September 22, 2025 • 34 mins
Felicia Hsu grew up dreaming of becoming a doctor. Years of relentless dedication brought that dream within reach, but the toll it took left her wondering whether it was finally time to let it go.
Have you had a slight change of plans you think we should know about? Send us a voice memo or an email at slightchange@pushkin.fm.
Sign up for Maya's free newsletter here: changewithmaya.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
A mantra that I've always lived by was that I
overcome odds, right like I overcome things that come my way,
and I figure it out and I land on my
two feet.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Felicia Shoe's biggest dream was to become a doctor, and
after years of dedication, she achieved that dream, but it
took a heavy toll on her.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I almost saw myself as this piece of glass and
it got a crack, and you get up and you
try to put a little band aid on it. You
know that doesn't work, and then another crack, and another
and another, and then you kind of just wonder, at
what point is it just gonna shatter?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
On today's show, how do you know when to let
go of a dream? I'm Maya Shunker, a scientist who
studies human behavior, and this is a Slight Change of Plans,
a show about who we are and who we become
in the face of a big change. Felicia is actually
(01:39):
a longtime fan of A Slight Change of Plans. Her husband, Chen,
reached out to us earlier this year to share her story.
She'd never spoken publicly about her experience before, but felt
that this show was the right place to finally open up.
I really hope that her story will help anyone who's
grappling with the prospect of leaving something behind, something that
(02:01):
they thought would define their future. From the time Felicia
was a little kid, she knew she wanted to be
a doctor. It felt like a calling.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
My introduction to medicine in some ways was through Eastern medicine. Actually,
my mom's best friend is an acupuncturist. I used to
go and she would babysit me, and I would say
in the office, I would watch people come in with
like frozen shoulder and then like you do acupuncture and
you just put all these needles into someone. It looks
kind of freaky, and then like she takes it out
and suddenly they can move their shoulder.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
For me, like as a kid, I was like, what
the heck, what is that?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Like I can't see what the needles are doing, but
like somehow it fixed something. I think that was the
first time that medicine kind of looked more like magic
for me, and I was like, I want to be
a doctor. I want to connect with people. I want
to help people in like a time of need.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Where do you think your drive to help people come from?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
My mom had really severe depression, and I think that
was really tough on me as a kid. I think
as a kid you kind of soak up, you know,
all the emotions around you. Took up way more than
you think, and I think I so badly wanted to
make things better for her. I just didn't know how.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
What was your parents response when you first told them
you wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You kind of think like Asian parents, like, oh, They're like, oh,
you have to be a doctor or nothing else, right.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yes, of course it's a stereotype.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's the stereotype.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
But my mom the first thing was like are you sure,
And I was like, well, what do you mean? She
really prioritized happiness and so for her, she was like,
will you be happy being a doctor, because doctors that
I know, like have no time for family, no time
for vacation, no time for happiness and joy. So they
(03:55):
actually tried to really distract me from medicine, like they
tried everything to say like.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
What about this, what about research? What about engineering?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
But then I guess I was the one who was like,
hell bent, I'm pursuing it.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
You end up going down this path of pre medical training,
So tell me about that. What kind of resources and
time did you invest in this process?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, it's always interesting when someone asked me, like, how
many years have you put into being a doctor, And
I just I never know what to say, because is
it med school? Is it med school plus undergrad? Is
it medical plus undergrad plus high school? It's the sort
of classic like you gotta get your GPA, you gotta
do all the activities, you got to explore, you got
to do research.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
So you were just heads down studying nights, weekends.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, it was pretty brutal.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Okay, so a lot of sacrifice, A lot.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Of sacrifice because it's like ten twelve years of training
and after MIT I ended up just hopping across the
river going to Harvard Medical.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
School, no big deal, you know, as we all do.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And then just kind of leaned into medicine. I really
fell in love with the thinking behind medicine, feeling like, oh,
you know, I'm putting things together in my brain. I
can help this person and to be able to be
there for them in that moment. The combination was pretty
much what cent shift for me.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So let's transition to your residency. This was the summer
of twenty twenty you did your residency at UCLA. It's
the height of the pandemic. What was your mindset going
into residency?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh man, I'll back up a little bit, because March
twenty twenty, how I was feeling was like on top
of the world. At first, you know, I was like,
I'm about to graduate med school, Like I'm about to
finally become a doctor. At this point, I had met
my now husband, and I was like, I have met
(05:56):
the love of my life.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
We're going to get.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Married, We're already engaged. Things are going on track. If
it's not obvious, I'm a planner, So things were going
according to pay check the boxes, check the boxes, correct
my timeline that I had laid out. We were on track,
and COVID happened and the whole world shut down, and
we decided to live with my parents to make sure,
(06:19):
like if quarantine were to separate us, at least we're
stuck together. And it was in those few months from
March to May that that's when everything changed, because I
started noticing that something was really not right with my dad.
And he is this like I don't know how to
(06:42):
describe it. It's like he's your like stoic Asian dad.
Everything is fine, everything is cheery, no pain, everything's good.
And there was one morning where I walked downstairs and
I heard this like really guttural sound coming from his room.
And I walked in and my dad was basically sitting
(07:05):
up in bed, keeled over, just come completely drenched and
sweat and groaning. And I was like, oh my god,
what's wrong? And he said the pain was really bad
and it was going to his back. And I'm like
a new grat, like what do I know? But I
was like, something is really really wrong. And so I
(07:27):
ended up sending the imaging to a friend back at
Harvard and she sent it to her cousin who's an
abdominal radiologist, and she told me that my dad had
this huge tumor in his pancreas that was basically pancretic cancer.
And so I remember like walking outside in the dark
because I didn't want anyone to see me. I have
(07:49):
a thing where like I can't cry in front of
my family, and honestly, I was just devastated. And it
was this thing where like I was trying to process it,
but at the same time like get myself together to
be able to go in and tell my parents what
the finding was. So that was my mindset right before residency.
(08:13):
My dad is sick, possibly dying. I was starting residency,
which is supposed to be one of the most grueling
times of your life. And it was a residency during
COVID in which we had no idea what the hell
was going on.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So let's talk about let's talk about residency amidst this
perfect storm that's happening in your life. What was it
like day to day?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Have you ever watched The Pit?
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah? No, I'm obsessed with the Pit.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Oh okay, Yeah, it's incredibly accurate. I can't watch it.
It's like too heavy. Anyway, it was a pretty brutal schedule.
I would say on average, you easily worked eighty tw
one hundred hours per week, and your shifts could be
up to twenty eight hours long.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You go in at seven am Tuesday morning and then
you go home at Wednesday twelve one pm. And it's
kind of this like non stop things happening all one
after another.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
And then there was this added element to all of
this burden, which is that it was early months of
COVID where doctors and other healthcare practitioners don't necessarily know
everything they need to know about how to respond or
help their patients or what all the risk factors are.
So how did that compound the stress?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Oh man, this was a time when there weren't enough
masks and the gowns that could protect you. That at
least people thought they could protect you from COVID. We
didn't even know if they were truly protective. We would
have these like brown paper bags that we would just
hang up on the wall and after you used your mask,
you would dump it into the bag and then you
(09:55):
would reuse it, which that's actually it just doesn't work,
But that's the best we had.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I would fear, of course, for like myself getting it,
but it wasn't just myself, because I would go home,
I would be worried about my husband getting it. I
wanted to be there for my parents because during this
whole time, I was still advocating for my dad, like
I was still trying to push his care forward.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And were you still living with your parents so were
they at risk?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
No, so I was living in la at that time.
But I would want to be delivering food to them.
But like I also didn't want to expose them. So
it was this constant internal battle with myself of like
I needed to help my parents, but by helping them,
I should actually stay away, but also like I should
be trying to spend time with them just in case
my dad doesn't have time left. So it was just
(10:45):
like all of this conflicting thoughts. That was also when
there was a lot of the anti Asian sentiment going around,
and I was really worried, and at the time, I
was like, don't go out for groceries, like just stay.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Home, order in. It was just like a total nightmare.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
You kind of felt like you were failing on all
fronts because I'd be at work and I'd be like, oh,
I should be a better partner and daughter, but then
like I'd be there, but then I'm trying to be
a doctor and then trying to keep the grief of COVID. Honestly,
like the worst of COVID surges in LA were really bad,
and I would come home and I just like I'd
(11:28):
remember getting to the door and being like, okay, like
deep breath, going to leave this grief outside because there's
already so much inside the house.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
But I think if you ask my husband I'm sure
it leaked in. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, it sounds like you were very much just in
survival mode, right, like, get through every day unscathed and
just pope you survive the next day too. When did
you first sort of recognize the toll that this environment
was taking on you, both physically and mentally.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
There was no one defining moment or disaster for me
that forced me to be like, oh my gosh, this
won't do. I almost saw myself as this piece of
glass and it got a crack, and you get up
and you try to put a little band aid on it,
and then another crack, and another and another, and then
(12:26):
you kind of just wonder, at what point is it
just gonna shatter? But I think the first time where
I was kind of forced into reality was actually in
November of twenty twenty, so I was about six months
into residency. My dad had just gotten most of his
chemo done, and on the bright side, my dad actually
(12:48):
responded really well to the chemo. The surgeon said, you
know what, I think it's shrunk enough that I think
we can try to take it.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Out, but let's do it quickly. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
End of November and two days before my dad was
supposed to get surgery at UCLA. I had one of
the most intense abdominal pains that I've ever experienced in
my life. And when I showed up in the emergency room,
the things that went through my mind it's like super
(13:18):
sad to even think about. The first was wait, wait, wait,
like I can't afford to be here because my dad
has his surgery in two days and I have to
be there for him and my family.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
What the heck is this? Like get me out kind
of thing.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
The second was dang it, like this is the middle
of the night, I have to work the next day.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
What am I gonna do? And maybe I.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Did register it on some level that something has to give,
But the thought in my mind was like, well, it's
not like I can stop being my dad's daughter. I
can't stop being a resident, Like what am I supposed
to do? Like, so there was no choice but to
kind of keep going. And it was like everyone suffers
(14:03):
in residency, Like we all do this, so just keep going,
Like what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You encoded this as a sign of personal weakness.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, I thought of like why can't I be better?
What's wrong with me? It was kind of like I
was blaming myself, and then I felt guilty actually because
also I was like, oh my god, I'm worrying my family.
They should just be focused on the surgery, and now
I'm putting them through this extra worry.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, what struck me and what you said. And I
think many people can relate to this level of self sacrifice,
as you said, Well, I can't stop being my dad's daughter,
and I can't stop being a resident. I guess I'll
just have to stop caring about myself. Yeah, I mean
that's essentially what you did. Oh, I can just stop
investing in this body and this human that I am
(14:53):
right now. And I imagine many people have to confront
that at times where they're a caregiver or they have
an incredibly demanding job and it's just their own needs
come life. If at all, it sounds like you didn't
even put yourself on the list. Yeah, you took yourself
(15:14):
off the list entirely.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, I think I did.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
But it's crazy because in the moment, like I would
like to say that I'm a somewhat reflective person, like
I think a lot about how I'm thinking, and yet
just totally miss this in the moment, like it just
wasn't even a thing.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I think, when you are so maximally stressed and you
have zero mental bandwidth, who would have the ability to introspect.
I mean, you're barely sleeping, you barely have time to eat,
you're working ungodly shift lengths. I'm not surprised at all
that that would be sort of the instinctual response what
(15:55):
was the nature of your pain and what did that
mean for your work?
Speaker 2 (15:59):
So I found out that my pain was actually intestinal spasms,
which can happen in stress or like a body's response
to stress. And at the time I didn't really realize
where that was really coming from. I just thought, oh,
I'm stressed with my dad's surgery and residency, like duh.
But the doctor came in and said like, oh, I
think you just need to rest more, and then laughed
(16:22):
because she knew I was a resident. And I was like,
I don't know if that's making me feel better or worse,
because it's kind of like she said it as like
this is all you need. You don't have cancer, you
don't have some disease. You know you're gonna be fine.
You just have to rest. But like knowing that it was,
you know, impossible.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, I was going to ask you whether that particular
diagnosis actually further perpetuated your self narrative of weakness. And
by the way, I think stress is as physical as
any other thing in the body, but psychologically we can
code that differently, we can carry a different emotional valance
for us. And so I'm curious to know whether you thought, yeah, Felicia,
(17:04):
this is on you tough enough. Yeah, deal with your
stress better a thousand persons, that's the culture here.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, everyone is stressed. Come on, you know, like everyone
gets through it. Just deal with it. I felt so pathetic.
My worst fear actually was that I needed surgery. So
that part of me was like, Okay, good, I don't
need surgery. But in some ways it made me think like, oh,
it's not that big of a deal either, because if
(17:30):
it's just stress, I can just keep going.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
When we return, Felicia tries to muscle her way through residency.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans, and it's all the stress Felicia was facing
(18:02):
in her residency. There was one piece of good news
in her personal life, her dad's surgery to remove the
tumor and his pancreas had gone well. He was recovering,
but Felicia's health it was only getting worse.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I referenced the cracks before in the glass.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
More and more and more cracks were coming up, like
more than I could keep track of. It was this
sort of rapidly increasing deterioration of my body. At one point,
I was coming off of a twenty eight hour shift
that had turned into twenty nine, and I noticed this
really annoying rash on my neck starting to go into
(18:41):
my ear. And it's one of those things where as
a resident, you're like, Eh, it's fine, you just kind
of move on. But then I realized, like, oh my god,
is this shingles? And I don't know if you know shingles,
but it's very much associated with sixty five year old
(19:02):
or older aminocompromised, neither of which I was. That was
probably the first time that I really looked at like wow,
Like I came to the point where I'm effectively imminocompromised.
What is wrong with my body? And this is where
it gets a little heavy. But when I was a kid,
(19:22):
I had a really traumatic experience with sexual abuse that
forced me to grow up at the age of seven,
and at the time, I kept it a secret because
I thought that's what I had to do until I
was eighteen. And I think the manifestations of hiding that
trauma in my body is what kind of it makes
(19:43):
my body respond to stress differently and was making my
body not cope with all of this additional stress, like
the intestinal spasms. And this was the first time where
I was like, oh, there are reasons that I'm breaking
down in a way that maybe other people aren't. Most
people after a twenty eight hour would go home and sleep,
(20:05):
they would get rest. For me, like I have an
intense stomach ache after really traumatizing COVID, I see you
shift and I'd go home and I like, I wouldn't
be able to sleep. And honestly, it reached this point
where two things happened. The first was I will never
(20:25):
forget this moment in the car. It was such a
heartbreaking moment for me and my husband when he looked
at me and I was on the way to the
er and he said, I can't keep taking you to
the er, like I just I can't handle this emotionally,
like it's taking a lot on me, Like I'm not
(20:45):
trying to make it about myself, but it's just a lot.
And I think it took seeing someone else suffer on
my behalf for me to be like, oh my god, wait,
like this isn't just about me, Like I'm not just
doing this to myself at this point. The second thing
(21:06):
was that I realized, like I wasn't rerecizing myself. I'm
aware when I'm not acting like myself, and it makes
me more annoyed that I'm not being myself.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I want to know how you were not being yourself.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
So I was at our twenty nine of a call.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
At this point, I had slept on literally two chairs
that I had put together, ketchup stained two chairs in
a call room. That was my brief fifteen minutes of
sleep overnight, and all I could think about I was like,
thank God, I made it to the end.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
I want to go home.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And right before I was going to sign out, which
is when you transfer over care to another resident coming in,
they announced code like a code blue on the intercom,
which basically means patient either as pulseless, not breathing.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
One of those and to remind.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You, like the kid Felicia right, who just yeah, it
felt like I had so much to give. Fast forwarding
to myself, it was like the first thought that went
through my mind, I'm so ashamed of this, was like,
why couldn't he have coded twenty minutes from now? And
(22:21):
I was like, oh my god, I cannot believe that.
That is what I thought in that moment. And this
was a patient I deeply cared for, reminded me of
my own dad, And that's what came out of me.
I wasn't recognizing myself and when I got home, did
(22:42):
not sleep.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Walk me through your thought process at that point? How
were you thinking about whether to stay or whether to leave?
For me?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Like I needed a pro con list, Like I wrote
this whole thing out with my husband and essentially kind
of boiled it down like staying was for other people.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Right?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
I had spent so much of my life dedicated to this.
Why would I give up one and a half years
from finishing Quitting wasn't in my vocabulary?
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Was I disappointing my friends? My family?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Like?
Speaker 3 (23:13):
What would everyone say? As much as.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
I'd love to say that I don't care what people think,
I really care what people think.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Of course, we are annoying. I know, it's very annoying.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I got like a PhD in people pleasing girl, don't worry, Okay.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
I also have that PhD. God, it's so annoying. My
co residence.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
The response that I got from initially even saying I'm
considering it was like, oh my god, I can't do it.
I felt like a horrible human being. I even thought
like I should help my parents more by staying in
the system, seeing how I saved my dad's life, Like
by being in the system, why would I leave it?
There was an element for me where I was like,
we are in the midst of another COVID search, how
(23:52):
could I possibly think about leaving now? In terms of leaving,
my body was breaking down. I realized with a bit
more clarity that it had to do with my trauma
and my ability to recover. And at the end of
the day, like I realized that I was kind of
in a system that just like really.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Didn't let me be human. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
I think these sorts of stressors they can pound, and
they can prick your heart's memory, and they can resurface
old wounds that you felt you had effectively buried or
had resolved, And then you enter a deeply stressful environment
like this one, and you just have fewer cognitive resources
(24:39):
to keep some of that anxiety and whatever the trauma
responses are at arm's length.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, And as you're saying that, I'm realizing it was
like this spiral of shame around it because I had
done the work and I had overcome a lot of this,
I had unpacked all of this, and I was like,
why is this even coming up again? Because I've already like,
(25:06):
I've done the work.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
This is such an important part of your story.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
I just.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
We try to do the work. We try to be
really good students when it comes to our mental health
and processing our past and getting the quote work done.
And then a big change comes our way and we're
thrust into a new reality that challenges us and makes
us feel like we are backtracking, or that we didn't
(25:35):
develop sufficient defenses, or that we never actually overcame our demons,
and it can feel so defeating in that moment to
have to carry that in addition to all the active
stressors that you're experiencing in your life. We can have
trauma in our past, and when a change resurfaces that
it doesn't just fill us with the anxiety and depression,
(25:58):
but exactly what you said, which is a feeling of shame,
like you didn't do a good enough job, and that's
just not accurate.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
No, thank you. You're going to make me cry now.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
It's just a mantra that I've always lived by was
that I overcome odds, right like I overcome things that
come my way and I figure it out and I
land on my two feet. And so this felt like
I was completely betraying who I was. I kept telling
myself if I quit, and I actually hate the word
(26:28):
quitting because it implies you're taking the easy way out.
And that was actually something my husband said when we
were talking on this pro con of whether to leave
or not. He was like, I noticed that you're using
the word quit, almost like you're giving up, and then
you're giving up to the trauma. You're giving up to this.
Your body wasn't good enough, You're not good enough. You're
(26:48):
letting everyone down.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yes, you're blaming yourself, and.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
It's actually the braver thing to think about leaving a
system that has such a tight hold on you. And
I think that shifted my mindset entirely where I was like,
wait a minute, actually leaving maybe the trying thing, the
brave thing to do. And I think it up until
that point, any decision that I was making, people always
(27:16):
showered you with this phrase that like I always hated.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
But it was like, there's no wrong choice, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Like, did you choose your class, There's no wrong choice.
Choose mescal, There's no wrong choice. And in this moment,
even contemplating the decision of leaving, why it was so
hard was it felt like I had no good choice right,
Like it felt like I felt backed into a corner
and either one was just bad. When I had on
(27:44):
my list like all the reasons to stay, one thing
I realized was all the reasons were for others, and
the reasons for leaving were for me.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So you told your supervisor? How did they respond and
how did your colleagues respond?
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Not very well?
Speaker 2 (28:00):
There was such an intense social pressure to stay. I mean,
it was ridiculous. I was actually shunned by co residents
who heard that I might be considering leaving, and it
made me feel like, oh my god, am I being
a horrible human being for quitting and leaving them with
(28:23):
this extra workload. Because medicine, unlike any other field. If
you leave, they don't just hire someone to replace you.
There was a very noticeable gap in the residency that
other people have to make up for. I lost friends.
It was really tough. The day that I had to
go turn in my badge.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
I had to ask my friend from my residency class
to do it for me. Like the thought of walking
into that hospital, possibly seeing some of these co residents
who were clearly just really mad at me, I just
I couldn't do it. The first few weeks after leaving,
I was just like, Oh my god, what have I done?
(29:06):
I felt so guilty. I almost went back. There was
another surge for COVID, and I was like, how could
I just be sitting here on the sidelines helpless.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I have to go back.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
And it took my friends, my family, my husband reminding me, no, no, no,
you made the brave choice. This is the right choice
for you to prevent me from going back. My way
of coping is like I need to explain it. I
need to justify it. I need to rationalize it, I
need to intellectualize it. I need to literally think of
it in every single way I can. And so that's
(29:36):
how I process it. I was so bitter. I was like,
why did my dad have to get sick? Why did
there have to be COVID? Why did I have to
have trauma such that my body like can't cope. The
whole time, I was like why is it that I
have these limitations? Rather than thinking like, oh, these limitations
are just a part of who I am as a
result of my experiences.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
I think society tells us that we must fight every demon,
we must overcome every weakness, we must do whatever it
takes to achieve every dream. And like another model is
to say, actually, no, it's okay to engage in radical acceptance,
like maybe there's nothing to keep fighting there, you know.
And I do think that that's not the narrative that's celebrated.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Even these days.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Like I need my husband to sometimes remind me of
that this is who you are, Like stop fighting it,
you know, like just love yourself for who you are.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Why is that so hard?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
And it's like, but like why can't I just change
that one thing and like make it work? Because yeah,
I wish I could have been in a different state
that I could have pushed through like everyone else.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
It's been four years since you quit. I'm going to
use the word quit because I want us to reclaim
quit as a positive word.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Okay, you can do that.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It's been four years since you quit being a doctor,
and these days your work involves researching and investing in
healthcare startups. I'm so curious to hear how you feel
your identity has shifted over time.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I mean, there was this moment, maybe a year or
so after I've left, I was on a hike with
my husband, and in those three hours, I came up
with a new fiction book idea, like a short story idea.
We came up with like two different startup ideas that
we were kind of just like hashing out and they
didn't work out, but like we did the exercise of like, oh.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
And then what if this and what if that?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
And I got in the car and I was like,
oh my god, I don't think we could have done
that a year ago, because I was so underwater that
this creative side of me was completely silenced and just
recognizing like I wasn't whole before, and now I actually
(31:47):
more whole in some ways because this other side of
me that I love can actually come out now. I've
had so many moments with my family. We started a family.
I had a beautiful baby girl, and right now I
am hanging on to the fact that she can't quite
walk on her own, but wants to walk everywhere, and
(32:07):
so she is holding my hand and like this feeling
those like little fingers wrap around your hands and like
walk you around. It's one of the best feelings.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
There's so many things that I can do now that
I couldn't before and that I definitely wouldn't have imagined this.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you've had a
Slight Change of Plans in your own life, we'd love
to hear your story. You can reach us by email
at slight Change at pushkin dot fm. And if you
enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow a Slight
Change of Plans wherever you listen to podcasts next time.
(33:04):
My friend and the former Surgeon General, the Vig Morphy,
returns to this for a conversation about connection, community and love.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Why are so many of the people that I meet
all across America and increasing across the world, why are
they so unhappy? So many people would say, I guess
this is just the way life is. Everyone's feeling this
way and I refuse to believe that because I don't
think that we are consigned to live a life of
emptiness where we're just unhappy because life is hard and
as a result unhappy. Life can be hard, and life
(33:36):
often is hard, but that doesn't mean that it has
to be unfulfilling.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
That's next time on A Slight Change of Plans. See
you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written
and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Changed
family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Luvin, and
our sound engineer Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
(34:05):
theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
See you next week.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
A mantra that I've always lived by was that I
overcome odds, right like I overcome things that come my way,
and I figure it out and I land on my
two feet.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Felicia Shoe's biggest dream was to become a doctor, and
after years of dedication, she achieved that dream, but it
took a heavy toll on her.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I almost saw myself as this piece of glass and
it got a crack, and you get up and you
try to put a little band aid on it. You
know that doesn't work, and then another crack, and another
and another, and then you kind of just wonder, at
what point is it just gonna shatter?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
On today's show, how do you know when to let
go of a dream? I'm Maya Shunker, a scientist who
studies human behavior, and this is a Slight Change of Plans,
a show about who we are and who we become
in the face of a big change. Felicia is actually
(01:39):
a longtime fan of A Slight Change of Plans. Her husband, Chen,
reached out to us earlier this year to share her story.
She'd never spoken publicly about her experience before, but felt
that this show was the right place to finally open up.
I really hope that her story will help anyone who's
grappling with the prospect of leaving something behind, something that
(02:01):
they thought would define their future. From the time Felicia
was a little kid, she knew she wanted to be
a doctor. It felt like a calling.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
My introduction to medicine in some ways was through Eastern medicine. Actually,
my mom's best friend is an acupuncturist. I used to
go and she would babysit me, and I would say
in the office, I would watch people come in with
like frozen shoulder and then like you do acupuncture and
you just put all these needles into someone. It looks
kind of freaky, and then like she takes it out
and suddenly they can move their shoulder.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
For me, like as a kid, I was like, what
the heck, what is that?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Like I can't see what the needles are doing, but
like somehow it fixed something. I think that was the
first time that medicine kind of looked more like magic
for me, and I was like, I want to be
a doctor. I want to connect with people. I want
to help people in like a time of need.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Where do you think your drive to help people come from?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
My mom had really severe depression, and I think that
was really tough on me as a kid. I think
as a kid you kind of soak up, you know,
all the emotions around you. Took up way more than
you think, and I think I so badly wanted to
make things better for her. I just didn't know how.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
What was your parents response when you first told them
you wanted to be a doctor.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You kind of think like Asian parents, like, oh, They're like, oh,
you have to be a doctor or nothing else, right.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yes, of course it's a stereotype.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
It's the stereotype.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
But my mom the first thing was like are you sure,
And I was like, well, what do you mean? She
really prioritized happiness and so for her, she was like,
will you be happy being a doctor, because doctors that
I know, like have no time for family, no time
for vacation, no time for happiness and joy. So they
(03:55):
actually tried to really distract me from medicine, like they
tried everything to say like.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
What about this, what about research? What about engineering?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
But then I guess I was the one who was like,
hell bent, I'm pursuing it.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
You end up going down this path of pre medical training,
So tell me about that. What kind of resources and
time did you invest in this process?
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, it's always interesting when someone asked me, like, how
many years have you put into being a doctor, And
I just I never know what to say, because is
it med school? Is it med school plus undergrad? Is
it medical plus undergrad plus high school? It's the sort
of classic like you gotta get your GPA, you gotta
do all the activities, you got to explore, you got
to do research.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
So you were just heads down studying nights, weekends.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah, it was pretty brutal.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Okay, so a lot of sacrifice, A lot.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Of sacrifice because it's like ten twelve years of training
and after MIT I ended up just hopping across the
river going to Harvard Medical.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
School, no big deal, you know, as we all do.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
And then just kind of leaned into medicine. I really
fell in love with the thinking behind medicine, feeling like, oh,
you know, I'm putting things together in my brain. I
can help this person and to be able to be
there for them in that moment. The combination was pretty
much what cent shift for me.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
So let's transition to your residency. This was the summer
of twenty twenty you did your residency at UCLA. It's
the height of the pandemic. What was your mindset going
into residency?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Oh man, I'll back up a little bit, because March
twenty twenty, how I was feeling was like on top
of the world. At first, you know, I was like,
I'm about to graduate med school, Like I'm about to
finally become a doctor. At this point, I had met
my now husband, and I was like, I have met
(05:56):
the love of my life.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
We're going to get.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Married, We're already engaged. Things are going on track. If
it's not obvious, I'm a planner, So things were going
according to pay check the boxes, check the boxes, correct
my timeline that I had laid out. We were on track,
and COVID happened and the whole world shut down, and
we decided to live with my parents to make sure,
(06:19):
like if quarantine were to separate us, at least we're
stuck together. And it was in those few months from
March to May that that's when everything changed, because I
started noticing that something was really not right with my dad.
And he is this like I don't know how to
(06:42):
describe it. It's like he's your like stoic Asian dad.
Everything is fine, everything is cheery, no pain, everything's good.
And there was one morning where I walked downstairs and
I heard this like really guttural sound coming from his room.
And I walked in and my dad was basically sitting
(07:05):
up in bed, keeled over, just come completely drenched and
sweat and groaning. And I was like, oh my god,
what's wrong? And he said the pain was really bad
and it was going to his back. And I'm like
a new grat, like what do I know? But I
was like, something is really really wrong. And so I
(07:27):
ended up sending the imaging to a friend back at
Harvard and she sent it to her cousin who's an
abdominal radiologist, and she told me that my dad had
this huge tumor in his pancreas that was basically pancretic cancer.
And so I remember like walking outside in the dark
because I didn't want anyone to see me. I have
(07:49):
a thing where like I can't cry in front of
my family, and honestly, I was just devastated. And it
was this thing where like I was trying to process it,
but at the same time like get myself together to
be able to go in and tell my parents what
the finding was. So that was my mindset right before residency.
(08:13):
My dad is sick, possibly dying. I was starting residency,
which is supposed to be one of the most grueling
times of your life. And it was a residency during
COVID in which we had no idea what the hell
was going on.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So let's talk about let's talk about residency amidst this
perfect storm that's happening in your life. What was it
like day to day?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Have you ever watched The Pit?
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah? No, I'm obsessed with the Pit.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Oh okay, Yeah, it's incredibly accurate. I can't watch it.
It's like too heavy. Anyway, it was a pretty brutal schedule.
I would say on average, you easily worked eighty tw
one hundred hours per week, and your shifts could be
up to twenty eight hours long.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
You go in at seven am Tuesday morning and then
you go home at Wednesday twelve one pm. And it's
kind of this like non stop things happening all one
after another.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
And then there was this added element to all of
this burden, which is that it was early months of
COVID where doctors and other healthcare practitioners don't necessarily know
everything they need to know about how to respond or
help their patients or what all the risk factors are.
So how did that compound the stress?
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Oh man, this was a time when there weren't enough
masks and the gowns that could protect you. That at
least people thought they could protect you from COVID. We
didn't even know if they were truly protective. We would
have these like brown paper bags that we would just
hang up on the wall and after you used your mask,
you would dump it into the bag and then you
(09:55):
would reuse it, which that's actually it just doesn't work,
But that's the best we had.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
I would fear, of course, for like myself getting it,
but it wasn't just myself, because I would go home,
I would be worried about my husband getting it. I
wanted to be there for my parents because during this
whole time, I was still advocating for my dad, like
I was still trying to push his care forward.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And were you still living with your parents so were
they at risk?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
No, so I was living in la at that time.
But I would want to be delivering food to them.
But like I also didn't want to expose them. So
it was this constant internal battle with myself of like
I needed to help my parents, but by helping them,
I should actually stay away, but also like I should
be trying to spend time with them just in case
my dad doesn't have time left. So it was just
(10:45):
like all of this conflicting thoughts. That was also when
there was a lot of the anti Asian sentiment going around,
and I was really worried, and at the time, I
was like, don't go out for groceries, like just stay.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Home, order in. It was just like a total nightmare.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
You kind of felt like you were failing on all
fronts because I'd be at work and I'd be like, oh,
I should be a better partner and daughter, but then
like I'd be there, but then I'm trying to be
a doctor and then trying to keep the grief of COVID. Honestly,
like the worst of COVID surges in LA were really bad,
and I would come home and I just like I'd
(11:28):
remember getting to the door and being like, okay, like
deep breath, going to leave this grief outside because there's
already so much inside the house.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
But I think if you ask my husband I'm sure
it leaked in. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Yeah, it sounds like you were very much just in
survival mode, right, like, get through every day unscathed and
just pope you survive the next day too. When did
you first sort of recognize the toll that this environment
was taking on you, both physically and mentally.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
There was no one defining moment or disaster for me
that forced me to be like, oh my gosh, this
won't do. I almost saw myself as this piece of
glass and it got a crack, and you get up
and you try to put a little band aid on it,
and then another crack, and another and another, and then
(12:26):
you kind of just wonder, at what point is it
just gonna shatter? But I think the first time where
I was kind of forced into reality was actually in
November of twenty twenty, so I was about six months
into residency. My dad had just gotten most of his
chemo done, and on the bright side, my dad actually
(12:48):
responded really well to the chemo. The surgeon said, you
know what, I think it's shrunk enough that I think
we can try to take it.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Out, but let's do it quickly. Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
End of November and two days before my dad was
supposed to get surgery at UCLA. I had one of
the most intense abdominal pains that I've ever experienced in
my life. And when I showed up in the emergency room,
the things that went through my mind it's like super
(13:18):
sad to even think about. The first was wait, wait, wait,
like I can't afford to be here because my dad
has his surgery in two days and I have to
be there for him and my family.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
What the heck is this? Like get me out kind
of thing.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
The second was dang it, like this is the middle
of the night, I have to work the next day.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
What am I gonna do? And maybe I.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Did register it on some level that something has to give,
But the thought in my mind was like, well, it's
not like I can stop being my dad's daughter. I
can't stop being a resident, Like what am I supposed
to do? Like, so there was no choice but to
kind of keep going. And it was like everyone suffers
(14:03):
in residency, Like we all do this, so just keep going,
Like what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You encoded this as a sign of personal weakness.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, I thought of like why can't I be better?
What's wrong with me? It was kind of like I
was blaming myself, and then I felt guilty actually because
also I was like, oh my god, I'm worrying my family.
They should just be focused on the surgery, and now
I'm putting them through this extra worry.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, what struck me and what you said. And I
think many people can relate to this level of self sacrifice,
as you said, Well, I can't stop being my dad's daughter,
and I can't stop being a resident. I guess I'll
just have to stop caring about myself. Yeah, I mean
that's essentially what you did. Oh, I can just stop
investing in this body and this human that I am
(14:53):
right now. And I imagine many people have to confront
that at times where they're a caregiver or they have
an incredibly demanding job and it's just their own needs
come life. If at all, it sounds like you didn't
even put yourself on the list. Yeah, you took yourself
(15:14):
off the list entirely.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, I think I did.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
But it's crazy because in the moment, like I would
like to say that I'm a somewhat reflective person, like
I think a lot about how I'm thinking, and yet
just totally miss this in the moment, like it just
wasn't even a thing.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
I think, when you are so maximally stressed and you
have zero mental bandwidth, who would have the ability to introspect.
I mean, you're barely sleeping, you barely have time to eat,
you're working ungodly shift lengths. I'm not surprised at all
that that would be sort of the instinctual response what
(15:55):
was the nature of your pain and what did that
mean for your work?
Speaker 2 (15:59):
So I found out that my pain was actually intestinal spasms,
which can happen in stress or like a body's response
to stress. And at the time I didn't really realize
where that was really coming from. I just thought, oh,
I'm stressed with my dad's surgery and residency, like duh.
But the doctor came in and said like, oh, I
think you just need to rest more, and then laughed
(16:22):
because she knew I was a resident. And I was like,
I don't know if that's making me feel better or worse,
because it's kind of like she said it as like
this is all you need. You don't have cancer, you
don't have some disease. You know you're gonna be fine.
You just have to rest. But like knowing that it was,
you know, impossible.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, I was going to ask you whether that particular
diagnosis actually further perpetuated your self narrative of weakness. And
by the way, I think stress is as physical as
any other thing in the body, but psychologically we can
code that differently, we can carry a different emotional valance
for us. And so I'm curious to know whether you thought, yeah, Felicia,
(17:04):
this is on you tough enough. Yeah, deal with your
stress better a thousand persons, that's the culture here.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, everyone is stressed. Come on, you know, like everyone
gets through it. Just deal with it. I felt so pathetic.
My worst fear actually was that I needed surgery. So
that part of me was like, Okay, good, I don't
need surgery. But in some ways it made me think like, oh,
it's not that big of a deal either, because if
(17:30):
it's just stress, I can just keep going.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
When we return, Felicia tries to muscle her way through residency.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans, and it's all the stress Felicia was facing
(18:02):
in her residency. There was one piece of good news
in her personal life, her dad's surgery to remove the
tumor and his pancreas had gone well. He was recovering,
but Felicia's health it was only getting worse.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I referenced the cracks before in the glass.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
More and more and more cracks were coming up, like
more than I could keep track of. It was this
sort of rapidly increasing deterioration of my body. At one point,
I was coming off of a twenty eight hour shift
that had turned into twenty nine, and I noticed this
really annoying rash on my neck starting to go into
(18:41):
my ear. And it's one of those things where as
a resident, you're like, Eh, it's fine, you just kind
of move on. But then I realized, like, oh my god,
is this shingles? And I don't know if you know shingles,
but it's very much associated with sixty five year old
(19:02):
or older aminocompromised, neither of which I was. That was
probably the first time that I really looked at like wow,
Like I came to the point where I'm effectively imminocompromised.
What is wrong with my body? And this is where
it gets a little heavy. But when I was a kid,
(19:22):
I had a really traumatic experience with sexual abuse that
forced me to grow up at the age of seven,
and at the time, I kept it a secret because
I thought that's what I had to do until I
was eighteen. And I think the manifestations of hiding that
trauma in my body is what kind of it makes
(19:43):
my body respond to stress differently and was making my
body not cope with all of this additional stress, like
the intestinal spasms. And this was the first time where
I was like, oh, there are reasons that I'm breaking
down in a way that maybe other people aren't. Most
people after a twenty eight hour would go home and sleep,
(20:05):
they would get rest. For me, like I have an
intense stomach ache after really traumatizing COVID, I see you
shift and I'd go home and I like, I wouldn't
be able to sleep. And honestly, it reached this point
where two things happened. The first was I will never
(20:25):
forget this moment in the car. It was such a
heartbreaking moment for me and my husband when he looked
at me and I was on the way to the
er and he said, I can't keep taking you to
the er, like I just I can't handle this emotionally,
like it's taking a lot on me, Like I'm not
(20:45):
trying to make it about myself, but it's just a lot.
And I think it took seeing someone else suffer on
my behalf for me to be like, oh my god, wait,
like this isn't just about me, Like I'm not just
doing this to myself at this point. The second thing
(21:06):
was that I realized, like I wasn't rerecizing myself. I'm
aware when I'm not acting like myself, and it makes
me more annoyed that I'm not being myself.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I want to know how you were not being yourself.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
So I was at our twenty nine of a call.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
At this point, I had slept on literally two chairs
that I had put together, ketchup stained two chairs in
a call room. That was my brief fifteen minutes of
sleep overnight, and all I could think about I was like,
thank God, I made it to the end.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
I want to go home.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And right before I was going to sign out, which
is when you transfer over care to another resident coming in,
they announced code like a code blue on the intercom,
which basically means patient either as pulseless, not breathing.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
One of those and to remind.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You, like the kid Felicia right, who just yeah, it
felt like I had so much to give. Fast forwarding
to myself, it was like the first thought that went
through my mind, I'm so ashamed of this, was like,
why couldn't he have coded twenty minutes from now? And
(22:21):
I was like, oh my god, I cannot believe that.
That is what I thought in that moment. And this
was a patient I deeply cared for, reminded me of
my own dad, And that's what came out of me.
I wasn't recognizing myself and when I got home, did
(22:42):
not sleep.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Walk me through your thought process at that point? How
were you thinking about whether to stay or whether to leave?
For me?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Like I needed a pro con list, Like I wrote
this whole thing out with my husband and essentially kind
of boiled it down like staying was for other people.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Right?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
I had spent so much of my life dedicated to this.
Why would I give up one and a half years
from finishing Quitting wasn't in my vocabulary?
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Was I disappointing my friends? My family?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Like?
Speaker 3 (23:13):
What would everyone say? As much as.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
I'd love to say that I don't care what people think,
I really care what people think.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Of course, we are annoying. I know, it's very annoying.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I got like a PhD in people pleasing girl, don't worry, Okay.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
I also have that PhD. God, it's so annoying. My
co residence.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
The response that I got from initially even saying I'm
considering it was like, oh my god, I can't do it.
I felt like a horrible human being. I even thought
like I should help my parents more by staying in
the system, seeing how I saved my dad's life, Like
by being in the system, why would I leave it?
There was an element for me where I was like,
we are in the midst of another COVID search, how
(23:52):
could I possibly think about leaving now? In terms of leaving,
my body was breaking down. I realized with a bit
more clarity that it had to do with my trauma
and my ability to recover. And at the end of
the day, like I realized that I was kind of
in a system that just like really.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Didn't let me be human. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
I think these sorts of stressors they can pound, and
they can prick your heart's memory, and they can resurface
old wounds that you felt you had effectively buried or
had resolved, And then you enter a deeply stressful environment
like this one, and you just have fewer cognitive resources
(24:39):
to keep some of that anxiety and whatever the trauma
responses are at arm's length.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, And as you're saying that, I'm realizing it was
like this spiral of shame around it because I had
done the work and I had overcome a lot of this,
I had unpacked all of this, and I was like,
why is this even coming up again? Because I've already like,
(25:06):
I've done the work.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
This is such an important part of your story.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
I just.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
We try to do the work. We try to be
really good students when it comes to our mental health
and processing our past and getting the quote work done.
And then a big change comes our way and we're
thrust into a new reality that challenges us and makes
us feel like we are backtracking, or that we didn't
(25:35):
develop sufficient defenses, or that we never actually overcame our demons,
and it can feel so defeating in that moment to
have to carry that in addition to all the active
stressors that you're experiencing in your life. We can have
trauma in our past, and when a change resurfaces that
it doesn't just fill us with the anxiety and depression,
(25:58):
but exactly what you said, which is a feeling of shame,
like you didn't do a good enough job, and that's
just not accurate.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
No, thank you. You're going to make me cry now.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
It's just a mantra that I've always lived by was
that I overcome odds, right like I overcome things that
come my way and I figure it out and I
land on my two feet. And so this felt like
I was completely betraying who I was. I kept telling
myself if I quit, and I actually hate the word
(26:28):
quitting because it implies you're taking the easy way out.
And that was actually something my husband said when we
were talking on this pro con of whether to leave
or not. He was like, I noticed that you're using
the word quit, almost like you're giving up, and then
you're giving up to the trauma. You're giving up to this.
Your body wasn't good enough, You're not good enough. You're
(26:48):
letting everyone down.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yes, you're blaming yourself, and.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
It's actually the braver thing to think about leaving a
system that has such a tight hold on you. And
I think that shifted my mindset entirely where I was like,
wait a minute, actually leaving maybe the trying thing, the
brave thing to do. And I think it up until
that point, any decision that I was making, people always
(27:16):
showered you with this phrase that like I always hated.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
But it was like, there's no wrong choice, you know.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Like, did you choose your class, There's no wrong choice.
Choose mescal, There's no wrong choice. And in this moment,
even contemplating the decision of leaving, why it was so
hard was it felt like I had no good choice right,
Like it felt like I felt backed into a corner
and either one was just bad. When I had on
(27:44):
my list like all the reasons to stay, one thing
I realized was all the reasons were for others, and
the reasons for leaving were for me.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So you told your supervisor? How did they respond and
how did your colleagues respond?
Speaker 3 (27:59):
Not very well?
Speaker 2 (28:00):
There was such an intense social pressure to stay. I mean,
it was ridiculous. I was actually shunned by co residents
who heard that I might be considering leaving, and it
made me feel like, oh my god, am I being
a horrible human being for quitting and leaving them with
(28:23):
this extra workload. Because medicine, unlike any other field. If
you leave, they don't just hire someone to replace you.
There was a very noticeable gap in the residency that
other people have to make up for. I lost friends.
It was really tough. The day that I had to
go turn in my badge.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
I couldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
I had to ask my friend from my residency class
to do it for me. Like the thought of walking
into that hospital, possibly seeing some of these co residents
who were clearly just really mad at me, I just
I couldn't do it. The first few weeks after leaving,
I was just like, Oh my god, what have I done?
(29:06):
I felt so guilty. I almost went back. There was
another surge for COVID, and I was like, how could
I just be sitting here on the sidelines helpless.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I have to go back.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
And it took my friends, my family, my husband reminding me, no, no, no,
you made the brave choice. This is the right choice
for you to prevent me from going back. My way
of coping is like I need to explain it. I
need to justify it. I need to rationalize it, I
need to intellectualize it. I need to literally think of
it in every single way I can. And so that's
(29:36):
how I process it. I was so bitter. I was like,
why did my dad have to get sick? Why did
there have to be COVID? Why did I have to
have trauma such that my body like can't cope. The
whole time, I was like why is it that I
have these limitations? Rather than thinking like, oh, these limitations
are just a part of who I am as a
result of my experiences.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
I think society tells us that we must fight every demon,
we must overcome every weakness, we must do whatever it
takes to achieve every dream. And like another model is
to say, actually, no, it's okay to engage in radical acceptance,
like maybe there's nothing to keep fighting there, you know.
And I do think that that's not the narrative that's celebrated.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Even these days.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Like I need my husband to sometimes remind me of
that this is who you are, Like stop fighting it,
you know, like just love yourself for who you are.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Why is that so hard?
Speaker 2 (30:29):
And it's like, but like why can't I just change
that one thing and like make it work? Because yeah,
I wish I could have been in a different state
that I could have pushed through like everyone else.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
It's been four years since you quit. I'm going to
use the word quit because I want us to reclaim
quit as a positive word.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Okay, you can do that.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
It's been four years since you quit being a doctor,
and these days your work involves researching and investing in
healthcare startups. I'm so curious to hear how you feel
your identity has shifted over time.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
I mean, there was this moment, maybe a year or
so after I've left, I was on a hike with
my husband, and in those three hours, I came up
with a new fiction book idea, like a short story idea.
We came up with like two different startup ideas that
we were kind of just like hashing out and they
didn't work out, but like we did the exercise of like, oh.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
And then what if this and what if that?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
And I got in the car and I was like,
oh my god, I don't think we could have done
that a year ago, because I was so underwater that
this creative side of me was completely silenced and just
recognizing like I wasn't whole before, and now I actually
(31:47):
more whole in some ways because this other side of
me that I love can actually come out now. I've
had so many moments with my family. We started a family.
I had a beautiful baby girl, and right now I
am hanging on to the fact that she can't quite
walk on her own, but wants to walk everywhere, and
(32:07):
so she is holding my hand and like this feeling
those like little fingers wrap around your hands and like
walk you around. It's one of the best feelings.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
There's so many things that I can do now that
I couldn't before and that I definitely wouldn't have imagined this.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you've had a
Slight Change of Plans in your own life, we'd love
to hear your story. You can reach us by email
at slight Change at pushkin dot fm. And if you
enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow a Slight
Change of Plans wherever you listen to podcasts next time.
(33:04):
My friend and the former Surgeon General, the Vig Morphy,
returns to this for a conversation about connection, community and love.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Why are so many of the people that I meet
all across America and increasing across the world, why are
they so unhappy? So many people would say, I guess
this is just the way life is. Everyone's feeling this
way and I refuse to believe that because I don't
think that we are consigned to live a life of
emptiness where we're just unhappy because life is hard and
as a result unhappy. Life can be hard, and life
(33:36):
often is hard, but that doesn't mean that it has
to be unfulfilling.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
That's next time on A Slight Change of Plans. See
you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written
and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Changed
family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Luvin, and
our sound engineer Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
(34:05):
theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.
See you next week.
Host
Dr. Maya Shankar
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!