Life Changing Moments: Tenacity and Grit, with Dr. Amy Reese

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"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."

This quote attributed to Aristotle invites us to examine ourselves beyond what we're doing in life and how we're affected by it. For physicians, our training and professional lives are so overfilled with the doing that there's little time for reflecting on how we are doing. My guest today was able to transcend that busyness, take stock, and then often listen to her inner voice, even when, to an outsider, the decisions that unfolded as a result did not seem very practical.

This week's guest is Dr. Amy Reese, an oncologist who has returned to her native Ohio to practice. Dr. Reese is a U.S. Navy veteran, who completed her residency and fellowship in military training hospitals and proudly served in medical units during operations in the Middle East. In this interview, we will hear what she did when, through self-awareness, she realized that her head was not quite in the game of medical training and practice, how healthcare professionals can benefit from therapy, and her source of inner knowing, resilience, and perseverance.

And, if it's time that you find yourself having difficulty summoning the energy to get through your challenges, it might be time to reach out to us at mymdcoaches.com

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This Episode is brought to you today by Eagle Financial Group.

Eagle Financial Group is here to help you understand your numbers to make wise decisions. From fractional CFO services to accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll, Eagle financial group is your partner to ensure that your practice keeps on serving your patients, and gives you more time to spend with your family and friends.

It’s time that you overcome your obstacles, and get control of your financial life today. Give Eagle Financial Group a call at 719-755-0043, drop us an email at clientservices@eaglefsg.com, or visit us on line at eaglefsg.com

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Are you a doctor struggling to provide the best care for your patients while dealing with financial and caregiving matters out of the scope of your practice?

Do you find yourself scrambling to keep up with the latest resources and wish there was an easier way?

Finally, our Virtual Health and Financial Conference for Caregivers is here!

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In just 90 minutes, our VIP Live Roundtable will answer your questions and be the lifeline that helps your patients put together an effective caregiving plan.Find out more at Jeanniedougherty.com and click on Conference for Caregivers VIP.

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Access the Show Transcript Here

LCM 37: Tenacity & Grit: Dr. Amy Reese

2024, Dr. Dael WaxmanLife Changing Moments

Produced by Clawson Solutions Group (www.csolgroup.com)

Transcript

[0:00] Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

This quote attributed to Aristotle invites us to examine ourselves beyond just what we're doing in life and actually look at how we're affected by it.

For physicians, our training and professional lives are so overfilled with the doing that there's little time for reflecting on how we are doing.

My guest today was able to transcend that busyness, take stock, and then often listen to her inner voice, even when at times, to an outsider, the decisions that unfolded as a result did not seem very practical.

We'll hear more about that in this interview.

My guest is Dr. Amy Reese, an oncologist who has returned to her native Ohio to practice.

Dr. Reese is a U.S. Navy veteran, completed her residency and fellowship in military training hospitals, and proudly served in medical units during operations in the Middle East.

In this interview, we will hear what she did when, through self-awareness, she realized that her head was not quite in the game of medical training and practice, how healthcare professionals can benefit from therapy, and her source of inner knowing, resilience, and perseverance. Please stay with us.

[1:21] There are times in our lives that change the way we see the world.

Navigating these challenges can take insight, trusted confidants, or even a coach. Let's explore those moments.

In this companion podcast to Rx for Success, we will discover ways to learn and write our own success stories together. I'm Dr.

Dale Waxman, a physician coach with MD Coaches, and this is Life-Changing Moments.

[1:49] Music.

[1:55] Dr. Amy Reese, welcome to Life-Changing Moments and welcome back to the MD Coaches Family Podcast.

Thank you, it's great to be here. Good to have you. So just to get us started, for those that did not tune in to the interview on our other podcast, Rx for Success, Can you tell us where you are geographically and what you're doing professionally right now?

[2:17] I'm in the northern part of Ohio in Sandusky and Port Clinton, Ohio. I have offices at both sites, and I'm a hematologist oncologist.

And what I recall also is that you are very involved as a kind of a community hematologist oncologist.

You cover a lot in that territory.

Yeah, we try to actually cover a four-county area around.

So, yeah, we have a wide variety of people that are mostly suburban and rural settings.

And what I also recall from the podcast is it's very much a general hematology, oncology practice.

[2:54] Yeah, we pretty much see adults only, but we see people of all kinds of malignancies and even benign hematology too.

Yeah. Well, there's way more to that story. And your path into medicine story is the RX for Success episode number 167.

So I'm just going to make a plug to all the listeners who are listening right now to go back and listen to that one. because it's a very rich story.

And speaking of that story, there were a couple of things that stood out to me from that story, a couple of moments from your life that stood out to me that I thought would be worth our investigating a little bit further and learning something from you about how you traverse life.

So I'd like to get right into that discussion. So what I picked up on was something that you called your intuition.

And when you're kind of confronted with branch branch points in your life, just using that intuition to decide what's best for you at that time, despite many, many challenges, and then going forward anyway.

So I'm going to play a couple of clips from that podcast with Randy, and we'll learn a little bit more about how you deconstruct those just a little bit.

So the first one is from your medical school days.

[4:09] And for the listeners who did not tune in, you were in a pretty intensive six-year medical school program. Did I get that right?

Correct. It was Bachelor of Science directly into medicine. So we really didn't take our summers off. We pretty much worked straight through.

And there was one point where I really had a rough time and I requested a leave of absence for a month.

And I was able to graduate on time, but I just took my own psychological pulse.

And I thought, my head is not in the game right now.

And I can't really do this and be there for my patients and be there for my fellow classmates and really get the best experience out of this.

Because I had had some personal things going on.

Nothing really dramatic, but I just felt like I wasn't there.

And I remember my father was somewhat angry with me for taking this leave of absence because he was afraid that I would not go back, that I was giving up, you know.

So, it was really hard to kind of stick with my own sense of what I needed for myself.

[5:19] Right. So, I know that could be a painful time in your life, but just if it's okay to talk about that a little bit. But let's start with how you navigated that relationship with your father when you made this decision.

Yeah, so my father was always, he kind of took a backseat, I would say, when I was younger.

And a lot of my goal of getting into medicine was purely driven by me.

And there were issues in the past where he really didn't want to co-sign on loans.

He didn't want to take the responsibility for the relationship.

And he's deceased now. I mean, this is something that's old news.

But once I did get into medical school, I mean, I had made the opportunity to get a military scholarship so that I wouldn't have to rely on his support.

So then when I actually had to come home, you know, for that leave of absence, I didn't have another place to stay.

It was really rough because he gave me a hard time about it and said, you know, see, didn't work out or whatever.

And I said, No, this is a a time for me to kind of clear things up.

I mean, I've been through a lot. It's a very strenuous program.

And there were some other things that kind of happened along the way that we can go into a little bit more.

[6:36] But I think I was able to just kind of stick to my guns.

I knew what our relationship had been like in the past. And I knew what I needed for myself.

So let's talk about that. You knew what you needed for yourself.

It sounds to me like Like there is this really strong, this is what I need.

And so, you know, that is the way that it is, Dad.

[6:57] So I'm here now, but this is what I need. And he still felt very right about that.

Yeah. And I will say that, so while I was in undergrad, before I had moved on, so this was during medical school, this was during my second year of medical school and in my early clinicals, I had had a incident, let's say, kind of a relationship incident where I felt threatened and I, you know, had gotten out of that.

And part of what I did through that was to seek counseling on campus.

And I really didn't go on any antidepressant medications or anything, But I pretty regularly attended some group therapy and had some one-on-one therapy with some of the counselors there.

And I did a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy, like the old time, make the two columns and identify your aberrant thoughts and things like that. And it really does work.

I think that if you kind of use that modality and you kind of stick to it, I really used it at a lot of other points in my life.

And this was another place where I just kind of looked at, you know, the good things and the bad things.

And I said, you know, I just need the break. It's just going to be better for me.

[8:11] Hi, I'm Rhonda Crowe, founder and CEO for MD Coaches.

Here on Rx for Success, we interview a lot of great medical professionals on how they grew their careers, how they overcame challenges, and how they handle day-to-day work.

I really hope you're getting a lot of great information. But if you're looking for an answer to a specific problem, management or administration challenge, or if you're feeling just a bit burnt out, like maybe you chose the wrong career, well, then there's a faster way to get the help you need.

No, it's not counseling. It's coaching.

Rx for Success is produced by MD Coaches, a team of physicians who have been where you are.

I know you're used to going it alone, but you don't have to.

Get the support you need today.

Visit us at mymdcoaches.com to schedule your complimentary consultation.

Again, that's mymdcoaches.com because you're not in this alone.

[9:13] We'll get back to our interview in just a moment, but right now I want to tell you a little bit about Physician Outlook.

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That's a really great deal on this stunning publication.

And now let's get back to today's interview.

[10:22] Can I just ask a little bit about, you don't have to talk about the incident that got you into therapy, but was it difficult for you to seek assistance and get into therapy?

To actually go to them and tell, I mean, it was not a problem for me to get that service on campus.

I mean, it was something that was available to us.

And, you know, know, I didn't really have any shame about seeking any kind of therapy, because I would rather be right in my own mind and know that I'm doing something actively to get through the situation, then to kind of sit back and say, Well, I'm just afraid everybody else is going to find out or things like that.

So you know, for me, I had sacrificed a lot to get into this very competitive program.

And I didn't want to sabotage myself.

[11:13] And helped me to focus on what the big picture was.

It's a great message. I really appreciate you sharing that. So many people are...

Afraid to seek help for a variety of different reasons.

Those in our profession are particularly notorious for not seeking things out when things are not going so well.

There's this sense of, you know, I don't want to be stigmatized by doing that.

And what I'm hearing you say is, you know, I didn't want to jeopardize my position in this place because I wanted to complete medical school, and I see this just like going to a physician to get through a condition that I have so that I can continue on with my goals, which is awesome.

So that sense of self, that inner voice, that self-empowerment, that self-drive, and the ability to have that inner voice that's sort of guiding you, do you have a sense of where that comes from? I'm religious.

So I have a very strong background in my faith.

And, you know, this episode that actually happened, I had gone through.

[12:23] Most of my experiences have been with adult medicine, and this was a pediatrics rotation.

We had a particularly hard case where we had a baby who had one of the shaken baby syndrome kids, and the child was about 18 months old and basically could not communicate, had not met their milestones.

[12:45] It was the first time that I'd really seen it, and it was a patient that I had to take care of in the inpatient setting, day after day over and over again.

And it just got to me, I just felt it in my heart, I just felt like very hopeless.

And I don't know if it kind of touched something inside of me.

But I'd had some other kind of personal conflict things going on.

And I just felt like I need to step back.

I don't know if I was grieving, I don't know exactly what the emotional setback was for me.

But I remember that was kind of the a straw that broke the camel's back.

And I just decided, I went to the administration of my medical school and I said, look, can I just take one month to just reset?

Because I think it'll be better for me in the long run.

And fortunately, they supported me to do that. Yeah, that was my next question.

So, sometimes that's not well supported, but it sounds like for you, they saw that that was something important for you to do.

Right. And even while I was in medical school, so I did some regular counseling in undergrad, and I did some regular counseling in medical school.

Again, nothing like I hadn't had suicide attempts, I hadn't had drug issues or anything, I just felt like I needed a conversation with somebody outside of me, I didn't have a support system in the area where I went to school, I didn't feel particularly close to my classmates, where I could really share a lot of these things.

So I really wanted to have an independent voice that could kind of help me walk through a lot of these issues.

[14:15] And it was extremely helpful to me. But, you know, that was another thing that was kind of reinforced to me was that if you need to take a break, you need to.

Speak up yeah yeah and you know the other thing i wanted to bring forward to listeners that was said in the earlier podcast was your self-awareness that your head just wasn't quite in the game.

[14:39] And you weren't being very helpful to patients and not really helpful to colleagues and i just wanted to acknowledge you for saying my head isn't here i'm not totally here i'm not very effective right I need to do something about that.

Because so many people just sort of go ahead anyway, even though their head isn't quite in the game. So I just wanted to acknowledge you for that.

Yeah, I mean, especially in the job that I'm in now, I'm in oncology, and I try to be very aware of the patient in the room, and what their needs are for the day.

And it really shouldn't be about me when I'm in the room.

It should be about them and the situation they're going through. Yeah, right.

So along those lines, Amy, now in practice, when you notice that you aren't quite there, is there something that you do for yourself to help you recover, restore, or get yourself back on track?

[15:35] I mean, a lot of it is I exercise, so I run and do the bike and things like that. I ski.

So I try to keep really active.

I try to stay really engaged with my family because I have a husband and children and, you know, try to be able to talk things out.

And, you know, if it gets really stressful, sometimes I'll book a spa day or something.

You just really have to be able to look at when you're not functioning well.

I mean, I'm recently going through kind of an issue and I'm still trying to work out another issue that isn't completely resolved.

I mean, just because something happens 20 years ago when you're in school, it doesn't mean that you're always through it.

And so I'm always trying to kind of be intuitive and figure out what the best decision for me is going to be and not to feel locked into my decisions.

Like, do I really want to practice in this way?

Or do I really want to, you know, go along with something where I feel like I'm being pressured?

I think I just need to have some kind of a release valve. And what I want to acknowledge is that ongoing self-awareness of how you are doing as you're traversing through life, professionally as well as personally.

[16:49] So, speaking of that, there are other times in your life when there's been these sort of really incredible challenges, but you kind of persevered and went through anyway.

And I want to play another clip from the RX for Success podcast about that.

[17:06] My goal was going to be do two years of internal medicine and get out and potentially do hematology oncology you know through a civilian program and um i ended up having my son in internal medicine residency so i had a young baby and uh we went through i went through a marriage breakup while while I was doing my internal medicine tour after residency.

And it was a horrible time to go to fellowship, but I did it anyways.

[17:43] So I think most listeners would also relate, not relate, but have the same kind of reaction like, wow, some very significant life events.

[17:57] Like way up there on the stress scale, right?

A new child, your residency, a child, and then a breakup, and then a move. Wow.

So tell us a little bit about that. So just without going into too much detail on my first marriage, it was a situation where I think I expected one thing when we got married.

And then once we did get married, there were some major violations of my I trust.

And that was challenging because you can't always double check people when you're in a full schedule and taking call in the hospital and things like that.

So there were various things that led to that.

But we had previously gone through some counseling again.

And I thought that we were working out the situation. We actually were in Texas before we went to California for my residency.

And things seemed to be better in Texas. they seem to be okay in California while I was in residency, had the baby, and then found out like in transition to go to Washington State, which is where I was doing internal medicine, that there were some other violations of my trust.

And so I was mid move with a new baby, because we were moving when my son was about six months old.

And I had to kind of figure out how to to negotiate that. So I really wanted to do fellowship.

[19:20] And with the military, you only have so many spots to get into a fellowship.

And I knew that I didn't want to do fellowship while my son was very young because there's a lot of time away and things like that.

So as things worked through, I had been in the area for maybe about nine months before I separated.

So my son was up to about a year and a half.

I was still practicing, I was, you know, had my son in daycare.

And I met somebody else who I didn't feel like we were going to have a long term relationship.

But I decided to commit, you know, I decided that everything had worked out.

And I just knew in my heart that that was what I was going to make it happen.

[20:06] So I ended up traversing from Washington State to Washington, DC, with my my mom along for the cross-country ride with a now three-year-old and moved into DC in an apartment.

And it was hard. It was really hard.

We did Navy childcare, which they have set hours. So I think it was like six to six.

So I had to work around my schedule so that I could pick up and drop off my son to daycare and still do the work in the hospital, which a lot of times meant finding a pharmacist or a nurse that was free to watch my son for a couple hours while I saw extra consults after I got him out of daycare.

So it was about probably four months of that.

And I went to my program director again, and said, I don't know if I can do this?

[21:00] So interestingly, he, I always laugh, he took the used car salesman part of counseling me about this.

And he says, What do I need to keep you in this fellowship?

So I said, Well, I said, can I coordinate some things with my mom and my then ex mother in law, who is still very close to us, so that I can kind of take a period of time where I can send my son off so I can do the really critical, difficult rotations.

And then he can come back when things settle down. So we did that he gave me about a week, I kind of coordinated getting my son to my mom for about three weeks, and then my ex mother in law for about three weeks, because my ex husband was not as available, shall we say.

[21:47] And it all worked out. And then the person that I met across the country that I I thought was not really going to be a long-term solution is now my husband and we did work it out.

So I was able to reach out to people who are around me and ask, you know, and get support.

And sometimes you don't have that, but it worked out for me.

And I kind of knew those relationships and, you know, reached out and made it happen.

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[23:09] Resource. Today's episode is brought to you by Eagle Financial Group.

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[24:09] So just again, lots of illustrations of your assessing your situation, determining what you need, and then going to others, including your program director, say this is I can't do this in the way that things are happening, but then having the opportunity to figure out how best to do that.

But I just want to highlight you're recognizing how you are experiencing life and recognizing that something needs to be different in order for you to move through.

I wonder if I could back up back to that statement that you made about it was a terrible time to do the fellowship, but I did it anyway.

And I heard you say that sometimes it just has to be like, if it's available, we need to do it now. But I wonder when you were making that decision to go or to not go.

[24:59] And what that was like, was it a pretty quick decision? Did you have to contemplate?

Did you do the two columns, pros, cons thing?

What was that like? I definitely had to. So this was something that I had planned to do.

And again, in the military, everybody gets so many points of how much time they have in and what their ratings were when they were in medicine.

So I was in that spot where I had to apply for the spot and I didn't know if I'd be able to get it again. And so I had applied for the spot, and then the marriage kind of officially broke up.

And then it was like, well, do I not accept it?

And I said, I can't not accept it. You know, this is my career.

This is the rest of my life. We'll make this work.

Yeah. So, you know, I just made it work.

Great. Awesome. Awesome. So somebody who's listening to this may describe you as a pretty resilient or hearty or somebody with a lot of grit.

Do you connect with any of those words?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, part of it is just that I'm pretty single-minded once I make a decision to do something.

As long as it fits in my parameters, I'm going to do it. I'm going to reassess as I go along.

But once I've made a decision, I never really go back on my decision.

And then the second thing is just being in the military. I mean, you develop grit, that's kind of what they do to you.

[26:25] So it's a very good place to develop resiliency, because you're put in situations where a lot of times you don't know the people around you, you don't know what their style is, and you just have to make it work. And then you change all these locations.

I mean, it seemed like every two years, I was meeting a whole new group of people and developing a new and usually not having any family support nearby.

So you would just have to kind of access whatever relationships you have, and, you know, try to reciprocate as well, you know, you want to be there to support other people, but.

[27:00] To not be afraid to take on that support. Yeah. In those situations, you have to figure out a way to make it work.

All of you have to figure out a way to make it work, even though you're all new to each other on a very regular basis.

That's kind of a definition of resilience right there, is that ability to adapt pretty rapidly to situations.

[27:18] So that's awesome. Well, Amy, this has been wonderful chatting with you.

I really appreciate your candor and your bringing your authentic self here and really sharing with some things that were particularly vulnerable moments in your life, but most importantly, how you moved through those with great aplomb.

Are there any other lessons from either these experiences or any others in your life that you wish to impart to listeners who are listening right now about this whole arena of inner voice, resilience, grit, and hardiness?

Yeah, I think that, you know, about four years ago, I think, Facebook challenges or whatever, there was this module on physician suicide.

And, you know, you do a workout every day for 30 days for physician related suicides.

And I've seen, you know, unfortunately, some connections to physicians and other professionals who decided to end their own life.

And I think a lot of them in retrospect that I actually knew very well, they were putting themselves in situations where they really felt like they had no option.

Like they were worried about how they would look or monetary issues.

[28:35] And you know, you have to give yourself an out.

You can never say I have to have to do this. And I think if you look 5-10 years down the road, and you kind of see, well, I could be doing this, but I could also be doing this.

I think as long as you give yourself choices, and then once you take those choices, give yourself a little bit of room to reassess the situation and what's healthy for you. because there's fewer physicians that are getting trained.

There's a lot of other kind of stresses that we each get.

And sometimes you just have to open up and say, this is what I need right now.

And if you can't support me, I can't continue on what I'm doing along this path.

I got to try something else.

Amy, those are really wonderful words of wisdom that I hope that a lot of our listeners are going to take to heart. I really, really appreciate that.

Thank you again for being with us and for coming back to the MD Coaches family of podcast.

And I look forward to future connections with you as well. Sounds great.

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