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Join us as we sit down with Olivia Ong, a pain and rehabilitation medicine physician based in Australia, as she opens up about her incredible journey of resilience and self-discovery. In 2008, Olivia experienced a traumatic spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed and uncertain about her future. Through raw and honest reflections, Olivia shares how she navigated through the darkest moments of her life, ultimately emerging stronger and more empowered than ever before. Olivia’s story is a testament to the transformative power of self-compassion, resilience, and the unwavering belief in oneself. From battling perfectionism to embracing mindfulness and common humanity, Olivia’s journey is an inspiring example of overcoming adversity and finding purpose in the face of life-altering challenges. Her unwavering determination to not only survive but thrive is a true inspiration to us all. Tune in to this compelling conversation as Olivia Ong shares her insights, wisdom, and lessons learned from her extraordinary journey of self-discovery. Discover what it truly means to be unbreakable in the face of adversity and find the courage to embrace your own inner strength.

Olivia Ong is a pain and rehabilitation medicine physician in Australia.

She discusses the KevinMD article, “My spinal cord injury story from physician to patient, and how I rebuilt my nervous system.”

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Transcript

Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast, and get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today we welcome back Olivia Ong. She’s a pain and rehabilitation medicine physician in Australia, and her KevinMD article is “My spinal cord injury story from physician to patient, and how I rebuilt my nervous system.” Olivia, welcome back to the show.

Olivia Ong: Thanks for having me again, Kevin. It’s a pleasure.

Kevin Pho: So we last had you on a few years ago, and for those who didn’t get a chance to listen to that, your most recent article recaps your story. So let’s jump straight into this KevinMD article, “My spinal cord injury story from physician to patient, and how I rebuilt my nervous system.” So for those who didn’t get a chance to read it, tell us what this article is about, and tell us the story.

Olivia Ong: Yes. So basically this article that I’ve come up with for KevinMD was, I guess at the moment I’m kind of writing my memoir on my spinal cord injury experience, and this kind of came again and I got inspired again by, like, what is the real story behind this? Is it just a motivational, inspirational story, or is it more than that?

So I started tapping into, I guess, my identity of myself as a physician, and I just had a really deep thought about it. And in those couple of years that I did my intensive rehab at Project Walk Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center in Carlsbad, California, I spent three years there, actually wonderful experience, wouldn’t change it for the world, I mean it’s Southern California, wouldn’t change it. But I thought to myself, what did I exactly go through in those three years, other than the wonderful connections I’ve made with friendships there?

There was the actual, I’ve been really deeply interested in nervous system health. I’m a strong advocate for burnout in doctors, as you know. And it all comes down, to me all roads lead to nervous system health. Obviously I have a spinal cord injury, so my nervous system, it’s pretty dysfunctional, but that’s OK, it is what it is, and now I walk with sticks and all that. And then burnout, again it’s a stressed nervous system. And then we talked about in 2021 about burnout in frontline workers, that’s also from a stressed nervous system, burnout. So all roads again lead to nervous system health.

But obviously in this interview with you today I’m focusing a lot more on how I rebuilt a nervous system from a spinal cord injury. Because I think, just using my own experience with what I went through when I had my spinal cord injury, despite the fact that I’m a physician, I well and truly know with spinal cord injuries what the outcome is, it’s not a pretty outcome. But the fact that when the doctors told me that I’ll never walk again and I’ll never practice medicine, that really hit me really hard. It was kind of shattering, because I remember sinking into this depressive state, I guess, and just losing my identity, just being a patient now with a spinal cord injury. And I had this belief that I had a broken nervous system and I can’t fix it.

But when I went to Project Walk in Carlsbad, intensive rehab included not only just balance exercises, learning to walk, stand like an infant, basically learning to walk again, and taking first few steps and all that. It was quite fascinating because I started being interested in it. I’m like, oh wow, every day there’s always something new happening, there’s more movement in my legs, I’m standing for longer periods, I can walk for longer.

I think what I learned was, the nervous system does change itself. You know how there’s this book by Norman Doidge, “The Brain That Changes Itself”? I think the nervous system does change itself, really. And yeah, I was just fascinated by the whole thing. I became my own textbook.

So I just started, like, oh, this is fantastic. After three years I did walk again, and I think there is opportunity here that the nervous system can heal itself in its own way. So that’s how it got me inspired to write the article for you. And this is all how it started, just from my journey with that spinal injury I had.

Kevin Pho: Sure. So for those who don’t know your story, just tell us about your injury. Just briefly recap that story.

Olivia Ong: Absolutely. So my injury happened in 2008 when I was a resident doctor. I just started my physiatry training, which is quite ironic because that’s rehabilitation medicine. I think it was my first year in that training, I just finished up my spinal cord injury rotation. Little did I realize that as I was walking to work as a pedestrian, a car at high speed struck me. And obviously that was unexpected, and the next thing I knew I was on the ground, paralyzed from the waist down.

And obviously not only physically in spinal shock, but mentally, emotionally I was in shock. Didn’t expect to have this, as I was just walking to work doing my daily thing.

And that whole event just changed my life, because I spent months in a rehab hospital going through grief and loss, in fact the five stages of grief as we know, anger, depression, acceptance, bargaining with God, like, if I get better I’m just going to save the world or whatever. I’ve done it all, and acceptance. So I go through that kind of emotional upheaval every day, up and down, up and down like that.

And a year after my injury I made a decision to go to Project Walk in Carlsbad, as I’ve spoken about, because I had nothing to lose. I’m like, exercising five hours a day, there’s nothing to lose, right? I become fitter. If nothing happens from the spinal injury in terms of recovery, I just become a fitter individual.

So I did that, made the decision, my husband and I packed up our bags, moved from Australia to Carlsbad for three years, and that’s what we did. And every day was like a boot camp, Monday to Friday. I would rock up in the gym and do my workouts and the intensive rehab, while my husband watches and interacts with the other carers as well in the center. Because it wasn’t just me, there were other spinal cord injury survivors from all over the world. Obviously North America was the majority of them, but there were some Canadians, some Aussies like me, some Brazilians and Japanese and all that.

And yeah, the three years there was very fruitful, not from just a physical, emotional and mental healing, I guess, internally from the injury. And I came back to Australia in around end of 2012, resuming my medical career, sitting for the board exams, became qualified as a dual trained pain and rehab physician. And I had two kids after that, my two kids are now nine and three-ish, which is about to be four.

And it’s been a wonderful life. Now I do a lot of coaching, speaking and writing, so it’s been a beautiful career. It didn’t start out that way. I don’t think I could have imagined that I’ll be leading this life right now, 10, 15 years ago lying in the hospital bed. So you never know what’s in store for you, isn’t it, in tragedies and challenges.

Kevin Pho: So you mentioned this injury was back in 2008, and one of the things that caught my ear was that you struggled with your identity as you rehabilitated from that traumatic event. So talk more about that struggle and some of the choices and decision points that you had to encounter.

Olivia Ong: I think, interestingly, my life before injury, it’s like there’s this point before injury and after injury. And before my injury, as doctors we all know what it’s like, working in the wards, going from ward to ward, seeing patient after patient, doing the charts. Well, I was a resident doctor, so I had more charts to do because I was the bottom of the hierarchy in a way.

But the thing as a patient in the hospital, it was quite interesting, because I thought I’ll be less scared as a doctor, because I thought I knew the health care system and all that. In fact I was really, really scared. So I couldn’t imagine what it was like for my patients, to be in the hospital. Because maybe because we know a lot more and we start freaking out over worst case scenarios, I don’t know.

But I started, when you have a lot of time to yourself as in you being a hospital patient, you have a lot of time to your thoughts. And just thinking about the past and the future and now and all that, you start being really anxious and scared.

So my identity in a way, I had this identity as a very strong, independent doctor before the accident. And then when I was a patient I’m like, I’m a spinal injury, injured person now, I’m disabled, I may not have a medical career, my husband might leave me because I’m just such a burden to him, I may not even have kids, like, what do I do with this life? I’ll be lonely and I’ll die alone, and all those thoughts.

So the identity shifted, became a more victimized mindset in a way, self-pity. I wasn’t my own best friend, basically. I was really my own worst enemy. So I guess my identity shifted within the instant where the accident happened, identity shifted.

But I slowly got my identity back as I spent those three years in America. But I think it wasn’t just a physical rehabilitation that restored me, it was all the other stuff, like the emotional connection, the mental improvements I guess, in my psychological state perhaps, that kind of slowly, I found myself back. Because I started, myself, the good voice, like my inner voice that says, hey, you got this. That kind of, the coach in me, or I guess the best friend in me that I’ve always had but I’ve kind of ignored. You kind of ignore that voice as a doctor, it’s always the harshest critic voice in your head.

But yeah, so that’s how my identity has shifted. Slowly now I’m back in a different way, different kind of identity. It’s more a physician entrepreneur identity perhaps, or thought leader kind of identity. But it’s still me. Despite all these new identities, it’s still Olivia, nothing’s really changed.

Kevin Pho: Now, did you have to navigate these choices by yourself? Did you go through your own therapy and coaching in terms of navigating all those voices? Tell us about who helped you, if anybody.

Olivia Ong: I think in the early years when I was spending those three years in intensive rehab in Project Walk, I didn’t have any access to coaches. I didn’t know about coaching at that time, really. This is way back in 2010.

But what I did was, every day, I didn’t realize I was doing what we call in the personal development world now visualization. Because every day I’ll come back home and just visualize that I’ll be walking. So I did that for three years while I was in Project Walk, like, one day I’ll be walking and doing this and doing that. So that helped, the visualization. I think athletes do a lot of that, performers do a lot of that, like singers and all that.

And the other thing I did was coaching myself through my own mindset. So what I started doing was, I started celebrating every win, whether it’s my big toe moving that day, or I started taking more steps that day. I just celebrated every single win. Those are kind of the two mindset tools I kind of did on myself, without knowing that they were actually mindset tools. Because I had to self coach myself through walking, because no one else is going to help me through that. This was in 2010 at that time.

But the spinal injury was a spiritual experience, I guess, and then the healing and all that. But then as I went back to the rat race, hamster wheel as I call it, medical life, you kind of forget all that. You start being, it’s so easy, because you’re surrounded by that kind of environment where everyone is their own worst critic, and then you have all this workload kind of, like how you say, dumped on you, and working in a broken health care system. It just kind of destroyed me.

And then before I knew it, in 2019 I had burnout. And at that time I didn’t know about burnout. I heard about burnout but I didn’t know what it was all about. And as a doctor, you know what I did, I just read all the articles, read all the books. Didn’t help. But until I received coaching, that was when it really, really changed my life in terms of recovering from burnout, way back in 2019.

Because I started becoming aware of my own, like, belief systems. Like it turns out that I had this shame about being a spinal cord injured doctor that I was carrying with me. So I was doing all the things, probably burning myself out in the process, to prove to my colleagues not only that I could still perform my usual work role, that I still got it. I had to prove to them that I still got it. I did what I did, passed the exams. So that burnt me out.

I think the coaching really helped me a lot, and that was the main reason why I got certified as a coach, initially just to coach myself, because I just thought, hey, it’ll be good to coach yourself through medical challenges and career problems.

And then during the pandemic, when we did the interview way back in 2021, I started getting all this request from my medical peers going, hey, can you coach me? I know you’ve become a coach now, can you coach me through burnout? Because of this COVID thing and I’m burnt out and all that. So I started coaching my peers, and then a couple months after that I set up my coaching business, and that’s how it kind of, still that way, I’m still coaching doctors through burnout in my business. So it makes me fulfilled and happy because I get to help so many doctors out there. So that’s how it all evolved, really.

Kevin Pho: So how did your story of spinal trauma, how does that affect your coaching with physicians and your interactions with patients? How did your story, your past and your recovery, how did that influence you professionally today?

Olivia Ong: I think what it really helped me with, the spinal cord injury trauma experience, was just knowing how to listen to my body more. I had to, Kevin. I just had to, because when I was learning to walk again and all that, I have to be mindful, I have to make sure that I walk properly so I don’t lose my balance and then hit my head, that kind of thing. I have to, like, every little win I have to celebrate, as I said. Because I just had to listen to my body more than my head. That’s what my experience taught me.

Not only that, it’s just this compassion towards yourself, being kind, being your own best friend. Unfortunately we don’t do that very well in medicine, I’m afraid, because it’s not the environment we work in. But despite whatever’s going on out there in medicine and in the world, you can control your internal environment.

And with the nervous system topic again, one of the other tools I learned from my burnout experience through coaching was also regulating my nervous system. That was a big key.

And I just remember when I was first out, I knew that I had to learn meditation. So I got the help of a meditation teacher, and he was quite shocked that I couldn’t even breathe properly. That’s how ramped up, or dysfunctional, my sympathetic nervous system was. It was like over amplified or something. And we spent months just to learn to breathe properly again. So that’s how I started. I didn’t start out sitting on a zen cushion closing my eyes, I didn’t start out that way, although I’d love to, but I didn’t start out that way. And that’s how it started.

So I started learning all these things I implemented for myself, and I started helping my coaching clients and my patients too. Because with chronic pain it’s also from a stressed nervous system, and a lot of these patients with chronic pain have been through trauma, so it’s doubly stressed nervous system. So whatever techniques I teach my coaching clients, I teach my patients, because these are the tools I had to learn for myself.

Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Olivia Ong. She’s a pain and rehabilitation medicine physician in Australia. Her KevinMD article is “My spinal cord injury story from physician to patient, and how I rebuilt my nervous system.” Olivia, as always, we’ll end with some of your take-home messages to the KevinMD audience.

Olivia Ong: Yeah, I think my take-home message for your audience, Kevin, will be, I just want all of you to just live your love. Just every day live what you’re passionate for and shine your light, whether it’s at work, at home as a parent, or as a coach for your kids’ soccer team, or what would you guys call it, football team, or just volunteering at church or anything like that.

And just to be your own best friend. That’s my key message, just to be your own best friend, because you’ve got your own back.

Kevin Pho: Olivia, thank you so much for sharing your story, time, and insight, and thanks again for coming back on the show.

Olivia Ong: Yeah, no problem, Kevin. Thank you.