Track 2, Side 1: A Night at the Opera

Coming up on this week's episode of my medical mixtape, time to flip the switch, everyone. They needed to talk about life, not about how to intubate a patient, or how to diagnose the flu. You know, when you kind of break down that? Absolutely. You know, it's me on the white horse here to save the day. Stories bring connection, and you feel less alone. I love that we've gone from heavy metal to everything is awesome in the leg of my heavy. And I honestly began to feel like this is where I was put on the planet, so that I can't not do this. Is it kind of like God just give me a sign? In order to do that, I had to bet the farm. I actually really like Obra. Yeah, you're not getting invited to the next party. When you realize that your patients are a bigger blessing to you than you are to them, healing people, staying human. It was a rookie mistake. I should have known better. You never make time-sensitive plans that start right after an ER shift. It almost never works out. But you should really never ask someone to come in early to relieve you so that you can get to an event on time. That really never works out. We E.R. Folk are a superstitious lot, and time-sensitive plans are a great jinx heading into your shift. And they add so much to your stress level on shift as patients keep coming in. I was no rookie, but on this particular Saturday, I had sure enough asked a colleague to come start his night shift early so I could leave at 6 p.m. An ER nurse friend of mine was performing in an opera that night. The marriage of Figaro. And my wife and I were going to see it. I always try to support a friend performing, but also, much to my wife and kids endless amusement. It was a double win. I only had one patient in the first half of the day. And you believe that? One patient. Rick. A cancer survivor in his 70s coming in with back pain. He was worried. Spontaneous back pain can sometimes mean cancer has come back and is spreading. I got him a little pain medication and ordered some x-rays. I was worried too. Rick did not seem surprised when the x-rays showed metastatic disease. His cancer was back and was spreading. I sat down at his bedside to talk. No, he didn't want me to call his oncologist. He would follow up. And no, he wasn't going to do chemo again. The first time had almost killed him. You know, it sounds crazy, he told me. But I'm actually so grateful for my cancer. If I had never had cancer, I never would have gotten to meet so many wonderful caring people. We talked about how he was going to tell his son and how his next steps might look. I lingered in his room quite a while. I prescribed him some pain medications. And eventually, Rick's good buddy came to pick him up and get him home. Only about five more hours now until I'd be leaving for a night at the opera. And that's when it hit the fan. [Music] My name is Tyler, and this is my medical mixtape. A podcast where we talk about music and medicine, grief and joy, life and death, and whatever else happens to come up in between. These songs on the mixtape tell the story of my transition from emergency medicine into palliative medicine. Like all our episodes, today's stories are based on real patient encounters with details and identifying information changed to protect patient privacy. Today, we'll be talking about track two on my medical mixtape, once in a lifetime by the talking heads. And we'll have a conversation with the inspiring, christic Gregory, seasoned clinical chaplain and founder of the Center for Resiliency. [Music] So there I was, halfway through my shift, thinking about this amazing man Rick I'd gotten to meet. And seemingly out of nowhere, the paramedics brought us an elderly patient with really bad heart disease, who could barely breathe. He was sitting up, his forehead dripping sweat, he was gray, he was leaning forward on his arms, tri-potting as we call it. Noisily gasping for every bit of oxygen he could suck out of his oxygen mask. Okay, time to flip the switch everyone. We're going from hand holding mode to life saving mode. Let's do it. Cycle that blood pressure. Let's get him on the bipap, the pressurized breathing mask, and put some white nitro paste on his chest to bring that blood pressure down. Let's get a nitro drip primed in an EKG. Get the crash cart and be ready to sedate him and put in a breathing tube, if we can't turn this thing around. He's still struggling to breathe, let's go up on that bipap pressure. This patient was sick as stink, but this is what we do in the ER. The two nurses and I could handle this. We relished this. Not five minutes later the paramedics brought us another one. Okay, that was quick. One nurse stayed with patient one and the other nurse and I greeted patient number two. Paramedics told us what they knew. 83-year-old female, unresponsive, super low blood pressure, 60s over palp, heart rate 85, coming from a nursing home, blood sugar normal at 120, last known well, last night, didn't come to meals today and somebody went to a room to check on her. We haven't had time to establish IV access yet. We took one look at her drive mouth, her irregular breathing, her wasted body, and knew we had to act fast. This patient was about to die. Our nurse got an IV started on patient number two and we started pushing fluids, blood pressure boosting medications, and got ready to put in a breathing tube. I mixed a syringe with dilute epinephrine mix to have it hand and gave a couple little pushes to patient number two in her IV to keep her blood pressure up. And I ran back to check on patient number one. And that's when patient three was wheeled in through the front door and straight to the back by our receptionist. Slumped over in a wheelchair, patient three was barely breathing at all. I'd have guessed about four times a minute. His friend, frantic at his side, told us he'd taken too many pain pills on accident. This had happened once before. I reached my arms under his armpits and the friend grabbed his feet. We hoisted the dead weight of his body and plopped him all crooked on the stretcher, nearly dislodging the mattress and barely getting his big body on the bed. Gonna need some Narcan in here, guys. I hollered to my two nurses who were busy saving other lives. Narcan or Naloxone is a lifesaver that immediately reverses an opioid overdose. But you gotta give it quick before the opioid slowed the breathing down enough to kill the patient. I hustled back over to patient two and gave some more epinephrine while my nurse ran over to patient three and squirted a whopping dose of Narcan up his nose. The patient awoke and began thrashing. Breathing normally, but wild and confused, he would need more help. But he was alive for now. We asked the friend to calm him and headed back to breathing tubes in both patient one and patient two and get them on ventilators. Sound chaotic, it was. At this point, we had asked the hospital to send whatever nurses they could spare from upstairs. And good thing too, because just then another ambulance arrived. This patient was a man in his seventies sitting up and awake. Maybe he wasn't so sick. But as the paramedics moved him over to the ER bed, I saw his heart rate on the monitor dropped from 50 to 40 to 30 to 20. His eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out. And then the paramedics turned the defibrillator back on. The electrical pads stuck to his chest started firing, telling his heart to pump faster. The patient woke up and his heart started beating again. Each shock to his heart caused a painful jerk to all the muscles in his chest and his body. And he cried out in pain at 100 beats a minute. This day was only getting crazier. Track 2 on my medical mixtape is once in a lifetime by the talking heads. What a banger. You know this song. This song is everywhere still on classic rock radio. 80s radio, Bob FM radio. V's TV shows, its music video was a ground breaker in 1981. My dad, philosopher that he is, pointed out to me one day, that this wildly catchy song is actually pretty thought-provoking. You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself in another part of the world. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife. He told me he would sometimes look around at how his life had unfolded and the beautiful wife on his arm and ask himself the very question at the end of this verse. This is certainly the question I have been asked most often lately. Well, Tyler, how did you get here? People have really wanted to know why in the world I made the change from emergency medicine to palliative care. The two fields of medicine seem a world apart. I myself didn't see the change coming. I never would have predicted it ten years ago, but life throws us many curve balls over the last couple of years when I looked around for what I was wanting and needing in medicine, slower pace, deeper dives into patients' lives, more human connection. I realized that palliative medicine checked all the boxes. Or at least that's what I hoped. I really had no idea where it would lead. In a way, that crazy Saturday I just described helped make it clear for me. It provided the clarity I needed. It was a gift. God gives us these visions sometimes. The first half of my day had essentially been palliative care, helping a patient deal with bad news and figuring out what to do next, helping a cancer patient with pain, taking time with a patient. The second half of my day had been classic ER life. As I sat in the balcony next to my wife at the opera that night, so wound up still from my crazy ER day, my heart still racing. And let me tell you, high pitched Italian opera doesn't exactly settle the nerves. I thought about all the crazy cases that had come in one after the other, after the other, and how I felt we'd done some really good work and had a few great saves. But mostly I thought about Rick and how this many years into medicine, that's how I wanted to spend my time with patients, talking with patients like Rick, making a big change necessarily involves some risk. Maybe it doesn't work out at all. Maybe this change would be a huge, tornadic disaster as alluded to in the song. Maybe the plan old backfire, and I'll end up slapping my forehead over and over again, like the talking heads lead singer David Burn does in the music video for this song. Fortunately, there's been no need for head slapping so far. It's not for everyone, but I love the music of the talking heads. I love their 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense. It's still mind blowing after all these years. It's amazing to me that the music of a band that on the surface seems so silly is actually quite profound. Shout out podcasters Yasi Salek and Rob Harvilla for their commentary on this film. They point out in an episode of Bands Blane how the film plots a character's progression, musical and visual progression, yes, but also a psychological and social progression. The film starts with David Burn alone on a stage with a guitar singing psychokiller, a lonely song, a loner's song. Then with each subsequent song in the concert, another band member comes on stage, and then a whole bunch of extra musicians keep coming too. And the complexity and joy and energy of the music crescendos. And soon it's just a carnival up there on stage, just a bananza of music. A few months into my palliative medicine training, when my wife and kids had gone to bed, I was sitting in a comfy armchair in our house, sipping a small pore of bourbon. The room was dimly lit and quite still for a change. The record player crackled and popped quietly while it spun the talking heads album speaking in tongues. I started to think about this year of transition and the strange new work I get to do helping patients at the end of their lives. The song "This Must Be the Place" flowed from the speakers of our record player by wacky and amazing song. It's a song about searching for home, searching for belonging, and then realizing you have found it. It's particularly powerful when the band performs this song in the film stop making sense. This song is a break. It's a respite, a deep breath, a pause, and the chaos and high energy of the concert. It comes as the eleventh song and feels like the resolution the psycho killer on stage had been looking for all along. He had found his people, he had found his place, he had found his home. During the performance of this song and stop making sense, David Byrne actually dances gracefully with a tall lamp, a top of Persian rug. Believe it or not, the performance is actually quite moving. As I sat there that quiet evening, my heart felt very full. I was more at peace and I had been in a long time. The lyrics to the second verse, "Home is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there had never resonated so strongly. I knew I was where I wanted to be, where I needed to be. I was home. What a feeling." I'm still not sure where this highway goes to, but I know there's nothing quite like the profound silliness of this legendary 80s band to voice for us our existential crises. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was. Alright guys, well with us today on my medical mixtape is the one. The only Christic Gregory. Christa, I'm so excited you're here and for those who don't know, Christic Gregory is a board certified clinical chaplain. Stop me if I get anything wrong. You've been in healthcare for over 25 years? Oh yes. Yeah. Okay. You're the founder of the Center for Resiliency. Yes. I mean, I'm sure there were more. You're very humble, so I know that you'll probably say, "Oh, lots of people helped." This is your baby. Lots of the founder of mortals in medicine, which I hope to talk about more. I would go so far as to say you are also an agent of culture change. Good. I want to be that. And an inspiration. Thank you. So there you go. I like that. Should I add more things? No, that's a wonderful introduction. I'll take that. I'll take all of that. Thank you very much. Okay. Good. Good. Well, Christa, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to spend some time talking with us. So as you know, we're talking about mixtapes here, right? And other things. But I'm guessing you grew up in the mixtape era. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you must have had some great mixtapes just knowing you. Well, all in thinking about that question, because you told me this was mixtape themed podcast, all my mixtapes were around relationships with boys. So I would either make one for them or they would make one for me. So all of them have been destroyed. None of them survived that era of my life. That's good. It's good to let go. But yeah, because you could, you would have to grab a song off the radio. Wow. That's a long time ago. Did you ever do that? Like record directly? They were like coming up next and you're like, quick, hit record. Yes. Oh, yeah. Because we didn't have, I had a record player. I don't know, we had tape players, but yeah, because it's the only way to hear your song again. Yeah. And you couldn't just, you know, pay 99. sense or have a streaming service and get like if you if you caught that song. Yeah, it was magic. I this is so random, but this week I was jogging and I listened to the song Silent Lucidity by Queen's Reich, which you're going to be like, what is that? Yeah, I am, but this was that kind of song where when you heard it on the radio, you were like, quick hit record, because I was never going to go out and buy a Queen's Reich. Well, sometimes I didn't like a whole album. Right. I don't want the whole album, because I only like that song. I only wanted that one. I didn't want the whole thing. And I'm kind of that way with music. Yeah. So okay, so how intentional were you with your song choices on a romantic mixtape? I mean, was it like if you read the song titles, you were reading a love letter? I mean, was it that dead on? No, no. I am all into lyrics lyrics are my thing because lyrics are storytelling. Yeah, absolutely. Those are the kinds of songs like anyway is it's got to tell me a story. If it's like, but don't bump over and over again, it's not really telling me a story. I'm not interested. So the titles would sometimes reflect the what the song was about, but sometimes not. So you wouldn't necessarily know by what I'd written on the outside of the cassette tape. It's a little white piece of paper that you would fold. Oh, that was the back in the plastic thing. Yeah, you wouldn't always know that because it's all about the lyrics. It's about the lyrics. And was it about the sequence as well? Like, did you put thought into it? Oh, I'm not that detailed. Just like good song. I like this one. This is making it. Yeah. Okay. It made it. Okay. That's it. That might be a chromosomal difference. I think so. Because I assure you, the sequence was like a big, big thought, you know, yeah, not mine. Well, that's good of you. I'm glad you don't have an old shoebox full of, you know, and you're out out in the garage at night listening to sticks or journey or I just pull it up off of Spotify or there you go. Whatever non-protested music thing I can have on my phone. Very good. Very good. Okay. So, Kristen, you were just telling me that there's one tape that you've hung on to. Yes. There's a tape. I'd love to hear more about that. I've got to. Do I tell people this? They're going to be listening to me. When I was a senior in high school, I dated the drummer in a heavy metal band. That's incredible. Name to mantra. And he was a great guy. I liked him a lot. And I have a cassette tape of their music. Oh, that's really cool. That's different than a mixed tape. That's like original production. It's original production, but handwritten on the outside of all their songs and yeah. Did they ever, you know, launch? Did they try to go? They did. They tried to launch in Houston and played a couple clubs and then they all went to college and that got a little hard to do, but they played a few times. Good for them. Yeah. I hope that somewhere wherever mantra is that they're still playing music in some way in their life, you know. I did. That's cool. Well, I was never, I was never worthy of my musicianship wouldn't have landed me in a band. So anyway, that's really cool. Well, you know, Chris, I know that you love and value story. You even mentioned it when we're talking about a mixed tape. And the reason I wanted to have you on this episode is because we're talking specifically this time about transitions, about big changes, about kind of going for it and not knowing how things are going to go. And you have a pretty cool story about that. Yeah. How long ago was this big change for you? Eight, a little over eight years ago. It was actually for probably 10 years ago when it started. Yeah. Oh, wow. It was 2014. I was working at the bedside as a chaplain. And the program director of the pediatric residency program said it was January and she's like, Christa, I don't know what's wrong with these students. They just are like riotous. They just have feelings and stuff. And I don't know what to do with that. Can you just like get with them and like fix it and make them stop? So the pediatric residents had feelings and were kind of struggling. Yeah. And the program director said, Christa, make it better. It stopped. So I met with them. It was a second year class. And to this day, they have a reputation of being that class. But I met with them. And what it was was they were just articulate about what they were experiencing in life. I mean, they were one of the most amazing group of people I've ever been with. And as we spent time together that first lunch time, we met at lunch. It was story. They just began telling stories about what they were experiencing and how they were trying to reconcile that with how they understood the world and how they understood themselves and medicine and how are you supposed to date and work 80 hours a week and how are you supposed to like have a baby and take care of all the babies that had genetic anomalies and not think your kid would have it. All the things and they were in the middle of incredible transition. And after we finished that hour, they said, can we do this again? I was like, sure, okay, we ended up meeting at lunch once a week for until they graduated a year and a half later. And what I realized in that experience was that they needed to talk about life, not about how to intubate a patient or how to how to diagnose the flu. They needed to talk about how to do life and it birthed in me. It desired to change how we do medicine so that we would talk about the things that were really happening to us. That's incredible. Thank you. Yeah, that's so cool. And it was just kind of a one off, hey, Chris, can you, can you help? And then you saw though that there was something very real, an unmet need. Yes. And even a culture change, really, ultimately. Well, I'd always felt like, I mean, I've been in health care since I was in my 20s. And I'd always felt like if the staff weren't happy, ain't nobody going to be happy. Like, you know, the staff were, if the staff from the physicians and the bedside folks or whoever was in part of the patient's lives, if they were struggling, then it would just be reflected in the patients and they would be unhappy. So I always knew that the, the magic was there. And so that had always been through, I always looked through that lens. But it wasn't until I was with these residents that I began seeing in and thinking, you know, you're right. Like, man, our culture is like a mess. We validate for each other really unhealthy behavior. What is wrong with us? Like, we can change that. Like, we may not be able to change the politics of medicine sometimes or we may not be able to change some of the larger decisions that get made, at least not tomorrow. But we can change how we treat each other. And, and what would that look like if we did? And so that birth, the idea of starting a center where we could study that and figure out what would that look like? And in order to do that, I had to bet the farm. And it wasn't the first time I've done that in my life, but I had to bet the farm, as the saying goes, like, I had to risk my career and leave it and try and see if it would work. Put all the chips in the middle of the table. So you have this seed of an idea that resonates that just seems to matter, seems to make sense. But you're talking about leaving a known thing, which is being a clinical chaplain, which you've done forever. And you're very good at. And inventing something, starting this new thing, reinventing how you work and how you're going to interact with the healthcare community. And I imagine people probably looked at you, like you were crazy at times. I don't know. Most people know me that knew me really well, were like, not surprised. They already knew you were crazy. They already know it's crazy. And that that I fight for justice. And I like change. And I do. I like change in a weird twisted way. But I just, and if I get an idea in my head, it did, it began to grow. It was like a spark that grew into a roaring fire. And I couldn't run away from it. And I thought at first it was just my idea. I was like, maybe this isn't really that important to other people. And one day I was meeting with the residents in the room, kind of like we're sitting today, Tyler. And a more experienced, an experienced attending physician who's been doing this work about 25 years walked in. This is, what are you doing? We told him. And he was like, well, why don't you do that for us? I was like, you're kidding. Even in the over 30 years, like, are you serious? So the, the boss doctors, the attendings wanted you to create this space for them too. And then so I found him later. And I was like, were you serious? And he's like 100%. Wow. So the next thing I knew, he and about four other all men actually went to the CEO of the hospital, all physicians, all leaders in the physician world in our community went to our CEO and said, we want Christa to do this for us. Can you make that happen? And I couldn't do it in the job that I had. I would was slowly getting close to losing that position because I was doing so much of this. You're doing this other stuff. But I loved your passion project. And so, you know, I won the lottery. A flanthropist showed up on the scene, paid us to get started, paid my salary. And I left my role. And we made, we literally made this up. I, there were places around the country doing things and exploring burnout and all the hot words that we use these days, Mayo Clinic and Harvard and Stanford. We're all looking at that stuff. But nobody was working with the people on the front line that I saw at the time that were in the middle of it. That's what I had known. I'd burned out so many times. I'd lost track because I just either gave it all, I would be like the person on the court until the last buzzer, and then I would collapse. That's how I played basketball, by the way, when I was in high school. And that's how I did everything. And so that's how I did healthcare. I really didn't know any other way to do it. But I wanted to see if I could figure out how, because I knew there were other people like me. That's so inspiring. So you invented, you invented a thing, the Center for resiliency and all the things it does. What exactly do you do? What is this? Well, it now has 11 different programs, does that sound like a work called, has 11 different programs in it. But we started out, I just started out what I later learned doing ethnographic studies, basically talking to a lot of people, most of them that I already knew and said, what should we do differently? What could we do differently? What do you want? Like what would make a difference for us? What do you think? And people just began to come up with really random ideas. And I was like, huh, that's kind of interesting. Maybe we'll try that. That was, that's how mortals and medicine is a storytelling night. That's how that started. So I was like, you know, when we were in, when I was in residency, we just got together at a bar in New York and we just talked about what happened during the day and it was really cool. And then the next thing I knew, we kind of made it like a stand-up night. And she's like, why don't we get to that in Austin? I said, why not? I said, we just have to find a bar that we could do it in. I said, I'm not doing it in a conference room on a Friday night. That's boring. Thank you for that, Krista. I was like, who wants to do that? I said, it's got to be hip and fun and cool. I mean, Austin, keep Austin weird. Let's make it so it's something I would want to come to whether I was at work or not. And, and so it took us a few years to find a venue for that. But that's how the center has been created. People had ideas, different ideas. Everything we do in those 11 things was somebody's idea. And, and they said, what if we try this? I said, sure, if we try it, it doesn't work. We won't do it anymore. So it's a very grassroots, ground up, absolutely. You know, meeting with, it's less every tower, big idea. It's more boots on the ground. Let's figure out something that works. Absolutely. And that, that had to do that kind of the way I think too. But, but I will say it comes from the inspiration of the CEO that sponsored it in the very beginning. Because he said, don't give me a, a 50 page business plan. I don't want you to figure out the ending of the story back to story. I want you to live it. I want you to live it organically and let it morph and change with the community. Because the community is the one that needs it. And they need to just, they need to define what this looks like. Your CEO told you that. That is awesome. Yeah, he's not here anymore. That is so cool. Oh my gosh. Well, you've really lived into that. Yeah. Well, it's important to me. I respect people too much. You know, I tell people, I said, I'm not going to bring in to something that's just kind of like, Oh, I think this is a nice idea. It might make us feel better. Like there's, that's great. And there's wonderful opportunities for people to do that out there. But for me, it was really important that I could say, we're going to try this. And if it works, great. If it doesn't, we're not doing it anymore. Like I have too much respect for your time and your vulnerability and all of that. Like as a person, I want to make sure that what, what we do together matters, or we're not going to do it. I'm kind of that way about meetings, like don't have a meeting if it's not going to have some kind of, we don't need to talk, just to talk. We need to, to, to move, make something happen that wouldn't have happened if we weren't in the same space together. That's awesome. So you have 11 arms of this thing. The one that I'm familiar with is mortals and medicine, which is so cool. And for those who don't know, it is a, a hybrid. It's an in person and a Zoom. It is now healthcare storytelling night, where there are drinks. There's community and people get up and they tell a story. Yep, pretty much, huh? It's that simple. We started out at a local watering hole with 35 people that first night. And mostly physicians who were a part of helping to figure this out. And, and it was a huge success. People loved it. We did it a couple of months later and we had 78 people. And at that point, we'd outgrown that venue and the next time we did it, we had a hundred. And it just kept growing from there. And it was pre pandemic. So it was all in person at the, at the beginning. Then the pandemic hit and we're like, we can't stop. So we just went, we went virtual for several years. And then when the pandemic settled down, we, we'd, we'd added all these people from all around the world. And they were like, don't, don't leave us out. I was like, what? They're like, no, I'm in Japan or I'm in Turkey or I'm in Germany. I was like, okay. And so we went hybrid. And that way those people could still be a part of the community. And I call it the community. It's the mortals of medicine community. It's a community of people that care about each other. The, the listeners are just as important as the storytellers. And we come together and hold, hold space to sound really dramatic. Hold space for people to be heard. And you can't, I don't know. But you can't get that any other place, but people that really get it. There's something very powerful about sitting with other people who've been where you've been. And when you say was important to you, they're like, yeah, like, and you can see it on them, right? You've been a storyteller at that event. Tyler three times. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And did you get that impression? Oh, it's unbelievable. That you like, wow, like he put words to what I was. Oh, yeah. And that whole, but also your whole notion. And then you don't, again, you're, um, you know, kind of making fun of your own language here. But the holding space is real that other members of the community are holding space for that story to be spoken. And it doesn't happen otherwise. Yeah. I tell people that I'm like, if you just came tonight and you're just here for the first time or you've been many times, don't think that if you sit here and never talked to a soul for the entire time you're in this space, um, don't think that it didn't matter. Because if you weren't here, we wouldn't be here. Exactly. You have a role in this, even if all you're doing is sitting in a chair, you have a role that's just as important and never forget that. And so then people in the chairs are like, okay, well, how about that? I'm just kind of like empowers them to feel, um, connected. Like it, like they're doing something good in the world also just by being there. Well, it's kind of like the, um, when you realize that your patients are a bigger blessing to you than you are to them. It's kind of the same thing in a sense where like sort of the traditional protagonist in this story would be the person with the microphone. But really, it's this community of people gathering because people in health care are hurting and people need each other. And we all, we all hurt. We all get broken. We all get burnt out. And so it's really kind of everybody's a protagonist. You know, when you kind of break down that absolutely, um, you know, it's me on the white horse here to save the day. No, not really. It's not we're all in this thing together. We are. And so we really try to create an environment of space where that just feels normalized. And the stories come from all over the place. Like, and we've had people tell very personal stories about their own lives that have nothing to do with medicine, but have to do with them. And, and they happen to be in medicine. We've had people tell funny stories. We had a nurse tell story about winning the nurse lottery during COVID. Oh, I was there for that. It was awesome. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. And then we have people tell stories about abuse and about, about prejudice against them. They, we've had, we've had a lot of stories that involve suicide. So such so many that I, I have learned to give a copy out before the storyteller starts to say, Hey, anybody in the room or in the space at home, that's about to hear the next story. Just know that suicide will be coming up. And, and if you need to leave, feel free. We got you. Wow. But it, it surprises me. Not anymore, I guess, but how many people have stories that relate to suicide, either of their own desire or the. Someone in their lives that they cared about, wow. And these are powerful people. I mean, everybody's powerful, but, you know, people that would had not ever told anybody in their lives. Yeah, this kind of thing. They appear to the world all put together. And then they get up at mortals and tell you this kind of stuff. And you're like, why? So what do you think it is about modeling that level of vulnerability in front of a group that is transformative and powerful. And bears repeating and, you know, continuing in other spaces. We as humans walk around in our little silos of our humanity. And stories bring connection. And you feel less alone. If someone knows your story and looks you in the eye and has heard it and doesn't run out of the room screaming. There's something about that that empowers you to realize that you're not a weirdo. That what happened to you, maybe different from something they've known, but they were able to hear it and still relate to you. And that sense of connection is very healing. That's the word that comes up more than anything from the storytellers after the night. They will either text me or email me the next day and say, Christa, I didn't realize how much I needed to tell that story because I have been healed or I am now healing. In ways I didn't even know I needed to heal just because I told that story. And that has been, I've got chills on my arms thinking about that because it was that's what's been so remarkable. to me is how much the storytellers have found themselves changed and in unexpected ways. I had, there's a storyteller, she may listen to this, but if she does, she knows I have talked about her before, but she told the story about her struggles going through med school and residency and the fact that she chose to go to a medical school that was overseas. It wasn't in the United States. Now because she had a foreign medical degree, she always felt less than, like she wasn't a good enough doctor and that people would always, always judge her for not being smart enough to have gone to a United States med school. So she shared this at Mordell's and Medicine, and the whole world went, "What? Are you kidding? Like we don't care. You're an amazing physician." "What is that? Like, are you kidding me?" She said, "I thought that I was over that," and so I was just sharing the story like big deal. She said, "I realize that night that I wasn't, but now I was because people embraced me and really showed me, people I didn't even know, and people I knew," and said, "That doesn't matter to us. It never has." And she said, "I began to heal." So that happens more than I would have expected. That's so cool. Yeah. Well, I can testify. As they might say in your-- It's chapel's word. Yeah. I can testify that telling those stories is transformative. And I think it's what kept me in medicine and helped me find a new path in medicine. Because I was at a point where it just kind of hurt too much or it was just too much. And I think for years I had kept up a pretty--yes, kind of a stiff upper lip, like, you know, keep powering ahead kind of mentality, because that's what we do. That's what we do. And that's-- And why do we do that? And some of that is important. It is. Like, if you're-- Of course. If you're the only doctor in a hospital in the middle of the night, patients keep coming. I want to believe that you know what you're doing. Right, right, right. You've got to be able to just, like, you know, deal with it. But with each other, we shouldn't have to fake it. That's right. We shouldn't have to. We shouldn't have to be able to be human. I love your tagline under the Center for Resiliency. Can you say it? Is it-- Yes. The tagline is healing people, staying human. It's awesome. I came up with it on a hike in Big Ben National Park. That's fantastic. Yep. Do you get a lot of your good ideas on a jog or on a hike or-- I do. And nature. Yeah. That's all. Stuff comes to me. And then I think, that sounds really cool. And then I'm like, does it? Anybody else? I remember coming back from that hike and I asked my friends, it's like, the seals seem really awesome, but maybe it's not. So I usually have to check it out with somebody else because I never know. Well, I think it's pretty awesome for what it's worth. Because we do. We are healing people. And we got to stay human. That's what provides the connection we have with the people that we heal. And we're also healing ourselves. Yeah. It's a shared humanity. And you're stepping into their story and they're stepping into yours. And you know. And we're stepping into each others. Yeah. We are all in this together. We're all in it. Yeah. You, I know you're really big and in movies. And you would ask me a question a while back like, did I have a movie that exemplified what I thought about resilience, you know, I was like, no, because I, I mean, I like stories and stuff. I couldn't think of one. But I thought of one. I did finally think of one. And it's kind of corny, but I work in a pediatric hospital. So it's the Lego movie. Oh, the Lego movie has the song in it. Everything is awesome. Everything is cool when you're part of the team. Yeah. Yeah. And you live in out your dream. And I am living out my dream. And everything is awesome as long as I'm with the team because there's so many things that make it, it's just so much more fun and enriching and complicated and I don't know. It's like you add all the colors get thrown on the canvas when you get with a team of people and you come up with something completely different than anybody ever thought. That's what's so beautiful about medicine. And we can be creative with our patients, we can be creative with each other. We can find solutions to answers that to questions that nobody ever could find because we're in it together and putting all of our different experiences together. And that's what we've tried to do at the center. That's beautifully said. And I love that we've gone from heavy metal to everything is awesome in the Lego movie. I love the Lego movie. Because hey, absolutely. It's a banger. It is. I remember taking driving one of my sons and a number of his friends to a bowling alley for a birthday party many years ago and some kid, like the car was quiet for a minute and some kid in the very back seat was just going, "Everything is awesome." Everything is awesome. There was an every time you weren't hearing it, but that's awesome. Yeah. Okay, so when you, I want to ask one more question about this transition. Did you ever struggle with fear or worry, or are you just like, nah, you're like the head of a pirate ship just heading into battle, unafraid? Of course I struggled with fear and it was interesting. I've done a lot of, like I said, I've bet the farm before and one of the other times in my life, which I won't talk about on this because it's really painful, but I bet the farm and I lost, like I lost everything in my life with that choice and so here I was doing it again and I was like, "Am I crazy?" And so I just kept kind of checking it out with people around me, like I said, the physician that walked in and goes, "No, I need this too." I was like, "Really? Are you sure?" And then as I started doing it, everything fell into place. People always would talk about that, but that had never happened in my life, but the money showed up and the venue came about, or the things fell into place and every time that happened, it reassured me that I was taking the next step. Is it kind of like God just gave me a sign and then you just kept getting them. It's like, "Hey." It did, and I can't really explain it any other way than that and that was what allowed me to keep taking the next step. That's so cool. I figured, I had funding I knew for five years from this one man outside of town and that was it. So I figured in five years already to look at the data on this calendar, I knew that in five years I was going to be looking for a job because I didn't, I was like if it doesn't work, five years later, I'm going to need to do something. But I thought, "Why not?" Yeah. This is important to me and I honestly began to feel like this is where I was put on the planet. So I thought, "I can't not do this." Double negative, my mother would be very upset, but I think when you have that feeling of like, "No, this is why I'm here." This is why I'm going to do this. I don't know how the details are going to work out. I'm not sure, but this is what I'm here for. That's a powerful feeling. Yeah. And it was what has gotten us through some hard days. Yeah. Yeah. Because there are days when I think what the heck am I doing? The hospital, hospital administrators as a whole, our hospital administrators here at my facility are fantastic, but as a whole, don't get it. I don't think they can because it would reveal their own vulnerability. But healthcare is struggling to come to terms with what it means to create a culture, maintain a culture, stay in a culture that is much more authentic. And that does have some cost to it, but it has cost on the other side too. Absolutely. And there are days when I get very worried that it's all going to fall apart. But I know that the individuals that have been a part of what we've done so far, their lives have been changed. And to me, that's all that matters. Okay. So I have a question for you that I'm asking everybody. Okay. You know, yours is unique because you've been a chaplain at a children's hospital. I was at an adult hospital before this, so. And that's, that has a lot of tragedies too, but I think like the children's thing is really tough. And so I know that you've by, you know, necessity dealt with a lot of really tragic situations over the years. So how do you stay whole? It's not the first time I've been asked that question because of course if you tell someone you work as a chaplain at a children's hospital and do kid death, they kind of go, yeah, you're not getting invited to the next party because we don't want to talk to you. Yeah. People like me a lot more when I told the ER stories. I'm not sure they did. No, it's all about finding meaning, whatever the situation can be, whether it seems tragic on the surface or not to other people depending on, it's all about finding the meaning in it. And, and most of the time I could find meaning along with a family that was going through a challenging moment. Sometimes you couldn't and you just had to own that this was what it was. But I think all of our lives, there's a point that I read years ago and I need to find the name of the author. I think it may have been anonymous actually. But it said our lives are made up of little chapters and I just consider all of these children I've gotten to know who aren't on the planet anymore are just little chapters in my story. And I'm a different person because I've gotten a chance to know them all. And I feel really privileged. Some of them live two days. How many people on the planet got to know that kid? Not many. I did. Did it change me? Yeah. It did. Did it change me for the worst? No. Actually, it didn't. It's made me appreciate it. life. It hasn't made me anything. It has brought me to a perspective to appreciate my life. And it's taught me that joy can be found anywhere even in the most painful dark circumstances. And I wouldn't say that I've always felt that in my life. But children struggling really teach you that. That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I welcome. Now I have some really important questions. Okay. I'm ready. Jazz or classical. Classical. Beatles or stones. Stones. Wow. Okay. Wow. No, I didn't. I almost breeze right past it. Nobody says stones anymore. I like it for you. Biggie or two-pock. Oh, two-pock. Stevie Nicks or Blondie. Stevie Nicks. Kat Stevens or James Taylor. Oh, that is too hard. I can't do that. Oh, I love Kat Stevens, but I love James Taylor too. Kat Stevens, just because there's some really special stories about Morocco and Kat Stevens. Okay. Okay. Cindy Lauper or Madonna. I probably Madonna. Beyonce or Taylor Swift. I'm a swifty. Drake or Kendrick Lamar. I don't even know who Kendrick Lamar is. They're side. But I played Drake at a memorial service for a kid here at the hospital. So you go Drake. Probably because I don't know who the other person is. And we had to try to turn the music down every time the curse words would come before the sisters heard it. Wow. That's you got to be on the dial. In the auditorium. That's fantastic. You too or radio head. Radio head. Oh, you're hurting me. You're hurting me today. But that's all right, Krista. Because you've done a lot of good for me over the years. Oh, my goodness. That's beautiful. Well, okay. My last, my very last question. If you, if your story right now being told through songs on a mixtape, what songs? Name a few that might be on there. And then we'll let you go. Oh, I kind of put it put together a sort of list. Oh, sweet. Because there's songs about resiliency because they've been things of an important to me. One is called, there's, there's one that's out right now by Sarah, Sarah Burrellis and John Legend called a safe place to land. And I've asked for someone to sing it at a future mortals of medicine. Oh, wow. But and so there's a, there are a couple of musicians that are also in health care that may play it together. That's awesome. Talks about just needing a safe place to land. And it talks about a boat and finding a safe place to land. And sometimes that's what we need. Christina, Christina Perry song, human. Oh, yeah, it talks about being a real human. I again, I love anything that's folk stories like these are some of the ones that stay with me. Leona Lewis, I've got you. Yeah, those are just a few. And then but like overall, anything by David Wilcox and the end of Go Girls, I'm all in that. Oh, nice. Yeah, nice. Christopher Gregory, you are a legend. You're an inspiration. You're such a gift. You've been a gift to our community. And thank you so much for spending time with us today. You're very welcome. Thank you for the time. Bye. Bye. Bye. This episode of my medical mixtape has been a crash cart campfire production. Thank you to our editor Sarah Brager. Thank you to our special guest, Christopher Gregory. Please check out her work at Center4resiliency.com that's center the number four resiliency.com. And there you can find a link to the healthcare storytelling community, mortals and medicine. Please also be sure to check out talking heads once in a lifetime on your favorite music streamer or even better find it on vinyl or cassette. See you next time, friends.