Catching Up with Walt Medlin MD on March 37th 2020 (the time of COVID19)

A lot has changed in the past 4 weeks since last I turned on my recorder, the majority of that having to do with the Coronavirus global pandemic. First, let me begin by saying I dearly hope you and yours are healthy and safe. Next, I want to pick up where I left off, one month ago. When I signed off in mid-March I told you that I was home on quarantine waiting for my own COVID-19 test results because a few days before that I had left work early with a fever, a dry cough, and pressure deep in my lungs. I was tested on March 14th. It took six anxiety producing days to get my results back but they were negative. Thank you so much to those of you who reached out to let me know you where praying for me and thinking about me. That warmed my heart more than I can ever express.

Now on to this episode, I asked Dr Walt Medlin if he would be willing to just talk with me while the recorder was running so that we might compare and contrast our thoughts and experiences on not only how this pandemic is affecting bariatric surgery in general and our practices specifically, but also how we move forward from this.

Before I cut to the episode thought, as those of you who are on my email list know, I have put out a call for Kid jokes. Initially my deadline was April 4th, but because I am publishing this episode now, I am extending to my deadline to April 25th. I want to create a WLSP episode entirely made up of kid jokes. I want to fight despair with a little kid joke humor. For those of you that don't know, for many years now at the conclusion of every single episode I have ended with a kid joke or two. If you have never heard this, then you just need to stick around to the very, very end, like literally that last 30-60 second of the recording time and you will hear the jokes. Its been like my little thing, like when you wait after all the credits of the Pirates of Caribbean or Ice Age movies and you get a little nugget, well, kid jokes are my nuggets at the end.

So now, rather than wait to the very end I want to make an entire episode of kid jokes, not because there is a lot to laugh about these days but rather to help us find a little light in this darkness. But I need your help. Me telling all the jokes, well frankly, that just wouldn't work. Will you help me? Will your kids help me? You family? Your friends? Everyone and anyone can call in. Please call the WLSP Google voice mail number 541-583-0099. You can also find the number at my website, WLSP dot com. Wont you help?

And one more thing before I cut to the episode, this podcast is listener supported. If you want to become a patron you can do so at Patreon or PayPal.

Discussed in this episode

• Walt Medlin, MD Bariatric Surgeon and a person who is affected by obesity.
• The episode that has not yet been published on revisional surgery
• Mother Nature’s time out
• Rebuilding the airplane mid flight
• No elective surgeries until…
• When we can operate again…
• Working from home via Telehealth
• How to keep our bariatric surgery program alive
• Being proactive with your health
• Getting used to hunkering down, what next?
• The levels of worry and preparing
• Weight gain due to quarantine means something different for people with the disease of obesity
• Loss of structure- Who are we without our routines?
• Creating a new structure
• What will life look like after this?
• How or will this change us?
• The importance of recognizing and allowing emotions
• Bravery is not the absence of fear
• Helping at the right place at the right time in the right way- know how best to help
• Limiting social media
• As we move away from so many things, what are we moving towards?
• Quality of Life and Quantity of Life.
• Getting honest about Moral Injury and how to recover
• Team Hope and Optimism

As always I hope you found this episode helpful along your way. You can find link to this episode and all prior episodes at my website, WLSP dot com. Regarding the kid joke episode, thank you to all of you who already called in your kid jokes and the rest of you who have yet to do, lets crowd source some kindness with some sweet humor by calling 541-583-0099.