Latest / Pediatrics Now: Cases Updates and Discussions for the Busy Pediatric Practitioner / When Breath Became My Backbone: A Surgeon’s Story of Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Gratitude

Transcript

When Breath Became My Backbone: A Surgeon’s Story of Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Gratitude · Pediatrics Now: Cases Updates and Discussions for the Busy Pediatric Practitioner

• 0:00
  I'm Holly Wayment, and this is Pediatrics Now, brought to you by University
• 0:04
  Health's new Women's and Children's Hospital and the Department of Pediatrics
• 0:09
  at UT Health San Antonio. Let's listen in.
• 0:17
  It's truly an honor to be here, and I'd like to start by asking you a question.
• 0:27
  How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?
• 0:35
  One, but that light bulb really has to want to change.
• 0:42
  And this light bulb really didn't want to change.
• 0:46
  My world blew up in every way that matters.
• 0:53
  And I'd like to share with you Three things that saved my life and eventually helped me lead.
• 1:05
  And those three things are mindfulness, acceptance, and gratitude.
• 1:17
  And I gained so many strengths from my family.
• 1:22
  I learned confidence and how to communicate directly and strive for perfection,
• 1:34
  work hard and stay calm and in control.
• 1:40
  And I used those strengths to become a reconstructive spine surgeon and musculoskeletal oncologist.
• 1:51
  And five years before my accident, I felt like I was living the American dream.
• 2:02
  My family and I had just returned from a medical mission trip,
• 2:10
  and my children were all attending amazing schools.
• 2:15
  I was living in a house that was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.
• 2:22
  And like many people in Texas, I was driving the check truck of my dreams.
• 2:31
  I had just been promoted as the vice chairman of orthopedic surgery.
• 2:39
  And on the outside, life seemed perfect.
• 2:46
  But on the inside, my life was unraveling.
• 2:52
  And I soon realized that everyone in my family, including myself,
• 2:58
  was struggling with a life-threatening illness.
• 3:06
  Mine were all stress-related. I had hypertension, pre-diabetes, insomnia,
• 3:20
  unrecognized anxiety, and unrecognized depression.
• 3:26
  And I was experiencing a tremendous amount of emotional pain as a result of a traumatic divorce.
• 3:39
  And it was around that time that I was introduced to a book called The Wisdom
• 3:46
  of Insecurity by Alan Watts.
• 3:51
  And in that book, he talks about mindfulness and the ability to live in the
• 3:58
  present moment without worrying about the future or dwelling on the past.
• 4:07
  And I soon found a book called This Moment is Full of Wonders by Thich Nhat Hanh,
• 4:17
  and that book has a collection of some of his calligraphy work and I opened
• 4:25
  the first page and it said breathe,
• 4:30
  and I'd like to invite you to close your eyes or have a slightly downward gaze and breathe.
• 4:52
  And the next page said, breathe, my dear.
• 5:08
  And the next page said, listen.
• 5:23
  And take a few more deep breaths.
• 5:32
  And when you're ready, come back to the room, open your eyes, and look.
• 5:44
  I soon started practicing moving mindfulness with yoga,
• 5:51
  and I took a mindfulness-based stress reduction course and downloaded a mindfulness
• 5:58
  app that allowed me to listen to three to five minute,
• 6:04
  meditations throughout the day and 20 to 30 minute meditations throughout the
• 6:12
  night while I wasn't sleeping.
• 6:16
  And then I started practicing one of my favorite things to do every time I washed my hands. Next slide.
• 6:29
  And I would close my eyes and turn on the water and breathe.
• 6:39
  And on my next in-breath, I would smell.
• 6:43
  And on my next out-breath, I would taste.
• 6:48
  And on my next in-breath, I would listen. and on my next outbreath, I would feel.
• 6:58
  And I would continue to smell and taste and listen and feel,
• 7:08
  until I felt calm and I was ready to open my eyes.
• 7:16
  And no matter what happened in the operating room or in the office, or at home,
• 7:25
  I could feel peace and serenity by getting in touch with my breath.
• 7:35
  And my blood pressure soon normalized, and my A1C normalized,
• 7:45
  and I could start sleeping through the night.
• 7:49
  And I felt like I had found equanimity, which is the ability to feel calm even
• 7:58
  in difficult situations.
• 8:03
  But what I didn't realize is that I was in a spiritual bypass.
• 8:10
  Next slide.
• 8:13
  And I realized this when I was at a family retreat, and everyone in my family, including.
• 8:27
  Myself was experiencing some difficulty and there was chaos all around me.
• 8:37
  Yet I was able to find peace.
• 8:43
  And I thought that the counselor would tell me how amazed she was that I could
• 8:50
  find peace with so much chaos around me.
• 8:55
  But instead she wrote in her final evaluation that I'm concerned you may never
• 9:04
  experience the fullness of an emotional life,
• 9:12
  and that you may benefit from individual therapy,
• 9:18
  and I was devastated when I read these words because I had thought I had found
• 9:26
  the solution to all life's problems.
• 9:31
  And this allowed me to self-reflect. And I soon realized that I had been suppressing
• 9:38
  all of my emotions throughout my entire life,
• 9:44
  especially difficult emotions like fear and anger and sadness.
• 9:54
  And I found this course called Awakening the Fearless Heart.
• 10:04
  By Tara Brach.
• 10:08
  And in that course, she taught me that in order to be fearless,
• 10:13
  I needed to be able to feel fear.
• 10:18
  And most of that course can be found embedded in her book called Radical Compassion.
• 10:29
  And in that course and in that book, She taught me how to feel difficult emotions,
• 10:37
  using a tool called RAIN,
• 10:41
  where R stands for recognize that I'm feeling an emotion,
• 10:49
  and A is to allow that feeling to occur, and I is to investigate where in my
• 11:00
  body I feel that emotion.
• 11:05
  And N is to nurture myself by getting in touch with my breath and my senses.
• 11:14
  And I'd like to share with you a time when I made a mistake and I didn't communicate
• 11:21
  with my assistant, my plan.
• 11:27
  And when I scrubbed into the operation, the operative field looked different than what I expected.
• 11:39
  And I recognized that I was angry with myself, so I closed my eyes and I started to breathe.
• 11:53
  And the next thing I heard was him say now is not a time to breathe.
• 12:05
  I opened my eyes, and I saw rage in his.
• 12:13
  So I closed my eyes, and I started to breathe.
• 12:22
  And I recognized that I felt rage.
• 12:27
  How dare he talk to me that way in my OR.
• 12:35
  And I allowed this intense anger to occur.
• 12:43
  And I investigated where in my body I felt this anger.
• 12:52
  And I nurtured myself by getting in touch with my breath and my senses.
• 13:01
  And I continued to reign until I was able to feel my emotions come down and
• 13:11
  we finished the operation.
• 13:17
  I soon entered a 12-step parent-driven recovery program and I entered that program
• 13:26
  to help save one of my children.
• 13:30
  But what I soon realized was that I needed recovery as much,
• 13:37
  if not more, than my child.
• 13:41
  I needed recovery for my severe codependency.
• 13:49
  And not codependency as I once knew it.
• 13:56
  The codependency that showed up as my potential strengths that I learned from
• 14:03
  my family that had gotten out of proportion and become disconnecting.
• 14:11
  My confidence led me to believe that I was better than other people,
• 14:17
  and I judged them, and I would violate other people's boundaries with my direct communication.
• 14:29
  And striving for perfection led to perfectionism.
• 14:34
  And working hard led to workaholism.
• 14:39
  And staying calm and in control led to me needing to be in control of every
• 14:46
  situation at home and at work.
• 14:53
  And I learned so many tools from this group to heal from my codependency and
• 15:01
  it was with this group that I was on a mountain bike ride.
• 15:08
  And I decided to turn left and the next thing I saw,
• 15:15
  was I saw a hole and I knew my mountain bike would roll right over that hole,
• 15:22
  and as I was going over the hole,
• 15:25
  the next thing I noticed was I heard a crack,
• 15:33
  and I wasn't sure what that crack was I thought it could be my helmet or my skull or my neck,
• 15:47
  so I kept my eyes closed and I started to grieve,
• 15:56
  And on my next in-breath, I smelled.
• 16:01
  And on my next out-breath, I tasted.
• 16:06
  And on my next in-breath, I listened.
• 16:11
  And on my next out-breath, I felt.
• 16:18
  And soon, the title of this book came across my mind, called Radical Acceptance.
• 16:28
  And I knew it was important for me to radically accept whatever that crack was.
• 16:38
  And I also knew that I could ask to be granted the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
• 16:52
  the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
• 17:08
  And the next thing I noticed was I heard my friend call my name in a panicked voice.
• 17:18
  Next slide.
• 17:22
  And I asked him to touch my foot. And he told me he was touching my foot.
• 17:31
  And I asked him to tell me if it was moving. And he told me it wasn't moving.
• 17:39
  So I knew that crack could be my back and that I was paralyzed.
• 17:47
  I asked him to touch my hand and tell me if it was moving, and he told me he
• 17:56
  was touching my hand and it wasn't moving,
• 18:03
  and I couldn't feel him.
• 18:07
  So I knew that crack was my neck and that I was paralyzed,
• 18:16
  and there was less than 5% chance that I would ever walk again,
• 18:24
  or operate again.
• 18:29
  And I also knew,
• 18:33
  that I may never hold my unborn child.
• 18:43
  Or hug my other children.
• 18:52
  And I also knew that it was important for me to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
• 19:04
  So I helped coordinate my rescue.
• 19:09
  And when I got to the hospital, my surgeon showed me my images of my spine.
• 19:19
  And my spine was dislocated. at the C3-4 level,
• 19:26
  and I had residual spinal cord compression.
• 19:31
  And miraculously, I was in the operating room within two and a half hours of my injury.
• 19:42
  As a direct result of my surgeon,
• 19:49
  getting my institution,
• 19:52
  to incorporate recent research showing the importance of early surgery for spinal cord injury.
• 20:06
  And when I woke up in the ICU,
• 20:12
  my surgeon said to me that most people with ear level and severity of injury,
• 20:23
  benefit from a tracheostomy.
• 20:29
  And I didn't want a tracheostomy.
• 20:35
  So I closed my eyes and I started to breathe.
• 20:44
  And there was nothing. That amazing, beautiful thing that had given me so much
• 20:55
  peace and serenity was gone.
• 21:02
  Life had taken my breath away.
• 21:12
  But I knew my recovery program had given me so many tools to help me find peace
• 21:21
  and one of those tools was the Panda Planner,
• 21:28
  and this tool is designed to cultivate optimism,
• 21:37
  and it reminds me every day to list three things I'm grateful for three things
• 21:45
  I'm excited for a daily focus and a daily affirmation,
• 21:54
  and every day in the ICU and every day since I list the same things,
• 22:04
  I'm grateful for my breath and I couldn't breathe on my own at the time and
• 22:14
  I was grateful for every breath the ventilator gave me,
• 22:21
  I'm grateful for life.
• 22:27
  And I'm grateful for my recovery program, which gives me good, orderly direction.
• 22:37
  I'm excited to see my family.
• 22:42
  I'm excited to see my friends.
• 22:48
  And I'm excited to see everyone who takes care of me.
• 22:54
  And my daily focus is to do my best,
• 23:00
  to be mindful and live in the present moment without worrying about the future or dwelling on the past.
• 23:12
  And my daily affirmation is, I am enough.
• 23:21
  I am enough. I am enough.
• 23:30
  Many people believe that my world blew up at the time of my accident.
• 23:39
  But the real explosion occurred years before with life-threatening illness, burnout, and divorce.
• 23:51
  And that's when I saw something more steady. and that's when I found mindfulness,
• 24:00
  acceptance, and gratitude.
• 24:06
  Before mindfulness, I was constantly worrying about the future and dwelling on the past.
• 24:17
  I was lost in my thought and I couldn't feel them.
• 24:24
  And after mindfulness, I was able to notice those times when I was lost in my thought.
• 24:32
  And using the tool of RAIN, I was able to recognize when I was feeling an emotion,
• 24:41
  allow that emotion to occur, and investigate where in my body I felt that emotion.
• 24:53
  And nurture myself by getting in touch with my breath and my senses.
• 25:03
  And I used the Mindfulness Meditation app to help me start my day with less stress and less worry.
• 25:14
  And I listened to it throughout the day in between my cases and at night to
• 25:21
  help me find presence and feel calm.
• 25:28
  And over time, my self-awareness increased and I became less reactive and less
• 25:37
  likely to harm people with my fears and my anger.
• 25:47
  Before mindfulness, I would harm people with my tone and body language.
• 25:57
  I would ask for a kerosene and if it wasn't there within seconds I would say
• 26:04
  I would shake my hand and I would say kerosene,
• 26:13
  and if an instrument was missing from my back table I would huff,
• 26:21
  and sigh and stare and say, did you look at my card?
• 26:33
  And after mindfulness, I was able to pause in those moments and no longer harm
• 26:42
  people with my tone and body language.
• 26:53
  Acceptance helps me find peace during difficult times.
• 27:01
  And radical acceptance in the serenity prayer helped me find peace when I was
• 27:09
  lying there on the trail.
• 27:13
  And they helped me understand that I couldn't change my decision to go on a
• 27:21
  bike ride that day or my decision to go left instead of right.
• 27:28
  In this version of the serenity prayer from the adult children of alcoholic
• 27:36
  and dysfunctional families,
• 27:38
  reminds me that I could ask to be granted the serenity, to accept the people I cannot change,
• 27:50
  the courage to change the one I can and the wisdom to know that one is me.
• 28:04
  And it helps me find peace when I think about that time,
• 28:16
  in the operating room when I lost a patient,
• 28:21
  due to gross under-resuscitation.
• 28:27
  As a result of a refusal of my anesthesiologist to give blood and blood products.
• 28:39
  I carried a lot of anger and resentment.
• 28:46
  And my recovery program taught me that,
• 28:53
  holding on to resentment is like drinking poison in expecting the other person to die.
• 29:06
  While finding acceptance and forgiveness could set me free.
• 29:19
  Teaching my youngest son to say good morning,
• 29:25
  please, and thank you helps him create emotional safety by communicating with
• 29:35
  respect and gratitude with those around him.
• 29:41
  And in teaching him this, I realized that I didn't start my day in my OR by
• 29:52
  creating emotional safety.
• 29:55
  I didn't say good morning. I never said please.
• 30:04
  And I never said thank you. and this really impacts me when I think about that moment,
• 30:12
  when I was wheeled into the operating room and I saw my favorite scrub tech,
• 30:22
  anesthesiologist and spine representative and I felt so much gratitude that
• 30:31
  they were all there to help me in the middle of the night.
• 30:40
  And I also felt shame and guilt when I realized that in the decade that I worked with them,
• 30:53
  I never said, Good morning, please, or thank you.
• 31:11
  I'm grateful for my recovery program, for bringing awareness to my codependency.
• 31:22
  My confidence led me to believe that I'm better than other people.
• 31:30
  And I judged them. And I found esteem in this way.
• 31:38
  And my recovery taught me that true self-esteem comes from humility,
• 31:47
  which is knowing that I'm not better than or less than anybody else.
• 31:56
  And in those moments when I judged,
• 32:01
  that they were wrong or doing a bad job I would violate their boundaries by
• 32:11
  speaking to them in a demeaning way,
• 32:16
  and before my recovery I was turned into HR by three different trainees,
• 32:25
  for violating their boundaries in a demeaning way.
• 32:31
  And since entering recovery seven years ago, I haven't been turned in since.
• 32:40
  And part of my codependency is believing that I needed to be a perfect surgeon.
• 32:50
  And like my mentors taught me, I needed to demand perfection from myself and
• 32:58
  from everyone else around me.
• 33:01
  And part of being a perfect surgeon was being able to remain calm and in control.
• 33:12
  While being able to demand control when I needed to.
• 33:19
  And I didn't realize how disconnecting this way of life was until I was sitting
• 33:26
  there with my son and his counselor,
• 33:31
  and she showed me his art therapy.
• 33:37
  And one drawing,
• 33:41
  was of an emotionless robot,
• 33:50
  and the other one was of an ogre ruling over his kingdom.
• 34:02
  That's how he saw me.
• 34:09
  And I'm grateful for my recovery,
• 34:12
  for teaching me that I'm perfectly imperfect and I don't need to be perfect,
• 34:22
  that it's okay to feel perfect.
• 34:32
  And that I don't need to be in control of every situation at all times.
• 34:42
  When I heard that crack, I knew that I might be paralyzed.
• 34:50
  And my mindfulness program allowed me to get in touch with my breath,
• 34:59
  find acceptance and trust that there is a plan.
• 35:07
  And I believe that part of that plan is to be here with you today,
• 35:16
  for someone who may need to hear this message.
• 35:25
  Mindfulness acceptance gratitude,
• 35:33
  they helped save my life and lead by creating emotional safety,
• 35:45
  not just in the operating room but in myself in every relationship that matters.
• 36:00
  Which one of these speaks to you today?
• 36:10
  I love you, and thank you.
• 36:30
  Thank you so much for listening. I'm Holly Wayment. I'll see you soon.