Author: heenastat

Acute Care Surgeon who blogs about joy in the profession.

A hobbyless life

Originally posted on heelskicksscalpel.com. And, I no longer use the term work-life balance.

Work-life balance is hard. If you are passionate about your work, and your work involves long hours, life and death situations, and tight deadlines, how do you fit life part of work-life balance in? And, as much as you love your family, if you have a working spouse and kids with schedules about as full as full time jobs (and that’s only after school), how do you have a life outside of work and family?

I will confess, I have no idea what the answer to those two questions is. I am trying, as many of the posts on this blog might suggest, but truthfully I feel pretty clueless. I am in awe of those friends and colleagues who spend quality time with their family, set age group records in triathlons, take a ton of in-house call, get a decent amount of federal funding, and then take on a hobby or two. They knit, they golf, they collect stamps. I have honed no such skills or interests (unless you can count shopping as skill but my husband calls it a bad habit for which I need an intervention).

A few years ago at a job interview I was asked what my hobbies were. I had prepared and prepared to be drilled on why I wanted an academic career as a trauma surgeon and how I was going to achieve my academic goals in a modern medical environment. I was ready to talk about my growing family. (Nothing like asking for extra time between back to back to back interviews with senior male surgeons so that you can, ummm, pump breast milk.) But I was literally catatonic when it came describing my hobbies. It didn’t help that the person interviewing me was a nanogenarian who avidly road his bike for miles daily and was an antiquities collector. “Ummmm, I guess my kids are my hobby,” I said without the least bit of conviction.

Don’t get me wrong, I love, love, love my kids. The decision to have them was not one we made lightly. I absolutely wanted to be a mother and luckily my husband wanted to be a father. Happily, we were able to discuss and modify our professional priorities to make the life part work for our family, especially when the kids were really young. While it has very hard over the years for me to find time to really *be* with my children (e.g. to not just be near them whilst half asleep, or worse yet fully dead to the world recovering from a brutal call, but to really engage with them), is “being” with them really a hobby?

A quick internet search reveals that:

A HOBBY is a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation; an activity or interest pursued for pleasure and not as a main occupation.

But honestly, though being with my children is my number one priority when not occupied by my occupation, some days being with my children is the furthest thing from relaxing. Bedtime routines, presence of green vegetables, absence of digital screen-based stimuli, etc. can often be infuriating. As a family we have kayaked in the ocean, gone to Broadway musicals, and engaged in arts & crafts. But none of these activities would qualify me as a kayaking, show tunes, or crafting enthusiast. Would I do more of these if I could? Quite frankly I am not sure. These and other family activities have definitely been a lot of fun and provided great respite from the work part of work-life balance; however, none have really sparked a passion in me. For me the these activities are not for the pleasure of the activity itself but for the joy of being together. (Of note, I have tried being to together on shopping trips as a strategy but it brings no one but me joy and eventually the vociferous protests of the children sap that too.)

So, between the challenges of balancing a demanding work schedule with the unpleasurable tasks of parenting and squeezing in those moments of togetherness that do bring pleasure, I am at a loss for hobbies. (I wish I were at that point in my life with exercise and fitness were a hobby but quite frankly they remain a chore; I am working on that but that is a topic for another blog post.)

So for now, I suppose I will settle for a reasonably well-balanced hobbyless life. When I perfect that, I will move on to cultivating some hobbies.

A decade of mommy guilt

Originally posted on heelskicksscalpel.com

My first born turned a decade old the other day. Surely hitting double digits was a huge milestone for her. For me it was a time of reflection on how fast the time has gone by and how much of her childhood I missed in the last 10 years. I want to close my eyes and turn on the reel of memories I have stored away of the day she rolled over for the first time, her first steps, losing her first tooth….. The list goes on and on.

Truth is, I was gone for most of those other milestones in her young life. It wasn’t just the firsts either. There are countless pediatrician visits, parent teacher conferences, sporting/dance events, etc. that I just could not make. Though I know better than to feel guilty anymore about the extra stuff that I might have taken on as a mom like being a coach or a troop leader or a school volunteer, what I wouldn’t give to have been able to console her when she got her shots or to be the one she ran to when she had a nightmare (I am sure she figured “Why bother, Mommy’s side of the bed is empty most nights.”)

While for much of the time I was, as this now wise young lady believes, “taking care of people,” there were plenty of times when I was simply busy doing the other part of my work where people’s lives were not in my hands (e.g. research, education, volunteer efforts for professional societies). While the trickle down effect of each of these efforts will certainly someday improve the care people receive, the guilt of being away from my child–the most amazing thing I have ever accomplished (albeit with some help from my remarkable life partner)–has been heartbreaking at times. Healing the heartbreak has been daunting. I am talking about healing me let alone the lingering effects my absence may have on her. (Luckily she has a great dad and amazing grand parents to counteract my absences.)

TIps for Healing Mommy Guilt found at http://dailymom.com/nurture/beating-back-mommy-guilt/
Tips for Healing Mommy Guilt

I have done more and more, in particular after finally getting my first grown up job in her 7th year of life, to assuage that guilt–to be there as much as I can.  When she was in preschool, everyone assumed that my husband was a single parent. I was that out of the picture. Entering into the picture has meant asking my parents to sacrifice daily contact with their grandkids so that I can have a more favorable commute that theoretically frees up times for the kids (alas most activities, events, and meetings still tend to occur between 6am and 6pm and I remain the forever absent mom). It has meant asking my husband to do every more to sustain our household so that I can get in some mommy time (i.e. he will do the dishes, bang out a few loads of laundry so I can maybe, just maybe be awake enough to read a chapter or two to my child). It has meant allowing myself to fall behind on the things where a life is not on the line or where someone else is not holding me to an expectation (I can’t ignore my billing or my employer gets on me, I can’t not proofread a paper that I told someone I would review for them, I can’t put off a grant that has a prescribed federal deadline but I sure can put off my own internal deadlines). In the end, an extra night or weekend of work will sort everything out. I am hardwired to get the job done, so I will. But every long day, every night, and every weekend of getting it done will come at a cost, another empty reel in the memory bank of my daughter’s childhood and, unless I pay re-calibrate the push and pull between work and family, I will find myself at her 20th birthday still ridden with guilt.

I attended a faculty seminar on work-life balance a couple of years ago. Everyone entered that room with a ton of baggage related to their inability to balance work and life with work seemingly winning every time. The upshot of the seminar was essentially: lose the guilt (if you are at work don’t feel guilty about not being at home and if you are at home don’t feel guilty about not being at work). While I have tried especially hard since then (not that I needed to be told but it was a good reminder at a time when I was really, really buried in my work life) to sneak in quality time with my daughter (and her baby brother but I will get all sappy about him when his birthday rolls around) the problem is that it has felt just like that–sneaking around. When spending time with your child feels like sneaking around, the Mommy Guilt has gotten out of hand.

The decade of Mommy Guilt I have built up won’t dissipate easily and surely my profession can move the dial a bit (both surgery and academics) so both men and women don’t have to “sneak around” so much when they choose life over work. But in the end, rather than letting the Mommy Guilt mount in the years to come, I am resolving to feel Mommy Pride for each of the moments that do make it onto the memory reel in my daughter’s teens. Guilt won’t make the reel amazingly devoid of gaps so why bother. I am better off feeling pride in the moments of parenting I am super savvy enough fit in given the nearly (but not completely) all-consuming career I have chosen (and do deeply enjoy).

So yeah, I am pretty proud that I proactively requested a day off over a year in advance so that I could be at my daughter’s birthday party, and that I might have put off writing a manuscript late one night to brainstorm venues and a guest list with her.  I ended up delegating the evites, the cupcakes, booking the actual venue to my husband (I could blog pages and pages about how amazing this guy is about getting it done at home while I work and work some more) but I wasn’t entirely absent and that is an accomplishment worthy of pride rather than guilt.

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I lost 5 pounds…and grew half an inch

Originally posted on heelskicksscalpel.com

I had my annual primary care visit the other day. There are several reasons I am proud of this accomplishment.

1) I made it to the doctor. With my schedule, the first person I tend to neglect is myself. I have been known to go years at a time without seeing a physician unless I was incubating a human inside me. Given that I am heading toward that age where routine screenings begin to start, I compelled myself to make this visit. Turns out, I am in great health and added routine screenings (mammogram) are still a year away but still I felt pretty proud of myself to just getting there and having the patience to be examined.

2) Though I could still benefit from a few fewer pounds on my short frame, I have lost 5lbs since my last check-up. While I know that it is not about the numbers and the last two years have been about being fit and healthy, about shedding fat for muscle no matter what the scale shows, it was nice to be a little lighter. The total weight is 32lbs less than my highest in adulthood (10 years ago, just after having my first child) and 17lb more than my lowest in adulthood (on my wedding day, pre-babies and after 9 mos of anxious energy and weight watchers but very little in the way of fitness activities). If I can hold my own in this range give or TAKE a few while persisting in the running-pilates-zumba regimen I have crafted for myself, I will continue to be proud.

3) Speaking of short frame, turns out I am not as short as I thought. I have been 5’2 1/2″ since puberty–honestly, a pretty remarkable feat of western nutrition given that my immigrant parents are only 5’0” and 5’2”. Despite weight fluctuations as wide as 50lbs, my height has been unsurprisingly consistent because, hey, that’s what humans do. The hormones kick in and we stop growing. But it turns out that I measured in at 5’3” this year. It is a sure sign the the posture benefits of pilates have become a way of life for me. So I will continue to stand tall, stand proud and hit the reformer as often as I can.

4) I went all morning without a cup of coffee (and survived). I didn’t want the hassle of coming back for fasting blood work so I challenged my body. I did not have my typical 10 oz borne from the Keurig on my way out the door. Usually this is consumed by 7am at the latest. And, though it is my only cup of coffee of the day on a regular basis and I no longer consume other caffeinated beverages, I am addicted to my morning cup of coffee. But, for this 9am appointment, I bravely entered the outside world sans travel mug in hand. I did not have a raging headache by noon so I powered on. Lasted a whole 24 hours without caffeine. I haven’t done this in the two weeks since but I might try is again sometime. Just shedding the fear of a day without caffeine in a point of pride for me.

5) I managed to be less VitD deficient. At my last visit, I was deficient. I was told to take a ramp up supplement for 4 weeks followed by a daily supplement. Well, it took about seven weeks but I did the ramp up; however, I never managed to get onto a daily supplement. I live at the wrong latitude and so in general me and all of my neighbors are VitD deficient and so I really should be taking the supplement but I really suck at taking pills every day. I just cannot make it happen (which I might add as an aside is as good a motivation as any to work hard at being fit to avoid the diabetes, hypertension, peripheral vascular disease, and coronary artery disease that ail the majority of my adult genetic kin). So that I was less VitD deficient this year to me is representative of the many more hours of sun exposure I incurred with the running. Granted a good month for me is still only 6-8 outdoor runs but that is 6-8 more than when I last got my VitD level measured and this added sunshine in my life is also a matter of pride.

I wish there was a #6 but I was a bit displeased by my LDL/HDL situation. My LDL had plummeted dramatic between my last two visits but was creeping up this time even though the HDL was better. This, at least, is motivation for future PCP visit related pride which will tie in well with desired weight loss goals as I doubt I can get much taller, don’t plan on relocating to a sunnier latitude, and imagine I will not become a daily pill popper anytime soon.

Parental validation with a haircut

Originally posted on heelskicksscalpel.com

The other day I decided on the spur of the moment to get a haircut during the day on a work day. I was really nervous leaving work to get this done. Ordinarily I just ignore personal needs like haircuts, doctors visits, pedicures, etc. that tend to occur during regular business hours for as long as possible since my typical work hours extend before and after regular business hours.

Luckily, some personal needs can be put off longer than others.

I have a great head of hair and, as such, am one to ignore care and maintenance of said hair for months and months at a time. I average 1.5 haircuts a year on a good hair year. It’s just not a priority which is good because I have so many other things I can’t seem to get done be they personal or professional. Looking and feeling good are definitely on the priority list but they compete (most often ending up on the losing side) with making our house a home, parenting, and work.

My daughter also has gorgeous hair.  She is only nine and thus also requires little maintenance of her lovely locks. Lately, however, it has been getting really hard for her to comb the tangles out no matter what products we try in an effort to dissuade these tenacious tangles. My husband is arguably great at doing basically all of the homemaking and the parenting but with our daughter he has drawn the line at putting in earrings and combing out tangles. (I wish I could say this is because he has experience with neither but there was that unfortunate period in the early 90s when my then boyfriend rocked a pony tail longer than mine.) Of note, we have both drawn the line at doing braids since we collectively suck at it despite how long our hair is or has been. So, lately a lot of my quality time with my daughter has been spent trying to get the tangles out of her hair.

It hasn’t been fun torturing her, especially since overall I have precious little time with my little girl. I have been working 60-120 hours a week since the day she was born. About three years into it, I made it even harder for her to get ‘mommy and me’ time by bringing her baby brother into the mix. All those days when I went to work before they were up and came home (if at all) after they were asleep broke my heart over and over again. To this day, I always make it a point to crack open the bedroom door and blow a kiss to my sleeping babies on my way out the door because it makes me a little less bad for leaving them for such long stretches of time. (Luckily these days I am heading out for fewer 40 hour single stretches of work compared to my training days; and occasionally, I even get to see them awake in the mornings.)

These past nine years I have been catching as catch can as a parent, first with her then with them both, first as a trainee and now as a faculty member. Some days I feel good about how I am doing and others I feel down right awful. Getting the work-life balance equation “right” is a constant challenge when you want to be the best parent you can while also doing “okay” (see, I didn’t say perfect) at everything else including self, home, and work. This past year, as I have focused more and more on my own wellness (because, after all, I want my kids to grow up knowing that taking care of one’s self inside and out is important no matter how challenging) I have also spent more time thinking about how to make the most of my fits and spurts of parenting. So I decided that my daughter and I should both get haircuts, not so much because I needed to (I had my last cut just 6 months ago) but because she badly needed relief from the tangles and I badly needed time with her. I was not on call. There were no imminent deadlines. Work could wait for a couple of hours.

It was her first time going to a real salon rather than a drive through haircut chain. That, in and of itself, was a thrill for her. Plus, she got to spend 2 whole hours alone with me when I was in a good mood. Driving there and back, discussing the futures of our hair, and marveling afterwards at how much difference a good haircut makes brought such joy. I was falling seriously behind on some grant writing and my work inbox had over a 1000 messages in it; but, somehow I managed not to think about that during those two hours as I enjoyed my daughter who, it seems, is becoming quite a smart, thoughtful, and pretty young lady.

I hope some of that has to do with the fact that I have been a good role model for her these past nine years despite my frequent absences from her daily life. (I know that bulk of it is due to her great dad and grand parents who have been raising her while I have been advancing my career but still I wonder if perhaps some credit might be due.) In the car I said to her, “You know, I am really sorry that sometimes even when I am home from work I am just too cranky or its just too late to spend time with you.” Her response, “That’s alright Mom, you’re busy all day taking care of people.”

DSC_7346

So proud of this little girl with the great haircut.

(Tears. Again. As I write this.)

Sexy None None: Letting Go of the Dream of Zumba

Originally posted on heelskicksscalpel.com

Anyone who has ever gone to a Zumba class has probably jumped and gyrated to that song Sexy Bam Bam. A simple Youtube search will yield any number of differing Zumba routines to this song. I know this because I find the lyrics hard to discern so felt the need to Google them after my last Zumba class when all I kept thinking was “Sexy None None.”

Zumba brings sexy to a single workout combining hip hop, latin dance, aerobics, and plyometrics. Have you seen the infomercial? The sexy is the seller. You can not only be thin and fit, you can be SEXY. You can do a grapevine or a v-step (come on you if you’re a woman in my age group you know you remember this from your step aerobics days, don’t deny it) and still exude sexiness if it is part of a Zumba routine (these moves are decidedly un-sexy on a pastel pink step stacked on purple blocks). It’s as if every move is a flirtation of the human body. I think this is why I can never turn away from the informercial. I only watch DVR’d television, so I don’t accidentally get sucked into a Zumba commercial that leaves me digging deep into my soul thinking “Can I ever be that sexy?”

And so, a large part of a Zumba participant’s motivation is to achieve sexy. You lose weight, you tone muscles, and you exude sexiness. That is the Dream of Zumba.

It took me a long time to live that dream. I love to dance and did ethnic dancing throughout my adolescent and college years. Back in the day during one of my fits and spurts of embracing health and fitness, I enjoyed a few step aerobics classes when there was nothing else that could motivate me to get to the local gym. So I really wanted to try Zumba expecting that based on shared principles alone, I would enjoy it as I had the bhangra, raas, and aerobics. But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t face up to my complete and utter lack of sexiness. I have no concept of how to flirt with my body. I did not want to embarrass myself in front of a group of strangers with my ungraceful, uncoordinated flailing of the limbs and torso.

I finally found the courage a year ago when, within the confines of my local pilates studio, I finally felt safe enough to try living the Dream of Zumba. (This is really a testimony to what a great judgment free place my local studio is. The owner, the staff, and many of the students I now count as friends). I had been working with the pilates instructors for nearly 6 months. I was feeling better about myself. I finally had the courage to try to bring the sexy. I listened to that Justin Timberlake song to get my head in the right place (not really ‘back’ though given I lacked any sexy to begin with).

It is a year later. I LOVE Zumba. I go as often as I can (which sadly, due to my crazy schedule, is only about 3 times a month on average) But the other night when “Sexy Bam Bam” came on, I still thought to myself “Sexy None None” as I watched myself in the floor to ceiling mirrors behind my completely amazing and incredibly sexy Zumba instructor.

This woman exudes more sexy in her pinky toe than a whole room full of Victoria’s Secret models. It’s really remarkable. Her hips, they way they move, they have a life of their own. I have taken Zumba now from a few other instructors, and there is truth to the Dream. Even if the instructor knows the moves and teaches them well, it’s just not fun if they don’t bring the sexy. I mean, I seriously hated the few classes I have taken with non-sexiness exuding instructors. They never put them in the infomercials, do they? There’s a reason. Zumba would not be the world wide fitness phenomenon that it is without the sexy. Of this, I am certain.

So, while I have bought into that phenomenon, it hasn’t made me sexy yet. Who knows, I might not ever be an infomercial ‘after’ candidate. But what the heck, as someone trying to somehow get all the pieces of her life in place to be mentally and physically well while succeeding at work and at home, burning some calories and toning some muscles even if I am a “Sexy None None” isn’t that bad, as long as my instructor brings the “Sexy Bam Bam.”