“If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.” The great comedienne Lucille Ball didn’t know she was talking about Dr. Julie Wei. Dr. Wei is not just an active member of the pediatric ENT community, not just a busy clinician in Kansas city, and not just a mother and wife. She is also a ground breaking author.
In her just self-published book, A Healthier Wei, Dr. Wei uses the most important relationships in her life to make her case with a certainty that only those of us who believe in wisdom gained from experience can do. She teaches how patients can live in a healthier way, and how women physicians can have their voices heard using non-traditional models of communication–heart-based and health-based.
The “Acknowledgements” section previews how Dr. Wei was able to create this work and to share it with us. She did it by caring about other people. Listening to them. Giving them the best that she has. She gave to her family, her patients and her colleagues.
Photographs of important people, from the kids in her clinic to her own child, reversing roles on a most beautiful cover photograph, chronicle her journey of discovery with the people who gave her the strength, the courage and the opportunities to make these discoveries. As a woman physician, I learned as much about the importance of relationships as I did about her core message of how to reclaim health for our children who are “misdiagnosed and over-medicated.”
Chapter 1 lays the foundation for observational medicine and how, without scientific controlled studies, we can have a profound effect on our patients if we listen and we think and use what we have internalized to make new discoveries. And while I have connected the same dots as has Julie for several decades now, she had the vision, the courage and the energy to share it with us.
Chapter2 tells us about “Milk and Cookie Disease”–a very apt name for eating habits that lead to sleeping disorders, croup, chronic “rhino-sinusitis” and much more. The problem is caused by refluxing of gastric contents and the late night snacks back up into the airway in the middle of the night. In chapter 3, she takes head on the potential resistance to an “unscientific” way of sharing “medical” observation. From there, in chapters 4 and 5 she gets into what this problem looks like and how parents can decide if their child might have this disease.
Chapters 6 and 7 are filled with treatment pearls. Beginning with a crash course in nutrition, Dr. Wei uses fabulous photos to make it look fun and convince us that it tastes good, too. Taking a very down to earth approach, her advice is based on a dash of creative thinking and a pinch of tough love. The use of patients we have seen in our offices as people we care about, not just case studies, completes the journey before the philosophical wrap up about how we need to heal ourselves and our families.
At the end she shares with us her favorite healthy recipes–Chinese cooking with its beauty and style. The photographs are enough to make your mouth water.
Dr. Wei is not just a successful author with this book. She is a successful advocate for women in medicine, winning the Mitochondrian Award from the Office of Professional Development for her work in preventing burnout for women physicians. Her energy and her insights abound. Julie’s book can be purchased on line. Enjoy!
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