speaker-0: Monday comes early. This chapter closes. A new door opens. This is the second shift. You don't have to have a purpose, but you do. Your purpose and my purpose and their purpose and anybody else's purpose will be what it is. It will be what makes you feel good, what's within the scope of your capability, if you have something. Write a book. Read it read music, learn an instrument. My ukulele rejected me. It just said, you ain't got no musical talent, you ain't doing this. Okay? But but if you don't, if you leave your primary vocation and you don't have an ad vocation to come up to or pick up, you will not be surviving in a full capacity. Either you'll become debilitated or you'll become dead.
speaker-1: Today on the Second Shift, I'm joined by Dr. Marvin Wayne, an emergency physician and EMS pioneer whose remarkable career has spanned more than 50 years. Even in his 80s, he's still teaching, inventing, traveling, and finding new ways to make a difference. In our conversation, Marv shares the lessons he's learned from a lifetime of taking risks, reinventing himself, and refusing to sit still. If you've ever wondered what it takes to stay engaged, relevant, and fulfilled through life's many transitions, I think you'll find a lot of wisdom in this conversation. Let's get started.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Second Chip Podcast. If you're new to our podcast, we focus on discussing how to successfully navigate career and life transitions, especially when coming from a high impact first career. It's not easy. There's lots of identity and behavior and psychological relationships, financial challenges to understand and deal with. I'm your host, Dr. Brian Jepson. I am a recently retired emergency medicine physician. Who has myself transitioned into a full-time second career as a CFP financial planner at Targeted Well Solutions? We're gonna have to excuse my co-host, Aaron Millage, today. He's in the process of moving his family to a new home and just had a little too much on his plate, given that. But we look forward to our next episode with him. Today I'm excited to introduce my guest, Dr. Marvin Wayne, longtime leader in the field of emergency medicine and pre-hospital medicine, who reportedly fairly recently retired. After a 50 plus year career. So I'll we'll see what that word retirement actually looks like for him. My suspicion after reading his bio is that he's still just as busy as ever. ⁓ Anyway, I'm excited to learn from his experience and hear more about what he's doing now. So he literally has an 18-page CV full of accomplishments, awards, and publications. Started out as a surgeon, was a major in the US Army, served in Vietnam, received a bronze star for his service. After the war, he saw the light and transitioned to emergency medicine in Washington, state of Washington. Became the director and developed the EMS program in Whatcombe County. I may not be saying that right, but hopefully close enough. And served in the role for 50 years, only stepping down in 2025. He's been given numerous awards, including Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College of Emergency Physicians. He's also a teacher, a lecturer, a researcher, an author of many medical publications, but also several cookbooks. A business owner and now a great grandpa. So Marv, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
speaker-0: Wow. I don't know who that guy is you were talking about, but it sounds pretty good. You know, it's ⁓ you accumulate things, but the bigger question is, as Norma McSween used to say, what did I do today that makes a difference in the lives of people?
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a great way to that's a great way to think about it because we can we can always be looking back or we can be looking forward. And and I think part of ⁓ part of this whole idea about with our podcast and our transitions is what's next. You know, it's it's it's using what we've learned from our experience, but then it's what what can how can we continue to use that moving forward? So really good point. So let me ask let me ask you this. Let's start it out start out this way. so you've had an incredible career over five decades. When you look back on it, how would you describe your life and your career in a few sentences?
speaker-0: That's no, that is probably the most difficult question you could ask. I I would I would say it as following. Would I do everything I did again? Absolutely not. Because if I said I would, I'm a fool. Or I have done nothing wrong, which all is wrong. ⁓ I, for the most part, have always tried to remain happy. I've always tried to be nice.
speaker-1: Starting out with the day.
speaker-0: I've also been very good at running off at the mouth, you know, inconceivably rapid, as my wife has to go, shut up, you know, stop. but I've also tried to make a difference. ⁓ not in the world's lives, although I think some of the things I've done as I look back probably haven't made a major difference. But in my life and the life of the people around me. Have I always done the right thing? Wrong. No, of course not. Have I always done what I thought was the right thing? Yeah, most of the time. Would I do everything I did again? Yeah, maybe, but would I do it smarter? Might be the better way to put it. You know? And I can we can run down the list however you want to run down the list, from surgery, trauma surgery, emergency medicine, cookies, making cookies and going from riches to rags, that's another story. ⁓ writing cookbooks. ⁓ you know, r driving race cars. You know, it there's probably nothing I haven't tried. How many of those things I've done beyond mediocrity? Limited. I am the ultimate and the epitome of mediocrity, but I keep trying.
speaker-1: I think that's a great lesson, you know. I mean i and I I look at my the things that I've done the same way. have they all worked out like I wanted it to? No, but I have the any of them been failures, I would say no, because you know, I've learned something from each of those. And you know, and again, if you go back if you go back and do things differently, hopefully you've if you've learned the lesson from them, you do better.
speaker-0: Well, some of them have been expensive. Let me put it to you that way. Yeah, life's lessons sometimes do not come free.
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely right. All right, well let's let's start out early in your life. So you you started out as a surgeon, went to Vietnam. So let me ask you how your experience as a surgeon in Vietnam shaped the rest of your life for your career.
speaker-0: ⁓ let me take one step back. when I I come from the an inner city background in Detroit. My father died young. A lot of issues came up, and I I was in Ann Arbor, I kind of skipped my senior year, so I don't have an undergraduate degree, so whatever. Went to medical school, that's also a completely different stor another story. And I finished and I I I won a fellowship to spend a little bit of time in England. Did that. I came back to at the time there was no such thing as emergency medicine. The only people that staffed emergency departments were surgeons with the sheikhs or cardiologists with Presbycusia. They couldn't hear much out of those scopes. and so I I did my residency in Denver ⁓ in a variety of ways, and I was in the Barry plan, which let me hopefully miss the war completely, ⁓ except they decided not to end it as quickly as I'd hoped, and I went off to Vietnam. ⁓ I was ⁓ a very good surgeon and less than mediocre ⁓ officer. Okay. ⁓ I'm afraid I shared
speaker-1: Yeah, I s I suspect I know why that is.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, well I know why that is too. ⁓ and I have a real problem with authority figures that are not that are not what I feel are really competent. However, my colleagues were anything but incompetent. They were amazing. I worked with great people, had great experience, got there in a transition period in seventy-one, from a busy war to not so much, spent a lot of time at the children's hospital in the over in the provincial hospital in Binois. Very, very primitive. I worked with an Australian surgical team and I learned what I didn't know what it was called, but I learned what PTSD was when nineteen of twenty-one children died in my arms in a week. That we could have saved most of ⁓ had I had a facility that could save them. But that's a lesson I'll never forget, because making a difference is making a difference. You know, the little bit we did, maybe, but what about all that we could have done? And that just something you have to face in life. Sometimes you can't do all the things you'd like to do. So now we come back, we finish Vietnam, we go to Colorado Springs, and then I decided I needed another year of surgery. I went to a fellowship year, went to Seattle, went to the wrong either the wrong place or at the wrong time or the wrong me. I went to a semi private facility there. and d from day one did not get along real well. You know, ⁓ here I am, city county residency, a war, ⁓ second year in the military, and I'm a fellow in surgery, and I had to beg permission to teach them how to do a hemorrhoid, which they didn't know to do. So another story. Did not get along. Made the decision about halfway through that I didn't know what I really wanted to do. Okay. and Yeah, when I was in Colorado Springs, and this again, what are the points that make changes in your life? The things you experience. So I came out of the out of out of Vietnam, went to Colorado Springs, ⁓ worked at Fort Carson Army Medical Center, but you know, there was a lot of downtime. So I used to moonlight at the the the there were three hospitals then, I think now it's one or two in Colorado Springs in the emergency department. So ⁓ I'd gotten the bite or the taste of emergency medicine. ⁓ and when I went to to Seattle and was having my not happy time, ⁓ I began to think, what am I going to do next? So you talk about what affects what you do next. So I fell back on the idea that I liked the emergency medicine aspect. Okay. Especially in those days when the you know there weren't a lot of residents where I was.
speaker-1: Come on.
speaker-0: And you've got to do a lot of a lot of the procedural things. So I said, okay, I'm gonna finish my year at Virginia Mason and then I'm gonna take a year, year off to think. So my year off to think is fifty-three later, fifty-three years later. And I I keep thinking. and I came out to Bellingham where there was a hospital war between two hospitals, and EMS was a private service that created more death than than than save. And Guy got in the mix of everything and I got thrown into the fire and kept staying above the flame and went on to get involved with so many other things. So this was the first major shift in my career path.
speaker-1: So as you were sitting there up in Washington, realizing that maybe you hadn't made the right career move, ⁓ as a surgeon. ⁓ What was going through your mind and how did you make how did you make the leap of faith to do something completely different?
speaker-0: Well, number one, I liked being a surgeon. I just didn't like the people I worked with. You know, patients were great. The rest of the people s not so much. ⁓ I think part of it was where I was was an egocentric facility. you know, a hierarchical, egocentric ⁓ place where I wasn't used to those kinds of people. I was more used to people that worked together, ⁓ played together, try to save lives together. And tried to be only merely making a difference. That wasn't exactly what I was dealing with. In any case, I needed to figure out what I was going to do. I didn't have money. In those days, ⁓ as a fellow in surgery, I think I made eight or ten thousand dollars a year. So that was before the the revolution came and the money came. So I I heard I may actually had lunch with one of the reps from a drug company, and he said, Hey, you know, if you're leaving this place, they're looking for ER docs. In Bellingham. And I said, Huh, where's Bellingham? Which is by the way 110 miles north up on the Canadian border, the area. And he said, No, really. They're they're really trying to upstaff there and they need people. Why don't you take a look? Well, not knowing any better about the war of the hospitals, ⁓ I went up to Bellingham. So now here I am. I've transitioned from ⁓ a being a nobody to being at least a surgeon, to a war, to the secondary aspect of the war being my time in Colorado Springs, which was what it was is what it was, to a fellowship year in Seattle, to not being happy with them and them not being happy with me. I this was very much mutual. and then looking where do I go next? And I don't know where to go. I I need a job. I liked working in the EDs in Colorado Springs. So I ended up going to Bellingham. I was going for one year. That's it, one year. So we moved up to Bellingham and ⁓ ended up buying a little house, which with expansion is the house I'm still in. and ⁓ the started working with the this is where really you begin to go, what do I really want to do? Is this really what I want to do? At the same time, EMS was non existent. There was a private service, it was Really substandard. And I think I'm being complimentary when I said they were substandard. And a group of the community had gotten together to try to create a new environment, a new rule, a new sheriff in town, a new process. And unfortunately, somebody stuck a tin badge on my chest. And I got to help be the sheriff. ⁓ and we evolved from there. And we began the evolution of a city-county MS system. And then the group I'm working with, I came to work for. gets fired. Okay? So now I'm sitting out in this little pinnacle about to fall off the mountain, and now what? And some of the people stayed and some of the people left. I'm already here in town, man. I'm I'm not gonna you know, where am I gonna go? So I stayed. The one hospital bought the other one. On what happens when your your hospital's bought out and you're hanging there and you go from an independent group To working for a corporate group. Think about that for a minute.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's no that's a in in you know, that's a transition so many people are facing right now because it's becoming more corporate just overall.
speaker-0: And and and with that the hospital itself began to transition from an independent part of a corporate group to a component, a greater component, and the corporate leadership completely changed. So nothing I would be proud of has happened in that respect. But I think EMS is something we all in our community can be very proud.
speaker-1: Yeah, so let me ask you more about that. So how do you so you you you're you've kind of landed in this unstable environment, unstable work environment with all these different changes, wars between hospitals, and you're there fifty plus years later. So obviously you did something right, ⁓ or wrong, I guess depends on the accuracy.
speaker-0: I was gonna say you gotta be careful how we ask that question.
speaker-1: But how did how did you set yourself apart and end up becoming a leader and what did you learn through, you know, being able to become a leader in the EMS system that maybe helped help your longevity of your career?
speaker-0: Well, I think first of all, there is no such thing as as a great leader. There is a smart person, which I I'm not always, who surrounds themselves with really good people. Okay. So people that really care and people that are willing to take that next step up or willing to be convinced to take the next step up. So I was really lucky. When we started and the private service went out of business, Billing and Fire, which is the biggest provider. Had sent nine people to EMT training. So we didn't have zero. Some of the county fire districts had trained a few people as EMTs. So when the private goes out of business at eleven o'clock on Thursday morning, and thinking, well, they now have the county over the barrel and they're going to beg them to come back and give them whatever they want, ⁓ the county goes, No, screw you guys, ⁓ have a really nice day. ⁓ and don't trip over the ⁓ the grease tubcaps that you've left on the floor. ⁓ and so we stood up. We borrowed a military ambulance. So we had to either have a retire retired military or reservist or an active military person driving it. That was our first ambulance. We borrowed another one from one of the fire districts and we went into the EMS business within one hour. ⁓ and we started taking calls. We now have an EMS agency for this whole county funded by a levy with multi-fire districts somewhat incorporated. I would say that to a great degree, with a unified 911 dispatch center, with the latest technology, we're looking at AI technology, ⁓ and the very, very well-trained EMS providers. We have our own certified paramedic training program, and the product of the process. Is at a very high level. And something we can be proud of. We look at our our cares data, you know, we have a go-home survival neurologic intact of around 14 to 15 percent, which is excellent. ⁓ we do well with trauma and all the other integrated things. And ⁓ we've had really people willing to step up and do difficult things at difficult times.
speaker-1: I I think that's the great part of emergency medicine in particular. You know, and th there are other specialties like this, but probably not to the same degree of of needing to be a team. You know, as a as a physician, you're a team leader, but but it you you have to rely on everybody else around you or you can't really do your job. ⁓ so let me ask you about this. So you've you've done a variety of different things, things we haven't even talked about yet. So y you know, you've been a lecturer, you've we talked about your s your
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Armory career, a teacher, researcher. You mentioned your race race car driving and your your cookies. I'd like to hear more about that. But before you do, let me just ask, so you it sounds like you've reinvented yourself in different ways many times. And what drives you to do that?
speaker-0: ⁓ survival. Okay. I mean I well, so all right. So here we are way back in nineteen seventy-four. I've come to work at St. Luke's Hospital, which was a community hospital, ⁓ and all of a sudden the contract for the ER is gone. So now what do I do? One one guy said, if you don't stay with us, the guy's gonna get pushed out and we're gonna get our way back in. You won't have a job. And the other guy said If you do stay with them, you're not going to have a job. So the first thing I do is make a very difficult and very quick decision. Turned out to be the right one. There have been many options or issues like that as time has gone on. ⁓ I was not I was not comfortable just going working ER, going home, and we started a family. I have two grown daughters, I have grandchildren, I have a grandson-in-law. A granddaughter-in-law and a great grandson. Most of my family lives in Israel. So it makes it a long way to go see the kids. but I do a little teaching over there too. So I got into the the process in interest in education. ⁓ why I'm not sure. ⁓ and what really motivated me, I maybe was ego. It's kind of like my I've been invited to speak in the ⁓ in Abu Dhabi in September. Yeah. And my wife says, What's in it for you? I said, ego. I said, I'm sure it's my ego. I mean, that's quite a invitation. I mean, and speaking Israel, I do a lot, but and I'm invited to speak at a major conference there. But that's something that ⁓ it's a known quantity for me. Or being invited to to address ⁓ a group anywhere or whatever. One, I look at it from two reasons. One, maybe what I say and do will motivate others to do something positive. Okay. I spent all morning on Zoom meetings about some new product concepts that I'm working on. One's a new airway, which we published the Reark in Science, which is not a bad throwaway. and that we think will be the AED of airways soon. Which by the way, I I hold the the distinction and unknown distinction of having the first person ever used a portable AED out of a hospital. In nineteen seventy four. Easy. Another story. But the point is, I've always been willing to take chances. Cause I don't know anybody who on their deathbed said to me, You know, one thing I miss in life, I wish I'd have gone to more meetings and I wish I'd taken fewer chances. So
speaker-1: Did you as you took those chances, did you have did you feel fearful about what might happen or or how how or was it like, you know, what just we'll just kind of go with the flow and see see where it ends up?
speaker-0: ⁓ anxiety is a good is both a good and a bad thing. I I know how to have anxiety. I'm I'm you know, I'm really good at it. I'm a s I have a you know, it's like my friend says, I have a specialty in something, and it's whatever. ⁓ I can be anxious. You know, I w my wife I make my wife is very she's unlike me. She's no chances, she doesn't jump off tall buildings, although we did go riding a balloon over Cappadocia in Turkey recently, and that took some convincing, but after she did it, she went was fantastic. ⁓ so she likes living not on the edge, and I'm always up here on the edge. But my philosophy is, you know, what's the worst thing I can do? I can fall off. And I've fallen off enough times and gotten back up. But if I never get on that edge, there'll never be a difference. Whether it's a difference in my life, it's a difference in your life, if a difference in the public's lives, or whatever. I and I like a lot of what I do, I really like. being looking at what's not today but what's tomorrow. The whole idea that AED that was brought to me as something that was impossible, and that we spent ⁓ five years trying to get it published and only got it published in an obscure journal medical instrumentation, because every major journal thought we were doing is crazy. You know, nobody but doctors or nurses or paramedists can use the defibrillator. Well our original paper said someday they'll hang on the wall next to the fire extinguisher. ⁓ go down your street, go down your buildings, where are they hanging? Now on the wall next to the fire extinguisher. It took 10 years to get that concept. What I'm doing is I'm transitioning my career from working ER, from doing EMS, although I really miss the people, ⁓ to looking at creation of new ideas and playing. ⁓ I I know many, I have many sports that I can hurt myself to.
speaker-1: Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that because already what you what you've told us about ⁓ does not sound like what most people probably envision envision as a retirement, right? So so so you're you're you're lecturing, you're inventing, you're still doing all kinds of stuff. So so is there i is that retirement for you or ⁓ is do you see ever see a point where you're done working, working?
speaker-0: Probably when I'm in a bed, ⁓ you know, in traction or something. ⁓ so let me let me turn it around and ask it differently. Are you retired?
speaker-1: I am not retired. I'm retired from from medicine, clinical medicine.
speaker-0: Okay. And you're doing and you've now become you've transitioned to become a financial planner, right? Correct. And if I give you my money, you won't piss it away, you'll make me rich, right? ⁓ Okay. All right. You you you get the point I'm getting to. You found something that gives you purpose and can be positive both for you and others, correct? Yeah. What if you were what if you had just retired from emergency medicine? What would you be doing? Sitting on the couch and reading books?
speaker-1: That's the goal. Yeah, well that's why I I I I I knew that that would not work out well because because like like you I kinda have that same personality where I always have to be doing something.
speaker-0: Yeah. So and and and so turning it the question around, the if if you're going to retire with no with the thought that you're gonna sit around on a rocking chair and reading books or whatever, that's not saying that that's bad, but that's your primary activity, and you're not exercising and you're not doing these other things, you're gonna be dead in a year. It's like the predictability of people to break hips, elderly people. Who break hips and remain inactive die. My wife broke her hip a little over well, two and a half, almost two and a half years ago. And we made her get moving, man. Once she got that fixed, and she did, she went for a three-mile walk this morning with her friends. She's very active. She goes a little slower than she used to. ⁓ but she's has a very purposeful life where she's doing lots of things. Well I don't tell you what your purpose has to be. And I say this to anybody else who's going to listen to this, and I have no anybody of anyone to listen to this. You don't have to have a purpose, but you do. Your purpose and my purpose and their purpose and anybody else's purpose will be what it is. It will be what makes you feel good, what's in the scope of your capability, if you're limited, if you can't, you know, if you can't get around the way you used to, find mobility assistance. If you don't want to go wing foiling like I'm going to do next week in Hawaii, like an idiot, you know, ⁓ and take and risk life and limb, like I do, ⁓ then that isn't what you should do. But if you if you have something, write a book, read it, read music, learn an instrument, my ukulele rejected me. It just said, you ain't got no musical talent, you ain't doing this. Okay? I tried singing.
speaker-1: Just started busting string strings on purpose.
speaker-0: Yeah, no, it just wouldn't make noise. It would anyway. But find find ⁓ something that you can get a passion into. Not not and it's not gonna be what I do. It's not gonna be what you do. It's not being a financial maybe it is being a financial planner. Maybe you should go out make movies. Maybe you go out and make music. But but if you don't if you leave your primary advocation, a vocation, and you don't have an advocation to come up to or pick up, you will not be surviving in a full capacity. Either you'll become debilitated or you'll have you'll become dead. And I don't mean to sound that not appropriate be inappropriate. It's a fact.
speaker-1: just gonna say I I I definitely agree with that sentiment. You know, I mean and it's not just the physical health, even though that's obviously important. I I think it's it's the mental deterioration that that continues to lead to that. And and and I like what you said where we don't have to save the world. You know, that's not ever that the everybody's purpose doesn't have to be grand, but it is something we we have to we have to retire into something. I you know I I I really think that that's important is that
speaker-0: D T.
speaker-1: You plan ahead, you kind of figure out what makes you happy, what brings meaning and joy in your life, and then you figure out how to how to adapt that if you need to.
speaker-0: to well let me give you the option. I'll give you a really world world personal example. I was hoping that when I left EMS that I would have another year of just being there. You know, and also I was working on a 15-year project in the intensive care unit. I had an IRB, but the ineptitude of the hospital administration didn't even know that. And when I and the I had a great relationship with the intensive care people. And when I was going in to do my continued work, one day they decided, ⁓ I was breaking all these HIPAA rules, and they came out and kicked me out of the hospital and said, Don't come back. Then they went and looked at the IRB and said, all right, don't come back, and we just closed your IRB. That'd been only it'd only been a a fifteen year IRB. The point I make is, you know, those kinds of things are gonna hit you in the middle of this if you wanna do continue to do something. And you may have to be willing To again readjust. When I left EMS, I wanted it to be really the turtle. It ended, I ended up getting forced into being the hare. I don't have any, so I might as well somewhere. and and that that was really hard, and it still is to some degree. But sometimes, you know, it may not be what you want, but it may be what you get. And it may be then you have to refocus. What you refocus with what you get. You know, whether it's teaching other places, other people in other ways, or whether it's finding new avenues. Now I'm looking at I'm doing a lot of unique product development ideas. I'm doing some work with the NFL and the National Association of Sports Trainers on what we call it's a group called the Wise Five. What do you do in the first five minutes after a player goes down on a field? What do you do in the next five minutes? What you do in the third five minutes? Part of our group is the two docs that took care of Damar Hamlin, you know, the football player that had his cardiac arrest on national television, probably the most famous cardiac arrest in history, you know. And we're looking at what do we do? How do we how do we make this so that nowhere USA, little teeny high school, can do what we do at a major stadium or at the NFL or at one of the major Big Ten. SEC or whatever schools. So and those are the kind of things, you know, that gives me purpose. The back point on that is it doesn't have to be what I I find rewarding it or you find rewarding. It has to be what that individual finds rewarding. But if you don't have anything, you better find it. I still get the creaks. from all my activities or or the wood rot. But you really need to have have a mixed purpose. And it doesn't have to be, if you have physical limitation, it doesn't have to be going to the gym and doing an hour, hour and a half on the treadmill. It might be just walking around the block a few times. And and I think if the any words of wisdom, it would be find the purpose that you want to do. And if you can't do it, go and learn.
speaker-1: Now that's really great advice and and I think that the the pearls from that also are, you know, take what take what you've learned from your previous career and apply it. You know, there's so many different ways that you can apply it and and to find those things that are are ⁓ that again add meaning and joy to your life and to kind of expand that and then there's no reason for that to quit. That's the that's the whole point of of living a long and and ⁓ fulfilled life. So let me ask you this. You mentioned something about how you and your wife have very different risk capacity in in a variety of in a variety of things. So have you have you noticed that as you've been more available at home or ⁓ that you know your career has has changed that that's been a challenge or or are you just so used to each other that that it's it's been a smooth sailing?
speaker-0: Yeah, sure, huh? Smooth sailing? Are you kidding me? It's a bet of nails at times. ⁓ first of all, I I I travel a lot. I still do. You know. I'm you know, I'm the guy that when he gets on the plane, the pilot says, ⁓ you here again? ⁓ so you know, that's how much I say. Yeah. Well, you know, yeah. In another in another life I would or did. ⁓ so the point being is if we had to spend all our time together
speaker-1: Saved your seat right next to him.
speaker-0: It wouldn't work for us. My ADHD and her calmness have have a controlled conflict. It's controlled because one, I travel, and two, we've kind of learned to nutri each other in a way. She's active, but she's not schizophrenically active. She's picked up a new act. She's playing mahjong now. That's her a big passion for her. For me, she said I'd make the table vibrate with my just by being there. Yeah. So I'm not allowed to join. But but we each have our direction. We do things together. We just got back from a ⁓ a trip to Turkey. And we went it was an organized trip. We had a great time. We saw lots of things. We we managed to make everything work. But so that kind of thing we can do together. Organized, structured process.
speaker-1: Just getting there.
speaker-0: Yeah. On a day-to-day basis, she's you know, she loves the garden, the yard. And I as far as I'm concerned, I'm not that's not my speciality. Maybe I could create an interest. That's that's the other thing though. Sometimes you have to learn to create an interest. Could I learn to be a gardener? Well, maybe when I run out of all these other things I'm doing, maybe I will. Maybe I'll get really good at pulling weeds. Or not. ⁓
speaker-1: Did did you find that you had to that that was a purposeful planning that that requir or did you guys just kinda fall into your patterns just because of of your long history together? Or or or did you sit down and say, Okay, on Tuesdays, I'm not playing mahjong, I'm gonna I'm playing pickleball. ⁓ you know, I in enjoy
speaker-0: Her or me, no, I play the pickleball. She plays the mahjong, yeah. We ⁓ I'm the one that's into the more active activity, although there are parts of me that are beginning to have revolution about that. But back to we are not we would not be together for 53 years if I was always home. Now there have been times she really wishes I had been home more. There's no question about that. But we're neither of them, we she really likes her own time. She likes her time to sit with a cat, cats, you know, and want to lay on her stomach, her chest, and and just enjoy the moment in passing. At the same time, she does like to read. She likes she has book groups, she has friends that she both helps and their relationships help. And I have my, you know, kind of that. But we also do social things together. So it's controlling the mix. That you know, that's a one other thing. ⁓ how long have you been married? Or how many times have you been married? I'm not asking you to say you.
speaker-1: married I've been I've been married once and we're approaching ⁓ boy I should know this immediately like thirty something years now. Thirty two, thirty three, something like that. Yeah. It's a good start.
speaker-0: Yeah. So the point being though, there are people that dis are determined or are destined to spend lots and lots of time together. And there are other people that spend are better off if they spend a controlled amount of time together. I don't mean you control that you schedule. I mean control each of you have your own independent activities. She's really not interested in going wing foiling. And I'm not sure my body's gonna be interested in a lot longer, but we'll see. we have a place in Maui, she doesn't like to go there. I I go there. So in other words, there's a balance here that works for us, you know. ⁓ we'll see where that goes as as as the years go on, and my own physical limitations, along with hers, are what they are, then that's the other thing. So if I would say this to the whoever's listening, whether you're a man or woman in emergency medicine. And you're coming to the end of that career. If you have a partner spouse, okay, whatever, if you have kids, you need to kind of think through where are they going to fit into your more available, if that's what it is, life. You know, or is it going to be like, Dad, I've seen you fifteen times this week because dad has nothing better to do? Or dad, it's great to see you today because you're going to babysit the kids. Yeah, it it's gonna have to be adapted to who and what you are. But don't try to which with the mistake we often make is to create a forced environment. It must be that it's Tuesday, so I have to do this. It must be Tuesday and I have to do what works for everybody and what makes everybody happy, including me. Okay. ⁓ so
speaker-1: What what would you say has surprised you the most about growing older this stage in life after after your long career?
speaker-0: ⁓ the body parts that don't wanna work like I did when I was thirty. ⁓
speaker-1: Did you expect when you were thirty and looking forward to when you were eighty that you'd be able to do what you're doing?
speaker-0: No, when I was 30, I was trying to survive between war, residency, and a career. So that let's not use 30. But as I got older, ⁓ I'm very lucky in a lot of ways. ⁓ I still can do a lot of what I want to do sports-wise, although my biggest problem is that I have a tendinopathy here. We just try to blast the calcium apart, and it's been plus minus. And I'm persistent. ⁓ those are not necessarily the kind of things that most people at my age would do. But those are things that I want to do. I would tell you, you know, I know when I was younger, I didn't think I'd be this old. Now that I'm this old, I'd sure like to have the body of the younger person. I don't know if I want the mind. My mind seems to still work. I'm still doing interesting things. Yeah. But I'm still teaching and hey, the bullshit didn't go away. It just got older bullshit. You know? Yeah, that capacity. But but it is really important that we we structure what we do within the scope of what we can do. Yeah. I'm pushing the envelope. But not everybody wants to push that envelope because sometimes, you know, what happens is the envelope tears and you attach to it. So, you know, again, not everybody can at eighty-three can be doing playing pickleball and wing foil or drive I I I can't drive race car anymore because Well disqu disqualified me. But even then, ⁓ I I was slowing down the last couple years I was driving. No more, I just come to that corner and I'm going, can I still really do it flat out like I used to? And I would chicken up. Well, you know, that's not the way you want to do it. And there are other people that can. So the corners of life that you come to. You may not be able to take them as fast as you used to, but you've got to figure out if can you still take them? And if you can't, what other corners can you take?
speaker-1: Yeah, that's a great analogy. So d so tell me tell us more about your your cookie business.
speaker-0: God. ⁓ all right. So when I was in the army, when I was in Vietnam, so I I kind of got into I'd been a baker in in I worked my way through school baking, selling vacuum cleaners, all kinds of crazy jobs. But what I I used to do is go over to the mess tent at night, and I would bake with our Vietnamese bakers, and I'd make cookies and you know, some of it was pre-made. We put it together and fancy it up. And the colonel found out. He used to give me orders for batches of cookies, you know. No, he didn't quite like that, but it was close. So I really carried that over to my civilian world. And when I was doing my fellowship in Seattle, ⁓ I met a a guy who owned a kind of a health food bakery. And I used to bake with him and I got the nickname Dr. Cookie. So I came back up to Billingham and I had a buddy in Seattle who was a cardiologist. We were sitting down one day and we're thinking about looking at famous, amos, all these things. We said, hell, I got a better cookie than that. Worst thing I ever said. so we got into it. ⁓ we finagled our way in the Pacific Southwest Airlines, which got merged into Western, which got merged into ⁓ Delta. ⁓ and you know, we went from, ⁓ we'll order a couple hundred and then they were ordering twenty thousand cookies and we're ice cream scooping them and sealing them, packaging them. At the height in nineteen ninety-one, we were making thirteen million cookies.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: We had a ten thousand square foot facility in Botham, Washington, and we're back shipping on United, Delta, Northwest, and a little piece of Alaska. ⁓ well, that's the good news. The bad news is you know what the sigmoid curve is in business? When your business is going up, w before you get to here, when you're way over here, is when you ought to be doing something to get out of the business. Sell, merge, repurpose, whatever. We did. We waited till we were down. and the first Gulf War hit and we lost sixty-five percent of our business. So we didn't know how to respond. We didn't have that kind of management. You know, instead of buying machines, we should have bought management. Yeah. And we ended up on a death spiral. ⁓ and in the means, I wrote a couple of cookbooks and one of them was the last one called the New Doctor Cookie Cookbook, which sold about thirty-five thousand copies and That's really good. Unfortunately, we always pissed away that money in the cookie company. It's all right. It was it was a unique experience. But again, some people think colonoscopies are unique experiences too. And they're both kind of a pain in the ass.
speaker-1: I I I think it's great though that in the midst of your busy career you're also y you know, creating, developing, running a a side company. I I think it's
speaker-0: Well that that was ⁓ again, words of wisdom. When you think you got something really good going, look around and say where with whom or how or what do I do next? Because I don't unless you've got a step ahead, you know, the old story how to become a millionaire and start with ten. ⁓ you know, we lost ⁓ a lot of money when that went down the road. But it was it was a crazy experience, you know. Yeah. T V time and all that stuff. Yeah.
speaker-1: So it said on one of the news stories that I read about you that you mentioned that your father had a saying. It says, If we make waves, we'll hit rocks. If we never make waves, we'll never change the shape of the world. So how has that guided your life?
speaker-0: So, how's it got in my life? Well, first of all, he was a factory worker who died of 47 of a cardiac arrest, had the arrest in the ER, got his chest cut open in those days. One of the things that guided was the fact that even though I was going into surgery, I was always thinking in my mind, what could we have done better? And of course, that was before defibrillators and everything else was occurring. It also got in my life in saying, I want at the end of the day, I know what I want to be. Be a doctor. At the end of the day, though, I don't know how I want to be there or where I want to go from there. And it's always made me not worrying about hitting the rocks. Trust me. if you look at my current recent interactions with the local hospital, there were a lot of we're a lot of rocks or rock heads. ⁓ and I didn't I didn't change the shape of the world. I had tried. But I hit the I hit the interminable rock. And all it's done is made me refocus what I'm doing to help others not have to face that. So if you're not willing to accept what you to try to do what you can, and I don't know if you say accept what you can't, I don't think that's the right word. Understand what you can't, and figure out how to refocus it to what you can. Maybe that's the better way to put it.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, I d I think that's great. All right. So ⁓ Marv, we're winding down on our time, but at the end, ⁓ what what we do is something called the reckoning. So these are not and if you if you were a windfoiler and and you know you live on the edge, this will this will fit in really well with you. So basically it's just it's just three short questions. Okay. ⁓ you know, first thing that comes to your head.
speaker-0: Good.
speaker-1: ⁓ doesn't need to be a long answer, but but just ⁓ just a kind of retrospective looking at your career at your life. So here here's the first one. You ready? All right, here it is. When you look back on your life, which accomplishment are you most proud of? And is it the same accomplishment that others would choose for you?
speaker-0: Well, the answer first answer is my family. ⁓ 'cause that to me, what they've done and the opportunities they've taken to do wonderful things is very important. The second one was being either very smart or very stupid in helping to develop the AED. I think that's the one thing I've done in my life that saved more lives than anything else. Yeah. And that's a hidden story. The guys that developed it, and I worked to expand that. Never got any recognition. I don't care about me, but they all died with the rejection letters from the England Journal and all the other major medical journals. Never really understanding the impact. Today, when I see that on the wall, that to me is a great achievement.
speaker-1: Yeah, awesome. And it is. It's it's it's so impactful. We we ⁓ one of our other guests was Steven Anderson, who I I'm sure you
speaker-0: Of course, very well.
speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. But you know, ⁓ similar things with Narcan and all the other things that was done with it with with that. So ⁓ those little those ideas that are often since they're different and ⁓ people, you know, you have to get out of the dogma that exists. ⁓ sometimes it takes a long time to get those out, but but you know, now looking back on it, how obvious it was, right? So yeah, thank you. All right, number two.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: You're now in your eighties. So what matters now that you thought was important in your forties, but it really wasn't?
speaker-0: Money. Yeah. ⁓ I have you know, we are rich of purpose. We probably have a lot more money than I ever conceived was even possible. And you know, other than buying my toys, which my wife restricts me a little bit, mostly from self preservation, ⁓ there's not a lot, you know, I I give you an anal a silly analogy somebody once said. He said when I was forty, I wanted a BMW. He said, now that I'm 80, I just would like to BM. I know that sounds very stupid and silly, but our purpose is, you know, I drive a 2000 Subaru, 2013 Subaru out back with not much mileage. It does what I need it to do. You know, I've driven all kinds of crazy cars through the years. And, you know, I I thought I needed to be rich, but I think rich is rich of purpose, is and not necessarily just rich of money. And we're happy to be able to share what we have with others with purpose.
speaker-1: I I think that that's fantastic. And and the more, you know, honestly, the more people that I interview on this podcast and the more consistent that answer is. You know, the older you get, the less money is important. You know, you wanna have enough, you wanna be sure that you planned well so that you it you it gives you the opportunities to do the things that you wanna do. But if money is your goal, you're missing out, right? That
speaker-0: Yeah, no aí.
speaker-1: Yeah. When when you're eighties you're looking back, th it it's really not that meaningful.
speaker-0: Well, I'm convinced I'm gonna live to be a hundred and ten and I'll need all that money, but that's probably not gonna happen.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. All right. How about this one? You spent your life helping people survive emergencies. What have you learned about how to truly live?
speaker-0: You said it, the last word. Live. ⁓ don't I mean I I push each day for me. I care each day for everyone or others. Okay? I have to, you know, the greatest fear I'm still processing is not going to the hospital in the ICU, not stopping by to say hello to all my friends in the ED, and not going to the EMS ⁓ system. To review charts. And I have to live for me while I allow others to live for themselves and promote and help. You know, I'm very proud of some of the things we've done for the community. We have a wonderful community here. It's growing a little faster than I would like. But I'll tell you something. We just our symphony celebrating 50 years in Bellingham, Washington. This is the Bellingham Symphony. This is this big of a community. Our guest conductor, our guest artist for our 50th anniversary was Yo Yo Ma. Yeah. And we helped bring, you know, we helped fund the bring it. But the point being, when the story of what we're doing in this community was told to him, he said, I'll come. Not we're not Seattle, we're not Vancouver, we're not New York, we're not Chicago. But there was meaning to the what we were trying to do, which had meaning for him. And I guess that's my bottom line. Whatever I mean, I don't know. But it has to be respectful of you and it has to be encouraging of others.
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. I I think you can never stop making an impact on those around you, right?
speaker-0: Hope that if you
speaker-1: We I mean that's the goal at least. And ⁓ you know, that impact's gonna change over time. But if you're to leave a legacy, it's not it's not gonna be about, you know, even necessarily awards or
speaker-0: There are your
speaker-1: career or anything like that. It's it's how people remember you based on the relationships that you've created and and what you've done to inspire.
speaker-0: And how you remember yourself. I think it's really important. You know, to thine own self be true. Well, you know, I I do a lot of stuff to piss people off. I'm really that's my specialty. If you really want to know my specialty is pissing people off. But there comes a time where that's yeah, there comes a time when that's needed. There's also comes a time when that's just who I am.
speaker-1: Well, thank you so much for for the conversation and for sharing your story and your wisdom. I you know, I I think it is gonna impact a lot of people and I appreciate your willingness to do it. So ⁓
speaker-0: Well Steve.
speaker-1: Yeah, well, you know, it's good to have friends. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, no, seriously. ⁓ thank you. Thank you for allowing me to do this. And again, if it helps one person, it was more than worth it. If it helps two people, that's double the opportunity.
speaker-1: Yeah, I I that's why I really enjoy this doing this podcast, honestly, is is is being able to you know, 'cause I do think that having conversations like this with people who've been there and been through a variety of things throughout their career are gonna help people who are listening because a lot of people, you know, whether it's fear of change or or you know, not understanding what their impact could be or not knowing what their purpose could be, or not knowing how to interact with their with their spouse after they retire or whatever it is, you know, if we can make that one little piece of difference to to help help improve their lives and it's
speaker-0: Well, thank you.
speaker-1: All right. ⁓ thanks to Marvin for this great conversation. Now I'm gonna do a quick recap of some of the words that he he gave us from what he's learned over his long and remarkable career. You know, the thing that immediately stands out to me is that in spite of being in his early 80s, he keeps developing himself. He has new ideas in medicine that he's working on, whether it's an invention for a new airway or a care protocol to take care of football player football player injuries on the field. And Even though he's no longer working clinically, he's still contributing as a physician, which I think is awesome. I also loved what he said repeatedly about purpose and how important it is for you to find yours. And that purpose is unique to you. It doesn't have to be grand, but it should be meaningful. Finding purpose will literally extend your life. Not to mention make the years you have left way more worth living. He also taught us the importance, importance of just adapting. So your career and your life and your retirement will never look exactly like you expected them to when you started out. And that's not a failure. The failure is not learning from your mistakes, not taking risks when new opportunities present themselves, and not pivoting or adapting when you need to based on whatever limitation that may come. I love that he's continued to do that, even in his in his eighties. I think he's a great example. I also enjoyed the discussion about his relationship with his wife. Sounds like there are very different personalities with different goals, passions, and speed, but they've made it work for 53 years. I think they've made it work by championing each other's strengths, but also respecting each other's differences. And there's probably no time to test that principle as much as retirement when you have more choices about what that relationship's going to look like. So finally, like most of my guests have reported, money is a great tool to help provide the life of purpose that you envision, but it is only that, a tool, not the goal. The further you get along in life, the easier that is to see. All right, and with that, we'll close another great episode of the Second Chip Podcast. Thanks again to Marvin Wayne for his time and his insights. If you like what we are creating here, please remember to subscribe to the podcast and to tell your friends about us. And remember that on our website at Second Shift, that's two nd shift podcast.com, you can download a copy of our second chip blueprint. which will walk you through five important conversations to have with your significant other or even just yourself as you approach your own next major shift in life. We'll see you next time. Take care.
speaker-0: The work you did mattered. And you're not done. Welcome to What's Next. Thank you for listening to the Second Shift. If this conversation landed with you, please download our free guide called the Second Shift Blueprint. Five questions you and your partner should discuss before any major transition. Get it at SecondShift Podcast.com. That's number two. To ndshiftpodcast.com. And if you're approaching a transition and want to talk through the financial strategy, we offer a complimentary 30-minute second shift audit. Details are at second shiftpodcast.com/slash audit. Join us next week for another great episode. And remember, your life and identity doesn't end with retirement. It's just entering its second shift. The content shared in this podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered personal financial advice. You should always consult with a financial professional to determine what is appropriate for your individual circumstances.
speaker-1: Today on the Second Shift, I'm joined by Dr. Marvin Wayne, an emergency physician and EMS pioneer whose remarkable career has spanned more than 50 years. Even in his 80s, he's still teaching, inventing, traveling, and finding new ways to make a difference. In our conversation, Marv shares the lessons he's learned from a lifetime of taking risks, reinventing himself, and refusing to sit still. If you've ever wondered what it takes to stay engaged, relevant, and fulfilled through life's many transitions, I think you'll find a lot of wisdom in this conversation. Let's get started.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Hello again, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Second Chip Podcast. If you're new to our podcast, we focus on discussing how to successfully navigate career and life transitions, especially when coming from a high impact first career. It's not easy. There's lots of identity and behavior and psychological relationships, financial challenges to understand and deal with. I'm your host, Dr. Brian Jepson. I am a recently retired emergency medicine physician. Who has myself transitioned into a full-time second career as a CFP financial planner at Targeted Well Solutions? We're gonna have to excuse my co-host, Aaron Millage, today. He's in the process of moving his family to a new home and just had a little too much on his plate, given that. But we look forward to our next episode with him. Today I'm excited to introduce my guest, Dr. Marvin Wayne, longtime leader in the field of emergency medicine and pre-hospital medicine, who reportedly fairly recently retired. After a 50 plus year career. So I'll we'll see what that word retirement actually looks like for him. My suspicion after reading his bio is that he's still just as busy as ever. ⁓ Anyway, I'm excited to learn from his experience and hear more about what he's doing now. So he literally has an 18-page CV full of accomplishments, awards, and publications. Started out as a surgeon, was a major in the US Army, served in Vietnam, received a bronze star for his service. After the war, he saw the light and transitioned to emergency medicine in Washington, state of Washington. Became the director and developed the EMS program in Whatcombe County. I may not be saying that right, but hopefully close enough. And served in the role for 50 years, only stepping down in 2025. He's been given numerous awards, including Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College of Emergency Physicians. He's also a teacher, a lecturer, a researcher, an author of many medical publications, but also several cookbooks. A business owner and now a great grandpa. So Marv, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
speaker-0: Wow. I don't know who that guy is you were talking about, but it sounds pretty good. You know, it's ⁓ you accumulate things, but the bigger question is, as Norma McSween used to say, what did I do today that makes a difference in the lives of people?
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a great way to that's a great way to think about it because we can we can always be looking back or we can be looking forward. And and I think part of ⁓ part of this whole idea about with our podcast and our transitions is what's next. You know, it's it's it's using what we've learned from our experience, but then it's what what can how can we continue to use that moving forward? So really good point. So let me ask let me ask you this. Let's start it out start out this way. so you've had an incredible career over five decades. When you look back on it, how would you describe your life and your career in a few sentences?
speaker-0: That's no, that is probably the most difficult question you could ask. I I would I would say it as following. Would I do everything I did again? Absolutely not. Because if I said I would, I'm a fool. Or I have done nothing wrong, which all is wrong. ⁓ I, for the most part, have always tried to remain happy. I've always tried to be nice.
speaker-1: Starting out with the day.
speaker-0: I've also been very good at running off at the mouth, you know, inconceivably rapid, as my wife has to go, shut up, you know, stop. but I've also tried to make a difference. ⁓ not in the world's lives, although I think some of the things I've done as I look back probably haven't made a major difference. But in my life and the life of the people around me. Have I always done the right thing? Wrong. No, of course not. Have I always done what I thought was the right thing? Yeah, most of the time. Would I do everything I did again? Yeah, maybe, but would I do it smarter? Might be the better way to put it. You know? And I can we can run down the list however you want to run down the list, from surgery, trauma surgery, emergency medicine, cookies, making cookies and going from riches to rags, that's another story. ⁓ writing cookbooks. ⁓ you know, r driving race cars. You know, it there's probably nothing I haven't tried. How many of those things I've done beyond mediocrity? Limited. I am the ultimate and the epitome of mediocrity, but I keep trying.
speaker-1: I think that's a great lesson, you know. I mean i and I I look at my the things that I've done the same way. have they all worked out like I wanted it to? No, but I have the any of them been failures, I would say no, because you know, I've learned something from each of those. And you know, and again, if you go back if you go back and do things differently, hopefully you've if you've learned the lesson from them, you do better.
speaker-0: Well, some of them have been expensive. Let me put it to you that way. Yeah, life's lessons sometimes do not come free.
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely right. All right, well let's let's start out early in your life. So you you started out as a surgeon, went to Vietnam. So let me ask you how your experience as a surgeon in Vietnam shaped the rest of your life for your career.
speaker-0: ⁓ let me take one step back. when I I come from the an inner city background in Detroit. My father died young. A lot of issues came up, and I I was in Ann Arbor, I kind of skipped my senior year, so I don't have an undergraduate degree, so whatever. Went to medical school, that's also a completely different stor another story. And I finished and I I I won a fellowship to spend a little bit of time in England. Did that. I came back to at the time there was no such thing as emergency medicine. The only people that staffed emergency departments were surgeons with the sheikhs or cardiologists with Presbycusia. They couldn't hear much out of those scopes. and so I I did my residency in Denver ⁓ in a variety of ways, and I was in the Barry plan, which let me hopefully miss the war completely, ⁓ except they decided not to end it as quickly as I'd hoped, and I went off to Vietnam. ⁓ I was ⁓ a very good surgeon and less than mediocre ⁓ officer. Okay. ⁓ I'm afraid I shared
speaker-1: Yeah, I s I suspect I know why that is.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, well I know why that is too. ⁓ and I have a real problem with authority figures that are not that are not what I feel are really competent. However, my colleagues were anything but incompetent. They were amazing. I worked with great people, had great experience, got there in a transition period in seventy-one, from a busy war to not so much, spent a lot of time at the children's hospital in the over in the provincial hospital in Binois. Very, very primitive. I worked with an Australian surgical team and I learned what I didn't know what it was called, but I learned what PTSD was when nineteen of twenty-one children died in my arms in a week. That we could have saved most of ⁓ had I had a facility that could save them. But that's a lesson I'll never forget, because making a difference is making a difference. You know, the little bit we did, maybe, but what about all that we could have done? And that just something you have to face in life. Sometimes you can't do all the things you'd like to do. So now we come back, we finish Vietnam, we go to Colorado Springs, and then I decided I needed another year of surgery. I went to a fellowship year, went to Seattle, went to the wrong either the wrong place or at the wrong time or the wrong me. I went to a semi private facility there. and d from day one did not get along real well. You know, ⁓ here I am, city county residency, a war, ⁓ second year in the military, and I'm a fellow in surgery, and I had to beg permission to teach them how to do a hemorrhoid, which they didn't know to do. So another story. Did not get along. Made the decision about halfway through that I didn't know what I really wanted to do. Okay. and Yeah, when I was in Colorado Springs, and this again, what are the points that make changes in your life? The things you experience. So I came out of the out of out of Vietnam, went to Colorado Springs, ⁓ worked at Fort Carson Army Medical Center, but you know, there was a lot of downtime. So I used to moonlight at the the the there were three hospitals then, I think now it's one or two in Colorado Springs in the emergency department. So ⁓ I'd gotten the bite or the taste of emergency medicine. ⁓ and when I went to to Seattle and was having my not happy time, ⁓ I began to think, what am I going to do next? So you talk about what affects what you do next. So I fell back on the idea that I liked the emergency medicine aspect. Okay. Especially in those days when the you know there weren't a lot of residents where I was.
speaker-1: Come on.
speaker-0: And you've got to do a lot of a lot of the procedural things. So I said, okay, I'm gonna finish my year at Virginia Mason and then I'm gonna take a year, year off to think. So my year off to think is fifty-three later, fifty-three years later. And I I keep thinking. and I came out to Bellingham where there was a hospital war between two hospitals, and EMS was a private service that created more death than than than save. And Guy got in the mix of everything and I got thrown into the fire and kept staying above the flame and went on to get involved with so many other things. So this was the first major shift in my career path.
speaker-1: So as you were sitting there up in Washington, realizing that maybe you hadn't made the right career move, ⁓ as a surgeon. ⁓ What was going through your mind and how did you make how did you make the leap of faith to do something completely different?
speaker-0: Well, number one, I liked being a surgeon. I just didn't like the people I worked with. You know, patients were great. The rest of the people s not so much. ⁓ I think part of it was where I was was an egocentric facility. you know, a hierarchical, egocentric ⁓ place where I wasn't used to those kinds of people. I was more used to people that worked together, ⁓ played together, try to save lives together. And tried to be only merely making a difference. That wasn't exactly what I was dealing with. In any case, I needed to figure out what I was going to do. I didn't have money. In those days, ⁓ as a fellow in surgery, I think I made eight or ten thousand dollars a year. So that was before the the revolution came and the money came. So I I heard I may actually had lunch with one of the reps from a drug company, and he said, Hey, you know, if you're leaving this place, they're looking for ER docs. In Bellingham. And I said, Huh, where's Bellingham? Which is by the way 110 miles north up on the Canadian border, the area. And he said, No, really. They're they're really trying to upstaff there and they need people. Why don't you take a look? Well, not knowing any better about the war of the hospitals, ⁓ I went up to Bellingham. So now here I am. I've transitioned from ⁓ a being a nobody to being at least a surgeon, to a war, to the secondary aspect of the war being my time in Colorado Springs, which was what it was is what it was, to a fellowship year in Seattle, to not being happy with them and them not being happy with me. I this was very much mutual. and then looking where do I go next? And I don't know where to go. I I need a job. I liked working in the EDs in Colorado Springs. So I ended up going to Bellingham. I was going for one year. That's it, one year. So we moved up to Bellingham and ⁓ ended up buying a little house, which with expansion is the house I'm still in. and ⁓ the started working with the this is where really you begin to go, what do I really want to do? Is this really what I want to do? At the same time, EMS was non existent. There was a private service, it was Really substandard. And I think I'm being complimentary when I said they were substandard. And a group of the community had gotten together to try to create a new environment, a new rule, a new sheriff in town, a new process. And unfortunately, somebody stuck a tin badge on my chest. And I got to help be the sheriff. ⁓ and we evolved from there. And we began the evolution of a city-county MS system. And then the group I'm working with, I came to work for. gets fired. Okay? So now I'm sitting out in this little pinnacle about to fall off the mountain, and now what? And some of the people stayed and some of the people left. I'm already here in town, man. I'm I'm not gonna you know, where am I gonna go? So I stayed. The one hospital bought the other one. On what happens when your your hospital's bought out and you're hanging there and you go from an independent group To working for a corporate group. Think about that for a minute.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's no that's a in in you know, that's a transition so many people are facing right now because it's becoming more corporate just overall.
speaker-0: And and and with that the hospital itself began to transition from an independent part of a corporate group to a component, a greater component, and the corporate leadership completely changed. So nothing I would be proud of has happened in that respect. But I think EMS is something we all in our community can be very proud.
speaker-1: Yeah, so let me ask you more about that. So how do you so you you you're you've kind of landed in this unstable environment, unstable work environment with all these different changes, wars between hospitals, and you're there fifty plus years later. So obviously you did something right, ⁓ or wrong, I guess depends on the accuracy.
speaker-0: I was gonna say you gotta be careful how we ask that question.
speaker-1: But how did how did you set yourself apart and end up becoming a leader and what did you learn through, you know, being able to become a leader in the EMS system that maybe helped help your longevity of your career?
speaker-0: Well, I think first of all, there is no such thing as as a great leader. There is a smart person, which I I'm not always, who surrounds themselves with really good people. Okay. So people that really care and people that are willing to take that next step up or willing to be convinced to take the next step up. So I was really lucky. When we started and the private service went out of business, Billing and Fire, which is the biggest provider. Had sent nine people to EMT training. So we didn't have zero. Some of the county fire districts had trained a few people as EMTs. So when the private goes out of business at eleven o'clock on Thursday morning, and thinking, well, they now have the county over the barrel and they're going to beg them to come back and give them whatever they want, ⁓ the county goes, No, screw you guys, ⁓ have a really nice day. ⁓ and don't trip over the ⁓ the grease tubcaps that you've left on the floor. ⁓ and so we stood up. We borrowed a military ambulance. So we had to either have a retire retired military or reservist or an active military person driving it. That was our first ambulance. We borrowed another one from one of the fire districts and we went into the EMS business within one hour. ⁓ and we started taking calls. We now have an EMS agency for this whole county funded by a levy with multi-fire districts somewhat incorporated. I would say that to a great degree, with a unified 911 dispatch center, with the latest technology, we're looking at AI technology, ⁓ and the very, very well-trained EMS providers. We have our own certified paramedic training program, and the product of the process. Is at a very high level. And something we can be proud of. We look at our our cares data, you know, we have a go-home survival neurologic intact of around 14 to 15 percent, which is excellent. ⁓ we do well with trauma and all the other integrated things. And ⁓ we've had really people willing to step up and do difficult things at difficult times.
speaker-1: I I think that's the great part of emergency medicine in particular. You know, and th there are other specialties like this, but probably not to the same degree of of needing to be a team. You know, as a as a physician, you're a team leader, but but it you you have to rely on everybody else around you or you can't really do your job. ⁓ so let me ask you about this. So you've you've done a variety of different things, things we haven't even talked about yet. So y you know, you've been a lecturer, you've we talked about your s your
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Armory career, a teacher, researcher. You mentioned your race race car driving and your your cookies. I'd like to hear more about that. But before you do, let me just ask, so you it sounds like you've reinvented yourself in different ways many times. And what drives you to do that?
speaker-0: ⁓ survival. Okay. I mean I well, so all right. So here we are way back in nineteen seventy-four. I've come to work at St. Luke's Hospital, which was a community hospital, ⁓ and all of a sudden the contract for the ER is gone. So now what do I do? One one guy said, if you don't stay with us, the guy's gonna get pushed out and we're gonna get our way back in. You won't have a job. And the other guy said If you do stay with them, you're not going to have a job. So the first thing I do is make a very difficult and very quick decision. Turned out to be the right one. There have been many options or issues like that as time has gone on. ⁓ I was not I was not comfortable just going working ER, going home, and we started a family. I have two grown daughters, I have grandchildren, I have a grandson-in-law. A granddaughter-in-law and a great grandson. Most of my family lives in Israel. So it makes it a long way to go see the kids. but I do a little teaching over there too. So I got into the the process in interest in education. ⁓ why I'm not sure. ⁓ and what really motivated me, I maybe was ego. It's kind of like my I've been invited to speak in the ⁓ in Abu Dhabi in September. Yeah. And my wife says, What's in it for you? I said, ego. I said, I'm sure it's my ego. I mean, that's quite a invitation. I mean, and speaking Israel, I do a lot, but and I'm invited to speak at a major conference there. But that's something that ⁓ it's a known quantity for me. Or being invited to to address ⁓ a group anywhere or whatever. One, I look at it from two reasons. One, maybe what I say and do will motivate others to do something positive. Okay. I spent all morning on Zoom meetings about some new product concepts that I'm working on. One's a new airway, which we published the Reark in Science, which is not a bad throwaway. and that we think will be the AED of airways soon. Which by the way, I I hold the the distinction and unknown distinction of having the first person ever used a portable AED out of a hospital. In nineteen seventy four. Easy. Another story. But the point is, I've always been willing to take chances. Cause I don't know anybody who on their deathbed said to me, You know, one thing I miss in life, I wish I'd have gone to more meetings and I wish I'd taken fewer chances. So
speaker-1: Did you as you took those chances, did you have did you feel fearful about what might happen or or how how or was it like, you know, what just we'll just kind of go with the flow and see see where it ends up?
speaker-0: ⁓ anxiety is a good is both a good and a bad thing. I I know how to have anxiety. I'm I'm you know, I'm really good at it. I'm a s I have a you know, it's like my friend says, I have a specialty in something, and it's whatever. ⁓ I can be anxious. You know, I w my wife I make my wife is very she's unlike me. She's no chances, she doesn't jump off tall buildings, although we did go riding a balloon over Cappadocia in Turkey recently, and that took some convincing, but after she did it, she went was fantastic. ⁓ so she likes living not on the edge, and I'm always up here on the edge. But my philosophy is, you know, what's the worst thing I can do? I can fall off. And I've fallen off enough times and gotten back up. But if I never get on that edge, there'll never be a difference. Whether it's a difference in my life, it's a difference in your life, if a difference in the public's lives, or whatever. I and I like a lot of what I do, I really like. being looking at what's not today but what's tomorrow. The whole idea that AED that was brought to me as something that was impossible, and that we spent ⁓ five years trying to get it published and only got it published in an obscure journal medical instrumentation, because every major journal thought we were doing is crazy. You know, nobody but doctors or nurses or paramedists can use the defibrillator. Well our original paper said someday they'll hang on the wall next to the fire extinguisher. ⁓ go down your street, go down your buildings, where are they hanging? Now on the wall next to the fire extinguisher. It took 10 years to get that concept. What I'm doing is I'm transitioning my career from working ER, from doing EMS, although I really miss the people, ⁓ to looking at creation of new ideas and playing. ⁓ I I know many, I have many sports that I can hurt myself to.
speaker-1: Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that because already what you what you've told us about ⁓ does not sound like what most people probably envision envision as a retirement, right? So so so you're you're you're lecturing, you're inventing, you're still doing all kinds of stuff. So so is there i is that retirement for you or ⁓ is do you see ever see a point where you're done working, working?
speaker-0: Probably when I'm in a bed, ⁓ you know, in traction or something. ⁓ so let me let me turn it around and ask it differently. Are you retired?
speaker-1: I am not retired. I'm retired from from medicine, clinical medicine.
speaker-0: Okay. And you're doing and you've now become you've transitioned to become a financial planner, right? Correct. And if I give you my money, you won't piss it away, you'll make me rich, right? ⁓ Okay. All right. You you you get the point I'm getting to. You found something that gives you purpose and can be positive both for you and others, correct? Yeah. What if you were what if you had just retired from emergency medicine? What would you be doing? Sitting on the couch and reading books?
speaker-1: That's the goal. Yeah, well that's why I I I I I knew that that would not work out well because because like like you I kinda have that same personality where I always have to be doing something.
speaker-0: Yeah. So and and and so turning it the question around, the if if you're going to retire with no with the thought that you're gonna sit around on a rocking chair and reading books or whatever, that's not saying that that's bad, but that's your primary activity, and you're not exercising and you're not doing these other things, you're gonna be dead in a year. It's like the predictability of people to break hips, elderly people. Who break hips and remain inactive die. My wife broke her hip a little over well, two and a half, almost two and a half years ago. And we made her get moving, man. Once she got that fixed, and she did, she went for a three-mile walk this morning with her friends. She's very active. She goes a little slower than she used to. ⁓ but she's has a very purposeful life where she's doing lots of things. Well I don't tell you what your purpose has to be. And I say this to anybody else who's going to listen to this, and I have no anybody of anyone to listen to this. You don't have to have a purpose, but you do. Your purpose and my purpose and their purpose and anybody else's purpose will be what it is. It will be what makes you feel good, what's in the scope of your capability, if you're limited, if you can't, you know, if you can't get around the way you used to, find mobility assistance. If you don't want to go wing foiling like I'm going to do next week in Hawaii, like an idiot, you know, ⁓ and take and risk life and limb, like I do, ⁓ then that isn't what you should do. But if you if you have something, write a book, read it, read music, learn an instrument, my ukulele rejected me. It just said, you ain't got no musical talent, you ain't doing this. Okay? I tried singing.
speaker-1: Just started busting string strings on purpose.
speaker-0: Yeah, no, it just wouldn't make noise. It would anyway. But find find ⁓ something that you can get a passion into. Not not and it's not gonna be what I do. It's not gonna be what you do. It's not being a financial maybe it is being a financial planner. Maybe you should go out make movies. Maybe you go out and make music. But but if you don't if you leave your primary advocation, a vocation, and you don't have an advocation to come up to or pick up, you will not be surviving in a full capacity. Either you'll become debilitated or you'll have you'll become dead. And I don't mean to sound that not appropriate be inappropriate. It's a fact.
speaker-1: just gonna say I I I definitely agree with that sentiment. You know, I mean and it's not just the physical health, even though that's obviously important. I I think it's it's the mental deterioration that that continues to lead to that. And and and I like what you said where we don't have to save the world. You know, that's not ever that the everybody's purpose doesn't have to be grand, but it is something we we have to we have to retire into something. I you know I I I really think that that's important is that
speaker-0: D T.
speaker-1: You plan ahead, you kind of figure out what makes you happy, what brings meaning and joy in your life, and then you figure out how to how to adapt that if you need to.
speaker-0: to well let me give you the option. I'll give you a really world world personal example. I was hoping that when I left EMS that I would have another year of just being there. You know, and also I was working on a 15-year project in the intensive care unit. I had an IRB, but the ineptitude of the hospital administration didn't even know that. And when I and the I had a great relationship with the intensive care people. And when I was going in to do my continued work, one day they decided, ⁓ I was breaking all these HIPAA rules, and they came out and kicked me out of the hospital and said, Don't come back. Then they went and looked at the IRB and said, all right, don't come back, and we just closed your IRB. That'd been only it'd only been a a fifteen year IRB. The point I make is, you know, those kinds of things are gonna hit you in the middle of this if you wanna do continue to do something. And you may have to be willing To again readjust. When I left EMS, I wanted it to be really the turtle. It ended, I ended up getting forced into being the hare. I don't have any, so I might as well somewhere. and and that that was really hard, and it still is to some degree. But sometimes, you know, it may not be what you want, but it may be what you get. And it may be then you have to refocus. What you refocus with what you get. You know, whether it's teaching other places, other people in other ways, or whether it's finding new avenues. Now I'm looking at I'm doing a lot of unique product development ideas. I'm doing some work with the NFL and the National Association of Sports Trainers on what we call it's a group called the Wise Five. What do you do in the first five minutes after a player goes down on a field? What do you do in the next five minutes? What you do in the third five minutes? Part of our group is the two docs that took care of Damar Hamlin, you know, the football player that had his cardiac arrest on national television, probably the most famous cardiac arrest in history, you know. And we're looking at what do we do? How do we how do we make this so that nowhere USA, little teeny high school, can do what we do at a major stadium or at the NFL or at one of the major Big Ten. SEC or whatever schools. So and those are the kind of things, you know, that gives me purpose. The back point on that is it doesn't have to be what I I find rewarding it or you find rewarding. It has to be what that individual finds rewarding. But if you don't have anything, you better find it. I still get the creaks. from all my activities or or the wood rot. But you really need to have have a mixed purpose. And it doesn't have to be, if you have physical limitation, it doesn't have to be going to the gym and doing an hour, hour and a half on the treadmill. It might be just walking around the block a few times. And and I think if the any words of wisdom, it would be find the purpose that you want to do. And if you can't do it, go and learn.
speaker-1: Now that's really great advice and and I think that the the pearls from that also are, you know, take what take what you've learned from your previous career and apply it. You know, there's so many different ways that you can apply it and and to find those things that are are ⁓ that again add meaning and joy to your life and to kind of expand that and then there's no reason for that to quit. That's the that's the whole point of of living a long and and ⁓ fulfilled life. So let me ask you this. You mentioned something about how you and your wife have very different risk capacity in in a variety of in a variety of things. So have you have you noticed that as you've been more available at home or ⁓ that you know your career has has changed that that's been a challenge or or are you just so used to each other that that it's it's been a smooth sailing?
speaker-0: Yeah, sure, huh? Smooth sailing? Are you kidding me? It's a bet of nails at times. ⁓ first of all, I I I travel a lot. I still do. You know. I'm you know, I'm the guy that when he gets on the plane, the pilot says, ⁓ you here again? ⁓ so you know, that's how much I say. Yeah. Well, you know, yeah. In another in another life I would or did. ⁓ so the point being is if we had to spend all our time together
speaker-1: Saved your seat right next to him.
speaker-0: It wouldn't work for us. My ADHD and her calmness have have a controlled conflict. It's controlled because one, I travel, and two, we've kind of learned to nutri each other in a way. She's active, but she's not schizophrenically active. She's picked up a new act. She's playing mahjong now. That's her a big passion for her. For me, she said I'd make the table vibrate with my just by being there. Yeah. So I'm not allowed to join. But but we each have our direction. We do things together. We just got back from a ⁓ a trip to Turkey. And we went it was an organized trip. We had a great time. We saw lots of things. We we managed to make everything work. But so that kind of thing we can do together. Organized, structured process.
speaker-1: Just getting there.
speaker-0: Yeah. On a day-to-day basis, she's you know, she loves the garden, the yard. And I as far as I'm concerned, I'm not that's not my speciality. Maybe I could create an interest. That's that's the other thing though. Sometimes you have to learn to create an interest. Could I learn to be a gardener? Well, maybe when I run out of all these other things I'm doing, maybe I will. Maybe I'll get really good at pulling weeds. Or not. ⁓
speaker-1: Did did you find that you had to that that was a purposeful planning that that requir or did you guys just kinda fall into your patterns just because of of your long history together? Or or or did you sit down and say, Okay, on Tuesdays, I'm not playing mahjong, I'm gonna I'm playing pickleball. ⁓ you know, I in enjoy
speaker-0: Her or me, no, I play the pickleball. She plays the mahjong, yeah. We ⁓ I'm the one that's into the more active activity, although there are parts of me that are beginning to have revolution about that. But back to we are not we would not be together for 53 years if I was always home. Now there have been times she really wishes I had been home more. There's no question about that. But we're neither of them, we she really likes her own time. She likes her time to sit with a cat, cats, you know, and want to lay on her stomach, her chest, and and just enjoy the moment in passing. At the same time, she does like to read. She likes she has book groups, she has friends that she both helps and their relationships help. And I have my, you know, kind of that. But we also do social things together. So it's controlling the mix. That you know, that's a one other thing. ⁓ how long have you been married? Or how many times have you been married? I'm not asking you to say you.
speaker-1: married I've been I've been married once and we're approaching ⁓ boy I should know this immediately like thirty something years now. Thirty two, thirty three, something like that. Yeah. It's a good start.
speaker-0: Yeah. So the point being though, there are people that dis are determined or are destined to spend lots and lots of time together. And there are other people that spend are better off if they spend a controlled amount of time together. I don't mean you control that you schedule. I mean control each of you have your own independent activities. She's really not interested in going wing foiling. And I'm not sure my body's gonna be interested in a lot longer, but we'll see. we have a place in Maui, she doesn't like to go there. I I go there. So in other words, there's a balance here that works for us, you know. ⁓ we'll see where that goes as as as the years go on, and my own physical limitations, along with hers, are what they are, then that's the other thing. So if I would say this to the whoever's listening, whether you're a man or woman in emergency medicine. And you're coming to the end of that career. If you have a partner spouse, okay, whatever, if you have kids, you need to kind of think through where are they going to fit into your more available, if that's what it is, life. You know, or is it going to be like, Dad, I've seen you fifteen times this week because dad has nothing better to do? Or dad, it's great to see you today because you're going to babysit the kids. Yeah, it it's gonna have to be adapted to who and what you are. But don't try to which with the mistake we often make is to create a forced environment. It must be that it's Tuesday, so I have to do this. It must be Tuesday and I have to do what works for everybody and what makes everybody happy, including me. Okay. ⁓ so
speaker-1: What what would you say has surprised you the most about growing older this stage in life after after your long career?
speaker-0: ⁓ the body parts that don't wanna work like I did when I was thirty. ⁓
speaker-1: Did you expect when you were thirty and looking forward to when you were eighty that you'd be able to do what you're doing?
speaker-0: No, when I was 30, I was trying to survive between war, residency, and a career. So that let's not use 30. But as I got older, ⁓ I'm very lucky in a lot of ways. ⁓ I still can do a lot of what I want to do sports-wise, although my biggest problem is that I have a tendinopathy here. We just try to blast the calcium apart, and it's been plus minus. And I'm persistent. ⁓ those are not necessarily the kind of things that most people at my age would do. But those are things that I want to do. I would tell you, you know, I know when I was younger, I didn't think I'd be this old. Now that I'm this old, I'd sure like to have the body of the younger person. I don't know if I want the mind. My mind seems to still work. I'm still doing interesting things. Yeah. But I'm still teaching and hey, the bullshit didn't go away. It just got older bullshit. You know? Yeah, that capacity. But but it is really important that we we structure what we do within the scope of what we can do. Yeah. I'm pushing the envelope. But not everybody wants to push that envelope because sometimes, you know, what happens is the envelope tears and you attach to it. So, you know, again, not everybody can at eighty-three can be doing playing pickleball and wing foil or drive I I I can't drive race car anymore because Well disqu disqualified me. But even then, ⁓ I I was slowing down the last couple years I was driving. No more, I just come to that corner and I'm going, can I still really do it flat out like I used to? And I would chicken up. Well, you know, that's not the way you want to do it. And there are other people that can. So the corners of life that you come to. You may not be able to take them as fast as you used to, but you've got to figure out if can you still take them? And if you can't, what other corners can you take?
speaker-1: Yeah, that's a great analogy. So d so tell me tell us more about your your cookie business.
speaker-0: God. ⁓ all right. So when I was in the army, when I was in Vietnam, so I I kind of got into I'd been a baker in in I worked my way through school baking, selling vacuum cleaners, all kinds of crazy jobs. But what I I used to do is go over to the mess tent at night, and I would bake with our Vietnamese bakers, and I'd make cookies and you know, some of it was pre-made. We put it together and fancy it up. And the colonel found out. He used to give me orders for batches of cookies, you know. No, he didn't quite like that, but it was close. So I really carried that over to my civilian world. And when I was doing my fellowship in Seattle, ⁓ I met a a guy who owned a kind of a health food bakery. And I used to bake with him and I got the nickname Dr. Cookie. So I came back up to Billingham and I had a buddy in Seattle who was a cardiologist. We were sitting down one day and we're thinking about looking at famous, amos, all these things. We said, hell, I got a better cookie than that. Worst thing I ever said. so we got into it. ⁓ we finagled our way in the Pacific Southwest Airlines, which got merged into Western, which got merged into ⁓ Delta. ⁓ and you know, we went from, ⁓ we'll order a couple hundred and then they were ordering twenty thousand cookies and we're ice cream scooping them and sealing them, packaging them. At the height in nineteen ninety-one, we were making thirteen million cookies.
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: We had a ten thousand square foot facility in Botham, Washington, and we're back shipping on United, Delta, Northwest, and a little piece of Alaska. ⁓ well, that's the good news. The bad news is you know what the sigmoid curve is in business? When your business is going up, w before you get to here, when you're way over here, is when you ought to be doing something to get out of the business. Sell, merge, repurpose, whatever. We did. We waited till we were down. and the first Gulf War hit and we lost sixty-five percent of our business. So we didn't know how to respond. We didn't have that kind of management. You know, instead of buying machines, we should have bought management. Yeah. And we ended up on a death spiral. ⁓ and in the means, I wrote a couple of cookbooks and one of them was the last one called the New Doctor Cookie Cookbook, which sold about thirty-five thousand copies and That's really good. Unfortunately, we always pissed away that money in the cookie company. It's all right. It was it was a unique experience. But again, some people think colonoscopies are unique experiences too. And they're both kind of a pain in the ass.
speaker-1: I I I think it's great though that in the midst of your busy career you're also y you know, creating, developing, running a a side company. I I think it's
speaker-0: Well that that was ⁓ again, words of wisdom. When you think you got something really good going, look around and say where with whom or how or what do I do next? Because I don't unless you've got a step ahead, you know, the old story how to become a millionaire and start with ten. ⁓ you know, we lost ⁓ a lot of money when that went down the road. But it was it was a crazy experience, you know. Yeah. T V time and all that stuff. Yeah.
speaker-1: So it said on one of the news stories that I read about you that you mentioned that your father had a saying. It says, If we make waves, we'll hit rocks. If we never make waves, we'll never change the shape of the world. So how has that guided your life?
speaker-0: So, how's it got in my life? Well, first of all, he was a factory worker who died of 47 of a cardiac arrest, had the arrest in the ER, got his chest cut open in those days. One of the things that guided was the fact that even though I was going into surgery, I was always thinking in my mind, what could we have done better? And of course, that was before defibrillators and everything else was occurring. It also got in my life in saying, I want at the end of the day, I know what I want to be. Be a doctor. At the end of the day, though, I don't know how I want to be there or where I want to go from there. And it's always made me not worrying about hitting the rocks. Trust me. if you look at my current recent interactions with the local hospital, there were a lot of we're a lot of rocks or rock heads. ⁓ and I didn't I didn't change the shape of the world. I had tried. But I hit the I hit the interminable rock. And all it's done is made me refocus what I'm doing to help others not have to face that. So if you're not willing to accept what you to try to do what you can, and I don't know if you say accept what you can't, I don't think that's the right word. Understand what you can't, and figure out how to refocus it to what you can. Maybe that's the better way to put it.
speaker-1: Yeah, no, I d I think that's great. All right. So ⁓ Marv, we're winding down on our time, but at the end, ⁓ what what we do is something called the reckoning. So these are not and if you if you were a windfoiler and and you know you live on the edge, this will this will fit in really well with you. So basically it's just it's just three short questions. Okay. ⁓ you know, first thing that comes to your head.
speaker-0: Good.
speaker-1: ⁓ doesn't need to be a long answer, but but just ⁓ just a kind of retrospective looking at your career at your life. So here here's the first one. You ready? All right, here it is. When you look back on your life, which accomplishment are you most proud of? And is it the same accomplishment that others would choose for you?
speaker-0: Well, the answer first answer is my family. ⁓ 'cause that to me, what they've done and the opportunities they've taken to do wonderful things is very important. The second one was being either very smart or very stupid in helping to develop the AED. I think that's the one thing I've done in my life that saved more lives than anything else. Yeah. And that's a hidden story. The guys that developed it, and I worked to expand that. Never got any recognition. I don't care about me, but they all died with the rejection letters from the England Journal and all the other major medical journals. Never really understanding the impact. Today, when I see that on the wall, that to me is a great achievement.
speaker-1: Yeah, awesome. And it is. It's it's it's so impactful. We we ⁓ one of our other guests was Steven Anderson, who I I'm sure you
speaker-0: Of course, very well.
speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. But you know, ⁓ similar things with Narcan and all the other things that was done with it with with that. So ⁓ those little those ideas that are often since they're different and ⁓ people, you know, you have to get out of the dogma that exists. ⁓ sometimes it takes a long time to get those out, but but you know, now looking back on it, how obvious it was, right? So yeah, thank you. All right, number two.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: You're now in your eighties. So what matters now that you thought was important in your forties, but it really wasn't?
speaker-0: Money. Yeah. ⁓ I have you know, we are rich of purpose. We probably have a lot more money than I ever conceived was even possible. And you know, other than buying my toys, which my wife restricts me a little bit, mostly from self preservation, ⁓ there's not a lot, you know, I I give you an anal a silly analogy somebody once said. He said when I was forty, I wanted a BMW. He said, now that I'm 80, I just would like to BM. I know that sounds very stupid and silly, but our purpose is, you know, I drive a 2000 Subaru, 2013 Subaru out back with not much mileage. It does what I need it to do. You know, I've driven all kinds of crazy cars through the years. And, you know, I I thought I needed to be rich, but I think rich is rich of purpose, is and not necessarily just rich of money. And we're happy to be able to share what we have with others with purpose.
speaker-1: I I think that that's fantastic. And and the more, you know, honestly, the more people that I interview on this podcast and the more consistent that answer is. You know, the older you get, the less money is important. You know, you wanna have enough, you wanna be sure that you planned well so that you it you it gives you the opportunities to do the things that you wanna do. But if money is your goal, you're missing out, right? That
speaker-0: Yeah, no aí.
speaker-1: Yeah. When when you're eighties you're looking back, th it it's really not that meaningful.
speaker-0: Well, I'm convinced I'm gonna live to be a hundred and ten and I'll need all that money, but that's probably not gonna happen.
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. All right. How about this one? You spent your life helping people survive emergencies. What have you learned about how to truly live?
speaker-0: You said it, the last word. Live. ⁓ don't I mean I I push each day for me. I care each day for everyone or others. Okay? I have to, you know, the greatest fear I'm still processing is not going to the hospital in the ICU, not stopping by to say hello to all my friends in the ED, and not going to the EMS ⁓ system. To review charts. And I have to live for me while I allow others to live for themselves and promote and help. You know, I'm very proud of some of the things we've done for the community. We have a wonderful community here. It's growing a little faster than I would like. But I'll tell you something. We just our symphony celebrating 50 years in Bellingham, Washington. This is the Bellingham Symphony. This is this big of a community. Our guest conductor, our guest artist for our 50th anniversary was Yo Yo Ma. Yeah. And we helped bring, you know, we helped fund the bring it. But the point being, when the story of what we're doing in this community was told to him, he said, I'll come. Not we're not Seattle, we're not Vancouver, we're not New York, we're not Chicago. But there was meaning to the what we were trying to do, which had meaning for him. And I guess that's my bottom line. Whatever I mean, I don't know. But it has to be respectful of you and it has to be encouraging of others.
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. I I think you can never stop making an impact on those around you, right?
speaker-0: Hope that if you
speaker-1: We I mean that's the goal at least. And ⁓ you know, that impact's gonna change over time. But if you're to leave a legacy, it's not it's not gonna be about, you know, even necessarily awards or
speaker-0: There are your
speaker-1: career or anything like that. It's it's how people remember you based on the relationships that you've created and and what you've done to inspire.
speaker-0: And how you remember yourself. I think it's really important. You know, to thine own self be true. Well, you know, I I do a lot of stuff to piss people off. I'm really that's my specialty. If you really want to know my specialty is pissing people off. But there comes a time where that's yeah, there comes a time when that's needed. There's also comes a time when that's just who I am.
speaker-1: Well, thank you so much for for the conversation and for sharing your story and your wisdom. I you know, I I think it is gonna impact a lot of people and I appreciate your willingness to do it. So ⁓
speaker-0: Well Steve.
speaker-1: Yeah, well, you know, it's good to have friends. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, no, seriously. ⁓ thank you. Thank you for allowing me to do this. And again, if it helps one person, it was more than worth it. If it helps two people, that's double the opportunity.
speaker-1: Yeah, I I that's why I really enjoy this doing this podcast, honestly, is is is being able to you know, 'cause I do think that having conversations like this with people who've been there and been through a variety of things throughout their career are gonna help people who are listening because a lot of people, you know, whether it's fear of change or or you know, not understanding what their impact could be or not knowing what their purpose could be, or not knowing how to interact with their with their spouse after they retire or whatever it is, you know, if we can make that one little piece of difference to to help help improve their lives and it's
speaker-0: Well, thank you.
speaker-1: All right. ⁓ thanks to Marvin for this great conversation. Now I'm gonna do a quick recap of some of the words that he he gave us from what he's learned over his long and remarkable career. You know, the thing that immediately stands out to me is that in spite of being in his early 80s, he keeps developing himself. He has new ideas in medicine that he's working on, whether it's an invention for a new airway or a care protocol to take care of football player football player injuries on the field. And Even though he's no longer working clinically, he's still contributing as a physician, which I think is awesome. I also loved what he said repeatedly about purpose and how important it is for you to find yours. And that purpose is unique to you. It doesn't have to be grand, but it should be meaningful. Finding purpose will literally extend your life. Not to mention make the years you have left way more worth living. He also taught us the importance, importance of just adapting. So your career and your life and your retirement will never look exactly like you expected them to when you started out. And that's not a failure. The failure is not learning from your mistakes, not taking risks when new opportunities present themselves, and not pivoting or adapting when you need to based on whatever limitation that may come. I love that he's continued to do that, even in his in his eighties. I think he's a great example. I also enjoyed the discussion about his relationship with his wife. Sounds like there are very different personalities with different goals, passions, and speed, but they've made it work for 53 years. I think they've made it work by championing each other's strengths, but also respecting each other's differences. And there's probably no time to test that principle as much as retirement when you have more choices about what that relationship's going to look like. So finally, like most of my guests have reported, money is a great tool to help provide the life of purpose that you envision, but it is only that, a tool, not the goal. The further you get along in life, the easier that is to see. All right, and with that, we'll close another great episode of the Second Chip Podcast. Thanks again to Marvin Wayne for his time and his insights. If you like what we are creating here, please remember to subscribe to the podcast and to tell your friends about us. And remember that on our website at Second Shift, that's two nd shift podcast.com, you can download a copy of our second chip blueprint. which will walk you through five important conversations to have with your significant other or even just yourself as you approach your own next major shift in life. We'll see you next time. Take care.
speaker-0: The work you did mattered. And you're not done. Welcome to What's Next. Thank you for listening to the Second Shift. If this conversation landed with you, please download our free guide called the Second Shift Blueprint. Five questions you and your partner should discuss before any major transition. Get it at SecondShift Podcast.com. That's number two. To ndshiftpodcast.com. And if you're approaching a transition and want to talk through the financial strategy, we offer a complimentary 30-minute second shift audit. Details are at second shiftpodcast.com/slash audit. Join us next week for another great episode. And remember, your life and identity doesn't end with retirement. It's just entering its second shift. The content shared in this podcast is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered personal financial advice. You should always consult with a financial professional to determine what is appropriate for your individual circumstances.
