Pushkin.

A mantra that I've always lived by was that I overcome odds, right like I overcome things that come my way, and I figure it out and I land on my two feet.

Felicia Shoe's biggest dream was to become a doctor, and after years of dedication, she achieved that dream, but it took a heavy toll on her.

I almost saw myself as this piece of glass and it got a crack, and you get up and you try to put a little band aid on it.

You know that doesn't work, and then another crack, and another and another, and then you kind of just wonder, at what point is it just gonna shatter?

On today's show, how do you know when to let go of a dream?

I'm Maya Shunker, a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is a Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change.

Felicia is actually a longtime fan of A Slight Change of Plans.

Her husband, Chen, reached out to us earlier this year to share her story.

She'd never spoken publicly about her experience before, but felt that this show was the right place to finally open up.

I really hope that her story will help anyone who's grappling with the prospect of leaving something behind, something that they thought would define their future.

From the time Felicia was a little kid, she knew she wanted to be a doctor.

It felt like a calling.

My introduction to medicine in some ways was through Eastern medicine.

Actually, my mom's best friend is an acupuncturist.

I used to go and she would babysit me, and I would say in the office, I would watch people come in with like frozen shoulder and then like you do acupuncture and you just put all these needles into someone.

It looks kind of freaky, and then like she takes it out and suddenly they can move their shoulder.

For me, like as a kid, I was like, what the heck, what is that?

Like I can't see what the needles are doing, but like somehow it fixed something.

I think that was the first time that medicine kind of looked more like magic for me, and I was like, I want to be a doctor.

I want to connect with people.

I want to help people in like a time of need.

Where do you think your drive to help people come from?

My mom had really severe depression, and I think that was really tough on me as a kid.

I think as a kid you kind of soak up, you know, all the emotions around you.

Took up way more than you think, and I think I so badly wanted to make things better for her.

I just didn't know how.

What was your parents response when you first told them you wanted to be a doctor.

You kind of think like Asian parents, like, oh, They're like, oh, you have to be a doctor or nothing else, right.

Yes, of course it's a stereotype.

It's the stereotype.

But my mom the first thing was like are you sure, And I was like, well, what do you mean?

She really prioritized happiness and so for her, she was like, will you be happy being a doctor, because doctors that I know, like have no time for family, no time for vacation, no time for happiness and joy.

So they actually tried to really distract me from medicine, like they tried everything to say like.

What about this, what about research?

What about engineering?

But then I guess I was the one who was like, hell bent, I'm pursuing it.

You end up going down this path of pre medical training, So tell me about that.

What kind of resources and time did you invest in this process?

Yeah, it's always interesting when someone asked me, like, how many years have you put into being a doctor, And I just I never know what to say, because is it med school?

Is it med school plus undergrad?

Is it medical plus undergrad plus high school?

It's the sort of classic like you gotta get your GPA, you gotta do all the activities, you got to explore, you got to do research.

So you were just heads down studying nights, weekends.

Yeah, it was pretty brutal.

Okay, so a lot of sacrifice, A lot.

Of sacrifice because it's like ten twelve years of training and after MIT I ended up just hopping across the river going to Harvard Medical.

School, no big deal, you know, as we all do.

And then just kind of leaned into medicine.

I really fell in love with the thinking behind medicine, feeling like, oh, you know, I'm putting things together in my brain.

I can help this person and to be able to be there for them in that moment.

The combination was pretty much what cent shift for me.

So let's transition to your residency.

This was the summer of twenty twenty you did your residency at UCLA.

It's the height of the pandemic.

What was your mindset going into residency?

Oh man, I'll back up a little bit, because March twenty twenty, how I was feeling was like on top of the world.

At first, you know, I was like, I'm about to graduate med school, Like I'm about to finally become a doctor.

At this point, I had met my now husband, and I was like, I have met the love of my life.

We're going to get.

Married, We're already engaged.

Things are going on track.

If it's not obvious, I'm a planner, So things were going according to pay check the boxes, check the boxes, correct my timeline that I had laid out.

We were on track, and COVID happened and the whole world shut down, and we decided to live with my parents to make sure, like if quarantine were to separate us, at least we're stuck together.

And it was in those few months from March to May that that's when everything changed, because I started noticing that something was really not right with my dad.

And he is this like I don't know how to describe it.

It's like he's your like stoic Asian dad.

Everything is fine, everything is cheery, no pain, everything's good.

And there was one morning where I walked downstairs and I heard this like really guttural sound coming from his room.

And I walked in and my dad was basically sitting up in bed, keeled over, just come completely drenched and sweat and groaning.

And I was like, oh my god, what's wrong?

And he said the pain was really bad and it was going to his back.

And I'm like a new grat, like what do I know?

But I was like, something is really really wrong.

And so I ended up sending the imaging to a friend back at Harvard and she sent it to her cousin who's an abdominal radiologist, and she told me that my dad had this huge tumor in his pancreas that was basically pancretic cancer.

And so I remember like walking outside in the dark because I didn't want anyone to see me.

I have a thing where like I can't cry in front of my family, and honestly, I was just devastated.

And it was this thing where like I was trying to process it, but at the same time like get myself together to be able to go in and tell my parents what the finding was.

So that was my mindset right before residency.

My dad is sick, possibly dying.

I was starting residency, which is supposed to be one of the most grueling times of your life.

And it was a residency during COVID in which we had no idea what the hell was going on.

So let's talk about let's talk about residency amidst this perfect storm that's happening in your life.

What was it like day to day?

Have you ever watched The Pit?

Yeah?

No, I'm obsessed with the Pit.

Oh okay, Yeah, it's incredibly accurate.

I can't watch it.

It's like too heavy.

Anyway, it was a pretty brutal schedule.

I would say on average, you easily worked eighty tw one hundred hours per week, and your shifts could be up to twenty eight hours long.

Oh my god.

You go in at seven am Tuesday morning and then you go home at Wednesday twelve one pm.

And it's kind of this like non stop things happening all one after another.

Yeah.

And then there was this added element to all of this burden, which is that it was early months of COVID where doctors and other healthcare practitioners don't necessarily know everything they need to know about how to respond or help their patients or what all the risk factors are.

So how did that compound the stress?

Oh man, this was a time when there weren't enough masks and the gowns that could protect you.

That at least people thought they could protect you from COVID.

We didn't even know if they were truly protective.

We would have these like brown paper bags that we would just hang up on the wall and after you used your mask, you would dump it into the bag and then you would reuse it, which that's actually it just doesn't work, But that's the best we had.

Yeah.

I would fear, of course, for like myself getting it, but it wasn't just myself, because I would go home, I would be worried about my husband getting it.

I wanted to be there for my parents because during this whole time, I was still advocating for my dad, like I was still trying to push his care forward.

And were you still living with your parents so were they at risk?

No, so I was living in la at that time.

But I would want to be delivering food to them.

But like I also didn't want to expose them.

So it was this constant internal battle with myself of like I needed to help my parents, but by helping them, I should actually stay away, but also like I should be trying to spend time with them just in case my dad doesn't have time left.

So it was just like all of this conflicting thoughts.

That was also when there was a lot of the anti Asian sentiment going around, and I was really worried, and at the time, I was like, don't go out for groceries, like just stay.

Home, order in.

It was just like a total nightmare.

You kind of felt like you were failing on all fronts because I'd be at work and I'd be like, oh, I should be a better partner and daughter, but then like I'd be there, but then I'm trying to be a doctor and then trying to keep the grief of COVID.

Honestly, like the worst of COVID surges in LA were really bad, and I would come home and I just like I'd remember getting to the door and being like, okay, like deep breath, going to leave this grief outside because there's already so much inside the house.

But I think if you ask my husband I'm sure it leaked in.

Yeah.

Yeah, it sounds like you were very much just in survival mode, right, like, get through every day unscathed and just pope you survive the next day too.

When did you first sort of recognize the toll that this environment was taking on you, both physically and mentally.

There was no one defining moment or disaster for me that forced me to be like, oh my gosh, this won't do.

I almost saw myself as this piece of glass and it got a crack, and you get up and you try to put a little band aid on it, and then another crack, and another and another, and then you kind of just wonder, at what point is it just gonna shatter?

But I think the first time where I was kind of forced into reality was actually in November of twenty twenty, so I was about six months into residency.

My dad had just gotten most of his chemo done, and on the bright side, my dad actually responded really well to the chemo.

The surgeon said, you know what, I think it's shrunk enough that I think we can try to take it.

Out, but let's do it quickly.

Let's do it.

End of November and two days before my dad was supposed to get surgery at UCLA.

I had one of the most intense abdominal pains that I've ever experienced in my life.

And when I showed up in the emergency room, the things that went through my mind it's like super sad to even think about.

The first was wait, wait, wait, like I can't afford to be here because my dad has his surgery in two days and I have to be there for him and my family.

What the heck is this?

Like get me out kind of thing.

The second was dang it, like this is the middle of the night, I have to work the next day.

What am I gonna do?

And maybe I.

Did register it on some level that something has to give, But the thought in my mind was like, well, it's not like I can stop being my dad's daughter.

I can't stop being a resident, Like what am I supposed to do?

Like, so there was no choice but to kind of keep going.

And it was like everyone suffers in residency, Like we all do this, so just keep going, Like what's wrong with you?

You encoded this as a sign of personal weakness.

Yeah, I thought of like why can't I be better?

What's wrong with me?

It was kind of like I was blaming myself, and then I felt guilty actually because also I was like, oh my god, I'm worrying my family.

They should just be focused on the surgery, and now I'm putting them through this extra worry.

Yeah, what struck me and what you said.

And I think many people can relate to this level of self sacrifice, as you said, Well, I can't stop being my dad's daughter, and I can't stop being a resident.

I guess I'll just have to stop caring about myself.

Yeah, I mean that's essentially what you did.

Oh, I can just stop investing in this body and this human that I am right now.

And I imagine many people have to confront that at times where they're a caregiver or they have an incredibly demanding job and it's just their own needs come life.

If at all, it sounds like you didn't even put yourself on the list.

Yeah, you took yourself off the list entirely.

Yeah, I think I did.

But it's crazy because in the moment, like I would like to say that I'm a somewhat reflective person, like I think a lot about how I'm thinking, and yet just totally miss this in the moment, like it just wasn't even a thing.

I think, when you are so maximally stressed and you have zero mental bandwidth, who would have the ability to introspect.

I mean, you're barely sleeping, you barely have time to eat, you're working ungodly shift lengths.

I'm not surprised at all that that would be sort of the instinctual response what was the nature of your pain and what did that mean for your work?

So I found out that my pain was actually intestinal spasms, which can happen in stress or like a body's response to stress.

And at the time I didn't really realize where that was really coming from.

I just thought, oh, I'm stressed with my dad's surgery and residency, like duh.

But the doctor came in and said like, oh, I think you just need to rest more, and then laughed because she knew I was a resident.

And I was like, I don't know if that's making me feel better or worse, because it's kind of like she said it as like this is all you need.

You don't have cancer, you don't have some disease.

You know you're gonna be fine.

You just have to rest.

But like knowing that it was, you know, impossible.

Yeah, I was going to ask you whether that particular diagnosis actually further perpetuated your self narrative of weakness.

And by the way, I think stress is as physical as any other thing in the body, but psychologically we can code that differently, we can carry a different emotional valance for us.

And so I'm curious to know whether you thought, yeah, Felicia, this is on you tough enough.

Yeah, deal with your stress better a thousand persons, that's the culture here.

Yeah, everyone is stressed.

Come on, you know, like everyone gets through it.

Just deal with it.

I felt so pathetic.

My worst fear actually was that I needed surgery.

So that part of me was like, Okay, good, I don't need surgery.

But in some ways it made me think like, oh, it's not that big of a deal either, because if it's just stress, I can just keep going.

When we return, Felicia tries to muscle her way through residency.

We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans, and it's all the stress Felicia was facing in her residency.

There was one piece of good news in her personal life, her dad's surgery to remove the tumor and his pancreas had gone well.

He was recovering, but Felicia's health it was only getting worse.

You know.

I referenced the cracks before in the glass.

More and more and more cracks were coming up, like more than I could keep track of.

It was this sort of rapidly increasing deterioration of my body.

At one point, I was coming off of a twenty eight hour shift that had turned into twenty nine, and I noticed this really annoying rash on my neck starting to go into my ear.

And it's one of those things where as a resident, you're like, Eh, it's fine, you just kind of move on.

But then I realized, like, oh my god, is this shingles?

And I don't know if you know shingles, but it's very much associated with sixty five year old or older aminocompromised, neither of which I was.

That was probably the first time that I really looked at like wow, Like I came to the point where I'm effectively imminocompromised.

What is wrong with my body?

And this is where it gets a little heavy.

But when I was a kid, I had a really traumatic experience with sexual abuse that forced me to grow up at the age of seven, and at the time, I kept it a secret because I thought that's what I had to do until I was eighteen.

And I think the manifestations of hiding that trauma in my body is what kind of it makes my body respond to stress differently and was making my body not cope with all of this additional stress, like the intestinal spasms.

And this was the first time where I was like, oh, there are reasons that I'm breaking down in a way that maybe other people aren't.

Most people after a twenty eight hour would go home and sleep, they would get rest.

For me, like I have an intense stomach ache after really traumatizing COVID, I see you shift and I'd go home and I like, I wouldn't be able to sleep.

And honestly, it reached this point where two things happened.

The first was I will never forget this moment in the car.

It was such a heartbreaking moment for me and my husband when he looked at me and I was on the way to the er and he said, I can't keep taking you to the er, like I just I can't handle this emotionally, like it's taking a lot on me, Like I'm not trying to make it about myself, but it's just a lot.

And I think it took seeing someone else suffer on my behalf for me to be like, oh my god, wait, like this isn't just about me, Like I'm not just doing this to myself at this point.

The second thing was that I realized, like I wasn't rerecizing myself.

I'm aware when I'm not acting like myself, and it makes me more annoyed that I'm not being myself.

I want to know how you were not being yourself.

So I was at our twenty nine of a call.

At this point, I had slept on literally two chairs that I had put together, ketchup stained two chairs in a call room.

That was my brief fifteen minutes of sleep overnight, and all I could think about I was like, thank God, I made it to the end.

I want to go home.

And right before I was going to sign out, which is when you transfer over care to another resident coming in, they announced code like a code blue on the intercom, which basically means patient either as pulseless, not breathing.

One of those and to remind.

You, like the kid Felicia right, who just yeah, it felt like I had so much to give.

Fast forwarding to myself, it was like the first thought that went through my mind, I'm so ashamed of this, was like, why couldn't he have coded twenty minutes from now?

And I was like, oh my god, I cannot believe that.

That is what I thought in that moment.

And this was a patient I deeply cared for, reminded me of my own dad, And that's what came out of me.

I wasn't recognizing myself and when I got home, did not sleep.

Walk me through your thought process at that point?

How were you thinking about whether to stay or whether to leave?

For me?

Like I needed a pro con list, Like I wrote this whole thing out with my husband and essentially kind of boiled it down like staying was for other people.

Right?

I had spent so much of my life dedicated to this.

Why would I give up one and a half years from finishing Quitting wasn't in my vocabulary?

Was I disappointing my friends?

My family?

Like?

What would everyone say?

As much as.

I'd love to say that I don't care what people think, I really care what people think.

Of course, we are annoying.

I know, it's very annoying.

I got like a PhD in people pleasing girl, don't worry, Okay.

I also have that PhD.

God, it's so annoying.

My co residence.

The response that I got from initially even saying I'm considering it was like, oh my god, I can't do it.

I felt like a horrible human being.

I even thought like I should help my parents more by staying in the system, seeing how I saved my dad's life, Like by being in the system, why would I leave it?

There was an element for me where I was like, we are in the midst of another COVID search, how could I possibly think about leaving now?

In terms of leaving, my body was breaking down.

I realized with a bit more clarity that it had to do with my trauma and my ability to recover.

And at the end of the day, like I realized that I was kind of in a system that just like really.

Didn't let me be human.

Yeah.

I think these sorts of stressors they can pound, and they can prick your heart's memory, and they can resurface old wounds that you felt you had effectively buried or had resolved, And then you enter a deeply stressful environment like this one, and you just have fewer cognitive resources to keep some of that anxiety and whatever the trauma responses are at arm's length.

Yeah, And as you're saying that, I'm realizing it was like this spiral of shame around it because I had done the work and I had overcome a lot of this, I had unpacked all of this, and I was like, why is this even coming up again?

Because I've already like, I've done the work.

This is such an important part of your story.

I just.

We try to do the work.

We try to be really good students when it comes to our mental health and processing our past and getting the quote work done.

And then a big change comes our way and we're thrust into a new reality that challenges us and makes us feel like we are backtracking, or that we didn't develop sufficient defenses, or that we never actually overcame our demons, and it can feel so defeating in that moment to have to carry that in addition to all the active stressors that you're experiencing in your life.

We can have trauma in our past, and when a change resurfaces that it doesn't just fill us with the anxiety and depression, but exactly what you said, which is a feeling of shame, like you didn't do a good enough job, and that's just not accurate.

No, thank you.

You're going to make me cry now.

It's just a mantra that I've always lived by was that I overcome odds, right like I overcome things that come my way and I figure it out and I land on my two feet.

And so this felt like I was completely betraying who I was.

I kept telling myself if I quit, and I actually hate the word quitting because it implies you're taking the easy way out.

And that was actually something my husband said when we were talking on this pro con of whether to leave or not.

He was like, I noticed that you're using the word quit, almost like you're giving up, and then you're giving up to the trauma.

You're giving up to this.

Your body wasn't good enough, You're not good enough.

You're letting everyone down.

Yes, you're blaming yourself, and.

It's actually the braver thing to think about leaving a system that has such a tight hold on you.

And I think that shifted my mindset entirely where I was like, wait a minute, actually leaving maybe the trying thing, the brave thing to do.

And I think it up until that point, any decision that I was making, people always showered you with this phrase that like I always hated.

But it was like, there's no wrong choice, you know.

Like, did you choose your class, There's no wrong choice.

Choose mescal, There's no wrong choice.

And in this moment, even contemplating the decision of leaving, why it was so hard was it felt like I had no good choice right, Like it felt like I felt backed into a corner and either one was just bad.

When I had on my list like all the reasons to stay, one thing I realized was all the reasons were for others, and the reasons for leaving were for me.

So you told your supervisor?

How did they respond and how did your colleagues respond?

Not very well?

There was such an intense social pressure to stay.

I mean, it was ridiculous.

I was actually shunned by co residents who heard that I might be considering leaving, and it made me feel like, oh my god, am I being a horrible human being for quitting and leaving them with this extra workload.

Because medicine, unlike any other field.

If you leave, they don't just hire someone to replace you.

There was a very noticeable gap in the residency that other people have to make up for.

I lost friends.

It was really tough.

The day that I had to go turn in my badge.

I couldn't do it.

I had to ask my friend from my residency class to do it for me.

Like the thought of walking into that hospital, possibly seeing some of these co residents who were clearly just really mad at me, I just I couldn't do it.

The first few weeks after leaving, I was just like, Oh my god, what have I done?

I felt so guilty.

I almost went back.

There was another surge for COVID, and I was like, how could I just be sitting here on the sidelines helpless.

I have to go back.

And it took my friends, my family, my husband reminding me, no, no, no, you made the brave choice.

This is the right choice for you to prevent me from going back.

My way of coping is like I need to explain it.

I need to justify it.

I need to rationalize it, I need to intellectualize it.

I need to literally think of it in every single way I can.

And so that's how I process it.

I was so bitter.

I was like, why did my dad have to get sick?

Why did there have to be COVID?

Why did I have to have trauma such that my body like can't cope.

The whole time, I was like why is it that I have these limitations?

Rather than thinking like, oh, these limitations are just a part of who I am as a result of my experiences.

I think society tells us that we must fight every demon, we must overcome every weakness, we must do whatever it takes to achieve every dream.

And like another model is to say, actually, no, it's okay to engage in radical acceptance, like maybe there's nothing to keep fighting there, you know.

And I do think that that's not the narrative that's celebrated.

Even these days.

Like I need my husband to sometimes remind me of that this is who you are, Like stop fighting it, you know, like just love yourself for who you are.

Why is that so hard?

And it's like, but like why can't I just change that one thing and like make it work?

Because yeah, I wish I could have been in a different state that I could have pushed through like everyone else.

It's been four years since you quit.

I'm going to use the word quit because I want us to reclaim quit as a positive word.

Okay, you can do that.

It's been four years since you quit being a doctor, and these days your work involves researching and investing in healthcare startups.

I'm so curious to hear how you feel your identity has shifted over time.

I mean, there was this moment, maybe a year or so after I've left, I was on a hike with my husband, and in those three hours, I came up with a new fiction book idea, like a short story idea.

We came up with like two different startup ideas that we were kind of just like hashing out and they didn't work out, but like we did the exercise of like, oh.

And then what if this and what if that?

And I got in the car and I was like, oh my god, I don't think we could have done that a year ago, because I was so underwater that this creative side of me was completely silenced and just recognizing like I wasn't whole before, and now I actually more whole in some ways because this other side of me that I love can actually come out now.

I've had so many moments with my family.

We started a family.

I had a beautiful baby girl, and right now I am hanging on to the fact that she can't quite walk on her own, but wants to walk everywhere, and so she is holding my hand and like this feeling those like little fingers wrap around your hands and like walk you around.

It's one of the best feelings.

You know.

There's so many things that I can do now that I couldn't before and that I definitely wouldn't have imagined this.

Hey, thanks so much for listening.

If you've had a Slight Change of Plans in your own life, we'd love to hear your story.

You can reach us by email at slight Change at pushkin dot fm.

And if you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow a Slight Change of Plans wherever you listen to podcasts next time.

My friend and the former Surgeon General, the Vig Morphy, returns to this for a conversation about connection, community and love.

Why are so many of the people that I meet all across America and increasing across the world, why are they so unhappy?

So many people would say, I guess this is just the way life is.

Everyone's feeling this way and I refuse to believe that because I don't think that we are consigned to live a life of emptiness where we're just unhappy because life is hard and as a result unhappy.

Life can be hard, and life often is hard, but that doesn't mean that it has to be unfulfilling.

That's next time on A Slight Change of Plans.

See you then.

A Slight Change of Plans is created, written and executive produced by me Maya Schunker.

The Slight Changed family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Luvin, and our sound engineer Erica Huang.

Louis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.

A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.

You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker.

See you next week.