Summary
Dr. Lindsay McGraw, a doctor of physical therapy and the owner of Mark Health, shares her journey into the field of physical therapy and her decision to start her own company. She also discusses her experience as a family caregiver, being part of the sandwich generation. She talks about the challenges and strains of caregiving and the lack of support and resources available. Dr. McGraw emphasizes the importance of self-care and the need for a shift towards prevention and equitable access to care.
Takeaways
- Dr. McGraw became a physical therapist after feeling overwhelmed by the process of applying to medical school and realizing her passion for working with patients.
- She started her own company, Mark Health, to provide direct care and prevention services to employees, focusing on ergonomics and workshops.
- As a family caregiver, Dr. McGraw highlights the challenges and strains of caregiving, including the lack of support and resources available.
- She emphasizes the importance of self-care and the need for a shift towards prevention and equitable access to care.
Transcript
neal_shah__careyaya (00:01)
lindsay yeah thanks for taking the time
you know to speak with us and you know just would love to introduce our listeners to you both personally and professionally ou know you ve been in the field of physical therapy for a long time you've got your doctor degree so thank you dr lindsay mcgraw for coming on the show and can you basically just give us an overview of know what was your life like how did you decide to pursue your studies and your career and then we'll transition to both your professional work and how you
lindsay (00:20)
yeah
neal_shah__careyaya (00:33)
got into the situation of being a family character so yeah
lindsay (00:38)
absolutely well thank you again so much for having me so i am a doctor of physical therapy and reasons that i kind of ended up going into this field to fast forward through some of them i know we've talked of off mike about it but i was primed in undergraduate and very quickly felt extremely overwhelmed by the process of applying and going to med school and also really unsure about what my options were as
and i went to a really big university and i just had this gut feeling that i was no way i was going to actually see patients and work with patients and i didn't like that so some similarly at the same time i was also starting work in athletic training working with the m and athletes at my school and really fell in love with that mostly because it was very didactic and
that's where i learned that i am you know a very anesthetic learner i like doing i like you know using my body to you know feel how things are done and so i really kind of fell more in love with this idea of like i want to be working with patients i want to be helping people but i don't know i don't know how i'm going to go to school and then have to work in a lab and then you know teach classes and fail people in order to get money to do more research and so i kind of found this sweet spot of physical therapy where i would have the ability
to see patients work one on one with them and also what i retrospectively realized was a really big gift that i didn't appreciate at the time was to be able to work with people on going and actually get to know them and i think that's one of the best i think that's one of the best parts of medicine for me practicing is really getting to be with people on that journey so yeah that's a little bit kind of what led me into physical therapy
neal_shah__careyaya (02:32)
great and and then i guess more recently you know you congratulations you are now running your own company and can you tell us a lot about mark health and how you decided to go along that journey what types of people are helping through your company and just give give the listeners an ever view
lindsay (02:49)
yes you love to pick on the places of my life where i really had an uncertainty and these big cross woods so this was about ten years into practicing as a physical therapist i struggled with burn out as a health care provider really challenging seeing patients non stop not really having now the ability to practice what i preach was really big part of it and so i kind of ended up hitting hitting hitting the wall
the floor and quitting almost cold turkey luckily i know i've been working for a long time and i had really supported partner uh throughout this period of time but i decided to go out on my own and i had been working in down town san francisco where there were a lot of technology companies finance companies and a lot of the clients that i was treating worked near by and so i really decided to just give it a go since i had nothing else i wanted
i wasn't sure i even wanted to stay in medicine at that point of trying to bring health care more direct to people and to shift away from an insurance base model towards a prevention and a cash pay model and so you know so much of what i had been doing was treating these injuries that really seemed like they were preventable a lot of over use a lot of you know chronic posture chronic movements and i had a really great supportive client based that believed in me on
willing and interested in actually bringing me into their office so market health is the company that i own and run now i guess it's been what five six years and we go directly to employers and work with employers to create policies programming and resources for their employes on how to stay paying free and productive so this includes doing organomics this includes doing workshops we do on sight
look he'd be clinics at some of our clients office we really are boutique firm i really believe that you know the company knows what their employe needs and they are so much more willing now to take that on and so we work directly with the companies to create plans for how to keep their employes healthy and happy
neal_shah__careyaya (05:09)
well that's great that's really great to hear and congratulations on that journey and it's also inspiring to see that employers and companies are starting to kind of think forward towards kind of population health their employe base that's been a recurring topic and a theme that we've been talking about is that employes have other needs you know physical personal care giving oriented et cetera and it's nice to see that for thinking employers are stepping up to the plate you know i think transitioning that even into your own personal life you know how did you you know
lindsay (05:33)
absolutely
neal_shah__careyaya (05:39)
recent years you have now become in the role of a family care giver i guess in a variety of ways you know you maybe cade yourself as the classic quote unquote sandwich generation care giver you know can can you talk to us about kind of how did you end up as a family care giver what has the journey been like over the years um you and then and then kind of my following question on that is what is your what has that meet in terms of day to day life for the listeners that are listening may or may not be in that situation
lindsay (05:45)
hm
yeah definitely definitely so yes i and my husband have found found ourselves as part of the sandwich generation and one of the reasons were really grateful to have karyaga as a resource for us we did not intend to kind of accidentally like many people found ourselves in this position we mostly i think because of covid really found
that my mother in law my husband's mom um you know really rapidly declined into a state where it was not safe for her to be living by herself and needed extra support and so we moved her in with us in the beginning of twenty twenty two so it's been just over a year now that she has been living with us and we additionally have two small children at home so
we are full help in the house and m yeah i really you know i think as much as you might think oh i know this is going to happen or yes of course i'll take care of my aging parents um really had no actual like mentality or preparedness to do so and i find it particularly i don't know interesting challenging because i went into a care giving profession and i consider myself a car
but the act of day to day care giving for both little people and older people is really big challenge and so um you know it requires a lot for my husband and i and has been a really big strain on our relationship on our relationship with our other family members m as we try to figure out what the heck is going on and what we're doing because we weren't really prepared for this and you know
kind of candidly we don't have space in our life to do this either but it's something that you know we want to do it's something that we believe in doing and you know i know we've had conversations so much about this system and and how it s really not well thought out or prepared you know to handle this kind of um shift that we're seeing so um yeah that's kind of how we fell into it and our day to day um you know we're very lucky we
do have some wonderful care joy givers that come in and they're here probably three or four days a week to help support us with my mother in law caroline while my husband i worked from home so we you know are in a very lucky position where with ovid we're mostly remote at this point in time and so we're able to be home which is honestly wonderful to be able to actually be around you know we can make sure she's taking her medicine
can be on call but you know she had some health challenges at the end of last year and so she's been recommended to have twenty four seven supervision and so having the piece of mind of having you know joy giver there to you know chat with her keep an eye on her insure her safety helps put us at ease so we can be you know in another part of the house or you know shuttling our kids to their different activities um not quite needing to you now be so physically in place all the time
neal_shah__careyaya (09:33)
yeah that's that's that's really helpful to hear and i guess as a follow up to that you know are there things that you've learned during this journey of the past couple of years that if someone out there is listening that might be just on the beginning of that kind of family care giving our generic generation journey you know you would say that you've learned you know lessons you would share resources you know that you would encourage other people to kind of like look into just for education and basically being able to handle this this type of transition
lindsay (10:04)
that is an excellent question when i haven't even thought about like kind of how far we've come in our journey of becoming accidental experts in this field right i think i think it's really important that you know you like ask a lot of questions my experience you know both from my own medical journey my professional journey in medicine and this as well as with kids you know like is
as much as people do care and there are really amazing clinations that want to help like it is a hard system and and i guess what i'm trying to say is like you know people aren't necessarily volunteering all of the things that are available or offering you all of all of the support so in some ways you know us leaning into our we don't know what we're doing what can we get what's going on h has helped because we are questioning
um kind of like what the doctors and people tell us just because we want to know and i think a lot of people know we really take everything that medical providers say is like this is the hard and fast truth and and while they have a lot of knowledge i think that you know the most powerful thing i know in my medical practice is what i don't know and i think that you know people will tell you what the what they're able to give you or what they're able to offer but that that you might be at the wrong you might be shopping at the wrong store if that makes sense you
you might there might be another another place like that knows more about a certain topic um so i think for us like you know i knew to ask for access to a social worker so that we could talk through some of our options um and i think talking to people that are really on the ground doing the care giving to you know the home health agents the aids or if you're in skilled nursing you know i think that a lot of the people that are you know
see it dan and day out they know a lot they might not be able to do a lot but they really are you know kind of like under undeserved or under under talked with people to hear more about m but it's a great question i think i don't know trusting yourself to like people will tell you what's going on with your loved one and i think you have to you have to know that to you know like we're even
experimenting now like yes she should have twenty for seven supervision but like you know sometimes she needs some down time and and you know you know kind of like listening to your intuition too but um it's really i don't know it's really hard and i'm in a unique position where you know the love one i'm caring for is not a blood relative and so maybe have a little more perspective i'm not coping with i think a lot of what you know people are coping with who are taking care of their you know direct pain
or something and so i mean you want to start to really talk about you know the mess medical system let let's get everyone in therapy you know and make that accessible i think if if you don't have access to that you know i really hope there is something that's available to care givers to get therapy or some type of you know support and i would say like instagram i know that sounds dumb but like there are a lot of care giver advocates that are
have social media accounts and provide a lot of information i sometimes look at them i sometimes find them a little too triggering like i don't want to spend my whole day frankly like you know listening to the videos that are talking about how you know we should take care of ourselves or tips and tricks but i think there are a lot of there's a lot of stuff coming out and i think there's only going to be more as this happens to more and more people so i think talking about it and see
it be more present is hopefully the best thing we can do kind of in the long run right now
neal_shah__careyaya (14:11)
wow that's actually really interesting and informative especially about the instagram thing i wasn't aware of that and that i think a lot of listeners might find that helpful resource yeah
lindsay (14:17)
yeah i go back and forth on how much i like it like it's not exactly what i don't want to escape you know like i go to instagram to escape i don't always want to be looking at it but also you're like this actually has some helpful tips so yeah get on social media any
neal_shah__careyaya (14:23)
yeah
yeah
yeah and then i think yeah i will well that's part of the plan and and then i guess on the system you issue i guess you now you may even have other friends you professional colleagues et cetera that might be going through similar things as well as just kind of people you've seen even patients who might be helping and i'm curious has this has your own lived experience kind of highlight and any issues with like the systemic issues you know that you see if like what are other people going through i think one
lindsay (14:36)
m
neal_shah__careyaya (15:02)
you alluded to is like the mental health of family care givers you know and that needed to be something you know the system thinks about you kwaffordability access you know kind of just are there any systemic issues that you've seen that are sometimes just more front and center because you're going through it yourself
lindsay (15:21)
yeah that's i mean that's a great thing to bring up i think i mean i think that everyone's sit everyone situation is so varied and so unique i think that there really is a problem with you know it's coming i think of how do we care for this elder population the boomers that are getting older and you know gosh i mean i don't want to get political anyway i remember my dad made a comment years ago and i think
they struggled when they were young too about you know oh pay into social security is it even going to be there for us when we get to this age and you know it's really challenging and really frustrating because for all the you know support and all of the things that are available and again i'm i'm coming from a place of like you know everyone is dealing with their own situation and probably is getting short changed in a lot of ways but as someone that's dealing with a loved one that has a you know has all time
because you know chronic chronic mental decline uh we're really stuck in this kind of like valley of nothingness once there was a diagnosis it's like okay and is it really hangs over every other type of medical treatment you know she's not able to uh you know she's discharged from a lot of services because of a inability to improve because she's at a declining status right so prognose
wise she's not getting better so she's not eligible because she won't get better so they won't pay for things because they're not going to get better but also the only other alternative is for things to get worse and then the system will pay for things and so it's really kind of confusing and frustrating because you're only you're already dealing with your own kind of mental messed up in ness of like you know this person that i love
the only way is through in a very you know weird process way um and yet there's not a lot of support in terms of like resources or treatments and as you know individuals that are lucky enough to have some additional income to kind of bridge that it's still the cost of care and you know the i think about if you know we weren't able to keep her at home
we had to put her in a home you know my husband and i go back and forth on like even if we thought that was may be best for our marriage or for you know her getting consistent care like like that financially will ruin us you know people that have to take that on for our parents um so i think there's a man i think there's a huge vale think we could have a whole nother conversation probably spending the whole time on kind of ways that the medical system really is failing people right now i know that
you and i have been able to connect over over trying to you know create something out of that or do things in a different way but i think it's it is it's really frustrating because you kind of feel like you're stuck a lot you know
neal_shah__careyaya (18:37)
yeah thanks for sharing and i think yea many families are now increasingly finding themselves in the situation so hopefully at a minimum we can kind of share our stories and build awareness and then hopefully at a greater level advocate for change and a better system you so thanks for hearing your stories you know i guess if you could have you know it's just kind of a random question but if you could have you know giant bill board anywhere with anything on it you know kind of metaphorically speaking getting a message out that's important to you to millions of billions of people you know
lindsay (18:50)
yeah
neal_shah__careyaya (19:07)
would you say and why could be a few words or a whole paragraph
lindsay (19:12)
this is like one of those really frustrating questions that you know you're like i have to have to ate it i think for my journey and for how i'm doing with my own life care giving aside i think i my bill board would probably say like you are doing enough i think that maybe don't even have to say more like you're doing enough like i am a parent i'm a business owner you know
you know helping care giving like there is a lot of crap that i feel like i should be doing at all times and it's really challenging to stop and enjoy my life sometimes because it feels like there's always something i should be doing or should be pushing forward and so um you know i think that that you can just kind of get racked by that sense of guilt or that sense of not enoughness and i'm trying to show
my mentality with that as i go through this whole process and i think that um just even thinking about just care giving and just just having a loved one you know you want to fix it you want to make it go away you want to do more for that person and yet at the same time like you can't lose yourself you know i think we could have a whole additional conversation on you know sometimes feelings of anger and resentment which like you know i don't want a talk about beaus don't want to sound like that angry person
but like guy there's a lot of anger you know that why is this happening to us right now you know this is taking away from my ability enjoy my kids or you know anger about you know just how things feel unfair and i don't know i think that like just always feeling like there's more you got to do or more we have to step up to and i think it's like okay doing enough like we did something you know like we call that one doctor in stead of that one appointment but
we don't have everything figured out you know i think so that's my bill board
neal_shah__careyaya (21:17)
thank you actually thank you for your refreshing honesty i think that you've shared and i've been a family care giver a couple of times in my life and i think that it's not talked about you know so i really appreciate you being you know refreshingly honest about this stuff
lindsay (21:22)
yeah
no because we're like supposed to like we're supposed to enjoy it and enjoy this time with our loved one and like and while there are really beautiful moments it's like it's also not glamorous most of the time and it's not wonderful and again like yeah it can be really really frustrating and yeah so
neal_shah__careyaya (21:33)
yeah
i think it's really it's really nice that you shared that because i think that can normalize how people might be feeling on the inside and then if they're just seeing this kind of comb as stuff on the outside you know they might feel like is this only yeah yeah yeah thank you for sharing the honesty that will actually help a lot of people not feel bad about what they're going through so really appreciate that m you know and then i guess you know in closing i guess you know i'm curious like i think that both of us are trying to build
lindsay (22:00)
which is why i don't go on so much social media about it yeah i'm i can't handle the bi part of it all the time
neal_shah__careyaya (22:20)
but er future for a care i think in an ideal world if you could just kind of snap your fingers and you now fulfill a dream of equitable access to care and help for people that need it you know what would that look like to you
lindsay (22:21)
yeah
yeah i don't know where i mean i know we're both starting in our own little ways like i just i think that i don't know i think that there's so much to do and like no where to know where to start with it i think that
i think focusing on prevention is huge and i think the challenge you know with the traditional insurance model is that it just doesn't make sense even though there's a financial long term aspect of you know investing a small amount to save tons in health care costs in the long run you know someone whose profit margins are dependent on you know taking gambles on the chances of someone having a certain illness isn't going to probably play that game and i think that's one reason that i should
you know tried away from insurance and i'm not trying to vilify them too much i don't even know enough about it like to accuse insurance companies of anything just to say that like i just don't touch it because it just confuses the heckatomy and i work in the industry so i think that probably like something is going to shift away from like ou know for profit insurance model i know there's been some shifts universal health care you know we're all just want to move
finland or whatever country how's all that but i think i think more towards prevention i think people taking a lot of responsibility for their health you know hopefully that something that you know will also trend and shift and you're asking me what i would change i think i'm more just trying to see what i in vision the shifts being um again i'm in my own little echo chamber but i think people are more aware of their health than you know
getting in touch with their bodies and and and hopefully that will be something that will continue to happen and so ou know people can find their own path with that but yeah something something is going to break and something is going to crack and and i don't know i don't know where it's where it's going to go first but i would really love to see a world in which you know we didn't have to worry about you know putting my mother in law in a state sponsor nursing home
because we can't afford something else or not have to worry about my marriage because of the challenges of juggling everything you know i would really like to see a world where we didn't have to worry about getting older as much you know um so it's not exactly as positive of spin as maybe you wanted but
neal_shah__careyaya (25:16)
it's real it's real it's realistic so you know thank you for sharing that and yeah i mean i think you know lindsay thank you very much for taking the time to appear on the show and inform the reader inform the listeners yeah you know we just heard from dr lindsey magra s mark health as well as a sandwich generation family care giver talking in a raw and honest form about you know the challenges the ups and downs of care giving and really appreciate end
lindsay (25:18)
yeah
absolutely thanks for having me
neal_shah__careyaya (25:46)
so just kind of cut to you know would say echoing back your bill board you are doing enough so you're actually doing a lot so thank you for even making the time to appear on the show and educate our our listeners
lindsay (25:51)
yeah
thanks neal i appreciate it
neal_shah__careyaya (26:01)
thanks lindsay