Traction in the Rain
SYNOPSIS
Illustration by Stephanie Singleton
Pathologist Sue Wheaton tells a story about helping her mom, a surgeon and racecar driver, navigate the challenges of aging. Later, she reflects on their complicated relationship, and how car metaphors helped them move through difficult moments in their lives.
LISTEN
storyteller
Dr. Sue Wheaton, MD is a practicing Pathologist in Minneapolis, MN and a partner with Hospital Pathology Assoc. PA for 26 years. She graduated from Rush Medical College in 1991, followed by a residency at Northwestern University, Chicago, and a subspecialty fellowship in Hematopathology at the Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City. Her interest in Pathology likely stems from the 1970’s TV show “Quincy, M.E.”, a medical mystery drama of a County Medical Examiner. She enjoys not taking herself too seriously, traveling with her husband and son, reading and cooking.
Host
Emily Silverman is an internal medicine physician at UCSF and Creator of The Nocturnists. Her writing has been supported by MacDowell and published in The New York Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, JAMA, CHEST, McSweeneys, and more. She was the Hellman Artist-in-Residency at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in 2020 and served on the COVID Crisis Group, which recently published the book, "Lessons from the COVID War." She lives with her husband and daughter in San Francisco, and tweets @ESilvermanMD.
CREDITS
Hosted by Emily Silverman
Produced by Emily Silverman and Sam Osborn
This episode’s interview was recorded at Aerial View Studio in Minneapolis (January 2024)
Edited and mixed by Sam Osborn
Sue’s story was coached by Kristin Moe and Molly Rose Williams. This season’s stories were originally performed live in Minneapolis in April 2023 at "Rebirth", a performance by The Nocturnists and The Center for Art in Medicine at The University of Minnesota
The Nocturnists original theme music by Yosef Munro
Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions
Illustrations by Stephanie Singleton
This season of The Nocturnists is sponsored by The Physicians Foundation
The Nocturnists is made possible by the California Medical Association, and donations from people like you!
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TRANSCRIPT
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The Nocturnists: Stories from the World of Medicine
Season 6: Episode 3:"Traction in the Rain"
Episode Transcript
TRANSCRIPT:
Emily Silverman
You're listening to The Nocturnists Stories from the World of Medicine. I'm Emily Silverman. In today's story, pathologist Sue Wheaton shares a captivating story about her mother, a woman who broke the mold not only as a surgeon, but as a racecar driver. In the story, Sue brings us on an adventure from her childhood, where she served as her mother's co-pilot during a road race. As a result, we gained a window into a complicated relationship between mother and daughter and the evolving legacy of a parent who maybe wasn't the warmest, but was definitely one of the coolest. Sue is a pathologist in Minneapolis and has been a partner with Hospital Pathology Associates for 26 years. She graduated from Rush Medical College in 1991, followed by a residency at Northwestern and a fellowship in hematopathology at the University of Utah let's take a listen to Sue's story, "Traction in Rain"
Sue Wheaton
It takes me about 17 minutes to drive home from the hospital and it is not infrequent that I call my mom and download my entire day with sometimes without even taking a breath. I tell her everything. I tell her about the new mom that I diagnosed with leukemia and how heartbreaking that was I tell her, "Hey, Mom, we can finally quit wearing masks at work." And this particular day I tell her about this horrendous autopsy I had. It was a patient with toxic megacolon he comes into the hospital and he perforates his bowel. They have ordered the autopsy to document the perforation. And I'm thinking really isn't that what imaging studies are for that whole, "Oh, there's free air in the abdomen. They should be able to figure it out themselves!" But they obviously need me and I'm thinking it doesn't take a rocket scientist to document a bowel. All you have to do is open the abdomen and there was literally shit everywhere. I am disgusted, it stinks. I'm talking to my mom. And I'm going on and on and on about how gross it is and how much I hate the bowel. And she says, "Oh, I love the bowel." And I said, "Hh yeah, that's right mom, you do love the bowel. When you were surgery resident, you would always wait to the end of the case so that you could look at and examine the bowel." And we will always as a mother daughter unit disagree on the bowel. Now the conversation turns on to bladder infections and inserting catheters. And I finally confess that I could never draw blood. And that is probably a pretty good thing that in the middle of medical school, I realized that I hate to touch patients. There are so many reasons. I'm a pathologist. Now I'm finally getting ready to get home and I realized I should probably get in a few minutes about her. So I say, "Hey, Mom, what do you been up to?", And she says "sewing and knitting" and I say, "okay, great. That's sewing knitting. That sounds good. What else?" And she doesn't say anything. And she usually says stuff like, "Oh, we found a new diner and they have the best waffles" or, "Oh, I just saw the funniest movie." But she doesn't say anything. So I asked again, "What else?" And then she doesn't say anything. And this isn't normal. And so I start to worry. And instead of going into the house, I turn off the car, and I sit on the phone with my mom, because something doesn't sound right.
Sue Wheaton
Now when I was little girl and people would ask me, you know, in school, it would always say write something about your parents. So I would write down that my mom was a doctor. And the teacher would always say, "Oh, you mean a nurse?" And I would say, "No, no, no, I mean a doctor." And then I would qualify that and say, "No, actually, I mean a surgeon. My mom's a surgeon." Well, I get it. I mean, there weren't a lot of female doctors in the 60s. I mean, my mom was one of 10 women in her school class, and they were 190 men. So for those of us who can't do the math, she was one of 5% of women of her class. Then I would say, "Oh, and there's one more thing my mom is a racecar driver." This would be unexpected random, but true. My mom drove race cars. So when I was little and someone would say what does your mom do, I would say my mom is a doctor and a racecar driver. Now, my mom has two passions in life as you can already probably imagine, it is medicine and cars. Now growing up with a doctor for Mom is quite convenient. I never had to go to a doctor. I mean, rashes, mumps, measles, chicken pox, all handled in the living room. It's always convenient to have a surgeon in the house when let's just say hypothetically speaking, an eight year old little girl rides her little pink bike into a not so little mailbox. It is very convenient to have a mom who magically has a suture kit and a dining room table that magically turns into an operating room. And four stitches later, I'm back on my bike.
Sue Wheaton
Now having a mom who is a race car fanatic and a sports car gal is also quite interesting and exciting. Instead of going to the zoo, we would spend weekends at the racetrack or doing something with sports cars. And one of my very favorite mother daughter outings looked like this. I was in fourth grade, I was 10 years old. And my mom signed us up for a Road Rally competition. And I was going to be the Navigator. So a Road Rally for those of you who've never been on one has three rules. Number one, each car has to have a driver and a navigator. Number two, we all drive the same route. And number three, you have to drive each segment of the route in a specific speed. So it's not the fastest car that gets there. It's actually the car who gets there closest to the projected time. So it's about precision. Now as the navigator I tell the driver what to do. And that would be how we win. So the day of the race, we pick our Porsche 911, which is my favorite car. But it's also bonus as a 10 year old, the only car where I can see over the dashboard, which is going to be very important because I am the Navigator. Now the race is about an hour away in Wisconsin and along the way my mom and I plan our strategy and then she starts talking about cars, on and on about cars and this is usual. She's tells me about spark plugs. She's telling me how to rotate the tires. She is telling me the difference between a ratchet and a wrench never knew they were different. They certainly sound the same. And I sit back and take mental notes. Now my mom and I don't really get a lot of alone time together. So I'm wondering if maybe this is a good time to talk to her about Sam Ludovico. Sam Lodovico was my fourth grade crush. I just realized that Sam Ludovico has a crush on Mary Scanlon. Mary Scanlon happens to be my best friend. And so I am in this fourth grade love triangle, and I could really use my mom's advice. But my mom and I don't really talk about stuff like that. So I kind of drop it and don't bring it up and I chicken out. Well, we finally get to the start of the race, which is at a fondue restaurant, and we pull into the parking lot. And there are a lot of cars there. And I look around. And I'm thinking there are a lot of cars, I have woken up to win, I am very competitive. But now I'm getting a little worried. I look at my mom, she's not worried. We go check in with the official and he gives us our map in our clipboard. And off we go. Now, as you can imagine, as the navigator, my job starts right, then I tell my mom, "take a left at the parking lot. Take her right at the stoplight," and off we go. I looked at my clipboard and I realized, wow, these directions are going to get pretty complicated pretty fast. So I'm going to need my map. Well, anybody who's ever tried to deal with a Rand McNally map knows exactly what's ahead of me. I start to unfold that thing and unfold, and unfold. It's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And pretty soon I realized that this map is going to be bigger than my 10 year old wingspan and I start to panic. People who can fold maps and newspapers have you noticed this, the people who can fold them into those tiny little squares, I think they have a genetic mutation because the rest of us fail miserably, and I don't have that mutation. So I look at my mom and she's not looking. So I start frantically, frantically crunching that map down to the only area I need. I call out my direction. I look at my mom's speed, and I take a deep breath. Now, what I haven't told you is that that morning before we left, we decided last minute to bring my little sister with us. Well, she's not so little, she's actually tiny because she's eight months old. Now, this is before this is before carseats and so we don't even have a back seat in this car. And so my baby sister is laying on a pink blanket in a very shallow cardboard box on the foot well by my feet. And my job is not to just look at the directions, read the map, check my mom's speed, but I'm also in charge of feeding the baby and changing the diapers. Now, this organized chaos goes on for about an hour and a half. And we finally get back to the fondue restaurant. And we check in with the official and he logs our time and I look around and there are a lot of cars there. So now I'm a little worried. We go into the fondue restaurant and my worries fade away as as a 10 year old I find it quite entertaining to chase marshmallows around a pot of melted dark chocolate. Then they start calling off the trophies. Third place. Second place, look around, I lose interest, I go back to my marshmallow. And then all of a sudden I hear me my mom's name called and we won the entire event. So I go up and we go up and get our trophy and my mom stands tall. So I stand tall and everybody claps and we drive home that night in a very comfortable, happy silence. My trophy is in my lap and my little baby sister's asleep in her cardboard box. And my mom, thank goodness she knew the ride home because I, the novice navigator have left the map conveniently back at the restaurant.
Sue Wheaton
Now, things don't go as planned, and my parents divorce and things get really messy, and my mom and I unfortunately become detached and distant. I'm 24 years old, and third year of medical school, we're back in the car. She's driving and I am the passenger. But this time I am not the Navigator. You see, I just been poking around about diagnosing myself with depression and actually self diagnosing. They give you this sheet and medical school and has the 10 questions of things. You ask a patient to see if they're depressed. And I start checking the boxes left and right. I can't focus. I'm losing weight. I'm not happy. I'm antisocial. And the second thing I do to double down as I decide to spend the afternoon in the emergency department getting my stomach pumped with charcoal. So now my mom, a very accomplished doctor mom, is driving me to the hospital for a week of evaluation and tests. Were in the car and it's really quiet. And I look over at my mom and she's focused on the road and I'm trying to think what is she thinking? Is she mad at me? Is she angry? Does she think I'm a failure. I mean, she's obviously made it through medical school, I am failing miserably at making it through medical school. And I want to hold their hand and I want to ask but I know we aren't close that way. So I chicken out.
Sue Wheaton
Now fast forward, and it starts to rain that day. And we're still driving to the hospital. And my mom finally speaks and she starts to talk to me about cars, specifically car tires. Firestone, Bridgestone, all weather, performance, you can tell how a tire performs by how it performs in the rain. And interestingly, something about sitting together like that the two of us in the car actually makes me relax a little bit. And I sit back and take my mental notes about tires and rain. And I wonder if maybe I'm supposed to be the tire and my life is supposed to be the rain. Now fast forward to current time. I am obviously graduated from medical school. I'm practicing medicine and my mom is 87 years old and has retired two years ago from practicing medicine for 65 years. I'm in the garage, and I'm on the phone with my mom and she's quiet and something's not right. So I start to ask her open ended questions. And her answers are very familiar to me and she sounds like she's checking the boxes left and right- the same boxes that I checked many years ago. So I asked her, "Are you getting out? Are you being social?" and she pauses and says, "No." And I asked her why. And she says, "I've let my driver's license expire." And then it hits me my mom has given up the two passions in her life: medicine and cars. And I don't know what to say I can't imagine my mom ever being without a car. I can't imagine my mom ever driving. So I asked her how she's feeling. And she says, "I feel isolated." And now I'm the one that asked the question, but I certainly wasn't ready for the answer or her honesty because emotions obviously are not our normal territory. And my mind is racing and racing to see how do I respond. And I realized that the only two love languages we've ever had our cars and medicine so I respond with the only language I know how. And I asked her, Where's her car? It's in the garage. Can you still drive? Yes. Mom, have you ever thought about getting your driver's license back. And the first time in my life I've never heard her unsure. And she says, I'm not sure some of my age can get a license. And I said, Oh, yeah, all you have to do is take the test and pass it like the rest of us. And then the call is quiet. And I can tell she's thinking, and her wheels are starting to turn. And she says, "Susie, I remember my first driving course. And I remember my favorite race track. And I remember how I learned how to pull out of a spin, and how to drive the favorite curve and how not to skid on wet pavement." And I remind her, "You know what, you've already educated me about tires and red pavement." But I can hear in her voice that she's getting energy, and I can hear that she's going to be fine. And she takes a big breath. And she says, "Thank you." And I say, "You're welcome."
Sue Wheaton
So now my mom and I are back on the road again. And she's happily driving, and she's just doing wonderful things. And she's actually reconnected with an old love of her life. And she's 87. And she's in love again, and it's so darling. And we are moving on with a new love language, and we talk now about medicine and cars. But it sounds different. And just the other day, I was driving home on my 17 minute ride from work, and my mom called me and she said, "Hey, I've just got a new job at a hospital near here so I can keep practicing medicine," which to me now is code for you're a very special person in my life and I really wanted to share this information with you. And without even thinking about it, I respond, "Well, Mom, you've got a car and a good set of tires. So you should be good to go", which is code for "Mom, I'm so proud of you.
Emily Silverman
I am sitting here with Sue Wheaton, Sue, thanks so much for coming in today.
Sue Wheaton
My pleasure.
Emily Silverman
So Sue, your story was one of the most- like the closest that we've had to like an action story on stage. And I think a lot of that obviously has to do with the character of your mom, just such a vibrant character. Talk to me about your family and your mom and how she got into racecar driving and surgery.
Sue Wheaton
She has always had a very strong mind. She had a brother, older brother who was very much into cars and she was very close to him. And via that she became very fond and had a love of cars, as did he. Now in terms of how she got into medicine. You know, it's interesting all this time together. And then me being a physician as well. We have never sat down and I have never asked her, "Mom, how did you get into medicine? And what was your inspiration?" We have actually never had that conversation.
Emily Silverman
And your mom was born around what year
Sue Wheaton
I think is like 1934.
Emily Silverman
So, being into race cars and being into surgery, these are very traditionally male-dominated spaces. So she was probably I think you said in the story that she was one of like 5% of her medical school class were women. I'm sure that number was even smaller in the racecar driving world. So did your mom ever talk to you about what it was like to be a woman inhabiting those types of spaces and how she dealt with that?
Sue Wheaton
Well, we definitely have talked about women in medicine. And her experience was definitely the glass ceiling breaking era, women had to be better than men, not just a little but a lot. They had to work harder and they had to work longer. And they had to really show up and prove themselves. That was challenging. And she was lucky to have a surgeon from Northwestern, I believe, who took her under his wing when she was doing her residency in general medicine at Cook County Hospital and said, "Here you take it, you go see that patient, you do that stitching, you go suture this, you deal with that gunshot wound" and really gave her a lot of leeway, confidence and encouragement. And I think that was a real turning point for her. But yeah, very male-dominated and then and on the race track as well. She really was the only female driver out there. And she loved it. She loved it. She loved competing. She loved competing against men. I don't think she always recognized that it was men, I think she grew up in the era with what she was doing that you don't differentiate yourself when you're a woman in that setting. In fact, once I said to her mom, do you want to go to the American Women's Association of medicine? And she said, I don't know why I would go to a women's association, I think I always want to always be showing up at the men's. She just did not allow herself to see differently. And I think that's part of what made her successful.
Emily Silverman
Yeah, that reminds me of a scene from the TV show fleabag, which I think I've mentioned before on the show, because it's one of my favorite shows where they're at this award ceremony, and it's the awards for women in business. And they give this award to this business woman. And after the award show, they're sitting at the bar, it's her and this younger character. And she says, How does it feel to be the best woman in business and the woman, she kind of rolls her eyes and talks about how she feels like, it's infantilizing that there's a whole separate award for women and, she just kind of showed up to be nice. And I thought that was a really interesting perspective, you know, wasn't what I had necessarily heard before. Makes you think about the pros and cons of having these, you know, protected spaces for women?
Sue Wheaton
Yeah, I think there's a time and a place for women to have their own audience and their own place to mature and grow. But I think when you are in a profession, that is and for a very long time may still be dominated by men, you can be in a meeting, and be as a woman, and I've experienced this as as the content expert at the table, and have a young new male resident talking over you and not even acknowledging that, you have something to say, and those situations are getting less common, but they do still exist. And we just have to navigate them. And I think she did a great job doing that. And she still continues to do it to this day.
Emily Silverman
Yeah, one thing I've noticed and talked about with my women physician colleagues is that this older generation of women physicians, the ones who were the glass ceiling breakers, that in order to survive, some of them did have to develop, like a pretty rough exterior, or did have to, I guess you could say adopt certain male characteristics in order to blend in, you know, things like not being super emotional, and perhaps being somewhat brusque in their communication style and things like that. And that it can be kind of hard to tease out like, is that actually their personality? Or is this a survival mechanism that helped them to blend in and succeed in this male-dominated profession? And I'm wondering if that's something you noticed at all in your mom, and how you feel about that? If so, do you feel like that's just her personality? Or do you feel like there was something lost there?
Sue Wheaton
I was probably six, and my mom would get up to go to work every day. And then she loved to sew, and she would sew her own white doctor coats. And they're always had a belt and it had a waistline, and it just looked more feminine. And she always was dressed up. And her hair was always done very nicely. And she looked very pretty. I remember everyday she went to work, I obviously emulated her, she just looked dressed just right and held herself with such strength. And I never saw her personally try to morph into what a male would want to see as another physician. I always saw her playing the role, the way she wanted to do it.
Emily Silverman
Hearing you talk about being a young girl and watching your mom dressed up and going to work to be a surgeon. That must have been a big influence on you. Do you feel like part of your decision to pursue medicine had to do with wanting to follow in your mom's footsteps. And I mean, obviously, you went into pathology, which is a very different corner of medicine than surgery, but talk a bit about your decision to go to med school.
Sue Wheaton
When I was in grade school, she had a small private practice doing hand surgery just up the street from where we lived and she hired me to be her assistant. And I would sit in the front and welcome her patients while I was doing my homework and she got me a little white coat and I would bring them to her room so that that was fun. We actually- I actually worked with her for a while which was fun. But my decision to go to medical school was really circuitous, I didn't really take much science in high school at all. I was taking band and French and other things and had one biology class. That's pretty much it didn't take physics, chemistry. So I really didn't think I was smart enough to be a doctor. And I went to university and changed my major five times. And it wasn't until I went into education first and then accounting, and then decided I wanted to run a hotel and went into Hotel Restaurant Management. And I had to take a biology microbiology class, and it just started to fascinate me. And I had to take chemistry and I had to take their zero credit chemistry class. And I just became fascinated and realized, well, maybe I can do this. And I started to pursue pre-med and had a really, really great advisor, ultimately, graduated in five years and then applied to medical school. I actually didn't get in originally and had decided then to go to PT school, and become a physical therapist and found out after five years of college, I was actually two classes short of being able to apply to physical therapy school. So I went back to junior college. And then just lo and behold, Rush Medical College had a vacancy, and they called me about two weeks before the year started. And I said, "Yeah, I'd love to come" and I packed up my five milk crates and my little car and drove to Chicago. And that's how it went.
Emily Silverman
What kind of car did you drive?
Sue Wheaton
I had a little Volkswagen Fox- stick shift, of course.
Emily Silverman
Yeah, I was gonna say you must drive stick.
Sue Wheaton
Well, it was really the only thing to drive, my mom said. In fact, I learned how to drive a car in the high school parking lot in our Porsche 911. Her teaching me and it wasn't only nerve racking to be driving a car and to be driving a stick shift. But also to have her saying the parking lot couldn't have had more potholes. I don't know why she chose that one. So between learning how to clutch and shift, there was this chaotic discussion about how I needed to continue to avoid the potholes.
Emily Silverman
It sounds like over the course of your life, both driving and medicine became almost like love languages or like a code, where you would talk to each other like you describe in your story, this scene where you're in the car together, like it might be raining, you're in the middle of a mental health crisis. And your mom is driving you to treatment. And she starts talking to you about tires and rain and rubber and the road. And there's this beautiful line in your story where I think you say, I started to wonder if my life was the rain, and I was supposed to be the tire or something like that. And I just, I really loved those metaphors. And I'm just wondering if you could talk a bit about how driving and medicine became like a form of connection or communication between you and your mom, even during those really difficult life moments.
Sue Wheaton
I think part of telling the story and working with my story coach really actually helped me understand that better. My mom, like I said in the story, she's not really one to say, "Oh, your prom is coming up, let's make sure we go get you a dress." It was really she loved cars. So, so much of what we did was cars. And I think that her more than me, that's her comfort zone. It's what she loves. It's what she likes to express. And I'm not sure all these years in any of her arenas, that emotional talk is really something she's either comfortable with or very skilled at. So in the car when I was on the way to the hospital. It was very quiet between us and I I didn't understand the conversation at all at the time. And I think thinking through it while I was writing the story. I wondered if maybe she had some other message or maybe that was the only thing she could think of at the time. Because that was back then when nobody talked about mental illness and then here she's picked up her daughter who's been in the ER and even just as a baseline, how does a parent talk to a child and then to have a have a relationship that isn't really based in emotional discussion. I think that she probably brought up a topic that was most comfortable for her. And I'm wondering if maybe that's what she meant, but I've never really asked her.
Emily Silverman
Well, in the story, you describe this moment where you call your mom and she's older now, I think she's in her 80s. And you ask her how she's doing, and there's something off, she's just not really answering with the same enthusiasm as usual, that piques your interest, you turn off the car, and you stay in the car, and you start with a line of questioning, you know, and what you discover is that she let her driver's license expire. And then that leads into a conversation about, you know, could she get that renewed? And what does it look like to be driving in your 80s? And, you know, what are those connections to her freedom and her social life, and you alluded to the fact that she does go get her license renewed, and then has almost like this renaissance, where she falls in love again, she you know, she reconnects, I think, with an old flame. And you talk about how your relationship changed after that phone call. So I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about that.
Sue Wheaton
That was a very interesting transition, I think when you're a kid, and then a teenager, and then a young woman, and then a mom, through there, you have different conversations and relationships with your parents. And this particular phase, at that point was really, definitely unexpected, to not see it coming. And then there it was. And she told me, she was depressed. And I was really taken aback that she had used that word. And I didn't know how to respond, just like I said in my story. And via that I literally just took this leap of faith that I'm just going to jump into this. I am just going to jump into what's going on with you. And how can we get to the next step. As soon as I started talking to my mom about getting her driver's license back. I'd never heard her be kind of tentative and questioning her abilities ever. And once I gave her the roadmap, no pun intended, she went right at it. She called me the next day, she'd signed up. She was going to take the test. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe her fortitude. And that turning point, that conversation that she and I had was the turning point for her. After that, she just blossomed. She had, interestingly, to Roger, the gentleman who was in the audience, who is just the sweetest man. They met while she was a resident, before she met my dad. And he liked her car, and she liked his red Corvette, and they switched cars for a week. And that's how they met. And they fell in love. And he proposed to her but where she was in her medical schooling, it wasn't the right time. And then they reconnected all these years later. And I've just never seen her happier. But that conversation about where she was at that moment in her life in isolation, and depressed and feeling alone. And maybe purposeless was definitely a very important conversation.
Emily Silverman
And her reluctance, you mentioned that she had always been so confident, and so in her power, and so in her skills, where do you think the doubt and reluctance came from? Do you think it just had to do with aging and moving on to the next chapter of life? Or was it the depression? Or what do you think was underneath the reluctance?
Sue Wheaton
In a way you don't sense it? It just happens. Like things happen to us. We don't notice how dirty something's getting until you look at it like, wow, that's really dirty, but you don't see it coming on. I don't think she saw this coming on. I think she was just going day by day, and this was happening. And that was happening. And I think, at one point, right at the point we were talking, I sense, a sense of purposeless that she had never not had purpose. And now, she didn't even have a way to go be purposeful in the way she needed to. And the way she found rewarding, she just sounded afraid.
Emily Silverman
Do you feel like you're similar to her in any way? Like, do you like racecar driving? Do you have like an adrenaline junkie side of you or you like to curl up in a chair with a cup of tea and a novel and are you really different from her?
Sue Wheaton
I do like to To drive fast, so I do like that I do like a good car, I can appreciate a strong engine. So all of those things resonate with me. I'm very competitive, extremely competitive in terms of competing almost with myself more than with others to be the best and to figure things out. And I, I do think of her as a role model, when I am challenged with things. Were different in so many other ways, my mom wonderfully so could care less if the furniture matched. She's such a perfectionist on so many different levels. But yet, there's so many things that didn't bother her she didn't really need to pay attention to I am very artistic in the sense that I like to match colors and fabrics. And we overlap like to two circles. But we also have our own spaces that were very, very different.
Emily Silverman
Sometimes at The Nocturnists, when people are being coached to perform onstage, they have a script or an outline that they feel really tied to. And you know, sometimes people will even inadvertently memorize their script and you know, have a lot of fear about deviating from it. What I noticed about you is just like a spontaneity and a looseness and an openness and an ability to really, like feel into the moment. And I'm wondering if that's something that anyone's ever told you before that, like you're a great storyteller at dinner parties or anything like that, or where do you think that comes from?
Sue Wheaton
Nobody has ever said, "Oh, you tell such good stories." I love to tell stories, people laugh, and they listen. But when I would practice it, I felt kind of stuck. I don't like to be trapped in any part of my life. And I really feel like, the more I tell the story, as naturally, as it's coming to me, the more fun I have with it. And so there were parts of the story that just rolled off my tongue more easily. And I just kept going with that. And then I think one of the things that was challenging then was to try to get back to the next segment of my story. That was a little bit challenging. And there were some segments of the story that you really can't change, they have to be sort of told in a fashion, that makes sense. But I do feel more comfortable when I am just moving around. I'm a very gesture oriented person. And it was a lot of fun. It was just a lot of fun. And I loved the audience, and it felt natural most of the time.
Emily Silverman
Well, what's next for you? How do you see storytelling fitting into your world moving forward?
Sue Wheaton
I'm looking at retiring in the next couple of months. And that's exciting. And everyone asks, What are you going to do next? And I don't have a definitive plan. But I love to teach. And to me teaching is telling a story. And I'm thinking about biology for middle schoolers or something like that. Were doing something creative and making them laugh and making it stick to their brains. That that would be fun for me. How do you make mitochondria fun, DNA or mutations, I just know, it would be super fun for me to make it fun for them.
Emily Silverman
Any plugs for pathology for people listening who are considering what specialty to pursue?
Sue Wheaton
I would say spend time in the pathology lab. That's not really something people focus on for rotations in medical school. And if you can carve out time to do that, I think that would be worth their while- it's there's a lot that goes on in pathology. There's a lot of diagnostics that are exciting, and interacting with other physicians that is sort of a hidden gem in medicine personally.
Emily Silverman
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today to chat about your story and the backstory to the story. And yeah, it's just been a great conversation and your story was definitely one of the highlights of the evening. So thanks again.
Sue Wheaton
Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much, Emily.