Ralph A. Miranda, MD and Brigitta Miranda-Freer

[00:02] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Hi, I'm Brigitta Miranda Freer. I'm 52 years old. It's Wednesday, June 1, 2022. I'm here in Missoula, Montana, and I am interviewing my father, Ralph Miranda, Md.

[00:15] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: That's me, Ralph Miranda, Md, and I am Brigitte's father. We are in Missoula, Montana, on June 1 of 2022. And I am 75 years old and darn near 76.

[00:30] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Great. So, dad, thanks for coming today. I have a lot of questions for you, but really, I'm just hoping to have a great conversation with one of my favorite people. Thank you. Yes. I wanted to give you a chance to share your story today because you have a great story to tell. You ready?

[00:48] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I'm ready. Let's do it.

[00:50] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: So last night, we actually had a great night at the baseball game, and we were there in part to celebrate Memorial Day and to honor people that have died in active military service. And it got me thinking, you know, as a Vietnam vet, how does that day make you feel?

[01:09] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, it's a little strange because I usually think of Memorial Day as grieving and honoring those who have died in war. And I kind of like Veterans Day in November as being the day that you recognize that people served in the military. So it's a little sad, because I do start thinking of people that I knew, some that I didn't even know their names who died or who were taken away, essentially, during that Vietnam experience. And there's a certain amount of, I don't know, guilt for having actually returned.

[01:53] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Is that right?

[01:54] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Because so many people didn't come back whole and so many people just didn't make it back. And that I've always felt bad about this. That guilt made me survive on one level, and on another level, it made me just cut off relations with people that I had known in Vietnam, people that were left behind. I had gotten to the rank of sergeant e five. I was actually in a platoon where for a while, I was the temporary platoon leader because of losing people and just not getting recruits or new, new members to the platoon. And as a sergeant e five, that was a bit of more responsibility than I wanted. My goal at the time was to try and get the six people that came over with me back intact to the United States. And I did that. I got every one of them out of the field before I came out of the field, and I went down to the absolute last day of my 366 days, and I made it back. But there were a lot of people that were, that started in country after me and were still there and still behind people that I helped train, essentially, and bring along, they wrote letters to me, and I just didn't respond because once I got back to stateside, I just needed to turn the page. I just needed to put that behind me. And I've always regretted not keeping up those relationships. But by the same token, I was able to somehow focus on what lay ahead. And you're one of the reasons for that.

[03:54] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Well, because I'm grateful that you were able to do that. I literally would not be here if you didn't come back home. So thank you. Thank you for doing that.

[04:08] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: If you hadn't been coming along, a lot of things would have been different when I came back. I could have indulged myself in a lot of unwanted activities that would just prevent me from moving on to my future.

[04:20] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Yeah, babies have a way of forcing you to get out of your own head, don't they?

[04:24] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Amen.

[04:25] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Well, you're welcome. Hooray for poopy diapers. But, you know, I guess I want to understand a little bit more about your time in the service, and then we'll talk about some other things. But you were drafted into military service, and I wonder if you can talk to me about the day you were drafted.

[04:48] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, I got my draft notice on my 21st birthday. It was bittersweet. You could now drink a beer legally, and at the same time, Uncle Sam wanted you to serve. They had to give you two weeks notice at that point. And it took a full two weeks? Yes, from July 23 to August 6. And that's when I left, and I had mixed emotions about it. I never thought that I would be drafted. I had a student status because I had gone to Mexico and matriculated in a bachelor's program. But I also came back to the United States after a couple of years, and the draft board didn't think I was progressing. There were a number of reasons. There was a difference in the kind of school year. The date of the school year ran from February to December in Mexico and in the United States, it was different, so they thought it was not progressing. They changed my status from two sdhe student to one a, which means ripe for the pickin and I was scared. I didn't know what was going to happen once I was drafted. As a matter of fact, the day I got the letter, I picked up your mom, who was in nurses training at the time, and we took off for the evening. That turned into taking off for the night. Almost got her into trouble for that because she had signed out in the wrong book. At the nursing school.

[06:26] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Anyway, you did something else before you left in that very brief two week time period with mom?

[06:35] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Yes.

[06:36] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: What was that?

[06:37] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I'm not sure what you're talking about.

[06:39] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Didn't you get married?

[06:40] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: No, no, no. It was. No, there was a, when I got drafted, I went into basic infantry or basic training, and that was at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. So we were separated at that point. She actually took the bus out to see me, but I couldn't get off base, so it was a fairly short visit. And when I finished basic training, I finished as the trainee of the cycle. And I thought, well, yeah, that's pretty good. That probably means that I'll have a desk job somewhere in an emblazoned, not so much. No. And when I got my orders, I was sent to Fort Polk in Louisiana, and that was for jungle training. And usually that meant you were headed for Vietnam if you got jungle training. So I went to Fort Polk and I thought, well, you know, I have a couple of years of college under my belt. I'm sure that. And I speak another language because I had learned to speak Spanish. Living in Mexico, I thought sure I was going to be on the honor guard at the embassy in Madrid or something of that sort. I got to advanced infantry training and found that my level of education was two tenths of a year less than the average for the company that I was training with. So I still held that hope that I would not get orders for Vietnam. And when we got married was after I had talked to your mom and I said, well, if I get orders for Nom, we'll get married before I go.

[08:18] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Gosh, I didn't even know the order of things here. Oh, my goodness. Okay.

[08:21] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: So I finished up in early December and, or mid December, went home and somehow my parents slept together. A wedding on a Wednesday morning at St. Agnes church. And mom and I got married. She always says she went to pick dresses off the rack, got a few friends together. That was the wedding party. But we did exactly, I guess, 14 days before I left.

[08:52] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Okay. That was the two weeks I was.

[08:54] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: That was the other two weeks. Goodness. Right.

[08:56] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Well, I just can't even imagine. I mean, I have, I just, I don't have a way to relate to that other than just feeling kind of gobsmacked.

[09:08] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: It was kind of cold. It was December 20, we got married. Nobody gets married December 20, except I ran into a couple about three weeks ago that got married on December 27, the same year.

[09:20] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: They still together? Because you and mom have been together a long time.

[09:23] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: They are 50, what, four years now? Something like that.

[09:28] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Dad, you talked a little bit before about what it was like coming home from Vietnam serving and coming home from serving in combat infantry. I mean, that's. Sorry. I guess maybe I cut you off there. You served in combat infantry.

[09:43] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: You were in jungle once. I had the advanced infantry training. That's pretty much where I was set. I had a specialty as a mortar crew member, and that means that I trained on the 80 1 mm mortar and among other weapons of the time, and that was my specialty. And I was. Let's see, I guess I was a private first class by the time I went over there. So that would be an e three. And when I got to Vietnam, I was sent to a weapons platoon in Bearcat which was the 9th Infantry Division base camp at the time. And it didn't seem like it was too difficult, except that I was sent to a 4.2 inch mortar platoon that I had had no training on.

[10:39] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Oh, gosh.

[10:40] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: So it was a little different. Same principle, just a much bigger gun. Yeah.

[10:45] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Luckily, you were a quick study, I suppose.

[10:47] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, yeah, it didn't take much. It was just a little bit different. But the assignments were basically go out in the heat and fill sandbags during the day and set up on the perimeter of the base camp at night in case they wanted you to fire the four deuce. And I thought I could do this for a year because it was just a matter of staying awake and pulling guard duty. The other duty we had was to ride shotgun on the convoys between bearket and Long Binh And Long Binh was a big supply base, and that wasn't that difficult, either. Occasionally somebody would snipe at their convoys, but it was good. And I thought, after two weeks of that, I can do this, I can survive this. And then one day around the end of January, after we've been there probably close to three weeks, they said, pack up the gun. We're going to put it on a three quarter ton truck. We're going out with Bravo company, which was straight leg infantry and partly mechanized, and we're going to find the snipers that have been sniping at the convoys. And we had reports from the long range reconnaissance patrols as to where they were. So off we went. And that particular night, we didn't get very far because we kept hitting landmines with vehicles, and it just seemed to go on forever. We'd stop, we'd sweep, we'd get back on and move. And then we got hit several times during that day with small arms fire. And we never did get to the location we were heading to. And this is significant because we finally carved a little piece of the jungle where we had set up, tried to dig a hole for our ammunition and our mortar rounds. And that night, we got hit several times. We fought them off, but the next morning, just before dawn, the earth trembled, and we saw a small cloud, like a tiny mushroom cloud, arising from long Bend, the storage depot. And that was actually the ammunition dump at Long Binh Depot that was blown up. And we were always told that was the start of the Tet offensive. From there, from that place, we went off, and for the next five and a half months, never got back to a base camp. We kept moving from one fire base to another and one skirmish to another for at least the first two months. And then after that, it kind of died down, and we still never got to a base camp.

[13:33] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: So, dad, I can't imagine. And again, I'm so glad that you came back and that you did survive, and I know that you have a lot of different stories about different people that you remember and experiences that you had there. I want to turn the page like you did a little bit when you got back, because your life, I don't know if it went in the direction you thought it would or not, but I want to. I want to understand. So immediately after service, you talked a little bit about how you felt coming home, and you felt, you know, some survivors. Guilt, basically. That's what they call that. And maybe we're glad to be able to refocus on the things that were immediately in front of you, like me, but you, the army, helped to re acclimate soldiers or sort of reintroduce you into the professional world then. And I think you had. Were offered kind of a couple of choices. What were those?

[14:33] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: There was a training program. I had skated through life before that, getting my parents off my back by telling them I was going to be a doctor.

[14:40] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: I see.

[14:40] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I didn't know that. And when I came back, that thought was still in my head. But then I started thinking, for real, what am I going to do at this point? And there wasn't much use for whatever skills I had learned in the service. But they did offer a program that was called project transition, where they allowed you eight weeks of training in some other kind of specialty. And the choices were welding, which I always say paid $6 an hour and would have been pretty secure at that point. Another was working in the army hospital as a lab technician, and the third one was working in the army hospital at Fort Carson as a, as an x ray tech. And I thought, well, of those three choices, I'm going to try x ray tech and see if I can't stay in this field and actually lead me toward medicine. I took some courses through the army in the night and in the day. I spent eight weeks in the x ray department of the hospital. Three weeks of that was in the file room. I got extended a little bit because of an incident that occurred. I was supposed to get out of the service August 6. And.

[16:00] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Well, you stayed a little longer.

[16:02] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I stayed a little longer. I had, in a fit of anger, I had punched the door. I wasn't much in control of my anger or emotions at the time, and I broke my hand, and I was working in the army hospital at the time. So they casted me up, and I still maintained my x ray duties, but I got extended for a little bit longer. The colonel that was running the hospital, the x ray department, kind of befriended me, and I could have gone home to have my cast taken off and gotten out of the army at the regular time. But he extended me until September 1, at which time the cast came off. But there was some of, there was another advantage to that. On September 1, the army started a program where they would give the soldiers 90 days worth of health insurance for $90, which came in pretty handy because you were pretty well gestated at that time, right?

[17:00] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: October, baby.

[17:02] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Yes. So September 3, I got out of the service. You came along October 19.

[17:08] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Yes. So I don't remember that part, but I remember being little. And Greg, my brother Greg, I remember you being in medical school, and I remember some nights, kind of some nights, I think when you had call at the hospital, we would occasionally come and hang out with you there. And I actually did like that very much. But I just, as a grown up now, I just cannot imagine that what you did, what you did. You were going through medical school. I think you had that job, another job, and you had two kids, and it's kind of mind boggling.

[17:50] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, during your early years, I was actually going to college because I had to rematriculate, essentially went to St. Vincent College, and that's when you and Greg were very small. When I graduated, I remember having him on my shoulders, on my head, and you by my hand, because you were already old enough to not be on my shoulders, but yes. And after St. Vincent, well, I got a degree in biology there, a ba in biology, and then I got into medical school. And it always amazes me that I actually got accepted, and this path was. I was able to follow this path.

[18:30] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Did it feel serendipitous?

[18:33] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: On some levels, because I had been accepted at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, and it was kind of a dingy area of Pittsburgh, I thought. And it was traffic. It was the wrong direction.

[18:45] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: It was hard for a place for babies.

[18:47] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Oh, God. I didn't want you to grow up there. And then I got on an alternate list at Hershey Medical center, which was basically in a cornfield where there was.

[18:54] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: A decent air and a chocolate with a chocolate factory. I have such good memories of that.

[19:00] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: And then they offered me the position at Hershey. And I said, sorry, Pitt, I'm going Hershey. And it was just a great direction for you. I loved the fact that you were growing up there.

[19:11] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: I did, too.

[19:12] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Four years and almost time.

[19:14] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: For me, it felt very magical. As a child, I literally used to dream about the chocolate factory. So we'll fast forward a little bit. You did medical school, and you worked in some other capacities as a doctor.

[19:29] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: After medical school, a residency program.

[19:31] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Residency program. Okay, right, the residency program. But then you started your own practice, and I wonder if you could kind of share a little bit about your practice. What was important to you in that?

[19:46] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, let me just start with. I started my own practice because I had finished the residency, and I was working a job as an assistant director of another residency program with a paycheck and benefits. And it was just so much better than what had been going on prior to this. And I was feeling pretty comfortable. But as probably has happened other times in my life, an accident ensued where I had some injuries and I had to make a decision if I was going to be the humanistic physician that my peers were telling me I was, and if I could do it on my own when somebody wasn't paying a salary. And that's when I made the turn to go into a private practice. I did some rehabilitation for myself and started my own practice. I called it the holistic health center, which I can remember. You were old enough to know that that sounded a little strange. The term holistic, it was different. It was different, yes, but I mean.

[20:50] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: It underscores how important it is for you to consider a whole patient and help them achieve that.

[20:57] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: My philosophy at the time is that I was there to be the listener, the teacher, the translator, and deal with the whole patient, whatever aspect and whatever direction they needed to go or they wanted to go. I was the facilitator, and I started getting interested in stuff other than what I had learned in the basic medical school, I started getting interested in alternatives.

[21:26] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: And incorporating nutritional supplementation and practices. Didn't you work at first with quite a bit in your residency, maybe people that suffered from addiction and you realized how sort of starved they were?

[21:41] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, it was actually one of my teachers, Tony Stiles, was a psychiatrist, but he also did a lot of drug and alcohol work, and he asked me to cover for him at a drug and alcohol rehab center that he worked at. And somehow I just got sucked into that, realizing that a lot of alcoholism and a lot of drug addiction can be improved and management can be improved if you just take care of giving the body what it needs and taking away the poisons. And that got me into biochemical individuality and trying to find the orthomolecule, the right molecule for the job, to influence that biochemistry, to support the healing and slow down some of the damage.

[22:27] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Yeah.

[22:28] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Yeah.

[22:29] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Well, you had your own family practice then for what was it, like, 40 years?

[22:35] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Right?

[22:36] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: I'll tell you, you had a pretty loyal following.

[22:39] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: It was not as lucrative as most practices, but I always thought that I was, well, living on bonus time and I was not going to starve, that there was always a need and there was something else going on there that was that I could use the experience and the expertise I developed in the drug and alcohol field to work part time jobs with gateway drug and alcohol rehab. I was an attending physician for them for a while, for about seven or eight years. And then later on in my career, I spent eight years as medical director for an outpatient drug and alcohol rehab facility. And all of that was beneficial to me. And at the same time, it kept me thinking in terms of how to apply the biochemistry, how to apply nutrition and support to help these people get.

[23:40] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: To reach their goals, better outcomes. Sure. So mom was involved in your practice for a long time. So I always wonder, because I dearly love my husband, but I do not work with him every day. So how did you manage to be in business together and in a marriage?

[24:02] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Wow, that's a big one. She started as a counselor and a biofeedback therapist. And I thought, well, that's fine. There's a need for that. We can use it here. But as the time went on, it turned out that what I needed more was somebody to rein me in and actually manage the practice. So I didn't give everything away and let employees run all over me.

[24:28] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: You trusted her?

[24:30] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I did.

[24:30] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: You trust her still?

[24:31] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Very much. She had some nursing backgrounds. She had some idea what goes on in medicine, but I don't think she really loved that part of the work. She just put up with it over those years. We started off with two desks facing each other in one room.

[24:49] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: I immediately know that doesn't work.

[24:51] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, we made it work for about.

[24:54] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Two and a half years. Oh, my goodness.

[24:55] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: And then we decided we each needed our own office in the building in order for that to work. So we added onto the building and made an office for her. And that kind of mollified things for quite a while. But she was certainly ready to give up or retire the practice long before I was. And I can't say as I blame her, because it's difficult to deal with employees and tone our turnover and managing everybody's requests and vacations and whatnot hard.

[25:29] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: And you're kind of in the middle of, but sort of more towards the tail end of this process of retiring. And I guess it really is, you know, it really is a process. So how do you feel about it?

[25:42] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: It's taken me a while. I have to ease myself into it because I still love helping people. I just love the. The gratification that I get from it and the results that I see from it when they move on to better things or they improve their own health or they can accept wherever they are in their health continuum.

[26:07] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Yeah. You're a teacher and a guide. Yeah.

[26:11] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, a whole lot of my practice was spent teaching with the American College for Advancement in medicine, and that was my travel budget for about 20 years, going to those conferences.

[26:24] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Well, you teach your patients, though, every day. I mean, that's kind of what those very long sessions were like one on one.

[26:31] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: And many people told me there are more efficient ways to do that. But again, there's no substitute for eye contact and listening. And I had a very wise professor that said if you listen to the patient long enough, they'll tell you what's going on and you can make a diagnosis.

[26:51] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Yeah. Yeah, it's. Yeah. This state of medicine today and healthcare in America today doesn't so much support that all the time. That taking time and kind of diving.

[27:06] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: In, that's a whole nother interview.

[27:07] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Yeah, it's more numbers. We won't get into that.

[27:09] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I want to get back to my retirement because only in the last couple weeks have I come to terms with being able to say, this is the date I'm going to give up my license. This is the date that I'm just going to be an advisor and listener for health related issues. And I am flipping a coin somewhere between July 1 and July 31 of this year, where I will relinquish my license and say that I have completed my process of retirement.

[27:44] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: You know, a lot of people, when they retire, just decide to kind of cherry pick fun gigs, like potentially teach at a university or something, or share that experience with other people coming into the field.

[27:54] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, I'm looking for things that I can still do.

[27:56] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Yeah.

[27:57] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: To keep my mind from melting away and keep myself involved and interested and not necessarily have the burdens of a medical practice and the responsibilities that go with licensure. And there are some. I just found out that I can still maintain a position helping a friend of mine in being a laboratory director for her doing some studies.

[28:31] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: I'm sure there are no shortage of ways that you can use the skills that you've amassed over the years. It's just going to be up to you to decide, do I want to do that, or do I want to do something else?

[28:40] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: By the same token, I'm watching my granddaughter graduate from high school and go off into college, and there's a whole lot more of getting involved with the grandkids that I want to do and I don't want to miss. That's one of my areas of regret, is how much I missed when you were growing up, just being in a residency and elsewhere.

[29:01] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: You know what's crazy, dad, is you've said that to me before, and I just talked to you before about how we would sometimes go and visit you in the hospital, but for all the time that you absolutely must have spent being away from us, that's not how I remember it. I remember you being there, and I remember you, you know, being around for baseball and, you know, being at the house and writing on your shoulders. And I just. So you should know that even though I know as a grown up and logically you must have been gone, I never felt that way. So I really think that it kind of speaks to the. The quality of the time together. So good job on that front. Thank you. Juggling it all. So your son is a doctor. My brother Greg is also a doctor. And I was just wondering what advice you have for him or others that might be just starting a career in medicine.

[29:57] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Well, that is difficult, because I have mixed feelings about it, and medicine has changed. You know, I came in on the cusp of the respectable family doctor period, and now we are in basically a period of corporate medicine where physicians are cogs in a wheel. They're employees in a specialty arrangement or employees in a generalist arrangement. Pcps that most everything is run through HMO's or profit making entities, and it's just, it's different and it's hard to take. It's almost like a cookie cutter. You have to do certain procedures because that's what's covered.

[30:45] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: That's what the insurance reimburses for.

[30:47] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Exactly. And I always, I said this many times, patients don't get what they need. They get what's covered. And it's a heartbreaking situation sometimes because I know or I have a very good idea of what would benefit them and help them get better. And they can't necessarily get there because they either don't have coverage for it, they don't have funds to cover it or themselves, or it's downright denied by a third party.

[31:20] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Let's, I don't know, wish and vote for some change on that front, maybe. But. So I have two more questions for you that I kind of wanted to touch base on. And the first is this, you know, I, your daughter went into business essentially, and not medicine, so we're certainly different on that front. But, you know, how do you think that we're alike?

[31:50] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: We're both obsessive compulsive. I'm pretty sure of that.

[31:55] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: I prefer perfectionists.

[31:57] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I see. I think that personality characteristic is probably consistent with success in whatever endeavor you're choosing to follow. And so there's an upside to it. And it's only when that is not balanced or it comes into crisis that things can fall apart, get self destructive.

[32:25] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Sure it is. Well, lucky for me, I feel like I have a spouse that always helps me to see the other side and a lot more measured.

[32:35] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I'm a very balanced spouse who's perceptive and smart and really loves you. But that helps a lot. That goes a long way to keeping relationships stable and keeping the boundaries set. So only one of us. That's what I would say on our marriage. Only one of us could be crazy at any one time.

[32:53] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: At any one time. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. You know, I think that I am very grateful to you, not only for my drive and my passion about things, but I think I'm very grateful to you for my sense of humor, which comes in very important in business, and we haven't even touched on that in this interview.

[33:15] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I love your sense of humor. I think you come up some quips that are yogi Berra-esque

[33:21] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: I know. So thank you for that, because I think that that's certainly genetically derived to some extent.

[33:28] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I'm picturing you on our deck one time this huge bumblebee came by and you just ducked out of the way and said, whoa, file a flight plan.

[33:38] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: I don't remember that. That sounds like early humor, but that does sound like early me humor. Right. Well, so my last question for you is, how would you like to be remembered?

[33:53] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I would love to be remembered as a good physician, a good educator, a good father, a good husband, and an okay lover. I don't know.

[34:10] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Go big or go home.

[34:11] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Dad.

[34:12] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: You can say good love or too.

[34:14] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: Yeah. I would just like to leave a trail behind me of people that would look up to me and say, yeah, he did all right by me. That would be good for me. And I've already achieved something that I think is much more worthwhile. Both of my children have become creative and intelligent and sensitive individuals that are reproducing on their own and taking over the world, and I couldn't be happier with you guys. Thank you.

[34:53] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Thanks, dad. I love you.

[34:55] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: I love you, too.

[34:56] BRIGITTA MIRANDA-FREER: Thanks for coming.

[35:00] RALPH A. MIRANDA, MD: It's.