THE BRAVE ENOUGH BLOG
Sashaā€™s Thoughts on Wellness, Women in the Workplace, Motherhood, and Medicine.
Recently I was saying goodnight to my oldest son, who is now 14 and about to enter high school. I was standing in his bedroom looking at his midnight blue walls, which are covered in each of the planets. He looked up at me from his Pottery Barn bunkbed and said, “Mom, I need a new...
Dear Boys,
I am so blessed to be your mom. You each have amazing personalities, unique talents, and special characteristics. I know someday you will grow up and be strong men. Kind men. Respectful men. Successful men. Men like your grandfathers. Men like your father.
Someday when you go out into...
One of the things I am asked about all the time is time management. People want to know how I find time to do the things that I do. I promise you I sleep (although, not much). I don’t have a group of minions doing work for me. I empty the dishwasher. I pay bills. I run to the store on my...
The practice of medicine is a lot like the practice of parenting. It is full of highs and lows, moments of pure joy and those of devastating heartache.
When I talk to my friends who are parents, they agree with me. Some of the most difficult times as a parent is watching your kids fail. When your...
You know that one failure, the one that comes into your mind at the most unpredictable times, and catches you off guard like a barking dog, right when your about to open a door?
We all fall short, every one of us. Some people are able to bounce up after being leveled by failure faster than...
If you are a woman, please read. I’m going to talk about something controversial that affects ALL women.
Hear me out.
Jane is a 38-year-old mother of three. She is educated and skilled and worked as a marketing director for several years until she decided to stay home after her...
“He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.”
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I was a third year medical student on a Sunday morning when the reality of what I had chosen as my life career truly hit me square in the gut. At that moment, I realized how intimate...
Since I was a little girl, I have been called a lot of things. Sensitive. Funny. Strong-willed. Outgoing. Take-charge. Friendly. Bossy. Focused. And my favorite: domineering.
I’ve always been a direct person. I’m an extrovert, which means I walk into a room and I am energized by the...
“Greatness is doable. Greatness is many, many individual feats, and each of them is doable.”
-Angela Duckworth, Grit
I have four kids and a full time job. My kids are in sports that require weekend travel. I am a practicing cardiac anesthesiologist in a busy academic...
After my second child was born, I realized a harsh truth:
I could not be everything to everyone.
It took me almost 30 years to understand this. I was working as a full-time physician with unpredictable hours. I was trying desperately to make it all work; juggling hospital burdens with the...
I was approaching 24 hours in the hospital and waiting for my partner to come into my operating room so we could do “hand-off”, where I spend 15 minutes going over all of the events of the surgical case and explain my patient’s health history, his current status, my current...
It is still dark out when I walk into the busy and bustling preoperative area where 35 different patients and their family members crowd into small bays. They hand over their personal belongings to the RNs and their trust to me. As I walk in, I grab my patient’s hand, smile and say,...