INTRODUCTION
Gillian Kumagi:
Hello and welcome to the DocsWithDisabilities podcast. My name is Gillian [insert last name] and I am thrilled to announce that we will be bringing you a special 6-month series with Stanford University. During this time, Dr. Peter Poullos will conduct one-on-one interviews with a number of guests and will also serve as the co-host of the podcast.
In today’s episode, we give you a glimpse into the backgrounds of Dr. Meeks and Poullos, as they interview each other about their pathways to advocacy, why the podcast was developed, and why they decided to partner. These two can be described as fierce advocates for disability access, but as you’ll see today, they are also lovely and funny individuals.
MUSIC
For today’s podcast we asked our hosts to be a little more relaxed, we wanted you--our audience to have an opportunity to get to know Dr. Meeks and Poullos outside of their “host” personas.
What we learned is that when you give the mic to these two, and do not structure the conversation, you never know what will happen….. Let’s listen or read along as “Pete and Lisa” have a little chat.
Lisa Meeks:
Doctors with disabilities exist in small, but impactful numbers. How do they navigate their journey? What are the challenges? What are the benefits to patients and to their peers? And What can we learn from their experiences?
Pete Poullos:
Join us as we explore the stories of Doctors, PA’s, Nurses, OT’s, PT’s, Pharmacists, Dentists, and other health professions with disabilities. We’ll also be interviewing the researchers and policy makers that drive medicine forward towards real equity and inclusion.
Lisa Meeks:
My name is Lisa Meeks
Pete Poullos:
and I am Peter Poullos
Lisa Meeks:
and we are thrilled to bring you the Docs with Disabilities podcast.
INTERVIEW
A little music….
Pete Poullos:
Let's interview each other.
Lisa Meeks:
"Okay, so the audience doesn't know much about us." We're-
Pete Poullos:
Us, is there an us?
Lisa Meeks:
There's definitely an us, I feel you're my brother from another mother.
Pete Poullos:
Yes, and you're my sister from another...
Lisa Meeks:
Mr.
Lisa and Pete: Laughter
Pete Poullos:
What are our goals for this podcast?
My goal for this podcast. You know, this wasn't my idea.
Lisa Meeks: Laughter
Pete Poullos: This is, my medical students.They're like, "How about we do a Docs With Disabilities Podcast?" And I said, "Well, that sounds overwhelming. I don't have time to do a podcast. It's ridiculous.
Lisa Meeks:
[Laughing] Now you tell me
Pete Poullos:
Have you seen how many hours Lisa works on prepping, recording, editing, and distributing these podcasts?" I said, "I want no part of that." But here I am because my students wish is my command.
Lisa Meeks:
You're in big trouble. Those medical students, darn it. That age group, all of their energy and bright ideas.
Pete Poullos:
They're always pushing me in the right direction.
Lisa Meeks:
Uh-huh
Pete Poullos:
Ya know, it looks like I'm leading, but I'm really just getting pushed from behind.
Lisa Meeks: Laughter
Pete Poullos: "Hold a national conference, do a podcast." "Yes, yes, yes..."
MUSIC
...But then, once we started talking about it more and I realized that we would be doing these interviews together, I thought, "Well, as long as I have a team with me to help with a lot of the details outside of the actual interviewing." I thought, "Well, you know, it should be fine."
Lisa Meeks:
So, you have your entourage, which is pretty big. And by the way, people can't see us, but you have a lighted microphone, it literally lights up and glows red. I have a regular microphone and I have a distinct lack of entourage that I bring to the equation.
Pete Poullos:
You have a worldwide following, I just have a microphone…..
and a friend named Lisa Meeks.
MUSIC
Lisa Meeks:
I was going to try to control this. You know I thought about it, I sculpted the interview. I had questions so that we could stay on task and so that we would…..
Pete Poullos:
Yes, we have to.
Lisa Meeks:
... have very little editing…..
Pete Poullos:
Yes.
Lisa Meeks:
And here we are.
Pete Poullos:
I'm an expert at taking conversations off the rails.
MUSIC
Pete Poullos:
My goal with this podcast is to raise awareness just like yours is, and why reinvent the wheel. You have a successful Docs with Disabilities Podcast rather than create a competing podcast, why not join forces and hopefully reach a wider audience and have fun with one another doing it….
….Yeah, I think we'll see I've my work is up to your standards.
Lisa Meeks:
It won't be.
Pete Poullos:
It won't be.
Lisa Meeks:
But you have an entourage to get there.
Pete Poullos:
No, you send me panic emails.
Lisa Meeks:
I do.
Pete Poullos:
I’m panicking…. I'm panicking over here, who are these people that are emailing me? Who's doing these interviews?
Lisa Meeks:
What's going on?
Pete Poullos:
Are you doing the interviews, are you in control? I need a plan. This is everything we do. I need a plan.
Lisa Meeks:
[Laughing] For every medical student out there that needs a plan maybe, like, .. I feel you.
Pete Poullos:
Loosen up, loosen up, you don't have to have a plan for everything. Turn on your microphone and start talking.
Lisa Meeks:
Oh God, that could get us in big trouble.
Pete Poullos:
Yeah, it could.
MUSIC
Pete Poullos:
Raising awareness, you know, bringing Stanford issues a bit to the forefront helping MSDCI. I think that they have ambitions to form a national organization, and interviewing their founders.
Lisa Meeks:
I apologize profusely for forgetting the name on the AAMC Webinar.
Pete Poullos:
It's a long name.
Lisa Meeks:
I'm sorry, You guys.
Pete Poullos:
You got the Medical Students with Disability and Chronic Illness.
Lisa Meeks:
I'm behind you and you are amazing, I'm sorry.
Pete Poullos:
It's okay. You can apologize to them.
Lisa Meeks:
I know.
Pete Poullos:
Don't apologize to me. We'll arrange a town hall, a town hall on Zoom where you can publicly apologize.
Lisa Meeks:
I just….. [breathes]
Pete Poullos:
Everybody makes mistakes, Lisa Meeks take a deep breath.
Gillian Kumagi:
As we said, you never know what will happen. Our hosts finally got around to the first interview question, “Why” was the docs with disabilities podcast started...let’s listen or read along as Dr. Meeks describes why she developed this podcast.
MUSIC
Pete Poullos:
Why did you decide to start this podcast?
Lisa Meeks:
I actually had a very good reason for starting this podcast.
And it was because when I was giving talks, somebody from the audience would stand up in the Q&A and say, "I knew a, fill in the blank.. which was almost always a person with a physical or sensory disability, and then made them out to be like the most amazing heroic, inspirational person ever."
And everyone's focus was on this one-off, unicorn that existed in this far away land medical school. And I thought, "Okay, quite literally, if you were to ask me, 'Can you introduce me to a surgeon that's a wheelchair user.' I would have to say, “Is there a specific sub-specialty that you're looking for?" There are just so many people, right?
And so, I started to think, the world does not have all of these puzzle pieces. They have one puzzle piece, and so they think this is an anomaly, and if you think something's an anomaly, if you think that everything is a one-off, you're not motivated to make structural changes, right, because this is one person and so now people can gather around the one person and make exceptions or change in an environmental barrier or do something, whatever. And I thought, this is a huge group of people, and they're hidden with the exception of one or two people who had been in the media, for the most part, this population of provider was unknown. And if you don't know about other people that are like you, you can't build a network, you can't build a community, right?"
For the non-disabled individuals in medical education, if you don't understand that there's a critical mass of individuals with disabilities in medicine, this is not going to become important to you. So, like you said, I wanted to build awareness and I wanted to give a platform to these individuals.
I knew their stories from interviewing them privately for research or just in meeting them because of what I did, but the world didn't know them and the world didn't know their story and I thought, If I could do something to help raise some awareness. Like you said, "That would be phenomenal just to get rid of the idea that this is a one-off concept.
And so, we did the campaign and that was highly successful, and people, more people than I ever knew. So, I thought, pretty naively, that I pretty much knew everyone who you would register as a doc with a disability that because of my network I was pretty aware, but I had no idea. And this all started when we started the AAMC Report, and then when we did the campaign, it became even more apparent to me that there are thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of physicians, trainees, students with disabilities. So, then I thought, well, a tweet with a picture and a quote is pretty simplistic if you're trying to change hearts and minds. So, you might change some awareness that these individuals exist, but if you're going to really have a serious conversation about inclusion, you need to get deeper into the stories and stories are one of the most powerful mechanisms of changing hearts and minds." So, then I thought, "Well, how can we build a platform where these stories exist?" And that was the birth to the podcast.
MUSIC
And so, it just began as "12 episodes, one a month." And we'll highlight people, and we've literally a backlog of both audio recordings and people who want to be interviewed and share their stories. And I think for the people who listen, it does change their minds.
Pete Poullos:
It's a huge comfort, I think, to other people out there who feel they're alone.
Lisa Meeks:
Oh my gosh. Well, Ruta Nonacs, her podcast aired today, and she is a psychiatrist at Mass General. She had heard Marley Doyle's interview and she also shares a visual disability and they're both psychiatrists. And she reached out to Marley, so, there's this kind of community that has occurred because of the connections that they've had on the podcast.
So, it's been nice. I see myself really as the host and now co-host, I just see myself as a vehicle to help tell people's stories. And honestly, whether that be through research or now through the podcast, I see that as a huge responsibility to, someone entrusts you with their story, which is deeply personal. And you have the responsibility of bringing that either to paper or to air in a way that doesn't sensationalize disability. That's respectful, but that also changes people's minds about what disability is.
I don't want people to listen to the podcast and think, "Oh, that's so nice. They're doing things for disabled physicians." I want them to listen to the podcast and think, "Wow, Physicians with disabilities are amazing for the practice of medicine and informing health care."
MUSIC
I never think that my perspective alone or my voice alone should be the prevailing voice of any of the movement for several reasons. One, a singular voice in any movement is uninformed, you need multiple voices and multiple opinions. And so, as we started to work together, seeing what you’re doing and the impact that you are having and getting to know you. You're such a joy to work with and when your students and Kate Panzer started talking and developing this idea when they brought it to me, I was like, "I love it. Let's expand. Why wouldn't we have Docs with Disabilities Podcast co-hosts in at Stanford. That's amazing. Wonderful. Eventually maybe we'll add somebody else." I think that the collective resources and the synergies and our feelings, our belief about the population, I think work well together. And so, it can only have an additive effect
Pete Poullos:
That's the hope.
Lisa Meeks:
Or we'll fail terribly.
Pete Poullos:
We're not measuring our success, so therefore we cannot fail. That's a benefit of not measuring.
Gillian Kumagi:
As a producer I know there is always a story behind the story. For these hosts, we wondered why they were drawn to this work. What in their past, or in their experiences compelled them to spend their careers focusing on disability inclusion and the bigger goal of equal rights for all?
Lisa Meeks:
What brought you to this work?
Pete Poullos:
What brought me to this work? That is a good question. A bicycle accident in 2003, changed my life in every way possible. And when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, I mean, this dates all the way back to around the time of my injury and figuring out what I was going to do for work.
And then there was the radiology path, which was by far the path of most resistance, but ultimately, I thought the most sustainable. But one thing I learned from visiting the spinal cord injury unit was that I did not want to make this, the focus of my work. I mean, at that time I felt so much of my life, everything about my life outside of work was about my injury. And I wanted a diversion that had nothing to do with my spinal cord injury. And so abdominal radiology was the perfect fit and ever since my injury, from the very beginning, I've been asked to speak to other people with spinal cord injuries to advise others with disabilities who have contacted me over the years, I've served on a couple board of directors of nonprofits, so I've dabbled in this work, but nothing like what I'm doing now with SMAC.
So, part of the reason why I wasn't involved with disability advocacy to a larger extent was that my situation was pretty sweet. I have my volunteer programs, I have personal assistance throughout the day. My Radiology Department is very generous with adaptive equipment and adapting my schedule and meeting all my needs. And so, I would hear about bad things occurring, but they were mostly from other places. And so, Stanford being West Coast and liberal, I just assumed that most people were having an okay time. And it wasn't until I started SMAC that I started to hear the stories…. not everybody is having the easiest time at Stanford.
And then realizing, like you said, that the community of people with disabilities in medicine is much larger than I had thought about before, and part of that is because I had a very narrow view of disability, I would say before SMAC. At least in my mind, I was thinking physical and sensory and not really thinking about all the important disabilities that fall into the psychological or learning disabilities.
Once I started hearing those stories, like you said, the stories are powerful, and I'm motivated to a high degree by systemic injustice and discrimination. I'm motivated also by the fact that we need more people with disabilities in medicine. It's not just about the mistreatment of the ones that are here, but the welcoming of more people who share this perspective of both patient and provider. But in starting SMAC that came out of just the diversity work that I was doing, and a recognition that diversity efforts were blossoming all over campus, but none of them seem to include disability. And I didn't think that was right, and I thought that volunteering for these different committees that I was on just by the virtue of my presence would expose them to the idea of disability as diversity. And it would also allow me to do my work and give me an outlet for another work that I wanted to do in terms of improving representation….
…That might have been almost as long as your answer to the first question, although probably not. Are you awake?
Lisa Meeks:
[Laughing] I'm awake. I'm drinking tea, I think that for future podcasts, we're going to have to turn to Bourbon.
Pete Poullos:
Do you like me to be more energetic?
Lisa Meeks: What?
Pete Poullos:
I can be much more energetic. I can talk faster.
Lisa Meeks:
No, you can be whatever. You should be your authentic self.
Pete Poullos:
I'm a slow talker.
Lisa Meeks:
Okay.
Pete Poullos:
I'm not a fast talker
Lisa Meeks:
In either meaning, literally or figuratively.
MUSIC
Lisa Meeks:
Similar to you minus the lived experience of being a person with a disability, I grew up on the South side of Chicago in a very socioeconomically depressed situation and with a very liberal mother and I think that has really shaped the course of my whole life and the way that I view equality and access and opportunity especially. So, I think whether it's racial injustice or inaccessible medicine due to a lack of education about LGBTQI rights or disability, I think for me it's a social justice, equal access issue.
Pete Poullos:
The social justice thing is interesting. I went to Santa Clara University, which is a Jesuit school, and a class that I took there on social justice was really influential in how I understood the world. I grew up in Stockton, which is also socioeconomically disadvantaged
Lisa Meeks:
Should we out ourselves as first gen socioeconomic.
Pete Poullos:
... First gen, first gen, college, first gen MD, that's me.
Lisa Meeks:
first gen all the way.
Lisa Meeks:
Our dads were both firemen.
Pete Poullos:
Yeah.
Lisa Meeks:
Yeah.
Pete Poullos:
How about that?
Lisa Meeks:
How about that?
Pete Poullos:
It wasn't always as liberal as I am now, the injury has pushed me even far more liberal as now I understand, firsthand the difficulties that people with disabilities face, and even I face with all the resources that I have. It ain't easy.
MUSIC
Gillian Kumagi:
We warned you. These two are going to bring us an interesting 6-months of interviews! When discussing issues of equality or access, there are many definitions and perceptions. So, we wanted to know how our hosts conceptualized these terms. In this next segment Pete and Lisa discuss their approach to the concepts of access and inclusion.
Pete Poullos: So, Lisa, what does access mean to you? What does inclusion mean to you?
Lisa Meeks:
Access to me is more than just numerical representation. There is the idea of access, i.e., we have 10% underrepresented students, we have 20% students with disabilities as part of our population.
And then there's true inclusion, which is, "Do I feel like I'm part of this community? Do I have access in the same meaningful way to the educational experience that my peers do? Or, am I having things waived? Do people look the other way when a competency is being taught, and I might have to go about learning that competency differently. Do people just say, don't worry about it, or is there a concerted effort to think about how I could learn the material or engage with the procedure or whatever it is in a way that allows me to truly engage, and truly learn at the same level and have the same or similar experiences than my peers.
So, I get worried, I don't think I've said this out loud before but I get a little worried that as we promote the idea of a equality in medical school, that some people will confuse this mission of bringing more individuals with disabilities into medicine as a numerical void to be filled versus the actual goal is deep and it's wide and it's big, and it requires constructive and critical thinking and creative thinking and a true desire to include someone which is very different from, "You're allowed to sit at my table, but you have to play by my rules." You know, and we don't have time in his podcast, but we could have a much deeper conversation about how that applies to other marginalized populations and the history of our country and how we've said to people. "You can come and be part of us, but you're going to be one of us. You have to do exactly what we're doing." So, I think my goal is always when we're talking about equal access to make sure that inclusion and meaningful access is a part of that discussion.
Pete Poullos:
Mary Stutz says diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance.
Lisa Meeks:
And dance in a way that makes you feel good.
Pete Poullos:
Yeah.
MUSIC
Pete Poullos:
Well, something you said just reminded me of something. And I don't even know if this was what you were talking about, but it reminded me of it is this idea that one way to approach accommodations for somebody is to just say, "You don't have to do it, or we'll just skip that part for you." Whereas another way to handle these issues is to say, "Let's figure out a way for you to do it, but do it differently." And that takes more thought and planning. I think it's easy to just waive a requirement.
In my residency, when I was doing GI fluoroscopy, barium swallows and barium enemas, and these sorts of things. I couldn't really operate the machines like other people did. So, I was always just watching and observing, which was fine. I didn't really have a particular need to run the machines. Although it ended up, I would say impacting my learning experience. But one of my attendings, Bruce Daniel was always thinking about how to include me and to get me doing the procedures, and he would figure out a way for me to run the rooms from the outside. So, I didn't have to use the big machine inside where I couldn't reach it, but a remote control outside the room. And I learned a lot more that way. It speaks to this whole idea of we don't want shortcuts, we don't want a less rigorous academic experience. One of my students wrote, “We don't want something that's less academically rigorous. We want to learn just as much as everyone else."
Lisa Meeks:
I had a learner that was deaf and we had a mandatory ride along for trauma, part of the trauma rotation and an ED rotation, and they wanted to just wave the right along, ad I've actually experienced this with other institutions where you have someone who's a wheelchair user and they want to waive the right along, and I'm like, "No, that's not how it works." You figure out something meaningful. I said, "That learner can be in the field and do everything they need to do. The interpreter's going to be right alongside them, but they can do everything they need to do the same with somebody who's a wheelchair user, you figure it out, come up with a way for that person to engage in something that's meaningful. You don't just waive the requirement." And to some extent, I think in many cases it's done because it's easier on the institution.
The other issue is the way we situate disability. And a lot of people will start a conversation with me by saying, "Oh my gosh, I have a problem. I really need to talk to you." And I take a deep breath, you know me well enough to know, I take a deep breath and I smile and I say, "You have an opportunity. I'd be happy to talk to you about this opportunity, just reframing it and not trying to be a smarty pants, but really why is it always a problem? Why doesn't anyone ever say, "Oh my gosh, this is going to make us rethink how we do this and we will wind up on the other end of this as better teachers, better educators, because we will meet the needs of multiple individuals in our educational space." But we don't.
MUSIC
Gillian Kumagi: As we mentioned in the beginning, I wanted the audience to get a more personal look into the hosts, so we asked them to develop some questions for one another, things they didn’t know about each other but wondered about….. the discussion, as expected, was quite interesting.
Lisa Meeks:
So, I've got a question for you.If you are working, so say you're reading what do you call them? Slides.
Pete Poullos:
Imaging studies.
Lisa Meeks:
Imaging studies.
Pete Poullos:
MRIs, CT scans, ultrasounds
Lisa Meeks:
Okay. Well, you're looking at pictures..
Pete Poullos:
Pictures, they're-...
Lisa Meeks:
... in your office. What music, if you're in the mood to just get work done, what music are you listening to?
Pete Poullos:
Zero music.
Lisa Meeks:
What?
Pete Poullos:
Yeah, no, can't stand it. I don't study with music. I can't concentrate at all.
Lisa Meeks:
I think this ends our friendship.
Pete Poullos:
I can passively listen, I need to start singing and dancing and...
Well the other thing is that when I'm reading these films, I'm constantly talking,
Lisa Meeks: AHHHHH.
Pete Poullos: So, I'm probably the microphone, and then this sound is going, it's just too much. And I've never been able to study with music either.
I need quiet. I get very annoyed by noise, while I'm sleeping while I'm studying, while I'm reading, while I'm watching television, while I'm watching a movie, you better not munch on your popcorn because I will shuushh you.
Lisa Meeks: Laughter
Pete Poullos:
Yeah. What about you? What do you listen to?
Lisa Meeks:
I'm everywhere, I love music. But if I'm trying to get a ton of work done and I need to focus, it's definitely classical or opera or something like that, something, fairly intense.
MUSIC
If I'm having a complete brain freeze and I need to just change my mindset or do something else, Dua Lipa is like my new go-to….
I will sing at the top of my lungs…
…I have a dance party for one in the front seat of my car all the time.
Pete Poullos:
Yeah, it's the best.
Lisa Meeks:
It's how to let go.
Pete Poullos:
I wake up with a different song in my head every morning and I sing it, and most of them are old, like from mostly the '80s and from the Hamilton soundtrack. This morning, I was singing Rise Up. Rise Up. Here comes the general (singing).
Lisa Meeks:
It is so weird. My brain is deeply, deeply connected to music, and my parents were kids when they had me and 1 to 10 was just a big party, so I know all these songs and my parents' basement was the big place to be.
And my dad, oh my God, if I were usually in the truck with my dad, my dad would sing it and that's all he did was sing. And so, I think I just, my brain, as it was developing is just somehow deeply connected to music. If anybody knows the theory behind that, I want to know what it is. But my dad's favorite song was “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”
Pete Poullos:
Oh my God. I used to sing that all the time with my dad!
Lisa Meeks:
I know. All the time.
Pete Poullos:
(singing). Bad bad Leroy Brown, baddest man in the whole downtown...badder than a junkyard dog...
Lisa Meeks:
Meaner than a junkyard dog.
Pete Poullos:
What's the next line? (singing). Meaner than a junkyard dog. Danananananana.
Lisa Meeks:
I'm pretty sure our audience doesn't want to hear us sing.
I turn the music up, really, really, really loud. I don't hear myself sing, and then I think I'm a really good singer.
Pete Poullos: It does help.
Lisa Meeks: You know what I mean? Because if the music's loud enough, your voice blends with the music. When I lived in Michigan I developed a kinship with our 8-mile friend.
Pete Poullos: Oh really?
Lisa Meeks: Eminem.If I'm going on a run, his music still.
Pete Poullos:
It's great. It's fantastic.
Lisa Meeks:
I love me some Eminem
Pete Poullos:
Me too.
Gillian Kumagi:
Thanks to both of you for the very bad Bad, Bad Leroy Brown earworm. I’m going to challenge your assumptions that the audience doesn’t want to hear you sing. I’m hoping for a duet in the next episode.
MUSIC
Lisa Meeks:
All right, so what is your biggest accomplishment?
Pete Poullos:
Getting into medical school. Because it was a disaster.
Lisa Meeks:
[Laughter] Well, not much of a disaster you got in.
Pete Poullos:
Yeah, getting in was the hard part. That I'm just joking, that is not my biggest accomplishment. I have to think.
Lisa Meeks:
There's so many of them.
Pete Poullos:
No, there's not. I'm just digging for anything. Any old accomplishment, that's like so hard. It's like what is your favorite movie?
Lisa Meeks:
The Time Traveler's Wife, by the way
Pete Poullos:
Hmmm
Lisa Meeks:
The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Pete Poullos:
Really?
Lisa Meeks:
What's your favorite movie?
Pete Poullos:
Star Wars, now known as Episode IV, A New Hope.
Lisa Meeks:
Wow. I'm not a Star Wars person.
Pete Poullos:
Keep that to yourself, I don't want to hear about it.
MUSIC
Lisa Meeks:
What is the last moment that brought you joy? What's the last thing prior to this interview that brought you pure joy.
Pete Poullos:
Being with my little being with my little boy. He's so sweet. He's just perfect.
Lisa Meeks:
I think babies bring a lot of joy.
Pete Poullos:
Yeah, much more than I even expected. Every time I hold him and give him a snuggle, it feels great. I mean, it's been a long time coming. It's an emotional thing, the worst part about my spinal cord injury I thought was that the fact that I haven't been able to have a family, and so to now have one is a really big deal for me. And it's brought me a lot of peace, I would say peace.
Lisa Meeks:
Awe. And now you have the perfect little boy.
Pete Poullos:
The perfect little baby. I would have to say, I mean, it might be premature because I don't feel like, SMAC is like a mature organization or that but I've never done something this meaningful or that has affected so many people. And so, I'm very proud of the work that we've done so far, me and my colleagues. Just to be able to affect people in this way to make them feel they're not so alone, that there are other people like them, that there's someone in their corner that somebody understands. I mean, it's a big deal. And especially when my students express that to me, it brings me a lot of happiness.
Lisa Meeks:
That's great.
Pete Poullos:
Yeah. What are you most proud of?
Lisa Meeks:
The thing that I am the proud of is…. I've raised two amazing adults, they're good people.
The peace that I now have as I go into the '50s, with who I am. And this idea that I feel very at peace with what I have done with the contribution that I've made to medical education, to the individual lives of people that I've seen or taken care of whether it's a student or a patient. And I think that I am very satisfied with that and I feel good about where I am as a parent. So, I think it's more the collective accomplishment is just, I feel good with who I am and knowing who I am and feeling I've done the right thing and when situations have occurred where you can take the ethical, you know, inclusive path, or you can choose to turn your head and take the easy path, I think I've never taken the easy path. And I'm just proud of the work that I've done.
Pete Poullos:
And that also to think that my best accomplishments are still ahead of me. I kind of view myself as a work in progress also, I'm always trying to improve and gain new skills and be a better teacher, and mentor, and friend and husband. I just never seem to be content with where I'm at at the moment in terms of, I'm not talking about being in the moment and enjoying the moment, I'm talking about sitting on, well, you say sitting on your laurels that implies that there's some laurels to be sitting on. Just to say kicking back and saying, "Yeah, it's all good."
Lisa Meeks:
With each decade, there's something that happens. They tell you that it happens, or at least the women who've gone before me say it happens. At 50 just become very peaceful about the choices you've made and the life, and that you've lived, and now you look forward and I think, "I have a decade left. What am I going to do this decade?" And for me, it's about building a network of people who can continue the work. So, then you go into mentorship. And so, for me, it is really supporting other people and bringing them into the work so that it can continue because it's not going to be solved in 10 years.
Pete Poullos:
The only experience I've had is my own like, lived experience of my injury. But the work that I'm doing, which requires a lot of knowledge about the law, about accommodations, about the history of diversity and disability and all of these things, it's been more of a crash course for me, and I feel I've had to stop and start a few times along the way. And that I haven't really been... I've gone from one thing to the other, rather than staying in the same thing for the long-term. Do you know what I mean?
Lisa Meeks:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Meeks:
You jumped into the deep end. And there are things about that, that I just admire because I would never have done that. I mean, with the year and a half that you had behind you, I would have never done the Stanford conference remote. It would have, well, I mean, if you would've sent me into an anxiety free fall to even think about it, but you just believed. There's something to be said for that initial just, "Hey, we're going to do something great in the world."
Pete Poullos:
I guess I had faith in myself and the people around me and you, you helped me out so much preparing for this conference. I mean, I feel like it was definitely a group effort and what's the worst thing that can happen?
Gillian Kumagai:
Thank you, Dr. Meeks and Poullos for sharing about yourselves and the experiences and paths that have brought you here. The space that Dr. Meeks has created to amplify the voices of physicians, trainees, and students with disabilities has had a profound impact and we at Stanford are thrilled to collaborate on this podcast.
Thank you to our audience of readers and listeners. We hope you’ll share this with your colleagues, friends, and families so that others can learn, grow, and find community through these voices.
Sofia Schlozman:
This podcast is a production of the University of Michigan Medical School, Department of Family Medicine, MDisability initiative. The opinions expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Michigan Medical School. It is released under a creative commons, attribution noncommercial, non-derivative license. This podcast episode was produced by Lisa Meeks, Pete Poullos, Gillian Kumagai, and Sofia Schlozman.
Music:
“Donnalee” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Aspire” by Scott Holmes
“Highway 430” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Rambling” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Our Only Lark” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Lovers Hollow” by Blue Dot Sessions
“An Oddly Formal Dance” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Gambrel” by Blue Dot Sessions
“The Poplar Grove” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Keeping Old Letters” by Blue Dot Sessions
“Positive and Fun” by Scott Holmes
“Game Hens” by Blue Dot Sessions
