Hello and welcome back to ACRAC. I'm Jed Walpaw and we've got a really great show for you today. I'm really excited. I've got two incredible guests.

First, I have with me, Carla Castro-Frenzel, who's an attending anesthesiologist at Nemours Pediatric Hospital in Orlando, Florida, and Halesa Dodd, who's an associate professor of anesthesiology at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.

And both of these fantastic physicians are here to share some really powerful stories with you that I think will be really important.

So we had this thought that we're all out there practicing medicine, and we are taking care of people who are sick, and what happens if we as the physician get sick?

What does that mean? How do we handle it? What do we do in terms of getting the support and the treatment we need and figuring out how to still do our jobs or what it means for our jobs?

And there are, I'm sure, people out there listening, whether you yourself or someone you know has been affected by this kind of a thing, and it's very possible that you don't know or your friend or family member doesn't know how to best handle this.

And so I really feel blessed that both Carla and Halesa have agreed to share with you their stories of going through this and what they've done and how they are going through it right now and how they're approaching the struggles that they've had.

And really still thriving and wanting to help you if you're someone else who either now or in the future may be going through something like this.

So I'm really grateful to both of them. Thank you both for coming on the show and for being willing to share your story with the audience.

Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. It's an honor to be here, Jeff. Thank you so much.

So Carla, why don't we start with you and please as much as you're comfortable share with the audience.

The story of how you came to be on this on this podcast with this topic.

Sure. I just would like to mention on the outset that I'd like to dedicate my contribution to this podcast and loving memory of Gina Hallebec president of Alcupositive for three consecutive years.

We just lost Gina to the same disease I carry Alcupositive cancer and I'd also like to dedicate this to all the anesthesiologist who have contracted cancer during their careers.

So I'd like to start off with a setting of my disease.

I joined my beloved hospital in 2015.

The hospital was newly constructed and growing.

But by night by 2019, the suddenly the hospitals volume of patients increased quite a bit as did the acuity of patients.

Unfortunately, our staffing wasn't quite keeping up, which is a challenge anytime there's a new hospital.

Of course, we had only 10 anesthesiologists and it was challenging at the time I remember to try to hire people they just weren't signing on.

And then something peculiar started happening anesthesiologist starting getting sick.

First one got sick and had to go on medical leave and then the remainder took up the call burden.

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