MappedCon presented by Blueprint Test Prep 2024 is this Friday, October 26, 925 Eastern. I'm starting the day in my track, the pre-med track, planting the seed of your personal statement. We have three tracks going all day long and a couple hours of amazing exhibitors where you can learn more about their programs. Again, MappedCon presented by Blueprint Test Prep, October 26, register for free. It's a virtual event and all the sessions will be up after. So even if you can't make it live, go register and get access to the sessions. Go to MappedCon.com right now, register. That's M-A-P-P-D-C-O-N.com. If you're applying to medical school in 2022 to start medical school in 2023, join me Wednesday or Thursday, Wednesday night at 9.30 p.m. Eastern or Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern at premedworkshop.com. Go register today. I'm going to show you how to tell your story in your application. Again, that's premedworkshop.com. If you are applying to medical school in 2022, be there or B-square. The medical school HQ podcast, session number 66. Hey, this is Z-Dog MD, rapper, physician, legendary turntable health revolutionary and part-time gardener. And you're listening to the medical school HQ podcast hosted by the irredeemably awesome Ryan Gray. You know, my perspective of being a wheelchair user and having a disability really is just a part of my inherent identity. I honestly didn't think about it as even potentially being a barrier to applying to medical school, which to me is really interesting because I'm not surprised that it didn't really cross my mind. You know, at the time, I thought, "Well, that's what I'm going to do." And that's what I'm going to do. Welcome back. I am your host, Dr. Ryan Gray, and I believe that competition amongst your premed and medical student peers is detrimental to becoming a great physician. In this podcast, we show you how collaboration, hard work, and honesty are critical to becoming a superior physician in today's health care environment. Hello, folks. Welcome back to the medical school HQ podcast. Is this if this is the first time joining us? Welcome. If it's not, welcome back. Remember, if you've left us a five-star review and iTunes and you're expecting to hear me say your name right now and thank you, stay tuned until the end of the podcast, and I will definitely thank you there. Doing these at the end of the show instead of the beginning will allow us to get right to the good stuff, to the meat of the interview. So this is only the second week that I've moved it to the end. So this is just a reminder that I am moving it to the end. Today, I'm going to have Allison introduce our guest. Hello, Ryan. Hi, Allison. Hello, everybody. I am so excited to introduce my friend and colleague, Dr. Sherry Blauett, today on the podcast. She is one of the most inspiring people I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with. Sherry is a physiatrist and currently in fellowship training in Chicago after having completed her residency training at MGH, Mass General Hospital, and Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. In this interview, Sherry is going to share with us about her amazing journey toward becoming a physician, her experiences as a medical student and wheelchair user, and how she continues to advocate for people living with disabilities in the medical community, athlete, community, and beyond. Not only is Sherry an amazing physician, but she is also an accomplished wheelchair racer with Paralympic medals and marathon wins to her name. Pretty unbelievably amazing. Just as I spoke about what it's like as a physician to become a patient back in session number 62, Sherry is also going to share her personal story with us of how becoming a patient has affected her as a physician as well. Sherry, welcome and thank you so much for being with us on the podcast today. Can you start by telling us about how you became interested in becoming a physician? Going back, I'm initially from a fairly rural part of the country. Actually, I grew up on a farm in Iowa. When I was a kid, I think initially I had considered medicine as a path because my mother was fairly involved in health care. She was a nurse that then really grew in her role and ended up getting involved in leadership, and now does more health care administration, and she's the chief nurse officer for a health care network that's in South Dakota. Just being around her and visiting her at work, I always was very intrigued by just being in a hospital and a health care environment. Then, due to my background and having sustained a spinal cord injury when I was young, because of that, I had a lot of exposure to health care more than most kids. Along the way, I became very accustomed to the environment, but then I guess became a savvy customer as I went along. From a fairly young age, I think you can't really trick kids often, and I feel like from a very young age, I became good at identifying who was really passionate about what they were doing and who really cared and who would listen to me, even when I was young, and conversely, who didn't, and who didn't really seem to have that passion with them, then to do the right thing and to really think deeply about what was going on and communicate well and communicate in a respectful way, and so as I got into even high school and then undergrad, I think a combination of those two things led me to an interest in medicine and related to the latter and being a person with a disability and having a lot of exposure to health care. I think, obviously, a lot of that was motivated by wanting to do better and wanting to think about not just physicians, but health care as a whole and how we serve that particular population of people and how we can do it well. That was a lot of it in the background. Initial introduction, your mom was a nurse, but you mentioned that you suffered a spinal cord injury as a kid. Tell us a little bit more about that. Sure. I am from a farm in Iowa, and when I was a year and a half, I was in a farming accident, which unfortunately is something that happens in that type of environment where there's a lot of machinery and a lot of things going on, especially during the busy times of the year when they're harvesting or planting. I was involved in an accident and sustained a T10 spinal cord injury and a complete injury. With a complete spinal cord injury, that means that I utilize a wheelchair for mobility. I have ever since I can remember, and that obviously was just a very big part of who I was growing up and just a part of my identity as I was developing from a kid into an adolescent into a young adult. Clearly, that's shaped me a lot and shaped how I see the world. So from a year and a half old, you've been in a wheelchair? Yeah, well, actually, yes and no. I think I received my first chair when I was about five. So typically with kids, there's a period of time in which kids are still growing and developing, and there's not quite enough coordination or understanding yet to use a chair. So prior to that, I had a little scooter and other ways of getting around, and I just crawled around a lot. But I obviously found mobility in different ways aside from walking. That's awesome. Yeah. So as somebody with a disability, year on your path, going into undergrad, and the majority of our listeners are pre-med students, and they're sitting there thinking about the MCAD and thinking about all the other organic chemistry and this and that. And you were on your pre-med path as well. How did having a disability factor into that, or at that point, was it just that's who you were and it wasn't any factor? Yeah. I think that's a really interesting question, and I think I would have answered it differently than I do now. When I was in undergrad, so when I chose a school, I chose to go to the University of Arizona, and a lot of that was because I was already really involved in sports, and I was becoming more accomplished as a wheelchair racer, and that was my main sport. And they had a team, so it offered an environment in which I could be a student athlete, which is a fairly unique thing. And I think because when I arrived there, I was already very involved in sports, and then, of course, started into coursework and chose to pursue pre-med type of track. But because of that, and because I was in a fairly empowered environment in which I was doing the sports thing while I was taking classes and things were going really well, and because of my background and my perspective of being a wheelchair user and having a disability really is just a part of my inherent identity. I honestly didn't think about it as even potentially being a barrier to applying to medical school, which to me is really interesting because I'm not surprised that it didn't really cross my mind. At the time, I thought, "Well, that's what I'm going to do, and that's what I'm going to do." I didn't think for a second that I shouldn't do it, or maybe there are some questions I could consider, or what accommodations might I need. None of that really even crossed my mind, and that was probably a little bit naive, but I think telling of what my mindset was at the time. Now, being further along in my career, and now being a fellow and almost finished with training, and speaking frequently to other people who are currently in undergrad, or those pre-med stages, or even in medical school, and our individuals with disabilities, there are many cases in which it does weigh in, and I think it depends a lot on one's type of disability and the environment that you're in, but I can honestly say that for me, I didn't consider it to be a deterrent at all, and part of that was naive, but it was probably naive in a really good way. Yeah, no, it is. It's probably a good thing that you weren't preoccupied with that, and you went about your thing, and obviously being pre-med is stressful enough if you were preoccupied with something that you shouldn't have been preoccupied with that would have been more stressful. There's enough to think about for sure. Exactly, so let's talk about everything else, so let's throw the wheelchair out the window metaphorically. What was pre-med like for you? Sure, so man, it was just busy. As I mentioned, I went to the University of Arizona, which is a really big school, big public school, and that being the case, it's a place where you really have to make it your own, and it is what you make it, and so the large sort of first year intro classes were really big with hundreds of students, and you could either excel or not, and it was 100% up to you. When I started undergrad, I went down the route of working towards an honors degree, so all those classes had honors sections, which those were typically smaller groups in which you considered additional questions and had a little bit more work to do in order to get your grade with honors. That being the case, I think I started in, and it was really interesting to me because being from a fairly, I came from a small public school in Iowa, and we didn't necessarily have advanced placement classes or a system in which people were able to academically differentiate themselves. To me, it was a bit of a shock, because I found myself in these classes with folks who had already either done a lot of work on that topic, or I found myself being peers with people who had already taken those same classes in high school, and so I had a little bit of catching up to do. I don't consider that to have been a detriment, but it just was the case, and so I think when I first arrived there, I probably without thinking about it explicitly, I think inherently one of my goals became finding a way to stand out amongst all of those students because it was such a big school. So forgive me, you might slap me, but if I was a normal student in class with you, I think you would stand out already. Maybe. It's pretty bad. You know what? And the other pre-med students out there, if I was your classmate, you already stood out. So when you're going up to the teacher for that letter of recommendation at the end of the class, he knows who you are, most likely. Well, and that's why it's interesting because so much of my undergrad experience was tied into this role of being a student athlete, and whether you do that through a wheelchair racing team or at the club sport level or through intramural sports or through varsity sports in a D1 college, that provides a unique experience because it's a lot of juggling of commitments and time management, and you kind of inherently have this identity as an athlete in addition to your academic work. And so I think more than anything, that's probably what made me stand out in addition to doing fine in the classes and making good grades. So I think it was that combination of things for sure. Yeah, that's awesome. So what was maybe your biggest struggle as a pre-med, something you had to overcome as a pre-med class-wise? I would say, probably, you know, I did not have a natural passion for a lot of the more analytical classes, specifically like calculus and physics. I was definitely more attracted to the life sciences and more of things that would be in line with excelling at kind of the art of medicine. So those were challenging for me, certainly. And I definitely had to spend extra time in those classes. And, you know, I think aligning myself with other students who did have strength in those topics was always really helpful. But that was definitely a challenge. And, you know, specifically the classes, like, I definitely remember calculus stands out because I didn't really enjoy it at all. And, you know, having to slug your way through those classes when you don't really find it interesting, just as a topic. But knowing that it's a necessary evil and that it's just something you got to do and finding a way to make it bearable and doing well at it, I think is a challenge. And that's, I'm sure that's the case for everyone, you know, and it varies kind of what their nemesis is, but we all have it. Yeah. And I struggle not even in medical school during Biochem. Like, why do I need to know this? I want to be an orthopedic surgeon. We don't need to know this. Right. Exactly. No, everybody has that in their lives, dependent on what it is. And it's just finding a way to keep your chin up through it. And I do think it's a great idea and very important to make friends and help each other through it. And everyone's going to have strengths and weaknesses. And, you know, at some point, it's going to be the fact that your strength is their weakness and vice versa. So working together is really important. And it makes it, it definitely makes it more, it softens the, the tediousness of it along the way. So we've gotten that advice before from an MCAT teacher. And he gave that advice on another podcast about forming a group, a small group of people and don't let everybody have the same strengths, pick somebody that has a strength of physics, pick somebody that has a strengths of biology, pick something, you know, and use each other and support each other. So it's interesting you brought that up as well. Mm hmm. Yeah. I think that's really important because people will, you'll find, you know, you'll have peers and colleagues that just, their brain works differently than yours. And you find that they just understand things that you, it takes you longer to figure out. And there's just something with how we're wired that gives us, you know, I think relative strengths and certain subjects where we might be a little bit weaker in others. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's just, that's just how we're made. And that's to be expected. And so not being hard on yourself if a certain area of study is tougher, but just sort of stepping up, understanding, admitting it's your weakness and then figuring out a strategy, I think is really important. I was waiting for you to say, admit or accept it. Yeah. That's the biggest thing. I think it's really important. I think it's really important. You know, another thing that helped me as well in those classes was looking at, I mean, it might be kind of a, I don't know if it's, it's sort of a, I wouldn't call it a cop out at all, but I think it was really helpful to, especially in those larger classes, like those Bio 101 and Chem 101. And they're called different things in every college, but you know, those big intro classes, I think, identifying who your, your professor's going to be and then looking at their teaching style and how they test because there are patterns in how they test. And if you don't love the topic, but you just want to excel and make sure that you do okay in it and then move on to what you do love. I think that's a really, you know, a really helpful thing to do too. Yeah, that's good. So you made it through pre-med, obviously. And talk about how you selected what medical schools you applied to and ended up selecting Stanford as the school that you went to. Sure. So when I was coming into the end of undergrad and looking at schools, I had a feeling that at that time of my life, I was still really heavily involved in sports. And in fact, my racing career was coming into its peak. So I was more than ever involved. And for that reason, it was, you know, that was just a big part of my life at the time. And so obviously I wanted to continue on and finish undergrad and start with med school. I didn't want to delay it. So I'm going to stop you. I know that the racing career is huge and I want to talk about it. And I don't know if maybe now's a good time to talk about it or after med school stuff. Oh, well, well, let me first tell you, I can tell you why I chose Stanford because I think that that's tied in but has its own unique, unique elements of it too. So so when I was looking at schools, I knew that I wanted to, it was a priority for me to be in a place that had the ability to continue with my training. And so, you know, the middle of New York City was probably not going to be the best option, but rather I was looking towards places where there was some open terrain and I could train on a daily basis but still have access to a great school. And the other thing that was a big selling point for me for Stanford and some other schools that I considered more strongly as well was the fact that I felt like I was, by that time, a fairly, I was a fairly independent person and independent thinker. And so I really looked for schools that would enable me to excel regimented and a little bit more flexible in their curriculum. And of course, I don't mean flexible to mean less academically rigorous but just places that encouraged and enabled some amount of independence to pursue other life endeavors and or continue with a specific endeavor that was valuable to you. And Stanford really, really was strong in that regard. A lot of the other students, a lot of, you know, they tended to recruit and accept students that were a little bit more mature, might have had a lot of other life experiences already and brought really interesting things to the class. And weren't afraid to say, well, I knew obviously I'm a med student, that's a huge priority in my life but I also have, I'm also a musician or I'm also an athlete or I'm also already involved in politics or whatever it might be. On your interview trail, did you get any kind of negative feedback about being in a wheelchair and how the school would have to accommodate you? I didn't, I didn't. And that's, that's a huge question and a really interesting one because, because I didn't, but that doesn't mean that those conversations didn't happen behind closed doors, right? And so I think that's that, that problem is one of the biggest barriers for students with disabilities currently. And because of, because of our laws and because of our history and fantastic safeguards that we have from the legal standpoint like the ADA and the Rehab Act of 1973, because of, because of our legal backing, schools are not supposed to say, to ask you about it essentially. And so if you want to bring it up in your personal statement or your interviews, that's 100 percent your choice, but they should not be asking you about it, point blank in an interview. And that conversation is supposed to happen later on after you've been accepted before you matriculate. And so, so that's, that's the sort of straight answer, but then of course the huge, huge gray area is what happens behind closed doors. And, and I don't know if there was discussion to that regard, I assume there was, but I, I don't know whether or not it affected decisions in a negative way when I was applying. So you just mentioned personal statements. And I, I've, I've, I've seen the question online a lot about students maybe with psychiatric disorders, bipolar, depression, should I talk about it in my personal statement? Did, did you mention being in a wheelchair in your personal statement? I did, I did, because, um, again, that was probably that, that same philosophy of, um, kind of that, uh, I guess you could say optimistically, and I don't say this with a negative spin, but it was probably part of that, um, sort of naive optimism when I was an undergrad in my application process. And I honestly, when I was writing my personal statement, I just wrote it about what I wanted to write about. And part of that included my motivation to be a physician and where I saw my career heading five years down the road, 10 years down the road, and, and being a person with disability is in some ways intricately tied to that. So I did bring it up. And, um, I didn't, I didn't, I mean, as it relates to, you know, that first door that's opened after, you know, the first line of application in which the personal statement is a portion of things, you know, I didn't, I didn't have any, uh, I wasn't declined at the first line of application, I guess you could say. So it didn't, it wasn't a deal breaker, it didn't seem. Um, I'm sure it prompted discussion. I also didn't apply. I applied, and if I think I applied to, if I think back, I think five or six schools, I didn't apply really, really broadly. And that was part of that was because I knew geographically where I wanted to be. And I knew that there were a few places like Stanford that I was very interested in going on the West Coast. But if those, those schools didn't work out, then I was going to stay at Arizona. And I knew I had 99% certainty that I would be accepted there. Very? That makes it easy. So I didn't, yes, I didn't, I didn't necessarily feel like I needed or wanted to extend into, you know, my application to 30 schools and put it out into sort of the wild blue yonder and the unknown as much. So that, that might have had something to do with it too. It probably did, in fact, because I do know, um, you know, I've spoken to many students now along the way with various types of disabilities who have had more of a mixed response. Yeah. Yeah. So Allison and I had a discussion as we released the podcast that we're talking on now is a couple of weeks ago where we kind of outed Allison as having Crohn's and and being a physician and now being a patient. You kind of started the other way. And I asked Allison a question. I'll ask you the same question. How, how has your disability made you a better physician? Gosh, I think in, I think, um, I think it all comes down to when you've been in those shoes, I think it just brings everything down to earth in a different way than, than you could ever really understand without having been on the other side and have been a patient. So I think that, um, there's so many ways to answer that question, but I think at the end of the day, it all comes down to just being real. And I think that when you've been a patient, you have this inherent ability to look at the person sitting across from you or lying in that bed or on that exam table and understanding the fact that they're just human and they are who they are and they're experiencing their illness or injury in a way that's deeply personal to them. And I think that having been in their shoes, there's just a deeper way that you understand that. That makes it, um, it just brings it down to earth a couple notches and it makes it, I think, much less formal. I, I mean, some patients want you to be formal as a physician, but I think that on the whole, I tend to be very informal and just try to really just talk to people. And, um, I think that that is probably one of the biggest strengths of having, um, or one of the biggest things you understand having had the patient experience. You know, when you're a patient, you just want your doctors to be straight with you and like talk to you like you're a person and really listen to you and take you for face value and really take value in what you're saying. And so I think that once you understand how that feels from the patient perspective, that really gives you, um, then, you know, obviously turning, turning 180 degrees and saying, well, no, I'm the physician, but I know what it feels like to want to be heard. And I think that's probably the biggest strength in having had both experiences. So for all those pre med students out there listening medical students, when, when you're grown up and practicing as a physician, he, he, those words just talk to your patient, be straight with them. Yeah. And try to put yourself in their shoes because that's the biggest thing. And, and Allison said the same thing when, when we talked about it. So you were an accomplished student athlete in undergrad. You went to Stanford medical school. You did a fellowship at Harvard. All along the way, you had this racing career as well. Talk about your racing career and what you've done and where you've been with that. Sure, sure. So, um, it goes way back. I started my sport as an athlete was wheelchair racing and, um, I started, I initially got involved back in, uh, junior high actually and carried it through. And it was always something that was really valuable to me in such a, such an inherent part of who I was and part of my identity that I never considered stopping, even when I was an undergrad and then in med school. So I initially got involved because, um, I was just in the right place at the round time and very lucky and our high school track coach who's a fantastic person, um, who, you know, in small town, high schools, the track coach equals the football coach equals the science teacher. So he, um, learned that there was a wheelchair racing exhibition event at the Iowa high school state traffic and he saw it and he came back to the school and he tapped me on the shoulder in the hallway and he said, Hey, you'll never gonna guess what I just saw. I think you should try it. I said, you're crazy. No, because, because, um, to that time, I had dabbled a little bit in, in adapted sports. I had tried wheelchair basketball. I didn't like it at all. I tried that in college. I volunteered playing. That was hard. It's really hard. It's really hard. And the team, you know, looking back, the team that was in my community was not, it was mostly like older guys. And I can, of course, totally understand why me as a junior high age girl was not at all entertained by that or interested in it. So I tried that but didn't, it didn't last that long. And then by the time I got into junior high, I was really, I had to not define myself as an athlete at all. I was, you know, into music and debate and student council and all these other things. But I, I didn't even contemplate the fact that I would want to be a student athlete. And so when that coach came back and told me about the event, I, I kind of, I'm sure I don't really recall, but I probably kind of rolled my eyes and totally wrote him off. But, um, the good thing about again, being about the good thing about being from a small town is that everybody knows everybody. And everybody, you see people all the time. And so he, um, you know, I kept running into him in the hallway and in gym class and, um, all these different points of exposure. And every time I saw him, he kept bringing it up. And I was really getting irritated about it. And then he, of course, talked to my parents and then they wanted me to do it. And so I was sort of being, uh, everyone kind of ganged up on me in a really good way and, um, talked me into trying it out. So I did the following year. Um, they had the call for, you know, the first day of track practice. Anybody wants to go out for the team, show up at the gym at this time. And so I showed up and I was typical by then I was a freshman and I was a typical, like, really embarrassed freshman, like wanting to blend in with the wallpaper. Um, and I showed up in the gym. And of course, everyone's like, what are you doing? And really? And you had all these questions and got a uniform and started training with the team, which consisted of me pushing circles, you know, pushing laps on my own. Well, everyone else ran circles around me. And of course it, you know, by that time or to that point still was not very fun. Um, but I also, I also had this like terrible aversion to quitting. And I was like, well, at least I'm going to finish out this season. So I went to all the regional meets and I was, they had, you know, very, very, you know, huge props to the state of Iowa because they had these events at the high school state meet, but they also had at all the regional meets for whenever there was interest, they would have a 100 meter and 400 meter wheelchair racing event. So I, those were my two events because those are the only two that were offered. And no one else was competing. So I often raced just myself in the clock. Um, but I stuck with it. And then nearing the end of the season, I, um, just through sort of word of mouth and, and, um, exploring on the internet, I think the advent of the internet had occurred by then. Um, we discovered that there was these things called racing chairs. And so we found a way to rent one through this medical equipment company and this racing chair arrived. And it was totally a piece of junk and way too big for me. But I tried it out and got in that thing and we went to the state meet. And, um, when we went to the state meet, um, much to my surprise, we ran into some people from Des Moines who were also doing wheelchair racing. This was the girl state track meet. So they were other teenage girls. And I discovered that there was a junior wheelchair racing team in Des Moines. And, um, all these girls had like much nicer chairs and they seemed to know what they were doing, whereas I didn't. And, um, of course they said, Hey, you should come join us. So although it was a great distance to travel, it was about four hours, one way from the small time I was from Des Moines. Um, I was so intrigued by meeting these other girls that I wanted to check it out. And so I started going to this practice and my parents, of course, this was before I was driving. So my parents made this tremendous commitment to drive me there and back on, on, we probably went about every other Saturday. So eight hours round trip, if you had the practice in probably 10 hours round trip on Saturdays down to Des Moines for this practice. And, you know, once I started to go there and I made all these friends on the team and then I got a decent chair because the team had, had rentals or, you know, they essentially loaned new chairs, um, that you could use to race. Once I got really involved with that team, then I was pretty hooked. And, you know, mostly the initial hook was the social interaction because suddenly I was on this team with all these other teenage girls who were also wheelchair users. And I had never had a group of friends who were also wheelchair users. And so it was such an empowering thing to be amongst a community where, where I wasn't, I finally wasn't different. Like they, I was just the same as all these other people. And that was so welcomed and I needed that. And so, um, that kept me interested and kept me involved initially. And then with time and going to those practices and starting to do some local competitions with them, then I started to get decent at the sport. And then that continued to grow and, um, and it got, you know, more and more fun and I got more and more committed to it because of the social community and then also starting to realize that I was pretty good at it. So I continued that through high school. And then by the time I was, um, finishing high school and looking at colleges, there were only a couple universities in the country that had wheelchair racing teams. One of them was the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. And the other one was the University of Arizona. And being a high school kid from Iowa, Arizona sounded far more entertaining than Illinois. So I, I, uh, trucked down to Arizona and I started to train there with a team. And that was, that was a, another huge opportunity and really sort of the next step in my career because suddenly, then suddenly I had daily training with a coach and with teammates who were also pretty talented. And so as you can imagine, then I got a lot better, uh, fairly quickly just because of that huge boost of being in such a good training environment. And so once I started down, started competing down at the U of A, um, then my career really took off. And then I started to compete nationally and internationally. And I, uh, that was when I qualified for my first Paralympics in Sydney when I was an undergrad. Um, so of course then by the time then when you make your first U.S. team, then it's sort of like, then you're, then you're 100% in, right? So then, of course, it became just a huge part of, of my life through, you know, from when I was 18 to when I was, uh, kind of in my late twenties. And I competed in three Paralympics and Sydney, Athens and Beijing and 2000, 2004 and 2008. And, um, uh, brought home a total of seven medals, one gold, one silver and five bronze. And, um, also got very into road racing and made a big career out of specifically marathoning. So was fortunate to be able to travel the World Marathon circuit and, um, have success there. And, uh, one Boston a couple times and one New York a couple times in LA and all those big guys. So, um, it was, it was amazing. And, um, you know, was my ticket to see the world and meet amazing people and, um, you know, learn how to perform under pressure and speak at large public events and be an advocate. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of being an athlete is also inherently, you also become an advocate along the way because athletes, especially in smaller sports, um, you know, athletes outside of the big, big name sports, like the NFL and NBA, um, for example, are always fighting for their rights because you just want to compete as an athlete and all of these smaller sports are always struggling for resources and, um, recognition. And so, you learn to be a fighter in order to get the things you need to be successful as an athlete. Yeah. And in disability sport, that's, that brings it to another level because not only are you continually fighting for what you need to be successful, you're also the whole time really using that platform of being an athlete to, um, change people's perception of disability and, um, get people to realize that regardless of how you navigate the world, whether you have a prosthetic leg or you're a wheelchair user or you're visually impaired, uh, you know, you, sports is a tremendous, tremendous vehicle to mobility, but also empowerment and, um, teaching others around you what's possible. So, so I loved that and, um, that really, you know, that heavily influenced how I chose to shape my career in medicine as well. So, um, so I, I want to talk about that next, but I, I first want to say thank you for representing the US and all of these Olympic games. All the Olympic athletes are out there representing what the US is all about. And so thank you. You know, you're welcome. Um, so, so talk about how your past, uh, being in a wheelchair, being an athlete, what, what's next for you? What, what are your career aspirations? So yeah, great question. So, um, when I started med school, I, um, knew about the specialty of physical medicine and rehabilitation, uh, and much of my knowledge of it was because of my experiences and, um, and being a person with a disability and having, um, had, you know, physicians from that specialty be my doctors over the course of life. And so I, uh, started fairly undifferentiated, but knew that I really liked the field of PM&R. And along the way, didn't find anything else that I liked more that I was more passionate about. So I did decide to do a residency in physical medicine and rehab. And that brought me from Stanford to the East Coast. Um, and the, um, Harvard affiliated program. And then as a resident, um, you know, of course, as with many specialties, you can take it in many different directions and there are fellowships that give you subspecialty certification in various, various aspects of the field. And in, uh, physical medicine and rehab, it's, it's very interesting because there are, there's a broad array of opportunities and a lot of them are very different. So you can do a fellowship in something like spinal cord injury medicine or stroke rehabilitation or brain injury rehabilitation or on the flip side, um, although they're very interrelated at the end of the day, you can, you can also do, um, suppose, subspecialty training and things like non-operative sports medicine and thinking about rehabilitation of musculoskeletal injuries that might be holding people back from the full function that they want to have in their life. And so along the way, I was actually, I felt like I wasn't quite a conundrum because as a person with a spinal cord injury, there's always that inherent like, Oh, well, are you going to do that? Um, and some people would even assume, which was always really funny to me. They're like, Oh, we were a person with a spinal cord injury. Of course you're going to do spinal cord injury medicine, right? Because obviously I have a heart. I should go into cardiology, right? Exactly. Exactly. So, um, along the way, I found myself being in some ways, amused in some ways irritated by that. And so, I honestly, I ultimately thought it would be more empowering to do a fellowship in more of the musculoskeletal and sports medicine side of the field, but then to utilize that to work with Paralympic athletes and athletes with disabilities. And I say with disabilities broadly defined. So in my opinion, there's a whole lot of people out there, whether you're a wheelchair user or whether you have, um, knee arthritis or whether your balance isn't great because of, um, a background, um, neurologic impairment. There's a lot of people who move, I guess you could say the word imperfectly, move in a non-traditional way or find mobility in non-traditional ways. And all of those people need to be active and obtain physical activity in their lives, whether it's through organized sports or just going to the gym or whatever suits their fancy. And so I thought it would be really cool to, um, do a fellowship in sports medicine and then to think about how to apply those principles to, um, to the disability community. And so, um, so that's the vision of where I want to take things. And, um, you know, clinically, that's, that means seeing everyone, right? Like average shows people who want to be active but are being held back for whatever reason it might be and have decreased mobility. Um, and then from this standpoint of, of more of the academic side and, uh, research and teaching, um, I've tried to maintain as much involvement as possible with the International Paralympic Committee and with the Paralympic movement and, um, have tried to create a sort of niche in that world looking at, you know, Paralympic athlete injuries and epidemiology of that and, um, learning more about how we can, um, empower more people to be involved and then keep them healthy along the way as athletes. That's awesome. That's, that, you, you mentioned niche. I think that's an amazing niche that you have created or will create for yourself because obviously the needs out there. So that sounds awesome. Thanks. Thanks. I like it. So Sherry, as we wind up here after telling your amazing story, what advice would you give somebody just starting on their path, whether they're living with a disability or not? What, what kind of advice would you give somebody starting off thinking about going to medical school and, and struggling with those decisions and everything else going on? I, you know, I think I'd say, um, that at the end of the day, you know, medicine, medicine especially is, uh, it's a journey. And, um, you know, you start into the phases of pre-med coursework and undergrad and then medical school and then your residency and advanced training. And I think it's much more useful to think of it as a journey as opposed to some light at the end of the tunnel that you're pushing, pushing, pushing towards because, um, you'll have a lot more fun along the way if you think about it as, as a journey in that every step along the way should be fun and should be fulfilling. And in order to make it fun and fulfilling, I think, I think really, um, really talking to yourself and examining your background and what brought you to that decision in the first place and what you're passionate about is so important because, because at the end of the day, it's a lot of work. And that's, you know, that's the case for any young person with ambition, whether you decide to go into medicine or law or business, you know, um, there's going to be hard work involved. And that hard work is so much more fulfilling and so much more pleasant if it's something that you feel is changing the world and something that you're passionate about. And so, you know, that it can be so broadly defined, you know, I think, I think that's one of the beauties of medicine is that, um, it's very diverse and there's so many ways in which each student and each resident and each then ultimately physician can make an impact and bring their background to the table to make it better. And, you know, our healthcare system is imperfect and we do a lot of good for people, but we have a lot of ways we need to improve too. And so I think thinking about what makes you special and what your passions are, um, is just hugely important and it'll make it a lot more fun along the way. And then once you've, once you've determined that, then go, go for it 100% because, um, and with confidence because, you know, if no one can, no one can do it as well as you, if you're passionate about it. All right, folks, that was Sherry amazing story and a, a colleague of Allison's during residency. So that's how we met her. If you want to leave Sherry a comment, go ahead and go to the show notes medical school hq.net/66 as an episode number 66. We'll have links to Sherry's webpage there or her Wikipedia article that is all about her. A very inspirational YouTube video about her. She's just a phenomenal person as I hope you could tell in that interview. So go ahead and check out the show notes as I mentioned. And if you like this interview, if you liked any of the other podcasts that we've done, go ahead and leave us a reading and review at medical school hq.net/itunes and it'll only take a minute or so and you can leave us a review. And as I mentioned earlier, we did have a couple users leave us five star reviews this past week. We had one from jtj07c who says relevant information and great hosts and one from so rugged top of the line advice and peace of mind. So thank you to those two users who left us reviews again medical school hq.net/itunes or you can leave us a review on Stitcher if you listen through Stitcher. Folks, as always, I hope you've learned a ton of information that you can use and give you inspiration on your path to becoming a physician. And as always, I hope you join us next time here at the medical school headquarters. [BLANK_AUDIO]
