Lisa Doggett Shares a Physician's Perspective on Living with Chronic Illness

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:08
Speaker 2: And this is Sarah Hart Hunger.

00:00:10
Speaker 3: I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:17
Speaker 4: Welcome to best of both worlds.

00:00:19
Speaker 1: Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:32
Speaker 4: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:35
Speaker 1: In this episode, Sarah is going to be interviewing Lisa Doggett, who is a physician but has also experienced the healthcare system as a patient as she's been navigating having a chronic illness. Sarah, maybe you can tell us a little bit about what we're in store for hero at the interview.

00:00:52
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it was a great conversation. And Lisa herself is a wonderful speaker, and I think you'll get that from the interview. But her perspective is just so unique, having worked as a physician for the patients that have the most trouble accessing healthcare and then also experiencing it on the other end, still struggling as a very you know, she acknowledges her own privilege and then yet still finds it hard. And it just got me to think about how like, even in the best case scenarios, there are just so many frustrating things about how we access healthcare in this country. And she has some tips for listeners about that, and it's i think, fighting the good fight herself.

00:01:30
Speaker 2: So it's a great interview.

00:01:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, have you experienced any of that yourself, as you you know, especially you know it from the provider side, but on the patient side then too.

00:01:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:01:40
Speaker 3: I was brainstorming about this and I'm like, Okay, I have like generally very low complexity needs in our family and also like great insurance and immense amounts of privilege, and I still find it like little things annoying. And I was just thinking, like, what are those things? Like I can never get the after school st or Orthodonis appointments, and I feel like my kids live there and I'm always having to like pick them up in the middle of the day. I mean, that seems so silly, but like I wish there were more afternoon slots for older kids, especially things like just resorting to paying out of pocket for certain specialists because the wait times are either so long or the quality is just spotty. And I feel very lucky that I've been able to do that, but then I also just am like frustrated for anybody who.

00:02:25
Speaker 5: Can't do that.

00:02:27
Speaker 3: You know, having to wait many hours in a doctor's office is a personal pet peeve of mine because I tend to run, not like perfectly on time, because sometimes there are patient needs, but like if I'm running twenty thirty minutes late, that's like that's like as late as it gets. So it's just frustrating to maybe get to an appointment and then sit there for hours. And then even prescriptions, which our person mentions, I'm on a specialty medication. It's not like a super specialty medication, but you know, for my migraines, and even though I know the doctor puts the prescription in, like I often just can't get it and there'll be some insurance hoop I have to figure out and it takes multiple phone calls. And again that's in like the best case scenario of where I am, and I acknowledge that, so my heart goes out to those who have more complexities, less privilege, less access, et cetera. And I think this conversation is a great, you know, starting point to think about some of those things.

00:03:17
Speaker 4: Yeah.

00:03:17
Speaker 1: No, definitely a lot of frustration. But you know it's I mean it's not just this country. There are places elsewhere too. I mean people have different frustrations perhaps, but yes, there are still.

00:03:28
Speaker 4: Still frustrations to there.

00:03:29
Speaker 1: And I know that you run a tight ship in your office, and so I mean it's maybe something you could explore more, telling people about how you do that sometimes.

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Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, but our office has are I mean, I'm not throwing anybody under the I love where I work, but like, just get like a new patient appointment. I think our wait time is very long right now. So yeah, nobody's perfect in this world.

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Speaker 2: Is perfect? No, there so many challenges.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, no, and that's true.

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Speaker 1: And maybe some other places are like, well let's just triple book them, get people in right, and then you know you wind up waiting for two hours. You got the appointment for a new patient, but yeah, you had to wait all that time. So yes, it can happen. I am sure. Well let's sell and Lisa's got a new book out right, that's a yeah.

00:04:12
Speaker 3: So we talk about this, of course, but it's called Up the Down Escalator and it is fantastic. I admitted in the thing that I read bits and pieces, but I'm fully committed to going back and read the whole thing because there's just such great vignettes and if you are in the medical field, you'll find the flashbacks to medical school and training I think to be really really poignant and fun to read.

00:04:34
Speaker 2: Awesome.

00:04:35
Speaker 4: All right, well let's hear what Lisa has to say.

00:04:39
Speaker 3: I am so excited today to welcome doctor Lisa dogge It to the podcast.

00:04:44
Speaker 2: We had for quite some time.

00:04:47
Speaker 3: Been interested in interviewing someone who could share their story living.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: With chronic illness.

00:04:53
Speaker 3: And when I learned about Lisa's story and also found out she was a fellow empty with a really really interesting story of her own, and I thought she would be a perfect person to join us.

00:05:03
Speaker 2: For this episode.

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Speaker 3: So with that, welcome Lisa, go ahead and introduce yourself, tell everybody a little bit about your career path, your family, kind of the Lisa background.

00:05:15
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Sarah. It is such a thrill to be on your show. I'm really excited to be here. So I'm Lisa. I'm a family doctor. As you mentioned, I live in Austin, Texas.

00:05:26
Speaker 5: I'm a rare native.

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Speaker 6: We have a lot of people that have come from around the country to Austin because it's a great place to live. But I've lived here for over twenty years. I grew up here and then went away from medical training and came back. So I worked as a family doctor in community clinics for about thirteen years after my return, and I had two kids during that time. They're now teenagers, two girls. I'm married to a pediatric hospital doctor, and I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis back in two thousand and nine.

00:05:56
Speaker 5: And now we're going to talk a lot more about that.

00:05:59
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh my gosh, So you have a lot in common with me in the whole like two position couple. And it was really fun because as I was reading some of your book, all those early memories of like residency or med school and then having your partner like going through it at the same time, absolutely like tweetd my own memory. Did you two meet in medical school?

00:06:20
Speaker 6: We actually met in college and there is a whole a chapter about it in the book. So more to come when you when you read the book. But we met through some friends during my first year of college, and we were at different schools though two hours apart, so we dated throughout college kind of a long distance relationship, and then we were able to go to med school together.

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Speaker 2: Ah, I love that awesome.

00:06:43
Speaker 3: Well, your book centers around well, it has a lot. Actually your book is, like I thought it was going to be more just around your illness, but there is so much more than that contained in the pieces that I read, and I've read, like I kind of flipped through and read my red parts, and I can tell already that I'm super excited to go back and read it in detail, because again, just struck a lot of personal chords for me, not the illness part necessarily, but just the medical practice part, medical systems, all of that stuff.

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Speaker 2: And yet one of the kind of.

00:07:16
Speaker 3: Main narratives is your journey through your diagnosis and learning to live with this chronic illness. So if you wouldn't mind kind of giving us kind of your version of how things unfolded from the beginning illness wise to where to kind of where you are now.

00:07:30
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, So the memoir is really about my transformation from doctor to patient with multiple sclerosis while I was directing a clinic for people who were without private insurance. It all started when I woke up dizzy one morning, and I remember the exact date. It was November two, two thousand and nine. It was two days before my younger daughter turned too, so my kids were really little, not at all independent. It was a very busy time and difficult time in my life already. But I woke up and then I developed double vision and then taste changes later in the week, and I started getting concerned, especially when I got those other symptoms. At first, I thought, oh, I'm just I've just got a cold. It'll get better. And then I started getting new symptoms and I was like, this doesn't make sense. Something's not adding up here. I saw a neurologist who was a friend over lunch. She thought I was probably fine, but with those new changes over the weekend, I consulted with an ear nose and throat doctor, also a friend. He got me in the next day for an appointment and ordered an MRI, and that is when I was diagnosed. It was actually a total shock, but I had been thinking I had a brain tumor over the weekend because I couldn't think of anything else. I'm embarrassed I didn't think of MS. My husband didn't think of MS. I looking back, I'm.

00:08:42
Speaker 5: Like, why didn't we think of this?

00:08:44
Speaker 6: But you know, that was my diagnosis and I really was very fortunate to find out just nine days after those symptoms started. So I know you, as a doctor know about MS, but I've learned a lot more about it, and I all is like to tell people what it is, because it's a very strange disease. But it's an autoimmune condition of the central nervous system, so the brain and spinal cord, and it impacts your body's ability, your brain's ability to communicate with the rest of the body. So it can cause all kinds of weird symptoms like mobility problems, fatigue, cognitive problems, sensory changes, bowel and bladder problems, depression, really on and on, and it manifests very differently in different people. Dizzyness isn't necessarily a common symptom, but that's kind of how it started for me. And my book is about my journey really coming to terms with that illness on the front lines of the messy and dysfunctional US healthcare system.

00:09:43
Speaker 3: Yes, and you were dealing with this initially when you had a two year old that was your younger year older at the time.

00:09:49
Speaker 5: My younger was two, the older was four.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.

00:09:53
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:09:54
Speaker 3: And I guess one of the things about MS, and you are a medical professional, is that, you know, we like it when we can predict how things are going to turn out, or when you have a condition that has a very defined beginning, middle.

00:10:07
Speaker 2: And end treatment plan MS.

00:10:11
Speaker 3: It sounds like is not like that and has not been like that for.

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Speaker 5: You, right, No, it's very uncertain.

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Speaker 6: And actually, you know, I have what's called relapsing remitting MS, which is about eighty five percent of people that had MS, and it's kind of the It means that you have periods where you get better and then you.

00:10:29
Speaker 2: Have periods where you relapse or get worse.

00:10:31
Speaker 6: And I had a relapse just five months after my diagnosis, which was really early and very concerning that I would have potentially had a more aggressive form of the disease. That's what my doctor thought might be the case. I had to switch medications really early. It was really a struggle, and then I had subsequent relapses a few years later. Each of those has been very difficult. But as you know, as you said, you kind I've learned to live with uncertainty and we all have that. I just have kind of an extra dose of it.

00:11:01
Speaker 2: Wow, how did you decide?

00:11:04
Speaker 3: Kind of, well, I don't want to stay in the aftermath because there is no there is no end here. But how did you decide to turn this into a book? What was a driving force behind you wanting to do that?

00:11:15
Speaker 6: Well, I've always loved to write. I am an obsessive journal keeper. I started writing in a journal every day when I was eleven years old. I have missed about five or six days since then, so I literally have over one hundred journals in my bedroom upstairs. But I've always loved to write, so I've always thought, you know, I might want to write a story of my life someday, but didn't really know what form that would take.

00:11:40
Speaker 5: You know, my diagnosis was really a shock.

00:11:43
Speaker 6: I was totally overwhelmed at the time with two kids under five, and I had this really challenging job, and I was, you know, I just didn't expect this to happen to me. I think we as physicians think, you know, we're dealing with chronic conditions a lot, but as certainly as a family doctor, I know as an in phnologists you do as well. But we also kind of think we're immune to this. We know how to be the odds, and I was kind of part of that. I thought, you know, I'm not going to get sick, but then I suddenly had this chronic condition. So writing the book was really a self indulgent exercise.

00:12:17
Speaker 5: I have to admit.

00:12:18
Speaker 6: It was a way for me to process what happened, and it was really kind of therapeutic for me to tear that apart and then put the pieces back together, which is what I did in creating the book. I also wanted to write it to help people who had chronic conditions to deal with it themselves and share some of the things I learned in a very roundabout way. My path was not at all very straight. It was kind of all over the place. I had a lot of challenges throughout the course of the illness, which of course still continues. And then, of course I wanted to write this for my patients because I was seeing their struggles and just felt like I wanted to shine a light on the real dysfunction of our healthcare system and the disparities that I saw.

00:13:03
Speaker 3: Yes, I want to take a brief break, but I want to delve into that a little bit more when we come back.

00:13:21
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back.

00:13:22
Speaker 3: So, as you mentioned, I want to go back and talk more about the personal side. But since you brought up kind of the healthcare system and the disparities, I thought.

00:13:31
Speaker 2: You did an excellent job. Okay, let me take a step back.

00:13:35
Speaker 3: Sometimes when I listen to narratives talking about people's experience in the healthcare system, the providers come out as villains. So your story was very unique because you are a provider, and I can tell from all of your stories about your patients and the population you care for, and how much you truly cared for those patients that you don't believe that providers are out to get people or don't care in general, Like obviously there's going to be a broad spectrum of.

00:14:06
Speaker 2: What people are like, but.

00:14:08
Speaker 3: You can have a dysfunctional system with a lot of well meaning components and it still sucks for the patient. And I would love you to get into that a little bit more and how that felt, especially as someone who had spent so many years trying so hard to help people and already knew how incredibly difficult it can be, especially for those without resources and privilege.

00:14:32
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, my patients faced incredibly challenging situations. I had patients who had spouses who were deported, or they had bats in their apartment and the landlord didn't get rid of them, or they had employers who were really unfair. I wouldn't pay them or would expect them to work ridiculous hours. And they didn't have resources, and they often didn't know how to advocate for themselves. Many of them didn't speak English, many of them didn't have friends or family nearby that they could call on in times of challenge. And I realized that, you know, they had a lot of what we are now calling social determinants of health, where they which are kind of the conditions in which we live, and those impact our health more than even our medical care. And it was hard because there was little that I could do about that. But our system is not set up to provide the support that's needed, so the people that need the care the most often get the least care. They could see me at the clinic, but then I couldn't refer them on to see a specialists, so I had a woman that needed to see an air nose.

00:15:37
Speaker 5: And throat doctor.

00:15:38
Speaker 6: I just talked about how I saw an aeronos and throat doctor, you know, a week after my symptoms started, really, you know, the day after I decided I needed to She had to wait literally two years to see an air nos and throat doctor, and then they told her she didn't have anything wrong and kind of sent her on her way. I had patients who needed to go to the er, and then they would go to the er and just be dismissed because, as you know, they didn't speak clearly or they just didn't present themselves in such a way that the er really took them seriously. And it was heartbreaking to see those kinds of things. So yeah, we have a system that is not set up to help people that need the most care. And then as when I became a patient, I really see those disparities in a new way. So, as I mentioned, you know, the ear nose and throat example, where you know I could see specialists easily, my patients couldn't. And then I also face challenges that I know they did and many others do, like my medication arriving late, so you know, my medicine is a specialty medicine that's shipped from a pharmacy directly to my house, and there were times that just didn't come and I was like, I need this medicine to keep me healthy. What's going on? And I would be shuttled from one pharmacy to a different pharmacy to you know, then told my prescription was canceled. It was, you know, that it expired, and just having to deal with all of those kinds of issues that I hadn't ever experienced firsthand before. It really gave me a kind of a new perspective and helped me appreciate what some of my patients.

00:17:14
Speaker 2: Were going through.

00:17:16
Speaker 3: And I don't want to minimize what you were going through too, because yes, even though it was it's even harder for many, it's easy for no one, and that it's unfortunate, it's true.

00:17:27
Speaker 6: And actually it's one thing I have thought a lot about is I really kind of minimized what I was going through because in comparison, my patients were going through such bigger challenges, and it's something I've kind of struggled with, like, I don't ever want to compare myself to my patients and at the same time, like I was like, I need to just suck it up and get over it, because really, this is not a big deal compared to what some of these, you know, my patients are dealing with. And yet it was still a challenge, and I think that I really didn't give myself kind of an off credit, enough of an opportunity to just grieve and then accept what I was going through.

00:18:09
Speaker 3: Yes, well, you were incredibly open in your book about some of the strain and the stress that this new burden placed on you by the illness had on your marriage and then your career. Can you talk a little bit about that, and also perhaps with a glimmer of hope for anyone experiencing anything similar a tough diagnosis, either in themselves or perhaps a child, Like, what are maybe some ways to mitigate some of what you went through?

00:18:37
Speaker 2: Sure?

00:18:38
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I think any kind of chronic condition is a challenge for a family. MS has certainly had a big impact on mine. I think it was worse at the beginning, certainly, just kind of figuring out what was going wrong and then realizing what this might mean. I really was very sick at the beginning, especially after I got a spinal tap where I was pretty incapacitated in bed, thinking.

00:19:05
Speaker 5: Is this what MS is going to look like for me?

00:19:08
Speaker 6: So it was a big strain on my marriage, and I think it's brought us closer, and at times it's been kind of up and down, and I think that you learned to navigate that. My husband and I have been best friends since we were eighteen years old, so we have a really strong bond. But I think something like having a chronic condition like MS, it can really rattle your marriage. And we've gotten help for that and we've worked really hard to stay together and I think now we're really in a very solid place. But it hasn't always been that way, and I think in some ways it's similar with my kids. We've had ups and downs.

00:19:46
Speaker 5: In my early years.

00:19:47
Speaker 6: After the diagnosis, I was dizzy every day for years and it made me so much more irritable and impatient with the kids, and I had to get help. So you were asking like, what do you do you're in this kind of situation, and you know, I think that really reaching out for help, reaching out to friends was key for me. I actually, my husband works crazy hours. I imagine yours does too, so he would work evenings and weekends, which is the time that I had off, and when I really needed to recharge, he was gone. So I ended up reaching out to friends, many of whom didn't have kids, and would say, Hey, come over in the week, in the evening or the weekend and help us. Let's make this fun, let's make dinner together, let's do bad time together. And I actually signed up friends and my sister as well to come over and help, which was fun. I got a babysitter to come in the mornings because we struggled so much to get out the door. I set up some systems like I would have baskets for snacks every day of the week, and just like fill those baskets every Sunday to make sure we didn't have to be rummaging around for snacks every morning. But I think most of all it's on mindset, so just kind of, you know, I was like, I need to get everything right. I remember, right before my daughter, right before I got sick with MS, I was like till nearly midnight trying to make her perfect birthday cake with orange icing because it was Halloween and I have to get the right shade of orange. And I really, you know, now I can buy the cake, like I don't have to do everything. It doesn't have to be perfect. And I think just like trying to be easier on yourself, ask for help and know that things generally will get better, even though initially they can look bad. You know, usually you will learn to come to terms with your condition and emerge wiser and stronger.

00:21:35
Speaker 2: I love that. So that was kind of the family side.

00:21:39
Speaker 3: You also, I think had a little bit of an arc or of what you felt was your best use of your talents and your career with what you're dealing with. I don't think you're still seeing patients clinically, although maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe there's some of that. But how did you navigate that piece? Because that can be very tricky, especially when we're trained to do specific thing and we feel like in some ways we owe it to someone to do that thing perhaps, and yet there are so many ways that we can be valuable in the world. So I'm interested to hear how that played out for you.

00:22:12
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you. You know that was a really tricky decision. So I worked in doing patient care up until twenty fifteen, many years after my diagnosis. I still continue doing that, and then I've taken a break from patient care. I moved to work for a care management company where we design programs for people with Medicaid and Medicare, so still kind of a vulnerable population, which is where my heart is. And the programs are designed to help keep people out of the hospital and the emergency room and keep them as healthy as possible, and we provide a lot of support with nurses, social workers, even have community health workers who can do visits in the home sometimes, and so I've been really involved in that. Over the last seven years or so, I've done still some patient care. I work at a clinic as a volunteer for people who are homeless, So I still have that kind of perspective, you know that just I keep it real with having some patient care. But I'm also going undergoing a shift, so I'm going to be starting back to doing more patient care in the fall at a clinic for people with MS specifically, and really doing some coaching around healthy lifestyle. I'm getting board certif right in lifestyle medicine and really just helping them live their best lives, which is what I really believe is my purpose and passionate this time.

00:23:31
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm super excited for you.

00:23:33
Speaker 3: That sounds like so like it'll be a lot of fun but also incredibly rewarding and how wonderful for patience to get to learn from someone who has at least in some way been a little bit in their shoes. Obviously every case is different, but that is yeah, yeah, thank you so well. I was going to ask what's next for you? But you answered my question. Tell everybody where they can find you and your book, and if they want to learn more about your journey, where should they go.

00:23:59
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:24:00
Speaker 6: So the book is called Up the Down Escalator. I think we forgot to mention the title, but it's Up the Down Escalator Medicine, Motherhood and Multiple Sclerosis. It's published by Health Communications Incorporated, and it's distributed by Simon and Schuster. It's easy to find in all the usual places, so certainly on Amazon, hopefully at your local bookstore. If not, ask them to order it. It's at a lot of libraries, and it's on audible. I have an audiobook that I narrated which is super fun, and I think you know, the best way to find me is on my website, which is Lisa Doggett D O G G E T T dot com. And I also have a newsletter about you know, health tips and updates that you can sign up for on my website.

00:24:43
Speaker 2: Very cool.

00:24:44
Speaker 3: I just realized I have one more question for you.

00:24:46
Speaker 2: Sorry.

00:24:47
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first of all, we have to do Love of the Week, and I guess I have one other adjacent question. I'm sorry for this organization today, but in terms of the navigation of the healthcare system piece, we kind of I just want to circle back to that one more time. If you yourself are going through something like this and don't necessarily have access to your clinic, which sounds amazing that you're going to be participating in, and you primed your maybe not getting answers or not being listened to, or maybe you have a child, what would your advice be for how to navigate this mess we have to deal with especially Yeah, I'm true.

00:25:23
Speaker 5: I'm so glad you asked.

00:25:24
Speaker 6: It really is not an easy system. It's not set up to be very very patient friendly, and I know that firsthand. Now, you know, I think one thing to remember is self advocacy is really important, so you know, stay on top of your appointments, bring someone with you to your appointments or to your child's appointments.

00:25:43
Speaker 5: Take notes.

00:25:44
Speaker 6: You know, getting someone to be there with you can really be helpful. You definitely want to have a doctor you trust. If you're not happy with your doctor, get a different doctor, ask recommendations from friends and family. You don't have to stay with somebody if you're not comfortable with them. I think you have to be patient yourself. You know, you might be spending some time on hold asking about an unclear medical bill, for example, and I have done that, and I've actually saved a lot of money as a result of questioning certain things on bills. And I think that you know, whether it's fighting an insurance company over an unfair bill or calling multiple times to get test results from your doctor, it's really important to stand up for yourself and seek answers to your health questions.

00:26:27
Speaker 3: I love it, Okay, good, I just didn't want to leave that part out. And now for our Love of the Week, which I may not have warned you about, but I feel like you're going to come up with something. So every week on our episodes, we share one thing in life that is bringing us joy. It can be like totally abstract, it can be concrete. I will start to give you a moment in that I finally saw Barbie the movie and might be top five. Like I'm so. I loved it, loved it, loved it, loved everything about it, loved the commentary, loved the styling, love the actors, loved loved it all. So that is definitely deserving of a space in my Love of the Week this week.

00:27:05
Speaker 5: Oh that's great.

00:27:05
Speaker 6: I still need to go see it, so I'm glad it was good. Okay, so my love of the week will have to be my sister's mocktails. I am not a big cocktail drinker, but the mocktails are really fun and it's great because the weather here in Texas is incredibly hot right now, so having a refreshing summer mocktail is fantastic. She came over to celebrate my book launch and made mocktails with ginger let's see, lime, blackberries, and a little bit of holopano, and she left the mix with me, so I've been making them all week.

00:27:37
Speaker 2: That sounds delightful.

00:27:39
Speaker 3: Ah well, I will link up to your book of course in the show notes, so everybody can find you, as well as your website.

00:27:45
Speaker 2: Lisa. This was a delight. Thank you so much for coming on.

00:27:48
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

00:27:51
Speaker 4: Well, that was great.

00:27:52
Speaker 1: Thank you Sarah and Lisa so much for sharing your wisdom on navigating the healthcare system and how that can be such a challenge.

00:28:01
Speaker 4: So our question this week.

00:28:03
Speaker 1: Comes from a person who has a mom who has a nineteen month old and another baby on the way.

00:28:09
Speaker 4: She says, after I had my first.

00:28:11
Speaker 1: Child, I left a ten year career in management consulting looking for a field that offered more balance. She took a job that she wound up being incredibly underwhelmed by. Maybe the balance was good, but she did not feel challenged at all. And so now she's trying to figure out what she should do after she comes back from her maternity leave this second time around. Should she go hunt for another job. Should she try to find another opportunity within the organization, you know, because there's some other people who are leaving. Should she just be happy that she has this balance? Should she maybe try to work on a startup idea that she wants to do.

00:28:49
Speaker 4: So she's looking for our advice for that. So, Sarah, what was what was your thought?

00:28:55
Speaker 3: Well, you had such a great and detailed answer that I do want to just add on to what you said, but I do think, you know, the person kind of asked a little bit about like, well, is it okay to take my whole leave and then kind of give my notice right at the end of the leave, and like, I think we both acknowledge that's absolutely within your rights as an employee.

00:29:11
Speaker 2: You probably earned that leave.

00:29:13
Speaker 3: And yet at the same time, my thought is like, these worlds are very small, and especially if you do that repeated numbers of times, it just may not leave like the best taste in people's mouths necessarily, And it's always better to leave an organization with everybody in good terms because you never know where your next opportunity might come from or circle back to or whatever. So I guess I would just be a little bit careful working through that and perhaps figuring out, even if you do plan to leave afterward, what a good kind of reasonable like exit timeline might look like. And then I was just you know, the idea of a startup being great if you were previously looking for balance, I feel like that's to me, I mean, maybe this seems obvious, but that probably is not going to provide necessarily that much balance. The balance is going to come more from either having a position of seniority or finding a company whose culture really like emphasizes employee autonomy, or not being available twenty four to seven, et cetera.

00:30:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean so, I guess I didn't tee up that question quite in the way the first yes. Her first question was was it okay to take her leave and then quit right afterwards? And yeah, agree with Sarah. It's within your rights to do so because you accrued the time. Probably as you know. That's why places won't let you take it often unless you've been there a year or something like that. But you might want to think about it because that is one of the reasons that young women in particular face some discrimination in the job market and young mothers because people assume that they will quit, which many of.

00:30:49
Speaker 4: Our listeners do not. And so there's a separate question though, of whether you know this question.

00:30:54
Speaker 1: I gave a long answer to this listener because there was a bigger point to me, which is that she took this job that she's taking now because of the balance, right, Like that was what she was seeking out in a job, and I'm never sure that that's the right thing to seek in a job. I understand that it can be a perk of a job, but you can't eat balance right, Like you don't live balance on a day to day like balance is like that I have a lot of good stuff going on in my life, right, And so to me, that means that you have an interesting, challenging job that you love, and you have a family situation that you're also really enjoying as well too, because you're doing cool things with your family, having you know, your hobbies and all that. And so if you're taking a job just because of like the hours or because they you know, don't require travel or whatever it is, I think you're going to be bored. Like if you are a smart, ambitious person, you're probably going to be bored with that.

00:31:51
Speaker 4: So I would say, seek out a.

00:31:53
Speaker 1: Job that sounds interesting to you that you think will be really challenging, and then work on the balance part, because it's often part you can negotiate for things that are balanced. You also might want to think about what your mindset is of what balance means, like if you travel for you know, like if you go in saying I never want to travel, so I'm gonna look for a job that I never have to travel, Like you're limiting yourself in ways that you probably don't have to. I mean, what if you said, like, Okay, I can be gone three nights a month, Like, well, that might open up quite a lot of other opportunities. And there's nothing unbalanced about be going three nights a month and home for twenty seven, Right, that's not terrible. So like, don't go in with that mindset of like or I want someplace that I'm never gonna have to stay after five? Okay, Well what if it's that, like you have a project that's always due at the end of every month, and so yeah, you stay after five for like the two nights before that, Like is that so terrible?

00:32:47
Speaker 4: Like would you be.

00:32:48
Speaker 1: Willing to accept a more challenging job, like a more higher paying job, a more interesting.

00:32:52
Speaker 4: Job, and let you have that if you mostly have a good balance. So I don't know.

00:32:57
Speaker 1: I think I just had a problem with that frameming And so whatever this listener winds up doing, I would say for all of our listeners, balance.

00:33:08
Speaker 4: Is a perk, not the bread and butter.

00:33:10
Speaker 1: Right, go in with that mindset, and I think you'll wind up with jobs that often are very balanced. I mean, maybe I'm saying it's just because it's you know, she was in management consulting for ten years, so she was getting pretty senior at that point. And I can tell you that by ten years in my husband had a fair amount of control over his time. Now, whether he always use that is a different matter. But in many of these cases, the more senior you are, the more autonomy and control you do have.

00:33:39
Speaker 4: And so there's also a question of whether.

00:33:41
Speaker 1: You are willing to push for that as well, like whether you're willing to say no, here are my boundaries. You know, I'm willing to do this, but you know somebody else is going to do this, and it's okay, Like you can also do that.

00:33:52
Speaker 4: So balance is also what you make.

00:33:53
Speaker 2: Of it, right.

00:33:55
Speaker 3: I love it getting more clear also on what balance even means, because it's does seem like an incredibly kind of vague term when it may mean actually something very specific to you, like you said, I don't want to work late more than ten nights, you know whatever, that those specifics are for you to actually reflect on what they are.

00:34:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so with that, the question of the startup is like, go ahead and start a company if you want, but it's do it because you have an awesome business idea that you want to see brought to fruition and you want to run this company that's going to bring this idea out into the world, not because it's like, oh, that would be something cool and balanced I could do, right, Like again, the balance is the perk that you could then have as part of this company as you're hiring people like, oh, yeah, we're all really cool people who are awesome and ambitious and smart and also have other things going on in our lives, and then that's the culture you create. But the primary focus should be your awesome business idea. So do whatever you want, but I think figure out what you truly want to do to have a cool career and then work on the balance within that.

00:34:58
Speaker 4: All right, this has been best of both worlds call.

00:35:00
Speaker 1: Sarah was interviewing Lisa Dogget about up the doown Escalator staircase.

00:35:05
Speaker 5: What was it?

00:35:05
Speaker 3: Escalator?

00:35:06
Speaker 4: Yes, escalator Yes.

00:35:08
Speaker 1: We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:35:13
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.

00:35:14
Speaker 3: You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you.

00:35:21
Speaker 1: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.