How to Deal With Grief Description
On this episode of the Take Good Care podcast, Drs. Williams, Guthrie, and Greene sit down with Dr. Karla Booker, an OB-GYN physician, and Family Medicine specialist. They discuss the inspiration behind Dr. Booker’s book “71 Days: How to Say Goodbye When Death Says Hello,” how she dealt with the passing of her husband, and more.
Produced by Just Eldredge Media
How to Deal With Grief Transcription
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to Take Good Care podcast.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
An endeavor that grew out of our love for obstetrics and gynecology. Our aim and mission is to serve as a source of vital information for women of all races, ages, and walks in life.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I am Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I’m Dr. Karen Greene.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Welcome to our show.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Welcome to this episode of Take Good Care podcast. I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I’m Dr. Karen Green.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Today, we’re excited that we have another wonderful guest in studio with us. For those of you who are checking us out on our website and our YouTube channel with the video, you can see that we have another person in here with us, and we’re so excited about that. I’m going to introduce her to you in just a minute, but as you can also tell, we are trying to up our game as it relates to our studio, and we are now on-air.
So, today, we have Dr. Karla Booker here with us, and I’m going to read a little bit from her wonderful bio just so we can introduce her to our audience. Dr. Karla Booker was born in Washington, D.C. while her father was completing medical school at Howard University. She had dreamt of becoming a physician since the age of 11. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and is the third generation in her family to attend Hampton University, where she was a pre-med major. She is a graduate of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, which is the second historically Black medical school in the United States. At the time of this recording, we’re just starting into Black History Month as well as Heart Health Month, so we’re especially proud to have an HBCU double graduate here in the house.
She completed her residency in Obstetrics and gynecology at Georgia Baptist Medical Center here in the Atlanta area. She completed her chief residency year at St. Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, and she practiced OB/GYN for 13 years, serving as the department chair at Southside Medical Center, the largest community health center in the southeast. Then, because she didn’t have anything else that she needed to do in order to expand her scope of practice, she completed a second residency-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I couldn’t have done that.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I couldn’t either.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Me neither.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I was not going back.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
No.
… in family medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine, my alma mater, and she was appointed assistant professor and director of the Maternal Child Health division there. Currently, she is practicing urgent care at WellStar Health System, but she likes to say, her favorite titles are grandmommy, world traveler, an avid crocheter. She’s an artist when it comes to the crocheting. She has three beloved grown children and two delightful grandsons, Trey and Hunter. The third… No, the second. It’s the second.
But we have Dr. Karla here, she could talk about, as you can tell, any number of things, but to get us started, we really wanted to get her on our show to talk about this amazing, amazing book that she has written. It’s called Seventy-One Days: How to Say Goodbye When Death Says Hello, A Caregiver’s Guide, and we’re going to get into the specifics of how she came to write this book.
Karla and I truly… I call her my Facebook friend, because we knew each other peripherally because of our Morehouse School of Medicine connection, but had never really met-met, talked, just because we were all OB/GYN physicians, we would be in some of the same circles, but when she was going through what she all talked to us about in this book, I connect with her on Facebook and just could not reach out to her as an in-person. She mentioned in the book that as she told her story and shared her story on Facebook, that there were thousands who fell in love with she and her then husband on their journey, and I was one of those thousands. So, Karla’s book is an amazing, amazing accounting of her personal journey through what happened with her now late husband Kent, and the lessons that she learned in that book, as well as what she wants to share with us and to our broader audience in general.
One of the things that I think this book really spoke to me in terms of general themes is what I love about Karla, I think the things that kept recurring in the book are the need to be vulnerable, the need to be intentional, and the need to be present. And Karla is someone that I… I tell her all the time, I say, “I want to be like you. You’re my Facebook guru.” I say, “I’m always trying to do what Karla does, because Karla is present in whatever she’s doing, and it comes across even on social media. She’s intentional about whatever she does, and she has been amazing in her vulnerability and sharing everything that she has shared in this book and just in other things in her life.”
So, Karla, can you tell us how the story of how you came to write this amazing, amazing, amazing book?
Dr. Karla Booker:
Wow. It’s interesting, my now husband, I remarried, said, “You have to write a book. You can’t have gone through what you went through, and the way that you went through it, and the grace with which you shared it, and the just overall openness of your life.” So, there are people who saw it happening on Facebook, but there are people who missed that, and those that missed it, missed something. My husband said that he loved Kent too, because I wouldn’t be the woman I am right now for him if I hadn’t gone through what I went through with Kent. So, he just kept pushing me and I was like, “Oh, come on, I’m old now.” And he said, “You got to do it.” So, this time last year, I met the woman who became my publisher and writing coach at the-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Oh, at the writing…
Dr. Karla Booker:
… Pink Goes Red-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yes. Okay.
Dr. Karla Booker:
… Pink Goes Red event last year. I was telling her about me, she told me about her and she said, “I’m a publisher.” I said, I’d just gone to a writer’s convention that December in Puerto Rico, and I wasn’t inspired. There wasn’t anything that was making me sit down to write. She said, “Let’s do it like this, let’s talk about the concept, what do you want to say? And then you just tell me.” So, then we transcribed it, the conversations, and then we edited it, and it became a book.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Wow.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Oh, wow.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Oh, wow.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Amazing.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, it was fantastic.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
So, it wasn’t actually sitting at a computer, just…
Dr. Karla Booker:
I tried it and I would mark out time in your schedule and I would-
Dr. Karen Greene:
That didn’t work?
Dr. Karla Booker:
It didn’t work. It did not work, but to just sit and organically talk about it. And then just we have hours, and hours, and hours of conversation-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Amazing.
Dr. Karla Booker:
… and then to just pull out, “Hey, these are themes that go together. Okay. Well, let’s do this.” Well, this is talking about self-care. It really is about you. It’s about you as a caregiver.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Gotcha.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Amazing.
Dr. Karen Greene:
I wondered how the book… Because the book really flows, and I didn’t know the story, so I was a little shocked when I started reading it, kind of like you were when you saw it from scratch. And as I’m reading and I’m just like, “She’s talking to me”, and I’m like, “Oh. Oh. Oh.” So, the entire time I’m just reading, and I call myself an avid reader, but I hadn’t read in a while, but it was really nice to just read the whole thing. And I was like, then digest it and then read a little bit more here and there just to go back to certain things. So, that explains why it flowed like that and that’s really-
Dr. Karla Booker:
It was a conversation. And we talked about how long it should be, how deep it should go. There are people that have said, “Oh, but there’s so much stuff you missed.” It’s like, no, we were very intentional about what we put and what we didn’t, because I wanted to use the story, our love story, as really a space to say, “Inside of all of that pain, what can I bring from it?”, and I thought that was a bigger story than just the death of this wonderful man.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah. I have-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I was going to say, for people who don’t know, can you give a little synopsis of-
Dr. Karla Booker:
Oh, sure. Okay. Oh, so, crazy.
So, Kent Smith was my boyfriend in the fifth grade. I was probably in love with him when I was nine though, in the third grade, and our families were very close. There were very few Black families in Marin County when we were there, and he just was a knight in shining armor for me. My house was very chaotic and a lot of single parent stuff, and he was just there being lovely to me, pre-puberty little girl being cared for, and it was just a lovely feeling. We then found each other again, he was at Howard and I was at Hampton, we had this woo woo weekend together.
Then I didn’t see him again until, gosh, I was 50 years old. I saw him on Facebook smoking his last cigarette and foreshadowing, and I was impressed, at 50 years old, someone would say, “I’m going to be done with this habit.” And he said, “I’m sure you and your husband are very proud of your daughter’s wedding.” I said, “I’m not married.” And he said, “I’m on my way. And I said, “Come on.” That was in May. We talked on the phone. I was in love with this man on the phone, on Skype, before we ever saw each other in-person, and it was just delightful.
One thing I think I knew I was in love with him, he said to me one day, he said, “Watch your motive for what you do in this life. If what you’re doing isn’t truly to forward a love conversation with another person, a stranger, a love conversation with a stranger is, ‘Thank you for your smile’, in the grocery store checkout, if that’s not why you’re doing it, don’t do it.” And I just had never met anyone that talked like that, that talked about the eternity of things, “There’s never been a time, Karla, where we didn’t love each other, and there will never be a time when we don’t, and that’s what love is.” So, once I connect with you, Mironda, it doesn’t matter whether I ever see you in-person, now there’s never been a time where we didn’t love each other and there will never be a time when we don’t, the bigness of that.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Wow.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I didn’t even know what he was talking about at the time. He wrote me this poem, when we met, that talked about the eternity of our love, not knowing that 20 months later he would be dead.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s an amazing thing.
I think you talk about walking through it and living it real-time, Karen, because she was mentioning, she had reconnected with this love of her life and things were moving, they were getting ready to prepare to be married, and all these wonderful things, and I’m one of the thousands on Facebook going, “Yay. Yay, it’s good to happen. It’s going to be wonderful.” And it was wonderful, but then tell the audience about the diagnosis.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Oh, it was so exciting. So, we got engaged. I’ll give you the timeline. So, this is 20 months of my life. So, we reconnected in May of 2013. We met each other in-person July of 2013. We got engaged March of 2014, and then planned for him to move from Richmond, Virginia to Atlanta. So, he moved from Richmond to Atlanta on the 29th of September. So, he moved all his stuff into my house and just left it there, because he’s going to go to Richmond for the week, come back on the weekend. So, everything’s in the halls and everything.
I remember handing him his coffee that morning and, “Call me at 10 o’clock to wake me up”, because I had a one o’clock clinic that day. He always woke me up on Mondays at 10 o’clock. And when he woke me up, he said, “Babe, something’s wrong with my hand. I can’t…” He’s left-handed, “I can’t even grasp my coffee cup.” And he said, “I sent you a video.” So, I’m watching this hand, he could not move his hand. Had high blood pressure, called some people I knew, “Do we need to stop the bus? What do we need to do?” “No, no, it’s probably a pinched nerve something, something, something. No other symptoms.” They said, “But get him off the bus. Don’t let him drive. Take him right to the emergency room.”
He was at the emergency room at seven o’clock. At 7:20, he called and said, “I’m bleeding in my brain. I have bleeding tumor in my brain. They’re calling the neurosurgeon.” So, I’m thinking he had a stroke, hemorrhagic stroke. Turns out they had told him, before he called me, that it was a metastatic cancer, but he didn’t believe it. He’s like, “This can’t be cancer”, and he didn’t tell me.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Can’t be happening, yeah.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, I got off the plane and I got all these text messages about cancer, lung, skin, or kidney. Then they found this eight centimeter tumor in his lung and lymph node in the lung, and said it was a primary… Had a biopsy the next day. So, the 30th of September of 2014, we got the diagnosis of stage four adenocarcinoma of the lung with brain metastasis.
This is the thing about cancer I think people don’t know, and that is important to know, when you say metastasis, when you say that a tumor has spread, that it is in the lymph node, understand it is in every single cell in your body in a microscopic way. It’s gotten into the bloodstream. So, it’s everywhere and now the job is to kill off those microscopic cells before they implant in another organ. That’s what metastasis is. So, when you talk about stage three, stage four, this tumor is everywhere. Now, it’s, kill it before it takes root anywhere else. And in the brain, of course, for him it was, he’s got bleeding in the brain in three different areas. So, that means he could have a microscopic tumor in the speech area or in the optic nerve. He could become blind. So, we had to do whole brain radiation in order to protect and preserve whatever brain tissue was there, and that put him into dementia within about three weeks. I don’t even think I really talked about that in the book.
Dr. Karen Greene:
No. No.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah, I remember going through it.
So, the Seventy-One Days, talk about why that’s the title.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, when he first was diagnosed, we were engaged and I said, “Well, babe, let’s not rush. Let’s be. Let’s be with this. Let’s not knee-jerk. Let’s not say, ‘Oh God, we have to hurry and get married.’ Let’s sit with it. Let’s do the medical part. I’m here, it doesn’t change anything.” We did all the legal stuff right then, so I could have medical power of attorney, all that good stuff.
Then he got really sick, went to the emergency room one night in severe, severe pain, and they did a CT scan and it showed a large amount of fluid around the affected lung. And they said, “We have to go in. We have to go in.” So, they did a surgical procedure. And before he went to sleep, I said, “I think…” This was a Thursday, I said, “I think we should get married. And he said, “You said cancer wasn’t a reason to get married.” You said… And I said, “Baby, yeah, but things are going a little faster than we thought, so let’s do it. Let’s do it, let’s make this official. Let’s show everybody what it looks like to be in love and committed.”
So, while he was under anesthesia, came out of anesthesia in septic shock, and ventilator, and everything plummeting, and IVs all over the place, and I just prayed over him. And I said, “Lord, you know the days that are numbered before him. You knew all of this before he was ever born. And I commit his spirit, I commit his soul and his body to you, but wake my baby up. Wake him up one more time.” And they said, “He doesn’t come off the ventilator by five o’clock the next day”, and if he wasn’t off the ventilator by five o’clock the next day, we couldn’t get married. And he was off the ventilator by five o’clock the next day. So, everybody drove in, “Mom, bring me that white dress and bring me those shoes”, and we had a beautiful wedding right out of the ICU for one hour on that Monday, the 27th of October. I remember he was wheelchair-dependent, oxygen-dependent, had two chest tubes coming out still. We had a cadre of nurses and respiratory therapists with us, and you can’t see them in any of the pictures.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
No. None of that is visible in any of the pictures.
Dr. Karla Booker:
They’re everywhere, and it was glorious. They gave us 60 minutes though. We came back from the wedding, and the nurses had decorated the ICU room, and had…
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Oh.
Dr. Karla Booker:
We had a filet mignon dinner and we had champagne at the hospital made for us, and we got married in the Healing Garden at Medical College of Virginia.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I remember it was [inaudible 00:17:23].
Dr. Karla Booker:
It was ethereal.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Oh, wow.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It was a beautiful day.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And people who saw the pictures on Facebook and said, “Oh, you got married”, but no one noticed the oxygen.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
[inaudible 00:17:31], yeah. They didn’t see.
Dr. Karla Booker:
They didn’t see that. They saw that love.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I mean, which is a testament to love.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Yes.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Exactly. They didn’t see anything that had to do with any illness.
Dr. Karla Booker:
No.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It was just the love.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And I think that’s the truth about love. If we can look for it, we could feel it, and what does it look like? They didn’t even see all of that stuff that was going on. So, it was delicious.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Have any other questions?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
So, the book is about dealing with loss. Often, people are afraid to talk to people who have experienced the loss. They feel like, “Should I ask them about it? Should I not?” And everybody grieves differently. In your case, did you find that… What would you feel if someone… You could feel that person avoiding asking you a question? Or, did you feel like you could talk about the person? Is it wrong to ask the person about the person?
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, first of all, I’m going to take exception with the word loss. I’m going to take exception with that, because I know that Kent Smith is not lost, and nor is he lost to me. He is as accessible to me as he’s to you. You now know something about him, so he’s accessible. So, I’ll say that first. I know exactly where he is, and now he’s wherever I need him to be. He’s right here with us flying around, going, “Oh, yeah, tell it all. Tell it all.” And he said that, “You have my permission, I want you to broadcast everything, because I want people to know what real love looks like after 50.” But your question is, how to manage, how to handle, how to be with someone who has someone that they love has died?
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
And that’s an example, not wanting to use the word, death. You’re trying to-
Dr. Karla Booker:
And look, and what is the back of the book says, “Death, a word we fear and avoid.” And I am going to be really passionate about this, what if we really got that death is another iteration of life? That’s what the book says. What if it really is an opportunity for me to really believe that the connection that you and I have, having seen each other in-person 10 times maybe-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Maybe.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Maybe 10, right?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Maybe.
Dr. Karla Booker:
… that that connection, you don’t have to be here for me to be able to connect with you.” What if that’s the way we raised our children? What if it was a true celebration of life? What if the idea of crying, because someone’s body was no longer here, was foreign? What if we could expunge the entire suffering around the physical absence of a person on this earth? It would change everything. It would change everything we know about ourselves. And what I would be doing, would be connecting with you spiritually, and praying for you, and trying to have a conduit between us when we’re not together, so you would know that I’m thinking of you. And then when you’re not here physically, there’s no difference in the way that I interact with you.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s right. That’s very true.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, that’s what I really bring from it. So, because we fear the word so much and we think if we say the word out loud, it’s going to visit our home-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
That part, yeah.
Dr. Karla Booker:
… it’s just so spooky, and crazy, and scary, and boogeyman under your bed at night, I can’t play it that way. I just can’t, and I learned that from him. So, I’d say, what I think I wish people had said to me is, “What do you need?” And maybe my answer is, “I don’t know, but thank you for asking”, but the platitudes of, “God knows best. His ways are higher than our ways”, and all of that-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Time heals all…
Dr. Karen Greene:
Better place.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Yeah, he’s in a better… No, he’s really not, because I want him to be here with me.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Better would be here.
Dr. Karla Booker:
But here, right?
But if it’s, “I have no idea what this feels like. I have no idea, but I know how you loved him, and I know what it feels like to really love someone, and I just need you to know that I’m here.” But to pretend it’s not happening or to have those funny faces that we do, and to be afraid to step on toes… Step on my toes and tell me that you care about me, don’t pretend that I’m not hurting. And I tell you what, I think people want you to get back to work and get back to your regular life, because they don’t know what to say. So, what if we admit that we don’t know what to say? That’s okay.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s okay.
Dr. Karla Booker:
But I’m standing here and I will hold your hand as long as I need to hold your hand, because I think a really hard part is, I think we’ve been raised, I think particularly as women, to figure it out on your own.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Absolutely.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Push on.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And not to say, “I am in peril here. I’m in trouble.” And I did say that, I think that’s where my friend, Carmen, a good sorority sister from Hampton, who saw me, felt me hurting on a post on Facebook. She sent me a DM and said, “I’m here if you need me”, and we talked on the phone from 12:30 in the morning to 2:00 in the morning. And she’s one of my very closest friends, because she was willing to say, “I’m feeling something from you, and I need you to know that I’m right here for whatever…”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I’m here for whatever you need.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And again, can you be willing to sit with the answer being, “I don’t know what I need, but the fact that you came over here in this crazy, scary, unsafe, maybe sad place with me means something to me.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Means so much.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, I’d say that.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Excellent.
Karen, do you have…
Dr. Karen Greene:
You just mentioned that if we could learn to deal with the being in that place of being sad and eliminate the suffering, but at one point I think you said in the book that the suffering is what makes us grow. So, one of the things I was thinking as I was reading it, because, for me, this was real-time for me, because I did not know the story at all. So, I’m reading it as if, “Oh, this is a wonderful love story, and where does the 71 days come from?” And then when I finally figured that out, I knew there was a lot of details that were missing, medical-wise, that I didn’t need, because, for me, the love story was the more important part, but how did you grow from that? Other than what we see in terms of what you’ve written, how do you see yourself as before you lost your husband and after you lost your husband?
Dr. Karla Booker:
I didn’t lose him, but I get you.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Yeah. Yeah. I-
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
[inaudible 00:24:03].
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Before he died.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Okay. So, when he wasn’t able to be sitting right next to you physically.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Yeah, there you go. Why don’t we just say, “Before he died”?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Before he died.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Died. That’s what she…
Dr. Karla Booker:
No, I mean, Karen, it’s a hard word to say.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Oh, yeah, it’s a hard word to say.
Dr. Karla Booker:
It’s a hard word to even say.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It is, and I don’t even like to think of myself dying and I can say that, but I don’t like to-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I think that’s a great point, Karen, because I think that’s really the issue-
Dr. Karen Greene:
And it is, as I read the book.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… when you’re trying to be with someone, who may currently be experiencing a death of a loved one, it makes us so much more aware of our own mortality, and so we don’t like saying, “He’s gone. He died.”
Dr. Karen Greene:
He died.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
He died.
Dr. Karla Booker:
He died. He did.
What did I learn? So, man, I didn’t realize how immature I was, and I didn’t realize how surface I was skimming my life, and I didn’t realize how much my true, genetic father was coloring my relationship with my heavenly Father.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Wow.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Ooh, that’s another show.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Okay. Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
No, but go. That’s… Yes.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, my dad was a trauma surgeon. My father was a surgeon, because he said he loved that you could find the problem and cut it out, and now it’s done. Chronic disease is years and years of diabetes. Surgery, I go in, I find the problem, I cut it out, I saw them up, and they’re all good. So, that’s my dad, and the divorce as a child, and my trauma from that, and my wanting to be the perfect daughter for him became being the perfect person for the world.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
For everybody.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I’m a doctor. He was an Alpha. I’m an AKA, I went to Hampton. I was an ROTC, because he was an ROTC. I wanted to be that perfect girl for him.
Dr. Karen Greene:
You checked all the boxes.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, therefore, then the authorities in my life, I always looked at them like they were him, and the ultimate authority in our life is God. So, God was a… “Don’t talk to me about the pain. I don’t want to hear about it. You’re stronger than that, you can do this.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Because that was your father’s voice.
Dr. Karla Booker:
That was my father’s voice, was, “This is what makes you good and this is the way it works.” And I got that I was skimming the surface and I was unwilling to go deep and say, “Man, vulnerability is the way. And if I’m hurting and I don’t share that hurt with someone else, then it has been wasted.” And there’s a scripture that talks about God collecting our tears and writing those tears in his book. That means that there’s a space for me to hurt and there’s a space for me to cry, but I was always afraid, if I started crying, I’d never be able to stop and I’d drown you all in the room. So, I-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
But that’s real, that’s human, right?
Dr. Karla Booker:
Right? Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Because I think a lot of what all of us have experienced in a number of ways is that you are given a set of rules, this box that says, “If you do this and stay in this box, then you are accepted. You’re approved and we all think you’re good.”
Dr. Karla Booker:
That’s right. That’s right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, maybe I don’t want to be in that box, but society and everything else around us continues to kind of, “No, no, no. Stay in here. Stay in here. Don’t show emotion, don’t show anger, don’t show fear, because that makes everybody else uncomfortable.”
Dr. Karla Booker:
That’s right. And for sure don’t show sadness.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Oh, gosh.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Definitely.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Oh, for sure not that. And you’re right-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And true grief.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Come on. And how uncomfortable am I making you if I come to work and I’m sad, because you don’t know what to say to me.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Right. That’s right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Right. You don’t know what to say to people.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, I’m wrong. So, that’s what it really got… It is a level of vulnerability and a space to say for true and for real, this right here, all of that, that means absolutely nothing to me. I don’t care how pretty you are, or handsome you are. I don’t care what you wear, what you carry, what you drive. If you are unwilling to connect with me… And I think I’m very peculiar, because I can’t talk about the Kardashians. I can’t know enough pop culture.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You don’t want to talk about the Ks [inaudible 00:28:30].
Dr. Karla Booker:
You know what I mean? I want to talk to you about-
Dr. Karen Greene:
Real stuff?
Dr. Karla Booker:
… where can I stand for you?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, see, this is why I love Karla-
Dr. Karla Booker:
You know that, it’s all-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… it’s because this woman right here, two things I’m thinking of in particular where she has exhibited that-
Dr. Karla Booker:
Don’t make me cry now.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, I’m trying myself.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Why not? You just said, “It’s okay to cry.”
Dr. Karla Booker:
I know.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Because, look, because we all cute, that’s why.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I know. I know.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Because we all made up.
Dr. Karla Booker:
We all made up, that’s what it is.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It was I think the summer of… Was it the summer… I think it was summer 2020, I was actually out of my house, because I was having some work done in the house, so I was staying at another friend’s house, and… It was. It was June, because it was the anniversary of my mother’s death, and I was just… A wave of grief just hit me.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I remember. I remember.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And I don’t remember who reached out to who. I don’t know if you texted… I don’t even know how we-
Dr. Karla Booker:
I reached out to you.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
You probably did, knowing Karla. And I said, whatever. I expressed to her the fact that I was missing my mom. So, she asked this simple question, she says, “What is it that you miss the most?” And as soon as she asked, it’s just like this-
Dr. Karen Greene:
That’s the wave.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Oh my God, but it was a healing wave, because I just started talking and then remembering all these wonderful good things. And then it was just like-
Dr. Karla Booker:
She’s right there.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
She’s right there.
Dr. Karla Booker:
She’s right there.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
She’s right there. To your point, I haven’t lost any of it.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Love you.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Girlfriend.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I love you.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I was just like, “Okay”, and I literally could exhale.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I’m telling you.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I literally could exhale, so that was one.
Another one, I don’t know why… This was on Facebook. I think you sent me a direct message. It was about… Somehow you asked me, “What does love mean to you now?” This is the kind of stuff she says.
Dr. Karen Greene:
It makes you think.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I’m minding my own little business trying to go about life and I was like, “What does love mean to me now at this age?”, because we were talking about maturity and getting beneath the surface, the fairytale, the Barbie, Ken, two kids and a dog, that whole thing, because as girls, most of the time we’re socialized to think of love looking a certain way.
Dr. Karla Booker:
That’s right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And again, I had to stop and think. Then I finally responded and we went back and forth. We were like, “Yes, yes, it’s about so much more”, which is what I loved about the love story part of the book, because you said, “We were connected spiritually” before you and Kent really connected physically, which is why when he died and he was no longer physically present, you still had him with you.
Dr. Karla Booker:
It took a minute though now.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Girlfriend, I know, because I was-
Dr. Karla Booker:
Watching me hurt.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Oh, Lord. And I would tell them, I said, “Y’all, Karla…” I mean, they say, “What?” “I don’t know what we going to do.” I was like, “What are we going to do?”, because it was hard.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Oh, gosh.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And I cannot imagine it happening to me, and I was so hurt and broken just because I was watching it happen to you.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Right. Well, I think the thing that was so beautiful too was, because I found this man at 50 years old. I was done.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And you had said that.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I had no intention of looking for a husband. I really did not. The way I was doing my romantic life was working very nicely for me, I’ll say it that way.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s all right.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And I wasn’t looking for that. So, to have found it and given the gift of it at 50, it’s like I had to share it, because there’s so many of us out here saying, “Is it too late?”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Is it too late? Will it ever happen?
Dr. Karla Booker:
“Will it ever happen for me?” And I really feel like this man, he was just plopped in my lap. It was like I was glamored, absolutely. I mean, my mouth is hanging open most of the time when I talked to him. And he said that very few people dwell at the depth that we do. Yes, we did crazy stuff, like we Skype meditated together. We Skype slept together every night. So, my computer was sitting there in the bed and I’m listening to him snore, so we slept together. I mean, I’d go and do a delivery, I’d say, “Babe, I’m going to do a delivery.” He’d wake up and say, “Okay.” And I’d go to do delivery, come back, he would be awake waiting for me to get home like he was in the bed with me. So, it was delightful. It was just very, very, very beautiful, and beautiful to share.
I think to another thing I’ve gotten is that time, this idea of time, this idea of age. If there’s eternity, if there’s never been a time when we didn’t love each other, and there never been a time that we didn’t, and never will be a time that we don’t, then really this 80 years that we spend in our flesh is nothing at all.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Nothing.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, that means that 50-years-old and single, that’s nothing at all, and an entire lifetime is nothing at all. And matters neither gained nor lost, so your physical being is nothing at all. So, how about we be willing to open our minds to the idea that a 50-year-old woman falling in love with a 32-year-old guy is perfectly fine, because there’s no time between them-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Nothing.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Or, someone deciding, after their wife of 52 years dies, that three months later they’re going to marry her best friend, that that’s nothing at all, because we have these rules and these ideas about what it’s supposed to look like, feel like-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
[inaudible 00:34:25].
Dr. Karla Booker:
… this idea of loyalty, this idea of, “I really can’t ever marry again…” People who hide their boyfriend from their family and friends, because they were married to this man for 60 years and their children would never understand them.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Understand.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Or, the fact that they don’t want their children to think of them being sexual with someone else. So, we hide the intimacy of ourselves from the people that we care about the most and that care about us the most. So, what if we just cut each other off the cross for that? What if we allowed people to be happy the way they’re happy?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
The way they’re happy?
Another thing in the book that really struck me, and when I read the book, this time getting ready for the podcast, I understood it better. When I went to one of your book signings and you were giving the story of how you wrote the book and everything, and one of the things you talk about in there, because there were some other women present at that particular book signing, who either had just experienced loss of their spouse or somewhere-
Dr. Karla Booker:
You mean widows?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Widows, those people.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I got to pull it out, because-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Pull it out of me.
Dr. Karla Booker:
… look how quick we’ll say, “The loss of their spouse.”
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
[inaudible 00:35:37], and it’s like ten words to say one word.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Right? Right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So, there are other widows there, and you were challenging them to put a timeline on the grief of being shut in and shut down. And I remember thinking, “Wait, now, isn’t that kind of harsh?”
Dr. Karen Greene:
When you were there, you mean, at this book signing?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah, at the book signing with other people.
Dr. Karla Booker:
With other people there.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Right. But then when I was reading through the book again, I said… Because you talk about in the end… That’s another thing I love about the book, at the end of each chapter she has, “Now, let’s do the work.” So, she has these suggestions for questions and just activities to process the information that she’s gone through. But you talk about, you should have in your grief timeline, the 30 day, the 60 day, the 90 day, because at some point you do have to move on with your life.
Dr. Karla Booker:
That’s right.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
But the loyalty, the social standards say, “No, I got to grieve the loss of my husband.” [inaudible 00:36:42].
Dr. Karla Booker:
My husband. [inaudible 00:36:42].
Dr. Karen Greene:
Husband.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So, talk about that.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Okay. So, I describe it as there was a time where the sadness, and the tears, and the grief, and the heaviness is comforting until it’s not.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Until it’s not.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And you know when that “it’s not” is. You can feel it. It’s like, “Oh, I’m so sad, I don’t even want to get up.” That’s not comforting. At first, it’s, “Oh, let me just stay in the bed, and have people bring me hot chocolate, and drink another bottle of wine, and get this comfortable blanket around me”, but then it’s, I don’t even want to talk to anybody. That’s not comforting anymore. We said 30, 60, 90. I’m going to say 71. What if at 10 weeks you say, “Okay, this is it.”
And I can still feel sad and I can still process, but I’m going to get up, and I’m going to walk every day, and I’m going to find the color purple somewhere, and I’m going to find… Oh, I love roses. I’m going to go to Jimmy Carter’s Rose Garden for his wife Rosalynn. And you know what? I’ve never been to the Margaret Mitchell house… I’m making this up… Something that says, “I need to have a reason, a reason to get up and get moving, because this is my life.” And that would be for anything. I’m divorced and I never wanted to be divorced, let’s say, okay, now it’s final and all the legal stuff is done, and I’ve now comforted myself with whatever. Now, it’s time for me to something every day that says, “Let me put my life back together.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And you have to be intentional about that?
Dr. Karla Booker:
Extremely, because I think what’ll happen is, those days will just seep into one another, and you turn around, and it’s a year or five years,
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
It goes along with what you were saying about what suffering is. You said, “Suffering is not accepting what is.” So, my question was, how can someone… You said, “You know.” How do you know when it’s not just the grief? When do you go from where you’re just wallowing, just sitting there?
Dr. Karla Booker:
What does that look like? And I was there, I was buying a lot of stuff. I was buying stuff, and I was traveling, and I was avoiding, and I was numbing. And I felt sorry for myself. I was in therapy. I was in therapy when he was diagnosed, and pretty intensive, like more than once a week, because I was in Richmond by myself. So, when I was doing phone conversations with my therapist and able to… I found myself not even listening. I just needed somewhere to put it all. So, if you didn’t have that, then the wallowing I think can get even deeper, but I’d say… How would you know? So, it’s no longer comforting when you wake up and you don’t want to wake up, I think. I think that at first it was, I just didn’t want to wake up, because he wasn’t there. But after a couple of… Three months it was, I didn’t want to wake up, because I didn’t want to be living this life, not like I wanted to die.
It’s so funny, I think I can hold a lot of pain. I’ve been through a lot of trauma in my life, and so I think it makes me a great doctor, because there’s nothing you can tell me that I can’t hold with you. So, I think when people talk about suicidality, I say, “Well, wait a minute, do you really not want to be here tomorrow? Or, do you just really want the pain to stop?”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s the issue.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And those are two different things. So, you start feeling like you don’t want to be here, definitely that’s a suicide, right? That’s a suicidal ideation. But if you’re just feeling like you just want the pain to stop and you don’t know which way to go, maybe that’s a wallow. “I just want this pain to stop and I have no idea where to go to make that happen, but I know if I stay in this bed another day, I know that’s not it.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Exactly.
Dr. Karen Greene:
So, looking back, are you realizing it or at the time, are you… I guess, my question is-
Dr. Karla Booker:
Oh, this is all looking back.
Dr. Karen Greene:
… at the time, how long would you have let yourself wallow, now you know that, “I probably shouldn’t have.”?
Dr. Karla Booker:
Oh my gosh.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Is there any correction you might’ve made knowing what you know now?
Dr. Karla Booker:
Let me tell you, and I was so mad at God, and I am going to say that very, very emphatically, be real about the anger. He knows you’re thinking it.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
It’s not a secret.
Dr. Karla Booker:
It’s not a secret. You’re not hiding. Why not just say? I said, I’m like, “God, this is my life. This is no joke.”
Dr. Karen Greene:
Why?
Dr. Karla Booker:
“That’s 20 months, you could have just cut that out and sewed that back together.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That part.
Dr. Karla Booker:
“What? I didn’t need this. I’ve been through enough. I’ve suffered and overcome so much. What in the world are you thinking? This isn’t funny? This isn’t funny?” And I’d say that out… Took me some time-
Dr. Mironda Williams:
To be able to verbalize it.
Dr. Karla Booker:
… to actually say, “I’m really mad at you. Why did you do this to me?” He did this for me to sit here and talk to you.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s right.
Dr. Karla Booker:
If it hadn’t happened, then you don’t know and you don’t know how to be there for somebody else. So, I think that’s it. It’s all in looking back, if I could have done it differently, I don’t… And I found a widow group right away that it was great to talk to, but I think what happens in these situations is, it’s a place for us to just go and dump a lot of emotion, and I don’t know how helpful that is. I mean, I even think about weekly therapy. I think there should be a goal, I want your therapist to be saying, “In six months, I’d like her to be talking like this, not just going to therapy every week and dumping all your crap on the table…”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Because then you’re just rehearsing.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Exactly. And I don’t think that’s… That’s not what’s intended. I want there to be somewhere you want me to be in 90 days, some way you want me to be feeling. Or, maybe ask, “In six months, Karla, what do you want your life to be looking like?” So, I’d like to be in a place where I can accept that my husband is dead, and we loved each other like crazy, and he is still present for me. And let that be what guides you. And I like the idea of dreaming, dreaming and believing in magic in a hurting place. What would make today perfect? What would make today perfect would be, he is sitting right here next to me. Okay, is there a way for me to experience him sitting right here next to me? Are there pictures I can look at from a place of him sitting right next to me, not looking at pictures like, “He’s dead.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
He’s gone.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, I think that magical dreaming, what would make today perfect, and then figuring out how I can make that possible in a way that is possible.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Absolutely. So, it’s just been so good. I could go on forever and we’ll definitely have to get Karla back. Once again, we have Dr. Karla Booker, MD, here with us, board certified OB/GYN physician, board certified family medicine physician, crocheter to the stars. She just does everything and does it so well. So, Karla, let everyone know how they can get your book.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Okay. So, it’s on Amazon and you can just type in, Seventy-One Days. Drkarlabooker.com, and that’s D-R Karla Booker, with a K, dot com. You can get it there. It’s also in Barnes and Noble, but I don’t think anyone’s ever gone there to get it. And I’ll tell you, the audible edition right now is on sale for $4.86 cents.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I was going to say. Yeah.
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, Amazon has that on sale. And I’m narrating.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
I was just about to [inaudible 00:44:39].
Dr. Karla Booker:
So, I’m narrating. I listened to it last night, just listening some stuff to get ready for today, and it’s fun. It was delightful to write and more delightful to narrate.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s awesome.
Well, my heart, of course, went out to you when you were going through this, but the fact that you have come out on the other side with such wisdom, such joie de vie, because this woman lives, honey-
Dr. Karla Booker:
I’m telling you.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… and encourages all of us to live our lives, which is why we wanted to bring your voice to our audience, because I do think that you have a unique voice that is able to speak to women and men, because we all have gone through, I’m going to use the word, loss-
Dr. Karla Booker:
Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… loss, death, just disappointment, where we have been rocked emotionally. So, a lot of what is talked about in this reference, is talking about the death of a spouse, but the principles can be applied to when you have gone through some-
Dr. Karen Greene:
Trauma?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
… trauma, some disappointment that has really been earth-shattering to your core. You can still set your intentions, you can do the work, and then you can have that goal of saying, “Okay, this is hurting me now. I don’t like it. I’m mad about it, but I’m going to set a course that I can get over on the other side of it.”
You’re married.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I am.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
So, tell us all about your new hunky hubby.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Wow. So, it’s crazy, right? So, my late husband, his name is Kent Smith, and my current husband’s name is Kenneth Strickland. Look at that.
Dr. Karen Greene:
So, no monogramming changing?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
[inaudible 00:46:32].
Dr. Karen Greene:
So, the monogram stays.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Right. It’s so crazy, right? And the Ken-Kent thing, but my husband loves… His name is Kenneth, so that’s really great. Really crazy, I got to a place where hanging out with sorority sisters on a Friday night and in a place where I had… What God asked of me, he said, “There is no man that can take my place and I won’t allow that, so marry me”, he said. “Be my wife.” And so God and I went to the movies and God and I went to dinner at a table for two, and I’d finish a movie and say, “Well, what did you think?”, and I would talk out loud. I mean, really let myself be absolutely enough in my skin with me, and my daddy, husband, brother, friend, God, and he told me that on the other side of this perfect man, Kent Smith, was him all the time, that it was always him.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
God’s love to you through him.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Always, and God’s love to me through you, and through you, and you, and you. So, that if God is on the other side of that, who I’m really looking for, the fullness of love is from God. And that’s one thing I think was, again, if I’m looking at God as a disciplinarian, who’s proud of me and loves me a whole bunch, but is expecting something great of me, then there’s no space for me to be vulnerable.
So, I’m hanging out on a Friday night and happy as a clam, and in love with God, and enough, and enjoying my sorority sisters, and this man walked into the venue at the same time as I did. He was tall, gray beard, and I just said, “Wow.” Something said, “You’re supposed to know him.” So, the hostess asked if we were together and you know me, I said, “Yes.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That part.
Dr. Karla Booker:
But he said, “I don’t know her at all.”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
No. Yeah, I don’t know her.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I said, “Okay”, and I went on with the night, and he watched me the rest of the night. And he came back around, I tapped him on the shoulder and I said, “Hey, I don’t appreciate you front me off to the hostess like that at the beginning.” And he sat down, and the sorority sisters were sitting here, and I’m leaning over her talking to him. And I said, “soror, quick, can we switch places?”, and talked a little bit. And he said, “I’ve never met anyone as intrusive as you are”, because I was asking him all kinds of stuff, and we’re just laughing, and having a good time. And he asked me out to dinner the next night, and got my phone number, and asked me to be his girlfriend 12 days later, and told me, “I promise you that if we are not engaged by this second anniversary of the day we met, I will let you go.”
We met on August 11th and he proposed to me in Cartagena, Columbia on the 12th of August under the stars by the pool.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Wow. Oh.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And it was a different thing< what I was asking for… It was so funny, after Kent died and I started dating again, the first thing I asked people was, “What medication are you on?”
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Your list.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Are you healthy? Are you healthy?
Dr. Karla Booker:
Are you healthy?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
I need to know all the things that are going on. [inaudible 00:49:47] check-up.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Do you eat a well-balanced diet? Do you take vitamins?
Dr. Karla Booker:
That’s it, because I’m not doing that again.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Do you smoke? Do you smoke?
Dr. Karla Booker:
Do you smoke? And to meet this man, and what I really was looking for was someone who loved God more than they could ever love me, because then I get it. What I know about marriage now, and this is new, is, marriage is not a covenant between me and him. Marriage is a covenant between me and God.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
And God.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And marriage is a covenant between him and God, and it’s our covenant with God that [inaudible 00:50:20] us stay together. There’s no way that flesh can make it through this life as flesh.
Dr. Karen Greene:
That part.
Dr. Karla Booker:
It’s not possible.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
She’s the only married one other than you here.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Right? Right?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
How many years, Karen?
Dr. Karen Greene:
22, running on 23.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I’m saying, right? And my grandma told me, “You think there weren’t five years in a row where I didn’t want to wake up in the bed with him?”
Dr. Karen Greene:
You said, “Five years in a row.”
Dr. Karla Booker:
That’s what she said, “In a row.” I mean, that sounds like a long time.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
That’s a long time.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Right?
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah.
Dr. Karla Booker:
And she said, “Being together at the end is what matters. I don’t remember those… It’s being here at your graduation from medical school, it’s watching our great-granddaughter walk across the floor. And I’m looking at him going, ‘What? Remember those five years?’” So, that’s what I got. I want someone who gets that, who God is for them, that that is a priority in their day. And that I will not be held to any standard except that I love the Lord and that I am willing to be vulnerable enough to share that with you. And so I think that’s what we have. I pull on him a lot. We can only do the super deep conversations once a month, but, man, he knows where I live and I know where he lives, and it is truly God between us that, when I look at him, I can see God saying, “I’m right here. Don’t get that mad at him, I’m right here.” So, it’s a beautiful thing.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Amazing.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Beautiful thing.
Dr. Karla Booker:
We’re coming up on five years.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Five years already? Oh my goodness.
Dr. Karla Booker:
I know. Kent has been dead, January 6th, y’all, was nine years.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
No, Karla. It doesn’t seem like it’s long. Wow.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Wow.
Dr. Karla Booker:
January 6th, 2015.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Wow.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Crazy, yeah.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Well, this has been an amazing conversation with the amazing Dr. Karla Booker.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Well, thank you so much.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Drkarlabooker.com.
Dr. Karla Booker:
That’s it.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
D-R Karla with a K, make sure you check her out.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Please.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
She’s an awesome woman, awesome woman of God, just an awesome woman friend, pal soror, physician, crocheter grandmommy, mommy, daughter. I could go on, but we’re so thankful.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Ah, thank you so much.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
This has been fun. I appreciate you.
Dr. Karla Booker:
Thank you for this time and just being who you are. It’s such a safe space to come and say what needs to be said, so keep doing what you’re doing, because I am impressed.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Yeah, we appreciate you. Thank you. We appreciate you. We are impressed with you.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
Thank you, thank you.
Dr. Karen Greene:
Thank you.
Dr. Deanna Guthrie:
So, once again, we hope you have enjoyed this episode of takegoodcare.com. If you have any questions or concerns, remember you can email us at [email protected]. Check us out on our website at rosagynecology.com. And until we meet again, I’m Dr. Mironda Williams.
I’m Dr. Deanna Guthrie.
Dr. Karen Greene:
And I am Dr. Karen Greene.
Dr. Mironda Williams:
Take-
Dr. Karen Greene:
Take good care.