Episode 1: Meet the Bridge Podcast Team

In our first full episode, you'll have the opportunity to meet the Building Bridges podcast team.

• Adrian Banning, DHSc, PA-C
• Breann Garbas, DHSc, PA-C
• Cody Sasek, PhD, PA-C

We'll take a casual and lighthearted look at the journeys that led each of the cohosts to Butler and to the seat in front of the microphone.

Transcript

Building Bridges: Episode 1

Hello, welcome to Building Bridges, a podcast from the Butler University Doctor Medical Science Bridge Program. I'm Cody Sasek, and I'm so glad you're here. This podcast is all about connection, bringing together voices from across healthcare, education, leadership, and beyond. Whether you're a practicing PA, a student, an educator, or someone passionate about where healthcare is headed.

This space is for you today. We're going to take some time to meet some of the other podcast hosts that you'll be hearing from, through our time together. Uh, as I mentioned, I'm Cody Sasek. I'm a physician assistant, still practice in emergency medicine. Uh, but I'm fortunate to spend most of my time working with new graduate PAs through our Doctor Medical Science Bridge program.

Through that. I see so many of the interesting things that PAs are positioned to do. And so I'm excited to learn more about some of those leaders and all of the ways that they're impacting not only the patients that they serve, but also their communities and [00:01:00] beyond. 

 I'm joined here with colleagues, Bre and Adrian, and we're all going to introduce ourselves in a second.

This is Adrian. Um, but Cody, tell us a little bit more. Tell us where you grew up. First and foremost. I think that's interesting. Yeah, I've certainly been a, a born and raised mid-westerner, uh, growing up in a small little rural town in southeast Nebraska. Um, and then, uh, staying in states at this point, I've, I have degrees from three of the four University of Nebraska campuses, so whatever that means about my educational journey.

So you're going to go back and collect the fourth? I think I get a fourth one for free at this point. It's a punch card system. I, I believe, I believe it is. Okay. I at least should get a free cup of coffee, A free sandwich. Yeah, exactly right. And, uh, and spent some time in, in Kansas City practicing in orthopedic surgery there, fresh out of PA school.

And so, um, now I'm excited to explore a new area in Indianapolis, although not living, uh, in Indy, but, uh, but having opportunity to explore the [00:02:00] city and its people. Kansas City is popular for barbecue and football, right? It is. Did you, uh, and Taylor Swift, now she's taking it over. Um, but you had something to do with football there, didn't you?

Yeah, I, uh, a really unique opportunity was, uh, worked side by side with, at the time the team physician for the Kansas City Chiefs, which was, uh, which was a unique experience seeing, how much, you know, those, How, how sizable those, uh, gentlemen are, uh, in the, in the work that they do. And, uh, and so it's a really unique opportunity to, to learn and grow and, um, and I think that's.

I think that experience is something all PAs can, um, can connect with how important that first job is and learning and the mentorship and the, the connections that happen through that. And I was just fortunate to, to find myself in a good place a little bit through happenstance. Um, and so that was, it was, you know, that first, first job, that first professional experience is so, so I think formative in, in [00:03:00] how people.

Develop over their careers that yeah, fortunately it worked out. Um, so it was, was, was lucky in that regard. So what I'm hearing is you do or do not, you do know Taylor Swift? I do not. Oh, okay. Never mind. We, I guess I wouldn't even call myself a fan, although I don't, I don't, I know. I don't know. Do you want to put that into the, we're going to, we're going to cut that.

They're going to at the same time. And we've reached our first edit point of the podcast. We're going to leave it. Um. I might just hold it as blackmail, actually, just in case it's getting, we, I think we should make him learn a Taylor Swift song actually. Um, yes. Maybe that for our next episode. Yes. That'll maybe like if as we're developing a new theme song, perhaps that you know, something to the tune of, I don't know, something.

Yeah, that's not a Taylor Swift song. Actually. Something, um, Cody sings. Cody Sings Taylor is what I'm hearing in season two. It's just going to be a cover. Yes. It, instead of Taylor's version, it's going to be Cody's [00:04:00] version. Cody's version. Uh, stay tuned. The next, the next top stay tuned chart topping album is.

Yes. 1989 Cody's version. I'm just can't wait for that to happen. Uh, but Adrian, tell us, tell us about yourself. Um, alright. My name's Adrian Banning. I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania. it was coal country. Both of my grandfathers were coal miners and I wanted to leave there asap. Uh, and so I did.

I'm a first gen college student. And Cody, you are too, right? Yep. Yep. And Bre is too. We're all here in the Bridge program. The faculty are all first gen college students, so I like that. Um, and so I got out of Dodge and I moved to the, uh, let's say Philly for undergrad. Uh, and I stayed there for PA school too.

And then my first job I was like, how about I leave my entire support system and everything? I know this sounds like a great idea. And go into primary care with a. Really complex [00:05:00] population where I'll mostly be by myself. This sounds like a great idea. And my mentors at the time were like, yeah, your contract looks fine.

Go. Which honestly, I don't know if I could go back, I might do differently, except that I learned a lot and I, I loved my patients. So I moved to the middle of Vermont where I did primary care and mostly saw military veterans. Uh, actually after six months. Of work I saw exclusively military veterans, and then I did internal medicine, outpatient internal medicine for Dartmouth Hitchcock really briefly before I moved back to Pennsylvania and ended up teaching full-time.

It wasn't what I expected. But I thought, well, I'll just try. And it, I had the best boss and the best team and, and you know, like Cody said, it was kind of happenstance, just happenstance that he stumbled into the Kansas City Chiefs locker room. I just stumbled into, um, education. And, and then stayed. And that, that was like 17 years ago.

Um, and since then I have practiced in, um, [00:06:00] doing primary care for an acute psychiatric population part-time. But now I teach full-time and I'm pursuing a certificate in lifestyle medicine. Um, so just trying to eat as many vegetables as possible, really, frankly. Um. Um, it's as boring as I'm making it sound right now, but the not boring part is that it's, it's not even a secret, it's really well known, but it's literally how we stop chronic disease, which is killing us in the US It's heart disease number one, killer, it's diabetes.

Um, type two, probably dementia, um, you know, high blood pressure. It's literally what you eat. Uh, and it's amazing that we don't talk about that more because it's pretty inexpensive when we could fix it. Um, but later on in the series you're going to hear from professor Rod Jackson who says Butter is poison.

And, um, I can't wait. I can't wait for you to hear from that, but that's enough about me. Bre, tell us all about you. Oh, wait, I have a question. No. What? Oh, no. What, what, what do your dinner in dinner dinners out with friends look like [00:07:00] when everyone is, is concerned about their vegetable intake? Oh, that's a really good question.

Um, it depends if people. Like, know that I'm learning about that stuff right now. Well, most people don't care. Like they're going to eat what they eat. And you can't, like if you're like, I'm telling you this to save your life, they're like, I don't care. Is there a pill? Um, honestly, my dinners out aren't perfect.

I don't, I don't do this perfectly. Like, and I don't, I'm not vegan or vegetarian. I don't care what anyone needs, honestly. Like you do you, I'm not judging you. Um, I just. Um, care what I eat. Um, luckily the other person that I live with, I live with my husband. Um. He's pretty easygoing and so we've tried to kind of make a healthier change at home.

Um, eating out. I don't think other people care. My, I have a, a niece who's, uh, about to be 13 who's really just discovered her love of steak. Yeah. And we kind of talked about how like the amount of steak she's eating is like really delicious. She like [00:08:00] goes into ovations over it. Like she like her like eyes roll back in her head.

She like loves steak right now. And I was like, you know, it's not so good for you. Maybe like once a week is like a balance and like really lifestyle medicine says like, not at all or like twice a year, but we're just trying to cut back. So she's like, oh, when was the last time I had steak? And I'm, I don't want her to be weird about what she eats or think about what she eats.

Just to know that you can make. Healthy choices, um, that really fuel your body and like your mood and your happiness. So, um, but she doesn't care. She's like, are you buying? And then I know what a mistake. I, I think that's one of the, hopefully the, the themes of, of our podcast is that there's sort of this social media perfection.

Everything's perfect, and the people who have arrived at their destination have it all figured out. I'm hoping by talking with some of these really impressive folks that we, we find out that people's journeys aren't perfect and that Yeah. That, you know, progress is, progress is progress, and it [00:09:00] doesn't have to be perfection and kind of pull back the, the veil on some of those things where, people are sometimes afraid to start.

Mm-hmm. Because it seems like impossible. Like, well, there's no way that I could eat perfectly. Mm-hmm. Well, the good news is you don't have to. Yeah. Right, right. And so, um, across all of the thing, all of the topics we'll discuss, I'm really interested in hearing some of those, like really just human sort of stories.

Yeah. Um, about people's, people's experiences. Yeah. Very much like the journey is that, that's the, that's the saying, right? The journey is a destination. And speaking of that as a segue, how about your journey Bre? Ah, uh, well, I, I took one this morning. I, I'm a mediocre distance runner, so I'm Bre Garbas.

I am also a associate professor here in the Bridge program. Um, a clinical background comes from OBGYN and family medicine, so on the butter is poison backdrop. I spent about 11 years in Charleston, South Carolina. Where butter is a food group, butter is definitely a food group. I actually hail from [00:10:00] Indiana, so coming back to Butler is a little bit of or a homecoming for me.

So I grew up in a teeny tiny town in Huron, Indiana, and I now live in a Guinea tiny town in Brooker, Florida where we hail 380 people in 4,000 head of cattle. If the cows ever revolt, you'll never hear from me again. I currently practice still in family medicine and OB GYN in a free night clinic, which is a super exciting and deep love of my heart.

I have so many wonderful patients who could really benefit from some lifestyle medicine actually, because there's. A deep access issue. And that's one of the things that I hope to be able to bring to the podcast with some guests would be, how do we overcome access issues for patients in low income areas and patients that are having reproductive health issues.

So hopefully that will be something that we can get some guests on the podcast and, and talk about. So. That is a, a research [00:11:00] issue and interest area of mine. Uh, there's also a nifty area that I get to work in on some clinical time, which is a direct primary care, bringing home medicine to patients in their homes.

Mm-hmm. So that is a really fun thing. A lot of patients that have transportation issues or patients that, uh, can only get to their. Primary cares in the evenings because that is when the family member could take them. Uh, they're trying to get off work to get to the offices, and that's, uh, a real problem for so many people.

So, like my, my heartbeats in the rural and, and underserved areas of medicine. So that is something I am grateful to get to practice in. I love it. Uh, that is, that's pretty much me.

And I also have a fantastic orange cat. If you are an orange cat person, you. Either smiled or flinched at the statement of, I always appreciate that, that in Zoom meetings in which we find ourselves often that, that, uh, our pets will make appearances. Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm. Each one of us having a, a unique, uh, [00:12:00] co inhabitant in our homes, whether it's orange cats or, or beautiful white, fluffy dogs.

Yeah. Yeah, I know, but, we'll, I could talk about Nora forever, so I don't want to get, I'll, I'll tell you a little bit about her in a second. But, um, Bre tell everyone what your cat's name is. My cat's name is Romberg. So I, for the medical people, I did not name Romberg. He came to me with that name. He was actually named after a 1964 Cartoon Rabbit.

Romberg is a, uh, Orlando Cat, cafe Kitty, uh, his previous owner named him. That's incredible. I just thought it was both. A gift and super ironic kismet that I got a cat named Romberg and I practice in medicine. So, yeah. That's incredible. I just assumed you had named it after the test. Although I did think to myself like, well, she doesn't practice neurology.

I, but you know, if, if you want to freak yourself out, Google that rabbit. Mm. It's a freaky looking rabbit. It feels like Donny Darko like rabbit maybe it's a freaky looking rabbit. He, Romberg [00:13:00] is. A unique and handsome cat. He's a big, long nose. Should we all be unique and handsome? You know? Yes. He's a loving kitty.

And Cody, you have Mack. Yeah. Yeah. A uh, sometimes high energy, uh, uh, red heer, um, uh, also sometimes very low energy. He, he does appreciate, he, now he and I are aligned on this. We do appreciate a good nap. So, uh, so there's, uh, there's, there's that piece of it. Okay, so now we're going to talk about Nora for the rest of the time.

Yes. I'm obsessed with this dog. Um, she kind of looks like a, um, that recent hybrid genetic, they pulled like prehistoric DNA and made dire wolves. And people tell us all the time, that's what she looks like. She's, yeah. Because we tested her DNA like. You know, you do now, I guess. And she's exactly half great Pyrenees and half Husky.

Uh, and she's lovely. She loves to meet people. She, she [00:14:00] wants to go outside just to see who's out there and socialize. She doesn't even want to walk. She just kind of wants to like lie down and have people come and pet her. Um. I started on the therapy dog journey, but when we went to class she, um, she's such a dainty eater because she's so perfect.

She would, um, like choke on the treats as we were like training her. So she would like try to gulp them or she'd have to go too fast. And, um, she was like coughing on all the treats. So we have to rethink how we are going to do her training. But she'd be a perfect therapy dog. I, I have not met Nora in person, but just by ca by camera she seems like just has a very calming presence.

Yeah. She's like, I can't eat at the speed that you want me to train, so we have to think of a new plan. But yeah, she's, she's lovely. I'm so glad. And she's just about three, so hopefully we have a lot of time together. Yeah. Staring at Nora is therapy. Yeah. Just when she shows up on a Zoom call all eyes go.

Hi, Nora. Yeah, except she comes in with a [00:15:00] cloud affair, so normally I'm like, hi Nora. It's like in my face. Yeah, I can absolutely see that. Well, I think this has been a great. Uh, great time getting to share a little bit about each other and certainly our four-legged friends and ending on Nora is probably a great place to wrap up our time together.

We appreciate you learning a little bit about us and, and our lives, but what we're excited about are a really exciting slate of guests who's. Who will come on with a variety of different backgrounds and experiences and really sharing their journeys as we look about the Bridges that they've built across the different phases, roles, and interesting things that they've done with their life and, and, uh, and their professional world.

So, we look forward to seeing you in the next episode of Building Bridges.