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The Hoeflinger Podcast
Welcome to the The Hoeflinger Podcast, where Dr. Brian Hoeflinger and Kevin Hoeflinger delve into riveting discussions about life as a neurosurgeon, the world of medicine, healthy living, fitness, and anything else that piques their curiosity. Dr. Brian Hoeflinger, MD, brings his extensive 24 years of experience as a full-time neurosurgeon to educate and inform. Get ready for engaging conversations that will broaden your understanding of the medical realm and beyond!
The Hoeflinger Podcast
#2: The Story of Dr. Cindy Hoeflinger
In this episode, we dive into the inspiring life story of Dr. Cindy Hoeflinger and how she courageously navigated the intricate tapestry of motherhood, career ambitions, and societal expectations on her path to becoming a full time forensic pathologist. Join us as we explore what it was like for her as a woman navigating the male-dominated realm of medicine. Candidly, she shares the pressures, triumphs, and pivotal moments that shaped her journey, including her impactful role as a deputy medical examiner.
As we delve deeper, we uncover a layer of Dr. Hoeflinger's life that speaks to the indomitable human spirit – her remarkable ability to overcome grief. We navigate through the raw and unspoken emotions surrounding grief and loss - unspoken topics that touch all of our lives - and explore how she found solace and strength amidst the most challenging of times. Her journey becomes a testament to the power of the human heart to heal and find hope even in the face of profound loss.
So, brace yourself for a rollercoaster of emotions, triumphs, and profound shared human experiences. Tune in to this remarkable episode of The Hoeflinger Podcast as we unravel the layers of a life well-lived.
Tune in every week for new episodes of The Hoeflinger Podcast with Dr. Brian Hoeflinger and Kevin Hoeflinger.
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Welcome back to the Hefflinger podcast. I'm here tonight with my mom, a very special guest, my dad actually. He's on call right now so he got called into the hospital so he couldn't join us but tonight. So we're talking to my mom, dr Cindy Hefflinger. She's a retired forensic pathologist. She's got her MD and her PhD, so she's got my dad, dr Hefflinger, beat out with the PhD. Welcome, clay.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Episode number two. So, yeah, exciting. So I swine to. I got lots of different questions and you can talk about whatever you want as well, but let's kick it off. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so tell people a little bit about, just to start of, who you are, what you did, kind of just give an overview of what a forensic pathologist is and anything else you want to kind of detail for people.
Speaker 2:Well, I graduated from high school in 1979 and I was a little country girl and my mom and dad hadn't gone to college. My dad didn't even finish high school and we didn't know about all the different careers that were out there and didn't have as many choices. And women were really starting to become.
Speaker 2:I guess, emancipated back then or whatnot. So I was gonna do like chemical engineering or something with chemistry or math, because I loved math and chemistry. And after a short while I realized there wasn't much. I was gonna do with math because I didn't really want to go on and take all that theoretical math. So I don't know, I was talking to my mom and had thought about becoming a nurse. And I was talking to my mom and I said I can remember standing in the kitchen in our little farmhouse out in the country and I said I don't know, mom, I think I want to become a doctor. Why should I stop and not try to go all the way?
Speaker 1:So that's how it kind of started. This was between high school and college.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, like my first semester in college, the first semester in college.
Speaker 1:So you just thought about like why not? Cause obviously it was a lot different back then. It still is women in medicine, it's definitely still a male dominated industry. So that was a pretty probably scary step saying I want to actually be a full doctor.
Speaker 2:I had parents that told me I could do whatever I wanted and even though they were very traditional and my dad was a truck driver he was an over the road truck driver my dad used to always tell me that there wasn't anything that I couldn't do if I set my mind to it. And that did help a lot with confidence and stuff and I did really really well in school and I just decided I was going to go for it and switch my majors and I went to a very small liberal arts college that used to be an all girls school, for it's Catholic, but it was an all girls school Initially. It was Sianaheits College. It's become Sianaheits University now in Adrian, Michigan, and like, for instance, my organic chemistry class had three people in it and I was one of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was really stressful, but it was also. I mean, what an experience to be able to have just three of you. You got a lot of one on one attention Every day. We'd have to do a problem on the board, so there was no-.
Speaker 1:That had to be a little nerve wracking off at the point.
Speaker 2:Very nerve wracking and my teacher was my advisor and one of the people I really, really looked up to, sister Sharon. She had her PhD in physics from Michigan University of Michigan.
Speaker 1:So you can imagine how smart she was.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 1:Before that, because obviously you always did pretty well in school. Well joke, but you graduated valedictorian or-.
Speaker 2:I graduated valedictorian, but number one in my class.
Speaker 1:Yeah, from Blissfield High School, blissfield High School, and you had some track. You had a track record too, I still have track record. We saw you had the relay, one that was still up.
Speaker 2:We went to States my freshman year and I went for the 100 year dash. I'm trying to remember I think it was the hundred. We were switching over to meters in the middle of all that. So, it might have been the 100 meter dash, I don't know, but it was the hundred and the 440 relay and the 88 relay. So it was either the 400 meter or the 800, or-.
Speaker 1:Someone was telling you that that was just like a year ago or something. Now that your record's still up, it's at the highest, so that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Well, and at first I thought it was yards and it would always be up, but it's in meters.
Speaker 1:That's pretty.
Speaker 2:So you know there has been no. No, it's the 800, and that was not my better event, the 220 or the 200. I wasn't as fast. I was better at the shorter distances, so I was the slowest one on the 800, but we placed, like I mean, seventh so, but it's school record, so that was pretty cool, but yeah.
Speaker 1:so you obviously were pretty athletic, you were very athletic, you were doing very well in school and then you went to Santa Heights for one semester or two semesters.
Speaker 2:Oh no, when I made that decision, I was in my first semester. I ended up graduating from there.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh, you went to the University of Toledo for one Saturday, but for one Saturday I started at University of Toledo.
Speaker 2:I don't know why, but a bunch of us went from my school we were in Michigan and then that year they opened up Rostrosity where they offered in-state tuition and there was like 10 of us. So it was kind of fun. A lot of my friends were there too, but I hated it. It was just so big and for me I mean, back then there were like 22,000 students at UT University of Toledo and it's much smaller now, but I just found that overwhelming as a little country girl, you know.
Speaker 1:Definitely probably a big shock to go to not being used to so many people. What a transition then to go to Santa Heights and have a class with three people.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that was my third year, but still, yeah, even my lower level classes might have had 25, 30. That would be my chemistry class 25 to 30 people yeah and then it's pretty small.
Speaker 1:So while you're at Santa Heights, how did you work in the lab? Then when you and dad met?
Speaker 2:Oh, that was grad school.
Speaker 1:That was grad school. Okay, yeah. So you graduated from Santa Heights, then you went to University of Toledo. Well, here's a little unique thing.
Speaker 2:So when I was trying to decide what to do, it was really really hard and I imagine it still is. It goes up and down, but it was really hard to get into med school back then and we only had I think we only had like three med schools in Michigan and there was like seven in Ohio. So obviously if you were in Ohio I wasn't that up your chances a little bit maybe. But we had this guy on our board at Sienna that was head of the graduate school at the Medical College of Ohio in Toledo, which is now affiliated now it's University of Toledo Medical but he was head of the graduate program, the whole graduate school, and then he was head of the anatomy department. So I went and talked to him.
Speaker 2:His name was Dr Liberato de Dio and he said to me why would you wanna go to med school? Why don't you go to graduate school? And you can do research and get your PhD and you have research opportunities. So since I didn't get into medical school from Michigan and actually I don't even remember if I took the MCAT then maybe I just decided I was gonna go to grad school because it was intriguing to me and I loved learning, so I ended up getting my PhD from getting into grad school and getting my PhD from MCL that's what we used to call it.
Speaker 1:And that's when you endowed that.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think. So we met in between after I graduated. I was working in the EM lab then, not doing research, but I had a summer job in the EM lab, the electron microscopy lab, and actually that was between first and second years. So I started medical school. Then, long story short, I just I still wanted to go to medical school, so I forgot my. As I was getting my PhD toward the end of it, I decided to pursue it. I was at that point then I'm an Ohio resident and I applied to medical school and got accepted. So I was finishing up my dissertation and working on that, my first semester in med school. And then I did my first year and I worked in the EM lab that first summer and your dad was doing research that summer on trigeminal neuralgia and he happened to work in the EM lab too.
Speaker 1:And we met that summer Because you are three years older than that.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am so yeah.
Speaker 1:But you guys were already older at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That was probably a very busy time then. So you were finished I didn't realize that you were finishing your PhD, kind of, and you still and started medical school. Yeah, and starting medical school, which?
Speaker 2:I had already taken my first year of graduate school. I had to take anatomy, I had to take physics, everything was pure. Now it's integrated and it's system based more like you'll do cardiovascular system, I believe. But we did all anatomy, a year of physiology. I didn't do behavioral science. That was a medical school class and there was another class for first year, biochemistry. So I did all those classes with the medical students and then my second year, or yeah, I'm sorry I got a little confused. I had already done those as a graduate student.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So then I met him that summer. We did not meet that whole school year. Why do you think that is? You both were so busy. No, I, there was about 150 kids in the class, and your dad sat in the third row and your mother sat in the back.
Speaker 1:Oh, you sat in the back, I sat in the back, so I guess I'm more like dad and I. Always I said in the front for a lot of my classes yeah, let's distract. Well, I don't how state there's just so many. Yeah, everyone's got their laptops open. They'll be people like shopping on Facebook or playing games. Yeah, no, it's so distracting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't imagine having the but part of. There were two reasons why I sat in the back. I'm always late, mm-hmm, and I talked to I talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so you can't talk in the third row.
Speaker 2:Yeah and everybody would stare at you if you were late, so you got to always be on time.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you guys met, You're finishing up medical school and let's fast forward a little bit to Age at the end of the medical school. Well, yeah, and just like dad would describe and you kind of laid it out for him, if you guys were gonna do the residency program match, since you were both trying to do residency program, get into residency programs. You can do a like a couple's match, but you wanted to. You're like, if I'm gonna move across the country or whatnot or move, yeah, we're gonna get engaged.
Speaker 2:Well, I said I'm not foul, I'm. I was very independent, yeah, and very much a strong-willed woman and very Spoken. Yeah, yeah and I said that I wouldn't be following him anywhere without a ring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I. I don't know if I said engaged or married, but I think it was married.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but that's, that's a good thing too, I think, to Stand up for yourself a little bit of well, you know, you got to keep your interests. You can't just let go of all those dreams you put in many years.
Speaker 2:You know I would never at that time in my life, at that young of an age, after pursuing my dreams at that point, would never have Followed somebody without making sure it was the best thing for me too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's and our match actually wasn't a couple's match because neurosurgery had their own match and it was early, it was a month before the others. So I was applying is okay. So we got to step back a little bit too. Yeah, so he ended up getting this press. He won't tell you this, but it was prestigious. He got a research Grant through the Howard Hughes Research Institute there were only 25 of those given out in the country and he got several papers out of that year of research.
Speaker 2:That was our first year of marriage and and to enhance his chances also to get into a residency program, and Since there wasn't anything in Toledo, obviously we were gonna have to move away. Yeah, so he did his match and then I would try to interview as a second-year Resident, which sometimes you couldn't do because, like Michigan for instance, there they take five. They at that point they had taken five residency year for five years that people never dropped out of their program, so there was never an opening. And then I said, well, okay, then I'll, I'll, I'll Interview as a first year. So then I got an interview, you know, but I pretty much interviewed wherever he was getting interviews set up, okay so that's actually a little different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think how he's. Yeah, yeah, but okay, so, and that just happened till a workout then, so you were able to get into. So you guys moved to Rochester, new York, where, yeah, we're and that that was nerve-wracking.
Speaker 2:I mean we're interviewing in Seattle, seattle, washington, baltimore, maryland, you know, ann Arbor, michigan, thinking about these. You know we were pretty much very home Oriented and family oriented and thinking about leaving.
Speaker 1:That was a big, big deal for us back then, yeah, I mean definitely come from a small town and growing up your entire life in this area, yeah, so that that probably was. And then you get there, and how long was it before you first had Brian?
Speaker 2:Okay, so, um, so while he did that research fellowship year, I started my residency in Toledo. So that was very easy because they knew me and and they knew I would be going away. But they, you know, offered me a position which was really nice. So I was doing my first year of residency and a combined anatomical and clinical pathology residency. So I did a little bit of anatomical, which we can talk about at some point, and a little bit of clinical, and then he was doing his research and and we matched in Rochester, which was kind of I mean, it's not a cut in here too.
Speaker 1:Our, our dogs are down here in the cats, and if you hear some background noise, that's Delilah spazzing out in the back.
Speaker 2:They can't. They can't stand to be separated from me. They follow, yeah, they follow me all around and she snuck in because the cat got it but um.
Speaker 1:I need to cut you all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no problem. Um, I forgot what I was saying. Something about Rochester.
Speaker 1:So you did was yeah, so the clinical and then not anatomical. Yeah, so you split between that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I started as a second year and then he started as a first year in Rochester. It was a little bit more of a feel like, a little bit more of a hometown. Even though it was much, it was a big city and all, and it was much more white collar Because I remember that being a description. It was more white collar to those, more blue collar because we have, like, the Jeep plant and they had like some really big, big industries like Bauchin Lam, the, the camera company at George the camera guy.
Speaker 1:Kodak yeah.
Speaker 2:Kodak and some really, really big companies like that and that University of Rochester Medical Center, which is a great place to do our residency, because the types of cases and stuff that we saw were incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, what was that? What was it like for you doing your pathology residency?
Speaker 2:It's pretty cool because we we had 25 or 30 residents in our program slot. It was very international program. There are a lot of people that came from. We had some Chinese, chinese residents couple up from Lebanon, spanish and Really cool thing about my program there were a lot of PhDs at my program who already had their PhDs. So I mean you can imagine it was a really eclectic but very Intelligent group. But it was really a family. It was really fun. We had a nice group of people and I, brian's. They only had like seven residents so we really became close to some of those people and the couples and stuff, because that's your life, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're just in Seattle. I got to meet Paul.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my gosh. The first person dad met in his orientation was Paul and he became he was a urology resident. He became a really good friend of ours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's funny scene even after that and seeing each other for a while, when in Seattle we saw him and just the banter they have together, because I feel like in residency, when you're doing all that stuff too, people you're closest with there you don't have a ton of time for all this stuff. So people you are close with you become close.
Speaker 2:You've become very tight knit with because I had a girlfriend whose husband was a Ortho resident and he was in his first year and dad was in his first year, so that's their Internship here. So they do general surgery and it's brutal Mm-hmm, and he was always gone and she we both had chocolate lab puppies and she also was Going through some. She did in vitro fertilization and she was super, super sick and she wanted me to give her one of her shots. You know, the tell the pregnancy until your hormones take over. And I couldn't do it, but or I was lucky enough, dad had to come home, so he gave her her shot because her husband was never there. He was even busier than dad. You know it was crazy, but you know, you, you have these memories in this closeness. It's like a whole another lifetime.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of the stuff we did. When you guys talk about it. It was obviously a grueling time, but you have. You look back at the fond memories.
Speaker 2:Oh, such fond memories. I had a really close friend, camille Chowari, who's from Lebanon, and he's back in Lebanon and we were just really close him him, I and Cheryl from New York. Fun times and George from Greece.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I don't know, I think. I think I thought we they're on a call him his wife.
Speaker 2:Yep and they? They live right outside of pits, or where did we do?
Speaker 1:Philadelphia. Oh yeah, I got to see him yeah well, um, so Then you start having you guys start the family in. Rochester and what. What was that like? Because obviously it's already hard enough to start a family, but then you guys are both in residency, so I had to be kind of a crazy it was really stressful, but I'm such I was very high energy and very I'm very ADD.
Speaker 2:You already know this ADHD. So I had so much energy and I had Brian and I At that time. I was supposed to only get six weeks. They didn't have the family leave and all that stuff much different time right so you could get eight weeks if you had a C-section.
Speaker 2:But I had him naturally and and that was so stressful trying to find the daycare, get him in daycare and and I wanted to transition a little bit. So luckily my doctor wrote me something and I was able to get the eight weeks and then I use that last couple weeks kind of transition over because I I didn't work eight hour days. You know, I worked 11 hour days so it was really hard to take your baby and leaving for.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine. I mean now a lot of workplaces. A lot of places are giving you more like 10 to 12 weeks or up to six months. Yeah and he's that's becoming a competitive advantage for companies. So I can't imagine when you're working 11 hour plus days and then you're only getting supposed to get six days weeks. That yeah that seems like nothing you're yeah.
Speaker 2:So, well, and I tried to arrange my schedule so I did an easier rotation, like if you're doing surgical pathology, you're there from six, seven o'clock in the morning till Ten, eleven o'clock at night, or longer depending on what you, what your load is that day, and I couldn't do that with a newborn you know, so I did some electives and things that I could work eight to five.
Speaker 1:So do you think you can walk us through like a typical day, or could you think you can remember any? I know it's a long time ago.
Speaker 2:So just what it was. Yeah, so it was another lifetime ago. I can't imagine I did all this. So we lived, literally it was called the white pants district Because everybody that lived there were doctors and nurses and residents that and I literally was one straight over from the hospital and Probably to get to the ER from which I never went to a dad did was probably you know, 10-minute walk, or I mean not even that, five literally, because it was two blocks. And then I mean it's a huge complex but you know, getting to where I had to go would be a little bit longer. But but once I had Brian, I had to and our car was in a separate garage, it wasn't attached to the house. So that was interesting because I had him.
Speaker 2:The end of December and Rochester gets a lot of snow and your dad would be out there and he would be on call hours and hours and overnight and he'd come home and Sometimes he'd go out at four o'clock in the morning before he'd go to work and he'd shovel the driveway because I'd have Well, this is after I had him, I guess because I'd have to take him to daycare. Yeah, so I'd have to get the car take, get him all in and take him to daycare, come back, park the car, walk to work, yeah. And so let's just say I started at maybe 6 30, but you and your brother got up at 5 am so I had plenty of time there. So I'd I'd get to work by probably 7, 30, 7, 45, and then I'd have to leave at you know 5 and then go pick him up and get, because daycare ended at 6.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so then then I'd have to make dinner and and we weren't eating a lot of fancy home meals that I can tell you that you said well, you guys were probably just tired all the time. Mac cheese, whatever words one time your dad said I probably after had you, he goes, he goes. Oh, I made you dinner. It's in the microwave because we had the dog that I was always trying to eat the food and I look in the microwave and it was Spaghetti.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was cocoa too, right, yeah, coco. I remember her for the beginning of my life. Yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 2:I, your dad made me, which I hate, by the way hate.
Speaker 1:I love spaghetti. I guess they taste like the can. I know it's funny how things don't like these. Big Things like that are still the same spaghetti. Yeah, yeah, even 30 years later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so then you know, I'd get Brian ready for bed, then I'd try to study.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I can remember sitting in my little kitchen table and falling asleep and like sometimes crying because I was like oh, how am I gonna do this, you know.
Speaker 1:I think it's just one of those things I observed in my own life. The busier you get, the more you're like I I'm. You can do more it's like more official.
Speaker 1:It's like dad when he was working and he did a full ironman. He's like I don't know how I did it. Or you guys talking about residency. It's almost how did I do that? Because you're just so out of the rhythm of things. But if you started slowly building back up, you humans were capable of such great things. We're kind of pushing us and obviously you guys had a passion for it. Yeah, a passion for what you do and like, just like when you talk, tell us stories. I'm my girlfriend, madison, about forensic pathology and we'll get into that. You got some very cool stories.
Speaker 2:Very cool stories there's lots of stuff.
Speaker 1:So to jump back into it, you guys finish up your residency, you come back to Toledo and I have you and Julie and Brian. Yeah, you had us in Rochester and then, when we moved to Toledo, you had Christie, and you and dad are working, both working full-time. So what was it like when she started working full-time in Toledo?
Speaker 2:What I worked full-time before I got pregnant because we came back in 99 and I didn't have her till 2001 and you know that that was hard but you know I did it and you know, and dad will tell you this, I was the primary. I mean I I dropped off, I picked up, there was. There was never any of Dad helping get out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I think your dad never helped because he was never there, you know, so he couldn't help. Yeah, one time when this is kind of funny one time I left the dog at the groomers and and it was also a a Boarding facility and that veterinarians was attached to it, and only because I was at soccer or something out of pace, I was you, probably, and all of you of course and I felt so horrible because I was like I completely forgot the dog. So they just locked her up and kept her overnight, you know, and Never did that to you guys.
Speaker 1:So that was lucky, but also it's way crazier to. I mean, it was the tech, like just the beginning, in clings of it, but there was no smartphones. Oh god, no, no. But like at the early days, hi, just remembering everything you had to write it down, I had right now.
Speaker 2:I had a little book, I had this one kind. It was a day or glance, a day or something like that, and I love that I had multiple ones of that. But um, I searched the World Wide Web for the first time when in the basement of our house on Virginia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I know, it's p. We take it for granted. The locks were so ingrained.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Our lives. They feel so weird to leave the house without your phone.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, like missing your arm or people, just used to do that.
Speaker 1:All the time, you wouldn't hear from people.
Speaker 2:So the first cell phones when we when, like dad was on call and stuff, so when we were on call, we had these pagers that would I'm trying to remember the very first ones. They would just come across. They beep, beep, beep and they'd come across with a number. You didn't leave the hospital if you were on call. There was none of that. And and then there came these big, big, big cell phones. They were like this big and you couldn't take them out of the car. They were car phones.
Speaker 1:Oh, the car phones.
Speaker 2:I've not seen those huge things because, um, when dad was His chief residence a year, the last year he he could come home and stuff and I had just had Julie and I was trying to go to grocery store. Can you imagine going to the grocery store with a four-year-old maniac and you who could barely sit up in a cart, and then I have this infant that I so I had to put the infant in the front pack Tried to sit you up in the cart and have Brian sit up there next to you and strap you guys down, because they just started making those carts where you could put two kids in them.
Speaker 2:Okay because you know it was crazy time. So he went with me the first time after I had Julie and we get in the parking lot and he gets called away oh, it's great to drive two cars, you know. So then I had to go in there all by myself. And you know, when you, by the time you get diapers and pull-ups and Formula or whatever, I breastfed everybody as long as I could, but by the time you get that, then there's no room for anything else in your car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got. You got two kids spaghetti.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is some mac and cheese.
Speaker 1:But, um, yeah, so you guys that that was just obviously a wild time in your guys's life, but you got it done and it was fun, no yeah wait, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean, I think finally, I think there's just chapters of your life. It's just like when people look back at Mentory school or high school or now college. It's just you. You almost think about a different chapters and there's just different people and experiences involved, and it's just. It's easy to get very Sentimental, but it's also it's also beautiful in a way, of just the different things going.
Speaker 2:Oh I think you're back on those times and how much fun we actually had, but we didn't really do anything. We didn't have time to like. One time we did a little wine tour around Like within an hour of where, and I went. I love dessert and coffee, right, and I couldn't. Couldn't get the dessert because he was falling asleep. Yeah we had to leave. Yeah but um, yeah, there's so many times where he was sleeping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well you guys, for you guys weren't probably couldn't be the life of the party when you guys had to work so much.
Speaker 2:No, but you hang out with the other residents, yeah but it's just a different.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's some aside of becoming a doctor. Other people don't see you have to sacrifice a lot, a lot and the pursuit of different things. But I think having already established and creating, starting the family kind of works out. You guys have each other in the family, you don't need all that other stuff and other people have are starting their families too.
Speaker 2:Yeah and your attendings and their wives are really Really cool too. You know they help kind of, but they're not the women I worked with in a sense weren't great role miles. We're not in a. Why my? Because they were like super women and you know you got to try to Put yourself up to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hard, yeah it is really hard to Be successful in such a driven field that requires so much of you, especially if you're married to someone who hasn't even more. Now, once I moved back here and worked in Toledo, a lot of the women that I worked with that were pathologists. They had husbands that stayed at home. Oh and one of them was married to a lawyer.
Speaker 1:He's. I mean, in most relationships, if you're the, an MD, phd, pathologist, you're probably the One put on a pedestal and then, but it just so happens, your husband's in neurosurgery. Yeah, which pop culture people put on a pedestal even more. Yeah, but do so something I just thought of with these women that you know, you think are just almost like superwoman. Do you think woman because of how Madison, especially back then, do you think you almost have to put on this outward facade Most people to like, look like you're perfect, because it's not. A man's not gonna be judged in the same way.
Speaker 2:Oh for sure, If he's not. Definitely the women were super women in many, many ways. Yeah, but you do have to kind of put on that persona. My best friend, cheryl. Her dad was a four-star general and she was initially in the armed forces and went to medical school through there, graduated like one or two in her class at Georgetown. Yeah, so just very, very driven, ambitious, ambitious, but she got. It was every she was in a surgery general surgery residency, which had to have been incredible. She's incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah and she got pregnant Mm-hmm. And I think there were some complications, or even if they weren't, that was the game changer. Yeah, because they Didn't accept that, you know, because women are gonna have to take some time off and then somebody else has to bear that burden.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's not fair, but that is a huge thing. I mean in sports, people will say that it's almost like an injury. If a woman gets injured in sports, she has to take Multiple months off compared to other people. Or if you're trying to become a, if you're a career woman, having you have to take the time of the male does it, and then they're gonna slot someone else in who, quote-unquote, doesn't have, who's more focused on work as it works and I'll be all yeah, which is not.
Speaker 2:I think it's a little more balanced today, but I will tell you that, um, there were some of even my fellow residents that were guys, and they were single guys. I can remember one of my kid think of his name and I could see his face and it was like, oh, you know, we're just not as serious, okay, because and I still work 10, 15 hour days, but I'm not as serious as you because I have a kid, yeah, and you know he would complain because I'd put my breast milk and in our residence refrigerator, inside, like you know, multiple bags and a paper bag, and you couldn't even tell what it was, but it was like, oh gross and you're just trying to balance everything.
Speaker 1:I was saying that when he's just a single guy and it was kind of funny.
Speaker 2:Um, you just there's, there's, there's your lack of support, sometimes from the we're.
Speaker 1:You know you think your fellow, residents would support you, but that's all, and that's how all those things build up, where it makes it less and less likely. I feel like those are all things that play against you. It does going into something like that when, when you don't, you get extra barriers right there. That sounds like something, even just a small quip like that of all, you're putting your breast milk in the fridge.
Speaker 2:You know that um New York, I think I don't know if it was the first State to allow women to breastfeed in public and it happened when I was.
Speaker 1:Doing it so that I didn't know that. So that was it used to be illegal or you couldn't do it.
Speaker 2:Even you know where I initially had to. After I had Brian. I breastfed him and I was gonna try to breastfeed him as long as possible. You know where I had to go to do collect the milk during the day the bathroom. I sat on a toilet in the bathroom until I found out. Somebody told me that the OB GYN, gyn residents had the pumping machines. I I had like a manual machine, they had like machines and you could do both at once.
Speaker 2:And that was so cool, because then you could go and do it and because that happy step beats going. Yeah, I'm a toilet that half hour that I would be gone. I'd have to hide and make sure nobody knew I was doing anything I'd I'd have to sneak away to go to my OB appointments Because, oh my god yeah, you know 530 at night I might be, you know, getting away with something. Yeah that's really how I mean it was like that, yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:You have to fit it all in, because if you say, can I, if you ask for that time off, then you're making yourself look weaker.
Speaker 2:Yep, it is we like. It's like you're not, you're not as serious, or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is totally. That's totally the wrong way to work. No it's good that things are progressed. I think there's still a long way to go with a lot of fields, but I mean it's definitely trending, trending in the right direction.
Speaker 2:Same with residency work hours, still long way to go, which is another thing that New York was on the leading edge of and they changed. I'm almost certain that they changed the rules or whatever, or the at the time when we were in, because Dad had to start keeping track of his hours, because they weren't supposed to work so many hours a week, or whatever. And here's how they got away with you not one week he worked all the hours except for like three. So that's insane. That's got to be illegal, right? Well, the way they get away with it is we get four weeks of vacation a year, so they turn the hours in like every three months, or something like that.
Speaker 1:Kind of average still or something. Yeah, this is the Irish.
Speaker 2:I literally would keep track of his hours for him and and one time he, because he asked me to, because he was always so tired and busy, that was probably the first year when he was an intern. But um, he, one time he gave me his pager and said can you please, please, just take this pager for, you know, a half an hour an hour so I could get some sleep, you know. So he went and laid down in the call room and I had it for probably half an hour an hour, yeah. And then he the pages. You know, he got a page or something.
Speaker 1:That's something that's a big it. The residency hours, then, because they're always.
Speaker 2:They have these rules and I keep modifying them, but what it sounds like it, there are always little loopholes around it, because that I mean it's definitely an issue with how Much residents work it is and it's see one, do one, teach one was the rules back then, or that's what people would say, and it's almost like a badge of glory that you could well, even when dad was interviewing for residency, like a couple of programs, bragged about their divorce rate. Well, because of that, you know that means you're really working hard because you got a divorce during your residency. Yeah, you know. So it's like you know that that's the cycle you need to break. Is this you? I suffered, so you must too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's the whole. The whole weird thing about it is yeah, they, so I've suffered, so you need to suffer, but we've now proven so much of how important sleep is, the whole sleep.
Speaker 2:I'll sleep and I'll die like that.
Speaker 1:Dr Matthew Walker, he's a lot of ton of the research and it's so insanely important and you, julie, would be great to talk about that too, but that's my sister. Yeah, it is insane that it's still not shifting. Where you can't, you can't just sacrifice sleep at you but we have to yeah.
Speaker 2:No, you know, you do have to it's but it.
Speaker 2:That's where stuff needs to change and yeah, Because I, you know, I think back on how a little sleep we got like after we got to Toledo and and I I was trying to study for my boards. I Would put all the kids to bed because this was probably after I had Christy or no, was before I had Christy. So I put everybody to bed and then I'd sleep until like midnight, one o'clock. So maybe I got three or four hours and then I get up and study for two or three hours for my boards and then I go back to sleep. Can I mean? Can you imagine?
Speaker 1:I know I can't, I just have it's crazy to think about that. I mean even kids, high school and college that sit there and have to cram stuff in and all that, and then that's not even keep. You cram stuff in, you do well on a test, but then do you remember it long-term? No, because you didn't. You didn't get sleep, so it doesn't well, I can tell you this is like oh, I partied all semester and then now I'm gonna study.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you had to do this like all the time, and I mean, we did that kind of stuff too back back in College, and then you did a little less of it when you got to to med school. Um, because you couldn't. You couldn't rely on your memory anymore and, floating by, you had the Studying we had to do. It was incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no. So your weeks were just really. Obviously you guys took some weekend trips here and there, but you guys were those years of your life were obviously very locked. I have a free time of just going to do oh, I hardly ever left.
Speaker 2:Once I was in the hospital. It's not like I went and got a Starbucks, or now you got Starbucks in the hospital, but you know I wasn't going to. I had regular coffee. We didn't have all those fancy. Yeah, gosh darn it. Love those fancy drinks.
Speaker 1:You love. We have big B here. I love big weeks north west Ohio and southeast Michigan.
Speaker 2:I don't know where else it is, but it's not nice, it's not national in Indiana a little bit you love the big. You would always have those after teddy bear yeah, I get the teddy bear before I went and picked the kids up from school. You need some sustenance in the afternoon.
Speaker 1:So now they kind of jump back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we're sorry.
Speaker 1:We're jumping around. But now to go back, let's get into some of your like. When you're a full-time Forensic pathologist, let's talk about like what you were doing more so break that down for people and let's let's hear some stories on that.
Speaker 2:So I got my four-year degree in natural science. I got a bachelor's in science with the degree in natural science and then I went to medical College of Ohio and did my graduate work and got my PhD in medical sciences with a specialty in anatomy Mm-hmm. And then I decided to. Then I decided go to medical school. So I got my MD and then I decided to do Pathology, because anatomy is normal, study of normal. You know systems and development, and anatomy, physiology, and then pathology is a study of the abnormal.
Speaker 1:Yeah disease.
Speaker 2:So it kind of went hand-in-hand and I was. So pathology was anatomical and clinical, and anatomical is autopsy, cytology and Surgical pathology, and then clinical is like blood bank chemistry, things like that, so on fluids and stuff like that. So I did a combined program, it. That was a five-year program and I Got you could have they wanted you to do like a internship year or clinical year, but they also had other ways you could fulfill that clip that first year and I was able to get credit for my pet, my PhD. Yeah. So I went, I didn't do a clinical year, I went directly into pathology. So then I got that. Then after that four years I I got my forensics fellowship for a year and then I started working and I Moonlighted and worked and was a why moonlighted during during my residency, but Extra and a little bit before. But then I worked as a deputy medical examiner in Rochester, new York, for a while while your dad was finishing residency. But it didn't officially work. Here I tried to get in but it just didn't work out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when you were in Rochester, I had met a lot of stories there. Yeah, when you were actually, you were the deputy Forensic pathologist, right?
Speaker 2:medical exam or deputy medical examiner.
Speaker 1:Sorry, so let's tell people I think a good. So we used to watch CSI Miami.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'd sit in the chair that was our time together, which isn't that kind of funny and then that was so we'd watch that and I remember watching the scene.
Speaker 1:So you are, it's, it's ducky in that one, right, no duckies in oh he's and say I asked, well, who's the one in a CSM? I am me. I can't remember.
Speaker 2:Sometimes there's a woman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't. I was so long ago that we watch that ratio.
Speaker 2:The ratio was the investigator.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but so you. So for people that wouldn't know, like medical examiner, forensic pathologist- Okay, this is that for the lame in person who wouldn't know?
Speaker 2:So we're digging here with terminology that I don't use anymore, because I just don't think about my well, Just no.
Speaker 2:I'm just gonna tell you that so, um, a medical examiner is a trained forensic pathologist that's usually hired and I got to review this to get the terminology straight there's coroners and medical examiners. Coroners are elected officials. Now in Ohio and Michigan and I don't know which other states the coroners happen to be, or have to be, physicians. They don't necessarily have to be forensic pathologists, but if they're not a forensic pathologist then they're not going to do the autopsy, they're just going to sign off on the autopsy. So in Ohio, in Toledo, we have always had a forensic pathologist who's been our coroner and Dr Patrick happened to be my mentor many, many years ago an exceptional individual, and I think, like Bowling Green has somebody who, for instance, maybe he's an internal medicine doctor, but there has to be a pathologist that actually does a forensic pathologist that does the autopsy.
Speaker 1:So there's some nuance there and we would have to dig up some more again, like you said. But I get what you're saying, so there's more nuance there. But let me tell you one other thing too.
Speaker 2:New York is such a big state, they have both medical examiners and coroners. So in the big cities, like I was in Rochester, we had medical examiners and then all these surrounding counties they have coroners because they're big, you know registry areas and stuff. But they would contract with us and we would do their autopsies, which was pretty cool because we got to see some incredible stuff industrial accidents, farming accidents. You know there's the prison systems too that you will have an autopsy to do sometimes. But yeah, it was. We had a lot of drug activity that would come through Rochester too, so I saw a lot of that and I had a lot of homicides.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's what I was trying to get at. So that's a very nuanced medical examiner versus coroner. But just in general, what you would do for work if someone if there was a homicide or someone died, you would be there trying performing autopsies, trying to determine the cause of death and you have some very correct.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, there I am. I'm this 33 year old woman who looks really young and I'm little and I'm young and I'm female. Back in the time when we get pushed around a little bit and legally nobody can touch the body until the medical examiner gets there and says you can touch it. Yeah, and I can remember a few of the hardened detectives you know, like not liking that I had I was in charge of the scene, you know, and here I am is just freshly out of my fellowship and not really knowing what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:It was kind of a there's a chain of commands, so you would show up to a crime scene and you had the same before you got there and could look at it. They couldn't touch anything.
Speaker 2:They couldn't even get a wallet out of a pocket. One time somebody did and two of the female investigators said something. One of them said something to me like oh, I can't believe you let that cop or you know that detective, you know, like ride over, you like that, and I said first of all he'd already done it and there really wasn't much I could do at that point. You know, I suppose you could say he destroyed possibly you know the crime scene or whatnot he got. You know he got identification and it was over.
Speaker 1:So that had to be pretty nerve wracking, but so you were getting into that and so you were in Rochester, as you said, the deputy position. So let's go through what some of these stories I mean. You've told me a ton of different ones.
Speaker 2:And I think that's one too Like they used to allow. I don't know if they do now, but at that point they always allowed cameras in the courtroom and they made a new law and they are people or something. What was it? I think it was cameras. They had cameras and they would the news teams you know, and they made it a rule then and I was there during that time where they couldn't have cameras in there that member of people would make drawings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they started. They stopped, like in courtrooms stopped having cameras. They were being able to have cameras in there.
Speaker 2:They didn't do that anymore. But like here, it's so nerve wracking on knowing what to say and stuff. I had a case of a poor woman that she worked at like a convenience mark and she opened. So she opened and I don't know how it happened, but somebody found her and you know I pronounced her 10. I remember in the courtroom it was a horror scene. It turned out to be an ex-employee that came back and was robbing the store and she caught him and I think I don't know if they oh, he knew where to get the videotape that was in the office, so it had him on it. But you know it wasn't too hard. But he literally she was like a grandmother and he was a young guy and he was just there to rob and he shot half of her head off.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And she was like oh, I'm in the police and I'm in the courtroom testifying and we're out of left field, you know, and I said I pronounced her dead. Or they asked me if I pronounced her dead and I I don't know what I said. They asked me how I did it or what did I do, or did I take her pulse or something, and I'm like half of her head and her face were gone and afterwards I felt horrible. He caught me off guard, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, it's. I mean, that's the whole thing you see in these courtroom scenes. Cross examining.
Speaker 2:They're trying to trip you up, yeah.
Speaker 1:They want, because that's our legal system. You can get off on any little technicality, but it's ridiculous, obviously there, you knew she was pronounced her dead, because I remember seeing that I hadn't taken her pulse.
Speaker 2:So you know, in my head I'm thinking, yeah, he's going to try to trip me up about this, you know.
Speaker 1:And I wasn't quite necessary in that situation, not in that situation, it was ridiculous.
Speaker 2:So I had, we had a. Really one of the exciting cases was I kind of give him a little name sometimes and I, you know, he, I called him the closing time bandit. He was. We had the Syracuse FBI was there and I had gotten this call. So he was. He was escalating in his behavior and starting to get more violent, like he'd come in at closing time and he'd rob a bank and then he started coming in, he started using a gun. So they really had the FBI all over him and they got him and they caught him and he was in a white van and they found explosives and stuff in the back and I guess he knew it was game over because he was coming and he got caught in an alley or something and they just shot him and they kept shooting and he ran into a brick wall or something.
Speaker 2:So I get called to, you know, to the scene and I'm, I'm trying, I'm actually trying to get pregnant for Brian I had had a miscarriage and I'm, you know, a couple months within that couple and I'm trying to get pregnant, which is kind of key in a sense. And I get into the van and they had we used to wear these jogging suits. They matched and they were. They were just these you know, jogging suits from the 70s, 80s and you can see people wearing those stupid headbands too. But he had on a blue, blue polyester jogging suit. Yeah, and I'm in the van with him, you know, he's in the driver's seat and I'm like over here and I'm starting to do my examination and they had already had the bomb squad there and cleared it, cleared it and cleared those explosives. I'm in the van and I'm starting to unzip his jacket and he's got explosives around his waist.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I get out of the van and I'm like, oh my gosh, you know this guy is, you know I don't know what the word was you know he's, he's got explosives around his waist. So they had to call the bomb squad back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean how I want to check the body.
Speaker 2:No, I mean cause I'm supposed to check it, I guess but still, I would have imagined that they kind of do a percursory check right. Oh my God, that was really scary and you hyperventilating from the bottom, you can imagine I was, but you know you got to act really cool.
Speaker 1:You got to act cool.
Speaker 2:So I mean it was, but I'm kind of like that. I mean I could talk to anybody and I can be us with anybody, and but your adrenaline gets going, you know. But so that that was a case where the guy had probably 70 gunshot wounds and it's a homicide. We can talk some other time about cause and manner.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know it's a homicide but it's legally not my the way I would describe it, but I think the legal system calls that a justifiable homicide. Like you, have to track each one of those gunshot wounds and you put, like you sometimes will put a probe in there so you can say entrance and where, how it's going up down, which way you know. So can you imagine how I'm at.
Speaker 1:I know, I've seen I mean I I don't know how accurate the shows always are, cause like you'll see them do that, or like blood spatter analysis, and they they'll do strings or probes like you say so how? Everything entered, so 70 bullets that you're trying to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that would be a blood spatter, would be an expert outside of me pretty much. But everything on TV is like all this excitement and all in one hour show where they do all this just different technology and a lot of cases are kind of routine. But that's, that's a tough one, it's just time consuming. You have to you. You do your autopsy the same every time, you start, at the same. You go through. The system is the same.
Speaker 1:Standardize it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I knew somebody that would go right in and he was very experienced, but he would go right in and start with the gunshot ones, and that would not be. That's not the way I do things, cause I was young and I was still doing things by the very much by the books. And probably after 20, 30 years. I could have done that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah.
Speaker 1:So, and we can, we can talk so much about all of these different stories and we will on another time. So I think so the next time I want to jump in here is then you guys had moved to Toledo, obviously, and then you and dad made the decision after Christie and just have everything with him working all the time that you got that you were going to retire to help to just raise us instead of us having us raised by day care and two or three different nannies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, yeah, because I had to do day care and I'd have to have a couple of different babysitters for call and brun dad, dad, um Christie had some health issues and, um, I had four kids under the that. Brian had just turned seven, so I had four kids and seven and under. And um dad uh had was going from four partners to three and he was the youngest one. So we knew he'd get the brunt of that extra that's 25% more patients. We knew that he would get the brunt of that as the new guy or the newer guy that would have more room in his schedule. So we knew he was going to get much busier and, um, we didn't make that decision together.
Speaker 2:Your dad said that it was my decision. He didn't want to influence me because he didn't want to pressure me and he never had he never has, which is really pretty cool. He's always been supportive of me and he tried to help in whatever way he could. He tried to help me make it work. But you know, I finally realized one day that I had the family that I'd always wanted to have as a kid. Um, I had a beautiful life, I had a beautiful family and, um, something was going to give. You know you can't maintain a high career, a marriage and four children and not have something give. Yeah, so I decided that I was going to put my family and my marriage first. Yeah, and I retired.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think I'm a very grateful.
Speaker 2:I feel like I had an epiphany. I really did, because I was always asking for some kind of sign or so I wanted somebody to help me, you know, and I'd pray and I had had a procedure, um a miligram after I had Christy, because I was having problems with my back and everything, and um, I got a miligram, post-miligram headache.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Despite the fact that your dad watched all of you and told me to go lay down with my head slightly elevated. So I, because you stick the needle in and then sometimes it doesn't seal and, um, you get a leakage and then it causes a headache whenever you're setting up. And I went back to work and I had the post. It was hideous. It's not like blinding pain, but after it's just insidious and it's just constant, you know, yeah. So, um, and I was starting to get headaches even after that, all the time, wondering what the heck am I doing and trying to balance it all and leaving work at six o'clock and then having to go home and make dinner. And I had a nanny, a lady, a nice lady, that babysat for me, but she didn't usually cook my dinner for me, so then I'd have to cook dinner and it was just too stressful, you know, and I'll tell you that as soon as um, I made that decision fully in my head, my headaches went away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like kind of weird.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, you gotta listen to your body at times. I mean I think it's very admirable. I mean there's always this thing of like you got to work, work, work. But what's the point of working so much or accomplishing things or making money if you then have a terrible emotional well-being or family life? You know it's not worth. It's not worth it. Some people always you'll see some people there's just really rich or successful people and then you see all the other stuff that's going on and it's not. You can't really be envious of them.
Speaker 2:Two things. My mother was really, really upset with me. Oh my gosh, I can't believe you're gonna quit working and throw away all that education and you're not gonna be a doctor anymore. And then you know, I told her you know I'm choosing my family and I loved what I did. I was very passionate about what I did. I loved teaching. I loved getting up and doing tumor boards and talking about I love talking about science and medicine. I loved it. I loved it. But after Brian died, your brother, the one of the first thoughts I had was God had a plan and I was home for all of you guys growing up pretty much and I didn't miss much with Brian, that's for sure, and I thank God for that every day.
Speaker 1:Just like you know, things work in mysterious ways where those headaches and at the time it felt right and then I remember you talking about that before of thank goodness you did and you got to spend all that time with Brian before he left this earth.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know it's funny because he was like 16 or 17 and you know, I know I. What my kids will remember, what my husband will remember, is that my screaming all the time. He'd come home from work and shut windows because I was screaming and swearing because I am, after all, the daughter of a truck driver. And I told him that the windows had been open all day and everybody heard me. So it was okay. But here I sometimes have these little mind blips when I was going to say About Brian.
Speaker 2:About. Oh so my kids hear me screaming and swearing and you know not being able to put two sentences together, and I must have picked him up from school and he told me he was going to be like he heard me talking to somebody and I was using all this big, big medical terms and I sounded really intelligent. Right, and he goes. Wow, he goes. You sound so different. And one time he said that I must have had on we Is that the proper word? The French word Like having to give all that up.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:And sit and raise children. It's hard. It's a thankless job and people think they don't know what you were capable of before.
Speaker 1:Well, you obviously are and I think people who truly know you know how smart you are, because I think just the average person when they see dad or even having friends and stuff he's a neurosurgeon. But you never, even just people who address him as doctor but not realize, address you as doctor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know what's cute? Is a lot of your friends always, especially you and Brian's friends. They would call me Dr Hufflinger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is cute. Yeah, it's just not that mad it's respectful, but it's just all the things like that or in some way, like as if you're not very highly intelligent in knowing all the medical stuff.
Speaker 2:But that's what we women do, and some men, you know it's probably the toughest and the most important job you can do is raise a child, because you do give up self, you give up any glory that you might have had working, and I don't have any regrets.
Speaker 1:Well, it's also probably one of the most fulfilling things in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:I think having a kid I mean even having a pet, but I think about as I get older is having a kid's the first time. Your own kid is the first time where you're putting someone truly before yourself. Where you always hear of these stories of moms that can get superhuman human strength to save their kid yeah, that you know that they would take a bullet for their kid. Because you've surpassed that level of ego where you care about yourself so much and you can have a significant other but people don't as much. It's really once you have a kid where that thing is the most important thing in your entire world.
Speaker 2:And you know you're at that age where you're starting to come out of it a little bit. But that's your job. From the time you get to self-awareness at like 12, 13, 14 years old is to focus on you.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you are very self-centered as a kid not you personally, but children and young adults are. That's what you're supposed to be doing is focusing on you, getting your career started, figuring out what you want to do with your life and making meaningful relationships. But it's all about you. What do you want to do tonight? Where do you want to eat? What do you want to do for working?
Speaker 1:out.
Speaker 2:You know, and then you start, maybe you meet someone or your friends and you learn. You know, let's compromise and let's do what they want to do.
Speaker 1:The world doesn't involve me.
Speaker 2:But I'm telling you what what a shock it is when you have a child, and that's what I'm saying, like when I forgot the dog.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, you have somebody that you are responsible for 24 seven.
Speaker 1:I know it's got it.
Speaker 2:It's scary.
Speaker 1:That's why I don't think, no matter what with especially anyone who has a first child, you can read as many books as you want or watch movies, or have someone else tell you about it, tell you, experience it. I don't think anyone can truly understand it, right?
Speaker 2:No, you know what you have Instacart and home delivery and DoorDash and all that we didn't have that. We didn't have that. So, like, let's say, let's say I didn't have something and I needed it for dinner. I'm making spaghetti and I don't have the spaghetti sauce, or I don't have tomatoes or sauce or whatever, and I got to go to the grocery store. How easy is it for you to jump in your car and run over to the grocery store? Super easy, right? Yeah Well, how easy is it then when you got this kid and you got to put them in there heavy, because you're a girl and you're not as strong, and you got to put them in the car seat, and then you got to drag the car seat in, because you don't have all those fancy carts either, and then you get it's like an ordeal.
Speaker 2:I listen to him cry, or what if he's hungry and he wants his dinner first, and now it's like 7.30 and it's like well, forget dinner, I don't know what do I need dinner for?
Speaker 1:I don't think you've seen it yet. Have you seen the new Barbie movie?
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:So Madison, my girlfriend, and I saw that last night, but actually it was very different than what I was expecting and it is very. It talks about that as just how I thought the director did very good in Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, but I can't remember. I don't know who this other female actor is, but or actress. It's this part where just talking about just being a woman, just balancing everything, it's just, it's a full time job being a mother.
Speaker 2:We are good at it.
Speaker 1:And it's full time job. Being a woman in our society, yeah Well you're supposed to be a sex.
Speaker 2:This is the Barbie thing. You're supposed to be a sex symbol and you're supposed to be hot and sexy for all your friends and your husband and everybody else. And then you've got to play this role where your kids vomiting on you and they got diarrhea.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Well, not that it says something like that in the movie versus cook but you also can't be like too perfect, where like that are too, too hot, where then you have other people looking at you, other guys and then their girls being mad at you for being too hot yeah.
Speaker 1:So now there's just, and there is so much stuff, and I think, going back to what you were saying about knowing it is a very thankless job being a parent, of just how much sacrifice you make until a kid becomes older you really, until they're much more mature.
Speaker 2:That's called delayed gratification, something that I don't think people know anything about anymore.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. Well, just like you said, with our in the world of Instacard or Uber, eats, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:We and you know what. It was so cool when they started making those drive through windows for the pharmacy. Oh, you guys would have strap throat and ear infections and I'd have you know, try to drag three or four kids in there. Try to drag them. I used to have to take all of you to the pediatrician and I can tell you I can remember banging my head against the wall, sometimes literally just going.
Speaker 2:Oh, help me, please help me, because Brian would be climbing all like a monkey, and probably you were too. You were so fat you couldn't walk until you were 15 months old, so then you'd be trying to stand up. And then I'm pregnant with Julie and you're hitting your chin on the coffee tables and getting mad if somebody tried to help you, and it was crazy.
Speaker 1:But and then you?
Speaker 2:started running, all of you running, running, running out the door, running down the street, and not always, but it happened a couple of times, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I was active. You guys were so active, little monkeys. Oh, you got it, you. We kept you young.
Speaker 2:Well, and I put you guys in cross country and every sport that I could as soon as I could, because I thought that it would wear you out. But you know what happens with that? Right Makes you more it makes you have. You have more energy and stamina, but you guys were always busy and happy.
Speaker 1:What was I going to say? Well, there's just, there's that, and I mean I can't. I just remember, yeah, how you got us to all of our practices, like when we were in soccer and cross country and you just had to drive us, you just stereotypical like mom. Then the mini van yeah, the mini van.
Speaker 2:You know what was worse probably was when you were a senior and Julie was a junior and Christy was a freshman and trying to get make sure, I made it to every event because Christy would golf in the fall, julie was in cheerleading, she played basketball and she played tennis. Where she played tennis and she played uh, was it field hockey or the cross field hockey?
Speaker 2:Oh, she played three sports for freshman year yeah or no way she did. Well, she tried to do that in the spring. She did dance, cheerleading and what would, and played basketball and she did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And maintained her grades. She tried to do field hockey and tennis and the field hockey coach Thankfully made her choose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Sometimes it's. It's too hard to balance.
Speaker 2:I'd go drop Christy off over a half an hour away at her golf and you'd have soccer and I would try to make it to everything and I'd only make like half of everything, but at least I made it.
Speaker 1:I think I think you did a good job. I think you had a lot of things yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, and then we'd have to come home and make dinner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it always comes back to making dinner.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I get how people well, the time it's so much easier to just go pick up fast food and how our world hated that. I know Well how the world is geared, that I mean it's such an issue, especially in America. It's just all the fast foods are out there. It's almost cheaper to do that and easier. Yeah, it's. No, it's so much easier. It's when you're not, when you're tired and yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you do that sometimes, but you want to pick it up.
Speaker 1:It's easy. It's so much, takes a lot more effort, it's not even that the meals are what they are, it's just you have to go get the stuff, you have to prepare it, make it, chop it, yeah.
Speaker 2:I would try to do, you know, get dinner prepared ahead of time. And I did have a really cool thing in this house that I absolutely loved when you guys were younger. It was the warm enjoyer.
Speaker 1:The warm enjoyer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because you guys were coming in at different times and that helped. Yeah, that was good and you, you know there are some women that are super good. I there was somebody when I was in residence. She worked in the lab and she chopped once a month and she had all the stuff prepared.
Speaker 1:I know that are so good at meal prepping. I've never. I always need to because I have to consume a lot of calories when I'm like trying to find iron man right now. I don't love to eat. So you have to really you have to meal prep and I've never been an expert in meal prepping because you have to label everything and keep all, keep track and do it all.
Speaker 2:Never feel like doing it and then you don't like to eat it, then you don't want to eat it, but it does help then for you to have the meals and it gives you the calories and the protein.
Speaker 1:No, I definitely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've done it before, but I used to be more efficient when I was younger and I had more to do, yeah, but yeah, you just have to. You have to find that balance and try to do the best and you can't beat yourself up. That's one thing I guess I probably learned is I used to be so intense and I'd beat myself up if I didn't do everything perfectly, and you got to have some grace. I've gained some grace about that, about not beating myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If I like, and I gained that after Brian died. I think a lot that comes with age too. But there were days when I'd be so depressed or upset or just grieving, and sometimes I would just go in his room and cry.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that day I didn't get anything done, because when you're that emotionally spent, you're not doing anything.
Speaker 1:Well, sometimes, I mean sometimes, that's the biggest win. Right there is just getting through the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a big feat in and of itself. I mean, I know that. I mean we all have this negative self-talk and I always think about it like this I've read and heard before. I think it's a great way of thinking that you would never talk to your best friends like that. You never talk to a loved one yeah.
Speaker 1:But you'll talk to yourself in such a like you didn't do anything today. You're so lazy. Yeah, it's all this negative, but I definitely when brought after Brian first died. I think one thing with us is we were busy with stuff. Dad was really busy with work still and it's hard for all of us. But yeah, with you, the more you can say busy on stuff, it's good, but the more when you can just when you just have to sit there and think through it, you lost your old son.
Speaker 2:You have to think yeah, it's hard. In the beginning it was grief or it was shock, and you guys were super busy and you were kids, so it didn't hit you quite the same, I think, and you were able to keep yourself busy with school, and then, I don't know, I think the first year is a shock year and then the second year it hit you like a ton of bricks.
Speaker 1:I don't think anyone's equipped, especially kids. You just avoid your emotions.
Speaker 2:I think you guys could put it aside for years.
Speaker 1:Well, I think yeah, no, I was just saying I think you avoid your emotions a lot more. You don't know how to be in touch with your feelings as 15, 13 and 11 year olds.
Speaker 2:You got enough other stuff to worry about, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean, just like you see, when people like high schoolers start lashing out at their parents, you just don't saw stuff you don't know how to deal with. When you're younger emotionally, emotionally you're learning all that then I don't think anyone of any age has ever equipped to lose someone that close to them, or even losing a parent when you're younger. I can't imagine Like, if you're 25, dad lost his mom. That's tough. It's just all unique in a different way. Pain is pain and it's all relative. I always think about so.
Speaker 2:But I feel like you guys were able to really continue on. I mean, look at you all. You all graduated Magna Cum Laude, got accepted into very good schools, did very well in college. I couldn't have done that. My brother got in a really bad car accident and I had transferred to UT for a semester in my junior year and the shock of going from well. I didn't know it at the time but there were three kids in my organic and I was one of the three. Second semester, first semester, I did organic at UT and there were 300 people in the class and I was worried about my brother because my brother told me he was going to keep drinking until he got the job done. He was three years older than me. Grown umm. I literally I got a C in organic. I mean, I had a four point the whole time I was at.
Speaker 2:C yeah, you obviously are very intelligent, but I mean, I did well and I had a four point and I worked. I worked 20 some hours a week the whole time and my brother is trying to kill himself and I almost flunked out of school. That semester was horrid, yeah, and I then transferred back. But your dad, his mother, was dying when we were in med school and he was studying for his boards. I could I guess you can't say what you would or would not have done, because maybe that was a good distraction He'd go in her room and sit with her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, I think I don't know. There's always people like they'll say to you or to me, like for me personally, all the people like you're so strong, how did you do it? Or your family's so strong, no one, I mean. I hate that in a way. Yeah, I write about it. We didn't choose to be strong. I wish I didn't have to be strong and I don't think about it as strength. Humans are a lot more resilient than you think and there's nothing, there's no strong. Or it's not like a movie where you're rocky and you get to the top of a mountain or something, or the top of the stairs and you're celebrating you. Just, it's an absolute. Like you said, it's just a grind and you don't think about being strong. You just think about I just got through another day.
Speaker 2:Even if I cry, you think you have to get through, because you have to get through for your family and your friends and, yeah, and because you know that Brian would didn't do it on purpose and you know that he would hate for us to have been suffering and that you got to be strong and positive for him, because that's what he was.
Speaker 1:You know, he was such an embodiment of positivity. That's why it's so hard that we didn't even realize until after.
Speaker 2:I didn't cause he had his negative parts and then you look afterwards and you're like, wow, how did I not see this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, I mean, he definitely was always. I think he's a very kind person. He obviously had issues too, Like we would joke or we would fight. Oh gosh, but you know like yeah, but after all of that, you remember the good things, and he did have. There's so many, there's such an inner working on each person that you never, you never know, even if you're so close to them, like all the internal writings, I think, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that that was God and him knowing and I'm religious and I know some people aren't you can call it a light, a force, an energy, I call it God that was in him and that maybe expressed itself because of what his fate was going to be, and it's like a gift that we were given that we could see, especially afterwards. It was a gift to be able to see that side of him. But people would come and tell me things and I'm sure they told you things of kind things that he had done for them or you know. But it's almost like because he was going to leave, we got to see that side of him because we didn't get to see the rest of it Is how, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I got lots of stories and lots of really freaky things. In a sense that only solidified that belief in me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think just in this world it's so hard to we're not equipped to deal with that as humans. It's just, it's so. It doesn't make any sense. Why does that happen?
Speaker 2:But you know what I also think too? I think that we were given this amazing ability to be able to feel intense and horrid grief and still have love and hope in our hearts. It's how we can carry both. We can carry immense pain and then these other feelings. Yeah, it's very, it's a very daoist thought of.
Speaker 1:if you think about the yin and yang, there's the small bit of white in the black, it's the light in the darkness, and there's the small bit of black in the white, which is the darkness in the light. You can't have one without the other. You can't have great joy and happiness without great sorrow.
Speaker 2:Because don't you think that, having had the great sorrow, you tend to appreciate certain things more, and you feel a more intense emotion about certain things and a gratefulness, and you forget, because that's our human nature. You forget how lucky you are for all these gifts that you're given.
Speaker 1:I think over the last 10 years I mean I would say for, and now I'm 25, but even 16, 17, 18, I think I had a much more appreciation of life, even just waking up in gratitude, of just waking up, the simple joys of life. And there's these small things where some people, I think that before you, if you don't lose someone like that or you kind of just get stuck in your own little world, where I want this or I want to do this, where sometimes just the little joys of getting to hang out with your family or just going and walking in nature, we forget.
Speaker 2:We don't get that pleasure always. We should do a podcast on this, because some of the things that Brian wrote in his journal that he kept while he went to that junior retreat, Kairos, yeah I mean, it's amazing the things he said. And what's your favorite time of the day when he would get to go work out? He just said some things. What are you most afraid of? Dying alone in a car accident? Just freaky things, freaky things.
Speaker 1:And then what about the thing of Christy that you've?
Speaker 2:Christy wrote something and I showed it to your dad and he goes oh yeah, well, so what? It's a creative writing in sixth grade. She wrote about Brian dying and I said she wrote this six months before he died.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when she talked about him hitting the tree and going away, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And then it was a creative writing project and it was from September and he died in.
Speaker 1:Fortnant is patron saint we know what is Saint Francis and what's he? The patron saint of.
Speaker 2:I had to look. Well, he's patron saint of peace. That's what we know him most for peace and animals.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Two things that Brian really stood for Well no but. But fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dying alone like fire. Well he's.
Speaker 2:Because he I think he died in a fire, but Brian was wearing that necklace and I felt like that protected him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I mean, there's just so many coincidences. It's always crazy. Well, they got him out before he could burn yeah they got him out with the jaws of life we need to talk about that.
Speaker 2:And yeah A lot more about him because there's some really cool things. But I feel like yeah, I feel like God gave us the ability to feel great, intense pain, but great love at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's what gets you through, if you can somehow channel that, because some people they can't, they can only, and in the beginning I wanted to die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, but I was thinking about ways to do it and ways that would work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like crashing into a wall, going like on the expressway.
Speaker 1:But how I mean that's.
Speaker 2:You didn't tell anybody that, because it's scary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think about it like that. But how serious do you think you were? Because I think about that ideation, but I always thought there's no way I could, because it's not fair to everyone else.
Speaker 2:Well, you want to know what I said when I finally said something to your dad about it. That had to have been right in the beginning. I was afraid to say anything in the beginning, Right in the very when I start having the thoughts, because you got to step back here and realize that I saw suicide all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right.
Speaker 2:And I had. I have strong feelings about things, and one of the things I used to think about suicide was that it was a coward's way out, because what you do is you kill yourself and you leave all these people behind grieving you, and it's horrid right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, I had a guy that had a drug problem and it was Christmas time and he had a wife or a girlfriend and a couple of kids and he took. I don't know if he spent the Christmas money Well, that might have been something else but he killed himself in the bedroom where all the Christmas presents for the kids were, yeah and blew his head off and that's a bloody mess, yeah, and all I could think of you know, and I had to see this scene which is fine because I was the medical examiner, not the loved one but all I could think about was, wow, what a coward's way out, right, yeah, that he killed himself. Well, then my son died and I realized that for somebody to do that to themselves, they must be in such intense emotional and physical pain yeah, to have to take your life that I finally understood why somebody commits suicide.
Speaker 2:It's not necessarily a selfish act.
Speaker 1:It's. I mean, it's easy to always say when you're in a different headspace, because there's mental illness, there's-.
Speaker 1:Well, you don't know and there's all this other stuff, because, yeah, sometimes you just need to get to the next day it's. There's just moments where you can just feel so low, where everything feels it's just negative and it just feels hopeless Like it feels like what's the point of stuff at times. But I think it's very powerful to I think it's always whenever you guys share. I know, whenever I've shared in my personal life, it's very powerful to other people to hear that everyone struggles.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think they need to hear yeah absolutely. And I think that's why dad resonated with people in the beginning when he would write stuff on Facebook, because he has such an eloquent way of, in a simple way, but without using big words and without making it sound crass.
Speaker 1:he's just very eloquent with sharing his pain and in a human way and just making you have to. I mean, that's so much of what of art, whether it be painting or writing, is it moves you, it creates emotion in you, right, and that's what it is. Is it's trying to relay to someone how it feels when that's happened to you?
Speaker 2:And then they can say, wow, and I've felt that, too, I'm not alone. And that's the problem with our society is we've got the Instagram with the perfect figures and the perfect faces and the lack of wrinkles, and we're perfect lives. And you know what? We're not perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean like we've been talking about.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's what we're not strong, we're perfectly imperfect.
Speaker 1:We're so perfect, we're perfectly imperfect. That's what makes things good, if everything's perfect all the time, like what really is life and you know what I decided was, first of all, I had three other kids.
Speaker 2:That's what I said to dad. He said yeah, but you wouldn't act out on your because of the kids. You know you have the and you know what I said, and this is a horrible thing to say, but you gotta understand the depth of the despair which I know you do. I said that's the thing, brian. I hurt so bad that I don't care about anybody else, I just want the pain to go away.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I just want it to go away. And then you know, time slowly starts easing it a little bit and you know we're 10 years out and it's great, isn't it? We're all doing great. And tell me how far away you are from going down the rabbit hole of hurting really bad, because we. Just what you do is you put the brakes on it, you don't let yourself go there, you don't let yourself feel it, because you've already felt it a million times and it never changed anything. I've examined his death from every angle that I could and it never changes the outcome. So once I felt like I had examined everything to the depths that I needed to, I try not to let myself go down there, because I don't need to cry about it.
Speaker 1:There's a lot I mean.
Speaker 2:You need to deal with it, but.
Speaker 1:I don't want to dwell in it.
Speaker 2:Do you see the? Do you want to?
Speaker 1:No, I agree, because the more you do, it's you have to, in a way you have to let go of someone. You have to let go Because if you sit there and think about them truly every day, you just suck yourself down into a vortex.
Speaker 2:And you know we're gonna be here and I figure I'm gonna be here for quite a long time because the ordinary people stick around, they stick around, I think they stick around a lot. So I figure I'm here a long time and do I want to make everybody, including myself, miserable for the rest of my days? Or can I maybe be once in a while a little bit, because I know I'm not always positive and I'm not always a light and I'm sometimes a Debbie Downer, but I want to try to be as uplifting as I can, and that is something that you almost have to remind yourself of. Yeah, to do.
Speaker 2:A lot of things are Because we forget, and then we start complaining about things.
Speaker 1:It's easy to you have to constantly have to remind yourself of to take a breath, take a step back and say, okay, I've just gone down this, it's easy to go down that path, because I think, with Brian's death too, like all the negativity and all the most, a lot of positivity has come out of it.
Speaker 1:But I think about it so much and I think through it and I write through stuff is there's certain moments in life and certain experiences in life that can either be your path to destruction or they can be your path to greatness. So they're very. There's two paths you can take out of something like that. You can sit there and say life is shit, I got dealt shitty cards, my brother died, this happened, that happened and I'm just I'm not gonna do anything about it, and you can start getting the drugs, alcohol or other things.
Speaker 1:Chip on your shoulder, yeah, and you can just live your entire life in self-destructs, or you can take that, and I think we have. In trying to create positive examples, try to be a little bit nicer to someone, because you remember hearing, because you know that so many strangers came up about your brother and thought this kid just held doors open. It matters to people, it does matter.
Speaker 2:It matters to people when you're nice to them, you smile at somebody and maybe that's just what they need at that moment in time. Is somebody be kind?
Speaker 1:Well, and that's why I can never get that thought out of my head of when you're in these terrible negative spaces, you never know if, maybe, if I decide to be mean to that person, that person might go home and say that was the last straw. All these people hate me, blah, blah, blah. But what if, on the reverse flip side of that, it's every situation you say, hey, how can I make this person's day better, how can I bring a little bit of light into it? And of course we're not perfect. But if you can try to think that in other people's perspective, people aren't trying to make thinking traffic, a lot of people can use that one. Don't get me into traffic.
Speaker 1:I have a little road rage. I always think about. If someone like cuts, I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt of they don't mean to, or maybe they're in a big rush, maybe they have something very important, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I think, if we all just tried to have a little more empathy for each other and kindness. We're more alike than we are different. The world would want to make you. If you just go on stuff, everything's so divisive. But if you actually talk to people, I think there's a lot more shared humanity amongst people.
Speaker 2:That's what I found out when your brother died Just the outpouring of love and support from people, especially after dad started writing near and far, and because it's a shared fear of all parents is to lose a child. It doesn't matter how Does it at the end of the day, does it really matter? We were blessed with a gift that he didn't hurt anybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but Lost at the end of the day I agree Lost is lost. It doesn't make it. I don't think it makes it better if he was doing anything else and he got killed. Someone's dead.
Speaker 2:Well, he was a good kid that made a bad decision, and so are a lot of people, and sometimes we make stupid decisions, but we've all made stupid decisions at times.
Speaker 1:We're all human, we're human.
Speaker 2:And that's where the grace needs to come in, with the forgiveness and everything. But we're all trying most of the time to do our best.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's, yeah, but.
Speaker 1:I think it got a little dark there. No, but I think it's real. I think it's very real. That's what Brian matters, that our organization's all about. That's why we spread advocacy, that's why we do what we do, and I think we discussed a lot. We'll definitely have to. There's still so much more we're gonna dive into me you, dad, Julie, potentially, and Christy over the next many, many episodes. So I think that's a good episode for now and thank you.
Speaker 2:Oh, a long one, and we didn't even touch on so much.
Speaker 1:But yeah, but we can always dive into a lot more stuff. I think that's a good spot to end it for now and thank you guys for listening. Means a lot. If you enjoyed it, please let us know on you know the social media, the comments, and leave you know, leave us a review, leave us a rating on the podcast.
Speaker 2:And let us know any suggestions positive suggestions or you know for maybe making it better or things we should should not talk about or things you'd like to hear more of. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But all right, mom. Thanks, kevin, bye Thanks.
