Episode 111 | Leonardo da Vinci Saved my Life

In this holiday episode of Uncopyable Women in Business, I’m switching things up and sharing something deeply personal - my mom’s 8-year battle with ovarian cancer, and how it influenced my own decision to have a full hysterectomy.  

The type of surgery I had was part of the incredible legacy of Leonardo da Vinci. His anatomical studies revolutionized man's understanding of the human body and laid the foundation for modern medical advancements. His genius and thirst for knowledge contributed to the medical knowledge we rely on today. That knowledge may have literally saved my life.

I hope this episode inspires you to pause to express gratitude, find ways to impact others, and answer Mary Oliver's question: "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Leonardo DaVinci Documentary: https://www.pbs.org/show/leonardo-da-vinci/
DaVinci Surgery Robotic Demonstration: Peel a Grape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNHgeykDXFw
DaVinci Surgery Robotic Demonstration: Sew the skin BACK ONTO the grape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XdC1HUp-rU
Rotating Surgical Table for Robotic Surgery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnC_b4Qf6So

The Summer Night, Poem by Mary Oliver: https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2015/6/29/the-summer-day

Kay Miller interviews women in sales with proven track records, as they share their experiences, success strategies and tools you can use to crush your sales goals. Kay has a history of sales success, earning the nickname “Muffler Mama” when she sold more automotive mufflers than anyone in the world. Kay and her guests deliver actionable insights and real-world tools that will help you overcome obstacles, adopt a winning mindset, and maximize your sales results.

Kay is the author of the book, Uncopyable Sales Secrets – How to Create an Unfair Advantage and Outsell the Competition. Go to Amazon.com and search “Uncopyable Sales Secrets” to order the book, or click the link below.

Contact:
kay@uncopyablesales.com
linkedin.com/in/millerkay
Order Uncopyable Sales Secrets: amzn.to/35dGlYZ

Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:00  Welcome to Uncopyable Women in Business. I'm your host, Kay Miller, also known as Muffler Mama. Stay tuned as I, along with my guests, give you marketing, sales, and personal branding strategies that will give you an unstoppable advantage. Welcome to this special holiday episode of Unstoppable Women in Business. As you know, I usually interview guests, but today I'm flying solo and I want to share a personal story that's really impacted me and taught me some lessons, giving me reminders about gratitude, the impact each of us has on the world, and one lesson I'm still working on. I have not mastered it, but I'll share the strategies I've put into place to help me do a better job. I really hope you find value in this episode, whether you're listening during the holidays or not. So here's my story. In 2006, my mom died of ovarian cancer. She was only 68 when she passed away. She went through an eight year battle with cancer before it took her life. I was with my mom through multiple surgeries, chemo and radiation.
Speaker 1 00:01:24  It was miserable for my mom and heartbreaking to watch. Now I know I'm not alone. We've all been touched by cancer. Everyone knows someone who's gone through that devastating journey. You might be someone who's beaten cancer yourself, and you know firsthand what it's like. Or maybe you're in the midst of your own cancer battle right now. And if that's the case, I want you to know my heart goes out to you. I admire your bravery, and I encourage you to keep fighting. Before my mom passed, we talked about ovarian cancer and how it's almost impossible to detect until it's too late. My mom was bound and determined. She did not want me to go through that experience. She made me promise to at least consider having a preventative hysterectomy after she died. The possibility of having ovarian cancer myself was in the back of the mind. After she died, the possibility of having ovarian cancer was in the back of my mind almost all the time I was afraid. Ten years went by and in 2015, my fear had grown into paranoia.
Speaker 1 00:02:55  It was affecting my life in a big way. So I decided to talk to my doctor and he said, the only way to guarantee I'd never have ovarian cancer was to have a total hysterectomy. They'd have to remove almost all of my so-called female parts. It sounded radical, but it was driving me nuts. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that's what I had to do. When I was a teenager, my mom's best friend, Judy, had a hysterectomy. I remember she was in the hospital for a week, and my mom and her friends delivered meals for at least another week. It was a slow and I'm guessing, painful process. And back then there was a danger of complications like bleeding and infection. It was a big deal. I knew times had changed. I mean, that was 50 years ago, but I had no idea how much until I met with a specialist my doctor recommended. At my first appointment, she told me about the new technology called the Da Vinci Surgical System.
Speaker 1 00:04:13  It was approved in 2000 and it's an amazing system that uses robotics. The surgery is named for da Vinci himself and inspired by, you guessed it, Leonardo da Vinci himself. I knew he'd painted the Mona Lisa back in the 1400s. I knew he'd studied anatomy, but I didn't realize he'd been a seriously pioneering genius whose discoveries still influence medicine. 500 years later, my doctor explained that this cutting edge surgery, no pun intended, was literally revolutionary. It was precise, minimally invasive, and it cut down on those risks and recovery time for my hysterectomy. She'd used the DaVinci system to guide robotic arms equipped with tiny, incredibly precise instruments along with a high definition 3D camera. She pulled out a brochure with a diagram of my insides and penciled in some arrows to demonstrate. It's quick, safe and almost painless, she told me. The next thing she said wasn't something I'd expected. We do have to rule out the possibility of any existing cancer. While I was in surgery, they'd biopsy my tissues on the spot to check for cancer cells.
Speaker 1 00:05:45  It was unlikely, but if they found any cancer cells, they'd remove the tissue, biopsy the next layer, and repeat the process until they were sure there was no more cancer. Well, that wasn't exactly what I wanted to hear, but she assured me the chances they'd find cancer were unlikely. When I gave her my deer in headlights look, she told me I could learn all about the process on YouTube, of course. So I went on YouTube and found three videos, and I gotta say, they pretty much blew my mind. The first video showed a surgeon who had his arms in these giant sleeves with his face fixed on a computer monitor, controlling equipment that was so precise it would literally be impossible to duplicate by hand. And guess what they used to demonstrate? They showed the DaVinci robot peeling the skin off of a grape. That's right, a grape. These tiny instruments peeled the skin off a red grape in six perfect sections without any damage to the grape. Unreal. But wait, there's more.
Speaker 1 00:07:10  The next video showed the robotic equipment perfectly stitching the skin back onto the grape. It totally seemed like science fiction. A final video showed that during the surgery, I'd be on a rotating operating table. It turned and tilted at various angles. I'd basically be on a human rotisserie. The purpose was to let gravity shift my other organs out of the way, and I thought to myself, at this point, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get any of my body to shift. My surgery date arrived. I was scheduled for 2 p.m. on May 4th, 2015. On the day of my surgery, I checked in, got ready for the procedure, and then they wheeled me into a room and put the IV in. I tried to count backwards from ten, like I always do, and I think I got to nine. And the next thing I remember was waking up to hear a nurse leaning over me and saying, good news. There's no cancer. No cancer? That's right. No cancer. When she said those words, I could literally feel a wave of relief, like a tingling sensation in my entire body.
Speaker 1 00:08:36  After all those years of worry, the tension melted away in a moment. I bet you felt a version of that feeling. You think something's wrong. Maybe your teenager is out with friends and hasn't made it home by curfew. You get more and more wound up. Then you hear the front door unlocked. You feel a sense of relief that goes through your entire body. That's exactly what I felt. I ended up spending the night in the hospital. Well, most of it. At 6 a.m., a different doctor came into the recovery room and said I was ready to go home. I'd been in the hospital for a total of 16 hours. He gave me some instructions. Light activity was fine if it didn't make me feel uncomfortable. And most importantly, no lifting over £10 for six weeks. I left the hospital with three tiny scars. The only downside was that my bikini wearing days were officially over, which of course, they'd already been officially over for many years. But I hardly had any pain.
Speaker 1 00:09:56  I went home and I seriously wondered, did they actually even remove anything? I remember that day so clearly. The day was sunny and warm. I sat at home for a while looking out the window, but I felt so good. I grabbed the leash and took our dog, Chaka to the park. When I walked to the park, I felt a level of gratitude that was so profound. I had tears in my eyes. I didn't have ovarian cancer. I never would have ovarian cancer. I walked to the park and past the same trees I saw every day. But I swear the leaves looked brighter. I breathed in the air which carried the fragrance of the flowers I'd never noticed. I noticed details that I looked at all the time but didn't really see. It was an incredible emotional experience and I really felt this sense of joy. I was overwhelmed by the feeling of gratitude for the brilliant surgeons, for the wonderful nurses and hospital staff, for life itself, and yes, for Leonardo da Vinci.
Speaker 1 00:11:14  Can you think of a time that you've been in a situation that could have been devastating, like a car whizzing through an intersection that could have hit you if you'd been there just three seconds earlier? That's what I felt. Now, this all came back to me a few weeks ago. My husband, Steve, and I watched the latest Ken Burns documentary on Leonardo da Vinci. Now, all Ken Burns documentaries are excellent, but this one might be my favorite. I've always known Da Vinci was the artist behind the Mona Lisa, probably the most famous painting in the world, but I had no idea what a pioneer he was in engineering, physics and anatomy. Da Vinci was insatiably curious about everything. He was a sponge for knowledge. To say he was unconscionable is an understatement. He studied everything he observed. Painted. Explored everything from nature to the human body. And he laid the groundwork for countless medical advancements. As I watched the show, it hit me. Davinci's genius, curiosity and relentless pursuit of knowledge inspired the surgery that I'd had, the surgery that eliminated my risk of ovarian cancer.
Speaker 1 00:12:46  He truly may have saved my life 500 years later if I hadn't had the surgery. Who knows, I might have developed ovarian cancer now that another ten years have gone by. Since the surgery, I thought of three lessons that were meaningful to me, and I hope will be for you too. The first one is gratitude. I'd like to ask you, what is your DaVinci moment? What's a moment when gratitude has overwhelmed you and shifted your perspective? For me, it was the walk in the sunshine feeling alive. I want to tap into that feeling every day on purpose, and I've added a DaVinci gratitude to my morning routine. The second lesson has to do with our impact on the world. We might not be Leonardo da Vinci, and honestly, none of us are even close to being Leonardo da Vinci. But our words and our actions do impact the world. They not only make a direct impact, but there's a ripple effect. There is a possibility that you and I can say and do things that have a tremendous impact on people.
Speaker 1 00:14:17  People we know, people we don't know, and maybe people who haven't even been born yet. Okay, here comes that third lesson, which, as I said, I'm still working on. And that lesson is that I need to unplug from social media and engage with the world. Watching that documentary reminded me of the importance of being present, of observing, being curious and learning. It's so easy to waste time scrolling through social media. I get sucked in almost every day. Yesterday I spent two hours on social media. That's two hours I'll never get back. So instead of looking at other people's lives, I want to make a conscious effort of tuning into my own life and my own experience. Leonardo da Vinci was a great role model for doing that. So I challenge myself and I challenge you to ask, are you living in the moment? I want to do better. So I went on my phone and set social media limits. I'm sure it will be challenging and I'm not so sure I'll be perfect, but I really want to be better at experiencing my own life instead of other people's lives.
Speaker 1 00:15:51  So I'd like to close out by asking, what are you grateful for? What impact are you making on the world, and how can you make a point of engaging with the world around you? I love the closing lines of the Mary Oliver poem called the Summer day, and I quote. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life. You, my friend, are un copyable. As we move into 2025, let's make it a great year. Let's look at each day with a renewed focus on gratitude. Let's strive to make a positive impact on others, and let's spend less time watching other people's lives and more time living our own. I so appreciate you spending this time with me, and I wish you a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. Thanks for listening to this episode the next time and always remember to be an copyable.