Episode 11
S1:EP12 Dr. Lally Pia - The Fortune Teller's Prophecy
Dive into a compelling conversation on the Mindful Mutiny Podcast with guest
Dr. Lally Pia, an esteemed Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Author. In
this episode, Dr. Pia candidly shares her life journey, offering a transparent
look into her experiences and the path that led her to become a renowned
psychiatrist in Sacramento, California.
📘
The Fortune Teller's Prophecy: A Memoir of an Unlikely Doctor will be published
on April 30, 2024, by She Writes Press. Dr. Pia is also working on
"Andorea," a novel of psychological suspense, exploring the ethical
dilemmas faced by a jail psychiatrist.
Having lived in diverse
locations like Sri Lanka, Ghana, Wales, England, Pennsylvania, and California,
Dr. Pia's journey is a tapestry of rich experiences. From teaching at a Junior
High school in Davis to mastering embalming, her diverse background adds depth
to her insights.
🎓
Dr. Pia attended medical school at U.C. Davis, completed residency in San Mateo
and Davis, and currently practices as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in
Sacramento. Her written works have been featured in anthologies for the
California Literary Review and the Sacramento branch of the California Writers'
Club in 2022.
🌟
Don't miss the insightful interview about a day in the life of a psychiatrist,
drawing over 65,000 online views from pre-med students aspiring to enter the
medical field.
🔗
Explore more about Dr. Lally Pia:
- Website:
- www.lallypia.com
🔗
Connect with Jeremy Van Wert for more empowering content:
- Website:
- www.jeremyvanwert.com
Subscribe for captivating
discussions with inspiring guests like Dr. Lally Pia. #MindfulMutiny
#PodcastInterview #DrLallyPia #PsychiatristLife #AuthorLife #SubscribeNow
#EmpoweringConversations
Transcript
WEBVTT
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::In
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::Jeremy Van Wert: when
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::Jeremy Van Wert: I am about ready here. So
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::Jeremy Van Wert: here we go.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Alright.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: All right, William. I'm going to do it just as normal here with the regular count in I'll hold up.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: I'll hold up the file if I if I need a an edit
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::Jeremy Van Wert: with the with the Bio. Okay. Alright.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you ready? Doctor? Pm, I think. So. Okay.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: 5, 4, 3.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Welcome to the mindful mutiny. Podcast. I am your host, Jeremy Van Wert therapist, CEO, and high level coach at mindful Mutiny. We thoughtfully rebel against anything that keeps you from obtaining your highest potential
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::in this episode. What are you going to learn. You're going to learn what it takes to rise from poverty to prominence. You're going to listen to the story of an incredible person who has exercised such incredible humility and patience through her life to become a psychiatrist.
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::And you're going to learn how to stay grounded on your path to the top.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Please help us make more of this content content. Please make sure that you're going and subscribing and liking and leaving reviews. That sort of thing really really helps. Today we have somebody that I've known for a really long time. We have Dr. Lollipia.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Doctor Lolly Pia is an accomplished author and child and adolescent psychiatrist. Her memoir, the fortune teller's prophecy is available now on audible.com. Please go. It's a great story with a fascinating background spanning from Sri Lanka, to Ghana, to Wales, England, Pennsylvania, and California. She's been a teacher and even an embalmer.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Before pursuing medical school at UC. Davis, residing in sacramento California. She practices psychiatry and has garnered recognition for her literary contributions, including being a final finalist for America's great
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::Jeremy Van Wert: alright, that's the second scrub on that one.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: All right. I'm gonna take the the bio again.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Dr. Lolly Pia is an accomplished author and child and adolescent psychiatrist. Her memoir. The Fortune Teller's prophecy is available now on audible.com. Please go and get that
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::with a fascinating background spanning from Sri, Lanka, Ghana, Wales, England, Pennsylvania, and California. She's been a teacher and even an embalmer, which she's going to get into before pursuing medical school at UC. Davis, residing in Sacramento, California. She practices psychiatry and has garnered recognition for her literary contributions, including being a
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::finalist in America's next great author. In 2022,
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Dr. Pia's insightful interview on the life of a psychiatrist has garnered over 65,000 views, resonating with aspiring medical professionals and people who are getting into being psychiatrists and therapists and professionals. Doctor Pia thank you so much for being on the mindful mutiny. Podcast.
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::Doctor Pia: Nice to meet you again. Yes, absolutely. Dr. Pia, you and I. We work together at the River Oaks Center for children. A number of years ago I got to know you. We had mutual clients, and I just loved your wonderful patient center approach, and the way that you just truly
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you. You care about people. You spend time with them, you make time for them, and there was always time on your schedule for seeing people that really really needed it. And so you've just. You've approached your career from a place of heart and a place of caring for people. Can you talk a little bit about your practice now, and what it is that you do?
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::Doctor Pia: So? One. Thank you for that introduction. I appreciate it, Jeremy? I love what I do. I work as a child, an adolescent psychiatrist. So basically, my youngest kids are as young as 4. My oldest ones are like 20 something you know, and II see them for what's called medical management.
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::Doctor Pia: but I always spend, like first 5 or 10 about a medical management and the rest of the time on everything else, because, as you and I know, there's a whole lot more to it. So I work. II love working at River Oak. That's where we met Jeremy and what I like is that I have the team with me, so maybe I can only see a patient once a week.
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::Doctor Pia: once in or once a month, and in that time I can talk like wh. What to the therapist. What happened when he was speaking to the skittle? Did something else happen? So I like that ability that I have the whole team backing me. So if someone on the team. Let's say therapist says, Oh, you know we are using patient pcit. I'll say, oh, so you're working with the parent on this. And so
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::Doctor Pia: together we work with a more cohesive approach to the the the patient. I only work 3 days a week, but I do like to spend a lot of time with each patient. And and I love what I do. So
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::Doctor Pia: that's pretty much it. One of the things that I work with people on is truly embracing their values. And you have a couple of values that you use
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::Jeremy Van Wert: in in how it is that you work with people, you, you you're so compassionate, and you're so kind with people. And II loved how
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you didn't do any thinking about exactly what to prescribe until you really knew somebody's full story and full. What? What are the stressors? What are the things that the child is going through? What's the parental dynamics and everything like that. Can you talk a little bit about the values that you use as a person in just practicing as a doctor?
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::Doctor Pia: Okay,
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::Doctor Pia: In terms of my values. I think the most important thing is to alleviate suffering, and I remember when I first had patience, I was thinking, oh, you know the parents are the enemy. It's all about the kiddo. But I realize that your per, your patience, are you the parents and everyone else? So when I meet people, and I'm saying, Hey, but let's let's do this evaluation. I usually do a 2Â h evaluation, which in involves the parents and the patients, and
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::Doctor Pia: II tell the parents, you know, who are always nervous like. Oh, gosh! This doctor's gonna medicate! My, my, my poor little kiddo! I say, you know I do not like to medicate kids unless everything else fails or everything else has failed. So sometimes I can do this to a evaluation and say, I don't support medicine for you. Okay, though. So I usually debunk that myth. That this person's going to, you know, put my kids on pills.
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::Doctor Pia: But what I do is I spend the time because I've already got information about that where the patient is coming from, the the th, the notes from the hospitals, then the notes from the parents. And sometimes I have to do this over 2 sessions. And I always tell parents. You know, this is an ongoing learning. I'm just. It's just the tip of the iceberg that you're bringing today. I believe it takes months, maybe years, sometimes to truly understand the dynamics.
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::Doctor Pia: So I believe in you know, taking care to really get a good history. And then the other thing that you learn in in school is you've got to learn to walk the tightrope
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::Doctor Pia: of caring a lot, but not caring too much, in which case you'll be sobbing every time and not caring too little, you know, Jeremy, so it's really important to to manage that title for yourself, as you hear all these stories, and I always, in my initial evaluation, try and talk to the child alone, because often things come up that they have not told a single person, and that to me is the heart of getting to know someone.
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::Doctor Pia: I see people as jigsaw puzzles, and it takes a lot of time to get all the pieces together.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Well, your whole life has been this gigantic jigsaw puzzle or tapestry that that you have written about in this wonderful soulful book that is available now on audible.com, and it's called the fortune teller's prophecy. And I guess let's kind of go back. Where did you grow up? What was your life like? Where did you start out in life.
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::Doctor Pia: Okay? So home story. So I hope you got that. I started out. I was born in Sri Lanka, which is a little island off the coast of India and when I was 6 months old my dad took me to my dad's Hindu, my mom's Christian. Well, my dad snuck me out to a fortune teller who who told my dad? You know what this girl she's going to be a doctor of doctors.
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::Doctor Pia: So we were, you know, in in Sri Lanka, being a doctor is a big deal, so I was told from the time I could barely speak. You gotta be a doctor one day. You gotta be a doctor. And I grew up.
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::Doctor Pia: We can. We can talk about how I got into med school later. But anyway, I grew up in in Ghana, and my parents grew up in Ghana, so they were there. From the time I was 6 months to 20 I was in Ghana and Kumasi, a little town about the size of Davis, California. Actually, it's a bit bigger than that. But anyway, so I was there and went to school there and grew up with my dad being an architect. My mom was a teacher.
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::Doctor Pia: And those people zoom those are very highly reviewed, being a being a teacher is very highly reviewed.
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::Doctor Pia: Anyway, all my friends growing up were from different countries. They were like me, sort of in Ghana, but able to go back every year to their countries could be England. New Zealand could be wherever. And so that's how I grew up getting to know the rest of the world, but sort of being in a weird place as in. I didn't really belong in the Ghana. In sense.
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::Doctor Pia: I didn't really belong in the Sri Lankan sense because I left it. But I was there with all these other kids who really would go back to home home. And so you never really knew where home was.
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::Doctor Pia: And then I got into medical school. In in the guardian system. It's like the British system where you don't get a first degree, but you just get you have to get into Med school when you're like 1718. And so it was great. My dad was like, see the pro fortune tell us prophecy is coming true. So we were all excited. Ii had actually preferred writing and those sorts of things. But
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::Doctor Pia: anyway. So then, what happened was the the the economic situation in the country was getting worse and worse by the time my parents decided we've got to leave. There was no sugar, no toothpaste, no, everything was not available. Yeah.
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::Doctor Pia: it went so it was very hard. So you had to, which is a good thing you had to know your community. If you knew your neighbor had bought a whole bunch of flour by waiting somewhere, you say, Hey, I've got rice, you got flour. So it it led to a kind of a bartering system, but it also led me to truly appreciate the value of community starting from there.
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::Doctor Pia: So it was all set up. You know, we were going to go to America, my dad, his sister, lives in Davis, California, or lived.
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::Doctor Pia: and so the plan was, the whole family would go there and guess what halfway through Med school I could get a degree. It was called a masters of human biology.
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::Doctor Pia: A bachelors. Sorry, a bachelors of human biology. So I thought, I'll go ahead and go to America with the family. And then, 1819. Sorry by the time III decided to leave it was I was about 2120 21. That's right. So so my dad got a green card for the whole family.
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::Doctor Pia: and I was going to finish my final exams for the third year that I'd have a bachelors, and we knew in America. If you have a first degree, you can then apply to Med school. So that was the grand plan the family leaves. They go away in January of when I was 2021
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::Doctor Pia: a 20. I'm trying to think about when it was
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::Doctor Pia: not very good with numbers right now, anyway. So I decide I'm gonna stay. And then just be a few weeks before my final exams.
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::Doctor Pia: The there was political unrest. There were a whole bunch of you know coups stay, you know. Stay back in the house. You couldn't you couldn't all the universities closed down.
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::Doctor Pia: so I'm thinking, Hello! I just wanted to stay behind for this one test.
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::Doctor Pia: and I waited, and I was staying with friends from Germany. I was waiting and waiting, and the months were going by, but the universities hadn't reopened, and I believe it was one of the first times in the country's history that so much political unrest was happening that they didn't open the universities. So this this realization was like, every day we were scouring the papers, did they open? Did they open?
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::Doctor Pia: And so I decided.
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::Doctor Pia: I'm done. I'm done waiting. I'm going to go to America and get back into school and do what it takes to try and apply to Med school when I get there. That was the plan. So I packaged. I said good bye to Ghana and good bye to Kamasi, and went to the capital Accra, which was where the green card was.
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::Doctor Pia: went to pick up the green card, and I went to to the American Embassy. This is kind of where my book starts actually around that time.
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::Doctor Pia: And they're like, we have a problem here. And I said a problem.
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::Doctor Pia: And they said, Yes, we've realized that we have made up a mess with your green card.
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::Doctor Pia: Your dad applied for you when you were under 21, but you are now past 21, so we're going. It won't work.
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::Doctor Pia: And I said, but it's you bungled it, you know. So and so basically they're like, Well, you can't, you can't. We can't, we can't do it. And I said, Well, ho! How long is it gonna take to fix this? I've got my stuff packed in the suitcase? And they said.
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::Doctor Pia: Oh, it could take a year, 2 years, and I said, I have no money. I have no family, I have no place to stay my in in Sri Lanka at the time there was, I mean, we'd gone back and forth, but there was fighting. There was a civil war.
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::Doctor Pia: I was essentially a refugee, with no country to call home and and and no way to stay, and no income and no job. And so they bottom line. Told my dad? I mean, told me, well, do you have friends in other countries?
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::Doctor Pia: And I said, Yeah, they said, Well, do you know someone in other. And so I said, England, I know some people, and a long story short, I ended up being stuck in England for a year and a half
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::Doctor Pia: a year and a bit of waiting for my green card, and in England I'm not allowed to work. I was just on extended visitor visas.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: So by then.
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::Doctor Pia: So that's that's pretty much the story of leaving Ghana when I left, and then a whole lot more happened after that profoundly frustrating.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: And and and so you're you're in. You're in England. What do you do? Do you stay with friends?
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::Doctor Pia: Yes, so I stayed with in Wales with friends that I had known before from Scotland. So I stayed with them. They were wonderful. They opened up their home to me, they they had them got an in the go up Peninsula, which is just extraordinarily beautiful.
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::Doctor Pia: So I was living in this lama land of beautiful surroundings, but missing my family like crazy. So every time little letters came from America. I was like, I really wanna be doing something with my life. So so I ended up being just volunteering to be an organ player in the church, with like a few, like 10 octogenarians as my audience. So it's fun.
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::Doctor Pia: And and it's just unspeakably beautiful. They have been many times back there. But I couldn't do anything. II couldn't play. I couldn't play the piano. I couldn't. I just played the organ.
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::Doctor Pia: and I just walked in the morning when my friends were busy at work.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: So I mean the the the thing that kind of like rings to me now is that if this was occurring and you were stuck in a different nation, and you needed to
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::Jeremy Van Wert: gets started with a degree, there's always the online
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::Jeremy Van Wert: option that is available. But you're talking about a time when that was not what was done. And and so you're kind of stuck waiting. What was it like for you, just waiting like? Is this
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::Jeremy Van Wert: new life that I want going to happen? Is was was there a fear that you were going to end up back in Ghana. What was what was the fear for you in this?
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::Doctor Pia: The fear was that I was
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::Doctor Pia: wasting my life doing nothing. I like to be productive. I like to be doing things.
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::Doctor Pia: and so just taking like miles long walks every day, just felt like what's happening to my brain. And any thoughts of becoming a doctor were like gone, because I knew even when I came to America, it would mean I'd have to go back, take prerequisites get into. Get a degree. Start up, you know, with foreign qualifications. Who's gonna look at you
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::Doctor Pia: so gradually I was beginning to think that this is this is just a pla time for Plan B. And I didn't know what it was.
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::Doctor Pia: and I felt like such a burden. My my friends never made me feel that. But they were paying for my house. My parents didn't have enough money to support me. Being there, I paid nothing
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::Doctor Pia: for a year and a bit. They took me under their wing.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: What amazing people they they are amazing.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah. Yeah. And so what what happens? Do you finally get the green card that you need to go to the United States. And and what happens there?
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, so the complication is my ex husband. So my ex husband is someone I met in Ghana and met again in in A in who came to visit my friends.
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::Doctor Pia: So we hooked up, and so when I came finally to America. It, you know this, my ex-husband, John.
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::Doctor Pia: was, was thinking he wanted to be with me, and I was thinking, darn it. I just made it to America, you know. So and so it it ended up being a very complicated chapter of my life.
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::Doctor Pia: because he eventually married me. He came to America shortly after I had been here.
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::Doctor Pia: and we went to England, and then I was married to him for some time after that
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::Doctor Pia: it so I changed my life in that way. But I came here thinking, Oh, okay, I'm going to go back and get into classes, and I got into UC. Davis. So II arrived in July
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::Doctor Pia: of that year. I think it was 83 84. Yeah. In July of 84 I arrived, and then I was. I got into Uc. Davis and was doing classes for a bachelors in physiology.
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::Doctor Pia: and then.
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::Doctor Pia: 6 months later, John comes and marries me and takes me back to England. So it was like this much.
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::Doctor Pia: Oh, my gosh! And so my parents were like, well, you just got here and now you have to. I don't know.
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::Doctor Pia: anyway. So my life took a turn then. Was this a was this a a youthful decision?
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, people make mistakes. That was a big, big, bad mistake. It was like 19 years older than me, my parents age.
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::Doctor Pia: It was a mistake.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah. And and and so you're you're married. You move back to with it, Wales or
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::Doctor Pia: Canterbury. Okay, okay. And what what goes on there?
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::Doctor Pia: I have nothing to do. I'm back at square one. So I am the typical housewife. He's a he's a professor of accounting over there, and II cook.
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::Doctor Pia: and I play piano 6Â HA day
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::Doctor Pia: and I'm basically, he said. Lally, we're gonna go back to America. So he had me apply for him to come to America on a green card.
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::Doctor Pia: We were waiting for him to come to America, which happened in a year and a half.
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::Doctor Pia: So wait. We're we're talking about several years of
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::Jeremy Van Wert: it has to be frustrating to you just in this time, when it just feels like a half a step forward and then 3 steps back on a lot of stuff
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and you fall in love. You marry a man. It doesn't turn out to be the the life that you really feel in your heart is right for you. And
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::Doctor Pia: so then are you still married to him when you come back to the United States? Yes, okay? And then we have nowhere to stay. So for the next 5 years, we're living with my parents because he's not able to find a job. And he's yeah. So we
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::Doctor Pia: it just becomes a different life. And it's it's all chronicled in my book. It's been, you know, narrating the book. It was painful. I had to say, Stop. let's not talk about this for a little bit. But but that's what happened. And when we when we came back. I actually went back to Uc. Davis, and I finished my bachelors in human biology
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::Doctor Pia: and then I went to Pennsylvania with my ex-husband to do a masters in physiology in Pennsylvania.
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::Doctor Pia: So I at least got my, I wasn't thinking Med school. I was thinking, darn it, let me just get a job and go and find find work.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: so I've I've got some questions for you about this period of time in your life, because your
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you have these dreams. You have this prophecy
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::Jeremy Van Wert: that is kind of hanging in the culture of your family and everything like that. And you are dealing with feeling setbacks.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: William, let's hang tight here for a second. Do you want to fix those blinds?
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::Doctor Pia: It's blind. Yeah. I just wanted to. You looked uncomfortable.
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::Doctor Pia: And this is why I never have the blinds on in the day. Is that okay?
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah, is it okay for you?
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::Yeah.
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::Doctor Pia: You know, what can I just take a second? I'll be right back. Yes.
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::Doctor Pia: I think it's affecting me more than I would want to tell you. Well, let me let me. Just take your let me just take your temperature in this.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: I don't want you to feel like you're giving your story away right now. I was going to go into your kind of emotions and your your your your path.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Do Where? Where is it that you want to go from here.
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::Doctor Pia: cause I generally have people tell their life story, which is what's in your book.
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::Doctor Pia: Okay? Yeah. So I just think I'd like to go to, probably talking about
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::Doctor Pia: I'm trying to figure out how we'd go into it. A slight way to
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::Doctor Pia: Is that better? I'd light yeah. Am I? Okay? Looking? Okay? Yeah, you're looking fine. Okay, talking. Because II don't really want to talk too much about John. But
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::Doctor Pia: he's involved. The next thing I was gonna say, is that
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::Doctor Pia: bottom line, Jeremy? I'm so I came back with John from from wherever from being in England. And then is this on the record?
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::Doctor Pia: Oh, yeah, I mean, but I'm just trying to think how you don't want to. So tell me where you'd like to go. I'm just telling you off the record that I'm II basically. The. My. My memoir begins when I'm actually age 32 and stuck in a, you know, embalming bodies. And that's because I've left John.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: So are you cool talking about? You know, I was, gonna ask you about
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::Jeremy Van Wert: all these setbacks the way that it made you feel, and you
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::Doctor Pia: feeling drawn to do something bigger with your life.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: And going, what are the decisions that you had to make in this to get into going to do something bigger. That's where I was going to go
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::Doctor Pia: decisions in this. Yeah, it was basically the the so so bottom line. It was the decision to leave John, and realizing this was toxic.
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::Doctor Pia: That's what helped me make that decision. That's what led the way.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Okay. So
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::Jeremy Van Wert: William, we're gonna we're gonna count back in here. So 5, 4,
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::Jeremy Van Wert: 3.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: So you're dealing with years worth of kind of setbacks and not being exactly where it is that you wanted to see your future going, and
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::Jeremy Van Wert: how I mean, what was it like inside you when you were just kind of watching time go by like month after month. Going. What? What's what am I? 10 years from now, based upon who I am now?
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::Doctor Pia: You're talking. What? When I was in England?
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::Doctor Pia: When when you had moved back to the United States? Yeah.
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::Doctor Pia: When I had moved back to the United States,
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::Doctor Pia: I was starting to question who I was, you know, John, my my my husband. Then was making all the decisions. He was like 20 years older than me. And so he would say.
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, we're going to do this, and then I'm going to go up to Pennsylvania, and I was just sort of along for the ride, and I was starting to think, I wish I could be more. You know I'm not gonna be a doctor now, but I was wishing that I could be more. Do something. Not just be a housewife and tag along
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::Doctor Pia: and so
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::Doctor Pia: but people told me, yeah, I'd say, yeah, the sports Intel told me when I was a kid I was going to be a doctor. I'm laughing, you know. Look at me, III. It's such a long road. There's no way I'm going to go into that.
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::Doctor Pia: But there was a part of me that felt I could do more, and not just be a backdrop.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah, yeah. And it, it sounds like it always lived in you. And then something something inside you made you start
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::Jeremy Van Wert: deciding. I need to make some big decisions. For myself. I need to
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::Jeremy Van Wert: start going in the direction of what my values actually are. And and so you know what? What was awakening in you during this period of time, where you were
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::Jeremy Van Wert: starting to recognize that you needed to embrace your own value.
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::Doctor Pia: So it started with basically the the breakup of my marriage in a way. I had now moved to Pennsylvania, and I had 2 small children. One of them was 2 years old. One of them was a few months old.
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::Doctor Pia: and II said, you know John had gone to do some kind of interview in England.
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::Doctor Pia: And so I said, I'll go and stay in California. Until you come back. I'll have someone to help with the baby, my mom, my mom and dad. So I came to California
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::Doctor Pia: and I got the call. There's a chapter in my memo called The Call
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::Doctor Pia: of the
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::Doctor Pia: this was a call from. So I'm sitting in the, you know, in the, in, in the room, and then the the children are playing around, and I get this call from John from England.
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::Doctor Pia: and he says
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::Doctor Pia: they offered me a job and I accepted it. And I said, What? And I hung up. You know, it was really
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::Doctor Pia: yeah. That was a moment when I realized
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::Doctor Pia: we are not communicating. This relationship is not right, but I can't believe he just expects me to pick up a phone and say, cool, what are we going
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::Doctor Pia: to? My children had got used to the California lifestyle and the support. Even though we were living in Pennsylvania.
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::Doctor Pia: I was giving them the childhood I had with family and everybody, and he was talking about leaving to England and taking the children, and it th. The enormity of that struck me so. The reason I think this is very important is, had that call not happened, I might have stayed in that toxic relationship longer. There's more about it, obviously in the book. But it's a moment when I had to make a decision that evening.
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::Doctor Pia: and I still remember how it's. It's all in the book about how I discarded the back yard, and I'm thinking about everything, and I have not just me to think about. But my kids, and it's it's such a humongous decision to think.
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::Doctor Pia: You know, I don't want to be a person who gets a divorce or anything like that because in my cultural values from Sri Lanka and family values I was the eldest, and I was the one who was going to tell everyone. This is how you do it. I put on such a good face. Apart from my very close friends, everyone thought the marriage was doing just fine.
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::Doctor Pia: so it was a huge decision I made that night after the call to go a different way, even though it was going to be harder. I thought, I can't put my children through this. It had just not become very, very friendly in the in the house.
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::Doctor Pia: I decided I had to make a change.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: So I'm I'm thinking that what we're talking about is the late 1980, s.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: In in you having
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::Jeremy Van Wert: it's 95, 94. Okay, parents and a family that have very strong cultural values about what family actually is, and you and and what a woman is.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: And so there you are! looking at being a
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::Jeremy Van Wert: single mother in the 1990 SA first generation immigrant to the United States. You have 2 children.
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::Doctor Pia: And are you working at this point? Oh, no.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: okay, all right. So you got to. You have to start from Square Square one, right? Got some education.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: And now you're as alone as you've kind of ever been with, you know, with the exception obviously, of your family and children. But you are
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you? You've got the world ahead of you, and you're starting from square 1, 1 one. And so you've you've got. You've got some decisions to make, and nothing is going to be easy.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Did you have this sense that you felt free. and that you could now move forward unencumbered, or were you scared.
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::Doctor Pia: scared? I was scared. II didn't even have a home right. We didn't have a house because we'd been living with my parents.
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::Doctor Pia: I had no house, and I was II actually now had 2 degrees. I had a bachelors on a masters in physiology, so I figured, well, I could find a job. But what about the kids? What about money? Is he going to support us because I refuse to go.
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::Doctor Pia: It was scary.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah, I imagine. So.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: II mean, it's a lot of responsibility. And I would imagine that your family would be as helpful as they could be, you know, but but at the same time you not only have to kind of figure out income. But you also. You had to know at this point that you're brilliant, that your mind works in an amazing way.
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::Doctor Pia: You don't know this? No, no, no. So when did you discover this?
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::Doctor Pia: I've never discovered that I've never discovered this. No, II just I just realized I had better get my act together and take my first steps, because John, in a way, had been like a parent. He's 19 years older. I was trying to take my first steps, and I knew I could count on my family for help with everything. I just had to find my way.
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::Doctor Pia: And that's when I decided, you know. And then money stopped coming in, you know, and had to try and work out how I'm gonna get a divorce and had to figure out applying to so many different things to get jobs. I even started. I was really upset. I applied for a a job selling seeds in woodland which is near us.
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::Doctor Pia: and they turned me down, thinking, darn it, I got a bachelors degree at a masters, but I think they thought I was over qualified. So back to your thought of brilliant. So I thought, I'm not very brilliant or smart if I can't get a job selling seats.
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::Doctor Pia: But I just started applying to everything I could think about, and I had to get on medical and welfare because he was not sending money. He sent little bits here and there.
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::Doctor Pia: but it was really hard to manage. So I got medical and food stamps and women, infant child care, and all of that.
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::Doctor Pia: And what struck me was how warm and caring those people were. I was at a very, very sensitive part of my life. And so imagine standing there with your food stamps, thinking. You know I've got food stamps. I'm just embarrassed, and it was awkward, but at the same point. At the same time the the people who I went to work with the county workers, the they were just the warmest, most compassionate people.
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::Doctor Pia: And that made such a difference. You know, people think, Yeah, there's all these losers on welfare, and I was one of those losers on welfare, and yet they never made me feel that way. So I felt such gratitude. II felt like I just come to this country, and here I am already
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::Doctor Pia: taking all this in and taking all this money and support. I even got support with my children who are in day care, and that's lots of money. So I just I kept saying to them, you know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you because had they not helped me, I couldn't have got a job. I couldn't have done anything.
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::Doctor Pia: It was. It was a hard time, and yet it was an incredibly gratifying time. Because of these workers.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: III love your thankfulness. In this II love the, the, the humility in that, and also for those that are listening here we're talking about Yolo County, right? Is that where we're talking about Yolo County is
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::Jeremy Van Wert: rural is a lot of farmland out there. You're more likely to have a John Deer dealership than a Bugatti ve dealership out there. It's a a place that that's a bit of kind of a it's a it's got a lot of greasy Spoon town greasy spoon diners, you know, and and it's a place that you wouldn't necessarily look at and go. There's a lot of opportunities here for somebody who wants to.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you know, get a a higher level education and all these sorts of things, but still in your mind, you have this as a as as an aspiration for yourself, or kinda what? What do you? What are you thinking?
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::Doctor Pia: I'm thinking I've got to get money, and I've got to get off this I've got to get off this this welfare. So I actually looked at a job. Feeding rats and Uc. Davis. And it was great. The lab is using my background, and it was research on rats. And then I found out how much
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::Doctor Pia: I was squeamish about. I hate animals being harmed in any way like that. So it made me realize I cannot do research long term, because I felt for every rat
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::Doctor Pia: and you know, one day it's in my memoir. But I was looking at this rat food and thinking, oh, I could just fall into this rat food, and you know, be be be Rachel, and this was not me. And so I then within a few months. Got a job as
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::Doctor Pia: a donated body program and the director of the Donated Body Program.
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::Doctor Pia: And that was another sort of place in my life where it paid $300 more a month, so I was like yay, but the downside was every morning you'd have to go and look at one of 2 coolers and see who died last night.
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::Doctor Pia: So actually, that's where my memoir starts, because I'm thinking this is not doctor of anything, but I am going to work with dead bodies and so I was embalming bodies. I was sectioning human bodies. So I had a huge freezer full of human body parts, so I alone would be taking off heads and knees and shipping them out to to different places. But the money was much better than my previous job.
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::Doctor Pia: So that was another point where I was really thinking I'm in a dead end job. But at least I was making an income, and gradually I was making so much more. I was saying, Hey, you know, to the people who are giving me welfare. I was on welfare. But I was saying, Hey, I'm gradually getting more money, and I can get off welfare. So to me even that was a huge accomplishment to feel like I am paying into this now.
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::Doctor Pia: yeah. So I did that for 3 bodies just emotionally hard on you. It was so hard, but within, I think less than a month I was having nightmares. I dreamt that my my dog, my sister, was being embalmed. I was just like, Hey, can you stop this? And I said, It's it's irreversible. Sorry. And I even dreamt I was involving my dog.
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::Doctor Pia: So you know, I was gonna imagine I'm in a basement right? And there's the embalming table and paraphernalia is out there. But there also, there's a huge room with dozens and dozens of dead bodies on shelves. So I had to walk through that every day. And this is solo work, and then, you know, and bomb bodies. And so I decided I'm done. I don't care how much. This job, you know is is Co. I'm going to give my give my notice.
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::Doctor Pia: But that's when someone, my my supervisor, Dr. Kumari, she said to me, Nellie, this is hard for anybody, you know. You don't normally see dead people every day, and just give it a bit longer, and I said, Well, can you get me someone to help?
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::Doctor Pia: And she said, Okay.
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::Doctor Pia: you get. We'll I'll look and see. And basically I got a helper. So psychologically it wasn't that the work was difficult. It was just emotionally draining. So and that's another story about how I got someone who worked with me at the baskin. Robbins. Ice cream. It's another story. It's a kind of a segue.
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::Doctor Pia: Go for it. But you obviously go for it. Okay? So when I before I was when I was in England, earlier when I was in California earlier, I needed a job for the summer, and I was working for Baskin Robbins here in Davis.
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::Doctor Pia: They paid me like it was a lot of money, $17 an hour to go and decorate ice cream cake cakes here in Davis, and so I was doing it and loving it, and then I did it for a summer.
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::Doctor Pia: and then
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::Doctor Pia: that was, and my supervisor was someone called Bob, who was Bob Ernesty? Who's was my my boss, so he's paying me 17 bucks an hour. Let's fast forward to. Now I'm stuck with the dead bodies and and looking for someone to help me. So I'm taking a walk, you know. I'm still thinking I need someone to help me, and and they gave me 5 bucks an hour to hire someone.
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::Doctor Pia: I meet Bob, who is the person who was in the ice cream place, and he's now thinking he wants to go to nursing school. And I say, Hey, Bob.
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::Doctor Pia: wanna work for me. You can work at Uc. Davis, and I'll give you 5 bucks an hour
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::Doctor Pia: and believe it or not, he said. Sure. And for him that was a a moment that was important for him. So here people meet me. We're both, you know, cutting our bodies and say, How did you meet?
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::Doctor Pia: And I tell them the story of he was paying me 17 an hour, and now I'm paying him 5 an hour to cut up bodies. So we he worked with me all the time I was there, and he went on to nursing school, and he's a nurse now, working for Uc. Davis. I mean.
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::Doctor Pia: I I'm just thinking how random it is that happened.
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, but but when I knew someone is there, you know II put napkins over the head when I'm taking heads off. It was so much easier that someone else was there.
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::Doctor Pia: and II transformed the place. II had even third and fifth graders come in for Tours. I talk to people about how much you can do when you're you die after you're dead. Your body keeps teaching. We have people who are, you know, dead 30 years before, and I'm still using their body parts to teach Med students.
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::Doctor Pia: So I gave. I made a huge presentation every year and and talk to your students, because you can learn a lot from deaf about life, I think.
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah. And I went to bed after doing that job. I still, I'm up till almost midnight every night. And II don't sleep enough because. hey, you could be dead. So it did change my Psyche some.
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah. Imagine that would have a huge
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::Jeremy Van Wert: impact. And and I mean, what? What did the studios spiritually, as far as like, is, you're talking about the
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::Jeremy Van Wert: the beyond death value of of a person, and you're talking about it in the physical sense and everything like that. But I imagine that there was some amount of you
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and and your spiritual journey in in this evolving and growing and gaining meaning, and so forth. I mean, was there was there any part of that that played a role in in
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::Jeremy Van Wert: in
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you, moving forward at that point, or or even now
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::Doctor Pia: hard to say. I'm not really a very spiritual person in the sense of oh, I believe in this kind. You know this Christianity, or Hinduism, or anything. I just believe there is so much good within people.
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::Doctor Pia: and it just needs to be harnessed. It could start with as simple a thing as I believe in myself.
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::Doctor Pia: but I just believe I can learn so much from the good and other people. That's the only spirituality I just have. Honestly, you say I'm I'm grateful, but I have felt very grateful. For what people teach me, because when you work with a patient they're taking you into their lives. So I'm living a life I couldn't have lived otherwise through them.
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::Doctor Pia: To me. That's a journey that's if you call that spiritual. It's like.
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::Doctor Pia: take me where your signs lead. Show me where your monsters are. You know that to me is so cool you're entering the world, the realm of someone who's abused. Who's you know you. You just learn what their reality is like. And
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::Doctor Pia: you know, some people say there's God in everyone. I kind of believe that I just believe we have to find it.
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::Doctor Pia: And that's the beginning of what my work is, it's to try and figure out what they can teach me. I'm not just the you. This is work. I'm not like that. I'm learning constantly, and the day I don't want to learn, I'll quit.
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::Doctor Pia: and that's why that's why I only work 3 days a week, because I think that the the toll. This takes on your spirit when you hear bad story after bad story, after bad story, it takes a toll on you, and if you then have 4 days to just let it go. That was the training in the training you. You get to learn how to draw that boundary and not work and and not take that in later.
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::Doctor Pia: So that's kind of a roundabout answer to your question. I don't know if I completely answered it for you. It's about the spirit in people exactly the spirit of of life and and goodness and possibility, and a journey, and my journey to help them find it if they haven't found that because I learned from their journey
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::Doctor Pia: every patient teaches me something new.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you know. So you're you're
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::Doctor Pia: are you pondering, going to med school at this point, when you're working with bodies, or where are you at then? No, no, no, my story is full of people who help me find that. But I was just like joking, like, yeah, right? Maybe that's what the fortune teller meant. Here I am with dead bodies. All day I made an impression with the with the students, and I had these talks.
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::Doctor Pia: But what happened was one day I was it's in my memoir also. Obviously I was cutting bodies with someone who was my it was actually the children's pediatrician, Dr. Doug Gross, who then was also working for Uc. Davis, and he knew me because he worked in the anatomy department.
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::Doctor Pia: and so we were preparing bodies together. and then he just looked at me and said, You know.
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::Doctor Pia: you know you have to think about med school again. And I said, Ha, ha! I'm 32, are you kidding? And he said, No, I'm not kidding, you know. Uc. Davis takes an older people.
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::Doctor Pia: and that sparked an interest in me like, what could I do it again? Could I go through the whole 9 yards, and he said, Hey, I'd write a letter for you if you want, because, you know we like you working with you. You're dependable blah blah blah.
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::Doctor Pia: And so that set something going that night when I got back, and I just thought of how much I had actually wanted really to be a doctor, but put it away as it's impossible, because life hadn't allowed that path to happen.
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::Doctor Pia: and that's when I actually went for it, I thought, oh, I'll have to, you know I'm older now. I'll have to go ahead and take Kaplan and learn all this basic stuff. But it's kind of you know, Jeremy, it's like you work on. You work on so much. So the wheel starts to open itself up to possibilities. So
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::Doctor Pia: I thought, why not?
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::Doctor Pia: This is the idea of let me try. And so I did, I mean, and that was my part. I mean, it took me a year or a bit after that, but I felt on a mission again, and even then, because I'd had so many things go so I thought if it doesn't work, I'll you know. Wait a year, and I'll apply again if I have to. And
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::Doctor Pia: so it was really cool. How I just decided I can handle it. I can handle this appointment, because when bad things have happened, you either just get crushed or you think, how do I get out of this?
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::Doctor Pia: How to find a way. Yeah, no.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: yeah. Yeah. And you're you're
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you're being encouraged here. And you're 32, because I've heard this before. Where
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you get you get to a certain age, and it's not a good idea to go to med school. It's it's very long thing. It's very taxing. You've got children, and it begins to feel more and more not possible for people, but it is possible. And so you you apply. And were you surprised when you got in?
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, at first I was rejected, and then Dr. Gross suggested. You know. Let me write a letter. Come on. You got into Irvine for an interview. Come on. And so even with that, I was like, Oh, see, there you go. It's gonna work. But I applied again. I got in that same. Yeah, I got in
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::Doctor Pia: And II was shocked. I was screaming. It's all you know. I in my memoirs, in the details. I was in my car. Just. I'm glad I didn't hit anybody, but I was just so so happy. It was such a long road.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: I imagine so. And and
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::Jeremy Van Wert: was was graduate or not graduate school was medical school
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::Jeremy Van Wert: really, really difficult? Or did you find yourself really grasping the concepts and getting it and sprinting through it?
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, it was so hard because of the 2 kids. Of course I had some help, but I was able to live in a rented place across the street from my mom so I could leave the the baby monitor with her and say, Hey, I'll I'll go to the shop and get something. But I was starting to get at least a sense of some financial security. But medical school was crazy.
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::Doctor Pia: because, you know, my younger daughter Shanthi, was having problems with the urinary system, and I was going to the er so you know, you get into med school thinking.
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::Doctor Pia: hey? Here we go, and then everyone knows so much that they you with these bright people. And you're thinking, oh, my God, these people are bright! So who am I? Because all my life, you know, I'd be the top person in this class so that get the highest grade. But here you're with all those people who've had the highest grade and everything. So then, if you then go to the er and you're not with the
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::Doctor Pia: the your, your your school for a little bit, or you're trying to read a book to the kids, and then you're falling asleep on. That's what I was doing. I was reading to the kids trying to. I was trying to be super person, and I was not. It was not working
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::Doctor Pia: so more than I think. Oh, less than 2 years later I was like ready to quit. Let's go. I was thinking that one of what that fortune teller was smoking, but I'm not ready for this. I'm not cut out to be this.
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::Doctor Pia: And that's another reason why I written the memoir, because I'm sure there's other people in med school who who feel like they want to give up.
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::Doctor Pia: and you think of the disgrace you think of. Oh, I'll let my parents down, the only doctor in the family.
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::Doctor Pia: and I just I felt so down II wanted to quit, but it was you see, Davis was fantastic. They said, you know we can give you a little bit more time. There's a a program where you can take it over 4 years, 5 years instead of 4,
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::Doctor Pia: you know, and so I thought, should I? Or should I give up right now? That was another moment in my life.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you know. Just as an aside, I'm working with a person
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::Jeremy Van Wert: who is going through this right now, and this person showed me the insight of the the all of the test materials, and all the things that need to be memorized, and everything like that. And it is
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::Jeremy Van Wert: absolutely astonishing, just, you know, in in medical school. Just imagine having to memorize thousands and thousands and thousands of small facts in order to pass these various exams and pass the ultimate exam that gets you, you know, across into being a doctor and and all of that. And these
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::Jeremy Van Wert: these facts and figures. Minor and Major, there, there's
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::Jeremy Van Wert: there's there's a mind blowing amount of topics, subtopics.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and and words that that the normal person has not ever heard of that you need to not only know, but you also need to know how to treat it and what to prescribe for it, and how to make a referral for it, and you might have a a one thing like hepatitis, A, BC, and DEF, and all the different ones, and you have to understand all the different
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::Jeremy Van Wert: ways to treat these things and all of the different iterations of them, and in in what way they are or are not, contagious, and these sorts of different things it I was stunned by the unbelievable amount of stuff that just need you need to retain. You need to learn them. And you you need to be able to, you know, essentially regurgitate them on tests and and so forth.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: That had to be. You know you've got 2 children, you've you, you know, got kind of a complicated life because you're doing Med school. You've got children to raise. You're trying to be a mother and redo them, and everything like that, are you? Are you? Are you having trouble retaining things at this point and and
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::Doctor Pia: in the work in the study, not retaining as much as it was just the sheer volume I didn't have a chance to get to, so you know I'd come back, and because this always happened to us, we were made the most important thing about in my family, so I had to spend time with my children. I loved it, you know, reading to them, doing things for them, eating together.
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::Doctor Pia: And so then by then, as I finish reading to them, I would be so tired I wouldn't be able to get the chance to do all the reading I was supposed to do for the next day, so that was where I would, you know. I just find I'd be slumped over falling asleep in the hallway, or and so I didn't have the time. It was never difficult, because one thing you don't realize is that it's so. It's so challenging. But you're learning about your own body. But what makes it work
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::Doctor Pia: and everything builds on everything the physiology leads to. This leads to that. So it's fun when it's when you're doing it. But I was not doing the work because my time was so limited. So that was what it was. It was never that the work was too challenging, so I could retain that, but not the sheer volume because I hadn't got to it all. And I still remember one night thinking the exams tomorrow, and I'm gonna try and finish this whole book dream on, you know that smartly. So.
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::Doctor Pia: It just got so so to go on with what happened then was I was going to quit. I had decided. I'm done, you know, and I went. II didn't know how to tell my mom, but II wanted to tell her, because for for my family. It was a huge deal I got into Mexico.
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::Doctor Pia: and I thought you was gonna try, tell me, try this, or do harder. Do this, and look.
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::Doctor Pia: and she is just the reason I did this, she said.
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::Doctor Pia: that's okay, Lilly, you're smart. You'll find something else to do. I thought what she didn't give me the Oh, my God! You gotta do this, you know. I look after the children, you can. And she didn't do any of that. She just accepted and trusted that I was made the decision based on where I was.
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::Doctor Pia: So after that I thought, Damn it, I'll do this if it kills me. I really II really said that. In fact, I decided I would take the advantage of their one year extra. I actually split. It's called splitting. I split twice. So I actually did med school over 6 years. Not 4. Am I glad? Oh, my God, yeah. Because I found smarter ways to learn the material.
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::Doctor Pia: I thought I had to take this time, and I did it. And I was a mom. So
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::Doctor Pia: yeah, oh, that's that's I'm I'm glad that you did that, because one of the things that
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::Jeremy Van Wert: it becomes overwhelming is when you approach something with this. This is a huge thing. Mind set
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::Jeremy Van Wert: the the way to accomplish these things is cutting everything into the small bits, just cutting everything into smaller, smaller bits. If if you're overwhelmed with a small bit, cut it into a smaller bit, and do that little piece, and ultimately, with your 6 years. That's what you did, and you did it a couple of times, and so
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you graduate and your you know your doctor, Pia.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and you're you're getting into. Where? Where do you go from there. Are you a psychiatrist somewhere immediately? I know that there's there's there's work that you have to do as.
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::Doctor Pia: And so yeah. And and and I journal like, you know, why I chose psychiatry. I was thinking, no way am I gonna go into psychiatry? But that's another whole story in itself. It's in the memoir, I mean coming soon to still near you now. But but the thing is that I eventually decided. I set my my heart on psychiatry. And so when you finish Med school, people don't realize this. But you have to go to a residency program. That means learning the
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::Doctor Pia: tricks of the trade and learning the medicines and learning all of that specific to where you want to practice. So if you want to do an intel medicine
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::Doctor Pia: that you do a 3 year Residency. If you wanted to go into psychiatry, you go to a 4 year Residency. If you want to go into child psychiatry, it's either 5 or 6 years. So there, all these other boundaries before you are a doctor on your own. You all supervise supervised, and it's a lot more learning. So it's it's the journey is not done.
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::Doctor Pia: So I decided I wanted to do psychiatry, which meant, and I knew I wanted child, which means 6 more years or 5 and so I decided to apply to various places, and I applied to Uc. Davis and San Mateo and some other places, and I liked the San Mateo Residency interview.
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::Doctor Pia: But UC. Davis would be closer for my girls, who are now going to school.
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::Doctor Pia: So guess what? I found out that I entered something called the match, and I found out that II did not get. You have to go wherever they tell you, and I got into Sam Matail, but not UC. Davis, so I'm like, Oh, my God! I've signed into this.
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::Doctor Pia: and I didn't want to do this by this time I had married my current husband, Tim. I've been with him for 20 something years so II didn't want to take the children away from where their close ties are, and my mom and my dad and everyone and my husband
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::Doctor Pia: So bottom line is, I said, I'm not gonna do this. I'm I'm going to try and work somewhere else. I'm not going to go into psychiatry right now. I'll give it a year.
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::Doctor Pia: And so I wrote to the II called my them office, and I loved it, but I'm sorry I'm not going and at the same time I was got I was given 2 opportunities to work with autism and the mind center in Uc. Davis and I also got a chance to go to the Mph program. So I had 2 things I could do that paid money. So I thought, I'll just get the money. And then I was sitting with that decision 2 weeks later. And my husband, said, Larry.
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::Doctor Pia: you know, I said, are you happy? At least I I'm staying with you guys. You know I'm not going anywhere. And he said you trained all this time to be a psychiatrist, and you're throwing it away. What you wanted to do. You'd throw it away.
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::Doctor Pia: and you know what
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::Doctor Pia: I'm used to thinking things over again. I thought, darn it, you mean. But what about the children? Yes, they don't want to go. They don't want to go to the Bay Area, he said. I will look after those children, I said. They aren't even your children, Tim, and he said, I will do. It will make it work, will we? You know you can be a mom on weekends. We'll come to the Bay Area.
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::Doctor Pia: and we did it.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Unbelievable difference here, you know you you you unbelievable difference between marriage one and marriage 2. And in marriage 2. You've got this real partner. You've got the one who's going to, you know. Grab the duffel bags and hike up the mountain right behind you.
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::Doctor Pia: That that's what you've got. What an amazing human being.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah, right? Right? And so, well, you did, you did. And and so in San Mateo. How long were you there?
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::Doctor Pia: 3 years? So I was a weekends only month for 3 years.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Okay, I'll keep your kids to this point.
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::Doctor Pia: Let me see, it was 1990, okay, 19, sorry. 2,002 to 2,005, right? So Shamela would have been. She's 91 9 9 years old. Is that right? Am I doing the math right? 91.
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::Doctor Pia: Take away. I I'm not very good with subtractions. But she they were probably about 9 9 ish 9 or 6. Something like that.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: There's a thousand reasons in your life up to this point that would have said, No, you can't.
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::Doctor Pia: No, you can't. No, you shouldn't. No, you don't have time, I don't know like, no, you're not smart enough. No, you're this, these sorts of things, these roadblocks
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::Jeremy Van Wert: that you just keep one by one going. I'm gonna try to see if I can get to the next stage. I'm gonna try to see if I can do this, and at times being
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::Jeremy Van Wert: so
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::Jeremy Van Wert: weighted down that you really did want to kind of throw in the towel, and
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you don't. And finally, you get to this like breakthrough point.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: You've got your medical degree you are. You've got this wonderful husband who just says, Go, do it, be it, make it happen. And you've done all of this breaking through barriers before
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::Jeremy Van Wert: now for you. You've made a habit in your life of just breaking the barriers. I'm going. I'm doing it. I'm making.
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah. It gets to be accelerating, you know, after you've gone through all the trenches
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::Doctor Pia: it it sounds to feel like, you know. What, in fact, can I read a little bit just this first bit of the my book, please. Okay, so it's just something that potentially, it's honestly a paragraph.
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::Doctor Pia: this is the book. And it's available now. Audiblecom. Okay, so I just started with what? What? I'm what we're talking about. If you fall into a dark well.
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::Doctor Pia: hunt for a handhold.
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::Doctor Pia: if you slip back down you'll know where to reach next time.
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::Doctor Pia: and always lead up and into the light
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::Doctor Pia: that just sums up what I was feeling at that time. I just thought I have fallen so many times. Bring it on, baby, let's go, you know
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you know it. It it it is it it really is that. And you know, when, when you've when you've had a number of hard knocks in your life, and you have been knocked down enough.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: It's kind of like that that silly 90 song I get knocked down, and I get up again. You know that the whole thing. And and it's it's a. It becomes a habit in your life
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and getting knocked down in your in your teens and twenties. It feels like you're never gonna get up again. It feels like you can't. It feels like life is too much, and and that sort of thing. But when you start making that habit of just get to the next rung of the ladder. Just just get up one more rung. It's it's it's a profound approach to
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::Jeremy Van Wert: to life. And what you can actually do with it. So
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you know you, you go to San Mateo. You do your your your work out there, and you know your your children are growing up into their early teen years and whatnot do you come back to Davis after this?
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::Doctor Pia: Yes, so so I did it for 3 years, and then II had told myself, if there was one time when I felt the kids were struggling or doing badly in school, I would quit. I was really ready to do anything for them, because I think it's critical to bring up your kids at least right. But you know they were resilient and we managed the 3 years. They even got into gifted programs, both of them. So when I came back I came back to Davis to do the final 2 years of child psychiatry.
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::Doctor Pia: So believe it or not, you've got like I've done 6 years. If you're doing the math in Med school, and then I had 5 years to get the child child training and the adult training down. And that's when you can become a psychiatrist. So it's a long road. Oh, my God! What are we talking about? Like 11 years from 11 years of training, from med school, beginning med school to ending, child psychiatry
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::Jeremy Van Wert: turns people away from it.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: from the very get go. And I know that I've I've heard this a lot. Yeah, but it's a long time, and you know, as you get older, you just realize everything's a long time. Everything is a long time. So when you do the 11 years, every every ounce of it is is not easy.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: but that 11 years will pass, and your where you can go from there is a sky is the limit scenario.
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::Doctor Pia: and and and those 11 years you you are working. You're learning how to the tricks of the trade. Like I said, you're learning how you know when. So and so said this, what? What did you say? Cause you're writing down what you said? So you have super vision, if you will, but you're treating patients, and that's remarkably rewarding. Because, yes, you're learning, and someone's holding your hand. But you see, people get better. You start these relationships with people
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::Doctor Pia: that mean so much to you. Because you realize this is not just books and silly medicines. This is people, and you're changing lives. And that's that's keeps you going. So it seems like a long time. But it's not just books and lectures. There's more to it than that. You're practicing being a doctor.
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, what supervision?
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah. And I'm
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::Jeremy Van Wert: I imagine, through this, you know you. You chose a difficult thing, a child in adolescent psychiatry. And as you're going through this, you're affecting change in the lives of families and children, and you begin to develop an overarching philosophy. Now every professional has a philosophy that they kind of like draw from you.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: You grew up outside of the United States. You have, you know, the bumps along the the ride that you've had and and whatnot, and you're you're serving populations, that every single population has their own struggles and heartache and everything like that. And you begin to develop the kind of doctor that you're going to be, and your overarching philosophy
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::Jeremy Van Wert: is something that you kind of talked about at the beginning. It's about understanding the whole person understanding the whole family being
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::Jeremy Van Wert: somebody who kind of really joins in with a treatment team to understand the holistic.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Concept of everything. I know that I remember times when I would bring a a child in, and you would meet with them for a very long period of time, and then say, I don't think that medicine is the medication is the right stage. Here, let's try this and that.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and then let's come back together in a month and talk about where we're at with this and that, and you're very holistic and
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and client-centered approach in this is something. Can you talk a little bit about how your personal history has kind of really played into how you, doctor?
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah.
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::Doctor Pia: well, that's a tough question. it's tough, because it's so difficult to figure out where this would come from it could begin as early as my childhood, when I was mixed with different people from different cultures, just feeling, you know, every every time I visit a country. I'm just blown away by how they have different ways that they do their culture.
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::Doctor Pia: and it works for them, I think the more you see. So I started with this very international background of friends, and we were always going I travel the world so many times around, going from Ghana to Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka to England, you know, just doing all of that. And so each time you might think I'm going way off base and trust me. I'm coming back.
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::Doctor Pia: if you start to realize that there's different ways of thinking and different cultural ways of thinking. And it just makes you
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::Doctor Pia: just like, I said. I feel like a sponge learning and learning, and so I don't look as an evaluation as a Me. To them. It's them to me. I'm absorbing the culture of their family, absorbing the culture of why they do what they do, and it's endlessly fascinating. No one persons like the other like. When I was doing surgery. It's like that this pipe is broken. Let's fix it.
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::Doctor Pia: But I've never been drawn to that. I just love the intricacies and the depth that people provide to me. So II am utilizing this this whole world coming to me feeling. And now it's the person coming to me, and I really feel connected. And I have got the tools to try and see. Okay, well, let's take them over this way.
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::Doctor Pia: And I think that is just so much fun because you're creating and thinking creatively like, forget the medicine. Okay, that helps this way. But this whole 9 yards is in front of you.
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::Doctor Pia: So I love. I love that. It really gets me going trying to think of ways to help a family. yeah, and
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::Doctor Pia: it really sounds like your parents were incredibly supportive of you absolutely all the way along. And it they they sound like
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::Jeremy Van Wert: that. you know.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Life changes. You grow up in Ghana, and it becomes politically unstable. And and you know they have to move for their own
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::possibilities and safety, and everything like that. You end up in the same place, but they were. They were always supportive of where it is that you needed to go to do things, even though it wasn't
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::Jeremy Van Wert: what would be considered, you know, traditional in a homeland.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Oh, no.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Oh, no.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Did I just lose?
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Okay, are. We are cut off.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: yeah, are, are you, are you with me? Now I hear you.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Okay, where are you? Yeah.
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::Doctor Pia: You said you started talking about my parents, and that's when you cut off.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Okay, I'm wondering if I had a a Internet issue. I'm going to start that line of questioning again. Here.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: okay. 5, 4,
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::Jeremy Van Wert: 3.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: So your parents, they sound like they've been just consistently supportive of you or in in your life. They were.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: They were people that had to flee from political instability. In Ghana. They came to the United States for their own possibilities and their own safety. And these sorts of things you ended up, you know, being near them and whatnot. But all the way along the way, even though
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::Jeremy Van Wert: you may not have had all the traditional things happen in your life that would spell. You know what a life is. Maybe in your in your homeland. They stuck with you. They were consistently supportive, and it sounds like they adjusted to the realities of your life, and that that was really profoundly supportive of you to get where you are.
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::Doctor Pia: Absolutely. I couldn't have done it without them, not not a question. In fact, you know, when you, when you live in different countries, you start thinking, you know, where do I belong? And you know I love America. I became an American naturalized American citizen. When I was leaving John. And you realize that
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::Doctor Pia: you home is where the family is and nobody belongs here in America, and that that's why I fit in so well. Because when I'm visiting Sri Lanka or visiting Ghana, I'm I mean, if I haven't visited Ghana yet. But it makes you feel like you feel like a tourist on the outside, because you've never truly melded there. But I love it being here because the sky's the limit, and I'm so grateful that
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::Doctor Pia: I've made it this far in this country because of of the availability. If you really put your your mind to it and work.
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::Doctor Pia: You know my my sister is a civil engineer. Work for the State for a long time. My brother, my brother is an inch, you know. He's a into that guy, and my sister works for you know the she she works in Cameroon, and she works with Unicef and world health. And so I feel like, here we came to America with just a sofa in my parents house.
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::Doctor Pia: and we've been able to all become so amazingly successful. And yet the net, the deep down like this thanksgiving, my 4, my 3 siblings, and my parents were all getting together in la, so we still have kept this all through the years that that has become
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::Doctor Pia: the link th the place that we can really, you know, feel supported and comforted with everyone. So II do in in terms of your question about family. Yes, family is so important to me, and that's why I can't have too many friends. I've got work, and I maybe if I can handle like 6 good friends, I can handle that. But my family takes the rest of it the whole 9 years. We we're always talking to each other, and
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::Doctor Pia: even though it's been so long since we left Ghana, we are so close together. 3 of us live here, and one goes back and forth to Cameron. So
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::Doctor Pia: we have a a good sense of family, and that's some people don't get that. And so I I'd realize that, especially with my patients, I'm working with low income patients who haven't had that.
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::Doctor Pia: And so I try to work with that which is hard, because, of course, I've never experienced what they have.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: What are your children up to?
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::Doctor Pia: My oldest Shamela? She's a physician. She is in Rochester, New York.
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::Doctor Pia: She's actually decided. She wanted to go into child neurology. So I said, Hey, you do the neuron out of the site. She's she's gonna come back to California to finish that one more year and she's going to be a child neurologist. My daughter Shanti, who's younger. She is in Santa Cruz, California, and she's becoming,
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::Doctor Pia: great, amazing mother of 2 children. So I have 2 grandchildren. Yeah. And so she comes it's much, much closer for her to come visit. She's an accomplished piano player, makes people cry when she plays chop, so I'm proud of them both. I'm so proud of myself.
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::Doctor Pia: Well, and and and Santa Cruz is just such a uniquely beautiful place. It's lovely there. Yeah, she she's really a person of the earth.
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::Doctor Pia: I'm so glad, and bringing up my my grandchildren that way.
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::Doctor Pia: So we, when they come to visit we just fly on this on the on the hammock and look up at the trees, and I'm so glad she's bringing them up without, you know. Da da da da, da. You know, we need the sense of connection. It's so so huge for children to learn this
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::Doctor Pia: early.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Yeah, yeah, it. It makes. It makes a huge difference. The
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::Jeremy Van Wert: children who have a lot of technology in their lives, and children who generally have it very limited in their lives. You can see the emotional maturity
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and the ones that
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::Jeremy Van Wert: mit Ctl, and have it very strategically limited to them. You know, we're seeing so many children right now who are so
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::Jeremy Van Wert: emotionally underdeveloped. And there's a lot of reasons for that in our modern age. But the delayed gratification is something that is
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::Jeremy Van Wert: not happening with a lot of kids. They constant constant stimuli of a very high and addictive nature
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::Doctor Pia: for the brain.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: their children's health, children's emotional health is being affected in a way that is
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::Jeremy Van Wert: just ghastly, and I know that in my county, which is a relatively small county by
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::Jeremy Van Wert: population.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: there's been a number of suicides that are of teenagers
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::Jeremy Van Wert: where nobody saw it coming.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and late one night, sometimes, even while gaming, or something like that, a child will do something, and to themselves.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: and sometimes the other gamers are like. Is this real? Is this what's really going on right now? But the children's have these children. They have such a short
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::Jeremy Van Wert: span for frustration, such a short frustration, tolerance, you know. And and so the the propensity for emotional problems seems to be going up so profoundly. And I'm sure that you're seeing that a as well. I know I see it on my side.
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, absolutely
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::Doctor Pia: II will start by saying that the reason I'm staying and loving my job is that children do get better, no matter where they are, no matter how I it's keeping me motivated that these kids are getting better. So even when they walk in the first day. I you know the the excrement, maybe hitting the fan. I still say, you know what over sometime I'm going to be trying to take you off your medicines.
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::Doctor Pia: and things are going to get better if you come in. If you take your bills like this. So III give them that first sort of things are going to get better. But in terms of your question about people tolerating, not tolerating them. I mean, you have to have things buzz, you know, but it's it's happening to our society.
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::Doctor Pia: myself included. Oh, there's a thing from your cell phone. So we are getting so ready for instant gratification as you point out, and and what's worse is, you know, I know the studies are not showing that video games are doing directly correlated with homicidal behavior. But I, even in the time I've been practicing, I'll see I'm seeing more homicidal kids.
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::Doctor Pia: Is it? Because, you know, I've had to call the police many a time? But I'm seeing this, and I think it's it's very intriguing to figure out what may be causing it, but I think the lack of this warm social
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::Doctor Pia: family, if you will, is causing a lack of empathy, the immediate gratification tip, give it to me. Not, hey? I'm gonna meet these friends. We're gonna talk. I care what you say. We are becoming less empathic. With all the children are that are given this kind of a background. So I worry about that in terms of suicide. They say there's only 2 kinds of psychiatrists once that have had a patient suicide and ones that are going to have the patient suicide.
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::Doctor Pia: So far touch wood. I haven't had a patient suicide. But it's important to to to realize that part of it is really getting to know what they're thinking about and spending that time to
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::Doctor Pia: to follow that thought so. It's it's very, very tricky. But I'm trying to remember what your original question was, because I took it away from you, who are at the beginning of making major decisions in their lives, and there's a lot of
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::Jeremy Van Wert: internal voices of discouragement that so many people face the I'm not good enough. The that's too big, the. I don't think that I have enough support for that sort of thing. What is it from your life experience that you would impart to people who are deciding
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::Jeremy Van Wert: whether you know swinging at the ball right now is a good idea for them, and that they might feel a little bit discouraged at at making a big goal.
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, I would say, you'd have to first look deep inside of yourself.
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::Doctor Pia: What truly makes me happy
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::Doctor Pia: such such a simple question.
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::Doctor Pia: what truly makes me happy? Is it the time I do this? Is it these people I work with? Is it that so you've got to identify for yourself what is driving you
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::Doctor Pia: to get that goal? And what's in your way. So bottom line is, I really figure that
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::Doctor Pia: once someone has decided for themselves. I'm so happy doing this.
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::Doctor Pia: They need to. Then look at what obstacles are in the way. Is it the lack of time. Is it the like of, you know? And so you can. From there you can generate a whole bunch of different things that are stopping you from being there.
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::Doctor Pia: but I would start with asking someone to look inside and say, Oh, all the other ways like, what am I not liking about where I am in life right now. If I could spend a few minutes, let me just list them.
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::Doctor Pia: This, this, this, this this right
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::Doctor Pia: and then problem. Solve with the therapist, if necessary, with the father, with the mother, with whoever with a you know, a therapist helped me understand when I was having that bad relationship meeting with that therapist. I've only met them once in my life.
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::Doctor Pia: Help me understand? It's okay to think this guy's a jerk. You need to go, you know, and it just gave me that freedom to make that decision.
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::Doctor Pia: because somebody heard me, and and I took the time to get that person to listen to my story. I'm not being selfish. I'm just getting someone to help me. So I would say that there's many different people you can identify that can help. If there's no one in your sphere, you can get a therapist to help you. Maybe a psychiatrist who might help you. It's just a matter of trying to identify your supports.
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::Doctor Pia: And and what's standing in the way of getting your goals.
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::Doctor Pia: But the sky's the limit. Okay, it really is.
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::Doctor Pia: It really is.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Dr. Lollipia. Your story is one of inspiration. It's one of it's so human
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::Jeremy Van Wert: in that your
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::Jeremy Van Wert: your next stage was never quite written. You simply grabbed
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::Jeremy Van Wert: a hold of the next opportunity, and you just made it happen. Your life has been a sequence of muscle and work, and making sure that the next stage of your life is something that you
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::Jeremy Van Wert: assume control over, and your your grace and your ability to overcome challenges in your life is something that is so
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::Jeremy Van Wert: incredibly inspiring. And I'm so happy that you came here, after all of these years of friendship, to tell your story and thank you for being on mindful mutiny.
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::Doctor Pia: Thank you so much, Jeremy. I really appreciate you doing this.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: So listeners, you know how they say that when you read the book that it's way better than the movie. That's the case here. This was a crash course on Dr. Lollipia's life.
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::Doctor Pia: Go get the book. It is available. The fortune tailor's the fortune tellers prophecy. It's on audible.com right now, and Dr. Pia, it's going to be April thirtieth of 2024. That this is, gonna be out on hardback. Is that what is that? How it works?
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::Doctor Pia: Yeah, it's going to. The paperback is out in 30, the thirtieth of April.
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::Doctor Pia: And but the but the audible is available. Now, me narrating, and my husband is a sound engineer, enjoy
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::Jeremy Van Wert: fabulous. I'm gonna have to talk to you about that because I, I've got a book coming out, too. So so everybody thank you so much for listening. Make sure to like and subscribe and leave a review on my podcast wherever you are listening, because that really really helps. I'm Jeremy Van Wert, CEO, of high altitude, mindset. Now go, be something great.
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::Jeremy Van Wert: Okay.
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::Doctor Pia: That's my my closing line. Always end like that. That's.
