The Storyteller: Jay Wellons, MD, MSPH
- Nov 26, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 4, 2024
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Jay Wellons MD, MSPH holds the Cal Turner Chair of Pediatric Neurosurgery and is Chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. He is a Professor in the Departments of Neurological Surgery, Pediatrics, Plastic Surgery, and Radiology and Radiological Sciences, and is also the Vice Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery. He founded SOCKS (the Surgical Outcomes Center for Kids) in 2015 and served as the Medical Director until 2022. He also served as the VUMC Section of Surgical Sciences Vice Chair of Clinical Research 2018-2022 and Department of Neurological Surgery Program Director for the Neurosurgery Residency Training Program from 2014-2018.
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Dr. Wellons received a B.A in English from the University of Mississippi in 1991, his medical degree from the University of Mississippi Medical School in 1995 and completed his residency in neurologic surgery at Duke University Medical Center in 2001. This was followed by a one-year fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery at the University of Alabama – Birmingham and the Children’s Hospital of Alabama. After his fellowship was complete in 2002, he remained on faculty at UAB for a total of 10 years, obtaining an MSPH during that time. He came to Vanderbilt in September of 2012.
Dr. Wellons has participated as a site investigator in two multi-institutional research networks centered on pediatric hydrocephalus and Chiari malformation surgical and patient-centered outcomes. While his past areas of interest include surgery for brain tumors, blood vessel malformations, and craniosynostosis, his current focus is on the surgical management of the Chiari Malformations, congenital neurosurgery, intrauterine neurosurgery, and lesions of the brachial plexus. This work has informed additional research endeavors evaluating health disparities, quality of life and in utero vs. post-natal surgery outcomes.
He has served on the editorial board of Journal of Neurosurgery – Pediatrics, Co-hosted the AANS/CNS Section on Pediatric Neurosurgery Annual Meeting in Nashville in 2018, and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the American Society of Pediatric Neurosurgeons in the capacity of President-Elect.
In addition to his scientific writing, he has been a contributor to the New York Times Sunday Review, TIME, Garden and Gun Magazine, Fresh Air: NPR, and OprahDaily.com. His book All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and their Stories of Grace and Resilience with publisher Penguin Random House debuted in June of 2022. His non-scientific writing focuses specifically on his specialty of pediatric neurosurgery, but also the broader field of medicine and the profound lessons learned from the children and parents that he has cared for over the last 30 years.
Dr. Wellons’s Prescription for Success: Number 1: It’s extremely important to work for someone who you believe in.
Number 2: Work along side the right people.
Number 3: You have a responsibility to those who work for you.
Connect with Dr. Wellons
All That Moves Us: A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience – by Dr. Jay Wellons
Notable quotes from Dr. Shah’s interview:
There’s something that our nurses do and many nurses do in operating rooms but if a stuffed animal comes in with the patient oftentimes the nurses if they have a moment will put a little head wrap on the stuffed animal or put a little sling on the arm or something that that’s similar to what the child is having so that when the child wakes up there’s their beloved buddy with a head wrap just like them. That’s really cool.
I say, all right, well, look, I want to ask you one more question, and that is that I’ve written some about patients, and I’d be honored if I had the opportunity to write about your child. And really, it’s just 100% of people just say, please do, just tell our child’s story or tell our baby’s story. It’s extremely important to work for somebody who you believe in.
I’ve learned a lot from my trainees, my residents, and my fellows.
Access the Show Transcript Here
172: The Storyteller: Jay Wellons, MD, MSPH
Dr. Jay Wellens, a pediatric neurosurgeon, shares insights on collaboration in the field and emphasizes mission-driven work and learning from the next generation for success.
2023, Dr. Randy CookRx for Success Podcast
Produced by Clawson Solutions Group (www.csolgroup.com)
Generated Shownotes
Chapters
0:00:00 A Long-Lost Idea Resurfaces0:00:49 Introducing Prescription for Success podcast with Dr. Randy Cook0:02:06 Introduction to Dr. Jay Wellens, a neurosurgeon from Nashville0:03:16 Childhood Memories in a Small Town0:06:42 From Birkenstocks to Medical School: A Surprising Journey Begins0:07:29 From English Major to Medical School Intentions0:12:28 Sponsorship Announcement: Eagle Financial Group0:13:15 EGLEFSG.com: Providing Support for Doctors’ Financial and Caregiving Challenges0:14:13 Caregiver Conference Announcement0:22:35 Compassion and empathy in pediatric neurosurgery0:24:57 The culture of compassion in the field of neurosurgery0:30:38 A Leap of Faith and Creating a Shared Vision0:33:47 Finding Unexpected Gratification at Vanderbilt0:36:07 A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Begins0:44:17 The Joy of Writing and Putting Stories Together0:46:52 Balancing Writing with Medical Responsibilities0:53:02 Importance of Passing on Wisdom and Listening to the Next Generation
Long Summary
In this episode of the Prescription for Success podcast, I have a conversation with Dr. Jay Wellens, a pediatric neurosurgeon from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Wellens recently published a book called “‘All That Moves Us,” where he reflects on his experiences in the field. We discuss his journey from growing up in Mississippi to becoming a neurosurgeon.
Dr. Wellens started his academic journey as an English major at Ole Miss with plans to become a family medicine doctor. However, his interest in neurosurgery grew after experiencing the wonders of neuroanatomy and the brachial plexus. He talks about his traditional medical school experience and the decision to pursue neurosurgery.
During his residency, Dr. Wellens did a general surgery internship, where he rotated through various surgical services. He shares a humorous anecdote about forgetting to set the parking brake on his truck, leading to a mishap. Despite the long hours and challenges, Dr. Wellens enjoyed vascular neurosurgery and ICU care. However, he eventually became drawn to pediatric neurosurgery and working with children.
Dr. Wellens reflects on his time at UAB and Vanderbilt and the growth he experienced in his career. He talks about the importance of collaboration and teamwork in the field of neurosurgery, contrary to the stereotype of neurosurgeons being lone wolves.
In addition to his medical career, Dr. Wellens is also a writer. He discusses his journey of writing a book, which he titled “All That Moves Us.” The book delves into the experiences of medical professionals, sharing heart-wrenching and inspiring stories. Dr. Wellens talks about the process of compiling the stories and the support he received from agents and editors.
Towards the end of the conversation, Dr. Wellens shares his personal prescriptions for success. He emphasizes the importance of working for a mission you believe in and having supportive colleagues. He also highlights the value of passing on wisdom to the next generation and learning from them.
In conclusion, Dr. Wellens expresses his gratitude to Randy for the opportunity to be on the podcast. He encourages listeners to leave ratings and reviews, as well as support the podcast through Patreon. The conversation ends with a reminder to stay tuned for the next episode and to fill one’s prescription for success through the show.
Brief Summary
In this episode, we chat with Dr. Jay Wellens, a pediatric neurosurgeon from Vanderbilt University. He reflects on his journey from Mississippi to becoming a neurosurgeon and shares insights on collaboration in the field. We also discuss his book, “All That Moves Us,” which explores the experiences of medical professionals. Dr. Wellens offers valuable prescriptions for success, emphasizing mission-driven work and learning from the next generation. Don’t forget to leave ratings, support us on Patreon, and stay tuned for more!
Tags
episode, pediatric neurosurgeon, Vanderbilt University, journey, Mississippi, collaboration, book, “All That Moves Us”, medical professionals, prescriptions for success, mission-driven work, learning, next generation, ratings, Patreon, stay tuned
Transcript
A Long-Lost Idea Resurfaces
[0:00] I just remember to myself, as I’ve begun to get interested in nerves and the central nervous system saying, you know, wouldn’t it be neat if somebody one day wrote a story, like wrote a book like this?And then basically, I took that thought and I shoved it as down deep into my psyche as I possibly could for about 25 years.
[0:26] Music.
[0:39] Music.
Introducing Prescription for Success podcast with Dr. Randy Cook
[0:49] Welcome to the Prescription for Success podcast with your host, Dr. Randy Cook.Hello everyone and welcome to Prescription for Success.I’m Dr. Randy Cook, your host for the podcast, which is a production of MD Coaches, providing leadership and executive coaching for physicians by physicians to overcome burnout, transition your career, develop as a leader, or whatever your goal might be, visit MDCoaches on the web at MyMDCoaches.com because you’re not in this alone.And don’t forget that CME credit is available when you listen with us.Just look for CMFI in the show notes to learn how.My guest today holds the Cal Turner Chair in Pediatric Neurosurgery and the Chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.He has recently published a new book entitled, “‘All That Moves Us,” where he reflects on his time in that role.So let’s hear my conversation with Dr. Jay Wellens.
Introduction to Dr. Jay Wellens, a neurosurgeon from Nashville
[2:06] Dr. Jay Wellens, I really enjoy myself on this podcast.I hate to admit it the most when I’m speaking with another surgeon and that’s what we have today.So I’m welcoming to the show a gentleman who is a neurosurgeon up in Nashville, Tennessee affiliated with Vanderbilt University.He has a great book that we’re going to talk about. Dr. Jay Wellens, thank you so much for being with us today. I’m looking forward to the conversation.Well, thank you, Randy. I’m excited to be here, too. I really appreciate the opportunity.Well, as we always do, Jay, I want to begin at the beginning, which is in Mississippi, where you did your growing up.But tell us a little bit about your early life and how you came to get interested in medicine.Well, I grew up in a small town in Mississippi.You know, most people don’t think about the fact that Mississippi and Louisiana have a north-south border, but there is.I grew up about an hour and 40 minutes due north of New Orleans, you know We used to say that New Orleans is the first biggest city in Mississippi and Memphis is the second.
Childhood Memories in a Small Town
[3:16] I I grew up in a small town just over the lawn in Mississippi, About 10 miles or so the name of the city was Columbia It was well known for the birthplace of Walter Payton who I was able to meet before he died He was just as outstanding a person as you think he would be.So I really cherish that memory, but you know, a lot of other cherished memories growing up in that small town.We kind of, you know, my mom and my dad and my two older sisters, you know, we lived this really nice life where we, you know, were part of a Small Episcopal Church of about 15 to 18 members.We went to one of the local schools there for a while and My sisters were a little older than me and I’m not supposed to say how older on the radio I won’t make you do that just supposed to say they were a little bit older than me Yeah, but they were off to college while I was still young So I had this really neat experience of being a member of a family with older siblings and then you know really living in this kind of wondrous world of being an only child for a while.And that was great, too. I mean, you know, obviously, it had – everything has its ups and downs in life, but, you know, I played rotary soccer and little league baseball and played in the marching band and French horn in the concert band and – Darrell Bock The usual small town stuff.
[4:36] Dr. Kevin Rooth Yeah, just usual small town stuff. Good friends that are – that have moved on from Columbia and good friends that are still there.But around my freshman or sophomore year, my parents and I began to think about the fact that I might want to go away to boarding school.And so I did that to a school called Macaulay, which is a Macaulay schools in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I was a boarder for two years there.And that was a really transformative experience for me. I bet it was.Small town boy in a completely new environment about that. I want to hear more.You know, it was a situation where, you know, you think you’re the bigger fish.And then in the small pond and then you go up and you realize that there are a lot of fish they’re as smart or even a little bit smarter than you and You know took some good classes and had some good friends and gotten a little bit of trouble here and there but but most part really just, kind of had this transformative experience that really matured me in a way that both prepared me for college but also prepared me for life.And some of the friends from McAuley from those days are still, you know, some of my closest friends now. Yeah, I bet they are.
[5:45] So when you finished up there and decided to continue your education at Ole Miss, your major at Ole Miss was English. Were you even thinking about medicine at that point?I wanted to kind of span, you know, ride both rails at one time I guess, um, and what I mean by that is, uh, my father had always wanted to be a physician But because of issues with finances, you know, he got into medical school and passed the MCAT and so forth But you know had a family two girls at the time and really just could not get funding.
[6:19] To go to medical school and so ultimately, went on into the business world and was very successful, president of several companies and also was in the Air National Guard.But I always accused him of, when he was alive, of coming into my bedroom when I was a child and whispering medicine into my ear when I was asleep.
From Birkenstocks to Medical School: A Surprising Journey Begins
[6:42] But I did recognize how important a physician was in our little small town.And so, uh, kind of in the standard way that, uh, that a Birkenstock wearing English major would do, I kind of wound myself into a place that I would, I would go to medical school to become a family medicine doctor back in South Mississippi, you know, to get paid in chickens and vegetables, you know? So that was the long-term plan when you started?That was the plan. Yeah. And then I would write that, that was the, that was the initial plan. And then it all fell apart.Well, I don’t know somehow falling apart doesn’t really sound like exactly what happened.So pick up the story from there That’s right. Maybe it all just blew up. I don’t know.
From English Major to Medical School Intentions
[7:29] So As I understand it now, this is a little bit unusual You got started Ole Miss as an English major with the intent of going to medical school And I’m gathering you had no problem getting accepted.So pick up the story there Well, it was um, you know, you have to have some basic classes like chemistry and physics. You got to do some science.Yeah Yeah, the standard ones but I filled all my elective time up with with English writing and you know with studying writers and there was some fantastic professors at University of Mississippi at the time in the Department of, English one where had come over from Oxford and was studying the similarities between southern literature and the Romantic era literature, had a phenomenal Irish writer, professor.Who really turned me on to Joyce and Yates and Singh and Swift, and just so many amazing writers that came from that amazing island.But yeah, I can remember the one professor from Oxford, his name was Chris Fitter.He used to have these classes. I was taking Milton from him.I’d had a microbiology test that day, and the Milton class went from 6 o’clock to 8.30 at night.
[8:44] Wow. And I can just tell you, when you’ve been studying microbiology and cramming for it like you do in college, it’s hard to stay awake at 6 to 8 30 p.m. to Milton.I bet it is. Like you know, like the most exciting line in Milton is I would rather rule in hell and serve in heaven.That’s the only one I know. Everything else is kind of just not quite as exciting.So Dr. Fitter was very kind and would would bring me tea during the break so that I could stay awake.My and continue the class. And he used to call me, he used to call me Dr. Wellens.Dr. Wellens, let me get you some tea. And all my friends would make fun of me for that. Yeah, I bet they did.Came time to apply to medical school and I’m gathering, you had no problem getting accepted or were there any struggles at all?You know, I got in and I was really excited to go.Moved down to the Jackson, to the medical center there.And it’s really neat because it’s really focused on training people from Mississippi.
[9:46] And so, you know, kind of very, it wasn’t the situation where, you know, like in the paper chase, you know, look to your left and look to your right and only one of you will be there by the end of your time here, you know.We really all helped each other out. There were people from all colleges all over the state.You know, we had a very traditional medical school experience where you studied really hard.And, you had a year-long anatomy class so we learned our anatomy left and right which is a little bit different from nowadays but I think that’s why we had a pretty high proportion of people that you know went into surgery or the surgical specialties just because of the exposure to anatomy.But yeah we had busy nights and busy days taking care of patients.I’d like to say Mississippi was akin to some of the other hospitals like like Grady in Atlanta.Yeah you’re really just taking care of the patients on a very basic level as a as a medical student.So you get a lot of exposure early on to not only procedures and learning how to interpret things but actually making some decisions and feeling strongly the good and you know feeling even four times as strongly the bad.
[11:00] Yeah, I think it’s a you know typical thing for people that are in medicine in those early days of medical school was Neurosurgery your target at that point or did that come later?Well, it’s interesting I am I’ve written in a a piece on becoming a neurosurgeon a piece like I In the fourth grade I wrote it about what what we wanted to do when we grew up in the four I wrote it being a neurosurgeon.Yeah, which was crazy to think about but then obviously going to medical school I was focused on family medicine and you know being the everyman doctor and what happened is in the anatomy lab We were doing the dissection of the brachial plexus, which is this, you know beautiful, group of nerves that come out of the lateral spine and they kind of jumble up in a predictable pattern and then they unjumble in a predictable pattern and they Become the nerves that go to the arm and I just remember thinking that it was like macrame It was just beautiful and it was relatively reproducible from cadaver to cadaver, you know It is a remarkable piece of work, isn’t it?It really is Yeah and I remember thinking about kind of the wonder of it of how how that forms and and so kind of from there I made My way back into the spinal cord and then from there up to the brain and then all of a sudden I’m taking neuroanatomy and and I just remember kind of laying down the that desire being a family medicine doctor kind of at the altar of neurosurgery and and then that was it. I was off to the run then.
Sponsorship Announcement: Eagle Financial Group
[12:28] Today’s episode is brought to you by Eagle Financial Group Eagle Financial Group is here to help you understand your numbers and to make wise decisions Whether it’s fractional CFO services accounting bookkeeping payroll or tax strategies and preparation 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 clientservicesateaglefsg.com.
EGLEFSG.com: Providing Support for Doctors’ Financial and Caregiving Challenges
[13:15] Or visit us online at EGLEFSG.com.We are a proud sponsor of the MD Coaches family of podcasts.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?Then this Virtual Caregiver Conference will save you time, money, and sanity by giving you all the resources and information your patients need in one place.This conference helps you and your patients enlist the best strategies around healthcare resources and the best financial steps for your patients while navigating caregiving situations.You don’t have to go home feeling frustrated and helpless because you couldn’t connect your patients with the best services. Find out more at rx4successpodcast.com.
Caregiver Conference Announcement
[14:13] Slash conference or click the link in the show notes. We look forward to seeing you at the caregiver conference.So, the way your training breaks down at that point, of course, you do a general surgery internship, although I don’t think they called them internships anymore back then. It was PG-1.And then at that point, you were in your neurosurgery residency. Is that correct?Yeah. So, at that point, I matched at Duke, which was kind of a Hail Mary pass.I felt very fortunate to have been able to go there.And my intern year was exactly as you said, it was that kind of traditional year where you rotate through general surgery and cardiac surgery and neurosurgery and plastic surgery and all kinds of different rotations.And again, you play a pretty integral part of those services.And so that was one of the busiest years.Yeah, I remember on my first day, those are the days that we wore a short white coat and white pants as interns.
[15:19] And I showed up on my first day and I happened to be the intern on call that day on the vascular surgery service and I showed up in my white coat, white pants, and a tie and I had a pair of penny loafers on and by 5 30 that afternoon, my feet hurt so bad from walking around, getting taken care of stuff, running from code to code emergency, getting stuff to the OR that I called my wife and And I said, please, can you please go get me some comfortable shoes?And she brought me to the hospital a pair of not attractive shoes, I’ll just say, but they were very comfortable.Dr. Darrell Bock Well, you asked for comfortable, yeah. Dr. John Alexander I did, and I wore those shoes the whole year.And by the end of the year, I threw them out because they were worn out.We were busy in those years.Dr. Darrell Bock Well, let’s talk about the move into your neuro residency.We haven’t even talked in detail about how you decided that that’s where you were going, but indeed that’s where you went.And I’m interested to know that in the beginning of that second year when you got involved with the neuro program, did you immediately feel like, man, this is exactly where I belong and I want the rest of my life to look just like this, or were there ever any misgivings?What was in your head at that point? Well, I did try to talk myself out of it multiple times.I mean, when I was an intern, I also really began to love the heart.I loved listening to the heart, listening for murmurs.
[16:48] I just thought it was fascinating and had some experiences with the cardiologists that were really profoundly moving just from a reception of such amazing teaching, you know.I just I just remembered that vividly and so by that time, it’s third year, you’re in your clinical rotations.I thought one of the best surgeons in the hospital was a GYN oncologist and so I’d thought a lot a little bit about that I really liked vascular surgery doing doing aortic repairs Yeah doing you know fem distal and fem pops and all those things But at the end of the day like every time I walked by OR 16 Was the neurosurgery OR I would look in the portal that porthole to see what they were doing Yeah, I don’t mean like every once in a while, you know I mean, like every single time I walked by there, I would look in there.And so I kind of didn’t know what my ability would be to be able to match in neurosurgery.And so I kind of hatched this plan of maybe doing general surgery for a couple of years and then switching over because that’s what a lot of people had done and at Mississippi that I knew and respected.But I did a rotation at Duke. My wife had been undergraduate there and she likes Duke a lot and I knew its reputation. And so I just kind of went for it.And I think that I ended up really connecting with the residents and the faculty there really just because I worked hard.
[18:14] It’s not like I knew all the answers, but I knew if I didn’t know something, I wouldn’t just pop out a lie.I would just go find out and then report it.And so I think that that kind of work ethic and that honesty ethic were really important as to the reasons why I ended up at Duke.
[18:32] It pays off every time, I think. I think so too.Yeah, I really do, Randy. I think those are two really important qualities.And you know over the years I’ve learned, you know, the the work smarter not work harder Which I think is a good is a good thing, too you know, I think sometimes you can get yourself all wrapped up in the.
[18:52] Unnecessary small stuff and forget the stuff that’s really important.And so My partner Rob naftal who I’ve known since he was a medical student.I was on faculty at UAB That’s always been his motto work harder not smarter.And so I’ve kind of taken that to but they’d all for you Yeah, I think so.I feel like I’ve got a lot of good advice along the way from people above me or beside me or Quote-unquote below me.So I mean I’m grateful for that. But yeah, so then you know your PGY 2 Through six year was doing neurosurgery and there were no Work hour limitations, you know nowadays.
[19:26] You can’t work over 80 hours and you have to leave the hospital or lie about whether or not you leave the hospital So that’s you know kind of a challenge, but we used to work I mean, we were called residents initially at Hopkins for a reason, you were a resident of the hospital.And as I’m sure you remember. So those were 120, 130 hour weeks.And I hit the same tree going home a couple of times on a slow curve, thank God from falling asleep.And one time I had this old truck that my wife’s dad gave me and he had driven about 150,000 miles on it, but it was still a good truck.And with the I couldn’t put it into park there was something wrong with the transmission and I could never take it in Get it looked at so I would just leave it in neutral and pull the parking brake up and it worked fine, And then all of a sudden I came in at 2 a.m You know as my post call and I parked the truck up on you on the little parking pad And I went in and went to sleep and I woke up at 4 32 to come back out and the truck was gone And I was like, somebody stole the truck.I went in and woke up Melissa and said, somebody stole our truck.And lo and behold, what had happened is I forgot to set the parking brake and the truck rolled down the hill and it hit a tree.And it hit a tree in a way that it dented the left fender in a way that I could drive it straight or I could turn to the right, but I could not turn to the left.
[20:53] Because the wheel would get caught up in where it had dented it.And so for the next six months, I didn’t take any left turns.You know, I learned that three rights make a left, you know.Dr. Darrell Bock What a great story. Yeah, that was something.Those days were something. You really do learn to be inventive when you’re on a budget. Do you know that?Oh, goodness gracious. We ate a lot of peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I bet you did.Well, interesting to me that only a couple of years and to your neuroresidency, you signed on for a stroke research fellowship.How did that come about? I enjoyed vascular neurosurgery. I thought the cases were challenging technically.Those are like aneurysms and AVMs.And ICU care was very busy. Those patients can be very sick and a lot of it is at the time we were doing lots of invasive monitoring, swan-gance catheters.
[21:53] Which is this fancy catheter that you place through the vein underneath the clavicle, and you kind of thread it into the heart, and it helps give you various pressures that help you understand how to increase the pressure to the brain.We don’t do that now, but it used to be we did it for every patient.And so, you know, I enjoyed that, but then I really liked this one pediatric neurosurgeon.I liked both the ones that were there, but this one pediatric neurosurgeon, Tim George, was just a terrific surgeon.He handled himself well. He had a good life.And I liked how he was with the kids. And I felt drawn to taking care of kids, too, because they are pretty resilient, I learned then.
Compassion and empathy in pediatric neurosurgery
[22:36] And they’re also relatively innocent. And so, when they get in car wrecks, it’s typically not their fault.Not that it’s our job to judge anybody for why they get in a car wreck.But I really just felt called to take care of children.And I enjoyed working with pediatricians, and I enjoyed talking to the parents.And in kind of a really weird way, and that kind of morphed over my time as an attending, I think I am relatively good at helping people digest and hear bad news.How do you say you’re good at something like that? But I think it’s because I was raised in a home where there was a lot of compassion and empathy for our fellow human being.So I feel like I got a double dose of that from both my mom and my dad and from the people around me in a small town of Columbia that I grew up in.I think I realized that I can handle the good, but also the ability to go in a room and tell people that the outcome is not going to be good.I think that that takes a lot of grace, and that’s not something that I had in spades as a resident.But I think I probably just had the haziest vision of the fact that I’d be able to do that well one day.Well, I’m going to ask you a little bit of a pointed question here.And all the honesty without any judgment at all, in my experience with neurosurgeons.
[23:56] That degree of concern and compassion and conscientious connection with patients and their family is not something that I see a great deal in neurosurgeons.So have I just been running into the wrong group or is it more common than I think?You wanna expound on that? Well, no, I mean I definitely had a lot of people entreat me to not go into neurosurgery, you know when I was a medical student, you know, just because of that very that stereotype like you talked about but I just felt like that there was room in that field for compassion and empathy and You know lo and behold I mean my my chairman Reed Thompson here at Vanderbilt is one of the most empathetic people I have ever met He is a deeply conned, I mean technically superb, master surgeon.
[24:45] His most important quality is his ability to connect.And so I really like being here and working for people who I really admire and believe in the way that they do think.
The culture of compassion in the field of neurosurgery
[24:57] And so I think that’s just what happened to the field. And I don’t know if it’s because I surround myself with more people that are like that, but I thought I went into pediatrics because that was a place, pediatric neurosurgery, because that was a place for more, where more empathy and compassion lived.And it seemed to be at the time, but now what I see is that it’s all over our field. It really is. Well, I’m glad to hear that.And, you know, it certainly can be an institutional thing. Yeah.That sort of culture or a particular culture grows in whatever form it’s going to grow kind of based on how it’s led.And I gather that at Vanderbilt, and I’m hoping at UAB where I did my additional, initial training, you were seeing the same sort of thing.
[25:45] And I’m very gratified to hear that that’s the case.Well, you certainly had a stellar beginning to your career at UAB in Birmingham, and then a prestigious faculty appointment at Vanderbilt, which you continued to blossom into.And in looking at your CV, you have really had a very fruitful and gratifying career.
[26:16] And having acquired a tremendous amount of both clinical and personal and emotional experience over those years, you have decided to take advantage of the writing skills that you learned as an undergraduate. it.And I’d be interested to know how that segue came about. You want to enlarge on that?Well, I loved my career at UAB. I was very fortunate.
[26:45] It’s a small world, pediatric neurosurgery. At the time, there were probably around 12 or 15 programs, so I was felt very fortunate to be able to go there.UAB had a terrific senior partner and leader named Jerry Oaks who was one of the most well-known pediatric neurosurgeons, that you know around the world and particularly for sure North America too and had two other great people that I trained with and I just enjoyed my fellowship.It was busy but it wasn’t the hours weren’t as long.The saves were equally as meaningful and the folks that weren’t saved were you know lingered around the edges.They still were disappointing but I just learned so much specific to pediatric neurosurgery and I came to interview or went to interview at a place and basically my partners there just said you know do us a favor and don’t sign any contracts and when I came back they had a contract for me and relatively soon I signed it and my wife had been in medical school at Duke.And then we had come to UAB for her to do an intern year, and then we were going to see if we were going to stay or go. And then she was asked to be chief resident.
[27:54] And so it made really good sense for us to stay there.And so when I joined faculty, I was fourth pediatric neurosurgeon there and really just grew a terrific practice over that 10 years.I had partners that came and and were successful and I’m grateful for all of them.But I really did a lot of cranial neurosurgery, a little bit of spine neurosurgery, but I also developed an interest in peripheral nerve surgery, which is the, you know, the nerves of the body that could be compressed or damaged or injured, oftentimes with birth and children or with other kind of traumatic accidents.And so I also was really fortunate to work with good people from an academic standpoint.We published a which was I think important to be able to kind of stay relevant and to push the field even further.And then I was able to get a Master’s of Public Health or an MSPH, a Master’s of Science of Public Health, kind of one class at a time over the last three years of my time there, which made a phenomenal impact on my own research and led to some really neat opportunities when we moved up to Vanderbilt.The decision was not made lightly, but it was a real leap of faith, to quote Kierkegaard, but I think it was important for me to do.
[29:21] What was your vision at that point? Sure.
[29:26] I had looked at both institutions. I felt like that where I was Had already published a lot and done a lot of things to help the children not just in Alabama But you know across the world and when I looked at the opportunity of Vanderbilt the program the pediatric neurosurgery program Here was well known for fetal surgery, For spina bifida, but I thought that there was an opportunity to grow kind of the rest of the program.
[29:55] All the congenital skull deformation work and the brain tumor work and the arteriovenous malformation and all the things that are on the table of contents of the book of pediatric neurosurgery.And so I made that leap and then came up and then gradually began to hire people and build our team.And we have phenomenal nurse practitioner partner, Haley Vance, who we work with, who basically everybody calls the boss right in front of me.You know what I mean? So that’s okay. because she’s amazing and…I have three great partners that all have their areas of interest, and we have a fellowship that’s well-respected, and we match good people into it, and we do high-level research.
A Leap of Faith and Creating a Shared Vision
[30:38] I’m, just very proud of what’s come up over the last 10 years here, and that really is a manifestation of the vision that I thought about when I made that Kierkegaardian leap of faith.I just remember it feeling like the biggest deal in the whole world, that I was leaving a place that I liked so much to go to a place that was gonna take some effort.But I just can’t imagine having not done it. It was good for me to take that leap. It was good for my wife.It was really good for my kids to have seen that you can just up and move and you’re a little unit and everybody can just be fun.And I think that was- It must have been really gratifying to sort of create something of your own, something of your own vision, came into being right in front of you just because of that decision. Am I overreading it or not?No, I’m very grateful for it. And also, I think a good leader, when they bring people on, you then begin to have a shared vision and you begin to incorporate what those people, what they value.
[31:48] When you move from being a member of a group to being first among equals, as they say for the Archbishop of Canterbury, I like to say I’m first among equals.It’s really important that you get direct input and that you value what your partners value and that you incorporate that into what your shared and collective vision is, because then you really get buy-in from your partners, and all boats rise.
[32:19] At the end of the day, the most important thing is that care is good, that the care that you render to the children and the way you communicate with the families and the way you engage with the pediatricians and your consultants and all the different places that we interact with in the hospital.I’ll say this, that view of the neurosurgeon is this kind of lone wolf who’s got, you know, kind of a two-day-old beard and drinking the terrible coffee and is not nice to anybody and doesn’t work well with others.I mean, I will tell you that in my opinion, neurosurgery and in particular, pediatric nurseries, there’s not a more collaborative field than what we do.I mean, we work in the pediatric ICU, the neonatal ICU, the emergency room, the wards.We cross with orthopedics, with spond and peripheral nerve, with plastics with peripheral nerve. We run a brachial plexus clinic together.We have epilepsy with our neurology team.We have a spondybifida clinic with our urologists and orthopedic colleagues.We do work with infectious disease, with hospitalists, with, the cardiac service. I mean, there’s really not a service in the hospital that we don’t have some interaction with, either surgical or non-surgical.
[33:32] And so, I find it to be fascinating to really be in a way where you can connect not just with the patients that you care for, but also you can connect with the people that you work with that are on other services.
Finding Unexpected Gratification at Vanderbilt
[33:47] Well, it sounds like you have found possibly an unexpected degree of gratification with the move to Vanderbilt, and certainly congratulations to you on that, but with that in mind, I would like to segue us into an even new chapter in your life and development of an additional talent that seems to be really profound.I mean, I’ve read your book and I’m very impressed with it.But certainly you’ve done quite a bit of professional writing during your career. But this is different.This new book of yours, All That Moves Us, really exposes a completely often overlooked side I think of medical professionals.
[34:39] I’d like for you to talk a little bit about how you decided to write this book and how you picked the stories that went into it.When I was a first-year medical student, I was up in the cadaver lab and I had this kind of nascent or this little interest in cardiology.There was a book that they’d given us called On Doctoring when we started our first-year medical school.One and it had as you know, it was an anthology of various doctors writings and one of them was by a guy named John Stone which I thought was just terrific.He’s a card at the time he was a cardiologist at Emory and so I found out that he’d written a book called From the Country of Hearts and it was a series of essays about the heart and so it was right around the time that we were studying the heart in the anatomy class I went and purchased that book and I just can’t tell you this you know understanding about the literal heart seeing it in the in our cadaver and looking at it and examining it and then also reading about the metaphorical heart I just remember to myself as I’ve begun to get interested in nerves and the central nervous system saying, you know Wouldn’t it be neat if somebody one day wrote a story like wrote a book like this, you know And then basically I took that thought and I shoved it as down deep into my psyche as I possibly could for about 25 years Oh, is that all?
A Neurosurgeon’s Journey Begins
[36:07] And most everybody from Mississippi are really good storytellers and can be long-winded in a William Faulkner kind of way.You know, I always say it’s hard for me to say hello in less than two minutes, you know.But it was my sister Sarah who basically said, you know, you should write some of these stories down that you’ve been talking to us about.And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll do it at some point, you know, but I’m busy.I’m a busy neurosurgeon. I got neurosurgery stuff to And then all of a sudden, I had a medical issue.The number of times that I’d sat at a computer or put films up for a family to see a tumor in the brain and telling them that we would need to take it out and we would need to know what it meant and was it benign or malignant and how long the child would be there and what the risks and benefits were from surgery.I just have that conversation hundreds of times and all of a sudden, instead of me sitting there saying it, it was me sitting there listening to somebody tell me I had a tumor in my pelvis that looked like it was benign but was gonna need to be resected.So I had that and it turned out I was on bed rest for like two months.And so you can imagine at the time, I was program director, I was vice chair of the department, I was division director of pediatric neurosurgery, I had a lot of responsible hats and you know I was busy surgeon.So I was going about Warp Factor 9, and all of a sudden, I went from Warp Factor 9 to Standstill.And so, you know, there’s only so much Netflix that you can watch.
[37:33] And there is an end to the internet also.But I just decided to start categorizing different stories of my life, you know, all the way through the segments like we’ve been talking about today.And then I decided to just write a story up that would happen to be a funny story about a trip that I made up to be visiting professor at the University of Vermont and that story was, I sent it in…
[37:57] Randomly sent it in to the New York Times, and lo and behold, they accepted it and they published it.Wow. And I got lots of emails from people saying, Hey, you’re a funny writer, you know, from friends saying, Hey, congratulations, New York Times, you know, you’re a funny writer.That’s really great. But my editor at the Times was a guy named Peter Catapano.And it turns out unbeknownst to me that Peter’s shtick is to fund new writers and help them write more.You know, the piece stayed on the most read list for a couple of weeks, and Peter said to me, he said, you know, this is a funny story and it’s really good, but you know, you’re a pediatric neurosurgeon.I know you have a serious story in you, so why don’t you write me a serious story and let’s see how that goes.And so I had kind of worked on a piece before that I worked on again and finished up, and that ultimately is in the book.It’s called 90 Minutes From You By Ground, but it’s the story of a young girl who was involved in a car accident and was 90 minutes away by ground, and And the ambulances, the air ambulances, the helicopters weren’t flying because the weather was so bad. And she was really injured.And she needed surgery. Dr. Darrell Bock Oh, this is the little girl in Auburn.Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, she was the one in Auburn. Dr. Darrell Bock Auburn, Alabama, by the way, for the audience, is– Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, Auburn, Alabama.That’s right. Dr. Darrell Bock South–East–Alabama from perspective.Birmingham is a ways north. So go ahead.Dr. Justin Marchegiani And basically, the ER doctor called me and I was like, why is she not in the air already?And he said, well, because the helicopters aren’t flying and you know, I just kinda I thought about it and thought about my dad and you know how he problem-solving.
[39:26] Was kind of a part of our lives and part of his life and all of a sudden just said what about those Blackhawks or they flying nearby and the ER doctor said I’ll give him a call and lo and behold about 25 minutes later I felt this thump on the glass thump thump thump and then you know it was pushing the rain to the side and I could see trash cans going down the street of the hospital right out in front of my office on a Saturday morning and I could look up and just see the tail of a black hawk hovering over the helipad.It’s too heavy to land. So, they had to kind of lower her down.And I met met them in the ER, you know, two of the soldiers were there.They were drenched from flying in the rain, but they got her there.One of them snapped to attention when he saw me. I said, at ease, you know, we should be saluting you because you guys have saved this girl’s life.And we took her up to the OR and, you know, took out her subdural hematoma.That’s a blood clot on the side of the brain. And, you know, she was sick.She had a blown pupil, which meant she was, you know, close to dying.One side wasn’t working.One side of her body wasn’t really moving. And so, it took her some time to get better. She survived. She woke up. She was able to talk to her family.But her course was one of just pure work and resilience.
[40:37] And I would see her on rounds or at the rehab part of our hospital or in clinic.And then once clinic stopped, I would get letters from her parents, but it was about how she was back in school, and then it was she had made the headmaster’s role in her grades, or she became the school mascot and was cheering in the big tiger uniform, or she got into college, or she decided to major in social work.And it was just really phenomenal to see her get better.And then one day, I was sitting at my desk up here at Vanderbilt, and I got a letter, And it was not cards or newspaper clippings, but it was a letter from her from Jensen from the patient who had grown up and was getting married and she wanted me to know that she was getting married and how grateful she was for Wow the ER doctor and for the nurses and for the soldiers that had been there because I had told her the story before and Then she said how grateful she was for me And you know I realized how grateful I was for her because it was early in my career and I was kind of learning how hard to push people and what to expect and how hard to work to get patients up.And I thought to myself, how many children have been saved because of Jensen’s recovery when I really could tell that it mattered.And so that piece got sent out. And after that, I got hundreds and hundreds of emails from people that I knew and people that I didn’t know.
[42:00] From around the world. And, you know, what was happening is that the pandemic was just beginning to raise its ugly head.And so, there was a lot of angst about what the future was.And that story is really a story of hope. You know, it really is a story of about people coming together to help somebody.I’ll read the last few lines of that because I think it’s very meaningful.But, my father’s lessons in the air, that industrious emergency room doctor, those brave soldiers soaked to the bone standing there as we rolled away.So many people and events came together for this one child to grow into her life, to find happiness, to find love.All of us need a living, breathing reminder to just keep pushing on.There may be a life there to be beautifully and fully lived.
[42:45] A person who just needs someone, anyone, to work the problem, to make the hard call, and to fly in a storm.” And that story really was the jumping off point for the book.Not only did I get all these kind emails from people around the world, I remember one in particular from a guy who said, you know, I had 104 fever in Vietnam on the front lines from malaria.I was going to, I was going to die. The, the medevacs weren’t running, weren’t flying because it was too hot, you know, too much fire bullets flying.Right. And this one crazy Huey helicopter pilot threw me in the back of his Huey and chomped on a cigar and flew me out through the enemy fire and got me to the back hospital.And that’s why I’m here today. And reading your story made me remember him and how grateful I was for that man and for what he did for me.
[43:31] How much he helped me. And so like that sense, I just said, you know, what these kids have shown me over the years and their grace and resilience has been phenomenal.What I’ve learned from them and how they’ve helped me, you know, handle my father’s early death or handle some of the difficulties in my life by seeing these children.I just said, you know, if I can do it, if I can write the stories the right way, it might really help, you know, a whole bunch of stories might really help people and so that’s what happened.Well that’s an incredibly generous attitude on your part and I cannot help but believe that it’s going to accomplish just exactly what you hoped it would accomplish because the stories are heart-wrenching.
The Joy of Writing and Putting Stories Together
[44:17] And they are unquestionably, to my way of thinking, going to be a source of inspiration for a lot of people.I just I can’t say enough nice things about the book and that’s just one That that one miraculous story is one among many and it’s beautifully written And I gotta think that you had a lot of fun putting all those stories together Was it have I got it, right or did you find yourself on some days thinking?What have I gotten myself into? We’re tell me about your mindset.Well, no, I mean we I I had more stories than we needed, you know, I had some that were already written, but some that needed to be written.But one of the first things that happened is, you know, with the second piece that came out and some of the kind emails from folks around the world also came emails from agents.And you know, I’m fortunate enough, as I mentioned, to have John Meacham and a couple of other writers as friends who helped me kind of navigate that world.But I selected a guy named David Granger and David had been the editor of Esquire for 28 or 29 years.
[45:28] And so he was not only an agent, but also was an editor too.And so, you know, I sent him these pieces and he said, Jay, you know, these are really good and I liked them, but I don’t know a lot about you from these pieces.And he said, I want, I want to know why you went into pediatric neurosurgery.Cause I never wanted this book to be like, hi, I’m Jay Wellens.I’m the best pediatric neurosurgeon in the country. send me all your patients. That was not my goal.You know my goal was to write about the patients but, But some of my author friends’ points and David Granger’s point was like people need to know a lens through which to read.They need to know the person that’s telling the stories.And so he said, you know, who’s your favorite author? And I said, well, it’s James Joyce. And he said, perfect.I want you to sit down and I want you to bang me out 5,000 words on why you became a pediatric neurosurgeon.And I don’t want you to punctuate it. I don’t want you to capitalize it.I don’t want you to edit it. I just want you to fire it out and send it to me.And so I did. didn’t capitalize or anything.
[46:23] And about 30 minutes later, he called me up and said some really kind things that made me realize that I thought that I’d be able to pull it off.And that actually became the introduction to the book, The Littlest Among Us.But we capitalized some things and put some periods in.
[46:40] You cleaned it up. And edited it. But that’s the part that kind of gives a sense about my journey from a small town, Mississippi to being where I am here at Vanderbilt.
Balancing Writing with Medical Responsibilities
[46:52] Well, it really is a wonderful piece of work and I can’t help but ask, are you working on the next volume yet or where do you stand with that?Will there be more of these?Well, I would love for there to be. I had a piece come out in Time Magazine.I had a piece come out in Garden and Gun. I had a piece come out online on Oprah Daily, which Oprah’s a big deal.And, you know, I’ve had the opportunity to give some talks at my boarding school to the student body on, you know, success and failure.And I spoke at the white coat ceremony when people get into medical school and get their white coat at the University of Mississippi.And I’ve, you know, spoken at neurosurgery programs and other medical schools, really a good bit over the last year.And I have really enjoyed it because it’s had the opportunity to tell those children’s stories. One of the things though is that you know, you can you can be a pediatric neurosurgeon.You can have a leadership responsibility You can do research with your team, and you can find time to write a book. But what’s tough is to be a pediatric neurosurgeon and have a leadership position and get good research going and then go out and talk about your current book and then have time to write a new one, right?
[48:10] And so what I find myself doing is sitting down and writing out notes about various things that happen in cases and how I can tie them together.You know, like a couple of months ago, we had a patient come in with erythropoietic porphyria, which basically means that the child can’t be exposed to light or it burns the skin, it blisters the skin.And the child had fallen and had an epidural hematoma, a blood clot on the surface of the brain that needed to come out.But there are some filters that you can put on the lights, but the guy with the filters that puts them on the lights was an hour and a half away.And so we basically covered the child with blankets, turned all the lights off in the OR and rolled that child up through the OR in the middle of the night to our room.And then we had the tiniest little light on in the corner of the room while anesthesia was able to get the breathing tube in.And then we basically were using our hands to feel the head where the anatomy was, to clip the hair and to prep and drape everything out.And then we got sterile and put our gowns on, and then we just kind of had to feel the head of where to make the incision, and then once we made the incision and got the skin reflected back, then we could turn the lights up a little bit more and continue the operation.So, I mean, there’s no way I’m not going to write about that.You did a craniotomy in the dark?
[49:36] Yeah, yeah. Operating in the dark.
[49:40] Yeah, it was something. What’s so neat about it is that, you know, for the book itself, the parents of the most recent patients that I could get in touch of, you know, 100% of them did not want any change.They didn’t want to change the name or the gender or the age or anything.And so, you know, now when I’m in a situation, when a child’s gotten to resolution, you know, I’ll say, you know, something like, look, do you have any other medical questions at all? And the families will say no, or they might have a question.I say, all right, well, look, I want to ask you one more question, and that is that I’ve written some about patients, and I’d be honored if I had the opportunity to write about your child.And really, it’s just 100% of people just say, please do, just tell our child’s story or tell our baby’s story.I’m not surprised to hear that at all. What a fabulous gift.Jay, I have really enjoyed this conversation, possibly as much as I enjoyed the book, All That Moves Us.Well, thank you. It’s just really a wonderful, wonderful piece of work, not only for medical professionals but for the lay public as well.I’m not at all surprised that it has been as successful as it is.I appreciate you being here to talk about it, but what I want to do at this point is get out of your way and let you speak to our audience on your own and from your own soul.
[51:06] Audience. I’m going to close my mic and Dr.Jay Wellens will share his personal prescriptions for success.Well, thank you, Randy. I appreciate the opportunity. So, you know, for me, I think what I have learned over the years in various work relationships, and that’s what I’m going to talk about because work is a big part of our lives.It’s how we get, you know, a sense of purpose.So what I have learned over the years is I think three main things.One is it’s extremely important to work for somebody who you believe in and that the mission is something that you believe in.And what I mean by that is if you have a chairman like an academic neurosurgery, academic medicine, or if you have a boss or a manager right above you and you don’t believe in what your unit is doing and you don’t really respect or believe in that person, it’s to be hard to find a lot of meaning in what it is that you do.
[52:04] And so I highly suggest doing your best to either find meaning in that and find the good side of the people that you work for, or trying to evoke change, or changing it yourself.Because I think that’s really important that the people above you and the mission above you is something that is important. And then that leads to the second thing, which is I think the people that you work with right beside you are equally as important.You know, I have three amazing pediatric neurosurgeon partners.We all split call every fourth night, every fourth weekend, and I have a nurse practitioner partner who actually has her doctorate in nurse practitioner, so technically she’s a doctor too, and she reminds me of that from time to time, I will say.But I will say that having people beside you who have your back and you have their back, that is a tremendously meaningful thing.I know that when I’m tired and my partners are on call.
Importance of Passing on Wisdom and Listening to the Next Generation
[53:02] That the patient that I operated on will be well taken care of and they know the same with me. And I just think that’s extremely important.And then last I’ll say is that then the people that are under you, you know, and under you is a hard, you know, there’s, I don’t know a better way to say that, but maybe the people who you have responsibility for, you know, who are coming up behind you, I can’t express how important that is to have a sense of passing on wisdom to that generation and also listening to that generation.You know, I think in medicine, we were pretty critical of Millennials for a while.You know, their work ethic was a little different than those, you know, we worked 120 hours a week.Back in my day, we went to school, you know, walking up both ways, etc, etc.But when the pandemic hit, it was the Millennials who came to the front lines.It was the Millennials who stayed and took care of patients because we were older or we had had medical issues that maybe kept them from doing it.And so I think all that stuff, all those issues, all that tightness between millennials and our generation should be wiped away because of the hard work that they did in the pandemic.And so I just say that it’s important to not only pass along things and wisdom and things that you’ve learned, but also listen to them too.And I’ve learned a lot from my trainees, my residents, and my fellows.
[54:29] I think it’s important to incorporate that. So those are my three main areas of advice that help really make work a meaningful part of your life.So in my notes, I’ve written, find and believe in good leaders for yourself, number two.Surround yourself with colleagues that you respect and believe in, and last but certainly not least, respect those whom you lead and take the opportunity to learn from them.That’s some really good advice, Jay, and I can’t say that I’m surprised to hear that kind of wisdom from you.I have really, really, really enjoyed the conversation today.
[55:13] It’s always a lot of fun to talk to a fellow Southerner, and I appreciate that.Before we go, I want to give you an opportunity to share anything that you want to share with our audience.Where to find your book, where to find you, email addresses, websites, anything that you’d like to pass on to the audience, please tell us right now.Randy, I really enjoy the opportunity to be here. I’ve enjoyed this conversation, too. It’s like a little calm zen moment in the in the midst of a crazy medical day at the hospital. So thank you But the book is called All That Moves Us. The subtitle is a pediatric neurosurgeon, his young patients, and their stories of grace and resilience.I’m fortunate, very fortunate, to have Penguin Random House as the publisher, which has been a terrific group to work with, editor, and just the marketing and all of it. It’s just been wonderful.And I’m very excited that the paperback recently came out.And they asked me what I wanted to do for the cover of the back and there’s something that our nurses do and many nurses do in operating rooms but if a stuffed animal comes in with the patient oftentimes the nurses if they have a moment we’ll put a little head wrap on the stuffed animal or put a little sling on the arm or something that that’s similar to what the child is having so that when the child wakes up there’s their beloved buddy with a head wrap just like them. That’s really cool.
[56:37] Yeah, it’s their beloved buddy with a head wrap just like them. It’s really such a kind of And so I had I asked our nurses to do it and we took some pictures and send it to Penguin Random House and they Loved it and so that’s on the cover of the of the new of the new paperback and I wrote a little short piece about You know how special it is to be a nurse that works in a pediatric operating room So I’m I’m very excited about that and the book is available at bookstores across the country Independent bookstores to Barnes & Noble to Amazon.It’s I’m one of the best sellers on Amazon. I’m really honored and was given a starred review in Publishers Weekly and Jerome Groupman gave it a really good review and The New Yorker, which I was so honored to see.So I’m just excited to have the opportunity to talk about it and I love doing book clubs and I love talking to people about it because it’s really getting a chance to talk about these remarkable children.
[57:35] And a little bit about people that have had an influence on me and people who maybe I’ve influenced, too.So thank you for the opportunity, Randy. I really appreciate it.Well, Dr. Jay Wellens, thank you very much for taking the time to be with us, and congratulations on the success of the book.It’s been a lot of fun talking to you today, so thanks again. Thank you.Thank you so much for listening today. If you enjoyed the show, you can help us reach more listeners by leaving a rating and a review, especially on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.And if your app doesn’t have that option, just leave us an email or a voicemail through speakpipe at rx4successpodcast.com.You can also help by becoming a Patreon member.That link is in the show notes. And we hope you’ll also follow our companion podcast, Life-Changing Moments with Dr. Dale Waxman.Special thanks to our producer Craig Clausen, our promotions manager Mariana Rodabaugh, and to Ryan Jones, who created and performs our theme music.And remember, be sure to fill your prescription for success with my next episode.
[58:49] Music.
