Why I Do This

Lately, for me, all you have been hearing is bitch, bitch, bitch about how this or that sucks big hairy ones (can't wait to get the misguided google searches on that one). So why, you collectively ask me, either outright or in your minds, do you put up with all that you do? Why not quit and become a garbage collector or something? This list, my friends and frenemies, is why:

~ Bringing babies into the world is, quite simply, awe-inspiring. I love it. It is so special and intimate, that moment when a family is born (and re-born), and I feel privileged to be a part of it.

~ I love helping women. Women are way too busy taking care of every one else to worry about taking care of themselves. It is good to have 15-20 minutes to sit and listen to women, and make suggestions on how they can better care for their own needs.

~ I like to *fix* things. I am, at heart, a fixer. I want to change things for the better, and being an Ob/Gyn allows me to do this more often than not. I find this infinitely satisfying when I can make things better through surgery or medical treatment.

~ I enjoy the continuity of care that being an Ob/Gyn affords. I love being able to deliver multiple babies for the same patient, and then be able to take care of their Gyn needs once childbearing is over. I like the lasting relationships the field can foster.

~ I like to do Gyn surgery. General surgery, to me, was overwhelming, but Gyn surgery affords me the ability to do a variety of cases in a limited area of the anatomy. The perfectionist in me enjoys the focus on one organ system, but there is always good enough variety to keep it interesting.

~ Procedures are fun. Not just surgeries, but colposcopies, LEEPs, IUD insertions, polyp removals, and endometrial biopsies are all very enjoyable, and the results are often immediately evident. Highly satisfactory.

~ There is a limited amount of pharmacology. For me, it is pretty much antibiotics, hormone replacement or suppression, birth control, anti-inflammatory meds, the occasional hypertension or diabetes med, and some anti-depressants. I loathe polypharmacy, so I enjoy the clean and simple pharmaceutical profiles that Ob/Gyn provides.

~ The patients. That's right, for all that they do to drive me crazy, it's the patients that keep me coming back for more. Be it the infertile woman that I helped to conceive, or the anemic, miserable woman whose ills were cured by a simple procedure or surgery, or even the chronic pain patient who got the correct diagnosis, treatment, and subsequent improved quality of life. I do this for the patients, plain and simple.

~ At the end of an exhausting day, I feel that I am making a difference and an impact for good in people's lives. That fact makes the unbearable actually bearable.

So, look, I love my job. I love it. For all of my whining, I wouldn't do anything else. I hope this answers the questions out there. Thank you for listening.



**Cross posted at Ob/Gyn Kenobi

a gray area

Just read a NY Times article about our presidents going gray. Every now and then I see a stray gray of my own pop up (surprise!). In terms of how I feel, well, you know, it's a gray area. I'm in the early stages of seeing one or two here and there, so I usually feel somewhat amused and am proudly reminded of all my accomplishments. These include first and foremost, being married with children. That is, having met my life partner and our shared attempts at raising two strong and silly kids together. Despite their (all) contributing from time to time to yet another gray hair. I still feel young (except for the occasional hip pains) and think I look fairly young (delusion or reality, I'll never know), so for me I actually welcome the few grays to help on the job, where I am supposed to have the authority to guide patients and families through important decisions about their health and well being. Where I work to educate and advise medical trainees (a few grays among them). Certainly, it's just hair, but it's aging and stress and experience and evolving self-concept as well. No need to pull them out gray by gray, I'll just let them blend in and go with the flow (tucked away in a pony tail, of course).

Fired

It was 7:30 AM, the front door was open in readiness for the five of us to brave the morning chill and head for the van, and I was crouching in the front entrance hurriedly attaching boots and mittens to my dawdling four-year-old.

I ushered him out the door, entreating him to pick up the pace as he ambled down the walkway, stuffing pinecones into his hoodie pockets. Once in the van, I had to remind him several times to climb into his car seat, as I strapped in his sister and deposited backpacks in the trunk.

I read once that children have no sense of urgency, that it's a waste of time to try to make them hurry, and I must say that in my seven years of parenting, truer words have never been spoken.

However, from time to time I can't resist trying to instill the importance of efficient house-departing routines into their little heads, and so this morning I told him earnestly, "Mommy and Daddy can't be late for work. If we are, we could be fired!" Unlikely though that scenario is, against the backdrop of today's economy the statement sounded sufficiently grim.

My words seemed to have an effect. I had his full attention. "They would set you on fire?" he asked with real interest.

All the sweeter

Today, a patient's family member hugged me. When I saw her standing in the hallway, by the room her father was in when he passed away peacefully last week, I wondered who she had come to see. Her father, a patient who was "comfort care," was now gone. The room held someone else.

I smiled at her and the next thing I knew, she was throwing her arms around me in the middle of the hallway.

She was here with the rest of the family, wanting to thank the staff, wanting to tell us of the funeral arrangements. She had told us last week that if she ever had cancer, this was the way she wanted it to be. This was the care she would have wanted.

My team has taken care of many, many patients with cancer these past few weeks. In a way, it's been depressing. There's just so much cancer. But in ways like this, it has been deeply fulfilling to be able to make a difference in the lives (or end of life) of patients and families.

I'm reaching the end of a particularly long stint of attending on the medicine wards. I thought that I would be ravaged by working the weekends, of not being able to spend as much time with my children as I wanted. I thought I would be impatient, tired, and annoyed.

Yet, today, coming home after a day of weekend rounding, I feel renewed.

Several patients expressed how much they appreciated me taking care of them. One grandfatherly figure said that he felt better just by me coming to talk to him and joked that even his gouty ankles were smiling at me. One, despite being frustrated at still not feeling completely better, told me how much he felt I made a difference. One, slowly getting better, said thank you in a way that made me humble. One, confused about what was going on, shook my hand with both of his after I gave him the diagram I drew of where in the biliary system we thought his obstruction was.

I don't know whether, with time, I'm getting better at interacting interpersonally with my patients, or that I just happen to be taking care of an appreciative bunch, but I can tell you I feel like each conversation I have with a patient lately has been therapeutic. I feel like I am personally making a difference in their hospitalization, that my joking with them, or trying to make their illness experience better in small, tangible ways, is making a difference.

Today, I came home, picked up, and twirled my 13-month old son, delighting in feeling his weight, his sweetness.

All the more sweeter from having such a fulfilling day in the hospital.

And, I thought to myself: I am good at this. This is my calling. I can't imagine doing anything else.

Just Like Mommy

Earlier this year, my daughter's class was doing a week on "healthy hearts," and her teachers asked if I could donate a stethoscope or two for the class. Since I am on my 5th or 6th stethoscope, it wasn't too hard to fish out the cast-offs from CindyLou's dress-up chest. The day we were to bring them in, CindyLou was sooooo excited. "My class is going to listen with *your* 'stefflstopes??' I'm so excited to be a doctor...just like mommy!" But instead of warming the cockles of my cold heart, these very words struck an odd chord of panic. I mean, what parent wouldn't beam with pride when their child wanted to follow in their footsteps, much less enter the medical profession?

Then, I paused a moment to think about what "being a doctor" really means to CindyLou. To her, mommy's work is hanging out at the nurse's station...checking out the new babies, coloring, eating crackers and suckers, and generally being fawned over by nurses, patients, and visitors alike. Or, perhaps she thinks about time in mommy's office, where SuperNurse plies her with her secret candy stash, she sits on her lap, and "works" on the computer. Being a doctor must seem a pretty sweet gig to a 4 (almost 5) year old. It also gives me hope that, for all my harried feelings about my job, they don't transfer to CindyLou; thus enabling her to feel like being a doctor is a pretty darn cool job. What ever the reason, I did feel grateful and humbled that my little girl was looking up to me, aspiring to be (despite my many foibles) "just like mommy.'

The Student

In the not too distant past, I had the good fortune of having a really great student with me for an "Office Ob/Gyn" elective. When I say "really great student," I mean exactly that. She arrived early and stayed late. She was professional and comforting to the patients. She asked appropriate questions and wrote really great notes. She had a good knowledge base, and she did it all with a smile and no 'tude. Truly, an awesome student. Unfortunately for her, we spent more time in the hospital doing surgery and deliveries than we did in the office. (I think that Whooville is having a serious baby boom. They just. keep. coming.) I do think that I was able to give her a taste of what being an Ob/Gyn is like, at least as far as being a solo practitioner, any way. She is trying to decide between Ob and a couple of other more "lifestyle friendly" specialties.

During the rotation, I really tried to let her form her own opinions about the life that she saw me living. I found myself, several times having to refrain from trying to talk her out of being an Ob/Gyn. A student that any Ob residency would be lucky to have, and I kept wanting to, I don't know, *protect* her or something. Maybe it was her sweet, un-cynical self, not yet marred by years of being beaten down by the establishment. Maybe it was because I wanted her to have a chance at a less stressful life, before it was too late to look back. Or maybe I was just trying to warn her not to make the same mistake that I made when I chose my first job out of residency (an essentially solo practice). I would like to think that it was the latter, because I truly love what I do, I just don't want to do it so, um, *often.*

I want to be able to feel confident in inspiring the best students to follow in my footsteps in a field that desperately needs good physicians. I worry that my first instinct is to tell my students to run, run, run, because I know that I wouldn't have. Even if the attending told me to run, I would have made the same choice. So at the end of the rotation, after we went over her evaluation, she asked for a letter of recommendation (which I will gladly write). When I asked whether she wanted one geared toward an Ob residency, or one for more general purposes, she chose the "more general" category. She's still making up her mind. Perhaps my feelings were telegraphed more than I had realized. I do feel hopeful, though, to know that the such bright rising stars in the future of medicine exist out there. So, to all you bright med students and would-be med students...don't let the disillusioned attendings get you down, y'all. We need you more than you know.

The most important job in the world!

Melly has been going through her "toddler word explosion" lately, so one word we've been trying to teach her is what I do for a living.

Husband: "Melly, what is Mommy's job?"

Melly: "Diaper!"

Me: "Great, she thinks I'm a diaper."

While I am not employed as a diaper, it should be noted that:

1) Diapers and I both work at night as well as during the day.

2) Diapers are white; I wear a white coat.

3) Diapers and I both get crapped on a lot in the course of our duties. (I said DUTIES.)

So my job actually does have a lot in common with that of a diaper, but I am not, in fact, a diaper. Nice try though, honey.

Boy Perfume

“If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you probably wouldn’t exist…”

My tween Eldest loves to use this Old Spice tag line. Like many things in his world, he’s just beginning to grasp the underlying meaning. Now youngest - age 8 - is starting to follow right behind. He came downstairs this weekend doused with his brother’s cologne.

“Whoa, Buddy. Have you been in your brother’s Old Spice?”

“Well. Maybe. “ Kind of hard to cover up an overdose of aftershave.

“A little goes a long way, ya know?”

“I like to smell good.”

“Maybe we need to get you some of your own.”

“Can we?” Sure, I think. I’ve got one I can’t get into the shower but needs it. Regularly. And I’ve got one who’d bathe in dad smell if I let him.

Smells are part of my life – they’re hard to escape in medicine. The good ones: The buttery sweet smell of a newborn that makes me ovulate on cue as KC puts it, my butter cream candle that puts me in that Zen place. The mediocre: hand sanitizer foam, plastic odor from IV tubing, syringes, and emesis basins. The stomach churners: toddler poop, third hand smoke, formaldehyde based wavicide we use to clean instruments (sends me straight back to anatomy lab), and the perennial vomit tang. A well trained nose can turn off all but the strongest smells.

At home, I have to remember to turn my olfactory sense back on – make a conscientious effort to take in the yummy clean smell of my youngest’s hair and even the pubertal funk of Eldest – pre-Old Spice. Do I really want to mess with the chemistry that goes straight to my amygdala? Cover it up with some commercial pheromone?

I wonder what I smell like to my kids. Will they get a whiff in their old age and suddenly have memories of their mom? Perfume is one thing I can rarely forgo – can go without makeup, like Fizzy, but cannot go without some sort of scent. My current favorite is Philosophy’s Grace – it’s like grown-up baby powder to me – soft, a little floral, and subtle.

So at Target, I buy Youngest a bottle of Old Spice. It’s better than some of the alternatives. We keep peace in the bathroom with separate bottles for each of my fellows. A little goes a long way.

Guest Post: A Parent's Perspective

Whether as a promise or warning, our psychiatry clerkship director had informed us that we would be surprised to find how much we have in common with our patients. What he did not say is how much we would have in common with our patients’ parents. My first evening on call, we were told that a nineteen year old*, who had attempted suicide two days prior, would be transferred that night from a local hospital. I called medical records to have his electronic chart unlocked. As I read through the previous history and physical from a psych hospitalization back in August, I tried to picture this kid. Numerous times in the notes, they made reference to his ‘severe acne’. I conjured up pictures of the pocked, scarred faces of the skinny, loner boys in hoodies I pitied during high school. Surely this was he?

I waited for the intern to come to the floor. I did not want to interview this person by myself. What if he admitted he wanted to kill himself again? What if I didn’t show enough empathy and caused him to feel worse, more alone or more misunderstood? What if I showed too much and embarrassed him? What if I simply projected enough of my own anxiety onto him and around the room that it became more about me and not about him, alienating him even more? I sat nervously hiding in the physician workroom.

When we entered the room, my visualization had nothing in common with our patient. He was nearly a man: well developed, almost muscular and his acne had all but resolved. Wearing jeans and a tee shirt advertising a local restaurant, he was mindlessly picking at his arm hair. One leg was swung casually across the bed. His parents sat on opposite ends of the room, both perched on the edges. Dad rested on the ledge of the room’s radiator and Mom was on the hard wooden chair that matched the pine desk. His dad was wearing a suit, looking fragile and exhausted. He, too, was well-built but unlike his son, looked as though he had just gone through an ordeal. His mom had dark hair and vivid cerulean blue eyes. She glanced up as we walked in and I could feel the breath fill her lungs. She looked over at her son and gave a sad, half smile, ‘The doctors are here, Louis* she said softly. She stood up and crossed the room perching next to him on the bed. She turned to us and motioned, "They’re babies, Louis. They’re so young. They’re practically babies." She continued to attempt a smile, and it was difficult for me to tell if she was simply openly skeptical (and rightly so) of my psychiatric acumen or if she was trying to put her son at ease. I was struck with the thought that he looked infinitely more casual about the situation than they did.

I suppose one of the nice things about getting older is that I only feel pleased to be called young. There are days I feel overwhelmed and exhausted: a result of too little sleep paired the intense time required of young children and academic endeavors. Initially, I fought back the urge to reassure her that, I wasn’t young. In fact, I have four children of my own. But I didn’t say it because, unknowingly, Louis’s mom reminded me of exactly what I am: a student, fledgling in my career, allowed to ask obtuse questions and to fumble through interviews. I often feel that because I am a mother, I should be mature and accomplished enough to be good at this.

With that, I registered that I felt much more empathy for the parents than I did for Louis. They looked anxious: a sick, what-do-we-do now expression as their fatigue mingled with wits-end. I was partially curious, floored, and anxious that two caring, highly educated people had produced a Louis, a Louis who by most accounts had a whopping drug problem tangoing with a schizoaffective disorder diagnosis. Parents, who by all appearances and written accounts, loved their son desperately, but I imagine must have also been furious and yet terrified of him. I pulled back realizing that perhaps I was afraid of him and again, vaguely aware that I could be projecting my parental panic for my own toddler son’s self injurious behavior. Panicked that one or all of my children could end up like this despite, or worse, due to my best efforts, it is little wonder I had trouble concentrating on Louis’s answers to my first question.

After the interview, I finished the write up and drove home in a daze. I recognized that somewhere during the interview my attention fixed exclusively on the patient. While agonizing over his parents’ thoughts, I initially fought to keep his story, his feelings and his concerns as the focus of the conversation. I know I am prone to identifying with the parents; yet, being excessively caught up with their anxieties could interfere with my relationship with Louis. I attempted not to illustrate his story with my own transferred feelings and hopefully, this awareness will improve the quality of care I provide him. But that seems to be the trouble with motherhood: it can be hard to separate it out from how I see and interpret the world.


*Patient's identifiers have been changed.

msm is in her third year of medical school and has just had her fourth child. She enjoys running, cooking and being with children. It will come as no surprise that she's planning on going into pediatrics.

Seriously, I wanna know....?

This month I was going to defer to the tried and true and ask about a historical figure you'd like to have dinner with, but...I'll save that for a future SIWK.

So, I wanna know: Have you ever had your life flash before your eyes? What were the circumstances? Who was with you? Are you different as a result of the experience? Can you describe it?

Looking fabulous

Yesterday, I cut my hair.

I've been cutting my own hair for about four years now. I was never really into fancy stylists or whatever, but I always at least went to a salon and got my hair cut by someone who could actually see the back of my head. But it never went well. Apparently, most stylists aren't good at cutting curly hair. Geez, why is it so hard?

My last haircut prior to my 4th year of med school was one of those really traumatic experiences. I'm still in therapy for it. The hairstylist cut my hair and I felt like it wasn't short enough, so I told her, "No, shorter!" Then she hacked off another five inches in one snip. I was horrified. Now I know how the surgeons used to feel when they'd tell me to cut knots for them.

The only good thing about the traumatic haircut is that I didn't need another one for over a year. Then during my intern year, I noticed my hair was getting a little long again for my taste. However, since I only got about one day off every month, I didn't want to spend that one golden day sitting in a salon. So I started to entertain the idea of doing it myself.

I think I stood in the bathroom with a pair of scissors for about 20 minutes, working up the courage to make that first cut. Then when I did, there was no turning back.

It came out better than I thought. Since my hair is so curly, it's fairly forgiving of being vastly different lengths. I decided that from then on, I would cut my own hair.

So four years later, I'm still cutting my own hair in the bathroom. Nobody at work can believe it when I tell them. I don't think it's that big a deal... I mean, it's not like I'm churning my own butter or anything. These days, being a resident and a mom, who has time to get a real haircut? Who am I trying to impress? I think it's amazing if I manage to make it to work without milk stains all over my clothing. Or manage to get my white coat in the washing machine a couple of times a year.

But yes, even though I was never the picture of style, I do think I've crossed a line by starting to cut my own hair. I also haven't worn make-up in... quite a long time. I know there are other working mamas out there (on this very blog, even) who still manage to look fabulous. I feel like I've boarded a high speed train--next stop, granny panties and eyeglasses from Sears.

Welcome to Topic Day on "Our Mentors"

Welome to another Topic Day on Mothers in Medicine! Today, we will be featuring posts all about our mentors: specific mentors, the difficulty of finding mentors, mentors who become friends, and more. We'll be posting regularly throughout the day.

Scroll down to find the posts...

Why I Quit

I don't have a mentor and I never did. But I did get some advice from an intern during my third year of med school that haunted me for many years after:

When I was a third year med student on my medicine clerkship, a intern named Jim saw me working on the ward at around 6PM. "What are you still doing here?" he asked, shaking his head at me.

"Huh?" I said.

"You should go home and study," Jim told me. "Or else..."

Or else I'll fail my boards? Look bad in front of the attending? Flunk out of med school and end up homeless and penniless on the street??

"...Or else you'll end up in internal medicine."

"Oh," I said, confused by Jim's ominous tone of voice. "Actually, I want to do internal medicine."

"Oh god," Jim said.

Interns typically are the most miserable and bitter people you'll meet in the hospital, but Jim was especially miserable and bitter because he wanted to match in radiology but didn't. He was stuck doing a prelim year in medicine and wasn't having much luck finding a radiology program that would take him. One day he was complaining about it and said to me:

"You know, it sucks. All this work going through med school and you can't even do the field that you want to do."

Those words really haunted me. I eventually came to realize that internal medicine was not my first choice and when I matched in it two years later as a compromise (long geography-related story), I kept thinking to myself, All this work going through med school and I can't even do the field that I want to do. When I hid in the call room during my dreaded internship ICU rotation, I angrily thought to myself, All this work going through med school and I can't even do the field that I want to do.

So I quit. To do the field that I wanted to do.

Thanks, Jim!

Athena

In Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, he introduces us to Mentor, a character to whom Odysseus leaves in charge of his household while Odysseus goes off to the Trojan War. Depending on which scholar you subscribe to, Mentor is not an entirely successful guardian. He allows courtiers to woo Odysseus’s wife, Penelope in his absence. It is the appearance of Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, who disguises herself as Mentor, who shakes some sense into Telemachus, Penelope’s son.

"And yet you did not know me, Pallas Athene, Daughter of Zeus, who [will] always stand by your side and guard you through all your adventures."1

Fast forward a few thousand years. What does mentor mean today? What does a mentor look like? I have asked myself those same questions many times – and not just in the past 36 hours as I’m trying to meet our Topic Day deadline. In my mind’s eye, a mentor is someone who’s a lot like me – maybe a little older, a couple more gray hairs, and a few more life experiences under her belt. This mentor has a similar job and balances life successfully between work and home. She has the same issues with being a breadwinner or weight gain or feminism or being a leader in a predominantly male hospital culture. In lazier moments, I can be a cc or carbon copy or her and just follow in her hard won footsteps. No need to reinvent the wheel here.

But that person doesn’t exist, at least, not in my world. Like Athena, my mentors have come in many guises and where I least expect them. Like you, I had assigned advisors, and I learned plenty of pearls from those people. Those advisors were wise and understanding. For me, though, my mentors have had additional almost familial qualities and seem extra invested in their advice. My partner in my first practice was a mentor although I didn’t know it at the time. Warren's keen sense of business acumen guided me through the first three years of life as a private practice pediatrician. At the time, his work holism drove me crazy especially on the day after Christmas when we saw seventy (70) patients each. His philosophy was we’d see “em, as long as they kept calling for appointments.

When I opened my own business, I realized what production really meant. It wasn’t just some fancy word for working your ass off – production pays the overhead and coasts my practice through lean summer schedules. Some days my office feels like a spin-off of my first practice especially the days I have to prod the other staff members to hustle. Warren also taught me to honor my community. The drycleaner who brings all seven children to my office for well child care gets my dry cleaning business in return. Giving back to the same community who supported him was a tenant that he lived by and that rubbed off on me, too. He even introduced me to my future husband. He was that invested in me and my career, and while he was too young to be a father figure, the mentor role suited him perfectly.

Other mentors are not so obvious. If you gave Dr. William Wilkoff my name, he would likely say “who?” I’ve never met the man, but each column he writes in Pediatric News is filled with anecdotes and common sense about his life as a pediatrician. Some are advice to the pediatrician like this Oct. 2003 article:

“As pediatricians for the new millennium, one of the many tasks for which we haven't been formally trained is to help parents learn to say no to their children. It may not have the ring of political correctness, but the health of our nation depends on it. Simply telling parents to “just say no” isn't enough. We must convince them that setting limits can be an important health issue by giving them the facts about obesity, accidents and a sedentary lifestyle. We must support parents by telling them that we understand why saying no can be difficult but that, when done properly, it is the right thing to do.” 2

Other columns comment on the demographic shift in pediatrics:

“Here in Brunswick, I have already been challenged by and benefited from the ramifications of this nationwide gender shift. My partners, Deb and Andrea, offer a perspective that teenage girls appreciate, and they project a warm and fuzzy image that appeals to the parents who find my no-nonsense style too hard edged. ”3

I love the practicalities Dr. Wilkoff discusses monthly. These are things I didn’t grasp in residency, and his warm and self-effacing manner focus on the art of medicine. He focuses on the science, too:

“Researchers recently discovered that there are two peaks for the termination of breast-feeding during the first 4 months post partum. The first occurs during the first week, when one-quarter of mothers stop breast-feeding. The investigators observed, “This timing suggests that a 1-week postpartum visit for well-child care is too late to intervene for many breast-feeding mothers” (Pediatrics 107[3]:543-48, 2001).
It's hard to make the handwriting on the wall any clearer. If we want to protect our patients from kernicterus, and if we truly believe that breast milk is the best first food for babies, then we all should be seeing our patients 2 or 3 days after hospital discharge.”4

The last piece of wisdom I’ve learned from all of these mentors is that my life is MY LIFE. Only I can navigate the path, and to carbon copy is cheating myself out of the opportunity to be a better, more balanced person. I don’t have to see 60 or 70 patients a day to be a good physician, but I need to be available at least 3 days a weeks to give my patients (& staff) some continuity. It’s what I do with their advice that matters, but they’re here for the long haul. I hope you find or have found that kind of support system – one that won’t let you carbon copy. Like Athena, it may be disguised and where you least expect it.

(1) Homer, The Odyssey: 210
(2) Wilkoff, William “‘No’ Problem “Pediatric News October 2003 (Vol. 37, Issue 10, Page 33)
(3) Wilkoff, William G.” The Feminization of Pediatrics” Pediatric News August 2002 (Vol. 36, Issue 8, Page 24)
(4) Wilkoff, William G.” Neonates Can’t Wait” Pediatric News; Volume 35, issue 12, Page 43 (December 2001)

Advice from a mentor

I've been fortunate to have worked with many individuals who have sheparded me through various stages from medical school to the present; limitation of time and space doesn't allow me to describe how each of them contributed to making me the person I am today.

But as I was pondering what to share, one memory kept pushing to the front of my brain: This was a statement from a woman who I admired greatly during the early years of my career and am pleased to share a working relationship with today. At the time she told me this, she had three school-age children and a nicely balanced life. I had two very young boys and felt like every day was a struggle. I vented one afternoon about my frustrations with my morning schedule; I knew it was my choice to take my son to preschool, but when I did this (seemingly) straightforward task I was invariably late to the clinic to see patients and ran behind for the day. Her response to me was so elegant in its simplicity that even today I admire it. What were those words of wisdom? "Start your clinic day fifteen minutes later." An invisible solution until it was pointed out to me, and with those seven words my outlook changed dramatically. Yes, I could put my family first and still be an effective physician. Yes, I did have some control over my days. Yes, even I could find some balance.

Today, as young women rotate through my office I try and discuss with them how being a mother has changed me as a physician (only for the better!), and I try to emphasize that they, too, will likely be able to find the balance they need. Sometimes its just a matter of letting someone show you the simple solution that you can't see on your own.

A