E 148 ChicksWithMDs Advocacy Dr Lisa Whitty Bradley MD

148 a doctors perspective lisa bradley md chicks with mds
Dr. Lisa Whitty Bradley, MD talks to Dr. Justin Trosclair DC on A Doctor’s Perspective Podcast.

Patient and doctor advocate Dr. Lisa Whitty Bradley MD created chicks with mds based on her own experience from both sides. She hold nothing back when discussing the pitfalls and positives of insurance, misconceptions and relationships. Full of good stories and laughter on this episode.

Dr. Bradley starts off discussing how she got into hand surgery as well as breast reconstruction surgery. As she says several times throughout the interview, plastic surgeons aren’t just breast and butt cosmetic elective surgeries. Mid way through the interview she will discuss the misconceptions as well as the bread and butter cases.

Were you aware that it is a federal mandate to reconstruct a breast after it has been removed of cancer, both sides actually so they stay symmetric.

Part of her passion with chickswithmd’s is that doctors need to fight so that patients can get services covered. Too often a patient is not even aware of the limitations in their own insurance policies.

There are 3 ways to be a hand surgeon and the main focus is restoring function and preserving surgical technique.

Race and Gender

Dr. Lisa breaks down what it was like growing up in Broklyn in the 80s. She discusses the go getter – defiant (in a good way) family she and northerns typically have when charting your life path.

Her family was thriving even when larger society was saying you should not be.

Then we get her views on people of color from the South and the generational mindsets that must be overcome and how she sees it changing over her work career as well as young people and migration influence. One phrase she used is accepted segregation. (don’t worry, it doesn’t get political)

Look at life and situations with an Outside The Box mentality. Just because you don’t see someone like you in a field doesn’t mean you can’t be the first.

How did Chicks With MD’s Come About and the Mission

A health condition required her to restructure her career and evaluate how to be a physician, mother and spouse. Once she became a patient with a difficult prognosis and treatment regimen, she started identifying the pitfalls in the system as a patient as well as the divide between what a doctor says and what a patient hears. She set out to remedy this situation for others.

Inform, Educate, Empower

Focus not just on treating disease but on making their existence better.

Remember we are treating a person, not XYZ condition. They have jobs, hobbies and families that they want to get back to.

How does you market to find speaking opportunities?

Why does she choose to do short videos for social media?

When discussing breast reduction surgery, doctors should ask more questions. Maybe the patient thinks she is just tired of back pain for the past 18 months but didn’t realize the car accident she had 18 months ago and never got treatment for is the actual cause of her symptoms.

Advocacy is not just grabbing a bullhorn and putting signs up for breast cancer month. She discusses the good things she has learned and the pitfalls in other scenarios (like disability insurance) to other doctors so they can learn from someone’s experience.

Briefly we mention the struggle of being a doctor with a disability and getting hired.

When you as a doctor do other activities and patients see that you are involved in say the community, it makes you more approachable and allows the doctor to engage more as well. Why would that be important and helpful?

Vacation

Residency teaches you to be all about medicine and if you take time for family, vacation, sleep etc it’s as if they question your devotion and it’s an unspoken sign of weakness.

Dr. Lisa says this is not a great situation and taking time for yourself in different capacities is vitally important.

Self care and spending time with family is not a weakness and it actually can keep your passion for medicine alive.

Author

As a women of many hats, she wrote a book (fiction) last year, this year will be a collection of short stories and the next three years are to be determined. She uses a pseudo-name Stella Jones.

Relationship

You and your spouse have to be comfortable having those tough conversations and that requires excellent communication. As doctors we are typically in charge, so with your spouse remember you need to be open, engaging and not demand to be the leader. If you really want to say something mean to your loved ones, perhaps write it down and wait 5 minutes or even 24 hours and see if you would still deliver it after you had time to reflect.

www.chickswithmds.com and all the social media is chickswithmds.

Dr. Lisa Whitty Bradley MD is a board certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon with a fellowship in hand surgery. Her LLC Chicks With MD’s is a professional group helping patients and doctors communicate better for the best clinical outcomes and empowerment. She lectures on private practice building, contract negotiations, disability and malpractice coverage, helping students get into med schools and residency and the importance of a work life balance.

Show notes can be found at https://adoctorsperspective.net/148 here you can also find links to things mentioned and the full transcript.

148 a doctors perspective lisa bradley chicks with mds long
Full Transcript of the Interview (probably has some grammatical errors). Just Click to expand

Justin Trosclair 0:06
So 148 chicks with MDF, we host Dr. Justin Trosclair and today we have Dr. Lisa Willie Bradley’s perspective 2017 and 18 podcast awards. nominate host and best selling author on Amazon as we get a behind the curtain look at all types of doctor and guest specialties. Let’s hear a doctor’s perspective.

welcome back today is a bittersweet episode. Because this is the last time I say live in China because we’re moving broke down our house we got four suitcases and carry ons. It is stressful. But we knew this going in that it wouldn’t be permanent. So we didn’t buy a whole bunch of stuff that you can imagine. And then we’re going to move to Cologne Germany in January so an exciting time to spend the holidays with the family. Two of them actually that’s fantastic two holidays. Give you a heads up the third book is coming out before Thanksgiving are already Getting finished right now pretty much if you want to do business in China, you got to be able to handle the dinners with a round table and the drinking and losing phase gaining phase. And so I’m going to walk you through how to do that. So you can gain phase not lose face and not look silly and know the nuances and really impress your clientele. So that will be available on Amazon and the web page. And then the relationship book, that’s not gonna be until late 2020. I mean, I got stage one done compiling but mixing it all up and editing it and all that virgin two things together. This will take a while. So stay tuned. We’ll let you know of course when it comes out. But today’s episode is Dr. Lisa. She’s a hand surgeon fellowship trained and she has an organization called chicks with MDS. And it’s really it’s like an advocacy group for patients and for doctors so doctors can communicate better with the patient and the patients can understand what the doctors are actually trying to say because she got a condition that is incurable and it’s a long term process and she was seeing all these pitfalls and the dysfunction as a patient and just was like, I’m a doctor. I This shouldn’t be this difficult, right? So now she’s got programs where she’ll go around and talk about these things. And, you know, as well as like contract negotiations and for the doctors as well as patients, understanding what they’re getting with their insurance where you can find the pitfalls, plus we actually talk about race relations. And you know, from where she was raised, we’re just like the south and people of color and, and we don’t really get political with it. It’s just sort of her life experience, what she’s seen and the changes that have occurred and definitely curry now presently. So this is a really good episode even at the end. She’s got amazing tips for relationships because her husband had to live apart for a while while she was doing Dr. stuff, and then they came together. And anyway, it’s just a good episode. I’m really excited that the final China episode is this one. We did have some I wanted to go hundred and 50. So like two more episodes, but one guy scheduling conflicts the other one, we just couldn’t get it on the same page before I decided to stop recording episodes. So it is what it is. We’re going to take a break. It’s been three years, like we said before in a previous episode or two. So super excited to spend time with the family and just relax a little bit and pick this podcast back up after a little break. So enjoy Dr. Bradley a nice conversation. show notes are at a doctor’s perspective, net slash one for eight. Let’s go hashtag behind the curtain. Live from China and Chicago. Today on the podcast we have a great guest. But before I introduce you, I just want you to know today is the last time I will say live from China because I am moving on. So this is a very special episode. And let’s just jump right in. It’s going to be a board certified plastic and reconstructive surgeon with a fellowship and hand surgery. She has a whole platform called chicks with MDS, which is partially the reason why we had her on because I was like, wow, that’s, that’s pretty cool. But it’s a professional thing take to ensure continuous care, educational empowerment of patients. And she’s going to lecture on lots of different topics like Private Practice building contract negotiations, disability and malpractice covered. I’m sure that’s the best hour and helping get into med school residency and the all encompassing work life balance that we always ask about at the end of our show. So please welcome Dr. Lisa. Windy

Unknown Speaker 4:16
Bradley. Thank you. Thanks, Dr. Justin. I’m so happy to be here I am. This is like the ultimate nerd experience for me because I’ve been bingeing your podcast and I really love your vibe. And I’m just so honored to be to participate in one of these podcasts because I think your platform is awesome. And thank you for being approachable and funny and engaging and just things that we really need in the healthcare arena right now.

Justin Trosclair 4:45
I really do appreciate that. We’re always going to jump in all the things that you could have done in life. You chose medical doctor, then you chose plastics and then hands. I think plastics are kind of you know, I think a lot of people just kind of go straight to face Maybe breasts, you know, stuff like that. And then you chose hanging and I was daydreaming about that the other day about, you know, there’s foot doctors, there’s teeth doctors, why there’s no special just hand ology.

Unknown Speaker 5:13
There’s a whole hand specialty out there and we really come to light around snow blowing season when people decide they want to put their hands in the snow blower and then also farm harvesting when they put their hands in the auger. Yeah. So, but yeah, there’s a whole aspect of plastic surgery that is just dedicated to hand surgery. And that’s just a little bit of what I do most of the time. What I do is breast reconstruction associated with breast cancer. We just got finished October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month. So we had an entire campaign on that. So anybody out there listening, if you have boobs, get them checked out, make sure you do in your exams. So yeah, but yeah, there’s a whole the spectrum of plastic surgery is simply That Unfortunately, most medical doctors don’t get exposure to let alone the the entire can, you know, just healthcare community but we don’t just do boobs and butts although that’s what’s on TV all the time. So yeah, yeah and it’s it’s it’s the best field in healthcare that but I have no bias in that regard. Of course, of

Justin Trosclair 6:21
course I remember, as a chiropractor, we don’t see a lot of certain things and this one lady come in one time and she had to have them both on the SEC dummies. And I don’t know, I guess her insurance didn’t pay to get them reconstructed very well. So she just had like scars and was like, you know, very just self conscious about the whole thing and had pain and all this kind of stuff. So I was like, man, come on insurance companies this Yeah, be step one, remove it step to fix it.

Unknown Speaker 6:44
Yeah. Well, actually, there is it’s federally mandated that not only does your insurer have to cover breast reconstruction, following mastectomies or lumpectomies, but we also have to cover the opposite side of the country. lateral breast to make them symmetric. So yeah, so thank goodness, I have that. But that’s why we have to stay engaged and aware of what’s going on from the legislative aspect of health care. Because, you know, there’s a lot of things in terms of rollback of patients, right. So we have to stay on top of it, because they will remove some of those protections if we allow them.

Justin Trosclair 7:23
So have the same issue, like everybody else, absolutely want to do one thing, and then they try to cut costs somehow, and then they don’t even get the things that they need.

Unknown Speaker 7:31
Absolutely. And the other thing is that people aren’t aware. So we have to make sure they’re aware Otherwise, they won’t even access those rights that they do have.

Justin Trosclair 7:41
Because I think, you know, again, when I think you know, plastic surgery, a lot of times you think like you said TV shows, but in reality, you you get your hand chopped, you want somebody to not only fix it, but make it presentable. They can. That’s the whole two steps to skills right there. The ER can fix you but somebody else has to make it prettier. Thank

Unknown Speaker 7:59
you. You know, you really want to restore function. And when you restore function and you keep those principles in mind, then you will, you’ll, you’ll perform well, from a from a surgical standpoint. So there are a lot of hand surgeons out there. So there’s three tracks that you can pursue in order to do hand surgery, you can do orthopedics, and then do a hand fellowship, you can do plastic surgery and then do a hand fellowship. And there are a small percentage of hand surgeons that are just trained in general surgery. So those are the three major tracks to pursue for hand surgery. But yeah, and and those guys in orthopedics and general surgery, they do just as good of a job. But we all have those same principles in mind, though, of restoring function and making sure that we’re preserving exceptional surgical technique

Justin Trosclair 8:49
about this. Regardless of how you get there, the fellowship is the fellowship when you’re focusing on the hand and so it’s all goes back to what you’re doing. Yes. Okay. So that’s Fun that I enjoy listening and learning about all these things, but a big passion of yours is this chicks within these. I love it because you’re double minority. Yeah, you know, not white and a woman. So it’s too, too wild things out there in the MD world. And we can definitely talk about that because you have approached, you know, when you’re talking about students and everything like that, I’m pretty sure that’s a roadblock for some people. And, you know, you’ve been doing it for a while. So that to me, if you want to talk about that later on, or at some point, if it’s if it’s part of your journey.

Unknown Speaker 9:31
Oh, it’s absolutely, it’s absolutely part of my journey. And, you know, the good thing for me is that I grew up in Brooklyn. And when you’re when I don’t, you know, I’m not sure what it’s like being a child in Brooklyn right now. But growing up in the 80s, you had to learn and there was always you defending yourself against the world. And so for me, I always focused on what my strengths were What I brought to the table, and that’s just kind of how I pursued medicine as well. And the other thing is, is that I was surrounded in my family by people who pursued things, whether or not they were allowed or not. They just did it out of survival. And so that was always you know, there were there were a lot of entrepreneurs in my family, or there are a lot of entrepreneurs in my family. So it was never like, Oh, I don’t know if I can do that. Because everybody was survived surviving and thriving, whether or not the larger society say we were supposed to or not. And so that’s how I pursued medicine. And so when I decided I wanted to do surgery, and it was like, well, there’s not a lot of women, there’s not a lot of people of color. Well, that’s just too bad. Here I am anyway. And so that’s just kind of how I engage the world. So and you really have to have that and you know how it is. I mean, you are living in Asia right now. Right? So I mean, you’re doing things that aren’t necessarily typical of life and you Just have to pursue them. And there’s there’s always going to be noise outside. It says you shouldn’t you can’t you won’t. It’s not possible. You just have to pursue it. There’s a whole lot of people succeeding in the world right now who didn’t exist two decades ago. They’re the entity of with the guy. I’m blanking on his name from Amazon right now. That guy, basically, right, Scott didn’t exist two decades ago, we didn’t know who he was, there was no Amazon. And so you know, you have to think outside of the box. And that’s how we have to pursue things not just as women or people of color, but people who want to engage a larger audience or even just if they’re engaging their patients in their office, you have to be focused on being better than you were the day before. And so that’s just kind of how I pursued things. And when you meet people who are minorities, in whatever arena, they usually have that same type of focus, like okay, well I couldn’t before but I’m doing this. I’m pursuing this. So. Yeah. Is it hard? Yeah, for sure.

Justin Trosclair 12:06
I mean, it’s kind of a weird thing, like, you know, the only white guy in town. So when I walk into like a wedding or a big function, I’m like, oh, okay, once they’re in me, and I’m like, that was like, the one black guy and an entire white church. It feels like it’s like, oh, this is weird. And that’s just like, all the time. Yeah. Would you say there’s a difference between say, you know, people of color in like Brooklyn versus the south and South Louisiana. There are different Yes, yeah. mentality. There

Unknown Speaker 12:35
is a different mentality because and I say this because I’ve visited the South a number of times, and there is still the culture of the south and you know, somebody from the south may disagree with me, but when I go down to southern areas, there’s still a culture of accepted segregation and accepted accepted concepts of inferiority and superiority, and that it’s been generations and centuries of inbred thoughts of that. It’s not fact its cultural acceptance of those things. And so there are some people and it’s changing down there because you’re having a migration from the north to the south. So you have people of color who have never lived under that structure. Right? They are. They’re from New York, they’re from LA. They’re from all of these people who didn’t live in that environment. So when they go down to the south, they rebel. Those are the first type of people who are changing that dynamic. The other people that are changing it are the new generation who have been exposed to it to freedom on a variety of levels, social media, going to university going me engaging other people, and so their brain A new culture into the South. And that’s a big reason why you’re having this dynamic in the White House and why you’re having this cultural war, because the United States is changing. And it’s changing because now, people of color and immigrants and all of these people are getting more pieces of the American Pie. And that is very frightening to people who have been raised for generations to think that they are superior simply because of their birthright, and not because of what they are doing to improve their communities or to strengthen the bond between their family members. So yes, there’s definitely a difference, but it is changing. But there are still some, you know, smaller communities in you know, rural wherever, where they hold tight to those beliefs, because that’s really all they have left. Because they had a lot of these people haven’t ventured out. They haven’t ventured out and tried to figure out how do I Improve just my nuclear family. And so and they hold on to these beliefs that they have. And the other last structure that’s breaking that down is that they have people, usually younger folks within their own families who are bucking against those beliefs from generations. So it’s it’ll get better, but it’s taken some time. But yeah, I definitely noticed the difference between the North and the South.

Justin Trosclair 15:27
Well, there’s definitely you could say, the younger kids, I mean, I’m, I consider myself still young, but not really. But you got social media, obviously showing you like, hey, these are some strong people of color that you could be that too and you you might be in a small town, but you could become this. And then yes, new faces. I know people that have never left Louisiana or never left their little 50 mile radius entire life. Yeah, and that blows me away. I’m like, how What? You’ve never wanted to go to the beach. You gotta go out of the state to see a beach.

Unknown Speaker 15:58
Yeah, right. Yeah, and that’s really what that’s really what confines people is that, if you will, what is the same? It’s the same thing out here in Chicago. I’m in Chicago. Now, there are people who have literally never left the South Side of Chicago. They’ve never they don’t go downtown. They don’t they people who visit from other countries have been down to the Magnificent Mile, and they haven’t been down there. And when you see you, I mean, for years, we were legally segregated. And now people are just voluntarily segregating themselves. And that limits you, it limits you it stifles your growth, and it allows you to just fester in your own little pot of funk and hate. And so yeah, we’ve got some work to do. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. These small towns, they can just you know, live and breathe that same existence because they don’t they never venture out and use it

Justin Trosclair 16:53
will get off of this. And once I even like a school like on a high school, if you had an older brother and stuff like that, sometimes they judge you basically What’s your older sibling? Did you like I’m not that person? Like, I’m not, I’m not like, Can I Can we get a clean slate? You know?

Unknown Speaker 17:06
Right, right. And sometimes you’re bullied by that older sibling or by that, you know, hateful person in your family just like they’re doing everybody else.

Justin Trosclair 17:15
Mm hmm. Let’s bridge into a said we mentioned it before the chicks with him. These give us a little, a little taste of what’s that all about? What’s the mission? And, you know, in the beginning of the show and introduction, you have lots of different topics that you can talk about, like, contract negotiations, to me is really, that’s important. And if you don’t know about that stuff, man, the hospital will take advantage of it.

Unknown Speaker 17:41
Absolutely. So just give you a brief background for me of how it chicks with MDS came to me. I was in private practice in Central Illinois for about four and a half years and my husband and I had a young baby and we were living apart. So I moved to Chicago so that we could live as a unit. And when I got here, like literally within a month of me getting here and starting, you know, contract negotiations with hospitals and getting a private practice loan and all this stuff, I was diagnosed with MS. And that kind of everything came to a crashing halt. I had to figure out how to evolve as a physician and a healthcare provider and a parent and a spouse and a community member with this new diagnosis because I couldn’t work the way I was previously, I was working myself to literally to death. And I created chicks within these because I still wanted to serve the medical community. I still wanted to get out and work in whatever capacity I could. And most importantly, because going through this process of becoming a patient, I started identifying things that were detrimental to patients. That were detrimental to physicians and other docs and administrators and people who were trying to engage the healthcare community. And most importantly, I realized that there was a significant divide between what physicians were trying to get across to patients and what patients were interpreting or receiving. So I wanted to try and bridge that divide. And I thought that I was in a very unique position, because I had been a physician for so long. And now I was a patient. And I wanted to relay things to people that I found were absent in my experience as a patient, and the frustrations that I had dealing with my healthcare ensure and getting my health insurance getting dropped by the Medical Center, and then me getting a surprise bill for $26,000 in the mail, and how do you deal with it and who is your support and so that’s where Where that all came from? And when I started thinking about what should I call this entity that I have, and I thought about, like, who I was and the fact that I didn’t want to separate and make this like, some corporate entity, but that I wanted to make it engaging and I wanted people to see it and immediately be interested and what I might have to say didn’t like what I called it or because they didn’t like what I called it or because the logo engage them or whatever. And so that’s where chicks with embodies the title came from, and then the logo kind of evolved from there, but it really is my personality like this is just who I am. A lot like to go out and ask people questions and get people to say things that I may or may not like and answer questions, and but most importantly, inform and educate and empower folks. And I feel like I’ve been able to do that. And every year the platform evolves and I do a little bit more do things differently. But I’ve found that people are utilizing the information that I have. And I feel like I need to do more and more and more because the, you know, like you had a post one of your podcasts was talking about chiropractic health, and that when people have health insurance, how their hospital stays go down and how they perform and how they recover is improved. Those things are essential. And also, you talked about that we’re like, number one in health care cost. But we’re like 50th performance. Yikes. Right. So that’s what we’re trying to work on, you know, like, how do we improve people’s outcome and how do we improve their quality of life which is so essential, because we shouldn’t just be treating a disease we should be focusing on how to make people’s existence Better on a day to day by treating their illnesses, but not just focusing on you know, like something that is a pet peeve of mine is when like students or residents or whoever presents on rounds, and they it’s like this is we have appendicitis. We don’t have an appendicitis we have

Unknown Speaker 22:23
the last name Hey Bob.

Unknown Speaker 22:26
Like before person would appendicitis came in they were a nurse, a doctor, a teacher and accountant, the the maintenance guy here at the hospital, you know, they have an amazing presentation.

Justin Trosclair 22:40
Yeah, like

Unknown Speaker 22:40
Come on, give me a break. You know, because when you to when you don’t, when when the when the patient loses their humanity in your regard. That changes how you treat that patient. So you have to focus on folks, and remember who they are and remember, keep Mind who these people are before they come in the door and present with this acute illness. And that will change how you treat patients. And it should change how you treat patients. So that’s kind of chicks within days, as well, because,

Justin Trosclair 23:15
you know, MS is not something that is easily taking care of the things. So there’s lots of visits that go along with that. And many doctors typically and lots of different avenues of between diet and medicines and finding a balance. So what what an eye opening experience to really have it flipped on your head where you’re the patient. And it’s not an easy diagnosis. It’s not just that just cut out your appendix. And you’ll be better. Right, you know,

Unknown Speaker 23:40
right. Yeah. No, right.

Justin Trosclair 23:42
That’s a big hurdle to have to jump. You know, you were mentioned the the stat. I want to see America, in the developed countries. Were not so great at even keeping mothers alive. Well, yeah. You know, maternal mortality. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 23:56
Yeah, you don’t think about it, but apparently it’s a thing and it’s the thing that we should Not be bright boasting about America. I can’t believe

Unknown Speaker 24:03
that’s actually the next campaign I’m working on is maternal mortality. So stay tuned. Yeah, yep. Okay.

Justin Trosclair 24:11
I wasn’t sure what you know, when you look at your social media and you looking at things and I wasn’t completely sure what chicks within these did, I wasn’t sure if it was like an advocacy group. Or if it was more like a, you know, ladies, let’s get together. You know, you’ll always bind together and become stronger and all sudden the guys like, I want to be a part of something like that. Like Wait, that’s like every other organization you’re like, Oh, yeah, okay.

Unknown Speaker 24:34
Right.

Justin Trosclair 24:36
Yes. So are you I guess how are you getting your message? Are you having a market to different major medical associations in different states are they people find how does that work?

Unknown Speaker 24:47
You know, it’s been a blessing because people because I do a variety of different articles. And because of my posts, people find me like you found like five feet. And so I’m just on social media. So I’m on like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, have a website. And one way or another people find me and I think it’s because there is a critical need for this type of information. And there aren’t enough platforms that are really addressing it. And the platforms that are addressing it exceptionally a lot of times they’re not on social media. So a lot of times we as and this is that cluster of, you know, women coming together. A lot of times we social media folks will come together and do things to just try and get the word out. So like when if you’re okay with me doing it after we get done with this, I would like to share a link on my platform so that people know about you because I was like going through your posts and I was like, how about Dr. Justin isn’t all over the place. I mean, like you have all your What do you call your your chiropractic moments? What do you call it has like a catchy term that you

Unknown Speaker 26:16
can look it up. I think you’re looking at my clinic site that I really don’t play with a lot, but I was playing with it for a long time. And I kind of like pause, right, but

Unknown Speaker 26:25
these are very engaging and people love that type of information. The other thing I liked about it, like your podcast is that they’re short. And so it’s just like a quick blip of information. So because you know, people’s attention span is like, not there. Like for me, my attention spans not there. So I’ve started to do very short video clips because I’m like, I know I’m not the only one with a short attention span. What I want to give people a lot of information in a short in a very short amount of time. And I think that’s critical to just know how people are communicating nowadays. And make sure that we get the information out in a format that is appealing to them. Where they get the most out of it

Justin Trosclair 27:06
is the I can appreciate that because in the marketing of like the podcast marketing of, you know, all those blog posts that you’re liking this red book over here, I turned it into a book. So it’s not like a brand new information. It’s called repackaging. But that’s smart. But you know, you listen to gurus and they’re like, sometimes you need three to five minutes. If it’s this kind of posts on this website, you need like, seven to nine minutes. And I’m thinking I’m like, I don’t have enough time in the day, watching seven minute videos of anybody making it better be a really good funny YouTube clip or something for me that like stick around. And internets are so crazy. Well, sometimes you get good internet. And other times you’re like, I can barely buffer through a minute. And so to be able to have that variety and I think, you know, we attract who we like, all right, like, I want quick videos, where you get quick videos, and then you have blog posts, if you want to read you can read and just kind of go down that rabbit hole and you try to you want to attract So, okay, I think this is a fun question. Are there any any misconceptions about what you’re doing? And is there any you kind of give them a couple takeaways, but Well, there’s a patient advocacy part or the doctor advocacy for the patient, kind of keeping those in mind. any major takeaways that we should have, just from listening to this episode?

Unknown Speaker 28:25
Um, you know, the misconceptions aren’t associated with chicks with MDS, like I would say, like, at the beginning, I did a, like a women’s wellness, some type of Expo and a man like, I mean, like I had all day, it was a women’s Expo. And so like all of these women all day, like, sign up for the event all. And at the end of the day, this older guy came up and he was like, don’t you think that women would be insulted that she had this entity called chicks with MBAs, and I was like, no And and open, you’re the only one all day and he’s really the only one who has ever relayed any that he was insulted by the name. The only issues that people in terms of misconceptions is really about plastic surgery and plastic surgeons because most of the time when people approach me or when they find out that I’m a plastic surgeon, it’s like oh, boots or Oh, what and that is like for the average plastic surgeon that goes to work every day and sees patients booms and what’s there sir, do you know they’re thrown in there but the majority of people are coming to you because they either have hand surgery complaints, or they have skin cancer, or sometimes you’re fixing a baby’s cleft lip and palate for a large percentage of plastic surgeons out there are doing breast reductions, breast reconstruction for for cancer. We’re doing You know what we call bread and butter stuff. And so it’s not that we don’t enjoy doing boobs inputs. But that’s really not what comprises plastic surgery. So if I can talk about misconceptions, it’s really about what people how people perceive plastic surgeons. And this is another reason why I like using social media because it gives the international community another side. Another view of what plastic surgeons are that we do advocate for our patients all day, every day that we go to multidisciplinary breast conferences every month, every week to advocate for our patients that this is how we need to approach doing breast reconstruction, who’s a good candidate who isn’t a good candidate. And so and we take that back to our offices, and share that with our patients and we’re constantly in a quest to get How to relate better care. So if there’s the misconception is really about plastic surgeons and how we’re perceived and we’re basically like the lawyers of the medical community and you know, my bad if any lawyers are but that’s okay. You know how like, you know, lawyers are perceived as an ambulance chasers, it’s like, you know, people think that you know, we trench coats and then we walk into like strip clubs, handing out our business cards and God level they need care to write but those lines to what we do a lot more in terms of trying to advocate for folks. And then what was the other part you wanted me to address? Like the

Justin Trosclair 31:45
Oh, it was and I think like said, I think you probably answered this part already. If someone was listening to this and like, what’s one or two ways that like patient advocacy, and then doctors knowing about mixing the address the patient’s correctly?

Unknown Speaker 31:58
Right, so patient advocacy is, is

Unknown Speaker 32:03
can be very tricky because you want to make sure that you are educating folks and that you’re making sure that they have access to adequate resources, which sometimes may not be you. Right? Sometimes when a patient comes to see us, sometimes they don’t need a breast reduction. Or sometimes that’s not the first step. Sometimes it’s Are you wearing the correct bra? Do you have chronic back issues? Have you had a back injury and that’s resulting in your symptoms, right? Because I mean, like, if you’ve had big boobs for 20 years, and you just started having back pain 18 months ago, after a motor vehicle accident, that might be you know what I mean, saying, you know what, these big boobs sometimes where we have to look at, once again, this is looking at the patient, comprehensively, globally, like what’s going on what has changed and if nothing hasn’t had if we haven’t addressed some things like, can we work on strength back strengthening, you know, exercises? You know, what, what have we done to try and improve your quality of life before we go to surgery?

Unknown Speaker 33:15
So typically, this isn’t like a 250 pound woman or something like this kind of like a fit women with ease or whatever and like my back hurts.

Unknown Speaker 33:25
Well, you know what, sometimes it is, it can’t be an obese woman. But once again, you have to look at somebody globally, because if you’re obese, and you’ve been obese for a while, and you’ve had big boobs for a while, and then you start having back pain out of the blue, we need to address that versus I’ve had big boobs for 20 years, I’ve had back pain for 20 years and I’ve just tolerated it. Then, you know, that’s something that you get from a history you know, and we that’s you know, something that we hone and revise and and and build on over our Practice lifetime. But you have to, you know, being a great doctor is not just about, you know, cutting somebody or knowing how to manipulate somebody’s spine effectively. It’s also about how do we get people to tell us what we need to know, you know what I mean? Like, what what is it that, you know, you learn you these skills over time, how do I hone this information and get these nuggets of gold so that I can effectively take care of the patient, not just so I can, you know, charge for whatever procedure and that’s what the majority of people are trying to do when they’re caring for patients, is how do I get the the appropriate information so I can make the right diagnosis and treatment plan for you?

Justin Trosclair 34:44
Because it’s hard to pull some of this information out? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 34:48
it is, but you don’t, but that is major advocacy is when you’re looking to make sure that the patient is taking care of not necessarily so that you know you’re getting your case logs, you know, That you’re getting appropriate. Like, okay, well listen, okay, you’re here for breast reduction. Okay, we’ll get you scheduled for breast reduction. That’s

Justin Trosclair 35:05
what you want. I’m gonna give it to you, to convince you not to have it,

Unknown Speaker 35:10
right. Sometimes advocacy is saying, Okay, well, you came here for this, but you’ve got a suspicious lesion here on your hands since we’ve been talking. How long is that been there?

Justin Trosclair 35:19
Or not worried about that?

Unknown Speaker 35:22
Right, right. Right. And sometimes it’s going through somebody’s history and saying, you know, the symptoms that you’re describing can also be associated with your history of x, y, and z. So that’s also advocacy. And then advocacy is also on the larger platform of let’s also do Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Let’s also make sure that people are not going to see the hotel rooms to get silicone and injections into their butts. You know, yeah. So all of that is advocacy. But yeah, so you know, it comes in in different forms, and we that the other thing is is that you can advocate every day on some level what sometimes sometimes it’s me advocating for other physicians and I know that people are like physicians don’t need any further advocacy when you when you

Unknown Speaker 36:16
when you can’t do the job you want to do

Unknown Speaker 36:20
when you talk to people and figure out like for me when I got diagnosed and I started reviewing my all of my contracts my disability contract my malpractice contract my health insurance contracts, I started talking to other docs like hey, do you know what kind of disability insurance you have? Do you have disability insurance, and that’s really how I got on the track of not just advocating for patients but also advocating for physicians and who else is going to advocate for physicians but another physician, because I’ve gone through all of these plot twists, and you know, had the floor fall out from under me and I wanted to try and help other docs so that they were not in the same predicament that I was in or and some of the things that I actually did do well, I wanted to make sure that they had that information as well. So that’s all advocacy though. And you know, we don’t have to, you know, like advocacy once again, it’s not just getting a bullhorn, you know, and doing a mark Sanders, you know what I mean? It’s sometimes having a conversation with somebody, like, Hey, I went through this experience that was very traumatizing. And I want to make sure if I can prevent you from going through that. I want to, that’s advocacy. All of that is advocacy.

Justin Trosclair 37:36
I remember doing disability insurance and realizing like, 90 days, it’s like, my goodness, like you can go bankrupt in 90 days.

Unknown Speaker 37:45
Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 37:47
And some disability policies are 180 degree, I’m sorry, 180 days

Unknown Speaker 37:56
is a long time to not be able to practice getting me right now. That’s it.

Unknown Speaker 38:01
So yeah, you have to, you know, make sure that people are prepared like do you have an emergency fund and uh you know there’s unfortunately there’s a lot of people no matter what they’re making every month they’re living paycheck to paycheck

Justin Trosclair 38:16
yeah right I bet you Chicago you can probably get a it’s not hard to probably find a multimillion dollar condo yeah live the good life yeah yeah and spend or NB house poor or condo? yeah yeah yeahs a lot of surgeries you gotta do there

Unknown Speaker 38:35
all day long my friend

Justin Trosclair 38:37
man we better have a snow season

Unknown Speaker 38:40
in Colorado with my assistant like man, I don’t want to slip in miles in my in my neighborhood area but uh, if they want to slip at their house but listen really good back patients right there. Just a minor spring we don’t want big surgery. You know what? Nothing serious. Just come in a couple of times. Come on. Get some ice In the doctors can joke.

Unknown Speaker 39:04
So it becomes more bit like we gotta stop. We got to stop hanging around each other. Yeah,

Justin Trosclair 39:08
that’s right. each other on go on once you go. Well, I always like to respect people’s time I’m noticing the time. And one of the things. Boy, there’s so many like so much to talk about, um, I’m gonna skip five year goals unless you really would like to talk about those, um, what, what are what are my five year goals? Yeah, we can talk about that. Or we can jump to the more personal side of the interview. We do prefer

Unknown Speaker 39:37
give you like a minute of five year goals and then we go on to the next one. Let’s do it.

Unknown Speaker 39:43
So for me, another great thing that came out of all of this chaos is that I started writing fiction. And so one of my five year goals is to publish a book of a book or a short a full length or short story book every year for the next five years. So I’ve done my first book of fiction, which is under Stella Jones is my pseudonym. And I published that in 2018. And I have a book of short stories coming out at the end of this year. And so I’m going to do that. That’s one of the things the other thing is, is that this last year I’ve spent going back into clinical medicine I’ve been very fortunate to be able to find part time you’d be surprised how hard it is that when you have a disability as a physician, that is very hard to number one get on staff because they think you know, you’re Humpty Dumpty that you’re going to like fall, you’re going to be responsible. But then also just being able to mold a practice where you take care of your health because you know how it is and how it’s like you could work yourself to death and then they’ll just like, post it for lease sign in front of your office space. You know what I mean? So

Justin Trosclair 40:52
yeah,

Unknown Speaker 40:53
it’s been a great in that regard that I’ve been able to find a clinical practice where I I can work and take care of patients. So I’m building up that But then I also want to find a way to incorporate go back out there a panel on the road and do lectures because I really feel like there’s a great impact when you can go and engage people and talk to them and not only provide information like in a lecture, but you really gain a lot in terms of being able to relay information when you have like the question and answer or you have a roundtable afterwards and being a be able to engage people because then they can take that back into the community and share that with other folks like you know, make sure you get your mammograms make sure these are the options you have. And then the same thing when I talked to physicians that they can go back out and carry that information about contract negotiations and disability malpractice etc. Okay, it was my friend your boat.

Justin Trosclair 41:49
Is any of this stuff CPE for the medical doctors or this is all just sort of, like you should know

Unknown Speaker 41:54
the CME You mean like the continuous education when I work like that. Sometimes I go out and I contract to work for other companies. And usually those when I do those lectures, those are CME affiliated so that they they’re already at a course where they’re getting CME. But when I go out independently, it’s just me. And most of the time when I go out independently, I mean, I talk in a variety of places like churches, sometimes I go and I give Grand Rounds presentations at other universities. And then so if I give a grand rounds, that is see me, right, but like if I go to a church, or if I’m talking about a woman’s group or something No, right. Our last I would say probably like 5050. That whether it’s whether they do get credits, but if I do it independently, no. But if I go and talk like with the university or whatever it is,

Justin Trosclair 42:49
and congratulate because I think this is one of the things about the medical profession. We can just work two or three days a week. You know, a quote working, we say work, we think we’re dealing with patients. And then anything else is like a side job or something like that. But that’s like two full time jobs for you like I do this to keep my skills up and I enjoy and I love it. And then I have this passion project that I really want to make bigger. And that takes probably, you know, like I said more weekend type of stuff like a Friday or a Sunday or something like that to, you know,

Unknown Speaker 43:19
it starts to all it becomes like a melting pot. Like eventually it all starts to infuse one one starts to infuse into the other words like, I don’t know, maybe vegetable soup or I’m not sure maybe ice cream, two flavors, ice cream melted together, but they wind up influencing each other. Yeah. And that also makes you approachable from a patient perspective when they when they know that you do other things. You know, like medicine, unfortunately, the perception is is that it’s very sterile. And so you tell people Oh, I also write fiction or Oh yeah, I’m on social media, you can probably say what you like you as weird. You know, so it people, it allows you to engage folks. And then and it also it drops the wall, you know, because there’s a perception that you’re not approachable or I shouldn’t talk to you about other things that I may find interesting or intriguing or whatever. And when people drop their guard, they’re more likely to relay information that maybe they thought you would judge them or whatever. So there’s, there’s been no drawback for me for engaging on social media.

Justin Trosclair 44:44
I did a African American series, man, I guess two Christmases ago, kind of the whole holiday series. All those ladies they end up all being all ladies for some reason. Between now and then it has been great to follow them. They’re releasing books and workshops. programs and all these different projects. And I’m just like, wow, I found them before they did that stuff. Yeah. And they were already looked like a shining light. To me, it was really cool to see these these people just come up and have this social media presence and they have their own following and they’re doing they’re doing it.

Unknown Speaker 45:16
And you know, the thing is that social media has allows people to pursue all of these entrepreneurial goals that, you know, sometimes we just kind of keep to ourselves or what people do in their basements where nobody else is watching. Yeah, and you get inspired and motivated when you see other people out there doing it, like, oh, my goodness, I keep doing that. You know, I’ve got a book out. Yeah, I mean, like, I can’t even tell you how many people like send me DMS and all this like, Hey, can you would you read this paragraph? like yeah, send it to me. You know, I mean, like, people have all of these dreams and ideas is sometimes you get older, and the What you learn from your family or from society is that Oh, that’s kids stuff or those. Those are passions. That’s not your life. It’s like whoa. Yeah, I’ll take a helping a both of those things, please. Like you should be able to mix them. And when you’re pursuing your passion for me anyway, it’s not work. Right? It’s just like, it’s that doesn’t mean it’s not hard. But it’s not a chore. You know what I mean? It’s like these are things that motivate me that inspire me and I think that there’s a misconception like, Oh, well, if you’re following your passion, you just play in around your not work. I’m sure you can spend 14 hours in one day doing all the stuff that you’re doing and just be like, man, I still have another 20 hours to do but I need to go to bed and I’m just fired up to continue. Yeah, and get your husband and your your kid. Hey, can we have some of your time? Well, I actually have insomnia. So I Do most of my writing even better?

Unknown Speaker 47:08
Yeah, so I mean, it’s great. I mean, it’s, it’s been a journey.

Justin Trosclair 47:13
I got a one year old It feels like I haven’t. stay asleep. Stop reversing.

Unknown Speaker 47:19
laces, bags. Number two, this little Asian cage and you can imagine

Unknown Speaker 47:30
Yeah, I remember those days one year old, all energy. It’s fun though.

Justin Trosclair 47:36
I’m a young I’m a young mid 30s. But let’s do this. Okay, so you’ve got you got a husband. I’m sure he works. Yeah, you got a kid. You got your own stuff that you do a lot for. Now sounds like you do travel for that. So that might be considered vacation for you. But a lot of docs in general just don’t take enough vacation. We don’t use what we get are given. What can we do about that? How can we max miser vacation never given.

Unknown Speaker 48:01
Okay, so it you got to get them young. Okay? And that’s the reason why I try to engage with medical students and undergraduate students and high school students and residents and fellows and everybody to try and tell them early like taking care of yourself and and attending to those things that are most important to you is not a sign of weakness. Okay, I did nine years of postgraduate surgical training, which is way too much for anybody for five lifetimes. And the thing that was always stressed and not verbally, but just in actions was that you know, sleep and eating and taking time for family and attending things that bring you joy is a sign of weakness. You carry that and they they teach you that you get indoctrinated in medical school very early. that these are signs of weakness. Doing things that you love, joy, and these are things that are strength and that’s, you know, dedicating all your time to the hospital which would bury you in the backyard and put you know, put a for sale sign over your tombstone. So, now are things changing? Yes. Because the newer generation and people are very self focused. Okay.

Justin Trosclair 49:22
Yeah, I am working 60 hours a week.

Unknown Speaker 49:26
Oh, so you so things are changing, right? But there’s still there’s still a lot of unhealthy lifestyle practices in medicine and in just in the general population, but for me, I know medicine so I try and teach people like or show people I hey, first of all, you can make a decision very early on that you want to make Max Max Max Max profit or that you don’t like the people in your family or you don’t like your spouse. So you want to be at work all the time. those are those are choices. And you can also choose to work 75% 50% or that you have like there are certain practices that, that I’ve been affiliated with some of these physicians where every three months, they have to take two weeks off that’s in their contract. So you don’t have, you don’t have to go on vacation, but you can’t come here. So they, it’s structured into their practice, they work three months, and then they’re off two weeks, or they’re off four weeks or whatever it is. And so it’s like, basically you you don’t and you can go somewhere else and work for that time, but you’re not going to be here. So they they kind of learn that this is part of your practice, part of your practice is taking time off. But also what’s important is, especially for the younger folks is making sure that you attend to Don’t forget about people Don’t you know go into medical school and residency and beyond and then not go to anybody’s wedding? Forget about people having babies, forget about those things for yourself. You have to structure time. It’s just like for me, I have like, and my husband hates it because I have like calendars all over the place. This is bad you on this day, this is what there is. When is my yoga time, like for me for my health, Yoga has been like, life changing. And so that’s a part of me. And so, because I do yoga so much. Now, everybody’s doing yoga dog does yoga, you know, or at least she comes and sits on the yoga mat. What you know, doing yoga to kids, you know, my daughter does yoga. My husband does yoga. My husband just did a marathon. And what did he do before he started? Did his sun salutations.

Justin Trosclair 51:55
Come on.

Unknown Speaker 51:56
So I mean, you know, it’s like an

Unknown Speaker 52:00
We do it and enjoy it.

Unknown Speaker 52:01
Yeah, he didn’t even he didn’t even say, hey, come and do this with me while I’m here. You know, he just got up, you know, we went down there with him so he can get started on the marathon. He’s, that was part of that’s part of his routine. So, but you know, you have to be intentional about taking care of yourself. And so that’s just what I try and impart. And if I could say one last thing about this work life balance, there is no work life balance. True, somebody is going to sacrifice and you have to decide where the sacrifice is going to be because there’s only 24 hours in a day. So you’re not going to appease all of the gods. Somebody is going to have to take a little list. And my hope is that people decide that they are self care and spending time with their family and friends and going to great events and taking vacations that they sacrifice more to enjoy the Those things rather than saying, Okay, I’m going to sacrifice all of that and spend more time at work, my hope is that when they see me or they see you, or they see whoever’s out there doing something other than clinical, that they say, I can do this, it’s possible for me to, you know, cheat a little bit more for myself and self care and less time, but you there’s no balance, somebody’s going to have to take a hit.

Justin Trosclair 53:26
And usually there’s seasons. Yeah, for sure. I have a couple of weeks were like, Look, I really get a I gotta bang this out for the next two weeks. Right? And then we’ll have a break. Yeah. I tell people this sometimes, if you kind of have been in practice for a while, and you kind of got an idea of how much money you could make. Oh, are you Do you know what I mean? You can project that out based on our views and all that. Talk to your spouse. If you’re like, I gotta work all the time and you’re fighting about you don’t see your kids and all this. You need to have that conversation with your spouse like, hey, if we made X amount less money, yeah, I can do that. We can do that. I could take off this They are cut shut it down. That means we’re going to lose this much income. Are you cool with that? And if you’re not cool with that, then it is what it is.

Unknown Speaker 54:08
I think, you know, unfortunately, I have seen so many docs who make a whole lot of money and die. And then you’re not you’re not making you’re not taking that stuff with you. You know what I mean? You’re working yourself into an early grave, or you’re depressed, or you’re, you know, you now you have a dependency on something to keep you going and active. Like, you know, think about this.

Justin Trosclair 54:37
I chose to work in China for almost five years. I’m done now, like, two weeks. This is the fifth right now. And then I’m done on the 15th. I’ll be back in America, January, I’m going to Cologne Germany. So like, I’m gonna work there for a year. And that’s crazy for a lot of people, but I’m like, you know, that’s what my 30s are going to be. When I look back in my life. It’s like, Dude, that decade of my life, I was doing something that most people won’t do. Traveling, enjoying it. And from then on, I guess I don’t know what to do but you know just one of those things where you can change it, you can change the priorities of your life. I’m not saying gotta go work abroad, but you can take more time off and just realize that hey, I’m still going to be okay financially, generally speaking, you know, medical doctors versus other doctors, sometimes there’s a difference in you know, don’t get you may have higher salaries, versus like a dentist where there’s not really a salary typically it’s you eat what you kill.

Unknown Speaker 55:30
But you know, dentists actually are in this healthcare arena are ahead of the game because of how they negotiated in terms of their reimbursement from health from insurance, but that’s a whole nother topic. But you know, what, the other thing I want to say for anybody who is tuning in who may be looking at things from a second career perspective, or you know, feeling like they’re coming into this late in the game is that even If you’re you know, like, when I, when I started medical school, there was a guy who was a PhD, who was starting medical school at age 50. My mom actually was an ICU nurse for 10 years. And then she and my father were they were married, and they had us and then she wanted, she had been discouraged from going to medical school and high school and went back to undergrad, we would go to classes with her, and then she went to medical school, and etc, etc, etc. So, for anybody who’s tuning in, I don’t want you to think that, you know, you’re, it’s too late in the game for you or you can’t still go and pursue things and, you know, like the world is literally, you know, because you’re halfway across the world, that the world is still out there and open for exploring and pursuing and I hope that people take from our exchange that they can purchase Su, whatever profession they want, in whatever way that they see fit, that there is not one mold for pursuing medicine or pursuing their life’s passions and that that may evolve over time. Because I can tell you right now, if I never got sick you and I would never have had this conversation. Because I was in clinical medicine, I would have never thought twice about that just being my life. But I’m very thankful that it evolved to this point where I am talking with you from halfway across the world. And that we’re I think that in our both of our ways, whatever we’re pursuing this that we’re helping folks that we’re advocating for folks, you know, and a different way of being and pursuing and practicing medicine.

Justin Trosclair 57:47
The podiatrist a few months ago, she end up having like a heart surgery and Marfan syndrome and she had like 10 podiatry clinics and all this kind of stuff. She’s like, yeah, that stopped. Yeah. Are you gonna have a hard valve replacement or whatever it was, he’s like, that’ll change your priorities in life in a hurry. And she had her own, you know, awakening and journey that she had to go on and she went the, you know, an allied health style of things. But last question, you ready for this one? In this show, we’re kind of talking about money. We’re talking about these spouses. Divorce happens, yes, a higher rate for doctors, which is never good. So how are you able to keep the love alive and feel connected?

Unknown Speaker 58:28
To it is a hard one. Okay. So I think the first thing for me is communication. Okay? You have to be able your spouse has to be comfortable telling you when you’re not being nice or when you’re not being available. And then you’re open to those criticisms. I think, as doctors we’re used to kind of in some realms or some arenas, thinking that we’re omnipotent. They’re here in charge or, and, you know, I think if you have honest communication in your household and with your spouse and with your children and your pets or whoever, you, you have to relinquish whatever concepts that you have of yourself, when you walk through the door your home, you have to know that you’re on an equal playing field, that you have to be available, open, engaging. And the other thing is you have to find a partner who, you know is the Yin to your Yang, right? So for me, I love humor. And there, you know, even if my husband and I may be warring with one another, one another, there’s always some type of humor. And I think that relaxes us both like we we can lead to each other and still, and and that be, you know, reaffirming of Our bond and that for us, it was important that we were friends first, because you can go through so many tumultuous things in your relationship, like my husband and I have been together for 23 years. But we’ve been married for 11, right? Because we weren’t going to be married while I was in training and all of that jazz. And so, I mean, as you can imagine, I mean, we’ve gone through a life period like a life cycle to life cycles. And so you have to be able to engage people outside of being attracted to them or them being, you know, a breadwinner or you being a breadwinner. There’s got to be something you know, that that that will you communicate on a level and an understanding that other people just don’t have. Because when you have trying times, that’s what’s going to preserve your bond, you know, and they’re going to be times you know, when I want Hit him over the head with a ruler and he wants to do the same to me. And so you have to find, you know, you have to

Unknown Speaker 1:01:07
want one of my

Unknown Speaker 1:01:08
you have to be patient. And you also have to accept that those times will come and and learn how to communicate even through those rough times. Because, you know, when we first started dating, I mean, it was like, if we had an argument was like, entire situation just shut down. We just wouldn’t talk to each other for days, like how’s this gonna work? But we figured out how to communicate in this, like, you know how to express ourselves how to take time, no, and also realizing that when you’re wrong, you know, even sometimes when you’re not wrong. Yeah, want to salvage things, how do I communicate? How do I Oh, and also making sure that sometimes even when your perception isn’t that you’re wrong, sometimes you could still be wrong, even when you don’t think you are. That’s been very hard,

Justin Trosclair 1:01:58
but every could be a massive issue. Sometimes

Unknown Speaker 1:02:02
deliver some truth but it was a bad

Unknown Speaker 1:02:04
yeah, like why you know and like my husband told me that the other day like, you know listen to yourself like I’m listening to myself I’m correct sound great

Unknown Speaker 1:02:15
there is

Justin Trosclair 1:02:16
a charge Hello.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:18
But yeah it just because you are factually correct sometimes you your words can be piercing especially for me because I’m like the queen of sarcasm and my comfort zone is just throwing spears like it you know, I can you know, I can kill somebody with my words. It’s so I have to be cognizant of that. But you know, sometimes I just have to not say anything or I have to what I’ve learned somebody saw this on social media somewhere is that sometimes if you want to say something, take five minutes or take a day and if you still need to say those things, then say it and 99% of the time, by the time the first minute is up, I know that I don’t need to say, because something’s you know, it’s like, okay, you know, somebody’s about to cross the street and the cars come and you say whatever you have to say. So that person doesn’t get run over. But, you know, other times, like if they say something that you don’t like, and you know that you could just come back with a verbal response that would just murder them. You just don’t need to do it, you just you know, and that’s also something that I had to retrain myself out of after training for nine years. Because you know, you’re a constant, you’re in a constant state of defending yourself. When you’re a resident or fellow or medical student, whether on rounds,

Unknown Speaker 1:03:45
you know, you do this while you

Unknown Speaker 1:03:46
do that, right and you’re constantly like coming back with something and that becomes your defensive it becomes your way of being and that a out in the world is not a good way to engage. People,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:01
right? Well, I had to

Unknown Speaker 1:04:02
learn that and I also I have to, like, take a deep breath like after I’ve been in the hospital for a while. It’s a different culture. So when you come home, you can’t be like bossing people around like,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:13
hey,

Justin Trosclair 1:04:15
at work, you are the top dog. You’re in charge of everything. Yeah, I want the practice to run this way. I need the nurses to do this. It’s all on me

Unknown Speaker 1:04:24
on the surgeons because you just you if you if you’re not assertive, sometimes things don’t happen for your patients. And that can be detrimental to them. And so would you can’t take that back into the house a, you know, I told you to get up. Yeah, it take it down. So, you know, for for people in medicine, I think, you know, you have to learn how to engage your spouse, not as your subordinate or not even not even as your colleague but this is your spouse is your life partner and there’s a difference in how you relate to them. And Your children the same thing. You’re not a drill sergeant, you know, I mean, when you talk to your children, you and they’re not just little, you know, miniature beings that are supposed to be just following your rule. You’re also having their own personality. I’m running. It’s crazy.

Justin Trosclair 1:05:13
Yeah. And I don’t want that. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:16
Right. Right. Well, you wait, wait till they’re set. Right now. Okay. I do see. And the other thing is, is that you’re going to see parts of you in them and say, Hey,

Unknown Speaker 1:05:27
you know, only on the top dog around, yeah, you the assertion doesn’t come from you. It goes for me, you know, like you had that,

Unknown Speaker 1:05:35
you know, you have to let your kids grow and be and evolved and, and, and also they will tell you, you know, you’re not being nice. You know, you’re not being fair. You know, you’re not being decided. Wait a minute now. Maybe I wasn’t, yeah, what you but that’s another time where I have to step back and say, you know, am I being fair or, you know, am I this Plenty, like is this appropriate or isn’t this appropriate? So it’s a it’s a journey, you know? And if, if my husband was here, I’m sure he would pique his head and and like, and she’s still learning, you know what I mean? Like, it’s it’s all being process. So yeah, it’s it’s, um, I think I don’t know if that that really that that answers the question, but

Justin Trosclair 1:06:21
definitely I mean, you got to remember I think for myself sometimes I have to remember we’re a team, when we’re really just in a stressful situation like we’re having to pack up our entire life. And for some cases, that’s some stress. Is this coming? Or is this going? Right? You need it? Or do you just want it? You know, we have to stop back, you know, every couple hours is when we’re really packing day and we’re just like, Hey, we’re on the same team. We’re on the same team. Good, good, good. All right. And then you know, you just sort of give it a hug, and you just kind of rebalance yourself and you kind of keep going, but if you don’t, it’s very easy. I would think that just like you said, spears and spears and you know what really, I mean, I’ve always learned from our brother and Younger brother, so I kind of learned how to needle find what aggravate somebody in play with it. Yeah, but uh oh yeah. Well, let’s have some websites and do you have your you know your handles for at least Instagram? I know handles for everything.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:19
So, my website is ww at chicks with mds.com. My social media handles for Facebook, Instagram. And LinkedIn is chicks with him DS. And

Unknown Speaker 1:07:38
if you want to see my

Unknown Speaker 1:07:41
literary work, it’s Stella Jones paranormal romance. But you can find all of my links and all of my social media handles on the website. There’s a bar at the top on the landing page. And you can find out more than you ever want to know about me and my experiences on the website. Also if you and I have all of my links to my books on the website as well, so I won’t bore you with all of those links. But yeah, just go to the website chicks with MDS calm and you can follow me on social media. I would love to hear from you all. And thank you, Dr. Justin for having me. This has been absolutely awesome.

Justin Trosclair 1:08:23
Well, you’re going to top notch guest and I just loved all the information. I don’t mind going long because sometimes you just got a lot to say and it’s good information. You know, so very happy to have you on Thank you so much. And hopefully people will be hitting you up on all the flavors that you’ve just mentioned.

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai

About the Author
Dr. Justin Trosclair, D.C., an expert in Chiropractic Care, has been focusing on back and neck pain relief for over 12 years and has delivered treatment to more than 6000 patients. With advanced training in treating disc derangement conditions, you can count on him to keep up to date with the latest research in physical medicine for spinal pain. He has 5 years of hospital experience in China, is currently working in Germany, and had a private practice in Colorado for 6 years. Dr. Trosclair hosts a doctor to doctor interview podcast called ‘A Doctor’s Perspective‘ with over 220 episodes. During his free time he wrote 3 books. Today’s Choices Tomorrow’s Health (rebooting health in 4 categories), a Do-It- Yourself acupressure book for 40 common conditions called Needle-less Acupuncture, and a step by step guide to look like a local for Chinese dinner culture called Chinese Business Dinner Culture. If you have kids, you may be interested in his 6 series tri-lingual animal coloring book series (english, spanish and chinese).