Celebrating Wins: Taking the Time to Practice Gratitude
I have spent a lot of time in the last two months being very busy and “checking all the boxes,” as I like to say. And I often spend my time here and elsewhere reflecting on ways to improve different pieces of the medical process that I have been a part of. But today, I want to share my gratitude over several events that have also occurred in that time frame!
First, due to a series of unfortunate events, I lost access to about a month’s worth of my business’ emails. It turned out this wasn’t the disaster it might seem; people who didn’t hear from me were able to contact me in other ways, and everything turned out ok.
But this also meant that I have just regained access to those emails. In some very pleasant surprises during that “missing” month, a lot has been going on for me behind the scenes!
Patents and Publications
The first exciting win is that two of the patents for my device were finally published. This means they have been made public, even though they haven’t been granted yet, so that is really exciting. This piece of technology I have been working on for eight years is becoming more visible to others, which is really validating, and that much closer to becoming a reality!
The next win is that a journal published a paper that I was the co-author for, which is a big deal, if you know anything at all about the research/peer review process. It’s not simply a matter of writing something and submitting it to a journal. This article entailed five years of medical research, then the process of writing the paper, then the process of submitting to a journal, then the peer-review process. I actually started the research for this paper in 2016. That’s nine years ago. This article is older than one of my children. So yes, I’m pretty pleased to see it in print finally!
Being a Teacher, Sharing my Story
And then, there were two invitations to speak. Neither of them felt like a chore or an obligation, though. One is a panel that Portal Innovations is hosting here in Atlanta at a charter school that’s focused on technology and engineering. They’re asking students to come hear people like me (innovators) speak about their journey in science and technology.
Although I left academia two years ago, I still love teaching and sharing my knowledge with students, so I am really excited about the prospect of talking to these kids.
I often think about what I might have chosen to do had I not become a doctor. I grew up saying I wanted to be a doctor, so that’s the career I pursued. However, I went that route not really knowing that being a doctor can take many different forms. I was fortunate to learn that a doctor can also be an educator, and I have found so much joy and fulfillment in my career as a teacher of other doctors. On top of that, I have also proven that a doctor-teacher can also be a mom-inventor, so I’m glad to juggle all my different roles, because they all feed a different part of me. And I’m so jazzed to have the chance to speak with students again and share my story.
Finally, I was invited to speak at Georgia Tech on a conference of wearable technologies and maternal health: just my area of expertise! And again, I’m honored and excited to speak to students and experts in this space. As both the innovator and a clinician, I have a lot of firsthand knowledge of the difficulties and the intricacies of this tech, so I’m very happy to share my story with them and learn from them as well.
So. Lots of wins, lots of gratitude. I can’t spend too much time basking in the glow; we are set to launch a new app on November 1, which is right around the corner, and I am obviously a little anxious about that. “This is my baby; what will happen?” If being a doctor-teacher-mominventor has taught me anything, though, it’s taught me the importance of being vulnerable. I have to be willing to share my ideas with the world to help others, and the app launching is just one more part of that. And hopefully, will be another win to celebrate soon.
