EP178: Reimagining Success: Leaning Out with Dawn Baker

Embracing Change: From Breast Cancer to Being Nice to Yourself

In this episode of The Girl Doc Survival Guide, Christine edited an episode from the Lean Out Podcast with Dr. Dawn Baker. The conversation covers Christine's journey with a breast cancer diagnosis and its impact on her work. They discuss the importance of self-care, the fixed mindset, and having hobbies. Christine shares insights from her journey as a parent of a young patient and her reflections on medical decisions, emphasizing the value of patient education and listening to one's intuition.

00:00 Introduction and Podcast Overview

00:31 Unexpected Directions in the Interview

00:58 Balancing Work and Life Post-Cancer Diagnosis

02:37 Exploring New Hobbies and Interests

03:02 Writing and Parenting Influences

03:34 Navigating Medical Challenges with a Child

07:19 Reflections on Parenting Decisions

09:11 Fixed Mindset and Personal Growth

11:41 Being Kinder to Yourself

13:26 Conclusion and Podcast Outro

Transcript

Christine Ko: [00:00:00] Given that it's summer, this is one more episode where I've edited a podcast episode that I did with Dawn Baker. We talk about my diagnosis of breast cancer. We talk about the fixed mindset, and we talk about having hobbies and also just the concept of being nicer to yourself. If you're willing to listen in, hope that it helps you in some way.

Dawn Baker: Welcome to the Lean Out Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Dawn Baker. Today's interview was another surprise for me. I expected the discussion to be about work-life balance and self-care, and it is to some extent, but we ended up also going a different direction that I didn't expect, and the result is really powerful. My guest is Dr. Christine Ko. We talked about being a patient and being a parent of a very young patient, and the great importance of being kind to yourself.

Tell us a little bit about [00:01:00] how your work life balance is different from those who are also in your profession. 

Christine Ko: I was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2022, stage one. I think I'm cured as much as medical cures are possible for cancer these days, and so I am happy and grateful for that, but it really did make me realize that life is short and do I want to be working all the time? The answer is no.

I do love my job and that's the thing that I find difficult, I have to say no to things that I really wanna do at work in order to do things that are non-work, which I also enjoy. But it's hard sometimes to see opportunities that are like, oh, I would love to do that! But I have to say no. Having cancer made me realize work is not the only thing that I [00:02:00] gain a lot of pleasure and satisfaction and fulfillment from.

Dawn Baker: I am so grateful that you are, doing well after this diagnosis and that you've had a really great outcome. And I understand what you're saying about having some sort of a health crisis cause you to wake up and look at your life and be like, what am I doing? Am I actually spending time doing the things I want? Because the time is precious. As far as the things that you realized that you wanted to spend more time on that are nonclinical or nonmedical, tell a little bit about those.

Christine Ko: There's a variety of things. So I have my own podcast. It's fun to talk to people about things that I'm interested in. I've been trying more to create hobbies for myself. Writing. I've always loved reading. In the last two years, I've been playing more tennis, which I'm not good at, but it's really fun to be [00:03:00] improving.

Dawn Baker: That's great. I saw, you have written a book for kind of more the patient population or like general public, but also a book for kids. So what prompted you to do that? 

Christine Ko: My kids influenced me a lot. I learn so much by seeing what they're learning or talking to them. 

Dawn Baker: Did this experience with breast cancer or maybe both inform why you wrote a book about improving doctor patient connections and communication? 

Christine Ko: The experience I had with my son, I was on the patient side. He was the patient, not me. I was the parent taking him around. The way that I was treated shocked me, actually, and not to be hypocritical or sound like I'm condemning the doctors that we saw in any way, I realized I would do the same things as a physician, like on the physician side, and [00:04:00] be actually maybe somewhat callous and dismissive of patient concerns, and not really intending to do that.

It really taught me a lot of what it feels like to be on the other side when you are very sensitive, very anxious, afraid when you have all of these sort of "negative" emotions. I was so worried about what was going on with him and confused, upset. Why wasn't this diagnosed properly? Not that it was anyone's fault.

The biggest thing that I took away from the whole thing with my son is there's a patient education piece that I think maybe I even discounted more because I'm a physician, just trusted that, oh, his newborn screening is fine, so why could there be anything wrong? Because at different points, up to when he was tested again at nine months, [00:05:00] I was like, there's something wrong with his hearing.

But I just thought how could there be, he was tested, like, it should be fine. I should have known that as a physician, that it's not like any one test is usually a hundred percent perfect. But I didn't think about that.

And so that is one thing that I think I try to be more cognizant of with my own patients now, and I tell them much more freely than I ever did before, okay, I'm not sure why you have this symptom, you know, If they have a certain symptom. Or I'll say, well, I think it's this and this is the reason, but if it continues or you get other symptoms... . like this, this or this, if I can sort of remotely think of something, I'll just tell them because they wouldn't know.

There was this sort of belief in the medical system that I had, which isn't necessarily bad, and then also, there are a lot of emotions tied to that because who really wants to think that there's any [00:06:00] medical problem right, with their child?

So I think there were just three major things that were competing against me trusting myself and pursuing that there was something wrong. I'll just insert here because I keep saying things like wrong or medical issue or problem. And I am also aware of the whole ableist tendency to say that hearing loss or profound deafness is a problem. I don't mean to be giving that sort of ableist message. There's the Capital D Deaf community who believes there's nothing wrong with profound deafness and that it's a difference that we should honor. I do wanna honor that perspective. It doesn't seem like I honored it with what we chose for our son. But one of the big reasons that I chose that is because I realized in doing the research, you can't give cochlear implants later, [00:07:00] like when they're 18 because their brain will have developed, it's too late to give them at that time. So it had to be done when he's not of age of consent. And I realized though, that he can choose later. He can't take out the inside component, but he can always just take the outside off and choose to be profoundly deaf. This gives him a choice later. I still struggle with this because I really wanted to be able to honor what he would want for himself later.

This is the paradox and difficulty of parenting. All parents can relate to that, right? We make decisions for our kids all the time, especially the younger they are, when they're babies, and who knows how the kid's gonna feel about that later.

Dawn Baker: You've been through this big journey with some big decisions that really do affect, like you said, the life of your child in the future. And I appreciate that you're pointing out the difference between the Capital D Deaf community and your choices.

And I've done in [00:08:00] vitro, had a surrogate. People have major reservations about stuff like that. And also like, why don't you just adopt a kid? There's enough room in this whole world for multiple different paths and choices. Your choice doesn't mean anything about disparaging someone else's choice.

I like to apply this same thinking to work-life balance and to medicine and navigating our career paths because we don't all have to do this same prescribed path that is supposed to be this golden path to success. There's room to be a professional and to do a podcast, to write a book, to work part-time, to do something unique in medicine, to start a business. You're demonstrating this.

Christine Ko: Thank you. Yeah. I mean parenting has taught me we all fail. I've learned to apologize through being a parent. I just say to my kids like, okay, I'm sorry, that was me.

Dawn Baker: This is new territory for me too.

Christine Ko: [00:09:00] They've given me grace, which is awesome. And I've had to give them grace plenty of times 'cause kids are kids.

When I was a young kid, I don't know that anyone ever told me to do this, but I took on the 

fixed mindset. 

Things need to be a certain way, my career needs to be a certain way. Part of that's tied into, who makes that rules, right? Like who makes that, who sets what a career's supposed to be, you know? And so It's people pleasing.

I limited myself as a physician, and I could have very well limited myself as a parent making this decision for my son about what to do about his hearing. Because if I had, too much taken on, oh, I wanna people please, and I want to not be ableist and really listen to what the Capital D Deaf community is saying, I wouldn't have had him have the cochlear implant surgery.

But the final piece of that is like making the decision for me and the family that I have. And the only problem I have with American Sign Language is I don't speak that [00:10:00] language. Imagine if you can only bring up your child in French, and you don't speak French, but you need to learn French right now and, teach your child French.

It came down to: I can't learn American Sign Language quickly enough. I thought, okay, if I quit and I dedicate myself, maybe I can learn it. But then what about my husband? Like His dad? What about his sister? What about the grandparents?

Dawn Baker: Yeah. He's 15, right? So you were probably early on in your career when all this is going on. and it's super stressful. People have infertility, health crises, children issues, right around that same time that they're trying to establish their career. And I look at it as the perfect storm.

Christine Ko: It is a perfect storm. When I'm stressed, and it's just survival, I default to my habits of mind, the fixed mindset way of thinking. It's not a healthy way to think, but it's survival, you know? And so if I [00:11:00] had better coping skills that habitually pop up when I'm stressed, I would be better off.

Dawn Baker: I'm wondering if you have any particular advice for people who are feeling like they can't get outta that fixed mindset? Because I know exactly what you mean. I've been there too. Um, and I would say that it's part of being on the whole treadmill of achievement idea, but fixed mindset goes even beyond that to like I can't change myself or I'm a certain type of person and this is who I am and that kind of stuff. Whereas we can change and grow and learn new things all the time. What's your go-to strategy besides your podcast and like learning from other people and reflecting?

Christine Ko: I think the go-to strategy is really to be nicer to myself. What I mean by that is believe in what your mind or body is telling you about a certain situation. Like for my son, like, I [00:12:00] I wish I had believed myself sooner, because there were at least four different opportunities where I could have maybe been like, but wait, something's wrong here. So it applies to that.

In terms of the other things that I do right now, it still falls under that being nicer to myself 'cause I do love my job, so I could just work. If no one really regulated me, I could work on different work projects, and I would find it enjoyable, but that's not being nice to myself because I learned through breast cancer that I might not be able to work being a physician, all the time. And so I am the type of person, I want to have something that I'm sort of actively thinking about and growing from. That's what I like about my job, but I realize there needs to be a hobby where I also can grow and change. And so that's the podcast, that's learning tennis, like doing something that I'm bad at and becoming better at it. For someone else, it might not be good to be adding on [00:13:00] activities, especially if you're overwhelmed as a new mom or something. I couldn't do anything new as a mom, right? I had my relatively new job, kids; you know, it's it's like enough, and kids at that young age are changing so much.

But yeah, I would say just to be nicer and trust that you do know what you need, just give yourself the stillness and space to listen to yourself. 

Dawn Baker: Yeah. That's great advice. Thank you so much. 

Christine Ko: So that was my conversation with Dawn Baker on the Lean Out Podcast hosted by Dawn, and I hope you enjoyed it. We'll be back next week with a new guest on The Girl Doc Survival Guide. Thank you so much for listening in! Please subscribe and follow and share. Thank you!