Month: February 2016
When Breath Becomes Air: Understanding Mortality
Tweet chat (follow @WomenSurgeons) and additional blog post to come on March 13th 8 PM EST! By Shree Agrawal Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, as Dr. Abraham Varghese promised in his foreword, confronted me with the truth of mortality. The kind that lies beyond textbooks, evidence-based medicine, and clinical research. Prior to reading his work, I perceived statistics about patient populations experiencing difficult diagnoses to exist in a world detached from my reality. I likened data surrounding diseases to Dr. Kalanithi’s perspective of “country facts”, his term for theoretical old wives’ tales about dangers in his hometown. The probabilities of human vulnerabilities, especially those that could apply to my loved ones and me, are ones I avoided and discreetly hoped to be untrue. When I read about his evolution from pre-medical years to those as a neurosurgery resident, there is a surprisingly relatable quality. I am with...
My Wake-Up Call
By Sharon Stein Cardiovascular disease...Not me- I am too young for that. I was shocked when I got the text from my husband. A friend and colleague had just had a stroke. She was in the Neuro ICU with dysarthria and left sided paralysis. Her systolic blood pressure was greater than 200. This wasn’t some white haired mentor of his – this was our friend, someone we go out to dinner with, our contemporary. She is a go-getter, an excellent physician, on the top of her game. Sure she worked too hard, didn’t have enough time for exercise, didn’t eat as well as she could have, but she is not different from me. She couldn’t have had a stroke, she is too healthy, she is too young, she could be me…. February is American Heart Association Health Month and the truth is that despite our medical training, we tend to...
Food for Thought: Progressive Advice for Mentees
By Gabrielle Rieth I recently encountered an instance in which a mentor suggested that I and other female medical students rely on antiquated gender stereotypes to succeed in our upcoming clinical clerkship rotations. This advice was dispensed without any accompanying professional recommendations, such as pre-rounding on patients, recalling the patient’s medications and allergies, understanding the patient’s medical history, or practicing patient presentations prior to reporting to her residents or attending physicians. There is nothing amiss with possessing or utilizing “feminine” characteristics to enhance or improve one’s work environment. I personally felt the recommendation was inappropriate for the setting in which it was dispensed. It seemed, to me, to neglect other vital assets we as future physicians and surgeons will contribute to our clinical teams. I am soft-spoken and often characterized as “nice,” “sweet,” or “adorable.” I express my gender identity in a way that is traditionally ascribed to females. This...
Integrating Surgery and Family Life
By Lillian Erdahl As part of the discussion on work and life, I want to introduce a term I heard recently. A speaker at a conference I attended mentioned the concept of work-life integration rather than balance. Life, meaning the roles I have outside of my work. Many roles i I play sometimes conflict with each other, including: breast and general surgeon, teacher of residents and medical students, mother to two children, wife, daughter, granddaughter, aunt, sister, and friend. For now, I will focus on how I manage being a mother and being a surgeon. The struggle of working mothers and working parents is not unique to surgeons. However, the nature of my profession poses certain unique challenges. I cannot interrupt what I am doing in the operating room to talk to my child’s teacher or pick her up immediately from daycare if she has a fever. Some days the...
February Book Club: When Breath Becomes Air
This month, the blog will feature Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s recently published book, When Breath Becomes Air. If you have not already, we suggest purchasing your own copy and joining us while we cover his work, here on the blog and on Twitter (follow @WomenSurgeons, @ShreeAgrawal21, @minervies, and @jzhao3). We will post reflections about the first half of his book on February 28th and the second half on March 13th to discuss your reactions and thoughts. Please follow #AWSFood4Thought to join us on Twitter on March 13th and use the comments sections below to tell us what you think as you read along with us! A brief synopsis from the publisher, Penguin Random House: At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and...
Maintenance of Self
By Jean Miner As many before me have asked, is there such a thing as balance when it comes to our careers and life outside the hospital? Maybe not, but we can realistically reach an equilibrium when we prioritize and allot time for all our responsibilities. Every time we step into the operating room we multitask, lead, and organize. Utilizing these same skills we have honed over time will aid us in our endeavor to reach stability between our career, family, friends, health, and most importantly our "self". ENLIST others to join you in your journey for equilibrium. As health care providers, we often neglect our own healthy sleep, diet, fitness, and preventive measures. Regarding your path to getting healthy - find a family member, friend, or colleague who has similar or even higher goals than you to help you design a plan or challenge. Set a realistic goal that...
Food for Thought: The Patient Side of Medicine
By Abigail Forbes I was diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Scoliosis when I was 8 years old. After many years of driving hours away to doctor appointments, the frustration of wearing a back brace as a teenager, and increasing back pain, the decision was finally made for me to undergo spinal correction surgery. The surgeon placed rods on my upper curve during the operation, and unfortunately my lower spinal curve continued to progress over the next year as I grew. I was still hurting, my clothes still ill fitting, and we were starting to question the benefit, if any, I got from the surgery. Frustrated, my parents and I sought out second opinions regarding further treatment; it was a unanimous opinion that my surgeon should have placed rods on both of my thoracic and lumbar curves. We were disappointed with the decision by the first surgeon regarding my surgery, because I...
Balance
By Andrea Merrill If you had asked me about balance at age 10, I would have taken this question literally, immediately conjuring up an image of the balance beam that tortured me daily at gymnastics practice. The meager 4 inches of smooth, brown leather mocked me as I struggled with simple jumps, handstands, and half-turns. At 10, I was small but strong, shy but determined and I lacked the grace and finesse required for the delicate art of the balance beam. I remember standing tall, trembling, arms held high as I willed myself to arch backwards into a backbend, to overcome my fear of falling, my fear of failing, likely a metaphor for life to come. In medical school, balance became about understanding physiology, homeostasis, and how the body regulates itself. What happens when the immune system runs rampant, unchecked, and begins attacking itself? How does the body compensate when...