The Moth Radio Hour: What's Up, Doc?

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From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour.

I'm your host, Suzanne Rust.

The vows in sickness and in health aren't just for weddings.

Doctors and healthcare professionals honor them every day.

Yes, they take care of our bodies, but when they go the extra mile, they can also help heal us in other ways and sometimes heal themselves in the process.

This episode celebrates the complexities of that special patient-doctor dance.

Our first story is from Michael Fisher, who told it at a main stage in Champaign, Illinois, where we partnered with the Virginia Theater.

Here's Here's Michael, live at the mall.

About one week into my sentence, the guards put the whole prison on lockdown.

I was in what's called reception, waiting to be classified and then sent to a different prison to serve my two years.

The rumor was that an inmate had convinced a civilian worker to smuggle in drugs.

and they'd shut everything down to look for the contraband.

I still don't know if that's true, but we were on lockdown for weeks over something in our cells all day, every day, no mess hall, no showers, no yard,

just guys yelling back and forth day and night.

I was in this big cell block, four tiers high on both sides that held 400 other men, but I was alone.

Every time the porter came by to drop a bag meal on the little shelf of my cell gate, I wanted to go for a handshake or a fist bump, anything, just just to make contact with another person.

But I was afraid the porter would just see some strange guy trying to grab him through the bars.

About 10 days into lockdown, my cell buzzed open after morning count and the tier officer sent me to medical.

I was born with a heart problem.

I've been having surgeries for it since I was a kid, so apparently I had to see a cardiologist.

before the state could decide which prison to send me to next.

That meant leaving the lockdown behind for a day and going to a hospital in the free world.

To see a doctor on the outside, I had to be strip searched and have my wrists and my ankles shackled.

The handcuffs were connected to a chain around my waist, so I could only lift my hands a couple inches.

Think of it like the choke collars some people use on dogs.

I wasn't used to ankle cuffs that early in my bid, and this was January in New York.

So I waddled through snow to the transport van with an officer on either side of me and then sort of threw myself into the back seat because I couldn't use my hands.

How boring you think the waiting room at your doctor's office is

depends a lot on where you're arriving from.

I was so excited to sit on a real chair instead of a steel bench, to be in a quiet room that didn't smell like sweat or urine or disinfectant.

But when I shuffled through the front door of the doctor's office, one of the COs with me said, come on, we're not stopping.

He led me down a hallway and I stood against a wall while the other officer checked me in.

Pretty naïve to think I'd be allowed to sit and wait with the other patients.

They would be afraid of me.

It occurred to me that this trip might not be the break I'd hoped for.

I thought being in the free world for a day would be great.

See mailboxes and billboards again, look at people in their cars and wonder about their lives.

pretend I was just on my way to work, like everybody else.

I thought I would feel almost normal, not like some animal escaped from the zoo.

The staff clearly wanted me out the door as fast as possible, so pretty quickly the officers and I were shown into an exam room.

The cardiologist walked in with a nurse right behind him.

And he looked at me and said, Michael,

use my first name as if I were any other patient on his schedule.

And I said, yeah,

I'm Michael.

The cardiologist started a physical exam, and just the feeling of his stethoscope against my chest,

I might as well have been at a spa.

I started reciting my medical history using all the technical terms I've learned from dealing with heart disease my whole life.

And when I'd finished, the nurse tapped my ankle cuffs twice with a finger and said, You're too smart for these,

which was supposed to be a compliment.

I wanted to tell her, that's not how it works.

The guys on my cell block weren't locked up for being stupid.

But to be honest, a part of me felt flattered.

This nurse and this doctor were treating me like I was a real person.

They thought I was smart, and they weren't afraid to look me in the eyes and lay their hands on me.

After weeks of no human touch and no dignity, to suddenly have people do things as simple as speak to me kindly or listen to my heartbeat or feel the swelling in my legs.

I decided I would pay any price for that.

Just to feel the touch of another person for a minute and to know that person's here to help me

and to hope that meant I still deserved help.

From the moment the officers put me back in the van, I had a new plan for my time in prison.

Take as many medical trips as possible.

Even though it would mean waking up at four in the morning and the cuffs and chains for 12 hours straight and the looks from every person along the way,

I needed that reward at the end.

I needed contact with people who treated me as if I was still fully human because I wasn't sure I even believed that anymore.

So I started lying.

I was transferred from maximum security reception to a different prison, and almost as soon as I got there, I started complaining to the medical staff about symptoms I didn't actually have.

But because my heart problem really is serious, everything I said was believable.

So they started sending me out on more medical trips.

Sometimes more than once a month, I'd get to take these awesome long drives through the countryside into the city.

Two officers and I would enter through a back door that was only used to take out the hospital's trash and bring inmates to appointments.

It always took a while to reach the cardiology clinic because every time someone came walking towards me, the officers would have me turn to the wall and stare at my feet until the person passed.

But I still caught sight of faces.

I saw people pull their children close or dart down random hallways

or pretend to forget something and just turn around.

Still, it was easier to mark time by my hospital trips than by what I was missing back home.

My sister got engaged and then married, but I had things to do too.

I had an appointment to get a CT scan.

My grandma's dementia got worse until she forgot who I was.

And it became hard for me to sleep through the night while I'm having a panic attack.

But at least my grandma couldn't remember to be ashamed of me anymore.

At one time, the doctors gave me what they called twilight drugs so they could put a scope down my throat.

And that was almost as good as real sleep.

My aunt died of pancreatic cancer, and because her funeral was out of state, I wasn't allowed to attend.

But what I could do was stare out the windows of the transport van and pretend I was someone else.

I knew I was wasting people's time and the state's money and scaring everyone I saw each time I left the prison.

But I didn't care.

I needed the connection, and I needed the escape.

I remember lying fully conscious on an operating table, handcuffed to the side rails, during yet another procedure that I'd talked my way into but didn't really need,

where the doctors were threading a scope up through an incision in my groin.

And I remember thinking,

this is so worth it.

By the time my sentence was almost over, I'd taken more than a dozen medical trips.

I should have been focused on my release, but I didn't want to think about life as a convict.

I definitely wanted to get get out, but there's a difference between getting out and truly going home.

I was afraid home had changed so much for me that it wouldn't feel like I belonged anymore.

On my hospital trips, I could catch sight of freedom without having to really deal with freedom.

But as my release date approached, I started to wonder what good the trips were doing me.

The van would be driving me to some appointment, and I would think, what if from now on I only know how to navigate the free world as a tourist, like I am now?

What's going to happen when I actually live there?

On one trip, towards the end of my bid, the CEO was parked a van by some dumpsters in the back, like always.

But this particular doctor's office was special because here I was allowed to sit in the waiting room, off in a corner behind this big pillar.

I didn't look at the other patients, even though I really wanted to.

That seemed like the one nice thing I could do in public.

Try not to bother people too much with the fact that, you know,

I exist.

The nurse who called my name was around my age at the time, early 20s.

Once we were in the exam room, she asked the officers to take off my handcuffs so I could remove my shirt.

They took off the cuffs and I took off my shirt.

And the nurse explained that she was going to stick some leads to my chest so that she could run a test.

So I lay back and closed my eyes.

eyes.

And when her hands touched me, I had to grit my teeth to keep myself from crying.

In a different life, she could have been a friend of mine.

But there in that room, I kept wondering if she was afraid of me.

She tried to run the test, but she wasn't getting a clean signal, so she started pulling off the sticky lead pads to rearrange them, and each one was pulling out a little patch of my chest hair.

I remember she winced as she pulled off the last lead and she said, I'm sorry about this.

She apologized to me.

And that,

that broke the spell.

Suddenly I felt so embarrassed that I brought myself and these two big officers into this nurse's space

just so I could, what,

deny reality?

Feel better about myself for 10 minutes.

She was just trying to do her job, and it was not her job to somehow make me fully human again.

It was my job to know that I'd never stopped being fully human, that I still deserved connection and compassion, whether anyone in any courtroom or waiting room agreed or not.

Because the alternative was to keep feeling ashamed, and to keep thinking of myself as a loser,

and to go through life begging other people, like this nurse,

to prove me wrong, to give me some small sign that maybe I'm not so bad after all.

That was my last medical trip.

I told the prison doctor I was feeling just fine after that.

And then, a few months later, I packed my stuff, signed my release papers, and they let me go.

Living in the free world again has been about as hard as I expected.

But despite that, I have to find my way as a citizen of the free world, not just as a tourist.

Because if I can't,

I'll never belong anywhere.

Thank you.

That was Michael Fisher.

After prison, Michael moved to Chicago and earned his bachelor's degree and two master's degrees.

Michael is a Lumen Arts Cultural Foundation fellow whose nonfiction writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

His work has been published in the New York Times, Salon, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

He is a proud uncle of two nieces and two nephews.

I asked Michael if he had any words for his younger self.

He said, I would tell him that all the work he was doing, both inside and out, was truly going to add up to something, even though it was difficult to imagine at the time.

To see some photos of Michael, go to themoth.org.

If laughter is the best medicine, our next teller should have a healthy life ahead of her.

Liana House told this at a story slam in Boston, where we partnered with WBUR and PRX.

Here's Liana.

So

the best thing I bought before my mastectomy was Googly Eyes.

I got this idea because I was trying to explain internet rule number 34 to my Gen X sister.

Some people know what that is.

It's if there is porn of it, or if it exists, there is porn of it.

And I Google mastectomy porn because I'm going to have a mastectomy in a month.

So I Google that.

Don't, don't do that.

Don't Google this.

But the first result that wasn't porn is a YouTube video by an actress that has breast cancer.

And the video is five weird reasons why I love my mastectomy.

Now, she's hilarious, so it's not surgery saved my life or you can't have breast cancer if you have no breasts.

No.

It's Facebook can't censor your topless photos because no nipples, right?

Or you can turn your boob into a nightlight.

You really can't.

So one of her reasons was you can turn your boob into a Muppet with the application of Googly Eyes.

So I think about

who can I make the most uncomfortable by doing this?

So my first post-op appointment with my new plastic surgeon,

I go in

and we're talking about opioids, we're talking about pain.

And he's like, hey, can I check out your surgical scar?

Yes, you can.

And he's a professional.

Keep this in mind.

He's like really good at maintaining eye contact because he does a lot of breast surgery.

So I'm unbuttoning my shirt and I can see in his eyes when he catches a glimpse out of his peripheral vision.

Because I have my boob that did not have a mastectomy has a nipple nose and a big highlighter smile.

It's bright pink.

And the other boob, it's like a crooked diagonal scar and it has, you know, it's an incision, so it has surgical tape.

It does not look happy.

The boob, it's the bad boob though, so of course it's not happy.

So he looks at me and he's like,

what is this?

I'm like, I have a happy boob and I have a sad boob.

He's like, why is your boob sad?

I'm like, you're going to stab her with a huge needle.

He is unflappable.

He is a professional.

So he just like gets onto the stabbing.

And as he's putting the needle in, I ask him, is it harder when my boob is looking at you?

And I crack myself up.

He had to tell me to stop laughing because he had to do a procedure.

So.

After that, I tell him, you know, we haven't done any progress pics.

I had told him that I want to be the pictures that he shows for the best possible outcome for a masectomy and reconstruction.

And he looks at me like I'm a crazy person, and he says,

these go in your medical record.

I'm like, yeah, no, I know.

And he's like, a lot of people see your medical record.

Like all of your doctors, you see a lot of doctors.

Every appointment that you go to, they're going to see these pictures.

I'm like, I think a lot of people should see this, don't you?

So, in my medical record, there is a picture of my googly-eyed boobs with one happy boob and one sad boob.

The nurse loved it.

She actually got me a marker

to make sure the smile was darker.

So, I wanted pictures because it's hilarious, right?

I mean, what's funnier than a mastectomy boob with googly eyes?

Nothing.

Nothing is funnier.

But also,

I know a lot of people who think that because cancer is ugly, that makes us ugly.

I know women who will not take pictures when they are bald from chemo.

I know a woman who her husband has not seen her without a wig.

I know women who can't look in the mirror because they're ugly.

And I didn't want to do that.

I didn't want to censor this because I have a scar because something horrible happened to me and I healed from it.

It's a miracle.

It's a miracle that we heal from things like this.

So, my body is beautiful because it's the one that I live in, and it's the one that allows me to experience all of the wonderful and terrible things that go along with living in this world.

And if you cannot make your scars beautiful, invest in googly eyes and make them hilarious, because that's the next best thing.

Leanna House works at the same Boston hospital that treated her cancer, and she says she's not leaving until she makes back every penny that her cancer care cost.

As you probably noticed, humor is Liana's best coping mechanism.

I asked her about her thing for googly eyes.

She said that for years, she'd leave a few googly eyes around whenever she visited the cancer center so that there were some silly surprise faces to keep the patients company.

The pandemic slowed her down, but she has a pair of gigantic googly eyes that she's still searching for just the right place to drop off.

In a moment, a phlebotomist's origin story and a new mother on the edge.

That's coming up next for you on the Moth Radio Hour.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

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This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Suzanne Rust.

Starting a new job is never easy, especially one that involves what you might call a very particular set of skills.

Our next story was told by Oscar Saavedra at a Washington, D.C.

Grand Slam, where we partner with WAMU.

Here's Oscar.

Can everybody make some noise?

Ah, yeah, we in DC.

All right, so coming up as a young adult, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life.

I didn't know what career I wanted to pursue.

I'm 18 years old, don't know what to do.

I hear somebody talking about phlebotomy.

So I look into it.

I tell my mom.

Nobody really knew what it was.

So

for those of you who don't know, a phlebotomist is the person that draws blood, right?

So, I take the course, I pass, I land my first job, I'm excited, and I bombed.

I was terrible.

I could not draw blood to save my life.

So, I'm going through it, and it got to the point where my coworkers, they would just sit me at the front and be like, just say hi to the patients,

and then say bye to the patients.

Like, I felt like a Walmart greeter.

So I'm like, no, I'm never going to get good sitting here.

So they let me stick somebody.

I go in the room, I prep, and I felt so confident, great veins.

I'm like, all right, I'm going to get it.

I miss,

completely missed.

But this guy, he got so upset.

He was really nasty.

He was rude.

He gets up and he tells me, he looks me in the eyes and he says, you clearly don't know how to do your job.

And I'm looking, I'm thinking, like, maybe he's just saying this in a joking way.

But he was really upset.

He's like, get someone who knows what they're doing.

He says, you're not good at this.

But he was really mean, really nasty.

And I'm not going to lie, it kind of hurt.

So I was broken.

I'm like, how can somebody just tell me this?

So, I mean, it got to the point though, all seriousness, I thought about quitting.

Like,

I said, I'm not going to make it.

So,

I call my mom.

I tell her, hey, look, this happened.

She's like, don't worry about it.

I don't even know why you're going through all that.

Just your dad could get you a job, but the construction site.

And I'm like, everybody does that.

All Mexicans work construction.

I said, no.

So I took matters into my own hands.

I asked the senior phlebotomist, can you please show me everything you know?

Take me under your wing.

Please give me some tips some pointers and she did and I got good but I was always uncertain am I ever really going to be good at this so fast forward six years later after all this training all this experience I'm working at this hospital in Baltimore I feel like I'm one of the best phlebotomists there I get a call they say hey we need you to go up to the ICU unit there's a patient in distress And I'm sitting here like, we don't go to those units.

Like, those are prohibited.

And they're like, no, the doctor can't get the blood.

The nurse can't get the blood.

This patient really needs it.

We need you.

So I'm like, all right, no pressure.

I go up there.

I've never been on this unit.

I'm lost.

But I find the room.

I go in, and it was just like a scene out of a movie.

It's like all these respiratory therapists, these doctors, all these nurses, this patient is really like losing it.

So I got nervous.

I felt like invisible.

I felt like I didn't belong here.

And every time I would miss somebody, I would think about that guy who looked me in the eyes and told me, like, you're not good at your job.

And I'm just sitting there thinking, like, what if I miss?

And everything just goes silent.

I don't know how many of you work in a healthcare profession, but it gets real.

And everything just silence.

All I could hear was my heartbeat.

Just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And it's kind of like when a roller coaster reaches its peak and it's about to drop.

And then all of a sudden, boom, adrenaline kicks in.

I said, hey, I'm the phlebotomist.

I'm here to get some blood work.

I I need access to the patient's arm.

And they look at me like, Who are you?

And I'm like, I just told you, I'm the phlebotomist.

I'm here to get some blood work.

I need access to the patient's arm.

They're like, Oh, yeah, yeah.

So I go in, I tie the tourniquet.

I'm looking up here.

I'm looking down here, the back of the hand.

I can't find anything.

I stuck this patient in the most unorthodox place.

I'm not going to tell y'all where because I know some of y'all are scared of needles,

but I got it.

So I stick the patient and I start getting a nice blood flow.

Boom.

One tube.

Boom.

Two tubes.

Boom.

Three tubes.

Done.

In less than 60 seconds, I did what nobody in that room could do.

Got this patient's blood work.

Thank you.

However, once I'm done, they're thanking me.

They're cheering me on, kind of like, yeah, you know.

But I realized like I didn't even see who I just drew blood from.

Like, I went straight to the arm.

I didn't even make eye contact or nothing.

They're wheeling this person away, and I look at the patient and he looked familiar.

And I'm like, why does he look so familiar?

And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I'm like, this is the guy, the same guy

from six years ago who told me I wasn't good at my job.

I couldn't believe it.

The next day, I go to work.

They called me.

I'm guessing, well, he obviously, the surgery went well because they asked for me specifically to come back and draw a little bit more blood work.

I go up there and I remember that when he told me that I wasn't any good, I told him, like, sir, I'm new.

And he's like, I know.

I was like, well,

I'm sorry.

But this time with more experience, six years later, he's the patient that's in the room.

I go in there, we chat a little bit.

He didn't recognize me, but I recognized him.

So I get his blood work and then as I'm getting ready to leave, I didn't say anything.

He says, Hey,

thank you.

And he says, We need more people like you who are good at their job.

And I look at him, and I turn around and I look him in the eyes, and I said, I know.

Thank you.

That was Oscar Saavedra.

He was a phlebotomist for over a decade and is currently studying to be a nurse.

I had to ask Oscar about which unorthodox place he drew blood from that patient.

He told me that he took it from an area in between the knuckle of the middle and index finger.

He says that not many people know or dare to go into that tiny vein that is barely visible.

It's a move for a very seasoned phlebotomist.

To see a photo of Oscar on the job, go to themoth.org.

Our next story was told by Gwen Carmen at a slam in San Francisco where we partner with KALW and KQED.

Here's Gwen.

In 1986, I was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.

And at the time, I was working in the middle school from hell in San Francisco.

And

my students, like, they would come in the room.

I knew I was working with the at-risk students, but I didn't know.

I wasn't, I grew up went to school in the 50s.

So if we did something wrong,

it would get to our parents before we got home.

So I'm not used to a student coming up to me and saying, you bitch, you fat fuck, you bitch, you bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch.

So I'm not used to that.

So anyway,

so anyway,

the doctor, he was all grim and sad, and he said,

you know, you have six months to live.

And I, instead of, I didn't process it because it was an eight-hour surgery.

And I'm up here trying to high-five him and saying, yay, I don't have to go to that shitty middle school anymore.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to high-five him.

And he's got his, his,

he's got his hands behind his back looking all grim.

And it doesn't, I don't get it until a few weeks later.

So anyway,

well, here I am, and suddenly I process I'm gonna die.

So I get upset.

The nurse is saying, you need to get up and walk around the room.

So I had one nasty nurse says, no, patient refuses to get out of the bed.

And I'm going, how dare you talk to to me like that I am dying I have a right to lay in the bed but

there's a reason you have to get out of the bed because bed sores one and it helps you know it helps with your circulation so she was just really nasty she was like cut and dry she wasn't all sympathetic like the other nurses Anyway, one of the things why I was upset about dying, I don't know how to die.

How do you do this?

You know, so

I started crying, and one of my women I worked with called me up and said, She's one of these old,

old school Christians.

She gets on, she said, stop that crying.

You know, Jesus Christ is your Lord, and when it's time for you to go, it's time for you to go.

And say to yourself, there's no such thing as cancer.

So, with that, you know, I said, okay.

So, I said, I have to deal with that.

So,

anyway, right after I hung up with her, this was, we had a rare thunderstorm.

So that was an omen right there.

So anyway, I get out of the hospital two weeks later.

Oh, by the way, they did a Whipple.

I was lucky because they had invented this thing to help with pancreatic cancer.

But one of the things that I had to deal with also was going through chemotherapy and radiation.

They put me on six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation.

So then

what helped me get through this whole thing was reading

Elizabeth Kubla Ross, The Stages of Dying, because I didn't know how to die.

So I said, I'll go to the library, figure out how to die.

And hers is,

all the rest of those books are like, woo, woo, woo.

But hers was really direct, real people's

stories, and it helped me get through the, that's why I'm standing here today.

It helped me get through the crisis and also having a positive attitude.

And I would like to end this by saying I

was lucky enough to have health, I got health insurance through that job and I had the best damn doctors and everybody in America should have health insurance.

Thank you very much.

That was Gwen Carmen, a San Francisco-based writer, activist, and former educator.

She says that she has Writer's Block to thank for pushing her into the storytelling world.

I asked her if she had any words of wisdom for people who are dealing with illness.

And she said, stay away from sad people and their pity.

It's not what you need right now.

And don't just focus on the crisis.

Find something that brings you joy.

Gwen wanted to thank Dr.

Dean Ryder and Dr.

Ian Silverberg at San Francisco's Davies Hospital for for their great attitudes and for keeping her alive.

In a moment, a story about learning to accept help when you need it most, when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by Peer.

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You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Suzanne Rust.

In this episode, we're focusing on medical stories.

Seeking help when you need it is an act of courage and self-preservation.

Our next story comes from Elizabeth Gray, who told it at a slam in Melbourne, where we partner with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ABCRN.

Here's Elizabeth.

When my son was, our youngest son was six months old, I took him to his child and maternal nurse health checkup.

And

so we're doing really well.

He was meeting his developmental targets, and the immunisations are up to date, so we were ticking all the boxes.

And at the last minute, our lovely nurse pulls out a yellow double-sided form.

And she says, oh,

this is just a questionnaire to see if you might be showing some signs of postnatal depression.

And I was like, yep, sure, no, I was cool.

So after about 20 questions, and she tallies everything up, and she says, she looks at me and she says, well, it appears that you're borderline.

And I immediately burst into tears.

So she referred me to a counsellor at the local community health centre and my counsellor worked out pretty quickly that I was in denial and I really was resistant to going to a group session and really really resistant to going on medication.

So she sort of went for this sort of softly softly approach and she sort of said look I think if you can get some sleep then you'll feel a hell of a lot better.

So of course this was true and but what happened was I clung to this idea that if I can just get some sleep then I won't be crazy anymore.

So on the positive side, we didn't made lots of changes at home.

So

I had a two and a half year old and we took the side off his cot so we could sort of transition him to a big boy bed.

We took my youngest, my six month old and his cradle out from the end of our bed and put him in his own room.

And I stopped breastfeeding so that my husband and mother-in-law could help with bottle feeding.

So the downside was that I became absolutely obsessed with sleep.

And I was totally convinced that my six-month-old and my two and a half year old were conspiring together

to keep me from sleeping.

So it all came to a head one day when

I'd managed to get them both down at the same time, which was a miracle.

And I was laying down in bed and I could hear that my eldest was out of his cot.

And he wasn't being loud, he wasn't crying or anything.

But as I lay there listening to him, second by second, I got more and more enraged.

to the point where I just burst into his room and I picked him up off the floor and I threw him really hard into the cot

and I screamed at him, stay in your cot.

And he wasn't physically hurt, but I will never forget the look of sheer terror on his face.

So the next day I thought, okay, I'm going to go to this group counselling.

And even though this terrible thing had happened with my eldest child, I still felt like kind of like a fraud or an imposter.

And I was shocked to walk in and find that none of them actually had three heads.

None of them were in the corner rocking or foaming at the mouth.

They were actually a lot like me.

And a week later, I got another shock because one of the sort of healing parts of the counselling process was to call family and friends and to let them know that you've got postnatal depression.

So I rang my mum and she was, you know, great and supportive.

And then I rang a friend and sort of solemnly said that I had postnatal depression.

And she was like,

I had it with both of my kids and I was on medication for six years.

I was like, what?

And then she went on to say that another friend of ours

had postnatal depression with her kids and she was on medication as well.

And I was like, what is this whacked out conspiracy?

It's like something out of the X-Files or something.

Anyway, for the next year and a half, things were

going okay and

then I hit a rough patch and just for shits and giggles I thought that I would toilet train both of my children at the same time.

Now I wouldn't recommend this to my worst enemy.

And what basically happened was I was just pissed off 24-7.

I was so angry at everyone.

The whole family was walking around on eggshells.

And finally my mother-in-law sat me down and she was crying and she said, Liz, I don't know what to do.

Every time I do something you get angry.

You know, anytime anyone does anything you get angry and I just don't know what to do anymore.

So the next day I went to the doctor and I felt defeated.

I felt like I'd failed when I told her that I thought I needed medication.

And

she was sort of talking to me, explaining, you know, all about the medication and I was crying and she just sort of casually said, I don't know why they just don't put it in the water.

And

I know that may not sit well with everyone,

but that was something I really needed to hear that day because it normalised it for me.

So after about two weeks of being on the medication, which it was really freaky and not in a, let's go to the bedroom and get freaky, more of a, holy shit, the whole earth is just shifted two degrees to the left and no one seems to know except for me, kind of freaky.

But after that,

it was like this calm kind of settled on me, and that terrible storm of anger and rage and fury just kind of dissipated like mist when the sun comes up.

And I realized that it was more important for me to stand in my truth and admit that I needed help with life and motherhood than to stand by and do nothing and risk hurting the ones that I love the most.

That was Elizabeth Gray.

She lives in Melbourne with her husband and two teenage sons, and she says that she's still recovering from homeschooling them over three separate lockdowns.

I asked her what she would tell other mothers who are dealing with postpartum depression.

She said, talk to people, talk to your doctor.

Asking for help and taking medication if you need it to help you get through this time is not something to be ashamed of.

You should be proud of yourself for taking steps to improve your life and your children's lives.

And she also said to take lots of photos.

Because when you look back, you will need a reminder that it wasn't all terrible.

To see photos of Elizabeth with her boys, go to themoth.org.

One of the tenets of the Hippocratic Oath states, I will remember that there is an art to medicine as well as science and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.

Our final storyteller, Dr.

Chris Katrine, took that oath to heart.

She shared this story in a slam in the Twin Cities.

Here's Chris.

I was so excited when I first started working at a children's hospital.

It was my first day, and I could not wait.

I put on my brand new white coat, and it still had like the creases in it from being in the package.

And I was headed to the children's hospital, and I was so excited to actually learn what I've been waiting and reading about the whole time.

And I had three whole years that I had to follow around these attending physicians.

They are the gods of medicine, right?

They know everything.

They're calm.

It doesn't matter what's happening.

And I have three years to suck everything out of their head and put it in my body so that I know how to take care of kids.

And that's what I was going to do in three years.

And I was ready to get started, so immediately I walk behind this attending physician in oncology and the cancer ward in the children's hospital.

And I sit down and I listen to this wonderful physician compassionately tell these terrified parents that their teenage boy has leukemia and that it's treatable and that the treatment's actually pretty scary, but he's going to help walk them through.

And two nights later, I'm on call.

And on call is different because the gods leave and they go home and the hospital is run by the residents.

So here I am, creases in my coat, ready to be on call.

And

it becomes very clear to me very quickly that this child is getting very sick and all of the things that I heard this wonderful physician tell this family could possibly happen to their child were happening tonight when I was on.

And I order labs, and I order meds, and I push IV fluids like I've been trained to do, right?

And it's not working, and I try again, and it's still not working.

And now, you know, what was really exciting is now really, really scary.

And I call the ICU and I say, you know, I think this child actually needs to be in your intensive care unit because they're really sick.

And said, I agree, Chris, boy.

Yeah, you've done a good job.

That's great.

We don't have a bed.

We'll call you when we do.

And so I call the oncology god of the night and I wake him up at home and he says, Good job, kid.

See you tomorrow.

And that's when I really start sweating.

And by the time we actually got this child into the elevator to go to the ICU, I am spent.

Those elevator doors shut and I slide down the wall and I'm shaking.

I smell like armpits and feet.

It's bad.

And then I realize it's 6.30 in the morning.

It's time to check morning labs and go on with the rest of the day.

And I still have a whole day ahead of me.

And right when I sit down to check labs, I get a call from one of my residents down in the ICU who tells me, Chris, I just thought you wanted to know, your patient just died.

And I was devastated.

I was just devastated.

How could they die?

I'm here to learn everything about how to save kids, right?

I mean, go to the children's hospital, get the miracle, that's the deal, right?

So I'm there, and it's just not, it's not happening.

I mean, how could he be dead?

I was talking to them yesterday, and we were joking about golf.

This child was a left-handed golfer who was on a golf team in his high school, and I was talking about how my two-year-old son had gotten a plastic set of golf clubs as a present and was so pissed off because he couldn't hit the ball because he's left-handed, and they don't make left-handed golf clubs for toddlers.

And we were joking about it, and now he's gone.

And just the way the hospital works, it moves on, it keeps going, and I had to keep going and not process any of this.

And so it moves on, I move on, and I'm at the next call night three nights later.

And I've been through a terrible night.

I've been up 30, 35 hours.

I don't remember the last time I peed or ate or brushed my hair or teeth.

And

as I'm that spent, I'm working on notes for the day and I hear, Dr.

Katrine, and I look up and I see this man.

And here comes the dad of my patient.

And he said,

I think your boy would really like golf a lot more if he could hit the ball.

And he hands me this little golf club.

that he was his son's that he cut down into a two-year-old size.

And I broke every little bit of eggshell that I had, of facade around me that I had built that I was in control broke and yolk's leaking on the floor and I'm ugly crying and we're hugging each other in the middle of the unit and it's just a disaster and I'm really not okay for a long time.

But the hospital moves on and I move on and I'm on my next

you know, I'm on my next rotation and years later this is still happening, right?

I'm not really processing these things like good doctors do.

You just move on.

But once a year I would allow myself this little indulgence where I would drive out to where this boy was from.

It was two hours away in the middle of nowhere.

And I would grab a card and I would pull up into this church and I would write out like a diary every fear I had and I would put it on his grave and I would leave and just thought it would, you know, get wet in the rain or blow away or whatever.

And I did it for seven years until I was wearing a white coat that didn't have creases in it anymore.

And I had people walking around behind me asking me questions.

And I got a page from the welcome desk at my hospital that I was working at in a different city.

And they said, there's a delivery for you.

You need to come downstairs and get this right now.

And I walked downstairs, and

here's the father of my patient.

And he said,

you didn't come this year, and we were worried about you.

And he had all seven cards in his hand.

And he said, I really just wanted to make sure you're okay, Doc.

Thanks.

Chris Katrine is a physician who's been practicing pediatric palliative care and hospice in the Twin Cities for over a decade.

She says that her work continually sparks her curiosity and teaches her humility.

Her patients have shown her at each stage of her career that she has so much to learn.

And if she remembers to pause and be curious enough to ask them, they will teach her something amazing every time.

Chris wanted to dedicate this story to her late Uncle Andy.

She misses their talks.

To see photos of Chris, head to themoth.org.

You can share these stories or others from the Moth Archive and buy tickets to moth storytelling events in your area through our website, themoth.org.

There are moth events all year round.

Find a show near you and come out to tell a story.

And find us on social media too.

We're on Facebook and Twitter at TheMoth and on Instagram at MothStories.

That's it for this hour of the moth.

And a special thanks to all the doctors, nurses, and first responders that help take care of us every day.

We hope you'll join us next time.

And that's the story from The Moth.

This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced by me, Jay Allison, Catherine Burns, and Suzanne Rust, who also hosted the show.

Co-producer is Vicki Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch.

The stories were directed by Michelle Jolowski, with additional Grand Slam coaching by Chloe Salmon.

The rest of the Moss leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Janess, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluche, Leanne Gulley, Brandon Grant, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Aldi Caza.

Moss stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers.

Our theme music is by The Drift.

Other music in this hour from Chili Gonzalez, Portico Quartet, Quartet, Victor Wooten, Charlie Rouse, Fruitful, and Dustin O'Halloran.

We receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX.

For more about our podcast and for information on pitching this, your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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