WEBVTT
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The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
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make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
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or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
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liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio
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or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should
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be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
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W FOURCY Radio.
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Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday,
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six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at
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W four cy dot com. This week and every week,
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we will reach for a higher purpose in money and light,
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as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now,
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let's join your host, Anita bell Anderson, as together we
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start with Asking Good Questions.
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Hey, Hello, and welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast.
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My name is Benita bell Anderson, and I am so
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excited today for the guests that we are going to
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be learning from. Her name is Antoinette Lee. I'm going
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to invite her to the proverbial podcast stage.
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Hi, Benita.
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Hello, Hello, So, as a lot of you know, I'm
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in I'm in Hawaii doing a senior mission with my husband,
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and so you know, you can do podcasting wherever you are.
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And Antoinette is, she says, up in the north.
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Woods, right I am. I'm in a forest in the
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north Woods, in the ice belt of the Midwestern United States.
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Have you gotten snow yet?
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Oh my goodness. We've had snow for three months now
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and it's awesome.
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All right. Well, yeah, the only snow that is here
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in Hawaii is at the very tippy top of one
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of the mountains. But nothing like that. Well, let me
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tell you a little bit about this girl. She is
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a she's a superwoman kind of in my eyes. She's
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an MBA. She's a former tech CEO. She's an eleven
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year US Army veteran. She was an Air assault qualified
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expert field medic trained in anatomy and physiology and pharmacology
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and infection control and disease prevention food. So, but today
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she has a really interesting story that we're going to
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enjoy learning from. She is an outdoor industry influencer. Now,
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she's a model, she's a consultant, she's a freelance writer
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at several magazines. She's the founder of the American Adventure
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Sports Club nonprofit Do you have any time to just
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go walk in the woods?
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And I'm wondering every day?
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Every day?
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Good you make time?
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And she's a motivational health and wellness speaker. She delivers
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a podcast of her own called The New Normal, Big Life,
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and it's a talk, it's a blog, and it's a podcast.
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And she has a debut book that is called Four
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Hours to Live, a Soldier's Journey of Adoption, Assault and Advocacy.
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So aside from an amazing recovery journey from using a
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walk or a service show, now is your service dog
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still around? Phoebe?
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Right, Phoebe is now fifteen years old and going strong,
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believe it or not.
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Awesome must be from all those walks.
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And cross country skiing.
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Okay, so she was also a one time a full
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time caregiver, as I have done a lot of caregiving
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in my day. But she had a traumatic brain injury.
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We're going to find out about that injury and PTSD
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and she now shows others how to create their new
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normal and live the biggest life that they can dream.
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One of her Passions is talking about how outdoor recreation
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is at the intersection of health and wellness and stewardship
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and adventure. I love that she can usually be found
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in the north Woods with her family, stearting the forest
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and river around their homestead while living the adventure sports lifestyle.
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She will. She leaves listeners and anyone that she's talking
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to with action steps to create their new normal and
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inspiration to live a big life. So how about that,
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I is there anything you'd like to add to that intro?
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I think you've nailed it, and you know, hearing that
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my life back at me is like, Wow, I've done
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a lot, but you know, I'm old. I just turned
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through the eight in November, so I've had a lot
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of You're.
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Not a general because I got you on that one,
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but yeah, No, the whole idea is to live every
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day to the fullest and to live the healthiest life
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and do those things that will help you create that
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healthy life, right.
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Right, Longevity is everything in twenty twenty six. Longevity and
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wearable devices are kind of the buzzwords that everyone's talking about, right.
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You know, I gotta tell you before I ask you
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this first question. I have been repelling. And when I
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first was reading about this repelling accident and we were
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talking about it, I was like, you know, I remember
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getting all, you know, just harnessed, and I'm feeling like
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this is completely safe.
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I was.
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I was at a cliff in Zion National Park. Uh,
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you know, just you know, going way down. But I
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felt completely safe because I'm looking at all the ropes
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and the harnesses and the everything pounded into the rocks.
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And so take us back to the repelling accident. What
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changed instantly and how did that happen?
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Well, you know, you talk about safety, and I felt
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completely safe, except the conditions that injured another soldier were
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the same conditions that injured me on my way down
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to give him aid. And so I didn't fall off
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the mountain. I slammed into the mountain. So when you're repelling,
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as you know, you have your feet out in an
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L shaped position, and you hit the mountain, your feet
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will bounce off the mountain, and you've got a person
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on bley down below who will tighten the rope if
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you start to fall. It just so happened that when
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I slipped my balat person's attention. Now, I don't remember
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any of this. I only know what people told me.
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I have no memory until two weeks before the accident.
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So the day before the accident, most of the time
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that I was in the hospital, I don't remember any
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of that, So I only know from onlookers. And apparently
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my blay person was distracted, so there was just like
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a few second delay of when they tightened the rope.
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But when I slipped, I swung out like a pendulum.
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I swung into the mountain and hit my head and
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then also swung back into the mountain again and hit
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my bottom, and then it broke my back. And so
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by the time that I was thirty two, I had
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arthritis from my neck to my tailbone, both knees, a
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shoulder that needed to be paired, reconnected to my bicep,
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and then complications from the injuries.
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Wow, So what changed slowly over time was just it
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just sounds like there was a lot of cascading pieces
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that were becoming noticeable over time.
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Great, so you have the initial injury and you think, oh, well,
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in the grand scheme of things, I'm not hurt so bad.
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In air quotes, thank god, you know, I survived it.
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I'm not in a wheelchair. I well, I am technically
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in a wheelchair, but once I leave the hospital, I'll
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no longer be in the wheelchair. I'll just have a pin,
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probably for a short time, and I will recover and
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go back to work, is what I thought. And I
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did have occupational therapy and physical therapy and all of
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the things to get me back to working and living
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my life. Maybe not at one hundred percent because at
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the time when I was injured, I came into the
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military a state championship runner, and while I was in
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the military, I was a competitive bodybuilder and powerlifter for
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the army, and so it took a long while before
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I could recover. But I was at a very advanced
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level of fitness when I got injured, and that is
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one thing that helped me. So having all that muscle
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protected my back from a more serious injury.
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Wow.
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So over time, you know, I went back to work.
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I think it took maybe three months or so, and
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then I continued living my life, but little by little,
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it was like boiling a frog slowly. You don't realize that,
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you know, I don't. My memory is not as good,
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and sometimes I lose my words, and sometimes I struggle
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to focus and some days, you know, I need a
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lot of pain medication just to be able to go
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to work. And so it was all these little things
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just compounding. But what made it substantially worse was that
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allopathic or conventional medicine just was not working for me.
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And I was on twenty medications at one time and
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getting sicker and sicker by the day. Yeah.
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So when you say you relied on a walker and
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a service dog and a full time caregiver, is that
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when you got Phoebe was when this happened?
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Yes, So I got Phoebe after, not at the initial injury.
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I got her maybe, Oh gosh, to do the math,
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it was almost a decade later that I went into decline.
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But the reason I went into such severe decline, in
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my opinion, it was that, you know, medications are chemicals,
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and they can be very very beneficial, especially when you're
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first injured, because they work fast, they're very strong, and
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they usually do the job that we want them to do,
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or that our doctors think they will do for us. However,
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there are some people for whom their bodies are just
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wired differently. And we are very sensitive to our environment.
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We're very sensitive to the things the foods we eat,
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the ingredients we use in products like healthcare and cleaning products,
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and the ingredients in our food Some people can eat
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chunk and perform at a high level. I'm not one
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of those people. Some people can take medications and say
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better living through chemistry and nothing ever happens to them.
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But for me, it was causing organ damage. My kidneys
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were failing because of the medications, and I was on
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phone medications at one time that all caused kidney of
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the side effect for kidney damage.
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I got really crazy over this issue about medications with
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my mother when my mother was dying, and they'd give
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her a medication, but then they would give her something
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else to counteract the side effects, and then there'd be
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another side effect, and so I was like, I remember
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just being so frustrated over that whole thing. But it
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so you know, you had said that you had excellent
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health insurance, but what gaps were there? Then? If you're
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receiving all these things and you know they had the
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best intentions, but what gaps did you experience in the system.
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Well, the major gap was that because I have a
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background in healthcare, I knew to ask questions about medications
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every medication has what they call side effects. It's not
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a side effect, is it's a potential likely effect based
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on data. Right, other patients have had these effects. Now,
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I brought up to every care provider that gave me
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a medication that could potentially damage my kidneys? Are you
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aware that I'm on three or four medications that also
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run the risk of kidney damage? And they would all
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say the same thing. You're on a very low dose
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of each medication. I don't think it will be a problem.
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And because I'm not the one with an MD, right,
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I have a NBA and a degree in economics and
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a degree in science, but I'm not an MD. So
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I relied on their judgment that if you say it's
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going to be fine, you're the one with the MD,
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I'm going to trust you. And until it wasn't fine,
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and I nearly died because of it. So not only that,
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but I became so allergic to so many manyations that
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today when I do need a medication, it's very difficult
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to find one that has not put me into anaphylactic
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shock in the past or given me a side effect
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that in the grand scheme of side effects, when you
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look at the ones that are just maybe a little mild,
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like may cause drowsiness, or one that could potentially stop
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your heart or cause dangerously low blood sugar. I'm the
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person who gets the one that could stop your heart
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or dangerously low blood sugar.
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Right.
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It's just a way that I'm wired. So I'm not
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anti medication, and I do occasionally take of medication for
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a short time, but very consistently. When I take a medication,
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for me, it's a fifty to fifty chance that I'm
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going to have an allergic reaction, and there's a fifty
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to fifty chance I'm going to have a very dangerous
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side effect experience.
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I think this is great medication motivation to be living
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the most healthy lifestyle that you can possibly live. Right.
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Amen.
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Well, I know that there were several surgeries involved in
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all of this, and you've described hitting rock bottom after
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what a fifth surgery.