Second Act

After navigating post-operative complications and relearning how to walk, his husband is thankfully tumor free—but the experience of being on the receiving end of the healthcare system stayed with Isaac. It was the first time he fully realized what a doctor can do for someone—not just perform a great surgery but also help people get through some of their hardest moments. “We had an amazing neurosurgeon who saved my husband’s life but also really took time to see us as humans,” he says. “And I was like, ‘okay, I want to do this for people.’”

A few months later, COVID shut down the theater industry.

“This is my next path beckoning,” he remembers thinking. For the next year and a half, Isaac did basic science research at Mount Sinai while applying to medical school, eventually landing at Columbia. There he found an opportunity to marry his love of music with his desire to be a doctor, creating a niche for himself as a music researcher within ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgery. “I discovered this new, interrelated passion to figure out how to help people with hearing loss enjoy music again,” he explains.

He also helped run Q Clinic, a free clinic serving queer patients without insurance or access to healthcare. The model revolves around spending time getting to know each patient—making sure they feel seen and understood. “That was a really seminal part in creating my own identity as a doctor,” says Isaac. “Not just caring for someone but caring about them.”

When it came time to rank residency options during his fourth year of med school, the West Coast was calling. Not only were two of the leading ENT music researchers in the world in San Francisco, but Isaac and his husband had recently welcomed a baby boy, Leo, and his family was still in the Bay Area. “No one’s going to drop everything for your baby like your family,” he says, smiling. He matched at his top choice—UCSF—and the three packed their things and moved cross-country, settling into a house with a yard (and room for a piano).

Encore

In retrospect, Isaac’s journey almost sounds choreographed, but at the time, the road from Menlo to Boston to Broadway to back to the Bay felt completely unscripted. “When you’re in it, it all feels like, ‘What is going on?’” he admits. “But in hindsight, it all fits together pretty nicely.”

The parallels between music and medicine have made the transition feel surprisingly seamless. Both fields require communication across disciplines—whether it’s a lighting designer who doesn’t read music and needs to cue the lights on a certain note or a team of specialists who need to collaborate on a patient’s best course of care.

Both professions also demand the insatiable pursuit of greatness and an unwillingness to settle. No matter how many times you’ve performed the song or the surgery, you can always strive to do it better next time. “That discipline and drive were intrinsic to my music career and definitely stood me in good stead in my pursuit of a career in medicine,” says Isaac.

Most importantly, both paths are rooted in empathy: seeing people at their most vulnerable and honoring the complexity of the human experience—a truth Isaac first experienced that day at the Menlo assembly. “I shared a very deep thing with a much larger audience,” reflects Isaac, “but it was those first few small conversations with a close friend or mentor that gave me permission to open up, in a way that I now try to give my patients space to do.”