Category Archives: Health

November 25:  My Journals Make Me Better

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NaBloPoMo 2019

“You both have multiple journals that are all partially written in?” I asked, feeling vaguely twitchy.

On an online forum where I like to think I’m making new friends, three of us have bonded over our shared love of journals.  I wrote to the group last week, “I may have almost as many blank journals as I have books–the potential in them, the invitation to fill them with experience and life–they just make me so happy.”  The other two musketeers described their journals of various sizes, shapes, and designs, scattered about their homes.  They get written in whenever inspiration strikes.

That idea made me a little uncomfortable—that thoughts and ideas might be strewn about in different books, lying randomly around a home, disconnected, alone!  Hence the question above that I keyboard-blurted tonight.  I thought at first, “I can’t do that.”  Then I realized, I do do that—I have at least 4 journals going at the same time.  But I do organize them (not that my friends don’t—I have asked them to clarify).  I have a personal one, where I keep all original content. This one has at least three different designs of washi tape tabs, for blog ideas, presentation ideas, and other recurrent themes.  One is for work–a record of meetings, tasks, initiatives and their progress.  In a third I take notes at conferences or other formal learning.  Yet another holds insights from coaching calls and exercises from LOH.  I carry at least two, sometimes all, of them around with me every day. It’s common for me to have at least two out and be writing in both of them at the same time–taking notes from a meeting or presentation in one, then writing reflections, insights, and revelations in the other.  I often flip them over and write from the back covers, to keep lists and other short, serial records.  I attach email printouts and sticky notes, and when I reread I highlight and write in the margins.  These are well-used and well-loved books.

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In 2010 I went to a Mindfulness in Medical Education retreat.  I was physically ill that week with a respiratory virus.  But I had been mentally and emotionally unwell for months, turbulent and restless inside.  All I could do was ruminate, turning thoughts, conversations, and memories over, raking the same terrain, uncovering nothing new, no insights to show for all that psychic energy spent.  On the first night of the retreat we were given some quiet time and a pad of paper.  I filled my mug with hot tea, climbed into the bay window, and started writing.  For a month I had had inexplicable and persistent cubital tunnel syndrome—inflammation of the ulnar nerve at my right elbow that caused such sensitivity and pain in my forearm that I could hardly stand wearing long sleeves.  That night I unloaded the whole of my pent up frustrations onto that legal pad, many pages worth—a total brain dump.  I always journaled growing up, and somehow it had been years since I had last penned for myself.  I had forgotten how cathartic, how therapeutic, it was.  The next morning my arm felt normal.  I have kept a journal ever since, and that pain has never recurred.

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Another friend mentioned recently that he may leave his house without his wallet or his keys, but he never steps out the door without his journal.  I can totally relate!  Now I suspect there are more of us than I thought.  It’s the most satisfying feeling to have a reliable, accessible repository to record insights, ideas, and discernments, whenever they occur.  When I cannot do this—usually when I’m driving—it’s like having to pee until I can get out the journal at the next stoplight (or pull over).  It occurs to me occasionally to stop accumulating blank journals.  I’ve already set a moratorium on buying yoga pants and washi tape (for now).  But if a blank journal calls to me, I will buy it.  It’s good for my soul.

November 24:  Alone Time Makes Me Better

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NaBloPoMo 2019

How many hours do you get to yourself at a time?  I mean not just in the shower or commuting, or to work out. I mean how much time do you get to really, only take care of yourself?  When there are no kids to pick up or drop off, no meals to plan or prepare, no immediate work deadlines, no call, no commitments?

I had 36 hours this weekend—there are about 25 minutes left.

I realized at the end of Wednesday that my irritation at fellow drivers was probably a projection of anxiety and agitation about my kids being away this weekend, each to a different place, a first experience for both of them and me.  Anxiety often manifests as anger and irritability for me.  I called forth many of my cognitive behavioral and mind body practices to manage the fear and worry, so that I could actually enjoy this amazing alone time—the first such stretch since the elder kid’s birth.

And holy cow, I’ gotta do this more often.

I will spare you the list of restorative activities!  But suffice it to say that I managed to balance sleep, music, food, productivity, creativity, solitude, and connection.  It really was a perfect rhythm.  Deep breath.  And now I’m ready for the family’s return and re-entry into life as usual, a little more relaxed and peaceful.

This year has been intense, fast-paced, and dense with learning, both personal and professional.  I think we all appreciate the idea of alone time, and we understand its importance intellectually.  But like so many things, to actually experience it first hand, for real, is completely different and profound.  I finished listening to Range this morning.  In it David Epstein describes how teams do best when members have a balance between solitary and interactive, collaborative work, as opposed to all one or the other.  Coaches know that training for any skill, be it athletic, musical, or otherwise, requires alternation between periods of sustained, focused practice and rest, time away.  New neural pathways require downtime to fully integrate.  This weekend, I was able to synthesize ideas from Epstein’s book on diversity of experience, and assimilate them with what I’m reading in Ozan’s book, Think Like a Rocket Scientist, on combinatory play.  In the quiet of an empty house, freed from rushing off to the next activity, insights arose more freely, and I connected dots to previous experiences and learning much more easily.  Today I started The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.  More transformative ideas (simple and profound) to start incorporating into my world view and leadership practice, and to write about later—Yahoo!

I wondered if I’d be lonely this weekend… Nope, not at all.  This time alone was exactly what I needed.  Loving thanks to the family for gifting it to me.

November 10:  Experimental Questions Make Me Better

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NaBloPoMo 2019

What’s the most interesting question your doctor asks?  What effect does it have on you?

I get to ask some really fun and interesting questions of my patients.  They often come about spontaneously, then I realize how helpful they are, and I integrate them into my routine interview.

It was almost ten years ago now that I was seeing a pleasant young woman for the third time.  She had recurrent, nonspecific physical symptoms, and felt down.  She was having a really hard time at work, and it was having a significant impact on her overall health and well-being.  Around the same time I saw another patient, a young man.  He felt well overall, but was also not happy in his job.  I remember casting around in my mind, looking for a quick and easy way to quantify the negative effect of these patients’ negative work experiences on their health.  I can’t remember which visit sparked the 0-10 stress and meaning scale questions, but it was one of them, and then I repeated the questions on the other soon after.  These were my first two, unsuspecting, experimental question subjects.  On a scale of 0 to 10, how high do you rate the overall stress of your work?  That was easy, but I also had to figure out whether there was some benefit that was worth the cost of the stress.  So: On the same scale, how high do you rate the overall meaning of your work to you?  The bottom line is that we can tolerate very high levels of stress if the work is meaningful—for sustainable work, the meaning-to-stress ratio needs to be 1 or greater, and overall meaning is best at 7 or higher.  That year I realized I could create deeper, more helpful, more insight-revealing questions in my patient encounters.

My own work meaning rating rose by at least a couple integers almost immediately.

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Since then I have consistently asked about body signs of stress, resilience practices, the proportions of threat vs. challenge stress at work or home.  Since I last wrote about these questions in 2016, I have continued the experiments.

By 2016 I was also using the elite athlete analogy with my patients, asking every year about habits in the 5 reciprocal domains of health (after talking about stress and meaning at work): Sleep, Exercise, Nutrition, Stress Management, and Relationships.  But after asking the same questions for a couple years in a row, both my patients and I get a little bored.  So in 2017 I went a little deeper in the relationships category.  After confirming marital status, ages and health of children, I started asking, “Tell me about your emotional support network,” because the more I am reminded of the critical importance of emotional support in our health, the less it makes sense to not ask about it directly.

With each additional set of questions, I learn more about my patients. I learn how people understand the questions—sometimes it’s totally different from my own understanding, and the conversation about the meaning and objective of my asking gives me wonderful insights into people.  Patients are remarkably open and honest in their answers, which always reminds me of the honor and privilege of my role as physician.  The answers to these questions are what allow me to imagine my patients in their natural habitats, engaging with their work and the people in their lives.  The answers provide context and texture to the other patterns we uncover in health habits, and we often come together to a better understanding of both the origins and consequences thereof.  I can’t speak for my patients, but I always come away feeling just a little more connected.  I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

This year I’m excited to introduce 4 new questions.  It started out as three.  The third one wasn’t landing quite right initially.  I wasn’t asking what I meant, and I couldn’t quite articulate what I was after.  So I experimented with the wording until I got to the current state:

  1. In the coming year, what do you see as the biggest threat to your health?
  2. What is the biggest asset?
  3. Having answered these, how does this affect your decision making going forward? …And other iterations I can’t remember anymore
  4. One year from now, when we meet again, what do you want to look back and see/say about your health, relationships, and whatever else is important to you?
  5. (then the corollary question that occurred organically once and I then incorporated–) In order to make this vision a reality, what support do you already have or need to recruit?

I have asked these questions since July.  I always think to myself how I would answer for my patients, based on what I know about their circumstances, habits, and biometrics.  About two thirds of the time, our answers are the same.  Patients seem to receive them well, too.  One asked me to email them to him, so now I offer to email them to everybody.

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You might imagine that I think these questions make me a better physician.  That may or may not be true.  All of these questions make me better—a better, more self-aware person—because I also ask them of myself.  What is my meaning:stress ratio today?  This week?  This year?  I assess the threat/challenge ratio of my own life stressors, especially the acute ones.  I have had the same body signs of stress for many years, but in 2019 I may have developed a couple new ones, darn.  What’s the biggest threat to my health?  My hedonist impulses, no question.  The biggest asset?  My Counsel—those best friends and confidants.  What is my vision for my health a year from now?  I only answered that for myself a week ago (and I’ll keep it to myself, thank you).  And what support do I have/need?  I’m still working on that one!  That I don’t already know the answer to this one surprises me—I assumed I knew, but when I sat down to think about it formally, I realize that this may be the missing piece that holds me back from achieving some of my personal health goals.  HUH, how fascinating!  Did I not just write about how I question some of my patients’ ‘Lone Ranger’ method of self-care?  Well hello kettle, I’m pot!

Now, off to ponder some more, yay!