The Bossticks - The Truth About The Medical Industry, Hospitals, Medicine, & A Medical Career Ft. John Lawrence, Author Of Playing Doctor

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

#650: Today, we're sitting down with John Lawrence, author of the series 'Playing Doctor.' John attended Georgetown University where he told his career advisor that the only thing he did not want to be was a doctor. He subsequently survived medical school and residency training in Utah and practiced for over 20 years before transitioning to becoming a writer, where he shares his best and scariest moments from practicing. Today, we sit down for a conversation about all things medical school, what happens behind the scenes in hospitals, and how he transitioned to becoming a writer. He also puts on his white coat again and gives us a few tips on when you should take your children to the ER, why overprescribing pain meds has become such a large issue in the US, and gives us a peek into teaching hospitals and what you should know about them.   To connect with John Lawrence click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To subscribe to our YouTube Page click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential. This episode is brought to you by Primal Kitchen You can find Primal Kitchen products at Target, Walmart, or your local grocery store. Or go to PrimalKitchen.com and use code SKINNYPK for 20% off your entire order. This episode is brought to you by MWH As Melissa says herself, "Don't trust me, try me." Visit melissawoodhealth.com and use code SKINNY at checkout to get your first month free off your monthly membership. This episode is brought to you by Tecovas Tecovas are handmade from the most premium leathers. Visit tecovas.com and point your toes west. This episode is brought to you by Cymbiotika Cymbiotika is a health supplement company, designing sophisticated organic formulations that are scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling nutritional gaps that result from our modern day diet. Receive up to 15% off your purchase at cymbiotika.com/SKINNY This episode is brought to you by Heineken   100% taste. 0% alcohol. Click HERE to purchase. Must be 21+ to buy. This episode is brought to you by Vroom Find your next ride on vroom.com Produced by Dear Media  

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

You know, the way I got into these stories was basically writing emails to friends back before blogs existed. It was back in the 19, late 90s. And I'd send these email blast out when I was on call at three in the morning, just this crazy stream of consciousness that would leave my friends asking, you know, are you breaking into the pharmacy or something or just random thoughts? Emergency amputation, the person who got septic and was dying, and his family, he didn't want to have his leg cut off.

If we don't cut this off, we couldn't get in touch with the intending doctors. And the residents say, well, let's, we got to do it. I mean, he's going to die if we don't get this thing off. So they're like, all right, John, you got to go bring it down to this is in the VA hospital. walking around with this leg in a garbage bag. I'm thinking, it's three in the morning on a Saturday. My friends aren't doing this. They're all having a great time together. They're out parting, and I'm doing this. Welcome back to The Him and Her Show. We are doing something fun today.

One of my favorite ways to have guests on this podcast is to read, to read wide, to read random, to read niche. And then what I do is if I really like the book, I'll reach out to the author on Instagram and basically beg them to come on the podcast. And that is exactly what I did with Dr. John Lawrence. He is the author of the series Playing Doctor. So I was on Amazon like perusing around trying to find a good autobiography. And this popped up. I am deathly afraid of hospitals and anything medical. And I think that maybe made me intrigued with the subject. Sure enough, I bought the book Playing Doctor and I read all three of them in like two weeks. I loved it so much. You have to read it if you're as intrigued with the medical system as I am. And luckily,

he came on the show. Today we're going to discuss all the things. Everything you need to know about a teaching hospital, the craziest burn unit stories, ER stories, the different phases of medical school, his advice on bringing your kids to the hospital and when you should bring your kids, why doctors are over prescribing pain meds, the ins and outs of hospitals, and what's it like, really, to be a doctor. On that note, let's welcome Dr. John Lawrence, the author of the series playing doctor to the him and her show. This is the skinny confidential him and her. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. John, John.

I don't know what you like to be called. I have to give you a little backstory. I have an irrational fear of hospitals. Like, ask my husband, I faint at a needle, Vasco-Vagal, or whatever it's called. If we go to the hospital ever, even for something beautiful like childbirth, like we go there. We're there for a happy. I won't touch the elevator button. I have, I think I'm scared.

she she she this is like people are gonna not like this but I get home I have brand new pair of shoes I'm looking for them like where the hell did they go she threw them away because she's so nervous no I'm too nervous it's not that I'm like worried about like just scared of hospitals I can't explain it I don't know I'm scared I don't like the fact of someone taking my blood it just scares me anyways I got served on Amazon your book playing doctor part one and immediately I downloaded it on my Kindle because I am intrigued by why I'm so triggered by the hospital. So I started reading it, and I could not put it down. It was light, but also gave you the juicy stuff. It also showed your life, which is super interesting, and just you sort of like fumbling through medical school

and then residency and then actually being a doctor, which are part two and part three. and I think I read your whole series in like, I want to say like two weeks. And then I harassed you on Instagram. I found you on Instagram and harassed you. And so here you are. Oh my goodness. Well, thank you both for having me. It is so amazing to be here because I've become a fan of your podcast to be here.

As I mentioned, just surreal. So I'm so glad you found the books. And when I realized when you've sent me that message, I was, it made my, I can't even describe it. Just to have somebody you don't know reach out and say. I read your books, I enjoyed them is for any, I think, creator artist is to hear, not that I consider myself an artist, but it was just so special to have somebody, you know, reach out and sell it, you suddenly feel legitimate that somebody enjoyed them. And that's

the only reason you write these books is hopefully for me it was, you know, maybe this is something that will entertain people. Maybe it'll be something that tells people about this world. They don't know because we've all had the experience, usually with medical people, whether in a clinic, in a hospital. And believe me, when we walked out with our first child, that was grasping arms, like not letting him go anywhere near the walls to touch anything in a hospital. So it does. So you're the same as me. Okay.

Okay. So I want to go, I want to sort of do this podcast like you've done the books. And I want to go back to part one of medical school. You didn't really want to go to medical school. I'm certainly not the typical story given I wasn't planning my entire life around. I want to be a doctor. I didn't grow up thinking I was going to be a doctor when I went to undergrad. when my career counselor asked me what you want to be, I said, I don't know, I just don't want to be a doctor.

You know, the idea of going to pre-med and carrying all these heavy books around just looked ridiculous to me. And where did you grow up just quickly? Was born in New York, grew up in England, came back to New York. Now I live in Utah. I was thinking I was going to go. I mean, I love the idea of writing. I started in college.

I got into some screenwriting classes and acting and loved it, but I thought that's just a dream world. You know, I don't know how anybody actually pursues this. This is a while ago. And I was thinking. I'd go into law and just work on environmental issues and took the LSATs, was going down that path and was working at some law firms, you know, intern years, you know, in between college and didn't think it was the path I wanted to go down. And so I had thought about medicine, just kind of off the side, well, you know, like thinking, well, I can take care of athletes.

You know, these are, these are, you know, something I enjoy sports, go down that path, but never really took it too seriously. And it really was this moment when my, even my advisor was like, don't just jump path, figure out what you're doing. And then I went to, I was living in France, was a ski guide. And this French doctor, who I couldn't really understand because my French isn't that good, basically was talking about Med Sanson-Fontierre, the going doctors without borders. French is not bad. And he's like, hey, I get to ski with my daughter. And then, you know, there's this other life. I was like, okay, that's great. And then, you know, this can, I could also do like community theater and do some writing. So it became this path. And I thought,

let me go to do this. But I hadn't taken a single pre-med class where I had to go back to all my pre-med classes had to apply. Yeah, it wasn't exactly what I was. I was. It wasn't exactly what I was planning to do, but I thought this is going to be a, you know, it's going to provide a good life. You hurt your head. I'll let you, real bad. So I actually get into medical school, which is something they probably regret at the school all these years later, because I definitely was not their typical student. And I was going on a mountain bike ride around four weeks before medical school is about to start. And the next thing, I wake up in the hospital.

I'm in a neuro ward. I'm seeing all my friends. Like, you know, in the movies, you have this like tunnel vision. You're looking all around. and I can recognize my friends. They're all looking at me. I can't really hear what they're saying. And it's kind of coming in and out.

And I had had a pretty bad mountain bike crash. I'm in there. And it was, you know, I learned all these medical facts. I learned what perseverating is when you keep asking the same questions over and over and over, just on repeat, just going, what happened? Why are we here? What happened to my bike? What's going on? And so I had a bleed in my brain.

So pretty significant injury. I discovered I didn't have insurance at that point. I had my med school insurance and my other insurance, which is another issue in medicine insurance. I thought they overlapped. Turns out they missed each other. So the next day they said, well, the bleeding stopped. And I said, okay, I'm out of here, took off. And for the next few weeks, which I don't remember very well, kind of my friends would take me for walks, everything really calm. And the day before med school, I go for another mountain bike ride and super careful, like a little five-hour ride through the mountains. And we're going back. And I like, my friend's like,

you don't need to go that slowly. I'm like, yes, I do. Got to be careful. And we get near the cars and I finally just let the bike just roll down this nice clear path and all a sudden I'm upside down, sailing through the air, just ripped open all the scar tissue, slammed my head into a tree and basically had another concussion which basically you have what's called second impact syndrome. So if you get two concussions within a few months, it can be potentially fail from the swelling. You know, luckily for me it just caused some pretty bad nausea, but it just made my amnesia even worse. And that was the day before medical school. So I showed up, you know, first day of medical school covered in bandages, you know, it's bloodied gau. You know, it's

bloodied gauze and can't stay awake, can't thing stray. And that was how med school started. So you got to spice it up a little. The whole thing was looking a little predictable. The head injury stuff. Can you heal fully from that? Now, head injuries, I mean, you've had a few people on and talked about this, you know, Dr. Amon, you know, Peter Atia and stuff, you know, some of the head injuries. And actually, Jeff Byers, I guess, was talking about, you know, with the microconcussions with the constant impact, things you can do. So at the time, this is back in the mid-1990s, I think I was around a week into school and I got lost. I couldn't find my way home like off two blocks from this.

I'd driven a car. I don't know if I should have been driving. I couldn't find my way home again. I was like, I can't figure out the two blocks that I turned here. So I went up to the neuro ward. And I said, what can I do? This is, you know, I'm, you know, likely we had any tests yet in school. And they basically said, just takes time.

It takes time. So I started my own protocol at that point going, okay, I've heard, you know, back in the day, fish was brain food. So I started eating fish because I didn't eat any fish. I started, okay, I mean, I always exercise. I figured that's good for blood flow. I started, you know, mentally playing chess against myself. I would sit there and just play numbers in my head, counting up by twos, down by threes,

in a different language, just anything to get your brain working. And then the test started. And it was one of those wake-up calls when suddenly school used to be relatively easy. Like recall when you read something and you remember what it was or somebody tells you something, you remember it. And that's what was completely gone. Well, because I was going to say you got into medical school and like, I'm listening to you say that.

and I was a terrible student. And I'm like, man, this guy just talking about getting into medical school easily. And I think for a lot of people listening, like, it's not easy to get into medical school. Well, I mean, I'm a little flippant about what it took. But I, like I said, I didn't even go. I went to undergrad not having taken a single pre-med class. So I came back and had to go take all the pre-med classes. And I realized I was just going to live at home and with my mom and take a, go to community college, basically,

and the state schools. It's like, all right, all these people applying from top universities. I'm competing against them. So I worked my butt off to get top grades. Actually, it's mentioned in the book. I mean, I was like, I can't get a single thing wrong. I'd come home and study until three in the morning. You know, I had to get an A plus.

Or not an A plus, but I worked to get perfect scorers, every test, did all the extra credit. So they gave me an A plus. And I'm in my first medical school interview. And the guy's laughing at me going, where did these joke schools you went to? Who gets an A plus? That's not a real grade. And he goes, and guess what? You're white, you're male.

You're not from in state. You're not going to get in. How does it feel to experience reverse discrimination? And you know, you're trying to smile going, okay, it doesn't feel so great right now. Didn't get in, got waitlisted that year. So I had to reapply a year later, but there was some work involved. When you're in medical school and they start to teach you things, is there a process? Like let's say someone's listening and they want to know what it's like to actually be there on the ground. And you talk about it a lot in your book, but maybe like some actual things that happened. Sure. And this was interesting.

just writing the books because the first year of med school is all wrote memorization. It's books. And some of this might have changed in the last few years. They try to get students into the hospitals a little sooner. But first year was all book learning at that point. And the most famous class, though, was anatomy. Everybody pictures is cadavers. So there we are. We're invited up to this really decrepit looking place that should have been out of a horror film. And there's cadavers and you line up and you're there just reading the book. And two of your other classmates are slicing and dicing. Is the cadaver naked or dressed up? Totally naked.

Hold on. I have a lot of questions about this. It's in a Chanel dresser. Well, what if, this is like a question. What if like the girl died and she's wearing makeup? Is the makeup still on her? Like, what is, what is the process? I didn't see any makeup. That's a good question. People have donated their bodies. And it was really the first day of school. I'm like, can the cadaver be in glam? Well, that was the, I mean, this is, you don't want to make fun of it. of the cadavers because they were donated, but there was definitely a rush to get the skinnier cadavers because you have the larger cadavers. It's a lot of fat tissue to cut through. So you got to see what

different types of lifestyles left you with these cadavers. And again, this is the time when my head's not working really smoothly. That was my very first test was anatomy. At the lowest grade in the entire school or class at that point, I just remember erasing every single answer throughout the test. I couldn't remember anything. And that's when I finally went in and said, can some somebody, I need to see a counselor or do something. I finally should tell you guys, I've had a head injury and this isn't going so long. I thought there's no way I can't continue it at school right now.

I think the most thing, you know, when you asked about medical training and the things people think about are cadavers and delivering babies. You know, that's not until later on. So those first years, there you are, mostly book learning, and remember a lot of students getting a little fresher going,

why are we learning about physiology? We're learning about cells. I don't want to treat cells. I want to actually treat the body. I want to do this. then second year, you jump into more pathophysiology. Like, okay, here's an organ, you know, here's orthopedics. Let's talk about the bones. Let's talk about the injuries that happen to bones and how you're going to treat them. Here's infections. Let's talk about all the different

infections. Here's the drugs you're going to treat them. Here's what they are. So you learn all the actual medical. You are downplaying how much work it was. It was like seven days a week all night. Like you didn't have a life, it seemed like. No, but the, I think for people who are thinking about this, this might be the inspiration. Again, I think there's all of life. Anything you want to accomplish takes work. And so when you're there, it was just you accepted. This is what you do. And when you got out, you had the best time. So yes, it was seven days a week. You studied, you know, you got out of the hospital. You might go for bike ride or do something else. Then you studied until night. Then you went back to school. And that was pretty much a seven

day a week studying. And when you're in the hospital third and fourth, you're actually starting your clinical rotations when you're seeing patients. Same thing. You're on call. If you're not on call, you're back home studying again to get ready to go back to the hospital. And then it was kind of like, you know, when they let the animals out of the zoo, you'd see medical students kind of let out for the night or off together. And you just felt like you had to celebrate every moments. You appreciated, you know, having your one weekend off a month or your, your night out was just wonderful. Is residency in a hospital? So typically... Wait, not residency. Sorry, is school in a hospital. That's what I meant. Yes. So they have the teaching hospitals throughout

the country. So you'll go to medical school and usually usually be at what's called a teaching hospital because I think they get reimbursed for having students there and the patients know, okay, we're in a teaching hospital. They're going to have students, you know, students coming in with medical residents to treat the patients as opposed to, let's say, a private institution that might not want students and residents and people don't want to see us, people who aren't quite trained yet. Remember when the residents came in when you were giving birth? That's, okay. So in the book, I'm like waiting for the part where you say that like there's so many residents that are in the hospital. And you did explore that. You said,

said, like, there's people that are performing things that they've never performed. And I'll let you say it more eloquently. But, like, I think you said something like the first time you had to cut something. Like, it was, it's like they were like kind of just throw you in. And that's probably the best teaching in a way, because there's no other way to do it. You can, you can read about it all you want. You can practice on plastic models and things like that. But until you've actually done it, and again, I think this is everywhere in life, until you've made a mistake, you know, you learn from when you don't do things right in a way. You never forget those moments when you didn't do something right. And in front of the whole group, you know, you've got these very

intimidating rounds where it's the head doctor and the residence and those students and you're talking about each case. And oh my goodness, if you made a mistake and they, you know, light you up, you never forget those moments and you quickly go and learn it. But the adage in medical training is see one, do one, teach one, which I think is applicable through all of life. You know, anytime you actually, you know, see it and then you do it yourself, go, okay, but once you can teach it, you really realize, okay, you know what you're doing. I think, like, well, for me, it's like, I, that bully makes sense. And I think, like, how else would you teach someone without them actually, like,

working on a real patient? I just don't want to be the patient that people are learning on. Like, maybe medical students are like, what an asshole. But, like, I want the guy that's, that can teach it and put a master's class on there. So you want to see them have, like, a punch card. When you can, let me see how many of these you've done. How many, you know, how many, you know, lungs have you reinflated? And going back, like, we had these residents come in the first time Lauren was giving birth.

and I don't think I've ever seen my wife snap faster. Just like, get the fuck out. Well, it's just like, I can't be pushing like a seven pound baby out of my vagina and have people want to come in and like learn about it. I know that's maybe really mean. I'm already so scared of the hospital situation. She got really mad because she was like crowning and then I started signing autographs for them.

And she was like, what you did? I was kidding. Believe me, as a medical student to walk into these women who are there to determine if they're going to be delivering and go, hi, I'm a medical student. I need to check your cervix right now. It was not the most easy thing to learn to say. I mean, there's no real graceful way or polite way. And the first time you had to do it, you just, you walked in and you did it.

And you go, they're about to kick me out. I know, I know, the very first delivery I had. So, you know, you're excited. Oh my goodness, I finally get my first delivery. I can't believe this is going to happen. And I had had, I mean, tragically, a very dear friend of mine had just died. And I'd flown out for to meet his family. And again, I'm a medical student.

I'm freaked out. I can't even think straight. Haven't slept for 60 hours almost. fly back and they said, okay, well, here's your first delivery. She's a really sweet woman. You know, it's great. She's really close. Go ahead. She speaks English. And a lot of times you have non-English speakers. So I just, I walk into this room. And I mean, this woman looks like, seriously looks like she's like the Tasmanian devil. She's standing there, this moo-moo. And she's like, who the fuck are you? I'm John. I'm the medical student. Get the fuck out. Now, now.

It's like, okay, okay. And I just turned tail and ran. I mean, I was like that was, you know, she was really close to delivering, did not want to see a medical student at this point. Do you have to deliver in medical school? Like, is that a requirement to get through? Pretty much. Yeah. And the residency I did, I did a family practice residency. And we had six months of OB, which I really enjoyed. Obes, it's really. People are happy there. Yeah, in general. And when it's not happy, it's really intense. And I think that's a really important thing about medical training. And, you know, people who are thinking about medical school. It's one of those things. You are in the moment. You know, you are fully, when you are there,

You cannot think about anything else. You are so focused, you know, in certain practices for sure. But, you know, in OB, when things are getting intense, it's one of those, you are. What was the transition from part one medical school to part two residency? What was that transition like? And after the transition, what happened? In medical school, and certainly mine was an extreme case. To go from, you know, your memory not working to try to just pass school and you go in, you're seeing patients, you're seeing, you know, clinical work.

And the transition is almost seamless. You finish medical school and July 1st, residents across the country start working in the hospital. Explain what residency is if you had to put it like in a box for him because I don't, do you know what that is, honey? Well, isn't it when you don't you partly live at the hospital during that time? Don't you? That used to be. Yeah.

That's why it was called residence because you actually lived at the hospital. So now this is basically indentured servitude. You know, it's the inexpensive way of saying, hi, we're going to have a lot of workers in the hospital. But so that people don't. live there anymore. It's just... No. Well, I spent a lot of times there. Michael, you're there. Okay. So how many hours in a given day are you there? It depends on what you're a surgical interns. So the intern year is considered the first year of residency. And if you're in surgery, you might be living there. I mean, you might be there 120 hours a week. I rarely had 120 hour

weeks. I had some weeks where I worked 120 hours. A lot of them were probably 60, 70 hour type weeks, you know, sometimes less depending what rotation you're doing. You might be doing what's called an outpatient where you're maybe working in a pediatric doctor's office. But if you're in the hospital taking call, it might be every third night or when I was working burn units, every second night, you might go home for a few minutes. They get a call. You've got to go back to the hospital. Tell me if I'm wrong. I heard burn unit is like the worst to have to. It was, I had no desire to go into it. And the woman I was dating at the time, she was one of the top students ever in the history of the school. She's just, you know, super smart, worked tremendously hard. She said,

John, you need to go do this. You're going to learn how to do procedures. You're going to learn how to do procedures. And as you said, Lauren, what does it like to be thrown in? So the very first day I show up and there's usually a resident and then there's an intern, kind of the beginner one. And then there's the medical students. And there was no intern. He had something else going on. So the resident looked at me and just said, you're the doctor. That half of the burn units me. That half is you. Take care of the patients. And you had to step up and you just did. And that's when you really learned, okay, He said, here's how you're going to put a central line in. You're suddenly going to cut the guy's neck

and feed this line down into his heart. And you're hearing horror stories of residents who maybe fed it into deeply. It hit the heart and put the patient into a coding situation. So you're really careful. And the burn unit is one of the places, like you said, it can be really tough to work in because of the patients you're seeing there.

But at the same time, it's for doctors. It's unbelievable training because you have to think of every single organ system. When somebody's in the burn unit, They have so much wrong with them that you just... When I think of the burn unit, I think of someone that's like they've been lit on fire. But is that what is... Like their whole body, you know. See, I told you people.

Like, people who aren't in hospital, we don't know. Like, you... This is the Wiley Coyote Center. This is where everything's... This is when people have... What's the most common injury? What's Wiley Coyote Center? I'm just thinking it's everything that goes wrong.

People are, you know, went down and looked for a methane leak in their house, holding a lighter in front of their face. They decided, let me see how close I can get to the Hot Springs in Yosemite. You know, let me see, you know, kids who poiled, you know, boiling water spilled off. They went to reach for their soup bowl or something off the stove. It's a mix of all the things that can go wrong, unfortunately. You know, meth labs blowing up in people's face, that type of thing. And the single worst, one, which I talk about in the book, the single worst case we had,

it's a little warning about overtaking antibiotics was this girl who had had a virus. And her doctor, they said, can she take some antibiotics? They gave them, you know, a common antibiotic to take. And she started having this bad reaction. Her parents kind of kept her home thinking, can't be that bad, can't be that bad. And she ended up getting something called tens, which is basically your skin starts sloughing off.

Her organ started sloughing down. It looked like she'd been just dipped into her whole body into a huge thing of boiling oil. But you said the reason in the book that she got that is because, you say, he needs to hear this story, is because her mom accidentally gave her a warm bath, thinking it would relieve the rash, right? They tried some naturopathic treatments at home.

it's it's uh it was a really really horrible story just because she was this beautiful beautiful woman who was you know a singer and had this great family and all of a sudden to see somebody who's then was basically needed ended up needing bilateral lung transplant so again it was just that warning of antibiotics have side effects you got to be careful. So someone's listening and they're on antibiotics or they have a kid on antibiotics you don't want to give them a warm bath is that like the message? No no it wasn't so much it was more of the time they waited was really to bring you in. Yeah.

So if people are having a reaction, that's what the doctors are there for. They want to hear from you. Anytime you have something going wrong, you're not sure about. And that's one of the, you know, I had certain pearls, things that you learned throughout medicine. And certainly for me, it's something I passed on to all the residents I taught. Anybody I taught was always, you know, listen. You have to listen to your patients.

If a parent tells you, they're coming back in for a reason, they didn't think the other doctor listened something. That's a red flag. You know, parents know their kids better than you ever will. You know, if a mother just says, I just know it's not right, never blow that. off. You know, parents know their kids. When someone's on antibiotics and they get a rash, you think they should go right to the doctor because they can get that reaction?

It's worth a call. You know, I don't think you need to go in all the time because you can have mild little reactions that start just, you know, like one localized area. But this was a full body. Certainly if that happens, yes, you want to stop right away, any kind of severe reactions. So people sometimes like they wait to go because they're trying to do holistic things, but it's like if it's from antibiotics, like even it's a full body, you want to go to the doctor. Yeah, and that was a rare case. That was one, you know, that was a really, really rare case. Now, that's something that needed to be treated right away. I've seen other patients with that same syndrome. And as long as they were treated right away, everything turned out okay.

Back to the residency. When you start that, how long does it, I mean, how many weeks, months, years does it take with those kind of hours? And also walk us through. It's so cool how you got to go to each, like talk about how you get to go to each thing. Yeah. So, so in medical school, you get exposure to a whole bunch of different options of what you might wanna do in your life. And the two big factors when you're thinking, once you're in medical school, are you gonna become a medicine doctor,

which means anything non-surgical or a surgical doctor? So surgery is general surgery or orthopedics, plastic surgery, ENTs, and internal medicine, pediatrics, when you're taking care of people without actually doing surgery, these things are considered medicine. So medicine versus surgery is a big difference. But as a med student, you go through each of these, you get a chance to see all of them.

And then when I did a family practice residency, same thing. We're doing months on the OB ward. You're working with the surgeons. You're spending another month in the ICU. You're spending another month doing, let's say, an outpatient sports clinic type thing. So you really get a lot of different exposure. Now, when you're a surgical resident, and usually residencies are three to five years. And you apply in med school.

You basically go and interview at different residency programs. And then you apply. And there's some crazy match system where you put. who your top choices are and the match programs, who their top students are and some crazy number comes out and spits out. And everybody on a match day is supposed to show and find out where you're going to go spend your next three to seven years. So it really depends what you're doing. If your family practice for me was three years, it's one of the reasons I chose it. Surgery is usually around five years. And then people might do a fellowship on top of that and go into something

more specialized, you know, pediatric surgery or plastics. And then they do more training on top of that. It was a while. There are three products that I use every single day for my kids. And I'm not the best cook, but I am serious about what's in my kitchen. And all these products are primal kitchen. The products that I use are the ketchup. I'm obsessed with this ketchup. I've switched out all my ketchup with this specific ketchup. My kids use this for their scrambled eggs. I put this on my hamburger with no bun. I also just like love this ketchup if I'm making a meatloaf. And then I also use their avocado oil. It's the best. I've switched to avocado oil lately, and you just can't go wrong with this one. It's so clean, I'm telling you. And then I use their dressings and sauces all

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or your local grocery store, I like to stock up at Target, or you can go to Amazon and get 20% off your order with our code 20 Skinny PK at checkout. Every single morning, I make it a point, a non-negotiable to meditate. And I'm really creative with my meditation. If I can't get it in the morning, I will take my son in his stroller on a walk and do a walking meditation. If I am unable to get it done early morning before my kids wake up, I'll do a legs up on the wall meditation for like 10 minutes. Walsals is at school. But the app that I always use, my go-to app is M-W-H. It's by

Melissa Wood-Teperberg. You guys know her. She's all over Instagram. She's been on our podcast three times. And her voice is just so soothing. She has a walking meditation. So I just turn on the one that's 16 minutes. Like I said, put towns in the stroller. And then there's a legs up on the wall one that I love. And then my absolute favorite on her app is the 18 minutes. breath work. And she's like doing sound bowls. It's my favorite. You should also know she has workouts and nutrition and lifestyle content too. So you can strengthen both your mind and your body. I'm a fan of her workouts. They offer a blend of yoga and Pilates classes. There's a seven-day reset and renew program. And they also have a week-long nutrition program. Everything to make you

feel your best. If I were you, I would definitely download this app. It's one that I click every single day, as Melissa says herself, don't trust me, try me. Visit Melissawoodhealth.com and use code skinny at checkout. You get your first month free off your monthly membership. That's M-E-L-I-S-A-W-O-O-D-H-E-A-L-T-H-H-T-H-com. Use code skinny for your first month free. When I moved to Austin, I immediately wanted a pair of chic cowboy boots. I wanted ones that were really well-made, but also super comfortable. I don't like to be uncomfortable. And I wanted them to go at the right place on my leg and be super flattering. And my stylist, Emily, recommended to covas. The ones that I got are the Abbey and I got them in midnight so they're black. They're very true to size. And I tried them on

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at Delacrem. If you can't make it into the store, Tocovus delivers the most premium quality and most comfortable Western goods right to your door. Visit Tocovus.com, that's T-E-C-O-V-A-S.com, and point your toes west. If you can't make it into the store, T-C-O-V-A-S, delivers the most premium quality and most comfortable Western goods right to your door. Visit T-C-O-V-A-S.com and point your toes west. All the buckets, there's the burn bucket, there's the OB-G-Y-N. What else are all the ones? So usually your third year, it's kind of these are the ones you must do. So you're going to spend months just taking care of patients who have been admitted. That's internal medicine.

Usually have time on the pediatric ward. And you have time in the ER. You have time on the surgery ward, usually general surgery. And then you have some electives. So burn unit was an elective. Orthopedics was an elective. OBGYN usually is medical students. You're mostly doing OB, the fun part, the delivering babies.

Later on, you might be the GYN, which is more. Who's like the roles Royce? Like who's like the ones that like think they're like the like a team? Is it like the surgeons? Like who's like walking in with the like. You're going to get me in trouble here. No question. Well, yeah.

The reputation would certainly be surgeons are the coolest guy in the hospital. You know, the surgeons are kind of the cool team they think they are. And certainly you get into, you know, the orthopedic surgeons are usually these complete overachievers. You know, these are the, this is like Eric Hayden lives in our town. Okay. You only won five. gold medals, you rode in the tour de France, now you're going to be an orthopedic surgeon. Sure.

You're just a complete overachiever, make the rest of us look like chimney sweeps. So the surgeons have that reputation. But I think when you're a med student, everybody makes you feel intimidated. You know, the cardiologist certainly has a reputation of being feeling smart. One thing that struck me in your book as a mother now was the first time that you went in the pediatric unit. I mean, every single mother's worst nightmare is probably having to go to that unit. What was that like for you the first time that you entered that area?

Well, it's very different now that I'm a parent how you see that and the experiences you have of wanting to be in there or not certainly post-COVID. You put on a doctor's hat. I think you have this moment where you're just your, at least I was, you're just, you're very objective. And the pediatric war is crazy. For some reason, I was there during the winter months when you have this RSV, which is kind of becoming really popular now again. It's coming around. Yeah, it's big time right now. And I think I wrote about it in the book, but it was, I think I burned my Pagers'

batteries out multiple times because you're just Pagers going nuts. It's just everybody's calling you. Get up to this floor. Get up to this floor. This patient, you know, patients are just pediatric patients throughout the hospital in the hallways. So it's a very intense time period. And it's so hard because pediatrics is so different than adults who, well, I shouldn't

say that. I think one of the biggest things you learn in medical school is how to get patients to answer questions. You've no idea how difficult it is to get somebody just answer a yes or no question. You talk about that in the book a lot. Talk about that. Oh, my goodness. You think it's the most straightforward thing in the world.

Well, I can say, you walk in the morning and you interview every patient every morning early. You've ever been in the hospital. You're like, who are these people coming in at five in the morning? It's usually the residence because they have to write notes that they then have to present. So you'd walk in. Hi, Mrs. Hopkins. How is? Did you have any chest pain last night?

Sounds like a yes or no answer. And they tell you, say yes or no. I've got a yes or no questions for you. And for some reason, they always go off on some different topic. She's going, well, I don't know. I had dinner last night and the nurse forgot to bring my broccoli and I thought I chefs and vegetables. I got five more patients to see.

I've got grand rounds starting in a few minutes. And they just start rambling on and on. You're going, okay, you know, you just start skipping questions. Are you breathing okay? I think so. I think I was breathing fine. And then you later find out she had a breathing attack last night. They had to bring medicine in and you forgot to ask the nurse.

And that's, you know, again, lessons you learn. Always ask the nurse. What happened last night? What about the kids? So kids are really tough because they can't answer any questions. So you're constantly, kids are, I don't want to say reduced. When you're with a real infant, they become just numbers, milligrams per kilograms, how much urine have they put out?

How much liquids have we put in? You're always constantly just basically watching numbers and trying to assess what's going on and looking at the patient. And a lot of pediatrics is knowing how to talk to parents, you know, reassuring the parents. They're usually in really good hands in these hospitals. You know, pediatric doctors are amazing.

That's an art form. What do you do if, I always wonder this, and you're the perfect person to ask, what do you do if there is a parent that brings their kid in and you can tell that there's abuse going on or like a Munchausen's situation happening? It's really difficult. The law has made it somewhat easier for doctors, at least in different states. It's mandated if you suspect non-accidental trauma, which is abuse. you have to report it.

And so it becomes very awkward, you know, as a doctor when you suspect something. And sometimes it's very, I mean, it's obvious, I guess if somebody walks in and they've said these kids were abused, we're taking them, you know, the states bringing them in. But a lot of times it's maybe a well-to-do parent who they bring them in and you say, oh, they fell down the stairs. And you can tell the kids just not responding the way you think or you might get an x-ray and you say, wait, there's another, you know, the radiologist says there's a second break in that same area where they might have an injury now, an old break.

could this be abuse, you know, could this be non-accidental trauma? And you have to confront the parents. So it's a really hard, and there's a hard lesson for me. This is one of the things that your blood just starts boiling. And it really took the pediatric doctor saying, okay, we all have the same reaction. You want to go attack the parents. And they just said sometimes, I mean, there are bad situations, but sometimes these people had a really hard day.

They came back. They're stressed. And they overreacted to something that they regret. It's better to get them into anger management and hopefully have them there as parents, then take every kid away and have you taken away for assault charges for punching a parent in the face? That's just... Did you see a lot of Munchausens? Is it Munchausen's by proxy or Munchausen?

What's the difference? So you're talking about when maybe the parent is making their kids sick and to bring them in and just get this attention, we think. There's some kind of psyche that goes with this. We did, not as commonly. You read about it all the time, but it was such a, you couldn't tell it. You suspected it. Like, you know, certain kids who keep coming. back and the parents definitely liked being there. I mentioned one woman who would actually

started stealing scrubs and showing up in patient rooms and saying she was one of the doctor there to administer medicine. So that became a an issue. And wasn't she like flirting with the doctor? Yeah, she was hitting. She was, yeah, it was, it got a little uncomfortable. So she was using it as like her dating flirt ground. It was her place to be. She had other other issues. But yeah, propositioning doctors. You're never going to go in the hospital. No, I'm never going to go. You would rather see me down at the strip club or the horror house than in the hospital. Sorry, Dr. John. I was listening to you talk and I was telling, I was telling my friend the other day.

I don't think it's possible until you become a parent to know the fear of like when your kid gets sick or when your kid gets hurt or when they're in a situation where you feel like you can't help them. I think you just can't. There's no way you can understand what that feels like until you have your own child. And I think it's one of the worst feelings in the world. And I'm wondering from your perspective now that you are a parent, do you think you could be as objective as you were then dealing with that kind of practice? Yes and no. It depends what role you're in. When you're in the medical role, you really go into an objective place. And I wish I could all your fears. Because if much as my stories are some of the highlights and the things that were entertaining, I mean, the people at work in hospitals are so dedicated. And I mentioned this in my entrant and beginning to the books because I know I'm being flippant in a lot of the pages. And a lot of it's my own frustration with myself.

I mean, the people that work in the hospitals are the most caring people you can imagine. I mean, I've just seen so many people, residents, you know, attending doctors who, they just don't go home. They're like, you know, they know it's time to go home. They're just gonna, this patient's not doing well. And they will just stand there for hours,

staring at just vitals, trying to think what else can be done. There is so much dedication to taking the best care of every patient. So as much as I might joke, certainly the message is these people, you know, it's amazing how hard they work and how much they care. At the same time for me as a, is a parent, certainly when my kids have,

we've had one who had a mild procedure and we're in there going, this is really minor, this is so minor, he's gonna be in and out and we're both just counting the minutes, nauseated, can't believe this is happening, and we're listening to other parents in the same waiting room whose kids are dealing with chronic issues or cancer and things like that and they're there for their 12th surgery.

And I'm going, oh my goodness, I don't know I don't have the strength to handle that. It's tough. This parenting gig, man. Ooh, it's a lot. Yeah. As a parent, Michael and I, whatever our kids get sick, we freak out like everyone does. I'm ordering fucking on postmates like a blood pressure machine.

I don't even know how to take a, like, I have no idea what I'm doing. I order a blood pressure. She's got the oxygen pulse holder. I got the oxygen thing that's like the little like bunny that you put. I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm going to text you next time. Or I'll, I'll message you. I'll voice note you what's going on.

But how do you know or what are some things where you should take a child to the hospital? But what's your like Dr. John's list? You got to go to the hospital. Well, the first thing I tell every parent because I'll get calls from friends or from other people saying, hi, what do you think? I said, if you're concerned, go in. I mean, every doctor will tell you. If a parent is concerned, and again, if it's a, they're feeling warm and they look fine

or it's a runny nose. And I've had plenty of people who came in with runny noses. And you're going, my kid's had a runny nose. He never gets runny nose. I'm like, okay, I don't know what I'm going to do. It's been 20 minutes of a runny nose, but let's at least listen them over and make sure there's nothing going on. But anytime you're concerned, if there's something you're concerned, any doctor wants to see you. They want to know what's happening because if you're concerned,

it's something intuitive that you know this isn't right. At the same time, I mean, the most common things we look at with kids are certainly high fevers, you know, anything over a hundred and there's no specific number. What would you take your kid with a fever? Like when are you going to the hospital? What fever? If they're getting over a, like, if they're getting up to 103, might be going, okay, I'm going, and I know a lot of people, anybody listening to his doctor, like, no, no, no, it's this, it's that. I'm just giving a rough range of, you know, it depends how they look, because they might be totally fine. They're just hot and you give them a little medicine and the Tylenol takes it down. Well, it's probably okay. It's when fever stay up,

despite the fact that you maybe tried a little Tylenol. It's if they're looking lethargic. If they can't, you know, younger kids, if they can't drink, if they're not eating, boom, that's a sign, they're going to get dehydrated so quickly. What about like the lungs and the oxygen? That's the big one. Yeah, kids are breathing quickly, you know, by the time, again, it's really hard to assess, even for doctors. So I think you have to go by that something's not right. This is, they're, they're breathing really hard. I'm talking with infants when you can see retractions. You see them using their ribs. They're using other muscles in their necks. They're not just breathing and they're breathing too quickly.

They'll wear themselves out. And that's a, that's, was an emergency situation. So these are, are a reason any doctor would want to have you call, say, hey, this is what's going on. And they're going to say, bring them in. Let's check them out. Part three, you talk about a lot of the patients that you start seeing as a doctor in different areas. And one common theme is people's obsession with prescription drugs. And the ways that these people will manipulate the doctor into getting them prescription drugs. And these ways are creative. They're resourceful. These people are coming to the ER. They're lying. They're using different names. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. They've really tried to crack.

down in the last two years. But I think I joke about the fact that there's, you know, there must be an idiot's guide to getting medicines in the ER, getting, and we're talking when, say, prescription drugs usually control substances. So you're dealing with narcotic pain medicines or sedatives, stimulants. And there's a big market for them. And it's you really, that's what you saw. And you could almost, I got to the point where you could almost be in the, in the lobby of your ER or urgent care center. You could look out and see somebody walking in and almost know what they're there's times you could almost say, I know, I already know exactly what I'm going to diagnose them with and what I'm going to treat them with. You could just become

that intuitive. But pain-seeking patients, they had, there was these red flags. There's always these red flags that would go up. So they're coming in for back pain. They're coming in for a kidney stone. They're these kind of common ways that you could basically, or a headache. Because you can't, you can't say, no, you don't have a headache or no, you don't have back pain. So those were kind of the flags that go up. And unfortunately, all the people that have legitimate back pain or headaches then have to be put under this scrutiny. And there was almost this, this ongoing. going, you just have the same conversation every day. So, you know, you get to, you figure out that they want something for the pain. So have you taken any of this pain in pills before? No, I never

take pills. Have you tried ibuprofen? I'm allergic to ibuprofen. They're allergic to everything except this medicine. They've heard is good. Something called hydrocodone. They're almost like stumble over the name. And you go, okay, have you talked to your doctor who had a doctor for this? Oh, yeah, they're out of town. Every time the doctor's out of town, they're usually extremely complimentary. So you'd have people who are always telling, oh, you are the best doctor. You always take the best care of me. And it's so nice you guys are here today. I'm so glad for this.

Other ones were having like the entire family. They'd have the entire family eating lunch in there. And they just, I just want to get these guys out of here. I just, you know, I can't have the screaming baby. They're changing diapers.

They use the urgency of the baby pooping. And like, they're like, come on, I got to get my pills. 100%. And the same thing for when they've lost their prescription. I mean, you cannot count the times you hear my car was broken into.

I put my prescription in the wash. The dog ate the pills. My kid ate the pills. I dumped them down the sink. And you just hear this over and over. Then you can get a report. You can actually get this report that shows all the different pills they've gotten. So here's this person that's basically told you, I've never had any of these pills before and you have to walk back in and go, this is really weird. Okay, I've got this report that says you actually received three prescriptions yesterday, another two the day before. You've actually had like 600 Lord Tab pills in the last month. And that's not me. Somebody stole my wallet. I lost my identification. And you'd have these crazy stories. where I had this woman walk in and, you know, same thing. She's super friendly. So she's like, hey, can't wait to see you, Doc. I'm going to be right. You know, I'll be right back.

So I walk in. She says, oh, talk. I had knee surgery a month ago. My horse kicked me this week and it's just killing me. I just need something for the pain. I'm like, well, okay, let's look at this situation. You look. And she has this, all this, you know, ink on her leg.

And I said, which is kind of the ink you expect to see if you have an infection. It's marking this red area on her knee. And I said, did anybody else see you if you've gone to an ER? No. You didn't go to another medical clinic where they marked you for an infection? No. Nobody thought you had a skin infection and wrote this. No, I told them it's just a sunburn.

So you did go to an ER. Yeah, I went to an ER, but I really don't like them. I don't like the way they treat me. I'm like, okay. So you've got this sunburn. How come you don't have any, you're not red on your other leg or on your arms? And she says, well, I'm really burnt on my chest. And so it's out of her chest.

I'm like, okay, that's, you know, flirting is not going to get us through this point. Said you haven't, you know, this, okay, I've really got to get in touch with their surgeon. since you had surgery, I want to make sure you're okay. She's like, well, they're out of town, so you can't talk to them. So let me just go, I need to find out what medicines, the other doctors put you on in case I don't want to put you on in different medicines. I call up her doctor and said, oh, yeah, we know her. Her doctors are in town. She called up three days ago saying she got kicked by a horse and she's not allowed to have medicines.

We're happy to see her today. So we have to walk back in and say, this is really weird, but did you get kicked earlier in the week too? This is like, you've now been kicked twice by the horse. Your doctors are willing to see you. And, you know, do you think maybe you've got a pill problem? Do they storm off or do they, do they, did they, let you confront them? Everybody's different. I've had definitely times. There's some people who get really furious. I mean, I remember walking out of an urgent care clinic at, you know, midnight and thinking,

I'm going to get hit by a two by four as soon as I walk out of this clinic. These people get so irate. Other people I've had just, one went into like a catatonic state. She just froze up and stared at the floor. I didn't know if she was going to like just lose it and attack me. And then also she just burst in tears crying. I had other people who apologize. You know, I've had people who fake their own, they add on to the prescription I wrote them. They add on a bunch of refills and the pharmacist will call up and say, I know you never give refills. Like what's, you know, is this real? Like, no, I didn't do that. And they'll come back and just say, I'm so sorry. Are a lot of these people who are drug users that are addicted to drugs

are some of them actually selling it on the street? Yeah. I mean, it's a really difficult situation to explain because you have people who are legitimately, physiologically addicted to medicine. And right now, addiction clinics across the country have a waiting list because it's such a huge problem. And it's not their fault. It's not, you know, these aren't people who are just going, oh my goodness, I just want to do something. I just want to take pills. No, I had a really close friend who's a very accomplished businessman, smart guy, doesn't drink alcohol ever. Nothing. He had double knee surgery. They put him on pills, but I mean, I guess that's a really painful surgery. And he had to check himself into a rehab. And we're talking like, this guy's never had substance

abuse, never drank, nothing. And he had to literally put himself into rehab to get off this stuff. Really difficult. And so hard to go through. And so I think anybody, in life. You probably know, whether it's friends, family, you might see people go through this. And it's, so it's really sad when you see that happen. Luckily, you know, if he can go in and get help, that's, that's great. And other people are selling it. I think you have people who, they come in, they have, let's say, Medicare, it covers. For $3, they get a prescription for 90 pills, and then they can sell them on the streets for $20 a pill. So we knew that was going on too. This is the year, everybody. This is the year. It's your time. It's my time. It's our time.

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They even give you seven days or 250 miles, whichever comes first to make sure you love your new ride. And if you don't, you can return it. Not only can you buy your car or truck on Broom, you can sell or trade in your old ride too. All you have to do is provide a few details and they'll give you an offer in as little as two minutes. They'll even come pick it up for free.

Vroom is the better way to buy. and sell cars, and that's exactly what their customers are saying. Like Timothy, who said, great cars, great shopping experience and app, great service all the way through delivery. Check it out for yourself and find your next ride on vroom.com. That's vroom.com. From a doctor's perspective, you know, from an outside, I feel like there must be a place for some of this medicine, but from your perspective, is some of this stuff too strong, is some of it not necessary? Is all of it necessary? It's become such a big issue in this country. Like, where's the line of, you know, this is what is needed for, you know, medical practice and for, you know, reassurance and for pain management?

And this is, like, just overkill. Like, where, like, where do you kind of draw the line? There is certainly an epidemic across the country with these controlled substances. And the fact that prescription medicines cause more overdosed deaths than recreational drugs in the last few years was, I think, a wake-up call. So there are a lot of measures being put into place. There being much stricter about falling up on. doctors and pharmacists who are giving out these prescriptions. They're really trying to pay attention to controlling it.

Better that said, there's so many different places that you get it. Kids are ordering stuff online. We had it happen in our small town in Utah. These two middle schoolers died from ordering some pills that they got off the internet. It's supposed to be some, they're laced with fentanyl and it can kill you. So the difficult thing is everybody's different.

It's really hard to know why like your friend, why one person who's never had an, you know, have an addicted personality could take a pill and become addicted and why other people can take more pills and not be addicted, just take it the limited time. So doctors, a lot of effort is being put into educating doctors. How many prescriptions you can give? At that point, let's get them in for counseling. The common maybe misconception or is, I don't know if there's truth. There's not a lot, I think a lot of people that aren't doctors feel that doctors are making a ton of money by prescribing all this. And so they're like incentivized. Is that true or is that a myth? Oh, man, I wish.

I could have done a whole lot better. You hear people, whether it comes to vaccines or prescriptions, whatever, like, oh, the doctors are all making all the money. No, this is the tough one. Again, the economics of medicine, you know, you look at people talk, I mean, you go to different countries and healthcare is so much more affordable. And the U.S. just has a mess right now. I think it's, you know, between insurance companies and what we pay for medicine is, can be crazy. That said, it's not the doctor is really making a lot of money. I mean, okay, there's really bad stories where you have hospital clinics saying, you're going to work on our pain clinic and we need you to write this many hundreds of prescriptions a day

and these doctors get burnt out because all they do is they've been told you need to see this many patients because for every prescription they write basically it's every patient they see the hospital gets reimbursed so pain medicine's a cash cow you get these pain clinics where that's all they were doing for the hospitals right so the hospitals might be making the money and again these are you know big generalizations you know these are you know i imagine a lot of this has changed in the last few years but no the doctors aren't getting reimbursed per prescription anything like that What are the common causes of people coming into the ER?

You mentioned earlier that a lot of kids will reach up and grab boiling water. I would like to know as a parent and just for myself, what are things that we should be looking for that you saw all the time? So adult ERs and pediatric ERs, two very different things. If we're looking at kids specifically, if you're asking as a parent, by age groups, you have usually cold, concerns that, hey, my kid's not breathing right. He's got a really severe cold in RSV season.

He's really horrible colds that make them not breathe well. As kids get older, the most common things you might see are more accidents, crashing on their bikes, cutting themselves, but, you know, pool accidents. I want to talk about severe things. A lot of people use the ER kind of as their primary care. It's easy to get into. I'm just going to walk in here and get treated. Adults are across the board.

But, yeah, kids, kids, the most common thing you're seeing are accidents and falling down. I mean, I can't tell you. You just every two or three-year-olds walk in, they either have a sliced chin or a slice forehead. I sliced everything. No, Towns just, he took the dog's water the other day. He's one and a half took the dog's water and the water spills all over the ground and then he walks through it and he slips and lands right on his two. It's like it's on and on and on and on with the falls. The good thing is kids are made to bounce.

That's the good thing. They really do just bounce back up. You talked a lot about abscess, which I. This is gross. I'm sorry. Why is that such a thing? It's like all over. Every time I watch a hospital show and read a hospital book, the abscess is like the thing. What is that? I know. I haven't seen one outside of my hospital life. I've never seen anybody else yet except in the hospital. They come in. Okay, the reason I said, oh, gross. It's the one thing that would turn my stomach to. Oh, yeah. You're like, oh, goodness. What's it from infection? Well, certainly you'd see a lot in, let's say, on the arm of, you know, drug users. And at the time, there was a lot of metacillin-resistant staph aureus. Mercia was really common, especially from hospital. It could be from anything. You'd get it from a hair follicle got infected and it turned into something nasty.

So it, again, maybe they waited too long. Taylor, you better be listening right now. Not Carson, our producer, our other producer, Taylor has real bad razor burn. I bet you he has abscess all around his penis. You better go get that checked out. Oh, you are right now. I would love to know, because there's a lot, I'm sure, of nurses who are are listening. And I think nurses like need to, I would love for you to just speak on the energy

and good vibes that nurses bring to the whole equation. Oh, certainly. Nurses, nurses in the hospital setting, they almost run the show. They're the ones that are on the floor. They, so, you know, doctors might be running back and forth between different floors, different patients in the cases. Nurses are amazing. Like I said, one of the pearls you learn, if you're smart, is ask the nurses about the patients. They know the patients better than the doctors do because they spend so much time with them. So this absolutely essential, amazing part of the workforce. And at the same time, you might have, let's say, a surgical nurse. And all they do is work in the OR. So a lot of friends of mine who went into nursing school, I think they have an amazing experience because they're doing

so much of the medical care themselves. And you commonly see, I think, on TV shows, and a little bit of a cliche of all the doctors or the hot shot residents thinking they're going to boss the nurses around. They're really quickly put in their place. You know, because And just like doctors. Sounds like marriage. Yeah. And you can't put all nurses in one group, just like you can't put all doctors in one group. There's really great doctors.

There's good doctors. There's some not great doctors. And same thing with nurses. It depends on the level of training, but really dedicated essential part of medicine and certainly a lack. I know they're really looking constantly for needing nurses. I think with COVID, it made it even tougher. You know, anybody working in the hospitals, the hours and the shifts were just getting overwhelming

for a lot of people. Were you practicing during COVID? That's right when I stepped away. It was almost to the end of 2019. I'd really cut down my time and decided to leave fully. And then 2020 hits. And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, I need to volunteer and just let people know. So I bought a bunch of medical supplies and just thought, okay, if anybody gets hurt,

they can come. I can sew people up. I can do things. So they don't have to go to the hospitals. They don't need to, you know, bother the hospitals that are so busy. Yeah. And even when it was hitting New York, I'm like, oh, do I? They need doctors to come to New York, and then I've got three kids, and you're going,

is this, you know, if I start working the hospitals again, you know, like, is this, I'm going to bring this back. And so I knew where we were, it never got as severe as it did in some of the other states. So I didn't have to make that decision. And when you, I mean, I'm looking at you and you look like a physically fit, able guy, you're able to, like, I'm wondering why you decided to step away at the end. Mostly time to move on and wanted to be doing something else. I'd practice for 20 years. and my interest has really been, I love writing, and I walked into another job that had, using medicine as well, but not working in it with patients. So it was just kind of time to move on.

And as you mentioned at the beginning, it was something that I did, but I always had a question of my mind. It wasn't, you know, when I was writing, when I was, I love sharing these stories. You know, the way I got into these stories was basically writing emails to friends back before blogs existed. You know, it was back in the 19, you know, late 90s. And I'd send these email blast out when I was on call at three in the morning, just this crazy stream of consciousness that would leave my friends asking, you know, are you breaking into the pharmacy or something? Or just random thoughts, but sharing these stories so that people got to hear. This is what happens in the hospital. I'm walking around with an amputated leg at three in the morning. Oh, my goodness.

You know, here's this person who's, you know, all these crazy things. What do you mean you're holding the leg? It's one of those moments we're going, I bet none of my friends are doing this right now. We'd have to have this emergency amputation. The person who got septic and was dying and he didn't want have his leg cut off. If we don't cut this off, we couldn't get in touch with the intending doctors. And the residents say, well, let's, we got to do it. I mean, he's going to die if we don't get this thing off. So they're like, all right, John, you've got to go bring it down to, this is in the VA hospital. Some walking around with this leg in a garbage bag, I'm thinking, it's three in the morning on a Saturday. My friends aren't doing this. They're all having a great time together. They're out parting and I'm doing this.

Tell us about the time you stitched yourself up. Which. You stitched yourself up and your wife got mad and said, get the fuck to the hospital. we're talking about the manscaping. Yes, the manscaping. He was manscaping. Yeah, the two chapters that seem to get a lot of interest where I thought a spider had bitten my penis back in, tell you right. I got a lot of interest in that in book one.

That was horrific. And, oh, we bring this up. So, yeah, doctors do some really silly things. So I was, I think we let the cat a bag. There I was manscaping. Well, wait, hold on, but manscaping with like scissors or manscaping. I had an electric razor, a little electric one. I thought, okay, you know what?

This is, it said it's not going to cut you. Michael and Carson do it too. They both do it. No, no, no. Let's look up as actually a word. I'm like, Google was like, oh, it's actually a term. I can use this. No, there's like a kick called Manscape.

There's a whole, there's a company now that's actually been a partner in the show called Manxcape. He was using. Oh, wait, wait. So I think it was manscaping the, I was using. And all of a sudden, I just see like, blood shoot out. And I'm in the shower. I'm like, oh my goodness. I, you know, and a lot of times when blood's in water, it looks a lot worse than it is.

I was like, okay, one, it's bad because I don't know what I've cut at this point. I'm like, try not to freak out. Like, you know, get out of the shower. And I go out and there's just blood flowing everywhere. And I'm taking gauze. And I'm looking up like all my wife's towels in our bathroom are all white. And she's got, she's a designer. So she's got this beautiful tile, which is all white and wood and intricate. I'm going, oh my goodness, I'm getting blood everywhere. I'm trying to stop the bleeding. She's about to arrive home with the kids from school. I'm going, okay, do not need her to walk in and have all the kids show up. And there I've got. blood and they think I've, you know, castrated myself.

And I couldn't stop it. And so finally, I ended up getting like, this is, you know, they don't teach you this in medical school. But I ended up getting like those potato chip clips that you close bags with. And I clip it on to my scrotum. I'm going, oh my goodness, I'm so much pain with this. Wait, so this is on the, I'm going to use just like a non-flip. This is on the ball sack.

This is on the ball sack. We're on the ball sack. I can't see it yet because there's so much blood. I can't see what it is yet. And there's no way I'm going to the emergency room at this point. I just figure if I just clamp it, it's going to stop. Also, they're going to be like, hey, John. Oh, and I'm going, and so I've got...

Hey, Dr. John. This is definitely not going to walk in and do that. I have to explain that. Yeah, there are some downsides to knowing people in the medical community. And so I'm walking out this big gauze thing, trying to have the kids not to notice that it looks like I'm just really excited at the moment. And an hour later, I take the clips off. Blood is streaming down. Cups of blood are flowing down.

I clip it back on. And if there's like, no way I'm going to tell my wife about this because the kids, I don't care how far away they are. be outside 100 yards away, they would hear it. Kids have this, like, your kids might be young, but they hear everything. If it's related to something they're not supposed to hear, what, what, what was that? I mean, they're going to, you know, if they hear me telling my wife Chandler, hi, I don't know what I did. I need to like maybe go to the ER or something. I know what happened, dad? And, you know, tomorrow, everybody in the school will know that, you know, I'd slice my balls off. So I finally see that, I can finally, I see this cut. And it takes, I don't know, it's probably

around midnight. It's around six hours later. I'm finally going, this is so painful. I can't keep doing this. I can't keep the clips on. It's not slowing the bleeding down. I don't know what damage I'm doing. And I can't let it keep bleeding because I'm seriously going to just end up bleeding to death. It's going to be like one of those suicide things where you just, you know, open your veins and just bleed out in your bed and they think it's some weird. Terrible way to go. Death by cut nuts out. Exactly. And then the kids will have to deal with that for the rest of their lives. You know, it was a bizarre thing. So I finally had to get, I found an old suture kit and just decided I'm going to sew myself up. And it was like the same thing. I was like,

it was, I just had to sit down, blood's pouring out, and I put the stitch through. And all of a sudden, I realized in the last few years, I'm now, I'm in my 50s. And my vision has got a little worse. And also I can't see a thing. I can't see between the blood coming out, this tiny suture thread. So I feel like a waddling out into this, into the room, find my readers, come back, trying to get some light on it. Oh my God. I'm just, yeah. So did you stitch it up in the end? So I stitch it up. I was able to stitch it up and stop the bleeding. And I kept thinking, I should, I probably leave a note in case for some reason it starts bleeding again. I'm asleep and I just bleed out and the kids let let them know what happens. Can you bleed out of your balls? Well, apparently the way I was bleeding. I mean, I've seen a lot of times when you go, this is a... This is a unique way to tell someone... It was a few centimeter sly sidegun right through a vein. So I finally tell my wife the next day, just so she knows what was, if I was acting weird. And she laughs and says, I'm an idiot. Then she tells a friend of hers who actually works for the rival company. And they decide they want to interview me and basically have a whole thing saying, you know, here's the story. And we're the story. And

of what happened. With the other brand. With the other brand. It turns out they both live in our same hometown. It was like a viral ad. Like for this. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Like the, there's two main companies that made manscaping razors. Oh my God. And the opposite company interviewed him on an ad. Didn't the ad go viral?

It had a few million hits. Yeah. And so I didn't think anybody would actually see it until like my friend's kids were like, is that, is their dad? Is that real? Like, it is John. Anything's possible.

So. hilarious. Well, John, We've never had anyone on the podcast talk about how they almost bled out from their balls. But we've also never had to anyone talk about Munchausen. None of the doctors that have come on the show have stitched up their own balls besides you. Well, you don't know. You should ask.

That might be a common question now. I'll ask Peter a teardex. Before we go, I would love to talk about your transition of now of what you're doing right now. So you have a huge film on Amazon called The Cyclist. And you also are working. I don't, I'll let you speak on this. But I hope you're. working on bringing this to television.

And three books. Thank you so much. I mean, even, you know, like I said, hearing you enjoy the books, hearing people who will write me and say, we love the books and is there another one or I would love to see this as a series, as you mentioned to me. And it just gives me the confidence. I think a lot of people who write or do things certainly have a little insecurity about is of any value.

That's certainly a message that I'd love to pass to anybody, whether you're thinking about medical school, you're thinking about writing a book or being a songwriter or opening a restaurant, just do it in life. You know, really, that's the difference between everybody and the people that have things out there is just making that decision to go out and take the time and do it because there's so many reasons you don't, including myself, where I would write these and think, there's so many books out there. There's so many people who've written about medical things.

And then I heard this woman saying, yeah, but, you know, what if you had your favorite restaurant? What if they never opened it? Because there's another pizza place and they figured they're never going to do it. So there's always somebody you might find your niche. You have something to say and people want to hear it. And so for me, yeah, I love the transition to writing. I've been working a lot of scripts over the years and hoping to make more films. The first one was a great learning experience.

It was kind of my true independent film and great experience for Film School 101. And maybe your inspiration saying this should be a series. Might be the motivation that kicks me into it. So yeah, I've been outlining the idea is how this could be a series, not make it about me, but make it more about that whole medical training. Because I think, like, as you mentioned, I think a lot of people are curious about what really goes on in medical school and this training and there's, and that level of what really happens. And it's a really exciting experience. As much as I can joke about it, there is a lot of laughter in the hospital. I think any time people have had bad things happen, you overcome it with a lot of laughter.

There's a lot of camaraderie. There's a lot of hard work. But it's a really great experience. I will say I've read a lot of books on hospitals because I am so intrigued because I'm so scared. and this is definitely my favorite series, my favorite book. I found it to be like so informative, but also lighthearted and digestible. And I can recommend with like everyone should go read his books. They're so good. They walk you through the whole situation. There's lots of funny stories.

There's also intense stories. And I just think you did such a beautiful job, which is why I stocked you on Instagram. Where can everyone buy your book, support your film, and find you. Oh, well, one. Thank you so much. And the books right now are available on Amazon. I'm about to start the audiobook. And I think I'll try to get more of a wide release for all of these. It'll be available in all the common places. But right now on Amazon, and certainly if anybody reads them and share them with your friends, if you like them, if you don't, maybe don't say anything.

The reviews are amazing. I was looking at the reviews. You got some good reviews. I don't read reviews because. No, you got thousands and thousands of five-star reviews. That's hard to get. That's not easy. I need to be a little bit better about the social media aspect and getting the word out there. But it's, you can come on more podcasts. Michael, your fingers in my Instagram post. It looks like a scrotum after that story. I've had enough.

So I put my scrotum on the table? Where can everyone find your Instagram? John Lawrence Ryder. And I will post more. I'm going to. I'm going to. I'm going to. Yeah, post more.

And the film was also on Amazon. It was kind of became a bit of a generic story. But it went to a few film festivals, which was really great experience. And on to the next one. Playing doctor. John Lawrence, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much. Michael and Lawrence, this is amazing.

It's such a treat. Thank you. Hope you loved this episode. Make sure you are subscribed to the him and her newsletter, tscpodcast.com. And also, if you want to watch this episode, we are on YouTube now. Just search the him and her show. I think that's so fun that you can now like be in the room with us, sort of. And on that note, we'll see you guys next.

time.