"We did it, Joe": Podcasting, Alpine Divorces & Other Opportunities

In this episode, Dr. JJ and Dr. Domi are in full form — true crime, career meltdowns, golf fits, and the moment they realized they probably should've started therapy instead of a podcast.

In this episode:

0:52 — The anesthesiologist murder trial that has us absolutely obsessed: a birthday hike, a missing syringe, and the term "alpine divorce" you'll never forget
8:29 — The spine surgeon who quit medicine six months in to be a TikTok creator — and why we're more jealous than we want to admit
14:03 — How this podcast actually started: two doctors, one birthday party, and a lot of commiseration
14:19 — The origin story: high school, culture club, and finding each other again in our "empowerment decade"
16:42 — Dr. JJ's first great escape: a year and a half off, globe-trotting Eat Pray Love style (she went to all the same countries)
23:19 — Dr. Domi enrolls in fashion school, and styles hospital kids for seven years
45:53 — Rant of the week: Justin Bieber sat at a laptop at Coachella and got paid $10 million. A woman would never.
48:34 — Rave of the week: Artemis II makes it around the moon and back, and it's the breath of fresh air we all needed
51:10 — Listener Q: what's the weirdest thing a kid has said coming out of anesthesia? (It involves cursing and compliments)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to No Other Skills MD, where I, Dr. JJ, a psychiatrist in desperate need of a mental break.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

And I, Dr. Domi, a pediatric anesthesiologist with a dusty degree of fashion design.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Explore the intersections of medicine, personal growth, pop culture, and surviving a dictatorship.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

From dissecting the absurdities in healthcare, navigating midlife transformations, and delving into the latest newsworthy topics.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Join us as we share candid conversations and learn more because we have no other skills. MD.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

And just remember, although we are both doctors, we are not your doctors. So please seek out your own physician for actual medical advice. Alright, it is time to spill the clinical tea or medicinal tea, as they say. Let's get some of our personal takes on current news. I have been obsessed with the anesthesiologist, my people, who is accused of trying to kill his wife. I believe in Hawaii.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

I think you know a little more about this. It's it I am obsessed as well. And I do want to get your personal take on it as well as a fellow anesthesiologist. You know, real quick, the story involves a married couple who went on a trip to Hawaii and a beautiful hike on the wife's birthday, where who knows? It's very much a he said, she said situation. But after learning about a potential emotional affair that she was having, she then claims that her husband attempted to kill her by, you know, tackling her to the ground to try to throw her off the cliff, and then claimed that he had a syringe that he tried to stab her with to potentially maybe sedate her, in order to then do said task of her throwing off the cliff. And he concedes that he actually was he did attack her. He confesses to that in some way, but says it was in self-defense. And right, right. The trial did conclude and he was found guilty of attempted manslaughter, but he is gonna serve quite a bit of time behind bars. But you know what really popped up for me was part of his defense was that he was carrying this like a medical bag in case of a medical emergency, and hence Which I'm not against in theory. I was gonna say, is this is this a common thing with anesthesiologists, just so I can get a sense of it. Do you carry around bags with sedatives or syringes?

SPEAKER_02 2:32

One, you're not supposed to carry drugs outside of the hospital. But good point. I once heard this rumor. I cannot confirm if it's true, but I heard a rumor back when I was in residency that there was another anesthesia resident that would go on the New York City subway with a syringe of succinylcholine, which, if you don't know, is a paralytic. In case anybody tried to attack her, she would paralyze them in order to survive an attack. Which makes sense. If you're in the New York City subway, you're scared. But that is not something that's supposed to happen. So perhaps there are anesthesiologists and other physicians that use medications inappropriately for self-defense, but this does not sound like that instance. I would not recommend anybody do that. That would be evil. But very supposed people, I have medical, like a middle medical kit in my house, you know, in my home in case something happens, but not with actual medications and certainly not sedatives that are regulated that you cannot take from medical spaces. Hello, Michael Jackson, doctor, right? There's a reason for this specifically. Right. So no good could have come from him carrying having access to and bringing it outside of a medical location on a hike. I don't recall what the medication was. Was it fentanyl?

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Was it well it was the syringe was never recovered? So, and I actually don't know exactly if that was ever allegedly he claimed he didn't have a syringe in him. He does have a medical bag, right? But at the same time, because of the cliff, the syringe may have been like knocked out of his hand and therefore not discovered. But it really, it really was quite a sensational story. And I mean they both survived, thankfully. And it was sort of like, you know, I have to say, my own view about the whole situation would really shift. Was she setting him up? Was he really acting in self-defense, or was he just trying to get rid of her? This was his second marriage, and I and they had two young children. It's a tough one, but I will say she was actually having, and I think kind of does say that she was having an emotional affair with a colleague. And she's also in her 40s, I believe, and therefore a little bit in line with a little bit of our general experiences, women in their mid-40s looking for something else because something wasn't working for her, right? That shift, a little bit of a midlife pivot for her, kind of just went the wrong way.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

And with this case, I found out the term for this scenario is called an alpine divorce. Have you heard this? Where men allegedly will take a woman on an adventure, and then an accident, I'm putting quotation marks around that, happens to her on some type of adventure. It's called an alpine divorce. This is not the first time that this has happened. No, or I've heard stories of dating where people very early on in dating will go on a hike, and then a man will leave a woman on it. He doesn't like what she says, and he'll just leave her out in the wilderness. Not just pushing someone, but leaving someone in a dangerous situation.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Wow, alpine divorce. I think an another headline recently is the woman who vanished off of uh the Bahamas with her husband. I mean, so I mean, I didn't hear that. I mean, I think it happens all the time, but alpine divorce. So a strategic move to be in the wilderness and kind of just let them go and either fend for themselves or let them be kind of quote unquote missing or lost.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Right, right. In a scenario where there would be no witnesses, and oh they could have slipped and fell, you know, things like that. So very interesting. So everyone be careful if you're not in a good place with your spouse before you take any adventures.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

And definitely, I think to think twice with an anesthesiologist, if you don't mind me saying so, Dr. Domi, you guys have I mean, you literally are bringing people to the brink of death and then reviving them. I mean, just a ton of power and knowledge and experience.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Oh, I guess really just multifaceted enough for teacher reference. But don't trust a surgeon either. I mean, come on.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Oh what about a psychiatrist?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

I mean, I think I read in the New York Post today, and I just read the headline, that there was a psychiatrist professor that basically scammed an older man. I want to say she was in her 40s, and I believe it's Columbia University, scammed an old man out of his money out of 1.3 million because he had like a little bit of a stroke and may not have cognitively been there. And she ended up using that money to buy a house in Greece and get the F out of 10. Exactly, exactly. So not quite an alpine divorce, but the manipulation. So all types of doctors are very dangerous, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Well, I hope that you guys come back next week for the next episode of Doctors Behaving Badly, because I think there'll be an infinite amount of stories. Oh, wow. What a great way to get out of working clinically.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Amy that delves into our topic a little bit. Exactly. Speaking of, yeah, I also in social media recently, there is a spine surgeon, I believe an orthopedic surgeon who completed residency, did a spine fellowship, and is maybe six months, eight months into the job, who's also an influencer, you know, making cute videos about getting ready for the OR or something of the like and how to get into med school, things like that. I forget the name of this person, but basically made an announcement that he's gonna leave medicine for a while to be a content creator. And then he was like swiftly eviscerated online. My first thought is like, you can't do that. But my second thought was like, oh, that sounds fantastic, actually. I know to be fresh out of training as a surgeon in particular, and to put that down to be content creator, one means you are making a lot of money. Because spine surgeons tend not to be poor, right? You spent a lot of money and time to get there, but in turn you you make a pretty decent living, right? As as far as other physicians are concerned. But two, you must be making a lot of money, but two, you just got your surgical skills. So there's the fallback plan, unless you were making so much money that's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

He must be making so much money. And frankly, likely, independent of the skills that he has, like it probably takes way less time. His time is his. He's not dealing with like a scheduler or other people. I mean, maybe in some way, in an administrative way. Yeah, I could see the appeal, but it's telling that it only took him less than a year to realize this.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Like, I have to get out, let me get trained better than the surgeon general, right? At least finished my residency, finished the fellowship. He's probably more qualified, right? Uh, and he's like, you know what? I've had enough six months, eight months after the job, I'm done. I think you'll always have an option to come back if you wanted to, but I just found that to be a very interesting story.

unknown 10:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

He might be a little jealous because I don't dance on TikTok, and maybe I need to. Maybe I need to put an outfit of the day. I have tried with social media, you know that it is not my strong suit because I'm not a look at me, look at me person. I relate to that. It's yeah, but guys, we're gonna work on it. We're gonna figure it out so you can perhaps see our faces at some point.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

We're we are working on it because by the way, I'm very curious with the spine surgeon, why was he so eviscerated? Was it like medical people who are like, wow, medical people saying that content creation, social media, being a social media star is not a stable uh or consistive, not even prestige, but you never know when something can go out.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

If let's say the president, the current president of the United States has some issue with social media and tries to shut down TikTok because that's happened before, what are you gonna do if your main platform for generating income is no longer available? So if you're making, I don't know, hundreds of thousands or whatever it is via TikTok and something in the government, something happens and you you know cut that off and you only have Instagram, but you're not really an Instagram person, you're not really a Twitter ex person, what happens to your income? Do you have to beg for your job back? With credentialing with medicine, it takes months to get your job back. And also if they don't see that you have cases, is particularly as a surgeon, if you don't have regular cases, if you don't have that case log, if you haven't been putting in some time, you know, 10 cases a month, something, are you really gonna get the job you want? Are you gonna be forced to take a job somewhere you don't want to be in the middle of the country and perhaps a rural area where you know they really, really need doctors and so I think that's a good thing. Yeah, that would be the fallback.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Right.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Exactly. Wow. I think if you leave truly leave medicine, and may maybe this is a temporary thing for him, try to make as money much money while he's hot and people are really looking at him and make that a little safety and then go back to medicine. Perhaps that's a plan. Uh right. But you know what?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

I think he'll be just interesting. Yeah, I think so. And I mean, I I you know, I think that sort of helps us uh think about like our own journeys in medicine and how uh it took us a little bit longer, but maybe not in your case, but I think sort of meeting the reality of medicine and the practice of it, right? And how that kind of can influence you, independent of like your income or the money that you can make. I think for him, you're right. I think you could just yeah, start the credentialing process and like try to pick up those tools again. I think at the same time, I am also like jealous. I have that envy in me as well because here he is actually making a good choice for himself at this moment, and it is temporary. And what I've learned too, and I think we'll talk about it soon, is that though medicine might have been practiced historically in a way in which people stuck to a job and stayed with it, there's a lot more flexibility and different things that you can do within it when you kind of can extract yourself from being stuck in a system that's really exploiting you.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

So I think that leads to our main focus today is how did this uh podcast come to be? Why did we start it? And I always say it's like we did it, Joe, we we started this. So we haven't quite shared this before in detail, but Dr. JJ and myself, Dr. Domi, actually went to high school together. Did we go to the same junior high? Grand Avenue? Yeah. Did we know each other back then?

unknown 14:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

In junior high, I'm not sure. I'm clear. Junior high was rough for me. I had a better time in junior high than I did in high school, I think. I was just happy to break away from my elementary school. Yeah. But we have a common friend, we'll call her Dr. M in common. That's our common good friend, and how we know each other. So either in junior high or high school is where we met and kind of we were in culture club together, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yes. Yes. We were in culture club together.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Kids of color, all the black kids and kids of color. There were so few of us that we decided to create a culture club so we could know about each other, where we came from, and just kind of had this connection. Yeah. Sometimes felt like we were in the middle of a KKK zone. We did fill up a classroom though.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

I feel like we got a good amount of people in one classroom. Yeah, it was yes, exactly. But we did it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

And then we recently went on our journeys, didn't really see each other outside of maybe a couple of family functions with this Dr. M. And recently Dr. M's child had a birthday party and we saw each other and we just kind of commiserated on the commonalities of our medical journeys, the frustrations, the aspirations to do something a little bit different than the status quo for a psychiatrist, for an anesthesiologist, and how we were navigating those worlds.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, and it was like an insta connection. I don't think I realized that I was gonna see you that day. Um, and there were other people that we knew in common as well, but I think we just sort of found each other and it was like this burst of commiseration. Exactly. You see me, I see you. Exactly. And with without any explanation, just like, oh, you want to quit your job? I just quit my job. We were right in the midst of it. Right. I think so.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

I had, I think I was maybe I was about a year in, and um, you know, let our audience know you did not work in psychiatry for how long in general?

SPEAKER_01 16:42

I've I took about a year and a half off. Wow. But I will take us, I know I I'll take a step back though, because I did this once before too. I don't even know if you know this, Dr. Joni, but so obviously we see we high school there, then went off college, medical school. You lived in California for a little bit, went back to the East Coast, New York. I've sort of been in California since, and did my training out here. And while in training, I remember a very specific sensation washing over me of, oh my God, this is my life. Like, this is it, you know. Like I, you know, we we just made it through college, med school, residency, fourth year, and I was like, this can't be how I am impacted every day, is by a schedule that is outside of my control and really counter to anything that I've wanted to do. Because residency is when I got the first glimpses into true medical practice and what it's like to work in various levels of care as a psychiatrist, both inpatient, outpatient, in the hospital, and got my first taste of really what dictates treatment in my field specifically, and the impact of things like a hospital administration and corporation as well as insurance companies, and how that kind of leads to a long standing pattern of difficulty with my own sense of self as related to clinical medicine. So I actually, after residency, I worked for a little while, kind of per diem type work, saved a bunch of money, and then I quit that job and took a year and a half and traveled around the world on my own. I was like, I remember this.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

I didn't realize it was such a long period of time because you didn't post about your adventures a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

I did at that time because I was younger and more naive, but I but yeah, I I really just wanted to know like what it was like to go somewhere and not have anybody or anything tell me what to do. And and and I know that's very eprey love. It it was literally an epre love. In fact, you should write a book. Dr. Domi, I went to all the places that she went to. Oh my god, I went to Italy, Indonesia, spent a lot of time in Bali, and India. So it was like I call it my little eprey love, but now Elizabeth Gilbert is kind of gotten a little strange as she's really she's been working the wellness world. We'll have to break her down sometime. But like I but yeah, so I had done that then and came back and then proceeded to through friends and connections getting a job in a pretty bit large healthcare system for 10 years. And uh about year four, I really should have just quit then. But I was like, you know what, I'm gonna try something different. This is me trying to run away from myself, you know, all kinds of excuses. And so I switched clinics, I tried leadership stuff, I maintained my weekly therapy for years. I tried all the things that they advise you to do to try to help manage the work-life balance within our medical system. And then I learned that the way that things were practiced in this healthcare system were just not the way that I wanted to practice medicine. And I felt like a real lack of control over my time. Uh that was one part of it, but I really felt a lack of control over my mental energy. Where it was getting consumed was in places that I didn't really want to have to think about, like these man-made problems in a healthcare system where people were not willing to make a shift or change. So I always say that it took me about six years to quit, but then eventually I did. And then another year and a half off. And then I took another year and a half off. And then this past fall I went back to work. But in these part-time jobs that really have like much lower volume of clinical onus. I'm six months in now of going back to work, but parallel to going back to work was you and our kind of exploration of the difficulties with the job that we encountered that made us wanting to seek out alternative ways of not only practicing, but maybe either alternative careers, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:08

And it's funny that you talked about when you had that realization, like, oh, is this how my life is going to be in medicine when you were at the end of residency? I had that driving to fellowship one day. So it was pretty early mornings. I think I was probably on cardiac peeds, anesthesia, cardiac rotation. And I remember driving, and I just thought, oh, if I could just get into a minor accident and like break my ankle or something, I could get like maybe a couple weeks off.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Not really hurt myself, but oh, that would that would really not cause an accident, but if that happened and I could just enough where I didn't have to work for a couple weeks. And I was like, that is a pathological thought. And that is where I made the decision that I was not going to work full time in medicine because I Obviously, residency and fellowship are many hours and it's hard. And honestly, it should be hard. You need to be trained appropriately, I think. Obviously, not to the point of exhaustion or hurting yourself or anything like that. But I just also knew that I wanted to feel in charge of my life. I didn't want anybody to tell me when I could take a vacation. And I don't want to feel like anyone's child. I have two parents, and that's good. I don't need people at work to feel like my parents. So I made a decision in fellowship. And then around the time I was a fellow, or as I was transitioning to be an attending, I met someone who was dating an anesthesiologist friend of mine. And she was a stylist and a fashion designer. And she was telling me how one day she had helped style Beyoncé for a photo shoot. And the audience, the jealousy I felt from my pinky toe to the top of my head. It was such an overwhelming because I had a desire and a love for fashion and styling and and just kind of that world. And I it was such an intense jealousy. That's the only word I can use, envy and jealousy. That from meeting her, I applied to fashion school and got it. Amazing. I even got a little bit of a scholarship because I wrote a nice essay about a doctor applying. It was a small scholarship. Don't get up in arms. But of course, you're gonna excel at that. Yeah. Exactly. And I actually did it. But also living in Los Angeles, I will say, makes you believe you can do anything. And I do miss that whimsy of being in Hollywood, quote unquote, and being in Los Angeles, because you will meet people doing absurd things and they sound normal to you. Oh, I'm an anesthesiologist, I'm also a voiceover actor. Nobody thinks anything is strange, nobody judges you for it. It sounds pretty reasonable. So you feel like you can do something ridiculous. And I thought, why not pursue a passion of mine? So as I know, I did wardrobe styling, personal styling, graduated from styling school as well. And I did that for seven years, about seven years, and then kind of came to its natural conclusion where I think I did everything I wanted to do, and I just wanted to explore something outside. And I had a charity that we used to give makeovers to hospital youth, and that came to a natural conclusion. I came back to New York and I'm kind of at this point, and the pandemic had an effect on me. Of course, obviously, I worked on a COVID ICU. My experience of COVID was very different than everybody else's. If you were not in the thick of it in medicine, it was a very different experience. You were in the thick of it. And kind of these years just really flew by very quickly, like the last five, six years. And realized I need some other passion. I need to feel what I felt for fashion in some other way. And there's a frustration where I don't want to do full-time work, I kind of went back to it because there was nothing else to do in COVID other than work, right? Um, especially in medicine, they needed people and then we met. And while I'm really having this what am I doing with my life? What is this second phase? What are my second passions? And we kind of connected on doing something outside of medicine. There's got to be this true balance for people that don't want to spend morning, noon, and night in the medical system, but making it easier for people in medicine, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

So that's where we kind of connected. 100%. And mind you, I do want to point out, I think when you were in fashion school and styling, you were also working. I was.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

So I would let's say work two or three days a week, and the rest of the week was dedicated to fashion stools, styling tools. So I didn't put one down because basically I was trying to pay off loans. And I also went to a great fashion school, but it wasn't cheap. So that was an added expense. Of course. I just love formal education, guys. And even the styling school, all this was money. So I wasn't making, you know, anesthesia money that people think of when they think of an anesthesiologist for close to 10 years. I was pursuing this fashion, which I don't regret. I had a fantastic time doing it. But I'm in this other phase, and you just had your other phase. So we connected on and it kind of goes into midlife. It touches upon perhaps perimenopause. That was our previous episode. If you want to take a listen to episode eight, uh so we're kind of in this phase, and we figure there are a lot of people in our generation in this phase of life of needing something outside of clinical medicine that can really uplift your life.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Exactly. Yeah, because these aren't things that we had access or a lot of time or bandwidth to explore in our early 20s, because it was consumed by medical school, which is very intensive and kind of all-consuming. And I think that recognition that as we kind of went through different stages and then were in the work world, to continue to feel like this limited control over our lives, like you said, like having to provide vacation two years ahead of it. Like I'm a human. I'm a human with human interactions. I would like to have some human uh autonomy. Yeah, autonomy is the way, like to be treated like a human as well, not like just a person who's there to fulfill a business goal, which is for me to be kind of a fancy cash register attendant for them as I chart and see as many patients as they think I can manage, which I learned a lot. I I picked up a ton of skills and experience, but and I also found that part of the experience too was that even the clinical interactions weren't even that satisfying after a while, right? And so there, like, you know, when we do talk about really needing a mental break, I had hit that wall.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

And I was in the we all hit it at some point in medicine, no matter what field, you could be a radiologist, yeah, you could be a family practitioner. Everybody hits a wall at some point. And sometimes a wall is not just because you're putting in so many hours, it could be where you work, frustrations of how things are. And as the years pass, how medicine was practiced when I first came out of or when we came out of residency, it's different than today because honestly worse. It's very money-making, it's always been a money-making pursuit, considering that we're in the United States and we don't provide free health care, which is uh beyond me. But I wonder how we would feel if we lived in another country where there was universal care. Right. There would be different pressures of making sure everybody, you know, it would be different, but I wonder what our frustration level would be.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Right. I think that there would be a different level of frustration. Exactly. The nature of our frustration would be different, but I think the challenge with American medical system is that in the end, and this has been my experience, is that the physician is the face of the system. Though the system is not quite dictated by you and your clinical expertise. In fact, it's often now the bottom line is a little bit more important. The shareholders that are uh part of the enterprises that have kind of eaten up small practices and taken over into these huge healthcare systems, they're sort of the ones calling the shots. And you're the one interacting with the patient who then sees you as that. You know, I ended up feeling that like a customer service representative, too. I'm like, I'm sorry we can't get you that. These are the four other options that are less ideal but cheaper. You know, that's a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Your insurance doesn't cover that.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

You can't and sometimes that was appropriate. I will say that there were times when I saw the like I understood the economy of the insurance company and like not wanting to throw everything out with the bathwater on a patient. But at the same time, there were times when it really wasn't in line with my clinical expertise or opinion and therefore very frustrating to have to be that middle man for uh a faceless entity that everybody doesn't get is actually in charge. So that was a big part of my coming to Jesus moment where I had to leave and reset.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

And if we're thinking about where we go from here, and I was just recently mentioned to you that I have a physician coach because I'm trying to figure out what are my new long-term goals, what are my short-term goals? What do I want out of this career in medicine? What do I want outside of it? And I'm still formulating that. I have I wrote a guidebook for medical students that was like a little side project, but what other side projects do I want to do? Do I I like speaking? Obviously, I'm apparently I like the sound of my own voice. I like the sound of your voice better than my sound of your voice. That's so beautiful. When I listened back to the podcast, I'm like, oh, Dr. JJ's voice is so soothing.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Oh my god, I feel the opposite. I'm just like, and then Dr. Domi, please speak.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Exactly. But I like the idea of speaking, speaking about other doctors, talking about our experiences, but what can that be long term for us? And so I'm in my exploration phase, and I think when we're midlife, we have got to come up with a better term than midlife. Because I know technically for midlife, I understand, but there's got to be a cuter way because it you know, I don't have that many wrinkles, you know. Midlife sounds very you've none.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

You've none.

SPEAKER_02 32:16

Um I try very hard. Our empowerment decade, maybe our better, better way to tell us about it. Please share. Please share. I'm tired of saying midlife or perimenopause. I I need a cuter way to encapsulate this part of life where I walk into a room and I've forgotten what I was gonna say, but it was gonna be important kind of thing. So we're all trying to figure out that part of life and what I call the second wave, because I you had this eat, pray, love as their first phase. I had my kind of fashion charity work as my first phase outside of medicine. I think we're both looking for something new and what we can contribute. Because we could still obviously contribute as physicians, but that's not the only thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Yeah, and I think this has been such a great outlet to give ourselves kudos, because I don't think we do that enough because we're balancing this self-journey and like seeking alternatives, but this has been part of the journey as well. And as you started the top of the podcast with, We did it, Joe, is really like giving us major credit that we have a published podcast out there, and thanks to you, really trying to share it and have other people uh dive in who are not only in the healthcare field, but other people who are also revisiting the reality of like what is your life like right now? Is it where you want it to be? Do you have the means and ability to make a change or pivot? And you know, if so, what can that look like? And I never thought like a year ago that I would have a podcast. So I mean, kudos to us. We did it, Joe. We did it, Dr. Domi.

SPEAKER_02 34:05

And I was on TikTok. So I I like to consume social media. It's just me putting it out there myself is has always been a barrier for me, even in fashion. It was just like a task I hated. But I was watching a TikTok recently where this woman was saying, if someone could follow you around for a week, how serious would they think you are about your goals? And that really stuck with me. Because if I say I'm looking for something outside of clinical medicine, I'm looking for fulfillment in different things, what am I actually doing on a regular basis? Because you are what you make a habit out of. What are we doing to actually make that happen? And so that really got me thinking about habits. I think habits are very important. And they say it takes, I don't know, 21 days to form a habit. But if someone were following me around for a week, I don't know if they would come to the conclusion that I am serious, quote unquote, about a second career, a second inspiration. Because it kind of comes and goes, and the consistency isn't there outside of this podcast. So that's something that I'm thinking about what I can do consistently for all these aspirations. And we all have, you know, five things that we get a little excited for, but we're not putting in time, effort on a daily basis. Except, I'll caveat my golf game. I am putting major effort into my golf game. My instructor is very happy with me. And more importantly, I have upped my fashion game. Perhaps I will put that on social media, and that will get some listeners so I can talk about my golf game, the golf outfit. And as a stylist, I can tell you when you look good, you play better.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Oh, I mean, that makes sense. I would love to see these outfits because I do think I've seen just a little bit, and it was very inspirational. And of course, you're like slaying on the golfing golf range. Have you made an outfit?

SPEAKER_02 36:15

I've done the driving range and I've been to the golf course twice by myself. Early bird special nine holes. And yes, I bought golf clubs pretty early on, um, and they're very pretty, and they function. Okay, they function well. But I got a good looking, I have a good looking, I have a cart, I've got the outfits, I've got a to me little um little sack where you carry the balls and the little T's and a little divot thing that's engraved in gold. I'm too much, but I'm a firm believer that when I look better, I play better. I'm going with that. So you'll see me as a phenomenon on social media.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

I think we need to see it. You know, we need to I it golds embossed in gold? Is that what you said? I don't even understand.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Initials on a leather uh tag on this divot that's where you kind of bring up the ground so you don't have like holes in the ground after you play. Oh, that's right. Okay. Yes, I'll show it to you.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Oh, I want to see it.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

I am too much.

SPEAKER_01 37:18

Are you like out there on your own? Do you interact with other people? I feel like I know we've talked about the networking, and so I mean, there's an opportunity deals happen.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Yeah. I'm a little shy because when I went the first time, I didn't see not a single woman. Oh, I did not see a single black person. Oh, and I was just like, oh it's not in my nature to walk up to random white men. It just was not gonna, you know, I wonder what it was just very I I wasn't there yet, even though we're there for a common goal. So I have to be a little more open, but also going to different golf courses the second time around. I went slightly later in the morning and I did see and I did interact with a couple people and I tried to ask a couple of questions, even if I knew the answer. It was like, oh, where is this first hole? Do you know? May I have been playing the I'm just a woman, I don't know where to go. You know, I can and with the cute outfit, it helped. And yeah, I I have to be a little more open, and I think I will see different types of people and be able to network a little more when I'm more confident in my game. But yeah, it's exposure there.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

It's like very much you're exposing yourself, you're putting yourself out there, and I just have to say it's I commend you for it because you have been extremely consistent.

SPEAKER_02 38:45

And I I do want to twice twice a week now. So driving range, and then of course I already have a tea time for Friday. I am excited, and it's gonna be 70-something degrees on Friday. I have my outfit ready, it's plaid, it's cute. I've got my shoes, G4, I've got matching hats. I am ready.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Oh, I think you need to definitely preview this for our audience because I must see it. And uh, and I think this is it. You're building that habit up. Here you are, like twice a week. You've got like what a great way to start Friday morning, too.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Like if I get good, and then somehow I can get in some older lady tournament. I might do that, but I'm not sure. Empowerment year. Empowerment decade, decade, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

Not just for a menopause golf tournament.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Oh, yeah. Though that has been men motivating us. I will say this week in terms of habit habits, I have been using my Pilates. I have like this little styrofoam support hump for Pilates. I know that there's likely a true technical term that I found on the street like a year ago and picked up, you know. The ground? Like outside. I know, I knew Dr. Tommy that I shouldn't reveal all the facts. I should have just said I bought it.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

Alcohol and peroxide.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

It's been very much wiped down and it was like nascent and not used for like six months, so it could like de, you know, de-air breathe, like get all the stuff off of it that's I don't think it's a little I think it was never used is the sense I got. But I've started using it. Um, and I'm finding like that I had to actually move my body because we've been talking about it a lot here, and it feels better, just the stretching and movement and feeling a little bit of that core strengthening. So I am inspired by your dedication to golf. We are also coming out of spring now, and it's the weather's gonna be moving in a direction that feels really good, so maybe I'll get out again. But at the same time, like those habits are starting to get reinforced a bit, which feels good. And so we'll have to stick to it. But you know, as we are sort of thinking about another part of our journey, I have to say, just to go back to something that we've been talking in our previous episodes, I have completed finally the first full season of The Pit.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

And tell me what your reflections are.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

I wrote down a couple of quotes from that last episode. I'm not gonna spoil it too much in case you haven't watched it yourself, to our beautiful listeners, though essentially it gets pretty dramatic towards the end, and that's why I could go into like full speed and get through some episodes that are very harrowing, horrific. Really, again, the ER is the a depiction of our American society at this point. There was an episode where the nurse, who's a charge nurse of the unit, says, People are angry and we are trying to help them. And then moved on to some really specific, like secondary trauma that is like very much showcased throughout that season of showing the reality of what it's like to practice medicine from the administrative hurdles and like the business side to the individual interactions that you're having with humans that you may relate to or identify with. But then again, all the trauma that you're just absorbing as you're working through a 12-hour shift. But but yeah, I think it was just like it was again so hard to watch. Uh, but I thought it really finally was a true depiction of the non-sexiness of medicine and the reality of yeah, less people might go into medicine or more people might go into medicine. I don't know. It's not like ER from back in the day with George Clooney, where you're like, oh, that seems you know, this it just shows like sort of the relentlessness of the job and like how you have to put yourself aside to really move forward to get the job done and save lives, frankly.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

And I think the quote that you talked about with the charge nurse is that people are angry and we're trying to help it. And at the top of the episode, we talked about how we as physicians are the faces of medicine. So we get a lot of that. And of course, nurses and other staff members feel the brunt of people's anger and frustration, which is understandable, but I will say, and I'm sure you experience this, especially with people who have psychiatric problems, obviously, that to be on the receiving end of someone's anger all the time, or different people's anger consistently weighs on you. And I'm not even in the ER where people are having emergencies and are truly stressed. On the other side of that, as we get on in medicine and we reach our empowerment phase, everybody, and not just doctors, will have kind of these transitions. And I was watching this Apple show, which you've caught, but probably not. The latest season called Friends and Neighbors. Yep. Um, with John Hamm, who I love. And it's essentially about a guy who lost his job and is having this midlife crisis. He he ends up robbing people. We've talked about that before. But it's also about all of his peers, because everybody is going through midlife transformations, particularly his ex-wife. Right. There's an episode where that talks about her perimenopause and how that's affecting her. Uh, but everybody's going through it and how it manifests in different people, how it manifests for physicians, how it manifests for business people, housewives. It's just a very interesting thing. And everybody's looking for sometimes a shift in their life. And we found this podcast, we found each other, and people are always looking for something. And what are we putting our frustrations on? What are we doing with our frustrations in life? So it's very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Like you said, that's getting spewed everywhere because of this very intense frustration. And how that kind of shows up, yeah, in our interactions with our patients. And again, trying to bridge a gap of care, particularly within the healthcare system that you didn't create and that you agree is wrong. But being limited in being able to provide a solution and having to communicate with people that, well, this is just how it is, even though it might not actually be. Nobody wants to hear that.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

No, it's just nobody wants to hear that. And segueing into a rant because we hear people's rants all the time. Oh, yeah. I tell you about my rant of the week. Please, I want to hear it. Let it out. So I didn't catch the full performance, but this is Coachella weekend or the first of Coachella weekends. Oh yeah. And I saw clips of the Justin Bieber performance where it seems like he's sitting on a laptop playing his old music and interjecting with new songs or something of the like, and just with flashy lights behind them. And I'm not an artist in this sense of the word. But I also just remember what Beyoncé had to do and what other women have to do to put on a show and what's expected of women. Because I don't think a woman on a laptop with flashing lights, no matter how famous, I don't care if it would be Janet Jackson or Madonna or Lady Gaga, I don't think that would fly.

SPEAKER_01 46:36

No.

SPEAKER_02 46:37

And I don't think anybody would get paid $10 million. That's the estimate I heard for that kind of show. But men sometimes tend to put on these shows. What's acceptable for men and what's acceptable for women are two different things.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

100%.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Yep. I got a little annoyed. I got a little annoyed.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

I hear that he was the highest paid Coachella performer ever. Yeah. That's what I mean. I think that that um again, not verified. So sorry if that's incorrect, but allegedly highest paid performer, and that was what he put out was, yeah, he did. He literally sat on a live stream laptop connected to YouTube and basically played what like via YouTube, the the music, and then sang. And I mean he looked healthy.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

Right. And uh I think we all know that he's had some struggles not otherwise specified. Right. But I just wish women were given as much grace in that situation, or getting at the very least, getting paid the same. And obviously, as time goes on, there's different pay structures, but I don't know if a woman with the plan for that kind of performance would have gotten paid the same. I I suspect not. So you know, and he's talented, he's a talented uh person. So that's not the issue. And he's a creative person. That is not the issue, it's just the performance factor and the expectations. So that's a rant. But do you have a rave this week?

SPEAKER_01 48:21

Yeah, I mean, the rave that uh really stood out for me. I I will preface it by saying we could spend money in different ways, but I was really captured by the Artemis II crew that made it around the moon and back and safely, because I heard very like maybe within a day or two prior to their landing, that was also picture perfect and kind of beautiful and really shows what science can do when appropriately applied, uh, is that there was like unclear the risk associated with returning through the Earth's atmosphere in terms of the capsule burning up. So I mean, I just hope they live. And they did. So, you know, astronaut astronauts Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Cooch, and Jeremy Hansen. Sorry if those are uh incorrectly pronounced, but I thought that their message was beautiful, all their interactions, their hilarious, heartwarming and very heartwarming.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

Their families, and you see Christina like a TikTok dance with I guess her daughters or or someone in her and they they named the bright spot after Reed's Carol's white. Right, exactly. So the whole thing was nice, and even when Trump called them on the phone and they were just I love that they were like person, so I appreciated that issues a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Yeah, and I just love their message, and I think Victor Glover was the one who said it. He's like, we are like given this earth to live harmoniously on and how spectacular it is. Let's just stay focused on our problems down here. I know that there's a lot of exploration interests. You do that, NASA. Work on that, but I I I don't know, it's just it was such a breath of fresh air in the stuff, yeah, especially given just like the toxicity of like the race to Mars, which I hear is just too expensive for anybody to really pursue at this time. And just like we need to nurture things here, and so it was it was a beautiful thing, and I I really wanted to rave about that this week.

SPEAKER_02 50:28

Yeah, yeah. And you know it gave a bit of not like I'm a you know a patriot where I'm wearing red, white, and blue for a bit, but it felt like a very patriotic moment because I'm during the Olympics or something where we're all about the American wind and the whatever win. I do want to take a moment because we had a listener question that was from a Spotify listener that I wanted to answer. And of course, we'll preface this that if you ask us a medically specific question, we won't answer because we are not your doctors. Please go see your doctor. But if it's kind of related to our experience, we're gonna answer. And any other questions you might have for us. So there were a few questions, but we'll just do one for today. What is the weirdest thing a kid has said right before going under? Ooh, that's a fun one. So if sometimes we give children oral medazolam or ivy medazolam, which is we call it happy juice because it kind of makes them nice and zen before going into the operating room if they're nervous. We don't always give it, but it's an option. A lot of times they end up a little sleepy and not so weirded out. But when they're waking up, sometimes you you hear some weird stuff. Occasionally you'll hear some cursing. And just especially the teenagers, when they're waking up, you'll hear you're so cute, and they'll talk about a girlfriend or something like that, or how they don't like them and how he's annoying, and stuff they would have no recollection of. And so it's it's usually things like that, or something at school, and them sounding a little drunk. Yeah, I was gonna say a little bit weird, but just odd. And sometimes you they're speaking in sentences, but they don't make any sense.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

Right. A little bit of truth serum, some disinhibition, and like you get a little dish. Great question, listeners. We really we want a dish, so send us more.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

All right. Thanks again for joining us at No Other SkillsMD Podcast. We hope you got something out of listening to your friendly neighborhood doctors.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

But please remember we are doctors, but not your doctors. So for actual medical advice, please reach out to your own personal physician.

SPEAKER_02 52:42

Please rate, review, and subscribe to our lovely podcast and refer a friend to us in the future. No preauthorization needed. We are found wherever you find your favorite podcast. Apple, Spotify, you name it, we're on it. See you soon. Bye. Bye.