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Marriage in Medicine With Dr. Nii and Renée Darko
247 Plays1 year ago
Navigating your love life while pursuing a career in medicine can have ups and downs. Let's talk about relationships and medicine💕! In this episode, Dr. Aldwin Soumare, Student Doctor Isabella Ntigbu, and Jared Jeffrey sit down with Dr. Nii and Renée Darko to discuss their experiences throughout their medical journeys while navigating their marriage, careers, financial obligations, and infertility.
To share your thoughts on our discussions or if you have any questions to ask our hosts, email podcast@snma.org for a chance to be featured on the show!
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed on our podcast do not reflect the official stance of the Student National Medical Association
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Transcript
Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The view expressed on his podcast represent only those of the hosts and do not represent the views of the Student National Medical Association. Hello everyone, my name is Jared Jeffery.
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm Dr. Aldon Somore, aka Waikou Poppy, you know what I'm saying? Bronx Future doc, all of that good stuff. And hello, everyone. I'm student Dr. Isabella Intubu.
Dating and Marriage in Medicine
00:00:40
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of SNMA Presents the Lounge. It is finally February, and you know what that means. Let's talk about love, baby. In this episode, we will be discussing dating marriage in the stages as a medical professional.
00:00:57
Speaker
We'll also talk about how to find the balance between school slash internship slash residency and your love life. So to help us lead this convo, we have Dr. Renee and Dr. Nee Darko, host of Docs Outside the Box podcast.
00:01:11
Speaker
Dr. Nate Darko, trauma surgeon and his wife, Dr. Renee Darko, OB-GYN, both have thriving careers helping people, but realize that there's more. Both doctors were inspired to discover the many other avenues that medicine can offer outside of seeing patients in an office or a hospital. This journey led them to launch three businesses, including the Docs Outside the Bus podcast, a premier resource for information on financial freedom, lifestyle design, and mindset.
The Darkos' Podcast and Personal Journey
00:01:36
Speaker
Through their journey of discovering their own passions outside of medicine, the couple speaks from life experiences, including expanding their family through the difficult journey of IVF and paying off a $662,000 combined student loan debt in just three years. I got a clap for that. I'm sorry. That is... That's for fire. I got a clap for that.
00:01:58
Speaker
The doctors are truly walking the walk and currently bring on podcast guests to discuss all things money, mission, and mindset fused with entertaining husband and wife barter about life outside the box, pop culture, and more. Welcome to The Lounge podcast, Dr. Ni and Dr. Renee Darko. We had Dr. Ni last episode, and this episode will stop its wife, Dr. Renee. Welcome to you, Dr. Renee.
00:02:23
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for having us on. I feel like I should be doing this. Snapping, snapping, snapping. Okay, okay. Yes. You know. Love Joan's style. Okay, period. Yes, it's Valentine's Day. We have to give that energy. But just to start off the convo, we have a very wide array of listeners for this podcast. This is an SMA official podcast, so we have people from all walks of
00:02:48
Speaker
their journey in medicine, whether it's from pre-med up until attending status. So we kind of just want to start it off with the beginning. How did you guys meet each other and how did you balance dating while pursuing medicine? Well, we met over the phone. So yeah, that's how we met. So we met over the phone, wasn't anything romantic. We just happened to interview at the same school. So we both went to KCU, Kansas City University.
00:03:15
Speaker
in Kansas City, Missouri. But we got accepted to the same school and a mutual mentor of ours basically put us together because he's just having all the black students contact each other before we all started. So I lived in New York, me lived in New Jersey. We met over the phone and we had a really great conversation the first time we met, again, over the phone. But we didn't actually meet in person until like, what, three, four months later? Yeah.
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, like three, four months later. Even then, I wasn't sweating him, he wasn't sweating me. It wasn't anything like that, you know, so we ended up being study partners. And then you started sweating me.
00:03:59
Speaker
because it is so automatically, right? You got to warm up to it. Okay. I see. We had to warm up
Career and Relationship Balancing Act
00:04:04
Speaker
to it. Right. Right. So we started out as friends. Yeah. And then I guess what the second semester of first year is when we started dating. Yeah. I love that. Do you agree with that? I feel like people have different interpretations of how we first met.
00:04:21
Speaker
See, I'm used to being a podcast host, so I always have final edits as to what says, so I don't want her to say what she says. I just go back to post-production and just edit it out and be like, just run, please. Cut, cut, cut, cut. I'm not going to lie. I love the way that he didn't even flinch when that question was asked. He already know, yeah, she gets to tell this story. He knew it a lot. But for the sanity of tonight, yes, as she says, she's right.
00:04:46
Speaker
Cool, cool. So I guess I would have to, so it sounds like y'all got a real like, you know, organic start, real slow start, all of that good stuff. So y'all gotta tell me like, when it comes to career, your priorities and personal well being, where does each one stack up versus the others? Because that's a difficult show to balance right there.
00:05:07
Speaker
You talking about now or you talking about in medical school? Nah, when y'all was getting to know each other. Oh, so I grew up in a household, both my parents, blue collar, Ghanaian immigrants, and my mother was very clear with me. She was, if you get married or if you have children, you will derail your chances of getting into medical school.
00:05:29
Speaker
or becoming a doctor. And she would drill that into me from a very young age. And because of that, I just, well, not even becoming a doctor, just whatever professionally I wanted to do, she would just say like, whatever you wanted to do, whether it's a lawyer, a doctor, teacher, because you know, in the African house where you can only be like those three things, engineer, engineer.
00:05:50
Speaker
Oh my gosh. You can only do those things. That will derail you, so you have to stay focused. So I was very focused. To an extent, it helped me be very focused and very selfish about what I was trying to do once I got into medical school. But I also think there was still a little bit of some growing up
00:06:13
Speaker
some immaturity on my end from a social standpoint in terms of dealing with relationships and how to balance and so forth. And low key, there's no such thing as balance. But I was very much into the books, everything, social life, all of that stuff came second to actually the goal, which was graduating and doing well. And that's how it was for me. But I look back, there was some mistakes that I made that I would have definitely gone back
00:06:39
Speaker
And, uh, no, for real. Whoa! Who am I supposed to talk about with Delgoth? Definitely somebody. It doesn't have to be real. That's a fact. It doesn't involve wifey. That's all we know. That's all we know. No, some of them are. Some of them are. Some of them are. You know, some of them are. Like, real talk. I was trying to save you. I was, OK. I was just in a deep end. All right. Dr. Nee is being upfront and honest, Dr. Nee. Y'all will pop? Do you give a shit just one?
00:07:07
Speaker
Oh yeah. Let's share just one. What are the early ones? What are the early ones? One mistake. What was one mistake you made? One mistake. Y'all for real? Y'all want to go there? Yeah. We just got to go. I don't endorse this, but you know what? It's two against three. So let me just, let me take a seat. The forgiveness clause is in though. Don't worry. Don't worry. I think definitely the biggest mistake I made was there was a point in my medical school training where I thought like I was a player.
00:07:37
Speaker
And I didn't really think about people's feelings. I didn't think about her feelings. I didn't think about what would happen two, three years down the line and stuff. And I made some really bad decisions, some major decisions. And I got lucky. I got a second chance with her and so forth.
00:07:54
Speaker
But you know, like some guys, a lot of guys don't get a chance to have that second chance. But that's right. That play that player mentality, you know, it runs its course. And there's gonna be a time when you need to be with someone who's been with you from the from the beginning.
00:08:09
Speaker
And if you don't play your cards right, if you're not smart about it, you're going to end up dating people who've only seen you when you are a doctor, or when you're driving a nice type of car, or just don't understand the struggle. And then at that point, you're trying to understand why these people don't understand what it's like is because you messed up when you were younger.
00:08:29
Speaker
the people who were there for you, the women that were there for you, or the person who was there for you, you messed that up, you know? And you don't get a redo. I did. So I got lucky there. So that was definitely the biggest mistake socially I made in school. So I could be real with that. But we caught it. That's right. That's not that one. That's great. That you've really owned up to it. A lot of it went up. They were known up to that. So I'm really, I'm really. Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella, Isabella
00:08:55
Speaker
Bull accountability from black men 2024 and see doctors starting it off. That's it. I'm not gonna get bullied. I'm not gonna love the bullying. I'm gonna speak by truth. I am going to speak by truth. Y'all can't silence me. Okay, next question. Y'all are so funny. Just remember, black men and women are loving on each other on this podcast in 2024. We are. We really are.
00:09:23
Speaker
They really are. No, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And we also have to remember, right? There's a level of immaturity just when you're younger, right? There's just a level of immaturity. I think that we all have in the way that we approach relationships, the way that we approach conflict in relationships. Here she goes for Claire Huxtable. Here she goes. Anyway, what you all talking about? She says it all the right way in everything. I hate relationships.
00:09:51
Speaker
But it's true, right? Like, it's not like, you know, just because you maybe didn't make the mistake of stepping out or whatever, that you didn't make other mistakes, right? Like, you know, how are you approaching certain conflicts in your relationship? You know, are you being really immature about it? Are you, you know, just, oh, I don't need you. I'm walking out. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. Like, what are you doing in order to foster the relationship? And it takes time to be that mature.
00:10:18
Speaker
to understand the implications of what you could be setting up for your future. So, you know, it was a lot, you know, we had a lot of conflict, a lot of conflict. Charlie said we wouldn't make it.
00:10:35
Speaker
It's the honesty for me because it's really not a walk in the park from
Challenges of Residency and Cultural Influence
00:10:38
Speaker
what I've heard. Like Michelle Obama said something similar with like her and Barack, how she hated him for like 10 years, but because she liked him, she stuck by him. And I feel like our generation, we have a very hard, we have a hard time sticking by people when we feel a little bit of discomfort. And I just think it's beautiful to like see that you guys like stuck it through, you know, stayed with each other to despite the difficulties. Cause like this life is not a walk in the park. So I think that's really like really honorable.
00:11:04
Speaker
I think it's also important to remember that good people do bad things and just because you do a bad thing doesn't mean you're a bad person. So that's something I think certainly helped us through our own path.
00:11:22
Speaker
So you said something major keys, right? What are you doing to foster your relationship? And I think one of the tenants and foundations for a relationship is maintaining mental and emotional well-being. How do you guys prioritize this in your current relationship? Because you talked about the past, but where you are now, especially with all the obligations. I know you guys have locums. You guys also have the podcast. You have some beautiful children as well and our parents. And then, of course, you know, holding it down for us on this
00:11:51
Speaker
podcast as well so uh... tell us more about uh... how do you manage all of that
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, do we manage? No. I look at you like this. Ain't no such thing as balance. I think, you know, I'll be really honest with you. Like my wife, Renee, has made some really smart moves that I questioned when we first got married. And then I was like, why? You know, so, you know, like I said, immigrant household, my mom worked full time, my dad worked full time.
00:12:22
Speaker
So whoever I was going to marry, I was like, nah, you're going to work. I'm going to work. We're going to make this money. That's it. So we lived apart for a good amount of years. Seven years. So we had a 10-year courtship, and we lived apart for seven of those. So when she was in residency and then I was in residency, she was doing her residency in Jersey. I was doing my residency in Georgia. Then I did a fellowship in Miami. That's why I thought he was a player. He was in Miami.
00:13:00
Speaker
The Sun was getting to your head dr. Nia okay I got it and then I ran out of money
00:13:18
Speaker
So when we first got married, the first job we looked at, she was like, I want to do part time. And I was like, part time.
00:13:27
Speaker
part-time OB. I'm like, part-time for what? We need to make money. We got debt. We want to make money. You need to work full-time. I work full-time. And that's it. And she said, well, we've lived apart for so long that her full-time OB is actually busier than my full-time trauma surgery, because trauma surgery at that time 10 years ago had transitioned to
Misconceptions of Dating Doctors
00:13:48
Speaker
shift work, really.
00:13:50
Speaker
OB, the type of OB that she was doing, not quite yet. So it's more like what she was doing is more like cardiology, more like neurosurgery where you just don't, you don't leave it. It doesn't stop. It's your patient is your patient.
00:14:09
Speaker
So she was like, yeah, I should be part-time. And I was like, OK, well, I'm not down with that. But then eventually, I was like, OK, I acquiesced. Let's do it. And we would spend time together. There was times when I would do 24-hour call. And where I worked at, we had a really nice trauma suite where there was a kitchen, a full bath. There was a whole private suite where we could be together while we were watching TV and someone wanted to call.
00:14:35
Speaker
I could go downstairs and be right on top of, like literally the suite is right on top of the trauma bay, right? That's nice. So like they even made it so you could bring your kids and all those different things so that if you needed to do like 24 or 72 hours consecutively, you have your family there. So she would finish work, come across the street. She'd cook up a nice dinner. We eat dinner. And then if traumas came through back and forth, it would just come through. And we were spending a lot of time together and we would get into know each other.
00:15:05
Speaker
And then there was a couple of times, remember, what did I ask you? I forgot what I asked you. Oh, there was one time we were like, maybe two months in, a month in. And he was like, you know, he goes, I thought you were, I thought you were working part time. And I said, this is part time.
00:15:20
Speaker
He thought when I said part time, it was going to be like I just wasn't working. I was working and I was still bringing work home with me because as you probably know, just anecdotally is that you end up bringing a lot of work home with you. I still was bringing work home with me, but I was able to spend certain days with him because I wasn't working certain days in clinic.
00:15:45
Speaker
So he just felt like, oh, like this is the part time that you were talking about. I'm like, yeah, he's like, so you could work more if you were working full time. I'm like, yes. I'm like, that's why I wanted to do part time. He's like, oh, I get it now. No, that's fire. So so when you say that, like, you took on part time at work to be like a full time wife.
00:16:08
Speaker
No, I think I took on part-time at work so that my relationship didn't suffer, right? Because you don't get married to get divorced, right? So that was the thing in my head, right? Definitely. And so, you know, when you get married, and I'm probably somewhat of a traditionalist, you know, my family's Haitian.
00:16:29
Speaker
So, you know, we grew up with a lot of the same types of principles. But when you get married, you know, you have to have a certain dedication to your marriage, right? So you can't just be like, you know, I'm going to be a wife. I'm going to be this boss lady who's just going to do all these things. But then you neglect the relationship that you have with your husband. How do you expect that to even be successful?
00:16:51
Speaker
So for me, I'm like, I have to now pay a lot of attention to the things that I said I was going to pay attention to. So I gave my career lots of attention. I got into med school when I was 27 and then kept going until I finished residency.
Fertility Journey and Financial Discipline
00:17:11
Speaker
So now that I'm married, I can't be like, all right, career, career, career only. It's like, no, I chose to marry this man. I have to give that level of attention that I gave to my career to this marriage. But you could do that, but just know that there's consequences. Right. Exactly. I think sometimes people will try to set up an adversarial relationship where it's like,
00:17:29
Speaker
you take this type of lifestyle and that's it and you get it when you get it how you get it and that's it and I think I learned a lot from her cues which was oh wow like I didn't realize because when I thought about getting married I didn't there was no color to it it was like this black and white picture
00:17:45
Speaker
Auto my mind, you know, like, you know, Kanye West used to say, like, you know, was it like something in my memory museum or something like that? There's a lyric that he says, where he's talking about something that is in black and white, and it's in his memory. And the way how I looked at it was marriage is black and white, she works, I work, if we had kids, you probably get a nanny or something like that. But I never really thought about what the consequences of all of those things meant, right, which is
00:18:08
Speaker
if she's so busy and I'm so busy, we can't spend time together. Like can we actually have kids, right? Or if we have kids, what kind of relationship do we want to have with our kids? Particularly if we want to have or mimic the type of upbringing that we had with our parents. But if you got a full-time OB and a full-time trauma surgeon,
00:18:28
Speaker
that's not gonna happen, right? Do we want the nanny or do we want the kids calling the nanny's mom, right? Like these are things that just, we have to start thinking about. Like, wow, I didn't think about that. Then also at the same time, at my job, when I first started, like two of my partners, you know, they were going through divorces and they were hella shy. But when I look at them, I'm like, I'm not shy. Divorce rate is high in medicine. People are surprised. It's high in medicine. And it's already 60% outside of medicine.
00:18:57
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. So those type of foundational things that she did, that kind of built on the decisions that we made in the future. So when she had a business idea, I helped her with that. When I had a business idea, she 100% jumped into my thing. We just kind of always worked in lockstep with each other. When we took on and decided to pay off our debt, which is huge. This is something that I want people to understand.
00:19:21
Speaker
She had $330,000 a debt. I had $330,000 a debt. We never said that, like, yo, dad is yo, dad. Even 30 years when you take care of this. And then my dad is my dad. And then I'll see you on the island. Another side.
00:19:39
Speaker
you know and go from there. It wasn't going to work. So basically we just said, look, first of all, the money that I bring in is yours. The money that you bring in is mine. The debt that you have is mine. The debt that I have is yours. Let's make it happen. And when we put our money together and we started thinking about ways of how we can tackle all of this debt and we did it so fast, it just helped us to realize that
00:20:04
Speaker
We're a team. We're a team. It's actually more than that. We're bonded, right? Like, she becomes I, I become I. Like, we all just become, we become we, basically. We get our pronouns right. You know what I'm saying? The two become one flesh, biblically speaking. I mean, that's what it is. Right.
00:20:21
Speaker
And we just started, we work like that. And as a result, like, that's kind of how we live our lives. That's how we raise our kids. That's how we do these businesses. That's how we do this podcast. This is like we, like we kind of, you know, she has the things that she's really passionate about. I have the things that I'm really passionate about. We respect that. But when major decisions need to be made, it's like we do it together. Yeah.
00:20:40
Speaker
I think I just everything has been screaming like dream team power couple like that's the energy I'm really getting from you guys and like I really wish there was more examples like for people to see who are interested in medicine or who are pursuing medicine and who are also in relationships and maybe are trying to figure out like how do I find that person? I'm curious to know like Dr. Ni how did you know that Dr. Renee was like this is the one I just feel like every person has their
00:21:05
Speaker
their criteria has like what it is that they were looking for. Like how does she check? Like she checked off all your boxes. Like what was it that made you say like, yeah, it's her. Isabella, you love love so much. Excuse me. It's Valentine's Day season. Don't ruin the don't ruin the shy.
00:21:24
Speaker
I'm gonna tell you real quick, the number one thing that knocked it out the park for me initially, but like I said, I was very cocky and, you know, not very smart with how I made decisions, but literally the first time I met her and she made, basically, was it dreapua?
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. She made Dariapua, the Haitian rice, which is very similar to the rice that, you know, my parents make, right, called wache. It's a little, it's kind of, I think it's similar. She doesn't think so. And then the chicken, she made chicken with bone in and stuff. With bone in. And I felt comfortable eating the chicken and then chewing on the bone in front of her. Right. I was like, like, there's already like that.
00:22:06
Speaker
Culturally, there's that link. And then the way how she moved was very similar to the way how I moved financially. I just was very immature socially with how I wanted to handle the relationship. I wasn't ready to settle down. I was like, look, I'm going to get this DO degree, and I'm going to get it. And we'll get into surgery, and I'm going to get it, and we'll figure things out.
00:22:27
Speaker
And I think once I went to Miami and you just start realizing as you're looking at the scene, you're like, yo, there's a lot of superficial people here. There's a lot of bikinis out there. A lot of bikinis. There are no BBLs back then. I'm sure there was a lot of BBLs too. Okay.
00:22:53
Speaker
I thought the nurses would be coming to Bikini, right? But not in there, just a joke. But there was just a lot of superficial stuff down there, and I wasn't with it, right? Just at that point. But there comes a point, I think, when a guy says, I'm ready.
00:23:11
Speaker
Right. And that was it. I was just like, I'm ready. And I just know that she's the one. And, you know, there was no boxes, but I just like this is the one like this is the one I spent my life with. I got to fix this and make it right and go from there. And luckily, you know, I had to call me on the phone 11 times.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, because she didn't want, she wasn't picking up on first. I wasn't that picking up. Playing the hard to get, the hard to get there. Okay, I see. No, I was playing the, I'm done with you. I had to do like a start. Okay, okay. This is different, you gotta change the phone number. Like I had to change the phone number. Oh, okay. Just start. She ain't know what's up. I like that. I like that. Get your, get your woman.
00:23:54
Speaker
Come on, right? Come on. Because sometimes people paint. This is like a perfect picture and stuff. It's not like that, you know? But for Mendo, I think Mendo is very clear. The lady's listening. When a man wants you and he makes that decision, he will get through any barrier to make sure that he can get you. Or so you relentlessly. Just so y'all know that. Right.
00:24:14
Speaker
Not to be confused with stalking. Yeah, there's a clear difference. There's a clear difference. Yeah, there's a clear difference. We talk on ourselves right here. We getting real, we potting. I'm talking about. Potting, potting. Absolutely. Yes. Oh my gosh. So we're going to switch gears just a little bit. Take me back to residency now and how the dynamic of your relationship going to residency at different places.
00:24:42
Speaker
How did that affect like really like completing your program successfully? Oh, they had no effect on me. So we had no effect on you. Of course it had an effect on you. A relationship? Yes.
00:24:59
Speaker
Well, you go first. So first year residency. So first of all, when we were in medical school, right, we had this we had this relationship, which was
00:25:17
Speaker
Kind of like, well, we talking, but we just dating, right? So, first things first, I was not trying to get him to be my husband, okay? That's number one. We were dating, and I was very clear about that. Like, no, I'm not trying to marry you. I don't even know if I want to marry anybody in medicine. Actually, I didn't even want to marry a doctor.
00:25:40
Speaker
But I met him, we were dating. So ladies out there don't like set your eyes on somebody and be like, I'm going to try to make him my husband. Because at least for me, that is not how that worked. So we were just kind of dating. And by the time the first year of residency came along, then at that point, Mr. Player here,
00:26:09
Speaker
I quickly thought in his command. And so I can say that that actually, right? Like the struggles and the strife and the conflicts of relationships actually do, can take a toll on you, right? On your everyday living, right? So it did really take a toll on me, right? In my everyday life, going to, you know, having to wake up, having to think about, you know, what we're arguing about.
00:26:32
Speaker
you know, what's going on in our relationship? Am I happy? Should I stay in this relationship? Those kinds of things. It does actually affect you. Things don't happen in a bubble where you can just put them aside and then think that, you know, life is just going to go on and it's not going to affect you. Now, I can say that it didn't necessarily affect me to the point where I failed anything, like I failed a rotation or whatever.
00:26:56
Speaker
But mental health wise, yeah, I could definitely tell you that there were times where I had to call my mentor and just like hash everything that was going out, going on out with her so that I could just live and feel like I wasn't just in this abyss of sadness. So that really does take a toll on you if you are in a relationship and you're having conflict. While other times when the relationship was good,
00:27:26
Speaker
then that takes a toll, not a toll, but that impacts you also, right? It makes you feel good. It makes you, you know, get your endorphins going. And it makes you feel like, yeah, I can do anything. You know, things are going really great. But it was definitely difficult to navigate residency because you're one in two different specialties.
00:27:47
Speaker
So the understanding of what is going on in surgery is different than the understanding of what's going on in OB. They have their similarities, but they're very different. And number two, you are miles and miles away in Georgia and in New Jersey. So your schedules may also just kind of be off. You're not seeing each other as often as you did before. Because you got to remember, we lived in Kansas City. We were with each other.
00:28:14
Speaker
all the time. And then all of a sudden there was this like break. Like I just didn't see him anymore. He just didn't see me anymore. And so I think that for me was, that was a little difficult to manage sometimes. So I don't know about for you.
00:28:32
Speaker
It was, it didn't affect me. So it didn't affect me the way how it affected her. It affected me very differently, very, very differently. And I'll tell you like men, it affects men differently sometimes. And particularly with me in a surgery residency, I was the first DO resident or DO medical student. I literally felt like, you know, that song war.
00:28:57
Speaker
Who? Good God, y'all. What is it? Like, I just felt like everything. I felt like every day that was me because I like had to represent the osteopathic thing and make sure that like I got into the program and they weren't going to kick me out. Right. Like I just felt like I had to survive. I felt like it was sink or swim. And I think socially, I literally just went into like a silo and I just was like, I got no matter what happens, I got to be at work by five in the morning.
00:29:27
Speaker
And I know I got to leave work probably by, you know, eight o'clock and I got to rinse, wash and repeat and everything else is just going to fall by the wayside. So while I was thriving as a resident, like mentally, I was really struggling because I wasn't talking to my family.
00:29:44
Speaker
as often as I wanted to. I wasn't talking to my girlfriend as much as I wanted to. There was a point, literally, like I remember my freshman or my first year, one of the residents was like, yo, did you shower? Because then I really, I had gone like three days without taking a shower because I was just so like, I was struggling. I was struggling. And then it multiplied as I went into my second year, third year and fourth year where there was a point where I probably was a little bit depressed.
00:30:13
Speaker
you know, but I didn't know because external wise, I'm showing up to cases, my attendance, my attendings didn't know what was going on, but you just see subtle things like I'm not like, from a physical standpoint, I'm not shaving, or you know, my car that I used to take pride in, like the mirror had broken off and like for six months, I was just driving around with the mirror, you know, the passenger.
00:30:36
Speaker
Just wow, neglect. Just be like, yeah. It's real. Whenever she would call me, I'd be snapping. Like, I ain't got time for this. I got to go click. Family would call. There was one time when my mom called me and I was in the operating room and the nurse picked up.
00:30:52
Speaker
And she said, oh, you know, Dr. Darko is operating. And, you know, I guess like she the nurse kept acting kind of like apologetic, like, oh, no, don't worry about it. It's OK. It's OK. And then I said, what's going on? She's like, oh, your mom was just like apologizing for bothering you. She you know, she just was like really feeling bad that she called you. And then it finally to me that I was like snapping at my family, you know, really short of my family, but I didn't realize it. And that's kind of when I realized I was like, man, like I really got to change.
00:31:21
Speaker
How I am but I didn't know how to do that So when I say like for her it affected her in one way it affected me differently Plus being a man like what am I gonna do tell another I just didn't feel comfortable talking to any of my men feelings
00:31:36
Speaker
Talk to them about what? Like, yeah, I'm having a hard time with my girl, or I'm having a hard time getting out, or I just feel like I'm struggling through this. Can y'all help me? I just didn't feel comfortable doing that. And so that's how, for me, I was struggling. It doesn't always show externally. And sometimes men may have a difficult time expressing that, particularly in a male-dominated field, like surgery. Thanks, surgery.
00:32:04
Speaker
no i think you guys highlighted such an important point because i'm actually reading this book called i'm sure you guys know about it like men are from mars women are from venus because men and women are so different and i really didn't realize how different we are in terms of just like how we express ourselves how we move through conflict like you were literally just saying dr knee like men don't really talk about their feelings they just kind of sit
00:32:23
Speaker
process how to get a solution and that's how they solve it versus we women. We like to verbalize what's going on, trying to get people's opinions, solicit advice. So we're very different in that way. So I can only imagine you guys both going through a difficult time in your training and then still having to maintain and foster a relationship. That must have been
00:32:42
Speaker
very very difficult. So I'm just wondering like how did you guys make it through? Like how did you sustain a long distance relationship? Like how did you communicate? How did you what things did you implement to like keep that alive essentially and get married? I don't know that we implemented anything I think.
00:32:59
Speaker
You know, what I think saved us was that we had a really close friendship to begin with. I think that's really what saved us. We liked each other. We actually liked each other. I always hear that. So when I would snap at her or if I wasn't 100% showing up, she still realized the good in me.
00:33:27
Speaker
Right. And vice versa, when we would argue or when I would, you know, whenever we would just go back and forth is like, oh, she's a good woman. She comes from a great family. Her family is amazing. You know, we just were excellent. Like we understood each other really well. So like there was always that baseline of this is a good person. First of all, why would they screw me or wrong me in a certain way on purpose and stuff? You know, so, you know, and the other I think part of that also is recognizing that
00:33:57
Speaker
you know, when you have that baseline of even just liking someone from the beginning and caring about someone from the beginning, that even when you are upset at them, you can still have concern for them. And I think that's really important. That's a key right there.
00:34:15
Speaker
Yeah, because when he would snap or whatever, that wasn't like him. That was not like him. And I was like, all right, something's going on. To the point, I actually called his sister and was like, you might want to go check on your brother because something's going on. His personality is changing.
00:34:39
Speaker
it's to a point where you really have to feel that your concern for that person is more so than the anger that you're feeling in the moment that you're having a conflict with them. So I think that's what saved us was our friendship.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's beautiful. I love that. And you guys made it through successfully. You guys got married and you guys were able to start a family. What are some things or I guess advice you would give in terms of how couples should plan for starting a family while they're also pursuing a medical career?
00:35:13
Speaker
Oh, God. Oh, there's so many ways to do it. Renee Van Zant over here. I know Renee Van Zant. I'm going to let her cook. I'm going to let her cook. No, no. I think there's no... Listen, I don't think there's any one way to do that. I think that when you are ready to introduce children into your life,
00:35:34
Speaker
that as long as the two people who are in it are ready to do it, that they should. Whether that means that you are still in school, whether that means that you are in residency or whether that means that you are done. I think that it really just all depends. I mean, we had a student, she was pregnant how many times? I want to say three times in medical school.
00:36:03
Speaker
Yeah, three times in medical school. I love that. Yeah. Medical schools were changed by, I was like, medical school? OK, that's not easy. Yeah, she had a kid back to back to back to back. Like, she just started her family. But she and her husband were ready to do that, right? Because their situation just said, just dictated that that's what they wanted to do. For me, personally, that is not something that I would have chosen for myself. Because one, I don't even think I was mature enough to be a mother.
00:36:35
Speaker
I'm double thinking it right now, okay? Am I mature enough? But you know, that's not something I would have chosen for myself. But again, I think that's such an individualistic or couples decision.
00:36:51
Speaker
that you really can't give someone just blanket advice on how to start a family because it's not going to look the same for everyone. So what I would say is that
00:37:06
Speaker
If someone is thinking about starting a family, don't necessarily think that there is one way to do it. That's the best advice that I could give to someone. I like that one. Yeah. You can go ahead, Alderman.
00:37:22
Speaker
Bro, you got it, Brody. Appreciate you, King. Appreciate you. So, um, High Sight is 50 is, is, uh, High Sight is 20-20. 20-20. Yeah, I'm about to say 50. There you go. High Sight is 20-20, right? Yeah. Um, looking back, what would you say are some of the, uh, try and word this right, characteristics that you would say would be like,
00:37:45
Speaker
ideal for getting through medicine, like with a partner, like, like, do you see what I'm trying to say? Yeah, yeah. So like ideal characteristics in your partner, now that you're a medical professional. Yeah, I think that that one, for me, again, is one, you have to see how this person moves.
00:38:08
Speaker
You have to see how this person moves. How do they move with you? How do they move with other people? What are the values that they hold? Are they similar to yours? Are they very family-oriented? When I first met Nee, Nee was extremely very open about the fact that he loved his family.
00:38:29
Speaker
Right. And that for me was really important because you got people out here, they'll have like three brothers and sisters and you will never know. You'll be like, you got a sister. Right. Right. You had to start wondering like, you know, what's going on? Like, are you not family oriented?
00:38:47
Speaker
I personally never understood where people get to the point of engagement and haven't met a family member yet, because that happens, especially when you're very far away. Not to say that that's always a red flag, but it might be. For me, it was that we shared a lot of the same values. I think being Haitian, him being Ghanaian, I think there's a lot of overlap.
00:39:17
Speaker
with us culturally also, with the way that we were raised. You know, I was also raised in that you go to school. Go to school when you finish, then you can worry about Boy Fuen.
00:39:31
Speaker
Okay. But I think that for me was a major characteristic that there was this cultural connection and this family love. And the fact that he was just a good person, he was very easy to get along with. He made me laugh a lot. I like to laugh. I'm always smiling. So he always kept a smile on my face. So that for me was really important.
00:39:57
Speaker
I think also there's a sense of the person who you're dating, whether they're on the side of the medicine side or just maybe not in medicine or even both is just being able to dream together and kind of realize that there might be an initial sacrifice that may need to be made. And there may not be a timeline on that, right?
00:40:18
Speaker
And just knowing what is that person's demeanor? Are they going to be the type of person who says, well, it's been five years, Kat checks up, it's my time to party, and all these different things, and why can't we buy this, or why can't we purchase that? There has to be a sense of just having the ability to have the dream together.
00:40:36
Speaker
Right? Like those are really big things that I would give anybody advice on. Make sure that when you're looking at a partner that you see that quality and being able to delay gratification, you know, to a certain point, but also at the same time understanding that their goal, excuse me, your goal, if you are on the medical side or even both, like you guys have to be able to share the goal together and the win together. Her win is my win, my win and definitely her win. Like we got to be each other cheerleader, stuff like that.
00:41:04
Speaker
Those are the things that are very subtle things that I think in this age of social media, you don't really see that glamorized that much. It doesn't mean that people don't use that, but it's so subtle that you don't really pay attention to that anymore. You're kind of focused on the end product of, well, this person is going to be a doctor. They're going to be making six figures and all these different things. Well, yeah, I mean, just because you make six figures and you're an asshole, or you're a jerk, or you're a womanizer, or whatever it may be, doesn't mean that that person is going to be
00:41:33
Speaker
you know, wife or partner or husband material, you know, so you know, doctors can be bad people to yo, you know, so like, let's keep it real. So that's the part that I think that people need to really pay attention to also is the subtle signs that you don't necessarily see like just blah, blah, blah, you know, nice body, or nice car or nice apartment, BBL, BBL. Don't forget the BBL.
00:42:01
Speaker
You know, you mentioned kind of sort of like, like resources, right? Is this person resourceful or are they wasteful? You know, we talked about how we paid off debt. Let me tell you, finances could definitely split you apart. 100%.
00:42:17
Speaker
Yeah, if you're trying to build something, you're trying to dream together, but this person is literally spending away the dream, that's going to be a problem. And one of the things that I really liked about him was he wasn't a spender. I wasn't a spender. The first conversation that we ever had when we met over the phone was for an hour long. And yeah, we had that much to talk about, never even met each other.
00:42:42
Speaker
But one of the things that we talked about during that first conversation was, are we going to get a car? Remember? Yeah, we talked about whether or not we were going to get a car. Shared car or? No, not shared car.
00:42:57
Speaker
So I was like, well, I am going to get a car. I said, but I'm just going to buy like a little second hand, something for like $900. And he was like, well, I'm going to get a car, but I'm going to finance mine. I was like, you don't finance your car. I'm like, we live in all loans. He's like, no, I just want something reliable, XYZ and blah, blah, blah. But he financed it. He did finance it, but he paid that thing every month.
00:43:21
Speaker
You know, he paid it off every month. He wasn't somebody who was like, yo, I'm running out of money. Can you lend me some money? Blah, blah, blah. My dad, my mom and my dad got the loan for the car, right? They got a personal loan for the car. So every time my refund check would come, I would pay six months in advance and get it out of the way. It was literally like even doing that pain me. Like I was, you know, my dad came here on, oh, literally came here on a boat. It took him three weeks to get here. Not a slave ship, y'all.
00:43:51
Speaker
We know the difference. Everybody here is a child or immigrant. Important. Important. We know the difference. Important distinction. Yeah. On his own volition. You know what I'm saying? And so there's always this perspective. We always have help, right? I'm sure when your parents or people tell stories, oh, I came here with 50 cents. It's like, where? You came to New York City with 50 cents. Like, I was waiting to make food. It's unbelievable stories. I don't believe none of those stories.
00:44:19
Speaker
Whatever your background is, I don't believe none of that. Like, oh, two pennies. Get out of here if you're a student. Nah, you ain't you to somebody. You stayed at somebody's crib. But like, no, how do you afford rent? You know what I'm saying? So I knew my dad was able to make a lot of things happen on his own, although I don't know the perspective.
00:44:40
Speaker
So I always took on that personality in my early 20s. I was like, now that I'm in med school and I'm taking all these loans out, I'm not asking y'all for Nathan. Nathan. I'm not asking. You don't want a burden. So I took out these loans to like, okay, I got to get this car and I can't get it myself because I don't have any credit. So I just want to make sure that they always got the money. I didn't want to let them down. I didn't want them to think that I was a deadbeat and I didn't want to miss any payments. So then they would start to worry.
00:45:06
Speaker
right? And that was the number one thing. My mom was a nurse's aide and I just didn't want her like, I just didn't want her worrying about her son in Missouri financially having any issues. So I was always made sure I paid my parents back their money. I just felt really indebted to them. And as a result,
00:45:23
Speaker
just with my money in general, like I was just always very miserly with that. Now looking back, I probably took out too much in terms of loans to make sure that I had money to like, you know, I didn't have to ask for money. I probably should have been, I should have budgeted a little bit better. And I probably should have taken out like thousands less. So that later on in the, you know, four years down the road,
00:45:46
Speaker
you know, the amount that I took out wouldn't be too much. But, you know, hindsight is 20-20. But that was the whole thing with me taking money out and making sure that I paid my parents is I just didn't want them to worry about me. I just wanted them to feel like I got it. And as a result of that, we were really good with money. Same thing with Renee. Renee was... So the other thing too is, you know, she's three years older than me. She was working. Damn, why are you not... Why are you looking at this outfit like that, you know?
00:46:21
Speaker
You look great. I thought you were much younger than him. Don't worry. She's not even near that. I'm just joking.
00:46:36
Speaker
He was ahead of me, so she was working. So she had cash. I was coming right out of school. I didn't have any cash. And I still could have figured out a way to get a car cash. I just didn't know how to do it. I didn't have the resources. Or I didn't think of the resources. So as a result, I financed the car and then used all of these different things to make up and make myself feel better. Oh, if I finance a used car, and this is a used car, by the way. So, you know, finances.
00:47:04
Speaker
I'm financing this pretty old car, it won't break down as much, all of these different things. Meanwhile, the same car that she spent $900 on lasted her all four years and even into residency. It's a residency. $900, well spent.
00:47:18
Speaker
No, see that, like I said, you guys have really kind of stayed on track with your financial goals and really stuck through it together, which I think is the biggest thing. But you've also discussed like some of the things that people don't really understand when you're dating or partnered with somebody in medicine, like there's so many trials, tribulations, like other things that people may not go through if they were not in that same field. So for those who are probably dating somebody that's in medicine or maybe they're partnered with somebody that's in medicine,
00:47:44
Speaker
or maybe they're trying to see what would that look like if you were just saying, Dr. Renee, you didn't even want to be with a doctor, right? I'm sure you had your reasons for that. What would you say are some common misconceptions that people have when it comes to dating or being married to a medical student, a resident, or just anybody that's in their journey of being an attending?
00:48:04
Speaker
I don't know if they are misconceptions or if they just truth. I'll say number one is like, yo, they ain't got money. Like even when they graduate from residency, they ain't got money. You know, this is my social media where this girl was like. Sprinkle, sprinkle.
00:48:22
Speaker
She was talking about how someone was telling her that she should wait for a resident. She should date a resident because as soon as they're done, they're going to make a lot of money. And she was on point. She was like, no, I know they're going to have a lot of loans and debt and all those different things. So come talk to me like five, 10 years down the road. Because we know those first five years after residency, they're going to be crucial. You know what I'm saying? It's going to be tough.
00:48:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think that people are definitely going to be broke. I think that they're going to be busy all the time. I just don't think that those are necessarily misconceptions. I think those are conceptions. I don't know why. Those are things that people should be aware of.
00:49:07
Speaker
they are going to be busy, right? Your traditional practice, your traditional doctor is going to be busy. Now, not everybody does locums like us. So you might hit a little bit of a jackpot with somebody who says, listen, I want to control my own schedule. I want to do something off the beaten path. I'm not just going to join a hospital, join a private practice. I'm going to do something different. I want to do
00:49:31
Speaker
I'm going to do concierge. I'm going to do direct primary care, something that's going to give me my time back. But as far as most doctors, yeah, expect them to be busy all the dang time. Right. Gotcha. So that's something that you really have to look out for. And that was, again, why I didn't want to marry a doctor, because I just felt like, well, if I'm busy and he's busy, then when are we seeing each other? It's a lifestyle. Yeah. It's a lifestyle.
00:49:59
Speaker
So, but yeah, what else? What other misconceptions? Well, I think, so I'll say this, I think that
00:50:10
Speaker
one of the things that you definitely need to think about, especially with young males, is that they don't think they hot it. Okay. Listen, now we're speaking the truth on this podcast. Thank you.
00:50:30
Speaker
Yo, but hey, there's some women that can do the same. I was glad it wasn't me. Hey, yo, y'all wasn't giving us attention in college, right? Y'all wasn't giving us attention in college. We can let y'all have the show. I was talking to Jared and Aldon off camera. I said that you put a black man, you give him a little bit of money. You give him a little bit of money, and he doesn't know how to, oh my God. I'm just talking about Dave Chappelle. Did Dave Chappelle all last year with Rick James?
00:50:54
Speaker
But listen, I think a lot of that has to do with what happens in college and what happens on the way to college. And I think oftentimes when- As you use a cornball. Yeah. And when you go into medical school, then what ends up happening is you feel like the ratios have changed, right? The ratios have changed in your favor.
00:51:17
Speaker
And depending on what you're depending on your background, depending on if you had, if you were savaged, going your way, right? If you got if you got got by a girl, a certain type of girl, it might be time to be like, my turn, you're gonna act a certain way. Or, you know, it just all depends. All that stuff really depends, right? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Class, it was still some hit chicks in there. So
00:51:46
Speaker
Okay, okay. We gotta do that behind you. We gotta do that behind you. Back to loving on one another for 2024. We're going great. We're going great. We love black men in 2024, but we have to say the truth too, right? Like I'm glad, like I said, I'm glad it wasn't me that said, I'm glad Dr. Renee, because I wouldn't have used as much tact when I said it. So, you know, it is.
00:52:13
Speaker
These high-value men. High-value men, that's right. K.S. K.S. Army. Oh my gosh. So we're going to move it back to the money conversation, right? You guys have eliminated 660,000 of combined debt. Say that again? We're going to snap for that one real quick. We're going to snap for that one, right?
00:52:34
Speaker
So please, I need the scrolls, I need the info. We all need to know, honestly. On this platform, the listeners need to know how can married physicians use their dual incomes to get rid of that burdensome debt. I'm telling you. So let's tell y'all start. Let's tell y'all how it started. SNMA. Well, no, but let's tell them how... It's over at SNMA.
00:53:02
Speaker
Well, you tell the story, go tell your story. So you don't remember, right? So it actually started, this actually started with SNMA before we ever started dating. We went to Region 9. Region 9? Although we were Region 2 technically, but we live in Region 9. So we went to Region 9's, what do they call it now? RMEC is what y'all call it. RMEC. It didn't speak of RMEC.
00:53:29
Speaker
Yeah. So we went to our, to region nine's conference and at the conference they had a financial planner. Actually he used to, he used to work for SNMA, this financial planner. I don't know if he still does, but he was telling us, he was presenting and he was telling us how when he graduated from school and his wife graduated from school, she had debt, but he didn't.
00:53:55
Speaker
And so what they did was because she had debt, what they looked at was which one of them makes more money. And they decided that they were going to live off the person's salary who made the least money and throw all of the big money at the person at her debt, basically, so that it could be paid off the fastest. So we went to that conference.
00:54:19
Speaker
Again, before we ever started googly-eyeing each other or anything like that. But that was something that I think that we remembered because when we eventually got married, that's exactly what we did. Wasn't that a Sophie Dave? Oh, that's fine. No, that wasn't a Sophie. No, that was at Downstate. Downstate. Yeah, it was at Downstate. Yeah.
00:54:37
Speaker
And so that's exactly what we did. So that's how we ended up starting, you know, thinking about, well, how should we, how should we approach paying off this debt? How should we even put our money together, right? Because like, in order to do that, you got to put your money together. I want prenup.
00:54:59
Speaker
Did you guys sign a prenup he didn't have anything I was like yo, I was like listen, I think we should consider getting a yes and then the prenup would have said I'm gonna keep my
00:55:17
Speaker
$0 negative, not even zero negative. Okay. That's what it would have been. Use your hand now. But the prenup discussion was brought up and she, she deaded it real quick. And I was like, that makes sense. Just because you guys probably started with debt together, you guys paid it off together. So it wasn't like someone was starting like here and the other person was here. So I see it. I see why you didn't. Yeah, I understand.
00:55:39
Speaker
I mean, I could, I could see if there was some like disparity between us, income disparity, but there really wasn't. And actually I graduated as an attending, you know, before he did. So technically I had more than he did. She also had IRS debt. So at least I had an income to have IRS debt. She wasn't paying, she wasn't paying her debts at IRS.
00:56:03
Speaker
Okay. I don't even know how to file taxes. I'm like, I still send it to my dad to file, but I have no clue how to file. So I could have been you. We graduated with 240k each. And then through residency, we just like after the grace period,
00:56:25
Speaker
you know, the initial deferment period, then we had to pay the piper. And back then, just remember, there's no PSLF out there, right? So like you get your coupon book and they don't care about your income or anything like that. You got to pay this amount. So unfortunately, we ended up forbearing a lot.
00:56:42
Speaker
And what was, and just, I hope you guys know what the difference between forbearance and deferment, right? So forbearance is basically they put up, you don't have to pay, but your interest still capitalizes, capitalizes or capitalized, whatever. Either way, it's exponentially growing still, right? And our debt both went from 240 to 330 by the time we finished our residency. We talking about five years.
00:57:07
Speaker
right so now you know we getting married and we decide to combine our finances and we realize you know we're making a good salary but we still live in paycheck to paycheck which means that we're not budgeting well
00:57:22
Speaker
And we have almost $700,000 of student loan debt. How are we going to handle this? And then we're living like five hours away. We're in the middle of Pennsylvania. And the people there were nice and they're sweet. But that's not the vision that I thought about when I decided to become a doctor. My plan was to come back to Jersey and practice. And I think her, I don't know if your thoughts were to go back. No, I wasn't going back to New York to practice. Crazy New York hospitals.
00:57:48
Speaker
So you look in the rocks, right, white coat, Papi? She's a baby violet, I already know. OK. I had enough of that. Where I was wasn't necessarily what I dreamed I wanted to be, basically. And we figured out that the reason why we were living where we were living in a very rural area was because we didn't have enough money to live in New York or New Jersey. And the biggest issue was the debt. And we just decided that, you know what?
00:58:16
Speaker
We really got to get this debt out of our lane. And the number one reason where we figured it out was on our honeymoon, right? So before we started our job, before we started working at the same job together, we went on a honeymoon. And this is the first time we've taken a vacation in 10 years of dating, and now we're married. And we went to Australia, New Zealand, and Bali, right? We did it for a month, right?
00:58:40
Speaker
He didn't even want to go for you. Like, oh, why we going for a month? Hold on. Hold on. Just let her breathe. Let her breathe. Sometimes you got to just let her breathe for a little bit. We popping in. Let her breathe. She just interrupting. Let her breathe. We finally get to Australia. And we look at each other like this is like day two or day three. And we have an amazing time. And we just are like, by the time we get back, which will be a month, we got to start working. And we said to each other like,
00:59:07
Speaker
When's the next time we're actually going to take a trip like this ever again? That's real. And the number one thing that we said was going to keep us from taking this trip was the student loans and having to work all the time. And there was like this eerie, weird silence afterwards.
00:59:23
Speaker
Ooh, I wish he didn't say that. I wish he didn't say that. Or I wish he had said something that was a little bit more positive. And I think that kind of set us on this path of, you know what? By any means necessary, we got to eliminate this debt. So what we ended up doing is just like that example of what Dr. Rene said when we heard at RMEC in Region IX several years ago. So since she was part-time and I was full-time,
00:59:48
Speaker
We lived off of her salary, right, which was part time. And then we used all of my salary to pay off each other's debt. And then I even did extra work where I did locums and then she did locums. All of that extra money went to the debt. I mean, there were months where consistently, you know, I'm doing extra work and all this stuff. She's doing extra work. We put in 20 stacks.
01:00:11
Speaker
towards our student loans, like, consistently. It feels good, but it was painful. It's like, yo, 20 stacks, that's just like, not even hours. You're just throwing it at this company, and it's like, dang. But also the same time, it was like, yep, yep, right? You should, like, drop a rant, right? Like, no, 20 stacks, and you go, Sally Mae, you know, make it right, and there you go. Right, 100%. 100%.
01:00:37
Speaker
It's a lot of money. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of time apart from each other because we're doing extra work. But it was worth it. But also during that time too, we started having problems with fertility. Awesome. So that was some real stuff there also.
01:00:55
Speaker
Can you guys actually talk, are you comfortable to talk a little bit about? Absolutely. Just because I feel like there could be some listeners who would like, who are going through a similar path and who would want to hear some encouragement or just some advice as to how to get through that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, one of the things, one of the potential consequences of going to school for a very long time is that you could be deferring your fertility to the point of
01:01:21
Speaker
basically becoming infertile or subfertile, right? And so basically making it difficult to either have children or not being able to have children at all. And so I don't know what exactly our issue was, because fertility is kind of like that, where it's like, nah, everything's normal, looks great. Make sure you say that. Everything was normal.
01:01:45
Speaker
You want a cookie? Like, I don't understand. They'd be trying to look at me like, nah. Koomis was good. Koomis was good. To me, everything was all good. Everything was all good. It was Michael Phelps, aye? It was Michael Phelps, aye? It's good for the narrative, yeah. I'm good for my. Let that breathe for a second. Let that breathe. Let that breathe. Let it breathe. Let it breathe. OK, it's breathing. OK.
01:02:12
Speaker
Everybody breath out? Okay. So basically about six months, we tried for about six months, because by this time I was over 35. So you don't really want to wait a whole year. So by the time six months came,
01:02:28
Speaker
I went and I got evaluated. He got evaluated. Everything was fine. We did two and a half years straight of IVF. And I'm talking at this point, we're working permanent jobs. So me part time, him full time kind of shift work. But what I was doing was I would wake up in the morning, go into clinic, be done with clinic at like five, maybe six o'clock, get on the highway because
01:02:58
Speaker
You got to realize we lived in the middle of Pennsylvania. There's no IVF center there. So the closest IVF center that I could go to was actually in Jersey about four hours away. So I would get in my car, drive four hours away, literally injecting myself on the turnpike. On rest stops. Yep, at rest stops.
01:03:18
Speaker
Um, and then, you know, getting back on the road. And so, so that I could go to IVF center in the morning. So I would stay at my in-laws because my in-laws live in, um, in Jersey. So I would stay there, get there at about 10, 11 o'clock at night, wake up about five o'clock. So I could be at the IVF center at six.
01:03:37
Speaker
They take my blood, do my ultrasound. I'd get back on the road four hours again and enough time to get to afternoon clinic and then potentially be on call that night. Now, when you're doing IVF, the problem is that you have a lot of monitoring that needs to be done. And so you could be doing that like three, four times a week.
01:04:01
Speaker
And so, you know, it really took like a big toll on just, I think, my mental health, my strength, my physical, my everything. In our finances. Yeah, in our finances. Because this stuff is not inexpensive at all. And it's like all out of pocket. It's like 25. At the time, it was like 25 racks. Yeah. Not including the medicine. Right. And so that's a pop, like every time you're doing it. So we did what? Probably six?
01:04:31
Speaker
Damn. Maybe six rounds of IVF. This is why we're trying to pay off debt. Yeah, this is all why we're trying to pay off debt. You guys are making good money then. Hold on. I'm ready to do something. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? But also, that's how much we were working. Like, I would work, and then I would do extra work. Right. We were doing locums, too. Oh, right. Right, you mentioned that. Right. OK. So we were doing locums as well. And so, you know, eventually, he was like,
01:04:59
Speaker
Do you think maybe you should probably quit your job?" And I was like, what? This is the one that didn't want me to work part-time, okay? Now you want me to quit my job. And I was like, I don't know. He's like, it just seems like you're going back and forth. You're doing all of this stuff. He's like, you don't think that stress is part of this? And I was like, no. I'm like, women get pregnant in war zones. Like, no, it can't be stress.
01:05:21
Speaker
So one of these days I was making the drive down again and I just thought to myself, I was like, you know, I've spent so much time in my career being intentional about getting to this point so that I could help other women grow their families. And now I can't grow mine. And so I thought about what he said and I came home that day and I was like, I'm going to quit my job.
01:05:44
Speaker
So I put in my three months notice. The only thing that I continued to do, I stopped doing IVF, stopped doing a hormone, stopped doing everything. Only thing I continued to do was massage and acupuncture. And I just rotated those once a week. There's a lot of sage in the house.
01:06:06
Speaker
Really me? I don't burn stage, but whatever. He liked to embellish. But on my last day of work, on my last day of work, I found out I was pregnant. That's insane. Wow. Yeah, I found out I was pregnant. Naturally. And my son is so funny because that morning, that morning I woke up and I said to him, hmm, I had a dream we had a baby boy. He goes, that would be cheaper.
01:06:36
Speaker
Oh, because behind maintenance of women. Okay. I see it. Yeah. No, no, no, no. He meant no IVF. No idea. He was saying that would be cheaper. Like if it just came like that, it would be cheaper. So he tells me, he goes, don't forget to call the IVF clinic. Cause the point of me quitting my job was so that I could do IVF, re-inclear and not have to worry about it. And so the plan was for me to move to Jersey with my in-laws while I was doing this IVF.
01:07:02
Speaker
Well, that same day, like 12 hours later, I find out that I'm actually pregnant. And that's how we had our first one. We did another round in between. Sorry. We did another round in between for my second one. Didn't take.
01:07:20
Speaker
And then spontaneously again, found out I was pregnant a few months later. And it was like... Oh my gosh. We kind of looked at it as a message. We kind of looked at it as a message that maybe this is the energy of the earth telling us to slow down. Slow down. We're not in control because that's a very humbling thing to spend a lot of money on something. You finally get to a point where you're making the money and there's a problem and it takes money to fix that problem and it still don't work.
01:07:49
Speaker
Yeah. So now you like, hmm. Yeah. What's the earth trying to tell us? What else can I do? There it is. Right. So as a man, you're just like, man, man, I don't know what this means, right? So that's when I said, let me just throw it up to her and see, well, maybe like,
01:08:06
Speaker
I have heard people making, getting pregnant their full-time job. So let's try that and stuff. And I don't know what it is because there are people probably listening right now who are going through IVF right now and they're trying to hear that stuff of slowdown and all that stuff. We're just saying that when she slowed down and it worked, that's it. That's all I'm saying. It worked. But I think that the running theme with us is the
01:08:32
Speaker
trusting your partner and trusting that, you know, if they make a suggestion, it's something that you should consider. You know, I talked about the part time and he was like, I really know about that. But eventually, you know, he conceded and was like, wow, it did turn out to be a good idea. Same thing with, you know, me quitting
Trust, Finance, and Freedom Strategies
01:08:52
Speaker
my job. I was like, yeah, because that that's not even something that I had even thought about doing. But, you know, I trusted that it was coming from a good place.
01:09:02
Speaker
And so I ended up taking his advice and look at that, we have our two boys. So I think that that's a really important part of a relationship is making sure that you understand that you should have some trust for your partner in understanding that even if they are bringing up something that you're like, I don't really know about that, that it probably is coming from a good place.
01:09:28
Speaker
The level of discipline you guys have displayed has been quite phenomenal, impeccable, to be honest, between IVF, paying student loans, paying the man, managing your relationship. I wanted to ask you, and you did talk about it a little bit, but what are some of the key financial strategies that married physicians can employ to achieve long-term financial success like you guys have displayed? Right now, I'm sure y'all way more chilling now than y'all were probably 10 years ago. So it's the consistency for me.
01:09:57
Speaker
Yeah. I'd say probably the biggest thing is really focusing on each other.
01:10:06
Speaker
and focusing on memories and like everything. Man, give the steps. You're all up here. No, no. Give the steps. I love the bad stuff. You got to fill your cup. Fill my cup. Tell me what you did. That's what they want to know. Give the people what they want. I'm going to fill your cup now. Yeah, you're going to fill it. I think focusing on each other. I'm on that fuzzy stuff. Sounded like your NPR. That's the lounge. That's the lounge.
01:10:36
Speaker
We accept all forms of answers, it's okay, but I accept whatever answer you want to give. Basically what I'm just trying to say is that money can't buy happiness, right? If you realize that money can't buy happiness, then I think you will start to move a little bit differently with your money and you'll start to realize that money is a tool
01:10:57
Speaker
and it gives you certain things and certain freedoms that, you know, you may not have if you don't have it. And what I mean by that is for me, like the money, like me having the money and me being out of debt meant that I didn't have to go to work all the time. Like I didn't have to see my stupid ass coworkers anymore. I could just do a job.
01:11:18
Speaker
I'm potting now, right? So the reason I'm bringing that up, the reason I'm bringing that up is when you realize like how much like you like when you have debt or when you have a job and you don't like it but you can't quit it because you got to pay your debt off or you don't have savings then you will do anything it takes to make sure that you get it taken care of.
01:11:40
Speaker
So that's where I was with my money. I couldn't stand my co-workers. I couldn't stand my colleagues after a while. Ask her. I couldn't stand it. They listened to this show. They know what I'm talking about. So for me, I was just like, yo, I gotta save my cash. And I gotta make sure that like, yeah, me wanting an Audi S5 at the time has got to be put on hold.
01:12:02
Speaker
You got a Corolla now. I got a Toyota Corolla, but you know what though? I can go anywhere I want to go. Anytime when I'm working as a locum stock right now, if they need me to work on Christmas, I'm like, I can't do it. If they want me to work Thanksgiving, I'd be like, I don't have to do it. If they say that, yo,
01:12:17
Speaker
We don't want you to come back. It's like, well, I already got like two years of emergency savings. Somebody else will come knocking, right? So that's the reason why I started at that beginning, which is like, yo, you got to realize what the money is for, right? Because a lot of people come on this or a lot of people, like particularly from our background will come and they get money and then they start spending money on things that they didn't have when they were growing up. And it's like, yeah.
01:12:38
Speaker
I got it. You got the sneakers that you want. You got the car that you want. You got the plane for eyes that you got. You got the apartment that you got. But you can't say no to somebody who's literally giving you a hard time at work. What kind of flex is that? So yeah, you come into work at Nike's, but someone's telling you when to show up at work. In your Nike's. In your Nike's. When you don't really call it. And you're a doctor. And they tell you this.
01:13:01
Speaker
That's how I am like so you flexing because you got the nice car you got the nice sneakers you got the nice apartment you paid for you know the partners all these different things but you can't say no to the person that's really driving you nuts and it's like why spend all this time and money
01:13:15
Speaker
When you can't even say no, right? So there's a book that's out there called like the $85 million slave or something like that. I figured what it is, but it's a book that was written like 10 years ago. And it was talking about basically NFL players and NBA players. They make so much money. Yet they can't say no to their coaches. They can't say no to their owners. It's like, but you make all this money and you still can't say no.
01:13:37
Speaker
but like how much like you still owned basically and for me like those small little things that we're talking about that makes a big difference when you change your mindset just a little bit and be like yeah like for me like
01:13:51
Speaker
The experience is just as important as just the material thing. And for me, it's like, look, I'd rather drive a Toyota Corolla and be able to say, look, if someone pisses me off at work, I could be out. Peace. And I said my peace. So that's me potting. That's him potting. That's it. Drop the mic. That's it. He out. He out. I like that one right there. I like that one right there. That was a smooth outfit. I love that.
01:14:15
Speaker
There's mad billionaires that ride around with Corollas. You would never know. They pullin' up to the bar wherever you at and they chillin'. Like, it's like, yo, I got, I'm stacked up. The world ain't gotta know, but I'm listenin' to it. For the people listening, you know how many orthopedic surgeons out there, you know how many neurosurgeons out there talk mad smack, like will treat their staff like crap.
01:14:35
Speaker
or the medical students like crap, and then the CEO of a hospital or a chief medical officer will be like, nah, neurosurgery, you got to take call, XYZ hours, blah, blah, blah. Okay, clock the tea. They don't say, you know, and I think a lot of people do have to really say those things and be like, look, you can make as much money as you want, but if you can't, if you don't have the ability or the guts or the gall or the savings to say no, what are we talking about here?
01:15:01
Speaker
Well, we talked about it. That's real freedom. It's the freedom that Muddy allows. That's how I feel about it. So that's why I talk freely like that. The time and the freedom. I could talk freely because I'm like, that's how I feel. And that's why, for me, I took my debt off the page. I don't got to deal with that. So if someone gets on my nerves, I'm like, yo, I'm out. I'm out. I have a good life. Right. Drop your mic.
01:15:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, certainly in that mindset. She go, Claire Huxtable, like, here she go. Here we go. You didn't even know who Claire Huxtable is anymore. You know what we do? We do. We do. Yeah, we know it. We know it. We have a book of culture and history. What he trying to say, he would watch the picture.
01:15:44
Speaker
No, I think that mindset is actually really important first, right? So before you start stacking all kinds of bread, you got to know exactly what you're stacking it for. Now, part of that also is the practicality, like exactly what are you doing in order to be able to stack that, right? So now that you've got that mindset of, I want to be in a position where I can say no to whomever, like right now, I work one weekend per month.
01:16:08
Speaker
That's it. I work one weekend per month and that's it. So I could be home with my kids because I like being home with my kids. And I like being able to say no that I can't work any other time if I don't want to work. But what we did as a couple was we made a pact. And the first pact or the pact that we made was that we would not create any more debt.
01:16:34
Speaker
Don't come with your credit cards. Don't come with, I want a new car. Don't come with whatever else that you're going to come with. Do not create any more debt. The debt that we started with that $662,000, that's the debt that we have. We actually had a little bit more. That was the student loan debt. The IRS debt. Oh, Lord.
01:17:06
Speaker
Whatever at least we didn't have a house in Georgia
01:17:13
Speaker
That was that, too. Yeah, that was big debt. We had close to like a milli. Yeah. Close to like a milli in debt. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, total. It didn't look like a student loan. In three years? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
01:17:30
Speaker
but the student loans was definitely in three years. That was the first thing is that we made a pact. No more debt, that's it. What we have is what we have. The second thing we did was we actually went through and looked at our bank account, our bank statements to see what are we spending our money on because we were not budgeting. Each had a card, we had a joint account. He's swiping, I'm swiping. I don't know when he's swiping.
01:17:59
Speaker
I don't know how much he's taking out. He don't know how much I'm taking out. He could be swiping for $50 a day and he could be swiping for $75 a day. So, you know, that wasn't working. So we went through and we were like, okay, this is not good. Eventually we decided we're going to make a budget. And in that budget, we also decided first things first, when the money comes in, the money to the loans goes out.
01:18:23
Speaker
No ifs, ands, or buts. That's the first thing that has to, it just has to leave the bank account. It has to. Because if it sits for more than a day, we're going to start swiping. One of the things that we also did was in order to decrease the swipe was to basically do cash.
01:18:42
Speaker
So we gave ourselves an allowance. We gave ourselves an allowance. For us, it was like $50 a month. You want to go buy lunch at work? You buy lunch, you got $50. Go buy lunch at work. And that was it. And the only time we swiped is actually when we were together. If we went to the supermarket and we went to buy stuff. So that way we knew what was in the bank account. We knew according to our budget, you know, we have $200 to buy food.
01:19:10
Speaker
That's what, you know, so we would be in the supermarket, remember? Calculating up, okay, how much that milk? No, that milk too. It was $200 a month that we spent on groceries. We stopped going out to eat. Yeah, $200. It's just me and her, that was it. What year was this? 2014. That's a good question. That's pre-inflation. You can do that now.
01:19:40
Speaker
You can't do that now. Look at you fallin' out your chair. Right? You can't buy too many honey buns with that. Y'all got a whole lot of ramen though. But what exactly are you cooking is the question? Like, are you cooking? How many of y'all ladies come in with that, y'all? So, one, we went to Aldi. Okay? Oh, that's right. We went to Aldi. That's where we shopped. Every now and then we go to Walmart. Every now and then we go to Sam's Club. Yeah.
01:20:06
Speaker
Um, but you know, we, we were very like very strategic with where we went, what we, what we bought. And you know, we weren't like, well, I guess we were rice and beans. People look at rice and beans. I'm like, that's what we eat. I mean, I'm Asian. I give me some rice and beans every day.
01:20:24
Speaker
So, you know, whatever. So we did that. What else did we do? Oh, we stopped going out to eat as much. And if we did want to go out, like we still had like date night and stuff, but we would just put that in the budget, right? Like, so people look at a budget and they're like, oh, you know, you just, you just bring your money on a diet. And it's like, my money's not on a diet, but I'll tell you this. If I make a certain amount of money, I want to know where the hell it's going.
01:20:48
Speaker
Right. Because swiping my money away and then you ask me, well, where are all the money going? I'm like, I don't know. Like that to me is a problem. I worked too damn hard putting up with too many stupid people to then get a paycheck and then not know where the money went.
01:21:05
Speaker
The other thing too that we didn't mention too is the people, y'all gotta listen, particularly the residents out there and the attendings who got these disability insurances, whole life insurances, so you may be sold.
01:21:22
Speaker
you know, an insurance plan or an insurance program that either you don't need or is hella expensive because back in 2013, we found out that we were paying more money to our disability insurance and to our whole life insurance than we were to our student loans.
01:21:39
Speaker
Yep. Oh, right. And like, real, like real is real, like outside of the whole life, like, you know, if we didn't die, like the disability insurance is gone. Right, right. So it wasn't making it wasn't doing anything for us to spend money on this disability insurance that was really expensive.
01:21:55
Speaker
So one of the biggest things we did is we found way cheaper disability insurance. So that decreased how much we were spending. And we cashed out. We got rid of our whole life insurance because at the time, that whole life plan didn't make sense for us. So for the residents who are out there listening, for the attendings who are out there listening, you may want to make sure you look under the hood
01:22:17
Speaker
on those plans that you were sold when you were in residency or maybe as an attending and you really didn't know much about it, it just sounded good. Make sure you look under the hood and make sure that the plan that you got is the right plan for you and make sure you can find something that if it's not cheaper, at least something that's more efficient for you all.
01:22:33
Speaker
because that takes a lot of money. That's like, depending on who you are and what your specialty is and how much you're spending, you could be spending close to like some people $2,500, $5,000 a month into disability insurance and like whole life insurance. That's money that can go towards loans. That's money I can go towards, you know, for your kids, you know, a college fund. That's money that can, you know, pay for, you know, an emergency fund.
01:22:57
Speaker
Yeah, and I just want to be clear. We're not saying not to get life insurance and not to get disability insurance. What we're saying is don't get something that is so expensive that it's actually breaking you and taking away from other things that you actually need. Right.
01:23:14
Speaker
right. Oh, this episode guys, like I feel like we went this is the best the best episode I think to date that I've done in terms of because you guys really dropped all of the gems like from love to finances to
01:23:31
Speaker
IVF. I just feel like our listeners are really going to appreciate just everything you guys have spoken about.
Commitment to Community and Education
01:23:36
Speaker
We are so, so grateful you came today to share all of this. Any last words of advice that you want to share with our listeners who may be dating, engaged, or just married to somebody in the medical profession? First of all, I want to say this. I want to say that both me and I were officers in the SNMA.
01:24:01
Speaker
So I'm a chair emeritus. He's a lowly RD.
01:24:12
Speaker
But we did, nope. I'll let you breathe on that. Let her breathe. Let her breathe. I got the highest honor in the SNMA. OK, period. I won that joint. Period. OK. I use RD2. But one of the things that we do want to say is that, for those of you out there who may or may not know me, really involved in the SNMA,
01:24:36
Speaker
I'm always very excited to meet the new students, especially students on the board. And I just continue, you know, over the last, what, 20 years or so, to be very involved in the SNMA. And this year for the 60th, we are commemorating the 60th anniversary of the SNMA, that Dr. Ni and I, because we were so fiscally responsible, we are donating $10,000 to the SNMA this year.
01:25:06
Speaker
So we just wanted to make that announcement and make that very clear. But to also say that, you know, these-
01:25:22
Speaker
Payable in 2024. But we wanted to say that part of what we do also is we like to basically give back. One of the things we didn't talk about really quickly is medical missions. We do medical missions work in Ghana.
01:25:40
Speaker
And we're able to do that, again, partly because of the way that we set up our finances, because of the way that we set up our lifestyle. And paying off the debt has a lot to do with that. We're able to work the way that we work and be able to give to SNMA in the way that we do because of the way that we have set ourselves up. And so if you are out there as a student thinking about, oh, I want to give back, I want to give back,
01:26:08
Speaker
You got to be intentional. You got to be intentional about how you're setting up your life. Don't just think, oh, I'll just be a doctor. And then when I'm a doctor, I'll just give back. It doesn't work like that. Just as intentional as you're being about getting into medical school, getting through medical school, going through residency, you have to be very intentional about how you're going to give back because it's not just going to fall into your lap one of these days. But I just wanted to put that out there.
01:26:39
Speaker
We love that. Dr. Nia, anything? Yeah, I would just say, listen, I think we need more of these real conversations. And I really want to say thank you very much, The Lounge, for having us on this show, allowing us to be very comfortable and let you know our truth. Because this is how we really talk on our podcast, on Docs Outside the Box. So we want the folks who are listening to continue to listen to The Lounge. This is a special podcast. It's much needed. And I said in the previous podcast, y'all need to do more episodes.
01:27:09
Speaker
You guys have the talent to be the best podcast out there. But for those who are listening. Even better than Dax outside the box. Yeah, y'all can do it. He's faking. If y'all see his face, he's faking.
01:27:24
Speaker
The competitor in me, the Michael Jordan in me. But on the real, I want people to listen who are listening to be like, look, you know, if you want to listen to docs outside the box, you know, this is how we talk every day on the show. Sometimes things may go over their head or sometimes people may feel like, you know, like, I'm not ready for that. But trust me, in five years, those conversations that we're having, you may have that conversation.
01:27:49
Speaker
So this year, you know, with docs outside the box, we got this renewed interest to make sure that we are covering all the things that medical students are going through, residents are going through, and even young attendings are going through. And that's everything from not just money, but also mindset. We're talking about finances. We're talking about relationships. We're talking about pop culture on it. And this is how we talk. We talk it and we keep it real. I'm the pre-med strategist, baby.
01:28:14
Speaker
She makes herself really nice. And I give you the truth. I give you the 100% truth about how I feel about certain things. And that's how we talk. So thank you again, Dolores. Love it. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you, guys. Thank you, guys. So first and foremost, thank you, guys, for pulling up.
01:28:31
Speaker
kicking it with us in the lounge. Second, on behalf of the entire SNMA, I think we can thank you guys for that $10,000 that you pledged. That is no small fact, and I'm sure that's going to go a long way.
01:28:46
Speaker
And third of all, I just want to say, ladies, if you're on the lookout for a good sign in your man, get you a man that's going to make sure that your microphone is right in front of your mouth when you speak so that the master is catching every piece of your voice.
01:29:04
Speaker
Make sure that you got your shine. I was like, okay, he's attentive. She had to move now one day. She's in the center of attention and that microphone been floating around her like, man, that's around his son. I see you.
01:29:30
Speaker
That's our show everybody. Thank you, Dr. Nae. Thank you, Dr. Nae for joining us in this discussion. Listeners, we hope that this episode can help you make thoughtful decisions when pursuing your future spouse and be sure to follow both podcasts. SNMA presents The Lounge and Docs Outside the Box on all streaming platforms and we will catch you guys in the next episode.
01:30:18
Speaker
Take care and be blessed.