Nov. 26, 2024

Resilience in Action

Show Notes
Transcript

What happens when a leader becomes a patient? Join Divya Parekh and Dr. Andrew G. Kadar as they share his journey through a severe heart disease diagnosis and recovery. Discover how adversity reshaped his resilience, leadership, and compassion. Tune in for powerful insights on leading with heart and strength in life’s toughest moments.

Beyond Confidence is broadcast live Tuesdays at 10AM ET on W4WN Radio - Women 4 Women Network (www.w4wn.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Beyond Confidence TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).

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This is Beyond Confidence with your host w Park. Do

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you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you

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want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional,

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and financial goals? Well? Coming up on dvparks Beyond Confidence,

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you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers

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who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and

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are living the life they want. You will learn how

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This is beyond confidence and now here's your host, div PORNK.

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Good morning listeners. It's of course a wonderful time for me,

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not only because we're stepping into holidays, but i'd get

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to be with you and I love it when I

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get to spend.

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Time with you.

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So I've got wonderful kind of story from Spain. Actually,

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one of our listeners, Gabriella, shared that they recently had

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floods and so I think so she lost quite a

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bit in that, and what she shed was that some

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of the neighbors, like you know, two or three streets

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over kind of like came and they helped out people

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in their streets. So what a beautiful story as to

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how people can come together. And especially I'm very thankful

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for each and every one of you spending time with

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us and listening to our show. And for those of

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you who have not got our books, please get our books,

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whether it is the entrepreneur's got in or expert to influencer,

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because they will impact your life, they will support you,

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and also it's a win win all the way around.

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Not only we get to help you, but together we

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get to help entrepreneurs across the world through key dot Org.

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Let's bring in our guest, doctor Kidar.

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Hello, how are you doing. I'm doing very well and

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happy to be here.

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Well, fantastic. So, you know, we get started from the

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childhood or an earlier part of your life. Do you

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recall a moment or a person who left a positive

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mark on you?

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Gosh, lots and lots of people along the way. I'd

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say my parents were the initial influencers. And I'm not

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sure that this is something that you're aware of, but

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I was a child refugee actually, and it's not part

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of the story that I'm writing about right now, but

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we spent the year in refugee camps and throughout it

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all we're always hopeful and positive and it all turned

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out very well for my family.

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Oh that is phenomenal. So tell us a little bit

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about your journey into how did you stay hopeful, like

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you know, especially with parents being in those camps, and

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like you know, you hear about things and unless you

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experience yourself, it's just hard to fathom.

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Yeah, Basically, when we left I was born in Hungary

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and my family left after the fifty Revolution, and throughout

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it all it was kind of an adventure to me.

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I think part of it was that I wasn't really

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aware of the dangers involved, and my parents always told

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me that that life would be better once we got

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to America, and as it turned out, it was.

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Well, it is so wonderful to hear and so hopeful

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that you know, you went through all of this and

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the life turned out to be well. So what was

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it that drew you to becoming a doctor?

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My undergraduate major was actually physics, but I wasn't totally

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loving yet, so I was looking around for something that

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was that involved science but dealt more directly with people.

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And as I looked around, the medicine seemed to be

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a good solution for that, and it turned out very

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well for me. I've enjoyed being a physician and taking

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care of people and interacting with my colleagues and my patients.

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Mm hmm. And so it is notoriously known that, especially

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when students are in training to become full doctor, especially

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in the residency, those years, you know, they're pushed to

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the limit, working so many hours. So how did you

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get through those years?

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I'd say the toughest year of my life was probably

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when I was a surgical intern. That was very difficult

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because in those days we would be in the hospital

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over one hundred hours per week and it was very exhausting.

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Once I unfortunately, fortunately my residency training was much more

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more bedign than that, and I enjoyed interacting with my

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colleagues and my patients. Mm hmm, So that made up

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for the more exhaustion than the ideal.

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Right, So there are so many options to choose from, right,

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Like you could have become a doctor and so many

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different disciplines. How did you select your discipline?

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Well, I'm an as physiologist and it's uh it's kind

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of the most intense manipulation of human physiology than anybody does.

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And uh, it's it's a it's a good interaction of

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the science of medicine and the humanity in medicine. When

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people come to you for surgery, they tend to be

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very anxious or often are, and you have the ability

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to to uh calm them down and make them more

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comfortable in the way you interact. But you also have

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the ability to do so pharmacologically and their physical skills involved,

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as well as the knowledge that that that you combine

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those things together, and so I think it's a it's

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a very exciting specialty to be in because there are

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so many skills involved and so much, so many different

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things that you get to do.

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And there's a lot of high pressure as well, right,

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like a little bit of dose here or there can

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cause a lot of issues with human body. And so

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as you were kind of going through the training, how

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did you deal with that stress?

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You know? I think the the the idea is to

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learn as much as as as is known and therefore

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be confident that you're doing the best that you can. Now,

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there are situations where patients have an incurable or a

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fatal condition, but all you can do, is human being,

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is do the very best it's possible to do with

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the present level of knowledge, and and I think the

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idea is to get get to that level, to have

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the knowledge and confidence in your knowledge that you're doing

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the very best that can be done, and and that

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is I think the best that that that you can do,

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and that is reassuring. There are of course frustrations when

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things don't go go well, but but you have to

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be confident that you've done everything that can be done.

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And if you're at that at that level, then I

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think it's not so difficult, it's it's more reassuring. And

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and let me just say that that the vast majority

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of times things do go well mm hm.

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And so what I'm hearing is that mental resilience is

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so important to build because not only it grows your capacity,

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it also brings you joy, because that's one of the

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beautiful things of being a human that we keep on

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passing level after level that there is no limit, as

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they say, even sky's on the limit. So, after you

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were done with your getting your empty so how did

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you decide, like you know, whether to go to in

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a hospital or did you take the path of doing

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your solo practice.

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I wanted I was interested in academics and as well

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as taking care of patients, and so I ended up

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in a hospital that I think has a good balance

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of the two. Work at Cedar Sinai, which is an

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academic institution, it's a private practice setting as well, So

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it kind of in some ways has the best of

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both worlds in that you do have the academic discipline

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and the conferences and at least some opportunity to do research,

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but it's also primarily a clinical clinical practice place, and

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you know, getting back to what you were talking about before.

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One of the things that I described in my book

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is my father had a cardiac arrest and I was

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there when that occurred. And obviously that one of the

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most intense things that can happen is a resuscitation. But

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we have essentially a number of steps that we take

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that are known to be currently the best way to

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resuscitate somebody. And essentially, if you know the steps to

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go through and you go through those steps, then either

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there's a good response or not a good response. But

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you have to you have to be able to know

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those steps and then go through them. And that's to

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some extent, it's what we do in the rest of

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Vanasesia as well.

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I see. So tell me when did you experience the

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life threatening disease. I mean, like, you know, you had

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the cadiological problem, like after how many years into your

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service and like working as a professional doctor.

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Oh gosh, it was must have been about twenty five

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thirty years and yeah, run around thirty years or so.

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And essentially I'd been in great health my entire life.

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I was a college athlete. I was on the UCLA

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gymnastic teams, as an undergrad, and I continue to work out.

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I was. I ran lots of ten k's And it

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was during a workout. Actually, I was in the gym

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working on the elliptical, and about nine minutes into a

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pretty intense workout, I started feeling some burning under my

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breastbone and you know, under the surnum. And now I

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was well aware of that. One of the things that

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happens that we face in medicine is denial. Patients don't

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want to have a life threatening illness, and so often

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they'll go into denial when they first first have symptoms.

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So somebody might have feel a lump, but oh the

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slump is not so big, it's not so hard, so

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it's all just just ignore. It'll go away. And of

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course it happens in cardiac disease as well, and I

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was very well aware of denial. And I was also

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very well aware of the most common presentation of cornary

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artery disease, which is pain in the center of the

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chest that comes on with exercise and goes away fairly

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promptly with rest. And that's exactly what I had. And

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so what did I do. I did exactly what lots

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of other people do, which is go into denial. I

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knew I didn't have heart disease. I was in great shape,

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I'd never had a major illness. I didn't have the

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usual risk factors, did not have high blood pressure, was

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not overweighthed never smoked, didn't didn't have the usual risk factors.

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And I was sixty two, which is relatively young to

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be having that kind of a problem in somebody who

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doesn't have the risk factors. So I figured out, you know,

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I don't feel well, I'll just stop working out today.

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And then three days later I was again back in

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the gym, and again about nine and listen to a

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workout on the elliptical. The same thing happened. So I thought, Okay,

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I don't have I know I don't have heart disease,

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but what would I tell anybody else who came to

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me with these symptoms? And then the answer became obvious.

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So I think the first lesson to me in this

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illness was to separate the situation from yourself, because it's

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much easier to be objective when the patient is not you.

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And that's why doctors just kind of told, you know,

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if a doctor, if a doctor treats himself he's he's

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got a fool for a doctor and a fool for

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a patient, because because you really need to be more

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objective than you can be about yourself. And so at

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that point I said, well, it became obvious that I

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would have talk to a doctor and have an electric

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cardigram and have a stress tests, and so then I

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called my doctor. And they're sort of the second lesson

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that I think they tell about in my book is

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when I called my doctor's office, they gave me an appointment.

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I think it was going to be like in three weeks,

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but I knew that this was a little more urgent

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than that. So then you have to talk to the

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person who can make a triage decision, because people in

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your doctor's office are their job is to fit you

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into the slot, and a routine visit is not the

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same as a visit that that's more urgent. And once

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you talk to your doctor and tell them what symptoms

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you have, then you can be put in for the

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in front in the line. And so a couple of

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days later I had a stress test, and that by

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that time, about two and a half minutes into this test,

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I started having symptoms. And then I looked over and

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then saw that there were abnormalities all over my electric cardiogram.

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And then the following day I had an engine gram,

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which hopeful, I was hoping would just just show a

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single vessel that could be dilated and I'd be back

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back to work the following day, But that didn't turn

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out to be the case, and I ended up having

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to have open heart surgery for a three vessel disease. Now,

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one of the vessels that had about an eighty percent

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declusion was the largest cornery artery, and that's that lesion

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is often referred to as the widow maker because it

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caused a sudden death so often. So I was fairly

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fortunate that the diagnosis came in a timely manner and

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I was able to have proper invention, and I've basically

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been in good health for the last fourteen years since then.

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Yeah. I know, it's said there are so many lessons

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to be learned from this, and so many times what

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happens is I have clients who are from different walks

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of life, from healthcare industry, tech industry, and they may

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be experiencing some health issue and they say like, oh, yeah,

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you know, I have this important project that I'm working on,

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I've got this offside, I've got this decisions, you know,

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I've got the strategy planning for the next quarter, and

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all of these things that pop up right that seem

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to be taking the precedence over anything else. So, based

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on your experience, what would you tell them that I'm

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not saying that panic at every single thing that shows up,

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because they don't want that either, But what other steps

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That doesn't matter whether you're professional or whether in any industry,

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an entrepreneur, or anywhere, what would be the first steps

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when you start seeing the symptoms.

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Well, I think obviously we all work walk a fine

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balancing line between being a hypochondriact and ignoring obvious symptoms.

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So I think that the way to get over both

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00:18:22.720 --> 00:18:27.000
of those is take it away from yourself, because you know,

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in my case, I knew I didn't have heart disease,

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But if somebody else had these same symptoms, I'd certainly

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tell them to get worked up for heart disease. And

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I think that the way for anybody else as well

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is to take it away from themselves. To to ask

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the question, what would I tell my best friend if

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they came to be and told me, hey, I'm having

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00:18:49.039 --> 00:18:52.240
these symptoms, what do you think? And then I think

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then you get a more objective opinion. And I suppose

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you could talk to your spouse or your loved ones

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about it as well and ask them what they would

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do under those circumstances. And actually, one of the things

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is the people who do have have a significant other

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tend to get better medical care because they can talk

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to somebody intimately and be given that sort of advice.

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Mm hmm. So you've mentioned it earlier as well, separating

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yourself from the situation looking at it objectively, and so

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many times if you're just doing the regular maintenance, just

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like a car, so for example, having your physical checkup

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and just having the whole blood panel, so if something

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is wrong and it would show up, and what are

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your thoughts on that. Okay, if there's a symptom, just

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go and get it checked out.

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00:19:49.839 --> 00:19:54.200
Yeah, I think it. Obviously, it depends on what the

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symptoms are, because every headache is not a brain too much.

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But if the same time, if you're having persistent headaches

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that that aren't going away, then then you can't ignore that.

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And and likewise with with chest pain in particular, which

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which is most likely to result in sudden death. It's

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it's not something that you want to ignore for for

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any period of time because, uh, timely intervention is is

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is life saving.

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Mm hmmm. So what I'm hearing is that one of

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us and like things that go away, it's okay, you know,

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kind of give it some time. But if you are

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seeing persistent chronic symptoms, do pay attention to it.

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Absolutely and and and it also depends on on the

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kind of symptom it is. But I think in heart disease,

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if you have pain in the center of the chest

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that that goes that comes on with exercise and goes

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away with rest, then that's that's a pretty clear sign

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that something should be investigated. And of course in some

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situations it's not in the center of the chest. It

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can be in the in the left shoulder, in the jaw.

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But basically pain that comes on in that in that

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basic area up the upper part of the body and

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00:21:18.519 --> 00:21:21.200
comes on with exercise and goes away with rest, that's

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00:21:21.359 --> 00:21:25.640
really a clear sign that you're having You're like, you

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00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:29.400
should check out whether that's due to a cardiac cause

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or not.

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Mm hm. So that is those are very important points

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for anyone to kind of keep in mind. So, going

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00:21:39.400 --> 00:21:42.680
back to your story, you mentioned that you had open

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heart surgery and the recovery can be tough. I'm not

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a doctor, but from a few of my clients that

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00:21:50.920 --> 00:21:54.640
I've heard, so if you could share with us your

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00:21:54.759 --> 00:22:00.279
journey during recovery, right, because here you were treating you,

329
00:22:00.279 --> 00:22:02.359
you know, working with patients, and now you're in a

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completely unfamiliar world.

331
00:22:04.680 --> 00:22:06.960
Yeah, I think one of the lessons to me, and

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00:22:07.119 --> 00:22:11.799
that was to expect the unexpected. Now, once I had

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00:22:11.839 --> 00:22:15.839
my diagnosis, I felt that my goal was to have

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00:22:15.920 --> 00:22:21.720
the fastest, most smooth recovery ever from Cornel Arty surgery.

335
00:22:22.200 --> 00:22:26.640
And some of that goes back to my background when

336
00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:31.160
I was while I was in college and working out

337
00:22:31.680 --> 00:22:35.799
in gymnastics, I thought the doctor's routinely exaggerated the amount

338
00:22:35.839 --> 00:22:39.599
of time it would take to get well because my

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00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:42.799
teammates that would come back and you'd be told, though,

340
00:22:42.799 --> 00:22:46.480
you need to be rest for two months, and the

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00:22:46.559 --> 00:22:49.160
month they'd be back in the gym doing their routines.

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00:22:50.119 --> 00:22:54.039
And I didn't realize that I had an atypical sample

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there because young college athletes tend to be in more motivated,

344
00:23:01.440 --> 00:23:04.440
in better shape. So once I got into medicine, I

345
00:23:04.519 --> 00:23:08.000
realized that they were doctors are usually giving essentially the

346
00:23:08.079 --> 00:23:12.599
average amount of time that it takes to recover. But

347
00:23:13.200 --> 00:23:15.880
I had definitely had the attitude that I was going

348
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to do everything possible to get well as quickly as possible.

349
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But I had a number of complications along the way.

350
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So the lesson to me was to expect the unexpected.

351
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And there were different things that that came along. For example,

352
00:23:34.559 --> 00:23:37.799
one of the things is I had an attack of

353
00:23:39.200 --> 00:23:43.480
horrible hiccups. Now, I'm aware that hiccups can be complication

354
00:23:43.599 --> 00:23:48.680
after coordinary ority surgery, and hiccups are usually a minor nuisance,

355
00:23:49.160 --> 00:23:52.519
but I learned in medical school that hiccups can go

356
00:23:52.599 --> 00:23:57.039
on for months and years and have sometimes even been fatal. Now,

357
00:23:57.200 --> 00:24:01.599
when I first heard about it, you know, hiccups sounded

358
00:24:01.640 --> 00:24:05.400
to me like the attack of killer tomatoes. But but

359
00:24:05.759 --> 00:24:14.000
once when I had my heart surgery, initially I had

360
00:24:14.359 --> 00:24:17.400
a few hiccups. Now you now, I was told, and

361
00:24:17.559 --> 00:24:22.519
usually it's due to the irritation from chest tubes. After surgery,

362
00:24:22.559 --> 00:24:25.640
there's some drain tubes that are left in and those

363
00:24:25.720 --> 00:24:31.480
come out sequentially one by one as the UH as

364
00:24:31.480 --> 00:24:35.319
you start to recover. And so when I had four trains,

365
00:24:35.359 --> 00:24:38.880
and when the first two came out, I started having

366
00:24:38.960 --> 00:24:42.079
a few more hiccups, and I was told, well, when

367
00:24:42.119 --> 00:24:45.400
the others come out that that'll go away. And when

368
00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:49.559
the last one came out, it was like it was

369
00:24:49.680 --> 00:24:53.400
like the finger in the dyke, because they started having

370
00:24:53.480 --> 00:24:56.240
hiccups on top of hiccups on top of hiccups. It

371
00:24:56.319 --> 00:25:00.240
was like a soccato barrage of hiccups and it just

372
00:25:00.279 --> 00:25:05.359
went on and on and on, and it was just

373
00:25:05.599 --> 00:25:11.319
like a horrible about And it basically took my doctors

374
00:25:12.480 --> 00:25:16.160
about over a day to get to a proper medication

375
00:25:16.279 --> 00:25:18.519
for that, because there are lots of different ways you

376
00:25:18.519 --> 00:25:21.599
can get rid of hiccups, and one of it is

377
00:25:22.319 --> 00:25:26.039
to reach high and swallow or do anything that irritates

378
00:25:26.079 --> 00:25:28.799
the back of your throat. But I had another problem

379
00:25:28.799 --> 00:25:32.599
at that time and I was having trouble swallowing. So

380
00:25:35.079 --> 00:25:39.920
they started with some mild medication and finally got about

381
00:25:39.920 --> 00:25:42.519
a day and a half, I had GI consult and

382
00:25:42.920 --> 00:25:45.599
they gave me a very strong medication that put me

383
00:25:45.640 --> 00:25:48.240
to sleep as well as stop the hiccups, and then

384
00:25:48.279 --> 00:25:51.640
they had to back down on the dosage so it

385
00:25:51.720 --> 00:25:55.599
was a somewhat unexpected complication for me. And the other

386
00:25:55.640 --> 00:25:58.799
one that I just alluded to was I had trouble

387
00:25:58.880 --> 00:26:03.200
swallowing after after the surgery. And I wasn't aware of

388
00:26:03.640 --> 00:26:06.599
this as a complication that perhaps I should have been,

389
00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:11.599
but it's not a very common complication after cornery Arty surgery.

390
00:26:12.240 --> 00:26:15.519
And it was it was very difficult for me to eat.

391
00:26:15.559 --> 00:26:18.200
Every time I tried to eat, it was it was

392
00:26:19.400 --> 00:26:23.480
a stressful, a bout of just trying to gagging and

393
00:26:23.519 --> 00:26:30.319
coughing and sputtering, and and it was. It was very frustrating.

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And finally I had an e in t console who

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00:26:33.039 --> 00:26:36.559
told me that this this can sometimes happen, but it

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