Suzi Schweikert, Once Upon A Time…

back-talk doctor suzi Suzi Schweikert Dr. Suzanne Schweikert is an Ob-Gyn. She recently left private practice to pursue public health, clinical research, and writing. She contributed a chapter on the health effects of "time poverty" to the Take Back Your Time Day Book, released in August 2003. She is the author of a non-fiction book, The Pregnant Traveler and has recently completed her first children's novel. In 2003, Dr. Schweikert began writing a column, It's About Time, in which she explores the impact of time (and how we spend it) on our health, wealth, happiness, and writing, each of which seems to be competing for an ever larger share. In 2004, Dr. Schweikert began writing another column, Once Upon A Time, in which she explores the lasting impact of having read too many good books when she was a kid. Suzi Schweikert is such a slacker.

It's About Time | Once Upon A Time...

Once Upon A Time...

Libraries: Story Hour
...It was in that very library that I discovered a book by an author with my own last name and, although I can’t remember what it was about, its mere existence promised that I too could be a writer someday. That was also where I discovered Ebony magazine, and realized that African-Americans have a whole different set of materials to help them understand the world. When the librarians weren’t watching, I would leaf through its glossy pages and wonder what it was like to be black. I never found the answer, but it was important that I asked the question...

Picture Books: When We Were Animals...
Stellaluna’s is a coming of age story, about getting lost, conformity, and the struggle to find one’s identity and a new place in the world. In its 42 pages, it elicits emotions that an adult novel often requires 300 pages to convey.

And What Do You Do for a Living?
Take my mailman, for instance. I know he’s a full-time mailman, but I also imagine he does other things, some of which might actually be more important to him than delivering my mail. He might write sci-fi books, make furniture in his garage, or organize food drives for his neighbors. He might have a handicapped child, or two older kids in college. And yet, he is first and foremost a mailman to me. That’s the way Americans tend to peg one another — with simple, suffocating labels...

Reading by Flashlight
Lately, I have returned (ok, regressed) to reading children’s books. This is partly because I am writing a children’s novel, and partly because, I have to admit, they hook me in a way grown up novels often fail to do. Because they are about children, they take me back to a time when I could read for hours, lying in the backseat of the car, or during math class, with my textbook propped up as a screen. Only now, I find myself reading while standing in line at the DMV, or at my desk at work, with a medical journal propped up as a protective shield.

It's About Time...

Traffic School
On our first day of school, we learned several things. For instance, we learned we were saving upwards of $15,000 by going to traffic school (according to Uncle Steve’s creative calculations). And, it is the law that one must turn one’s blinker on for at least 100 feet before turning. Personally, I have always assumed that if a blinker is on for that long, the driver has forgotten about it. We also learned that the average person breaks about 2,000 laws before getting caught, so in a fatalistic world view, this was simply our time.

The Quality of Life
Lately, it has come to my attention that many of the infants I’ve "saved," i.e. those who miraculously survive their own births, go on to live nightmares of sickness, self-abuse, abuse by others, and so on. Some die a slow and prolonged death in childhood, while others are wiped out in their teens, in the wink of a speeding bullet. And for the rest of us who live into our adulthoods, we die slowly or quickly, depending on the circumstances...

Driving M.A.D.D.
And now that we’re on the subject, why do we call these "accidents" anyways? What is so accidental about car crashes? If not premeditated, then aren’t they are at least predictable? And aren’t things that are predictable also preventable? It seems that people who are stressed out, running late, frustrated about wasting their lives in traffic, or just plain exhausted, are bound to make a few mistakes. Is this really accidental, or is it the price we pay for the pace we keep?

No Time for Dog Labs
My first contact with these dog labs was eleven years ago, when I joined the ranks of the first-year medical school class. Of my fellow 126 students, twenty-five or so refused to participate. The pharmacology professor who ran the labs was outraged by our demonstration of so-called morality. How on earth did we, lowly first year medical students, know what was good for us? (As we all know from watching television's E.R., medical students know absolutely nothing.)

Take Back Your Health
First of all, I’ll let you in on a secret: Physicians are not shining examples of the "take back your time" concept. We work longer hours than is healthy. We often fall into the trap of believing that material things will compensate for a lack of time. We buy lots of time saving devices. We rush around on freeways. And we hurry our patients through visits like they are products on an assembly line.

Guaranteed To Save Time, Or Your Money Back
What I've learned from my leaf-blower epiphany (and a few others that came before) is how the most simple but time-consuming tasks, like cooking, washing, sweeping, and yes, even writing with pen and paper, can be more rewarding than anything I could have planned. In fact, before I quit my 90 hour per week job...

Taking Time To Be Sick
I used to feel the same way about being sick: What a waste of time. Two years into my residency, when I had been coughing and sniffling for what seemed like months, I asked my doctor if there was anything wrong with me. Perhaps I was immunocompromised or had been infected with some terrible disease. Her answer surprised me...

Car People
Maybe people who drive a lot, like me, go about life thinking and behaving as if we are cars. Perhaps our interactions with other folks, and with strangers in particular, have taken on the personality quirks of motor vehicles...

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