Handling uncertainty has been the work of the last few years. First there was the abyss of #womenshealth issues I fell into following what seemed simple enough egg freezing, then the unearthing of years of remote & recent medical system trauma causing me to question my own work
Oh, cancer monitoring too. & other types of uncertainty

One thing that I changed was my level of frankness. I became much more direct and not concerned with whether what I communicated was liked

You can't be a "pleaser", outwardly focused, & deal with uncertainty from own body
My mom gave me "permission" to be less perfectionist despite that being a trait she had most of her life. You have to develop self-compassion. When you have the latter you seek less external validation

More than that is recognizing control is only ever an illusion. Ride the wave
I focused less on "control" and more on generating options. To an extent Mom also modeled this all her life. If not this then that. She had multi-level contingency plans. Her goal was perfect execution, which she always achieved. Options without perfection is different, freeing.
More recently she would tell me that "you do it your own way but you always get it done" which was different from her always worrying about me. I don't have any official diagnosis of anything but have a lot of traits of neurodiversity. Girls/women like my thrive with right mom.
Am SO grateful for the recent years because even though she is now gone, I know she felt I would be okay, I was capable, etc, etc. She often worried about my bleeding heart and getting drawn in by everyone else's story at expense of self-care. She was right. Moms always know best

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More from @usnehal

9 Apr
I state, highlight, mark up, not insinuate
Why is someone who likely does not menstruate a sudden expert on #womenshealth to identify a WOC seeking #data #quality & #integrity as the threat...to women?
"Respecting" social science = using respectable methods, not online surveys.
What you see in the tweet and the "study" is ego, defensiveness & flagrant Dunning-Kruger effect for #womenshealth, #menstrualhealth, #COVID19, #vaccine #research.

The best way to demonstrate the value of a field is to be consistent on #quality not

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Academic language on #online #survey #data:
"systematically assess carelessness in a crowdsourced sample" Denial that quick & dirty is poor #quality is an odd use of time & ineffective. One could better defend one's merit, by delivering #quality per best practices and standards.
Read 34 tweets
9 Apr
LOVE being faculty at @MIT this semester for a class on #dataanalytics & #datascience. I tend to PM my mentees, especially women and #blackexcellence to start to prepare questions to ask. Too often people stay silent. Speak up. Never be embarrassed to show #curiosity.
Listening right now to mid-semester progress reports from teams and am feeling like such a proud #datascience #BigData #bigdataanalytics momma. Bear cubs doing good (well AND good in world)

LOVE that this is a space within @MIT that focuses on #SDoH and #equity.
Literally right now, hearing about a study on #socialmedia chatter as a driver of vaccines hesitancy driven by #Twitter - start postulate "cause/effect" by an incident that happens within days after a vaccine - like ppl automatically assume a death is "caused" by vaccine
Read 27 tweets
9 Apr
Adding the word "experience" to an online survey of biological & immunological mechanisms does not make it anthropology. People who are spreading online rumors about vaccines need to take a hard look at what they are doing. There are valid ways to collect health data. Use them.
There are real, concerning, harmful gaps in knowledge in #womenshealth. Bad data of the GIGO method of data collection for quick and dirty "research" on "vaccine side effect" merely replaces one harm with another harm. searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/gar…
If collecting data, overtly on "vaccine" and "side effect" claiming causation from temporal relation
for "after" on something as highly variable as menses, w/ deliberate inclusion of perimenopause (known menstrual variation)
=methodology used by anti-vaxx

sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/f…
Read 15 tweets
9 Apr
If you study #vaccine + #sideeffect... you automatically cross into #healthcare & #medicine regardless of what other label applied

I'm a #vaccineswork #vaccinessavelives #pediatrician & #tweetiatrician careful on #data #quality particularly for women, WOC, POC

This is my lane
Every seeming kind of "not a big deal" thing related to #vaccineswork blows up in our faces like death threats via online mobs against #pediatrician #SciComm

May seem extreme but take a look at the escalation of responses to my identifying "bad #data"

medpagetoday.com/special-report…
We can't wait for yet more false "vaccines affect (THEY DO NOT) fertility" trope to circulate

anyone who is generating data on #vaccine "#sideeffects" needs to think about clean, quality, meaningful data. Junk data: common, but this actually matters

healthline.com/health-news/no…
Read 9 tweets
8 Apr
Peak Twitter. Woman w/ stage 4 #endometriosis, #fibroids, latter condition more common in WOC, post 2 gyn surgeries

identifies online #womenshealth #vaccine #survey as poor #data #quality

instead of improving, response ~ "not to attack... but am glad you are not my doctor"
Indeed, I engage patients & families 1:1 without forcing them into fields I've pre-created for my #data collection, based on assumptions I have from personal experience

Respecting women & WOC allows people to not be forced into leading questions or pre-created fields
Measuring needs to be #quality to deliver quality. Your #results will never be better than your #studydesign or collection methods. Wrote this cuz we need less measurement & more humanity. I'm in b-school & everyone sends a new survey every 30 sec..
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…
Read 7 tweets
8 Apr
Utterly irresponsible

An *anthropologist* spreading vaccine hysteria (hate the word but she’s using the uterus to spread vaccine fear) 😱😡

NOT AT ALL controlling for
prior COVID
b4 vaccine

Perimenopausal included?!?

This is why you need GOOD science
#MedTwitter
#COVID19
Some women trying to “lead” on #womenshealth only serve to harm

No, the way to win in a man’s world is NOT to be as nonsensical as Trump on science

You only harm WOMEN when you fear monger with ZERO understanding of female biology

This is akin to “bleach treatment” science
They literally included perimenopause (pregnancy and lactation) which is KNOWN to have fluctuating hormones and distressing symptoms.

There IS *zero* biological understanding yet claiming to study “immune” response.

OMG.
Women are women’s worst enemies, I am convinced.
Read 15 tweets

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