Hey, it's another great day to get better. I'm Toby Brooks. Becoming Undone is the podcast for those who dare bravely, risk mightily, and grow relentlessly. Join me each week as I invite a new guest to examine how high achievers can transform from falling apart to falling into place. Dr. Julie Partridge is a well-respected professor and sports psychologist at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Growing up in rural Kansas, her earliest dreams were to become a classically trained professional musician as a violinist. However, over time, those dreams made way for sports, where she found success as a softball and volleyball player, ultimately leading her to college. However, when her playing days were done after two years, she felt drawn toward a career around sport as a sports psychologist, ultimately earning both a master's and doctoral degree in the field. Today, she serves as a graduate program director and a professor of sport and exercise psychology. However, in 2019, she unexpectedly found herself in an emergency room with a diagnosis of a pulmonary embolism that could have cost her her life. Since then, she's combined her skills as a speaker and a researcher along with those experiences as a patient to help raise awareness through work as an advocate for the National Blood Clot Alliance. Listen to this and more in episode 34, Professor Jen X. Y'all were fortunate enough to have one of the funnest people I've ever worked with, without question. And if there's a contest, it's maybe only between her and her husband, Phil Anton. But Dr. Julie Partridge is a professor of exercise science support administration and human sciences at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Julie, so thrilled to have you. Thank you so much for having me. The title of the show is Becoming Undone. is becoming undone and I thought you would be a great guest because you've experienced the loss that we've talked about for student athletes that search for identity. You've also worked in this space as a faculty athletics representative and working with physically active folks and athletes. And then you've also had a setback of your own health care not long ago that sent your life in another direction. So the question I always ask to start off with just a little bit of a softball, is who did Julie want to be when she was a little girl growing up? Yeah, so it's funny, I was thinking about this. So when I was growing up, when I was like young, young, so like early elementary school, I thought that I wanted to be a professional musician for many, many years in Kansas City. She had like a vaudeville act and she was a violinist herself and I got a violin as a present for my third birthday. So I was like, you know, I played the violin when I was growing up. So that was kind of like what I thought I wanted to be. And then at some point I realized like I don't actually want to do that. And then it was sort of transitioned into this, like, I want to be a veterinarian stage. And then I realized that I don't like to see animals suffer in any way, so that seemed like a bad idea. But then once I was really sort of thinking about what do I actually want to be, I was one of those people that never changed my major. I was a psych major from the time I started college, and I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do until part of the way through college, and I realized that there was this thing that was called sports psychology, and it seemed like such a great marriage between the two things that I was most passionate about, which was sport, and then trying to understand the psychology behind behavior and that type of thing. So it transitioned a little bit, but honestly, once it was time to kind of get serious about what I wanted to do, I kind of followed a path and knew where I wanted to go. That's cool. So I know you were an athlete yourself. So we've talked to artists and we've talked to athletes and it's really amazing. We really have more in common than not. And so my daughter is, she's in musical theater and vocal performance and those kinds of things. And lots of times the setbacks are really similar and the The identity that's formed from being that growing up once that's over with that's a really tough transition for a lot of people So start at the beginning for you. So you maybe started down this path as a violinist, but sports certainly entered the equation Yeah, so I I don't remember how old I was when I started playing sports, but you know, six, seven, I'm going to guess. And I played, you know, I grew up in a small town in Kansas. So in, in the eighties, there weren't a ton of options for what to play. Um, honestly, not just for, because I was a girl, but because there just weren't that many options. But I, I did play softball. I played basketball. I was truly awful at basketball. Truly, truly awful. I love basketball. I love watching it. I was just bad at it. And at that time, you couldn't start volleyball until you were, actually there was not even a junior high team, but my older sister played. And so I got the chance to kind of learn volleyball a little bit before starting in high school. And that really was a sport that I loved. I think I was probably a little better at softball maybe, but I really liked volleyball better. And yeah, so then I played up through two years of junior college, and I did play both sports there. By the time it was over, I was really burned out. And I didn't have a word for it then. Like, I didn't really realize how burned out I was. But I've said this in my classes before, when we talk about burnout, and it's this idea, right, of maybe not really caring what happens in the competition. Obviously, softball was the last season that I was in, and I remember we were going to regionals or whatever, and it was a double elimination tournament. And I remember thinking, if we could just go 0-2, I would really not be upset about it. And it felt so weird, because I didn't think of myself as somebody that would be, I certainly wasn't trying to not perform well or anything like that, but I was just like, I just want this to be over. And so it was a real bittersweet ending. I did not want to continue playing. If I was going to continue playing, I was going to play at like a small school. I wasn't good enough to go on, I don't think, but like to a D1 or something like that. But I just wanted it to be over at that point. But it was sad because it really was a huge part of who I was. And I think that for me, that identity, I sort of just transposed it onto, well, I'm going to go on. I'm not going to ever be away from sports. Like, it's always going to be part of who I am. But I had to transition the way that that existed. That's interesting. A lot of people really struggle with that transition. And I've talked to a few people who really don't. Like, they're ready for that next season. You've worked with a lot of athletes and you certainly counsel and work with athletes now. What advice do you give student-athletes who are in the midst of that transition and just lost, feeling like they're searching for identity? What is the best approach for moving on in that circumstance? Yeah, it's a great question. I think it depends some on the individual, right? Like everybody's circumstances are a little bit different. I do always encourage people to, I know it sounds very trite or I guess very obvious, I don't know, but like I do encourage people to think about what else do you do? What, who else are you besides this? And it's so hard to do. It's so hard for athletes to separate that part of themselves. Sometimes in classes that I teach, when we're talking about issues related to performance, I've made my classes repeat back to me three times, like I'm not my performance, because it doesn't feel that way to them. It's so closely intertwined that it's so hard for them to then, if they perform poorly, it's hard for them to separate that out. When the time comes for that performance to be over, in the deepest sense of it, like I'm not doing this anymore at all, it is really hard to set that aside when so much of the identity has been tied up in it. Did you catch that? I'm not my performance. Dr. Partridge has her classes say that sentence aloud three times. Give it a try. I'll wait. Not so easy, right? If you're like me, you've either been conditioned or somewhere along the way you conditioned yourself to believe that your self-worth is riding on not just what you do, but how well you do it. Lots of times, the best performers are able to separate out how they play or perform from who they believe themselves to be. But that's never come easy for a perfectionist like me, and in many ways it's been like a pair of handcuffs that I put on myself every day. For a high achiever who finds success early in sports, the arts, or whatever, this process can be stifling, and it's a steep hill to climb once that season is over. But I do encourage again, like, you know, think about what else it is that you that you do, who else are you, even though it may feel like nobody else sees you in this way, like what are other ways that people could see you based on on those parts of your life? And I think that that's one of the hardest things, especially I mostly see college athletes, right? And I think it's, it needs to be more of a global discussion in the sense that it's really hard to make that connection when they are a senior. And it's two, you know, weeks until they're in their last performance or two months or whatever, that's a conversation that really needs to be had across the sport experience. I think it's really hard to convince people of that when it's like, and now think of yourself some place in a different way, that needs to be a longer conversation that's had. Yeah, absolutely. I certainly have seen that in some of the student athletes that I've worked with who really struggle through that transition, especially those that are injured where it ended sooner than they had anticipated, where they expected to have the season. We saw this with COVID, where especially high school students thought they had a baseball or softball season and it just gets washed away. And you know, college gives you that extra year, everybody has this COVID year. High school kids didn't get that. And that's just such a, I don't know, there's no other word for it in my mind than suck. It just sucks that they lost that and it's irrecoverable. Yes. I think there are a lot of parallels there. Sorry. Yeah. The injury, COVID, like that, that immediacy is really hard to wrap your head around. Yeah. So you graduate with your associate's degree. At this point, are you thinking about a career in academia? Is a PhD even in the discussion? Or what's Julie's planning process at that stage of the game? I don't think that I had a PhD in mind necessarily, but I will say that I have a very good friend from high school. He lived like a block away from me. We were And he, I think, did have a really well-defined path ahead of him that included getting a PhD and going into academia. And again, I'm from a small town in Kansas, so I think it was important for me to sort of have that, like somebody else that was like, oh, this is the plan and this is what I'm gonna do. So I do think that it was in my head a little bit of like, well, that's a thing that I could potentially do. And I will say, he did do that. He's a professor now at University of Wisconsin. So he followed that path, and that was exactly what he ended up doing. But I was still not 100% sure if I wanted to stay in school that long. So when the time hit, but at the same time, like I said, I was a psych major. So it was like, what do I do with a psych degree if I don't go on? And so I kind of knew that at least a master's degree was in my future. And so then when I really started to get a little bit more serious about sports psychology, my feeling really was, okay, if I get a master's degree in this and it's not my thing, it's like two years, right? Like, it's two years of my life and I'd have a master's degree and then I can figure out whatever I want to do from there. But I really did think, when I was thinking like sports psych, really what I did think was, I want to work with athletes, that's all I want to do. I wasn't thinking research, I wasn't thinking teaching necessarily, but it was like, this is the path to be able to work with athletes, so this is the path that I'm going to go on. So my first stop was, okay, I'm going to do this master's degree, and if I hate it, it's not like it's a 10-year commitment. Right. I think we all get sucked into the pyramid scheme that is higher education. What can I do with this degree? Well, I can go get another degree that's more money and more time. For me, it was, well, I've got all these loans, so as long as I'm still in school, I can defer them. Maybe I'll just stay in school until I die, at which point I'll never have to pay them back. I mean, it's not bad logic, honestly. So you did your undergrad and then went on and did your master's. At that point, this idea of being an academic and actually doing research. But I'm curious, a lot of what we talk about here is how failure can teach us more lessons than success ever could. Were there lessons in failure that you picked up along the way in grad school that inform you even today? Yes, absolutely. So I'm trying to think of how I would say this. So I went through school, I wouldn't say like, oh, it was easy, but I did very well in undergrad, right? So I think that I went into my master's degree with a little bit of a sense of like, and then I ended up at what was my number one choice for a master's program. So I think that I kind of went, not went into it like, oh, this is going to be nothing, but just like, oh, I'm, I'm prepared. Like I'm ready to go with all of this. And then I got smacked down pretty hard my first semester, I would say. I started, it was a small cohort. We had five students in my class. One girl left at the end of the first semester, another guy flunked out the next semester, and I was like, you know what, I had a 4.0 in undergrad. That's not me humble bragging, but I'm getting ready to follow that up with the fact that I was, I felt like I was clearly the third smartest of the three people that were in my class. And it was, it was important, I can't just to mix my metaphors here, I can't just roll out the ball and be good at this. Like I have to work harder than what I was doing before. I would say that the messaging of how poorly I was, I don't want to say I was doing poorly, but like the messaging that I was getting from my advisor was extremely pointed. It was extremely difficult to hear and it was not just directed at me. I want to point that out. All of us were told that we were a disappointment, that we were lazy, that we were, you know, those aren't even like I interpreted it that way, like literally word for word told those things. So it was, it was not pleasant for sure. And it was difficult at times. Because you did know that no matter what you did, it was not going to be good enough. Julie and I are almost exactly the same age, so I can say this and I can relate. Her Gen X is showing here. We came up in an era where expectations might not always be clearly communicated. There were no assignment rubrics or behavioral contracts or 20-page syllabi describing every policy and every standard. But a failure to meet those unspoken and unwritten expectations? They sure were. Coaches and teachers of the time, they seemed to have no problem telling us when our work wasn't meeting the mark. And it was hard to hear. In today's society, such coarse and frank discussion of a student being a disappointment is likely to get a faculty member an appointment with the dean of students or worse. But back then, it was just how things got done. And you either wielded under the criticism or you rose to the occasion. Never one to back down from a challenge, Julie doubled down and committed to figuring this grad school thing out. I venture to say that that experience, while not pleasant, it's made her the kind of faculty member today whose students and advisees absolutely adore. Because she can bring her excellence right along with her compassion and her heart, making that journey through rough academic waters seem somehow less perilous. But I have to say, like, with the benefit of experience, looking back, I think there was a certain amount of freedom that that afforded me to be like, well, I'm not going to, I can't just come in here and do well in the way that I did before. So I had to take the lessons a little differently. Like, getting an A didn't mean anything. Well, to be fair, where I did my master's degree, in grad school, I don't know if they do anymore, but they didn't grade on like an ABC scale. It was basically like, did you pass or not pass? And there was like a high passing that I guess could be like an A or whatever. But the intention was to try to prevent you from sort of being too caught up in that. And it was an important lesson. Now, that being said, when I went to my PhD, I chose intentionally an advisor who was very different than that. I was looking for a bit more support, I won't lie, because it was definitely a lot. I mean, I had never in my life been told that I was a disappointment in a classroom. That was hard to take, but I intentionally told, chose somebody who was gonna be more supportive. And I literally, this is gonna sound like I'm making it up, but the first paper that I submitted in my PhD program, it came back and it had, certainly there were comments and suggestions and feedback, but at the bottom, he had written, you write very well. And I was like, is this guy messing with me? Like, this feels like a trap. I don't really know how to take a compliment anymore. And it literally took me, you know, the time that I was in my PhD program to be like, maybe I'm not terrible at this. So it was a hard lesson to learn, honestly. And I don't think I would want to learn it in exactly the same way that I did, but there was value in me learning, like you can't skate on this or like you do need to learn how to work. I don't know if it was harder, but I need to approach this differently. Like I'm not, it's not coming as easily to me or it's just, it's a different game now and I need to figure it out. Yeah. And that's really been a theme that's emerged in the show. I've, I've experienced this as a dad, experienced it as a coach and as a professor. If we just pave the way for those that are relying on us and it's easy, there's no growth there. But at the same time, if we so crush them, that they lose all confidence in themselves, that's not very beneficial either. So interesting that your PhD advisor helped put the pieces back together. Yeah, yeah, he really did. I think he passed away last year, actually it's been almost a year, and you know there were obviously, you know, there's always things that you think like, well, I kind of in some ways wished he would have pushed me harder than he did. I don't think at the time I could have handled quite as much pushing, to be fair. I do feel like I came in a bit, not fragile, but it was just like, okay, I really can't have somebody else telling me that I'm terrible for three or four years or however long I'm here. So that part was hard, but I will forever and always be grateful to him for sort of, yeah, rebuilding my confidence or helping me rebuild it because it was definitely not there when I started that PhD. So, yeah. Yeah. I'm reminded of the Jack Black movie, The School of Rock, where he's kidding around and he's like, those who can't teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym. As an athletic trainer, I got into this step to work with athletes, to be a clinician. And your story is similar on the sports psych side. You got into this to counsel, to help, to lead athletes to peak performance, but now you find yourself, the majority of your time is spent not doing that. You're writing manuscripts, you're submitting grants, you're doing administration. So I'm curious, at what point did this idea of an academic career start to seem like something that may be even a greater opportunity than continuing in clinical practice? Yes, I would say it was when I was in my master's program, which I'm very fortunate, like it was, you know, there were some, it's so different now, but at the time, there were some master's programs that were very research focused, and then some that were really only applied. And I, it definitely was expected and required that you were going to have to do a thesis, you were also going to have to do clinical, you know, hours or work with athletes performance-wise. And so, like I said, I thought all I wanna do is work with athletes, but where I did my master's degree, you, basically everybody was funded. Like if you got in, you were gonna be teaching in their activity classes, programs, right? And so I was like, okay, that's just part of the deal and I'll do it and I don't have a problem with it. And then I just really loved teaching. You know, I just found that I really, really enjoyed it. I love connecting with the students. And even though it was not classroom based necessarily, I really liked it. And I think that was when it first started to kind of dawn on me like, oh, maybe this is something I could do. And the other part was that it was kind of, it's kind of a recurring theme, right? Like you, do you have somebody who's sort of demonstrating these things for you as well? So like I said, I had a friend in high school that kind of, it kind of was a little bug in my ear at that point. But then the program, like people who were ahead of me in that program, that was the goal was like, I'm going to go into an academic position. And so that was sort of modeled as well. And it started to be like, you know what, maybe that's, maybe that is what I want to do. Um, but I will, I will say it was also still a big decision for me to go on for a PhD. We were kind of joking about it before, but it was like, all right, well, I'm going to have to have some student loans to do that. And do I want to keep racking up student loans? And then there's not sure if there's going to be a payoff at the end of this. But at the end of the day, I decided that it was worth it. But yeah, there were definitely some moments of being like, is this the right decision? Yeah. I recently got promoted. I think you wrote a letter for me, so I owe you a thank you on that. But I was going back through the stats because I was just curious. I'm like, how many people actually make full professor? And the stats were shockingly low. I wasn't prepared for the numbers. Only about 20% of PhD-trained folks that graduate actually end up in a tenure-track position. Only about 20% of them make it to associate. Only about 20% of them make it to full. So the number is about 1%, less than 1%. You've managed to make it even more challenging on yourself by marrying someone who's also in an academic position in your same department, no less. So finding an academic job can be a real challenge. Finding two in the same department is almost unheard of. So I'm curious, how did you end up at SIU and that continued to be the perfect place for you and your family situation? Yeah, so at the time that, well, so in, it would have been 2002, it took me technically about five years to finish my PhD, even though I already had a master's degree. But I met my, who is now my husband, you know, we met in grad school in PhD program. He was a year behind me in terms of starting. And so like we planned a wedding in the middle of that, you know, and then I was writing whatever. But in any case, in 2002, I got a full-time, but non-tenure track position at the University of Colorado in Boulder. So that was about an hour and 15 minute drive from where we were at in Greeley and that same, I got that job after I thought all of any possible jobs had passed me by that year. But one of the jobs that I had a phone interview for was here at SIU that year. They were just at the point of getting ready to bring people in for interviews on campus and the positions got frozen. So it's funny, because I had connected with Elaine Blendy at that point. And she was very apologetic, and we just found this out. And I understand. And then I had interviewed for a postdoc, and that didn't happen. And so there's all these things that you're like, well, I guess I'm going to be substitute teaching or something while I work on my dissertation. And then this job popped up at Boulder and it was perfect because it was non-tenure track, but it was full-time, so I had benefits. I remember getting that first paycheck and by the second or third one, you're like, they're actually getting a pretty good bargain here, but the first real paycheck was very exciting. I was able to work there and I finished my dissertation that first year, and they were great. I think I could have continued working there. But they did also encourage me to, obviously, they were very supportive of, I know I got a really strong letter from the chair of the department and whatever. But yeah, so two years later, this job comes back up at SIU. And so it felt a little bit like, hey, maybe I'm, this is sort of meant to be that the SIU thing is going to work out. And my husband was still not ready to be done and that type of thing. And so when I got the job here, he was able to sort of adjunct. He finished and somebody retired in his area and was able to get hired. And it's always tough because there's always going to be some, oh, it's the grass greener in someplace else. But we know exactly how fortunate we are to be in the position that we're in. As I mentioned, I'm from Kansas, Phil's from Michigan. We are actually about halfway between our two families. We wanted to be back in the Midwest. He has family in St. Louis. And then the stuff that he does is with cancer survivors, he has built that Strong Survivors program from the ground up. It's not the kind of thing you can just pick up and move. And then you know with stuff that I've done with the faculty athletic rep stuff whatever it just has felt like it's a place that we're we're very happy with the stuff that we've been able to do here. Julie's husband Phil is Dr. Phil Anton another professor at SIU who's an exercise physiologist as well as a renowned researcher on the physical as well as social impact of group exercise for cancer survivors. Now, I'm 6'4", and I tend to be pretty insecure when it comes to people taller than me. But much like Julie, it's impossible not to like Phil, even if he is a good four inches taller than me. I'll get Phil on the show soon, as he's a fantastic storyteller. But for now, you'll just have to wait. I applaud both of you for the work that you do. It's great stuff. So you managed to navigate successfully through the system, make it to the highest tier as a full professor. Things are going great, and then suddenly one day, things aren't going so great. Talk me through your scare and how that sent you maybe in a different direction. Yeah. I'm going to say really Christmas break, 2018 into 2019, I had started experiencing some pain in my legs. Like we take this long trip every year, or at the time we did where we would go up to Michigan and then down to Kansas and back over. So this huge Midwestern, you know, triangle at Christmas. And when we got back for sure, my legs were hurting. And I, because the pain was like reasonably constant, in my head it was sciatica. I was like, it's nerve based because it's not I can't do stretches and make it get any better and whatever and my mom had Had a bout with sciatica when she was probably about roughly the same age And so I was like that's what it is and it just kind of continued to get worse And I I did go to the doctor and they told me to roll it out It's looking back Maybe not so great. Maybe not the best idea I did go see a chiropractor, and this is no shade on chiropractors specifically, but the one that I went to see, I didn't have a ton of swelling, but I did get swelling the first time after I went to see him in my ankles, and I was a bit freaked out because I did know what blood clots were. And he said, oh no, that's normal. And that's the thing I kicked myself for the most was that I did not go in then to the ER, but I was like, well, I don't know, I've never seen a chiropractor before, so I guess I'm gonna trust what he says. Anyway, on January 22nd of 2019, I was here at school. I was working in my office, and I actually had felt decent all day. And I went to go home. It was cold outside, of course, and I had stopped off in the bathroom because I was like, man, I just don't feel well. And I don't even really know how to describe it other than just I just didn't feel right. And I thought, well, I already had like my hat and a and a coat on. And so I was like, well, I'm, I'm hot. Like once I get out into the cool air, I'm going to feel better. And I was parked right out in the parking lot right outside Davies. And I was maybe 20 feet outside the building. And I thought I'm going to pass out, like I could not get breath into my lungs. And I was like, I've got to get to my car before I pass out because I'm going to pass out on this pavement and a car is going to run me over. Like that was my big concern. And I got to the car and I pulled off, I sat down and I pulled my hat off and I was just drenched in cold sweat. And I thought, oh, I'm having a heart attack. Like that's what's happening. That was really my thought was like, that's why I can't catch my breath, you know, this cold sweat and whatever. And then of course when I sat down, I was able to get some breath back in. So I'm, you know, immediately you're like, oh, I'm just being dramatic or it's really not that big of a deal. But I did call Phil and I said, what I told him was that I had gotten lightheaded walking to the car instead of saying, hey, I was gonna pass out walking out. I don't know why I didn't tell him the truth. And he said, well, do you need to just go lay down, do you think? And I said, yeah, maybe. He was like, well, I'll meet you at home because he wasn't at school. And I said, okay. And I sat there and I thought, no, in the depths of my soul, I know something is really wrong here and I'm not going to be the person who goes home and lays down and then dies. And they're like, well, she said she didn't feel good. She shouldn't have gone and laid down. So I texted him back and I was like, just meet me at the ER. So I drove myself to the ER like a moron and got there. And yeah, I parked again, maybe 50 feet from the emergency room entrance. And I had to stop and lean against the building going in because I couldn't just couldn't get my breath. And when Phil saw me, he was like, yeah, that was hard to see because it was very clear something was wrong. And so went in, they have me hooked up pretty much immediately, this is pre-COVID, and they knew obviously something was really wrong. They took a D-dimer, which kind of shows these elevated enzyme levels if you're trying to break down a clot. And I think the normal range, at least at this hospital system was zero to 230. Mine was over 3,600. So they were like, we're pretty sure you have a clot, so they sent me for a CT. The ER doc came in and she said, yeah, you have a very large clot and it is saddled, so it was across both sides of my pulmonary arteries. And she was like, the cardiologist is gonna come in in a minute, I don't know yet what he's going to recommend, but I hope that he recommends an aggressive treatment. She's like, it's kind of shocking, you're as stable as you are right now. So that's always exciting to hear. So the cardiologist came in, he said, you have a very large clot. We need to go to the cath lab now because you could die from this. And I was like, I did say this to him. I said, you get me on a gurney and I will race you down there. Like what are we waiting for? I don't need any more information. Let's go. So he, yeah, we went to the cath lab. They put two catheters in my femoral vein, ran it up to my lungs and blasted apart that clot and ran a bunch of blood thinner through me for the next 12 hours. I was awake for all of it. As I was laying on the, I will say, when we were headed down to the cath lab, I remember thinking, okay, I can't process all this right now, but I'm sure I'm gonna be sedated for this, so pretty soon I'm not gonna have to think about it. And I'm laying there flat on my back in the cath lab, and I hear one of the cath techs say to the cardiologist, do you want to sedate her? And he said no, because she's really stable. I remember thinking, are you sure you don't want to just give me something to knock me out? So yeah, I laid there overnight. And let me tell you, at 3 o'clock in the morning when the Golden Girls reruns go off and you have to really confront your own mortality in that way. It is a wild scene. So I was in the hospital for two days. I was actually downgraded out of ICU the next day. Fortunately, yeah, this ecosystem is, it was amazing and it worked great. Downgraded out of ICU the next day. So I went in on a Tuesday, was released on a Thursday, and I was back in the classroom on Monday. See, told you Dr. Partridge's Gen X were tough. She wasn't going to let a little thing like a nearly fatal blood clot and a hospitalization keep her out of work. Back to her story, though. But the recovery was certainly longer than that. And psychologically, it definitely, it took a while for me to kind of wrap my head around everything that had happened. And much like an injury, like we just talked about, it was so, like I'd had this pain in my legs, but like I left the house that day just feeling like, yes, I've got sciatica and whatever. And you know, 10 hours later, I'm on my back in the cath lab and they're like, yeah, we got to do this now because you're going to die if we don't, is a wild scene. So it was very immediate. And I do remember when she said, when she came back in to say like, the CT is showing this blood clot, being like, wow, that just changed my entire life. And it did. Yeah. Right. So obviously you wouldn't have chosen this, but this has set even your professional career down a different path. How has it changed you as a clinician? When you work with student athletes, how has this experience impacted your empathy or impacted your communication with people who are struggling through their own things? Yeah, I think it definitely, I think it has changed my empathy level. I will also say though that it has made me more like, this too shall pass, right? Like, I know everything feels massively important, but we also want to see the big picture. And it's not, I'm saying, you know, you could die, that could be worse. But, but it's that sense of like, all right, let's try to keep things in perspective. And where are we actually at? And that type of thing. But yeah, I think the idea of dealing with those changes that can happen and do feel like they are life-changing, where do we go from there, what are some of the things that we can do. But I will also say, I think that a lot of the things that I had sort of brought in professionally, I did use for myself as well in dealing with all of this stuff. So, you know, it was maybe a bit of a, sort of a two-way street, I guess, in terms of things that I've learned from athletes that I've worked with and how do I apply that and then how can I also try to help other people in sort of recognizing some of these issues. So, this opened some doors for you to serve individuals who have dealt with the same thing you have and also to publish and produce scholarly work. So, talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah, so it's really funny because I'm on Twitter, but I hardly do anything on there but like, you know, stuff related to Saluki Athletics or, you know, things like that. Like I'm not a super, I don't comment on stuff very often, but I had certainly sort of looked immediately for like support group stuff, because it is a very specific issue. And it's one that I just, yeah, I felt like I need to hear from other people that have kind of gone through this, right? So anyway, I was following the National Blood Clot Alliance, which is a large like patient advocacy group. And so this would have been what, 2021, I guess, because it was the first year after COVID that they had the men's basketball, men's and women's basketball tournaments for the NCAA. And it was, I don't remember who they were playing, but it was during a game that Gonzaga was playing in. And I'm watching the game and one of the referees passed out on the floor. And of course, you know, they bring out the stretcher. And so they have him on this and they're wheeling him out. And he was sitting up and he looked fine. And I thought, I wonder if that guy had a PE, because that was exactly my experience of like, once I was sitting down, I was fine, I didn't feel, and you could tell he was mad that they had him on this thing and they were wheeling him out, and he was kind of like this. So anyway, I don't know, a couple of months maybe after the tournament was over, NBCA put on Twitter this story about how that's exactly what he had and that he the the paramedics at the arena were going to send him home and some of the other refs that were there watching the game were like man we think you hit your head you should probably go to the to the ER and that's when they found this PE so anyway I I wrote on there like the little story I just said yeah this is this is exactly what I wondered if it's if that's what it was. And then, like, the next day I get an email from the woman who was, you know, serving as the acting director. Her name's Leslie Lake. And she was like, hey, so I Twitter stalked you. And I realized, like, you have a background in some things that are really important. They actually get a lot of questions and requests for information from people who are athletes or who are exercisers who are like, how do I sort of get back into this? And so, yeah, it started to feel like, I do have some knowledge in some of this stuff that I went through, other people are going through it, and I have some expertise that I think can be beneficial. And yeah, I've had the chance to speak at a couple of conferences. I'm speaking this week actually, like remotely, but there's a thrombosis symposium at Johns Hopkins that I'm gonna speak at talking about, yeah, the experience of exercise following DTE and how do we talk about it? How do medical professionals talk about it? You know, because my, the instructions I got when I left the hospital were, because I had a right, a mild right ventricular strain because my heart was working so hard to pump through this massive clot that I had. And so the cardiologist was like, you know, for the next month, like we think it's gonna resolve itself and thankfully it did but he said you know for the next month just you know don't do anything too hardcore I was like I don't know what that means but I had so many other questions so like the next week I go to his office and I had I had a book with me like I'm ready to write things down and I had questions and I was going to ask about like okay are we talking about like 60% of the O2 mat whatever and he said oh you know you were active before you can probably go back to doing whatever you want. I'm like, man, that's not helpful, like, at all. And again, I'm thinking, I have a background that puts me in a decent position, and then I'm married to a physiologist, like an exercise physiologist. So, if I don't know what you're saying, I hate to tell you, but I think there's gonna be a lot of people that are gonna be somewhat confused by it. And so, yeah, this research that we've been doing for the last year or so, it is so consistent. Like one out of four people, you know, in this survey, we're like, I wasn't told anything about exercise. It's like, well, it's not contraindicated typically, and it helps to break down residual class and it helps to prevent new class. Why would you not be told about it? Lots of people are told, listen to your body. Like, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. And again, I think it means something to the person saying it. I don't know if that's always the same thing as the person receiving that message. So yeah, it's gotten me thinking more about mindfulness, about how do we frame that messaging. So yeah, it kind of took my research and that type of thing in a different direction. But a lot of the people that I work with, with the MBCA stuff, we all say the same thing. Like, this is an awesome group of people that I wish I had never met. I wish I was unaware of their existence, but that's not the case. So let's do something useful. Yeah, that's awesome. Well shout out to Anton. I know he's going to be listening and he's going to be a guest. I just haven't gotten around to asking him. I hit you up first. But something his research really inspired me about, and he's been looking at this for 20 years, is the influence of social dynamics on exercise and how cancer patients, if they don't exercise, man, their outcomes are horrible. If they do exercise, it's better. But if they exercise together, it's so much better and it's worth more than the sum of its parts. And as you're talking, I'm just, I'm recognizing that that same thing held true for you, that connection that you got allows you to really leverage everyone's respective strengths in this specific area. So also as a healthcare provider, I would also say embolism isn't at the top of my differential diagnosis list and there's an awareness piece that we need across the board. You know, if you watch House, like the dry erase board, like pulmonary embolism isn't up at the top of that list, but we don't want to miss some obvious red flags. And I think that's still happening. There's some education that needs to occur. I would agree. I think, again, I like, when she came in and said pulmonary embolism, like I knew what it was, but I would say there was still a disconnect there of like, I knew, oh, this is not good. Like, this is not good. But yeah, like the, so the CDC number or the factoid that they throw out there is that it, and this was pre-COVID, so it's gonna be probably more than this now, I would guess, just because of the nature of COVID, but that more people die of blood clots every year than AIDS, breast cancer, and car crashes combined. Wow. But people don't realize that, and another problem, right, is, like you mentioned this, like it's a great mimicker of things. So, you know, again, like the pain that I was having in my legs, it was easy for me to kind of like talk myself out of that. But even just, I don't know, I was out of breath. I was sort of out of breath or I'm having some pain. And the interviews that I've done, like these one-on-one interviews with people, like I would have to go back and look because I did write this down, but I would say a full 80% of them were misdiagnosed at least once, at least once. And then you start thinking about some of the people who are well-known that have had an embolism. So like Serena Williams almost died from one after giving birth and they wouldn't listen to her, which is a whole other thing. But Katie Hoff is the spokesperson for NBCA. She is a former world record holder in swimming. She was training for a meet and she was having difficulty with, she thought maybe that it was a pulled muscle, but she was misdiagnosed for six weeks or something like that and has lung damage as a result. And it's like, yeah, it's not protective necessarily. And in fact, in some ways, when it happens to somebody who's a little bit younger, it's like, well, it wouldn't be a blood clot because who's going to have a blood clot at that age or somebody who's a professional athlete or whatever. But it can happen to anybody. And obviously it's more likely to happen when it's somebody older and some of those things. But it's, yeah, it's pretty amazing the number of people that it's, you know, it's a lot of people, actually. So, yeah, unfortunately. I love music and the emotions that it can frequently represent and some of my favorite questions from this podcast Or favorite answers rather come from this question. What song would you pick as the soundtrack of your life and why? I'm well Would that be the same as like I know what my walk-up music would be with that count that counts That counts. Okay, because that's always, my answer is always sabotage by the BC boys. Nice. Yeah. I don't know if it's the soundtrack of my life, but it might be. I don't know. I like it. It's upbeat. It makes me laugh every time I hear it because I think of the video. Yeah, but probably honestly, like that's my walk-up music, but if I were thinking about like soundtrack of my life, it probably would be a soundtrack. Like, I, it, whenever I think of, like, music that kind of transports me immediately to something, it is the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings, the first movie. I wrote my dissertation to that. I just would play it, like, on a loop. I cannot work with music that has words going in the background, it draws my attention too much. Phil can do that, I can't. And so it was just on sort of like repeat. And I played it the other day in here, and I was like, oh, that kind of brings back like frustrating memories sometimes. But it was also like, that was what I just listened to it nonstop. And I found it very relaxing and like helpful to me to write. So maybe that's actually the soundtrack. Yeah, those are both great answers. What for you remains undone? So I think continuing to work down this path of working on what I can do to contribute to information about how best to certainly prevent blood clots, but if they've happened, how can we work to best help people like recover from those mentally, emotionally, physically, et cetera. And then a thing that I think does remain undone for all of us maybe. And it, it was thrown into very sharp relief for me as a result of the blood clot was, is just, it is important to take time off and to do the things that you love to do. So that's probably always going to be undone. Right. I am still bad at saying no to some things. Like I still say yes to things that I think, why did I say I would do that? But I will tell you like it, it sounds so cliched, but like, you're just, I don't know, I'm laying in the hospital going, okay, I got to change some things here. It didn't cause the blood clot, it was nothing like that. I have an inherited clotting disorder that I found out about through this process. That was probably what triggered it along with a couple of other perfect storm kinds of things. But I did take a hard look at, man, I say yes to a lot of things that I don't wanna do. And so I think there's that in trying to make sure that I'm making time to do things that I want to do, that will always be undone and things that you can like work toward. But I will say I am much better at that now. Like if I, I don't want to make it sound like I'm like, okay, I could get hit by a bus, so I better like watch this TV show now. But I don't save things the way that I used to. I've like, oh, I'll watch that this summer when I have more time like no No, I'm doing that now because I want to do that now and whatever other stuff is going on It can probably wait so yeah, it's nice because those things will always be undone But those things are the things that are much more important to me now taking vacations We were really bad at doing that we would always be like oh, well, we're gonna go for vacation But let's let's leave it so that we can kind of do whatever we want to do. And then it would be August and we're like, well, I guess we're not going on vacation this year. So those things are the things that are important to me. And it's okay that they're undone because I continue to like set new things that I want to do. Well, I will say for all of the listenership, I owe you mightily. First of all, I roped you into a paper that we co-authored together. So as you're talking, I'm like, that was one of them. And here we are, you're on sabbatical this semester, but you're in your office at 6.29 p.m. talking to me on a podcast, when you could be at home enjoying your husband and your dogs. But I'm thankful for this. This has been a really great conversation. I've said this before, if no one listens, this is still a fabulous excuse for me to reconnect with the people that I care about. Absolutely. And you and your husband were certainly a critical part of why I loved being in the Department of Kinesiology at SIU. You guys are absolutely top-notch. Phil notwithstanding, if Texas Tech plays Michigan into the Final Four, he's insufferable. Aside from that, awesome. I absolutely love you guys. Well, we miss you. So fun. Same here. Well, Julie, how can listeners connect with you or follow your work that you're doing on this platform? Yeah. I mean, I am on Twitter. I'm trying to be a little bit better about being on there. So it's just at Julie A. Partridge on Twitter. And then, yeah, that's kind of, I guess, the main, you know, like social media real presence that I have. I'm on Instagram, but I can't even remember what it is on there. So I need to do a better job of that. But probably Twitter is a good way. And my email, certainly, if anybody wants to reach out, I'm sure you can post that in show notes or that type of thing. Yeah. It's a really dumb email address. I have to look it up every time. It's from when you could only have eight characters and they gave me that. And every time I'm like, I need to change it because I think you can change it once and I need to change it and I'm always too lazy to do it. So that remains undone. I still have a bad email address. There we go. I was a student. My first email address was when I was a student at SIU and you got to pick it. It wasn't a default. So I wanted to be an astronaut. So my SIU email was blastoff at SIU.edu. Like if I could pass that to you in conversation, awesome, right? Like this guy's going to be an astronaut blast off at SIU.edu. That is amazing. From a different era. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Julie Partridge. It's been awesome. Thank you again. Thank you so much for having me. In honor of finals week, it's Dr. Partridge's time-honored tradition to change your Facebook profile pic to what has over the years affectionately became known as the finals week bird of doom. Whether it's a steady stream of 90s and 2000s era pop culture references like that Beastie Boys Sabotage reference she mentioned earlier, or that impressive number of current and former students and colleagues who love her for her wit and her wisdom, Julie is, in my opinion, what the best professors of my generation have to accountability with compassion, knowledge with care, and learning with laughter. Such isn't an accident either. It was formed through a few years of struggle at the hands of an advisor and mentor who could be hard, but through the process, difficult as it may have been at the time, she built the foundations of the mentor and educator that she is today. So while Charles Xavier may be the fictional Professor X, I'd like to formally crown my dear friend Dr. Julie Partridge as Professor Generation X. What about you? I know there are great stories out there to be told and I am always on the lookout So if you or someone you know has a story that we can all be inspired by Please tell me about it. Surf on over to undone podcast.com and drop me a note Coming up listen in as I talk to former student Stacy Salazar Who's navigated her life after softball and changing jobs after graduation? I'll also be talking to my friend coach and author Reed Maltby author of the new book Spartan Mindset. I'm about halfway through and I am loving it. Then you'll also get to hear from Dr. Ram Hadass, who I'm happy or maybe not so happy to say, depending on the day, gave me the crazy idea to go after a Masters of Business Administration degree that I officially start tomorrow. So I'm going to wrap this episode up and get back to reading. This and more coming up on Becoming Undone. Becoming Undone is a nitro-hype creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for Becoming Undone, contact me at undonepodcast.com. Follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at Becoming Undone Pod, and follow me at Toby J Brooks. Listen, subscribe, and leave us a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Till next time everybody, keep getting better.