Interview with Andrea Wadley

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: hello. Welcome to Beyond ADHD, a Physician's Perspective. I am Dr. Diana Mercado Marmarosh. I'm a family medicine physician practicing in rural Texas. I used to be hindered by my adhd, but I now see it as a gift that helps me show up as the person I was always meant to be. Both in my work and in my personal life.

In the past two years, I've come to realize, That I'm learning. Some of my beliefs and some of my habits were just as important as learning the new set of skills.

Hello. Hello. I am so glad to be here today. I have an amazing friend. From Dallas, Dr. Andrea Wadley, and she is actually the owner and head pediatrician at 1 27 Pediatrics. It's a really cool setup that she has going on. She is a home visit. Only direct primary care, pediatric and lactation practice, and she's able to provide convenient and really high quality evidence-based care.

In your house. Like how amazing is that? And she also helps with breastfeeding medicine consultations. So yeah, I'm so excited to have her here. And she does all kinds of education on breastfeeding, but this is probably her passion project and she's gonna share some nuggets about.

Some of the difficulties that can happen during breastfeeding time and how maybe taking some of those steps can be helpful to implement For any of us who have a D H D or any of us who feel like we might all of a sudden have something that feels like A D H D because of the new responsibilities during this amazing and exciting and challenging time of our lives.

Awesome. So thank you for coming. I'm so excited you're here

Dr. Andrea Wadley: today. Thank you for inviting me. This is exciting.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Tell me how did you decide to do what you're currently doing? Because, I'm, did you envision this all along when you started off, like in residency into pediatrics, or what were

Dr. Andrea Wadley: you thinking?

Yeah, so I was. In pediatric training in San Antonio actually. And I had a pediatrician mentor, so my advisor was always telling me that I should start my own practice, and I told her she was crazy. So I never ever had that desire when I was in residence. C my husband and I actually met via the internet while I was in San Antonio and he was here in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex.

So we met, we dated, we married and we were long distance for that whole time. We got married at the end of my intern year of residency, which was crazy. Why would anyone do that? And then we lived apart for the first two years of our marriage, so I moved back to the Dallas Fort Worth metro.

And it was. , it's really hard to find a job. As a pediatrician, as a doctor, you think the world will want me, and nobody wanted me, it felt like. And , I looked all around town and then I found this amazing job as a newborn hospitalist. I worked there for eight years. Loved every minute of it.

Loved helping moms and babies in the hospital during the first few days of the baby's life. But there was always something inside of me that was missing that I am pediatrician, so I wanted that. And as the corporate structure of medicine continued to press down on.

My heart and my soul . I had my own child during that time and just missed having time with her just because someone else was telling me what my schedule was gonna look like. So as a result of all of those things, I decided I wanted to start my own practice. So in the middle of that, having my own child as well and trying to breastfeed I was a physician.

I thought I knew everything, right? I'm a pediatrician. I take care of moms and babies, and I know everything about breastfeeding. Oh my gosh, I didn't. So it was soul crushing right to, to try and breastfeed my own child. All of those things mixed together and prompted me to want to start my own practice doing pediatrics as well as breastfeeding medicine.

So lactation consults. And then I looked at the horizon of medical care at that time, and it's only gotten. Maybe worse since that time. So about four and a half years ago, five years ago, I was like, I just don't wanna work for anyone anymore. I wanna do my own thing. And so in Dallas, Fort Worth, many of the practices, like anywhere else are owned by a big health system, which is not all bad, but just for me, that just wasn't what I wanted to do.

I wanted to provide a different thing for people. So I saw this model of direct primary care. It's like a membership, right? Think gym membership, Netflix, that kind of thing. But this, you're becoming a member of a practice. And it allows me to provide kind of care that. Is really outside of the insurance structure.

Insurance is, I do this, you pay me this, and then the insurance says whether or not that was okay or not, right? So this is more of a relationship between me and the patient. So each family pays me a set amount every month on the first...