertise isn’t just about credentials or experience—it’s about breadth of knowledge, staying current with new approaches, and being humble enough to say “I don’t know, but let me research that for you.”
It’s about treating each client as an individual with unique needs rather than applying one-size-fits-all solutions.
Just as I had to become an informed advocate for my own health, you need to become an educated participant in your financial planning.
This doesn’t mean you don’t need experts—you absolutely do. But it means you should work with professionals who encourage questions, explain their reasoning, consider alternatives, and demonstrate genuine curiosity about finding the best solutions for your specific situation rather than defaulting to what they’ve always done or what’s easiest for them.
Don’t wait to live your life. I had a retirement dream that became more urgent after this experience.
Having a serious health threat will often bring this kind of clarity. Suddenly, you may not want to put off dreams you’ve deferred for the future.
The health scare gave me a clarity about life priorities that I’d been intellectually aware of but hadn’t truly internalized. I had always told clients about the importance of work-life balance and using their money to create meaningful experiences. But when you face the reality that your health or even your life could change in an instant, these concepts shift from abstract principles to urgent truths.
I realized I had been falling into the same trap I warned my clients about: deferring present happiness for a future that isn’t guaranteed. Living abroad had been a retirement dream, something to look forward to after decades of work. But what if I didn’t make it to retirement in good health? What if my vision hadn’t recovered and I’d lost the ability to fully enjoy travel experiences? What if something else happened before I got the chance?
I had lived abroad as a college student three times, in Hungary, Germany, and Poland. I had always wanted to do it again, but I figured I would wait until retirement to do that again with my wife.
After this experience, I thought “what if something happens?” Life—or our sight—can be taken so quickly. We never know what the future holds.
I knew that living abroad now would look different than it would in retirement. It wasn’t as easy to arrange. But also, if we went now, I could enjoy it with my kids. And I could be sure of having the vitality to explore and do all the activities I wanted to.
What if later I wasn’t able to walk as far or go scuba diving?
This shift in thinking has profoundly changed how I approach financial planning with clients. Yes, we need to plan for retirement and ensure long-term security. But we also need to engineer ways to enjoy life now, not just later.
This might mean taking a sabbatical mid-career, reducing work hours to spend more time with aging parents, or investing in experiences with children while they’re still young enough to appreciate family adventures.
So, exactly one year after my surgery date, my whole family took off for a month in Portugal. My wife had to get a leave of absence from Wells Fargo. I had to take leave from my business. It took a lot of planning.
But it was so worth it.
We had the time of our lives. The trip to Portugal wasn’t a financially optimal decision in the traditional sense. Taking a month off from my business had real costs. But it was the right decision when evaluated against what truly matters: creating memories with my family while everyone is healthy and present, experiencing the world while I have the physical capability to fully engage with it, and modeling for my sons that life is meant to be lived, not just planned for.
Key Takeaways: Align Your Money With Your Values
Here are the two essential lessons this health scare taught me. First, you need experts—but you also need to take charge of your life. Expert guidance is invaluable, but blind trust without personal engagement and research can leave you with incomplete solutions. Second, your money needs to work for you now—not just later. Financial planning should enable you to live a meaningful life today while also securing your future.
Prioritize what’s important in your life. Figure out what your values are.
Mine are adventure, freedom, and family. What are yours?
Let’s align your money with it, so you can live a life of meaning and purpose. Understanding retirement accounts and how they work is essential to making your money work for you now and later.
This is why at Calamita Wealth Management, we consider ourselves equal parts financial planners and life coaches. Don’t wait for a health scare to reassess your priorities and make sure your financial plan reflects what truly matters to you.
If you’d like to talk about making your money work for you now and later, reach out using our online calendar.
Or call us directly at (704) 276-7325
About Todd
Todd Calamita is the founder and managing principal of Calamita Wealth Management, an independent, fee-only wealth management company located in Charlotte, NC. Calamita Wealth Management serves people locally and across the country, providing wealth management solutions to affluent individuals over age 50 and their families, with a special focus on supporting Wells Fargo employees.
Todd has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry. He’s passionate about helping people create a better life by designing and implementing customized financial plans that bring clarity and confidence. Todd is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ (CFP®) and CERTIFIED DIVORCE FINANCIAL ANALYST® (CDFA®).
He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Ohio University. He also holds a Master of Business Administration from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University.
Todd has authored a book, Plan Smart: Conquering 10 Common Money Traps. Todd also wrote numerous articles on wide-ranging personal finance topics, from taxes to retirement accounts.
He was featured in a Financial Boot Camp TV series as a volunteer. There he was showing people how to make smart decisions with their money. When he’s not working, you can find Todd spending time with his wife, Teresa, and their sons, Colin and Cameron. He enjoys rock climbing, swimming, and traveling. Todd even has a black belt in Tang Soo Do, a Korean martial art. To learn more about Todd, connect with him on LinkedIn.
