Podcasts about Stroke

[REBROADCAST FROM July 23, 2026] After cabaret comedian Cat Cohen suffered a stroke at the age of 30, the comedian was inspired to write about it in the way she knows how: through funny songs. Cohen discusses her new one-woman show, "Broad Strokes," running at the Lucille Lortel theater through September 5. Photo by Matthew Murphy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Seizures After Stroke Symptoms: What Letitia Hritz Wants Every Survivor to Know It was New Year’s Day, and Letitia Hritz almost didn’t go. Her husband Jonathan wanted to hit a sale at their local mall, and she’d rather have stayed home. She went anyway, with gift certificates from Christmas, a Chinese buffet for lunch, their seven-year-old daughter in tow. They’d barely sat down at the restaurant when it started: tunnel vision, a sudden inability to speak, the desperate, wordless search for the nearest chair. “I remember sitting there,” Letitia says, “and I think I said I feel like I’m going to pass out. And that honestly was the last thing I remember.” She was 34. The emergency room staff, seeing a young woman collapse on New Year’s Day, assumed the obvious: too much celebrating the night before. It took nearly three hours, and a doctor asking her to roll over and noticing her face had dropped, before anyone called a stroke alert. By then Jonathan had already caught her as she went limp in his arms, already flagged down an off-duty paramedic eating lunch nearby, already made the drive to the ER with their daughter beside him, not yet knowing the word for what was happening to his wife. The Diagnosis No One Expected Letitia’s stroke was ischemic, centered in the left thalamus a similar injury to other survivors Bill has spoken with (recoveryafterstroke.com/thalamic-ischemic-stroke-survivor-story/), and one that comes with its own particular set of challenges around sensation, fatigue, and cognition. The cause, once doctors went looking, turned out to be a PFO, a small hole in her heart that had let a clot travel straight to her brain. It’s a cause other guests on this show have lived through too (recoveryafterstroke.com/pfo-and-stroke-recovery-yvette-adams/), and like many of them, Letitia had no idea it was there until the stroke forced the question. What followed was the version of recovery most people never hear about: inpatient rehab, then six months of outpatient therapy, a wheelchair, then a walker, then a cane she still carries today. And then, just as she seemed to be finding her footing, something stranger: a full return of her stroke symptoms, triggered by an unrelated illness, so sudden and so complete that even a family who’d spent two decades around the “stroke world” had never heard the word for it: recrudescence. “I’m glad you’ve never heard of that,” Jonathan told Bill, “because I know you’ve been doing this a long time… and we had never heard of it either.” Seizures After Stroke Symptoms: What Letitia Actually Experiences This year, a new chapter began, one this episode was built around. Letitia started having seizures. Not occasionally: close to 200 of them since January, sometimes several in a single day. What makes seizures after stroke symptoms so hard to manage isn’t just the seizures themselves, but how unpredictable the warning signs can be. “I try very hard to pay attention to how I’m feeling,” Letitia says, “but there are some days where I don’t feel well, and it’s very hard to differentiate those two feelings.” Some seizures come with a warning she’s learned to read. Others don’t; they simply arrive, and the world goes dark for a minute or three. The seizures have taken her driving privileges and, with them, a piece of her independence. They’ve also reshaped her household in a quietly heartbreaking way: her ten-year-old daughter now knows to guide her mother to the floor, pull out an iPad, and start a timer. “I hate it,” Letitia says. “I just hate it.” It’s a small, devastating image of what recovery actually asks of a family: not a single crisis to survive, but a new baseline everyone has to learn to live inside. A House That Was Never Built for This Long before the seizures, the Hritz family was already learning how much a body’s needs can outpace a home’s design. Their two-story house has eight steps from the driveway to the front door, fifteen more to the bedroom, ten down to the laundry. “I’m sitting there at thirty-four years old,” Jonathan remembers, “thinking to myself, how am I ever going to take my wife home?” It’s a question few young stroke survivors (recoveryafterstroke.com/young-stroke-survivor-izzy-hirst/) or their partners expect to face, and one more reason recovery is rarely just medical. The Cost That Never Stops Climbing Then there’s the bill. This year alone, between two hospital admissions, the Hritz family is looking at roughly $178,000 in medical costs a number that grows faster than they can pay it down. “You can make all the payments you want,” Jonathan says, “it never goes down.” It’s the kind of financial strain that stroke caregivers (recoveryafterstroke.com/stroke-caregivers/) rarely get warned about in advance, and one more layer on top of everything else the family is carrying, including, this year, college funds quietly set aside for something else. A Promise Still Being Kept Through all of it, one thing has stayed constant. Bedside in the hospital in 2023, Jonathan made Letitia a promise: that no matter what happened, they would get through it together, and he would always give her a safe place to heal. Three years, a heart procedure, a recrudescence episode, and nearly 200 seizures later, that promise is the reason their family calls their story Keeping a Promise, and it’s still, in Jonathan’s words, “something I’m still trying to keep, because we have not been able to.” Their story is a reminder of something Bill has said often on this show, in different words each time: recovery isn’t a straight line, and it doesn’t end when the hospital discharges you. As Jonathan puts it, “People just think, he was in the hospital, and he’s out now. He must be okay… They’re not okay.” What the Hritz family is living through — the seizures, the setbacks, the debt, the promise is exactly the kind of story that doesn’t get told enough. If any part of it sounds familiar, you are not the only one going through it (recoveryafterstroke.com/stroke-caregiver-journey-donna-odonnell-figurski/), and it’s worth hearing more stories like it, wherever you can find them. Bill’s book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, was written for exactly this: the years after the hospital, when the real work of recovery begins. Read it here: recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if this show has helped you the way it’s helped families like the Hritzes, you can support it directly on Patreon: patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. The post Jonathan & Letitia Hritz: Keeping a Promise Through Stroke, Seizures, and Everything After appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

Researchers found that Wegovy showed the strongest reported association with a rare optic nerve injury that can cause sudden vision loss, raising new questions about the safety of high-dose semaglutide formulations Men using Wegovy showed the highest reported risk in the FDA safety database, with odds of optic nerve injury appearing substantially higher than those reported for women Analysis of more than 400,000 online discussions revealed that many GLP-1 users frequently reported fatigue, low energy, menstrual changes, chills and hot flashes — symptoms that receive far less attention than digestive side effects Real-world patient conversations and artificial intelligence analysis are helping researchers identify emerging drug safety signals much faster than conventional reporting systems alone Your body already produces its own GLP-1 hormone through gut microbes that generate butyrate, and restoring this natural system through better gut health supports appetite control and metabolic function without relying on injections

Listener feedback on mechanical CPR devices, PFA and stroke, the Lindy effect in adopting new technology, and an ESC preview are the topics John Mandrola, MD, discusses in this week's podcast. This podcast is intended for healthcare professionals only. To read a partial transcript or to comment, visit: https://www.medscape.com/twic I Listener Feedback on Mechanical Compression Devices for OHCA   Mechanical CPR Device Use and Cardiac Arrest Survival https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.126.079272 PARAMEDIC trial https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(14)61886-9/fulltext CIRC trial https://www.resuscitationjournal.com/article/S0300-9572(14)00128-2/fulltext LINC trial https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1774037 Cochrane Review – Mechanical vs Manual Chest Compressions for Cardiac Arrest https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6953326/ II PFA and Stroke Risk of Stroke and TIA With PFA vs RF Ablation https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/epub/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.126.081092 AVANT GUARD Trial https://www.nejm.org/do/10.1056/NEJMdo008538/full/ EMBOL-AF Registry https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/advance-article/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehag217/8566008 III A New ICD Lead LEADR LBBAP Trial https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrthm.2026.08.030 IV ESC Preview Mandrola's Preview of the European Society of Cardiology 2026 https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/mandrolas-preview-european-society-cardiology-2026-2026a1000tfi You may also like: The Bob Harrington Show with the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine, Robert A. Harrington, MD. https://www.medscape.com/author/bob-harrington Questions or feedback, please contact news@medscape.net

Food as Medicine: Why Medical Nutrition Therapy and Medically Tailored Meals Belong in Modern Healthcare: Registered dietitian nutritionist Leyla Muedin argues that food should be treated with the same rigor as medication through medical nutrition therapy (MNT) and “diet prescriptions,” integrating nutrition into treatment plans rather than leaving it as optional advice. She cites evidence that medically tailored meals (MTMs) can improve outcomes and reduce costs, including a Health Affairs simulation estimating $23.7B in first-year net savings nationwide and a Nature Medicine analysis of a Massachusetts Medicaid demonstration (2020–2023) showing MTM recipients had 31% fewer hospitalizations, 20% fewer emergency visits, and $3,433 lower total healthcare costs, offsetting 98% of program costs. She discusses food insecurity, expanding Medicaid coverage via Section 1115 waivers, EHR integration, and how MTMs support adherence for conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, depression, and IBS (including low FODMAP).

In this episode, Scott Becker discusses the challenge of competing against a golfer who is better than his index suggests.

In this episode, Scott Becker discusses the challenge of competing against a golfer who is better than his index suggests.

Bonus Smarting! Trusty answers questions sent in by SmartyPants! Email your SmartyQs to - Whosmarted@whosmarted.com

Losing Confidence After Stroke: Why It Happens and How to Get It Back Jaemin Frazer has spent nearly two decades and around 16,000 coaching hours on a single question: what is actually going on when a capable person stops trusting themselves? He founded The Insecurity Project to work on it directly. He is not a stroke survivor – and that turns out to be the reason this conversation is useful, because he arrives without any assumptions about what stroke recovery is supposed to look like. What he does have is a precise account of what happens to a person when their ordered world collapses, which is, more or less, the definition of a stroke. “I Just Want to Be Who I Was” Almost every survivor says some version of this. Six weeks out, six years out – the sentence barely changes. Jaemin’s response is to ask what is actually being requested. His answer: not the past. Certainty. They’re looking for certainty. They’re looking for comfort. They’re looking for safety. They’re looking through rose coloured glasses in many ways, because no one’s life was perfect before anything. That last part is the uncomfortable bit. The life you want back had its own problems. What memory offers is not a better life but a known one – and the nervous system will take known over good almost every time. Certainty Is the Real Request Humans need certainty the way they need food and shelter. We don’t function in chaos. But we also can’t get certainty from the outside world, because the outside world doesn’t have any to give. It never did. The stroke didn’t remove your certainty; it removed your ability to keep believing in it. Which leaves one option. As Jaemin puts it: The most resourceful form of certainty is to embrace uncertainty and back yourself. That distinction – external certainty versus internal certainty – is the whole conversation. When your sense of safety lives outside you, you have to control your circumstances to feel all right, and after a stroke your circumstances are largely uncontrollable. When it lives inside you, circumstances can do what they like. This is the same territory covered in stroke recovery mindset (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/stroke-recovery-mindset/), approached from a completely different angle. Self-Doubt Is Useful. Insecurity Is Not. Jaemin draws a hard line between the two, and it’s worth holding onto. Self-doubt is accurate information about a skill gap. If you can’t yet climb the stairs unaided, self-doubt is what stops you attempting it alone. It says nothing about your worth. It’s wisdom. Insecurity is different. Insecurity is the belief that a failure would expose something defective about you. Jaemin argues that most people misdefine it – it isn’t fear of judgement, failure, or rejection. It’s one level deeper: No one’s actually afraid of being rejected. They’re afraid of: if I put my best foot forward and it’s not enough, and then people don’t accept me – what does that confirm about my own inadequacy? The threat isn’t out there. It’s a verdict you’ve already passed on yourself, waiting for the world to co-sign it. What Insecurity Costs Your Recovery This is where it stops being philosophy. Jaemin frames insecurity as a resource problem. Proving yourself, defending yourself, covering and compensating – all of it consumes energy. When life is going well there’s enough spare capacity that you never notice the drain. After a stroke, there is no spare capacity. A stroke puts you into survival mode, and now you’ve got no resources to survive, because all your best resources are directed elsewhere to make sure no one sees your inadequacy. Survivors already know that fatigue after stroke is not ordinary tiredness. An injured brain rewiring itself is metabolically expensive. Every unit of energy spent managing how you appear to other people is a unit unavailable for healing. Attending to the emotional side of recovery isn’t separate from the physical work – it’s what frees up the capacity to do it. That connection runs through emotional recovery after stroke (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/emotional-recovery-after-stroke-dr-bradley-nelson/) as well. Why Your Friends Push Back Many survivors have to change how they live – what they eat, what they drink, where they go, who they spend time with. And many report losing friends over it. Jaemin’s framing here is bracing. Resistance from the people around you isn’t a malfunction. In any story worth telling, the character who transforms does so by overcoming obstacles, and those obstacles almost always arrive in the form of other people. Remove the resistance and nothing in the hero is enlarged. So when someone says you’ve changed and doesn’t mean it kindly, they are – without intending to – handing you the exact thing you need to become someone who no longer requires their approval. Grief and Insecurity Are Not the Same Thing This distinction matters, and conflating them causes real harm. Losing the use of a limb is a genuine loss. Grief is the appropriate response, and it deserves acknowledgement rather than management. The damage begins when the loss becomes a statement about your worth. I can’t run, therefore I’m not a runner, therefore who am I? That is no longer grief – that’s insecurity wearing grief’s clothes, and it needs a different response entirely. Survivors working through that identity question will recognise it in craniotomy stroke recovery and identity reset (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/craniotomy-stroke-recovery-identity-reset/), and it sits close to the ground covered in anxiety after stroke (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/anxiety-after-stroke/). That’s Not the Tragedy. That’s the Setup. The line Jaemin returns to twice in the episode is this: being lost and confused doesn’t disqualify you from a meaningful life. It’s what qualifies you to begin one. Nobody reaches adulthood with an accurate picture of who they are. Everyone arrives confused. The confusion isn’t damage to be repaired before you can start – it’s the starting position. This reframes the disorientation of early recovery as the opening move rather than evidence that something has gone permanently wrong. The same reframe underpins post-traumatic growth in stroke recovery (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/post-traumatic-growth-stroke-recovery/). And Jaemin is firm that this is solvable – not managed, not coped with. Solvable. Because the inadequacy you’ve been protecting everyone from isn’t real. It’s a conclusion you drew as a child and have been gathering evidence for ever since. There is no monster under the bed. Only the idea of one. Where to Start Start by being precise. When you catch yourself saying I lost my confidence, ask what you actually mean. Confidence at what? In front of whom? What exactly are you afraid would be revealed? Abstract language hides the levers. Precise language shows you where they are. Closing Links If this episode is useful to you, Bill’s book The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened covers ten tools for recovery and personal transformation – you can find it at https://recoveryafterstroke.com/book. If you would like one-on-one support with your own recovery, you can apply at https://recoveryafterstroke.com/momentum. If this show has helped you, you can support it at https://patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Footer Disclaimer This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. Losing Confidence After Stroke – Jaemin Frazer (Interview) You don’t need your old life back. You need to trust yourself again – and Jaemin Frazer explains exactly why that feels impossible after stroke. Highlights: 00:00 Introduction – Losing Confidence After Stroke 08:54 Embracing Uncertainty and Personal Resourcefulness 20:43 The Role of Self-Doubt and Insecurity 38:26 Transformational Journeys: Overcoming Obstacles 46:14 The Hero’s Journey and Storytelling 52:07 Understanding Bullies and Personal Growth 59:21 The Role of Parents in Identity Formation 01:11:17 The Cost of Insecurity in Recovery 01:20:55 Finding Purpose Beyond Insecurity Transcript: Introduction – Losing Confidence After Stroke Jaemin (00:00) A stroke puts you into survival mode, and now you’ve got no resources to survive because all your best resources are directed elsewhere So then it costs you everything. It costs you your future. It costs you your ability to heal, to make sense of this, to come out the other side and reinvent or do whatever you need to be present for yourself. It’s a slow descent into madness really, if all your best resources are proving and defending, covering and compensating, then you stop being human, you stop being alive, you stop being present, you become hypervigilant around what others are thinking, and your world keeps getting smaller. Bill Gasiamis (00:35) Welcome back to Recovery After Stroke. I’m Bill Gasciamas. Before anything else, thank you to everyone supporting the show on Patreon, becoming a YouTube member, and to everyone supporting it in all other ways. Sharing episodes, leaving reviews, sending them to someone who needs them, buying the book. This show has reached over a million and a half downloads because of people doing exactly that. And I don’t take it for granted. If you’ve ever caught yourself saying, I just want to be who I was, this episode is going to sit with you for a while. My guest today is Jaemin Fraser. Jaemin is a coach, the founder of the Insecurity Project, a TEDx speaker, and as of this year, a novelist. He spent nearly two decades, around 16,000 coaching hours, on one problem. What happens to a person when they stop trusting themselves and what it costs them? Jaemin has not had a stroke. I want to be upfront about that because it’s the reason this conversation goes where it does. He came to it without any assumptions about what recovery is meant to look like. And what he brought instead is a very precise account of what happens to anyone whose ordered world falls apart overnight. We get into why wanting your odd life back is really a request for certainty. The difference between self-doubt, which is useful, and insecurity, which isn’t, why insecurity draws down the exact energy your brain needs to heal. What’s really going on when friends push back on your habits and why being lost and confused isn’t the tragedy, it’s the setup. Three quick things before we start, my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, covers ten tools for recovery and personal transformation. It’s available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. If you’d like one-on-one support with your own recovery, I walk I work with a small number of stroke survivors at a time. Structure, accountability, and genuine guidance from someone who’s been through it, you can apply at recoveryafterstroke.com/momentum. And if this show has helped you and you want to help me get to a thousand episodes, you can support it either as a YouTube member or by going to patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. I want to make sure that No strike survivor. has to ever go through what I went through when I first started my recovery, and that was not having any information about how to proceed after I got sent home from hospital. Now it’s time for the interview. Bill Gasiamis (03:14) Jaemin Fraser, welcome to the podcast. Jaemin (03:15) Thanks for having me, Bill. Bill Gasiamis (03:17) Absolute pleasure, mate. I wanted to ask, actually I want to start with the person listening. They’re anywhere from six weeks to twenty years post stroke, right? and what they say is they want to be back to their old life. In your experience, when someone says, I just want to be who I was, what are they actually asking for? Jaemin (03:39) Hmm, well, I think they’re looking for certainty. They’re looking for comfort. They’re looking for safety. Yeah, they’re looking through rose colored glasses in many ways because no one’s life was perfect before anything. So the fantasy of if I could go back to where I was, it deletes a whole bunch of stuff around the reality of where you were in the first place. But I think that the desire is it’s certainty, safety, peace, comfort. That’s what a person is driven to find some way or other. Bill Gasiamis (04:16) W what do you think it is about certainty? A and what does that even mean? Like I There was, you know, before my experience with stroke, there wasn’t anything that was certain. Is it an illusion? Is certainty an illusion? Because I definitely don’t feel certain about anything going forward either. but kind of not in a bad way. Like I don’t have a bad relationship with the lack of certainty. It’s just. It i it’s just not real. Like I feel like it might be an illusion. Jaemin (04:53) Well, I love Anthony Robbins take on this. I think his six core needs model is his finest contribution to the personal development space and his earliest versions of this, because I think if you were to do a search, Tony Robbins six core needs, what you’re going to get today is an idea that there’s a hierarchy of needs. So you could do a test to work out which needs are most important for you based on your personality type. That’s not how we first introduced them. And I am convinced it’s not actually how it works. So just a quick summary. He says, doesn’t matter what age, what sex, what culture, what stage of life, because you’re human, just as important as food, shelter, clothing is the need for certainty. Firstly, we are creatures who do not survive in chaos. We need some sense of control, order. We thrive in the familiar. We need a sense of what’s happening next. So we organize ourselves and we find certainty. We cannot survive without it. Interestingly though, we also need uncertainty. these six needs operate in paradox. Piers, are you familiar with the six core needs? Bill Gasiamis (06:07) I’m not actually. Jaemin (06:08) and variety is the first two and they operate in paradox pairs. So certainty pulls you one way, but we also need variety. If you have 100 % certainty, you’re completely bored and Bill Gasiamis (06:18) Uh-huh. Jaemin (06:19) you would ruin things. You’d mess it up so that there would be something to do. So we need uncertainty, surprise, spontaneity, adventure. But if you have 100 Bill Gasiamis (06:30) You’d mess it up i is is is messing it up because you need uncertainty, is that that sounds like like self sabotage. Jaemin (06:41) Well, it is if it’s unresourceful. is if you haven’t, I mean, the aim of the game is to find high quality internal resource, ways to meet these needs. If you don’t find that, then unconsciously, you’ll still find a way to meet these needs and it will be through sabotage, dysfunction, know. So certainty and variety are the first two. The second two are significance and love. So all humans need a sense of significance, need to know, I matter? Am I more than just a name and number? Do I have value? Is there any point to me? Now that’s a journey away from the tribe because we’re also relational beings. So we don’t survive in isolation. We need love, belonging, connection, warmth, touch. So if you have 100 % love and connection, you lose your separateness. And if you have 100 % significance, then you’re completely lonely and isolated. But we do need both. Embracing Uncertainty and Personal Resourcefulness So certainty, variety, significance, love, and then the final two are contribution and growth. So humans do feel the need to make a difference, add value, give back, leave a legacy, solve problems. So contribution is about adding value to others. And then growth is adding value to yourselves, to ourselves. Every living thing grows, you either grow or die. So this is the need that drives us to do more, to have more, to see more, to expand our experience. one way shape or another. it’s a strange thing to need certainty back to certainty. It’s a strange thing to need certainty for survival in an uncertain world because you then can’t help but cling to things that aren’t really certain and try and control them. Cling to a job you don’t like, cling to a memory that feels familiar, cling to a relationship that’s dysfunctional. cling to stuff that you know, because it makes you feel certain and makes you feel safe. There’s a predictability around it. What you’re describing is not that you’ve done away with the need for certainty. It’s that you have a certainty in your ability to handle the real world. So you don’t need to cling to things being a certain way. You don’t need to force things to be back the way they were. You’re like, that’s ridiculous. Here I am now and I’m certain. that I am a resourceful person, a creative person, a good person, a clever person, I’ll work it out. The real world will happen to me. I’ll wake up, I’ll open my eyes and I’ll handle it. That’s what I’m certain about. So the most resourceful form of certainty is to embrace uncertainty and back yourself. Bill Gasiamis (09:26) To be certain about uncertainty. Jaemin (09:28) There be certain uncertainty. That is the only certainty. It’s, you there’s you think, what is certain? well, the sun’s going to come up tomorrow. For some people, it’s not. Some people, this will be the last sunrise they ever see. No one’s expecting that, but it happens. So we’re not entitled to any more time, any more opportunity. That’s not certain. It’s not guaranteed. So yeah, the only certainty is it’s all uncertain. So then you must find certainty within, and that will require you to examine your own. your your capability, your own resourcefulness and to grow up and mature in your own sense of who you really are. Bill Gasiamis (10:06) Yeah. I have this saying that I picked up from somewhere. Some dude in the Middle East, like I think in the 40s or 50s, said this thing. I forget his name. I I always wanted to remember his name so I can give him credit, but it goes like exp expect the best, prepare for the worst. And it kind of feels like that’s how I handled my uncertainty when, you know, the doctor turns up day one. Of a bleed in the brain diagnosis and says, gives you the most vague version of the diagnosis and said to me, there’s a shadow on your brain. It could be a cancer, it could be a sea it could be a tumor that’s benign, it could be a bleed in the brain. Like, any questions? And I was like, Well. Jaemin (10:57) There’s a few. Bill Gasiamis (11:01) I don’t know, at eleven PM on a Friday night. Maybe not. Let’s talk in the morning. but it’s like And then after that came a lot of uncertainty. We didn’t know what a family life was gonna be like. We didn’t like know what my work life was gonna be like. We didn’t know whether I’d be around. We didn’t know any of the things that I kind of knew the day before, which I took for granted that I knew, which was only that w without knowing that there’s something wrong in my head and that potentially I’m unwell, I knew that. Tomorrow was going to be pretty much the same as yesterday. And there’s going to be some movement in a couple of similar directions, maybe a few odd ones and different ones. And I suppose that expect the best prepare for the worst was me embracing uncertainty, the certainty of uncertainty. Does that saying kind of capture that spirit? Jaemin (12:03) It certainly does. However, the challenge is no surprise. I’m going to talk about insecurity being a challenge because then it comes back to them. But then what do you believe about yourself? You know, do you feel like you’re actually up for the challenge? Do you have the resourcefulness? What is the story you tell around your own capacity, your capability, your intelligence, your value? Because to fear inadequacy then undermines your confidence in your own ability to handle the real world. And therefore you must then cling to external certainty and long for things to go back the way they were so that you can be safe. Because you don’t trust yourself to be up for the challenge. Bill Gasiamis (12:50) Yeah. It’s a real interesting conundrum because before I was unwell I didn’t contemplate life, me and how I interact with life or the possibility of nail life. I didn’t I didn’t contemplate that whole relationship and then you’re thrust in it and it seems like people that I’ve interviewed at least the four hundred odd stroke survivors that I’ve interviewed have not got the resources backfilled in preparation for when that day comes, and then you feel inadequate, insecure, perhaps, whatever the word is, that you can even handle this. I’ve never met anyone who said, I know, I was 100% certain that I was going to handle this diagnosis from my doctors. Can you prepare for the worst? Like that whole going back to that statement again, that saying, is there a way that we can even prepare for the worst when we don’t even know what the worst is? Is it even is it sounds like it might be might be a futile pursuit? Jaemin (14:07) Whoa. I I think you and I here today are doing that exact thing, you know, with internal resourcefulness. We don’t know what tomorrow is bringing. So in some ways we are certain in our capacity to, you know, hope for the best, prepare for the worst. So that’s not futile. I don’t consider that futile at all. And I think that is the only job is to resource yourself for the real world, is to grow up, is to become mature. The way that I think about that is self-sufficiency. You when you’re young, you’re growing through stages of development and really learning self-sufficiency. Can you feed yourself? Can you dress yourself? Can you learn yourself? Can you drive a car? Can you earn money? And they’re all the things, physical, financial, self-sufficiency, but people are… seem, you know, it’s see when it comes to emotional, intellectual, psychological self sufficiencies, like what is that? How does that even work? And so they come into their adult world, being able to earn money, being able to drive a car, out, address themselves, you know, wipe their own ass. Great. But when it comes to validating their own existence, when it comes to sourcing their own certainty, when it comes to deeply loving and accepting themselves, when it comes to being the one that approves of themselves, that sees themselves. you know, adults are typically ill prepared for that, you know, stroke Bill Gasiamis (15:38) Mm-hmm. Jaemin (15:38) or no stroke. And so, you know, you know, we’re talking about when a stroke happens, but people have all kinds of catastrophes they’re not prepared for, you know, and things are fine because their ordered world is safe and predictable. And then next day it’s not. And they look inside and they’ve never developed the resources, the internal resources of adulthood that helps them stand solid when the world is falling around apart. about them. you know, primarily that is the work of the insecurity project. It’s these conversations around existential angst, which people don’t prepare for because their world’s ordered. But when your world falls apart, then you really see how unprepared you are to handle difficulty and the worst case scenario if you have not examined your own sense of who you are. Bill Gasiamis (16:29) Mm-hmm. The world being ordered, it can be ordered in a dysfunctional way as well, right? Jaemin (16:39) Well, that’s, yes, that’s exactly what happens because we need certainty. I love thinking about these six core needs as a vacuum. In our atmosphere, a vacuum is always filled. So someone says to me, I don’t need that much certainty. You know, I’m more of a risk taker, I’m adventurous, or they might, someone else might be the opposite. I need so much certainty, I’m very risk averse. you know, someone looks at one of my clients recently looked at me and says, you’re a free spirit. You’re adventurous. It’s different. It’s different from me. You know, I’m very analytical. I’m risk averse. I’m safety conscious. But if you zoom out and have a look at both of us, I need just as much certainty as that person. Exactly. I can’t survive without certainty. I can’t survive without order. It’s just that I’ve found a high quality, internal adult way to order my world so that I have internal safety. which then frees me to go into the world and experience uncertainty and play. Whereas this other person has not found an internal way to create order. So they’re clinging to all the dysfunctional external forms of order. Hate their Bill Gasiamis (17:47) Wow. Jaemin (17:47) job, relationships falling apart, don’t like their relationship with money, know, problems here, difficulties there, but it’s familiar. So I better cling to it because I know it. There you go, there’s some certainty for you. Bill Gasiamis (18:03) I love what you said, like that internal sense of certainty Jaemin (18:06) Hmm Bill Gasiamis (18:07) seems to be the biggest l skill lacking in many, many people. If you have internal sense of certainty, then you don’t have to control the outside world. You put the dishwasher plate in the wrong direction. You know, when we loaded the dishwasher, y this might be revealing. you park the car in the wrong bay, or you know, all these little things that people kind of cling to to make their world feel right if they see it like that. If everyone just did the task the way that they needed to do it, then I wouldn’t have a problem, right? But if you have internal certainty and you can be more flexible, I think Tony Robbins talks about being having multiple ways to be to be. being more flexible, then you realize that there are infinite number of ways that things can be loaded into a dishwasher, for example, even though there are certainly some ways that won’t be able to wash the dishes effectively, perhaps, but there are many ways, and the other person’s ways not necessarily the wrong way or the odd way or or the incorrect way, right? Jaemin (19:30) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (19:31) I think I resonate with that immediately, that internal sense of certainty. And then the external world becomes easier to navigate. Is that is that Jaemin (19:44) Well, does because then play becomes possible and you don’t need things to be anything other than they are, know, good, bad or indifferent. You have an experience that looks terrible. Well, are you sure it’s terrible? Or could there be learning? Could there be a gift? Could there be an opportunity? Might you meet someone? Might your life change in an unexpected way? Like who’s to say a bad experience is actually a bad experience if you’re free to encounter it as it is. The Role of Self-Doubt and Insecurity That’s what becomes possible if you have internal safety and that you do back yourself to handle that. And I think it’s an abstract concept for most people because they’ve never faced their fear of their deep inadequacy. And so it’s always undermined. They would love to take internal certainty, but their conviction, if they’re really honest, and it’s hard to be honest, because this stuff gets pretty well suppressed. Their honest fear is that there is a problem with them. There is an inadequacy. They are not up to the challenge. So if they rely on themselves, they will be found lacking and wanting. So therefore they must look outside themselves. That’s their only option. Bill Gasiamis (20:53) Got it. You’ve worked with high performers for hundreds and maybe thousands of hours, right? if one of them walked into you into a meeting with you and said, I had a stroke and I lost my confidence, what what’s the first thing you ask them? Jaemin (21:15) What do you mean? That would be the first thing that I asked them. I understand a little about a stroke. think I would understand enough about that part of the sentence, but I’m more curious around the second part of the sentence. I love Jordan Peterson’s thinking in so many ways. And he says, listen, be precise in your speech because things that go unnamed become monsters that consume you. So that would be where I would start. What do you mean I lost this happened and that made me do this? Are you sure? That’s how it actually worked. What do you mean? Let’s have a look. Let’s have a look. So that’s my whole world is someone comes to me with a level of abstraction. They use language that’s abstract. And when you use abstract language, you cannot see any of the levers that can be pulled. And so you end up feeling hopeless and overwhelmed. When you be precise, when you have a look, you actually begin to see the mechanics, the structures that are actually influencing your experience. And when you see them precisely, the levers become apparent, like, I could actually adjust that. I could turn this, I could change this. Therefore now I’m back in control of my own experience of my reality. So yeah, that’s where I say, what do you mean? What are you talking about exactly? Bill Gasiamis (22:37) I love that. It’s it reminds me of when I hear the word the one of the most common words I hear in my interview, stroke recovery, stroke conversations. And I I’m specifically talking about stroke because that’s my niche, right? That’s my audience, that’s the podcast. But I know this is a situation kind of that I experience also broadly outside of my stroke podcast world. my children, others that I come across is I hear the word depression and anxiety. And it’s an umbrella word that people place on so many experiences and nobody ever even really knows if if I challenge if I have the permission and and I’m in a room with the right person to challenge them and ask them, well, do you do you know what the definition of depression is? And do you know what the definition of anxiety is? Nobody can really give you that. And they’ve taken a word and they apply it to an experience that may have been completely separate from the intended definition of a word like depression and anxiety. And I I kind of feel like that’s what you’re saying. Like somebody says, I’m I’m depressed, like, okay, like, why? How? How do you know that? Jaemin (24:00) It’s exactly anxiety is a great story because I go, well, hang on. How did you, how are you anxious? And anxiety requires a backstory to survive. So I’m curious, you know, are you anxious tying your shoes? No. how do you do not anxiety? Well, I don’t know. No one cares. I can’t fail. I’ve done it a million times. there you go. That’s interesting. So the, the areas that you are not anxious about, there’s no possibility of being found inadequate. Curious. So the areas you are anxious, you’re only anxious because there’s something about the activity you’re involved in, which you feel threatened, personally threatened that someone might see your flaw. So let’s not worry about the anxiety, it’s downstream. Tell me about this perceived flaw. Tell me about this thing that you think is wrong with you. Are you sure that’s even there? The great humor of my work in the same as what you’re saying, know, insecurity. Talking about fear, my first question to people, what are you afraid of? And no one knows. People are experiencing fear. They can tell you that much. So what you’re running and hiding, but what are you running and hiding from? yeah, it’s just this, you know, I just feel so, like, okay, interesting. So you’re running and hiding. What about if we go and have a look at what it is you’re running and hiding from? You might be surprised. In fact, You will be surprised. promise you it’s not what you think it is. And you’ve just been running and hiding for so long. You’ve just become convinced that there’s a thing here that you ought to keep running and hiding from. I’m not so sure. Bill Gasiamis (25:41) Yeah. That what are you afraid of? That’s a very interesting question. Again, you know, I find myself in the hot seat here. And every time I ventured down something new, it was interesting now ’cause I’m reflecting like how often insecurity came up. You know, the first few episodes of the podcast were, my God, people are going to judge it, they’re gonna say it’s no good, you don’t know how to interview, all that kind of stuff. And the the best thing to do was just put it out there. And if somebody did say that was handle it. And if somebody didn’t say that, well then there was nothing to handle. So just do it anyway. And I remember then also with my book, I’m not an author. I did I’m not a scholar. I’ve never done any of that stuff. But I wrote my first book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened. It’s a pretty loaded title. And I knew it was gonna ruffle some feathers. But I put it out there and the very first comment that I got from the very first post that I made was a negative one. And what I realized was that pattern was similar in that when I started the podcast, I had the exact same concern that it might happen and it did. People did give me negative feedback. But then it seems to me now now that I’ve learnt a few times, you know, what happens when you put yourself out there for the first time when you tell the world this is what I’ve created, you know, I’m sharing my creation is part of the journey has to be something that’s gonna test your insecurity. It might not be a negative comment or so but it but it might be like bad sales or it might be nobody listens or whatever. So it sounds like insecurity is necessary in some cases to kind of overcome, to tackle it, to overcome it, so that you can be better at tackling it and overcoming it and achieve more things. Do you know what I’m saying? Did I explain that correctly? Jaemin (27:54) Yeah, I think I understand. I don’t think I agree with you though. Bill Gasiamis (27:58) Okay. Jaemin (27:59) So here’s how I’d think about it. I’d separate self-doubt and insecurity into slightly different categories. Bill Gasiamis (28:07) Okay, so you picked up self doubt there. Jaemin (28:10) So, so self doubts are really important quality of wisdom. So for instance, I’ve got a mate who races super bikes, you know, say he got injured this weekend and he says, Jaemin, you know, there’s still four rounds left. Can you sub in for me and race my super bike next week? And I’m like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I’ve never raced a super bike before. I do have a motorbike license, but you know, if I didn’t have severe self doubt, I’d be delusional. I’d be a crazy person and I would be, you know, dangerous to myself and the world. So self doubt doesn’t, doesn’t tell me I’m a bad person. It just highlights the limit of the things I’m good at. So, so the real function of self doubt to me is more what you’re describing. It’s, it’s the limit says, you’re not actually very good at this. Now that doesn’t say anything about your essence, your value and your worth. Would you like to be good at this? And I go. Actually, no, great. Well, then don’t do it. Don’t do it because it’ll go bad. I’m like, Yeah, I’d actually like to be good at it. excellent. Well, you have a massive skill gap. So go take however long to learn the skills and fill the skills so that you can come back with genuine confidence with earn confidence so that you could compete in this arena and do well. That’s that’s a wisdom conversation. Now insecurity is this personal piece. It’s like, I’m gonna put myself out there. people are gonna judge, laugh, critique, and then they’ll see who I really am. They will see my flaws, my flaws, my inadequacies will now be exposed to the world. Now it’s personal. And so to me, the definition of insecurity is really important here because people think insecurity is somehow related to the fear of what others think about them, the fear of being judged, the fear of failing, the fear of being rejected. Bill Gasiamis (30:04) Hmm. Right. Jaemin (30:05) Really imprecise. That’s not that’s not insecure at all. It’s just one or two levels deeper than that. You know, say for instance, the fear of failure, which is a typical one. And no one’s actually afraid of failing. They’re afraid of the personal implications of failure. I if I try my best at something, and then it doesn’t work. Huh? What have I just revealed to the world about me the problem with me? Same as rejection. No one’s actually afraid of being rejected. They’re afraid of, if I put my best foot forward and it’s not enough, and then people don’t accept me, huh, what does that reveal? What does that prove? What does that confirm about my own inadequacy? So then insecure. Bill Gasiamis (30:47) about what I about what I think are my inadequacies. Because it’s not about the other Jaemin (30:50) Exactly, that’s insecurity. Insecurity is… Bill Gasiamis (30:53) person’s thinking, it’s me, what I think, and then they’re confirming my inadequacy that I’ve Jaemin (30:56) confirming it. That’s it. That’s it. Bill Gasiamis (30:58) generated and created, which is not even real. Jaemin (31:01) That’s exactly right. That’s the thing, which is hilarious. But when you see that now the levers become apparent, because if the fear is out there, then you got to control the world constantly and obsess about it. But if the fear is here and you created it, then the levers are very apparent. You could then go examine this perceived inadequacy, trace it back to when you first described it and examine it at its roots. Like you could go on a structural engineering quest back into the the substance of your own sense of you, the language you’ve used to describe yourself and check it, check it for integrity, check it for gaps, check it for misunderstandings. Like that’s the fun of what I get to do. It’s take what appears to be abstract, mysterious, messy, unknowable and treat it like a structural engineer just by examining the structure of language. Bill Gasiamis (31:57) People don’t do that much, do they? Jaemin (31:59) No, no, no. And people are insecure about being insecure. So like when I launched the insecurity project, my business coach said, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Like you’ve picked the most difficult, scary topic and put it at the front. No one’s going to be putting their hands up saying, Jay, when I’m insecure, can you help me? Like it’s existential angst. It’s the human condition. We want to be good. We’re just afraid that we’re not. So we run and we hide and we cover and compensate. So yeah, it’s a hard topic to face and yet the great joke is there’s no actual reason for it to be hard other than the confirmation bias we’ve given ourselves buying into our own bullshit, confirming our own fiction, exasperating our own misunderstanding. So there is no monster under the bed. It’s just the idea of a monster that terrifies us. Bill Gasiamis (32:55) we influenced in that way by external sources or is that a a human a human thing like that that we are kind of pre-programmed to do just because of that whole safety issue because you know safety comes in in a variety of different things. You know, you have to be safe from people entering your home, you know, back in the day and harming you and your family and taking your belongings. If you’re in a war torn area, you have to be safe from, you know, the invaders and that kind of stuff. But also this discussion that we’re having seems to me, as you keep going into those little beautiful deep places, it seems to me that Again, it’s about us creating like many barriers of safety around us and thinking that that’s the perhaps not even thinking like in just instinctively creating this kind of like multi layered safe structure that we can’t be harmed in. Jaemin (34:06) brilliant way of describing it. And that is the instinct. We are hardwired for safety. You cannot like this idea, more courage, less fear, feel the fear and do it anyway. It’s such a nonsense as though you could turn off your need for safety. Bill Gasiamis (34:20) Mm-hmm. Jaemin (34:21) It’s chemical, it’s biological, it’s psychological, it’s unconscious. And that as the child, the child starts in a very carefree, non-transactional experience of being themselves. I’m just here, not. doing the dishes and not mowing the lawn and not contributing to my ecosystem in any way, shape or form. And yet I’m being rewarded, loved, nurtured, cared for, praised, fed. Hmm, turns out it’s fine to be me. I can be relaxed and at ease being me, me as I am without performing, without achieving, without contributing is enough. Great. And then, then you, you know, you get somewhere past two, you know, somewhere around that the game breaks down. And all of a sudden you’re expected to participate, to perform, to conform, to behave. And no child’s prepared for that. No one’s ready for that. Such a surprise. And so the first time the child gets surprised, embarrassed, disappointed, upset, scolded, it’s such a confusing experience, but all the alarm, those safety warning lights are going off through their whole being. There’s a danger you didn’t know about. You. must pay attention and here’s the thing the danger is in you the danger is you’re not who you need to be to survive in this world so don’t be you ever again like be other than you be better than you be different than you do not ever show up present and unguarded ever again or it will turn to shit so yes it’s safe so then you build this safe world this safe persona these safe structures these familiar places where people think you’re good, think you’re smart, think you’re strong. Also, they never see the thing that you don’t want them to see, which would be the ultimate danger and then you die. Yeah, it’s entirely about a biological, chemical, psychological need for safety that is unavoidable. Bill Gasiamis (36:21) Hmm. It what came up in my mind while you were chatting about that is often stroke survivors need to make some radical changes in their life, the way they go about their nutrition, who they hang out with, the stuff they listen to and read, the whole the whole thing. Like, know, it’s sometimes it’s a line in the sand moment and everything changes, and you’ve got to change everything I did. And One of the challenges that stroke survivors have, well, I’ll talk about me. I had the challenge of, well, I needed to stop smoking and I needed to stop drinking. But all my extended family and friends were smokers and drinkers. And stroke survivors often comment about how they lose friends after a stroke. And we’re I and I’ve kind of tried to unravel that a few times and understand what it is that makes it difficult for people to evolve and and adapt and grow and stop the behaviors that perhaps led to a stroke, you know, so that they don’t have another one. And family and friends often do that. They kind of intervene in a way which says, Well, what do you mean we can’t have a drink when we go out? Like that’s we always go and have a drink. And then that person has has to explain themselves, perhaps, or conform again, just to be part of the group. The question is, are we also dealing with the insecurities of our family and friends when we find a way to overcome our own insecurities, perhaps, about something, and then we start to change and evolve and move forward? Are they are those people feeling like Transformational Journeys: Overcoming Obstacles They’re left behind. Th sometimes the sometimes the sentences that people hear when they try and stop smoking or drinking in a particular situation are you’ve changed. You know, like it’s a bad thing. But it’s not said in a positive way. People experience it on both sides of the coin in a negative way. The person who’s saying to their friend who’s had a stroke, who’s trying to not have another one, is saying, You’ve changed and I don’t like the way you’ve changed. And the person changing is hearing I’m changing and now people are having a bad experience because I’m changing. Like What’s all that about with that other person in our life? Jaemin (38:59) Such a great question. Can I, genuine question, can I take five minutes to answer that question? Bill Gasiamis (39:07) You can, absolutely. Jaemin (39:09) because I think this opens up a possibility for a window into a whole different experience of life if you’re willing to go down this thought experiment. Bill Gasiamis (39:23) I am. Let me switch my header off. It’s getting too hot in here. Jaemin (39:31) So I’ve just finished writing my first novel. It’s a five year project. I thought it was impossible. And then it out it wasn’t. It turns out I learned a lot about myself and the process of writing. And it’s been a thoroughly delightful experience. But great storytelling, great fiction writing typically follows some kind of hero’s journey trajectory. You’ve got a small, weak, lost, strange hero who for whatever reason says yes to a cold wood venture and embarks on a journey of self-discovery and eventually has to go do the thing that only they can do along the way they meet a wisdom character. You know, there’s a Gandalf, there’s a Yoda, there’s a Dumbledore, Mr. Miyagi, but eventually the hero’s got to go face the biggest fear and do the thing that’s impossible. And when they do, they come out the other side transformed and then they return home with that transformation and their whole world benefits. So, so it is the process of transformation. It’s the process of potential. It’s the process of destiny. It’s the process of seeing a person fulfilled in their experience of themselves. So a writer is bringing you in, in along for that journey. Now, if the writer transforms the hero magically or supernaturally, it’s a horrible story. You know, if the writer goes, you know, here’s the weak person. They went to sleep and they woke up the next day transformed. Who knows what happened. It was just, you’re like, really? What’s the point of that story? Like, that’s a horrible story. If the transformation happens in a way that’s supernatural or magic, it’s false. The transformation happens through overcoming of obstacles. The weakling becomes strong by overcoming resistance. And the resistance is almost always through the form of characters. So the writer says, stage, write the bully and to stage, write the villain, the parent, the trickster, the joker, the judge, the king, like, and so the hero doesn’t know the story is being written about them. And so experiences all these characters very personally and wishes the characters would go away. But the audience kind of sees the gift in the character, sees the opportunity. You know, when the audience sees a bully harassing a victim, what the audience is rooting for is that the victim would rise up and punch the bully in the nose. And something transformational happens if that victim ever does, you know, they actually then receive the bully’s gift. All along the bully had this gift of personal power delivered in the form of oppression. And because the victim had to find such deep strength that they didn’t even know existed to rise up and finally say this ends here, they’ll never be the victim again. And so in that way they’re transformed. So you could make a case to go, thanks, bully for being a good bully because you made my life so hard. I didn’t think it was possible to overcome you. Thank you. It’s not personal. So a writer then is not going to write an empathetic bully, you know, a very emotionally intelligent, compassionate, they’re going to write a thug. They’re going to write a dullard. They’re going to write someone who’s big and does not change. And even though the, the hero wants to bully the change. If the bully changes, if the bully goes to a spiritual retreat and comes home and change man and then apologizes and makes it up to the victim, it’s kind of nice, but the audience is going, but the victim didn’t have to become stronger in any way. So they’re still just as strong and the next bully is coming and they’re no better prepared. So all that to say, love, I love treating our own lives like this hero’s journey story. I love gamifying the experience. I love going. You know, this insecurity, a lot of people think if only I had a different experience at childhood, then I wouldn’t be so insecure now. If only there weren’t so many difficult people blocking my path, then it would be easier for me. Like, what, do you mean? Like that’s, that’s not the tragedy. That’s the setup. That’s how the game begins. Like that’s how the tensions created so that you have a gift of being able to overcome. So these people exist for you. And yes, they’re in your way. Great. Yes, they’re making it hard. Perfect. But we only play hard games. Like if you’re, you’re playing footy and it’s, you know, last year’s premieres versus the under 10s girls side and you win, you, that’s a very embarrassing experience. Like you don’t eat. That’s a horrible thing. You, know, this year’s premieres, you know, sorry, last year’s premieres versus the team that’s got undefeated this year and you win that game. You know, that’s, that’s a meaningful experience. and yeah, I love this idea that everyone comes into their twenties and thirties lost and confused. And most people are really upset about that. Wishing that their experience up till then had been different and feeling disqualified from a meaningful life because of what’s happened, because of who said this and who’s done that. But if you just zoom out and say it like a hero’s journey or a beautiful game, then then you realize, no, no, no, being lost and confused, oppressed, you know, that doesn’t disqualify you. That’s what qualifies you to go play. Now you can begin, now you can begin this journey of self-discovery to go all the way back to the beginning and see who you’ve always been all along. So it’s a very different way of thinking about life, but I’m constantly confronted with people who treat the stuff that’s happened to them as wounds. And the best you could ever hope for is that eventually you could bring healing to yourself and it become a visible scar that doesn’t really afflict you. Whereas this says, yeah, what if those things, what if life doesn’t happen to you? It happens for you. And the real gift is your own opportunity to rediscover who you’ve always been by overcoming obstacles and especially in the form of people and especially in the form of insecure people. who of course are going to make your journey difficult. Of course, you know, not everyone’s cheering you on. Eventually the heroes got to go alone. Eventually they’ve got to. If they don’t go alone, then they can’t do the thing that only they can do. The Hero’s Journey and Storytelling Bill Gasiamis (46:01) Yeah. Man, that was well well worth the f the the time that you allocated to answer it because it’s such an important part of recovery after anything. and In fact, I learnt about the Heroes Journey after my brain surgery. So we’re talking about I don’t know. I think I got out of hospital for after brain surgery in late 2014. And I think it was around 2017 I did a particular course that I was in. It was a behavioral modeling course and it was about modeling a behavior that we thought was one worth other people learning and repeating. And the The person who was running the course, awesome friend of mine and mentor and teacher, a gentleman called Marvin Oka, he spoke about the hero’s journey as part of this course to teach us about like how to tell a story. And I hadn’t grasped the concept very well. but because of that course, my first book was able to become a reality. It took four years for me to. make that happen. And I released it in twenty twenty twenty three, somewhere there. And since then I’ve done a bit of a deep dive into the hero’s journey and understanding how to take people through a story. And my next book is structured that way. There’s a moment where life is quote unquote normal and then there’s an event and then there’s everything, you know, there’s been a spanner thrown in the works and everything is not like it used to be. And now there is this post-traumatic growth experience that you can go on. And if you know you’re going on it, it’s easier to go on it. But some people are not aware that they might be going on this journey. They’re just programmed from a previous way of doing life that these things are all terrible and bad and they’re not good. And there’s no growth and there’s no learning and there’s no opportunity. But there but there is, but we just framed it. in our past way of thinking and that’s not applicable now, even though we’re still trying to apply it, apply it, apply it. And what you said about the the bully, I remember at school, if if I was a victim, bullies used to seek me out like like a mosquito knows who to go and sting, right? Jaemin (48:40) Yeah Bill Gasiamis (48:42) But then the first bully I punched in the nose was was it. That was the key to unlocking the whole how other people perceived me in those types of situations. And then none of the bullies turned up to have a go because they weren’t gonna get or or perhaps they saw that my response was going to affect their insecurities about themselves. Right. and realistically when I was going through stroke, stopping smoking, stopping drinking, stopping attending the particular venues where smoking and drinking happened so that I can avoid smoking and drinking. It meant that certain people couldn’t associate with me anymore. And It’s not that they were bullies, but when I learnt how to manage that situation once, the others that now I that I now interact with don’t require us to interact in a way that includes smoking and drinking in a particular venue. We can have just as meaningful interactions without the smoking and drinking, without being in that venue, just being in a different location. Doing a different thing. And and there’s no n and and no one feels bad about that interaction. I don’t feel about bad about it because I’m not partaking in something that the other person wants me to partake in. And the other person’s not feeling bad because they’re partaking in something that I’m not partaking in. And we’re there for the same reason. We’re there for the catch up. We’re not there for the smoking and the drinking. Jaemin (50:26) Yeah, and that’s often the way when you break through an archetypal character, a bully is a great example. It’s not uncommon that there becomes a level of respect, a mutual respect post that violence or post the standing up for yourself. And it’s not unheard of that bullies and victims become friends and respect each other. And so there Bill Gasiamis (50:50) Mm. Jaemin (50:50) must become a line in the sandwich like, whatever it costs me, If I, you know, the smoking drinking example, if you never talked to me ever again, if you cannot, then that will be okay. But I cannot go here ever again. And I won’t and you cannot make me and I won’t be made. And so there it is. Great. That your audience is watching that cheering. Yes, transformed. Never be victim again. And then on the other side of that, it’s often surprising what happens in those relationships. And it’s not uncommon for mutual respect, even though It’s not guaranteed and you have to be willing to let go of it completely. Because yeah, the hero’s got to go alone. Bill Gasiamis (51:33) we we’re talking about it like, you know, you know, we’re kinda having a a t a philosophical conversation, an intellectual conversation. We’re doing all of this stuff. And I remember being literally on the football pitch fighting with a kid, and then once we’d thrown the punches and everyone had done what they had to do in that moment, it was are we are we done? All good? And and it was. We were done. And we were all good. And it was instinctive. Like I wasn’t even ten years old or eleven years old or something. And yeah, then we got along forever. Understanding Bullies and Personal Growth Jaemin (52:08) A quicker side, but on the very same thread, if you keep thinking about characters like archetypes, do you know the hardest, but the most exciting, the most wonderful and the most, the biggest opportunity that the person in your life or the people in your life to treat as characters, not the bullies, any idea what makes the top of my list in terms of the characters with the biggest opportunity for growth. Bill Gasiamis (52:39) Just I’m kinda drawn to say family, my family, but Jaemin (52:42) family and parents make the top of the list. And I think Bill Gasiamis (52:46) Yeah, right. Jaemin (52:47) Sigmund Freud’s greatest contribution was that the nest is the hardest challenge for the human to break free from the nest is number one. And all this function ultimately comes from the nest, the familial relationships, exerting unconscious pressures from the parent of the child and the child with the parent outliving their usefulness. And so But in the same way, like no victim when they’re being bullied wants to see it like an archer, like wants to say it like a gift. They want to be rescued or they want the bully to change. It’s impossible to face a bully. Same with the parents. It’s like, don’t understand. This is my dad. You don’t understand. Like it’s just, you know, blood is thicker than water. You got to be there for family. Like it’s just how it’s Bill Gasiamis (53:30) Mm. Jaemin (53:30) always been. The way my parents make me feel like no one wants that tension. and would hope that the tension just goes away. But if you see it like a great story, it provides the greatest opportunity for your own sovereignty. You know, the bully’s gift is personal power. The parent’s gift is sovereignty. Because when you were born into their world, it’s like you’re born into a kingdom, king and queen on the throne, and it’s their arbitrary rules. In this world, this is how we do it. You don’t like it, bugger off down the street. But here, you know, do this, don’t do that. Why, dad? Don’t ask why, just do what I say. So the parental relationship, parents are right even when they’re wrong. And that’s a really important distinction for the nature of those relationships. And so you are a subject inside a kingdom, their rules, their map of the world, their right, even when they’re wrong. And it’s incredibly hard to break free from that to create your own map of the world and Bill Gasiamis (54:29) Mm. Jaemin (54:29) for you to be the king. But if you see it like a setup and a game, well then, Freud says, you must live as though your father is dead. You must depose the king. So Bill Gasiamis (54:42) Mm. Jaemin (54:42) if the king gets off the throne, if the king bows down to you, if the king goes, you your map of the world now is better than my map of the world, your way of thinking is better than my way of thinking, then there’s no challenge, there’s no resistance to overcome. So my favorite way of describing the role of the parents then is actually, It’s not to love and support and empower. They might do all that, but their central function in the hero’s journey is to confuse you about who you really are. Bill Gasiamis (55:12) Wow. Jaemin (55:13) so that the game can begin. Like everyone comes into their 20s lost and confused and the primary confuses our parents because they impose their map of the world. They have their own sense of who you are and what you ought to do. And it doesn’t suit a single person to be born into the family they’re born into. And yet here you are having to adapt and fit in to a pre-existing ecosystem with rules, values, culture, and then you’re given that name. So it’s like, You are this, this is who you are. It’s like, no, it’s just a bit of Bill Gasiamis (55:46) Wow. Jaemin (55:47) language like Jaemin Fra- I’m not Jaemin Fraser. What do you mean? Like, I was born into a family and those words were put on me. That’s not who I am. And so the confusion of growing up thinking that’s exactly who I am, this is the limit of my experience of life. And I cling to this as my whole certainty. is so wonderful because it’s the ultimate resistance to break out of, to examine the structure of that, to examine the confusion and really go back and reparent yourself and really be the one who actually knows who you’ve always been and to nurture that into the real world and then to become sovereign. And you know you’re sovereign when you become the one who’s right, even when they’re wrong. So you’ve got friends and family saying, what do you mean? It’s not. You need to be able to have a smoke. got to be able to drink. That’s what everyone does. Not in my kingdom, we don’t. In my kingdom, Bill Gasiamis (56:39) Mm. Jaemin (56:39) we don’t smoke and we don’t drink. You’re an idiot. That’s stupid. Well, I’m the king and this is my sovereignty. And if you want to come play in my world, this is how it works. And so, so many people are faced with those challenges. Then they keep pulling back from the edge because of their relational cost, hoping, wishing the world would go easier on them. But if you see it like a story in a game, it’s like, it’s a setup. It’s all a setup. So you could be the one who unconfuses yourself by having to overcome the relational resistance in your world and discover who you’ve always been. Bill Gasiamis (57:15) And we know it innately because we’ve all had that dad, mom, whomever, like I did what I had to do when I was in your house. Now this is my house. Now they this is how it applies. If you don’t Jaemin (57:26) Yeah. Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (57:27) like it, you don’t like it. Like I’ve actually thrown my dad out of my house in my twenties, when we moved out because my wife and I got married and we had kids and whatever, and they’d come over and visit to see the grandkid. You know, my dad would do the whole over helicopter grandparenting, you know. You know, the kids cold or the kids this and the kids that, you know, we lived this with this kid twenty four hours a day, seven days a week for five, six years, you know, like we knew its needs, you know, my my son’s needs. And my dad just wouldn’t have it that we what we were saying wasn’t that we were saying was correct or was okay or was fine or whatever, you know, we were it was everythi

This week on High on Home Grown, we have another packed episode of cannabis news from the UK, Europe and beyond, covering the rapidly developing medical cannabis market, dangerous illicit edibles, legalisation in Germany and the latest research into cannabis and health. Macky: Aurora Buys UK Pharmacy and Import Licence for £2.1m, Securing 'Direct Route' to Patients  Smee: Cannabis gummies sold on social media are laced with spice, scientists warn | The Independent  Billy:  Germany bec@ft omes Europe's largest regulated cannabis market  Margaret: Cannabis use linked to 37% higher stroke risk in massive study | ScienceDaily This week we discuss Aurora's move to buy its own UK pharmacy and licensed importer, and what greater control over the supply chain could mean for Britain's rapidly expanding medical cannabis market. We also examine the disturbing discovery of synthetic Spice in illicit cannabis gummies, highlighting the huge difference between regulated products and mystery edibles being sold through social media. Billy takes us over to Germany, where the country's cannabis reforms have created Europe's largest regulated market, while Dr. Margaret brings us the latest large-scale research examining potential cardiovascular risks associated with cannabis use. And, of course, we have to explain John's mysterious absence from the show this week... Another episode packed with cannabis news, science, business, regulation and plenty for the panel to argue about.

Large language models (LLMs) are moving beyond simple data extraction to complex, guideline-based triage in emergency stroke care. In this episode, JNIS Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Michael Chen, speaks with Dr. Ayman Meddeb, a senior consultant and interventional neuroradiologist at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. They discuss his latest paper, "Evaluating accuracy and reasoning capabilities of large language models for acute ischemic stroke management" (https://jnis.bmj.com/content/early/2026/06/23/jnis-2026-025429). Please subscribe to the JNIS podcast on your favourite platform to get the latest podcast every month. If you enjoy our podcast, you can leave us a review or a comment on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4aZmlpT) or Spotify (https://spoti.fi/3UKhGT5). We'd love to hear your feedback on social media - @JNIS_BMJ.

A North Texas father donates a kidney to his son after he’s diagnosed with a genetic disease called Alport Syndrome. AND When his 7-year-old son had a stroke in the pool, this father saved his life. To see videos and photos referenced in this episode, visit GodUpdates! https://www.godtube.com/blog/father-donates-kidney-to-son.html https://www.godtube.com/blog/father-saves-son-after-stroke.html Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Welcome to the NeurologyLive® Mind Moments® podcast. Tune in to hear leaders in neurology sound off on topics that impact your clinical practice.In this Mind Moments episode, Pezhman Roohani, MD, neurologist and medical director of the teleneurology and telestroke program at Allina Health, joins the podcast to discuss the emerging role of GLP-1 receptor agonists across neurology. Roohani outlines where these therapies may have the greatest impact, highlighting stroke prevention, neurodegenerative diseases, idiopathic intracranial hypertension, and other areas being explored as researchers look beyond their established metabolic effects. The conversation also examines what recent Alzheimer disease trial results mean for the future of GLP-1 research, including the potential importance of prevention and identifying patient subgroups most likely to benefit. Roohani discusses key cautions surrounding long-term use, muscle loss, nutrition, and lifestyle modification, as well as practical considerations when counseling patients. He closes by highlighting unanswered research questions and potential applications in neuroinflammation, traumatic brain injury, and addiction. Looking for more Stroke discussion? Check out the NeurologyLive® Stroke clinical focus page.Episode Breakdown: 1:15 – Neurologic conditions showing the greatest promise for GLP-1 therapies 4:15 – GLP-1s in neurodegeneration following recent Alzheimer trial results 7:35 – Key cautions and limitations surrounding long-term GLP-1 use 9:35 – Neurology News Minute  11:50– Counseling patients on lifestyle changes when initiating GLP-1 therapy 14:20 – Research priorities and emerging neurologic applications for GLP-1s The stories featured in this week's Neurology News Minute, which will give you quick updates on the following developments in neurology, are further detailed here: First-Ever Platform Trial for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy Enrolls Its Inaugural Participant FDA Approves Tau PET Tracer MK-6240 for Alzheimer Diagnostic Workup Efgartigimod Meets Primary Endpoint in Phase 3 ALKIVIA Trial of Autoimmune Myositis Thanks for listening to the NeurologyLive® Mind Moments® podcast. To support the show, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. For more neurology news and expert-driven content, visit neurologylive.com.

In this week's potluck episode, we discuss what we feel is the best time of day to workout, what we should focus on for the optimal pedal stroke, and the best way to return to form after forced time off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Episode 67 of the Stroke Alert Podcast, host Dr. Negar Asdaghi highlights two articles from the August 2026 issue of Stroke: "Diagnostic Yield of Cardiac CT to Detect Cardiac Thrombi in Patients With Acute Ischemic Stroke (AIS of HEARTS)" and "Intensive Versus Conventional Blood Pressure Lowering After Successful Endovascular Thrombectomy: OPTIMAL-BP 1-Year Outcomes." She also interviews Prof. Ulf Landmesser about the CLOSURE-AF trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine. For the episode transcript, visit: https://www.ahajournals.org/do/10.1161/podcast.20260811.265479

Episode 26-33 Is Insulin Resistance The Greatest Threat To Your Health? Nearly EVERY chronic disease is strongly linked to Insulin Resistance. Or, stated another way… As you age, Insulin Resistance may be THE factor that causes you to suffer with one or more of the following conditions: High Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Alzheimer's, Stroke, Parkinson's, Fibromyalgia, Multiple Sclerosis, Obesity, Heart Disease, Autoimmune Disorders, Vision Problems, Kidney Failure, Neuropathy, Bipolar Disorder, Depression.  On this episode I address the basics regarding Insulin Resistance. Specifically I ask 5 questions that you need to know the answers to should you desire to live a long and HEALTHY life:   1) What is Insulin Resistance? 2) Why is it so harmful? 3) What causes it? 4) How can it be corrected? 5) How do you know if you have it?   Give this episode a good listen if you want to prevent, and possibly reverse, Insulin Resistance and the negative health consequences that come with it. And, as always, be sure to share this episode with a friend.  Thanks!  ———————- Want to learn more? Continue the conversation regarding this episode, and all future episodes, by signing up for our daily emails. Simply visit: GetHealthyAlabama.com  Once there, download the "Symptom Survey" and you will automatically added to our email list. ———————- Also, if you haven't already, we'd appreciate it if you'd subscribe to the podcast, leave a comment and give us a rating. (Thanks!!!)  

               * This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Please consult with your health care provider before making any health-related changes.

After poet Nora May French committed suicide in the artist's colony of Carmel-by-the-Sea, a “cavalcade of death” followed. But how responsible was Nora for the bizarre deaths of her Bohemian friends, and was her death truly a suicide?Sources: Denouden, Jeremy. “‘Great Nature, Refuge of the Weary Heart:' A Regional and Literary Exploration of the Early Grove Plays of the Bohemian Club.” Master's Theses. San Jose State University, Fall 2015.French, Nora May. Poems (San Francisco: The Strange Company, 1910).Lanzendorfer, Joy. “Bohemian Tragedy: The rise, fall, and afterlife of George Sterling's California Arts Colony.” Poetry Foundation. February 25, 2018. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/146051/bohemian-tragedyPrendergast, Catherine. The Gilded Edge: Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle that Shook America (New York: Dutton, 2021).Starr, Kevin. Inventing the Dream: California through the Progressive Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).Stewart, George R. Footloose in Arcadia: A Personal Record of Jack London, George Sterling, Ambrose Bierce.by Joseph Noel. American Literature, vol. 12, no. 3, 1940, pp. 380–81. Articles from the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Call, Los Angeles Times, Oakland Post Enquirer, and Sunset Magazine.Music: Credits to Holizna, Fesilyan Studios & Virginia Liston 

Dr Rachel Forman is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine and a stroke neurologist at Yale New Haven Hospital. She tells us signs to watch out for and how to make sure you are preventing having a stroke.

Aug. 14, 2026 - In a Dispatches from Planet Albany excerpt, State Sen. Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, discusses her experience recovering from a stroke and her agenda for 2027 in Albany.

Dave Brisbin 8.9.26 You may be familiar with an elevator speech. Whatever you have to offer, if you can't articulate who you are, what you do, why it matters in the time it takes to get to your floor in an elevator, you've lost the opportunity. Jesus' Way is purely experiential, not cognitive, but we still need an elevator speech to concisely understand what it is and isn't or we'll be digging holes where there is no treasure. We each need our own personal speech…but generally, it's not a path leading somewhere else. It's how we follow the path we're already on, growing awareness of the unseen Oneness of all things in two complementary ways: living as if oneness really exists while relinquishing everything that obscures it. Only way to see who we really are in relation to what really is. In 1996, a neuroanatomist had a stroke. Function by function, her left hemisphere went offline, leaving her entirely in her right mind. The left brain is the source of ego awareness, linear order, sense of separation and physical boundaries, deep ties to the past for threat assessment. The right brain is all about the present moment, flow, sense of oneness, experience without judgment, identification with everything. She watched with clinical fascination as her left brain faded, each area stopping function, her fear and horror muted by the overwhelming peace and oneness she felt as never before. Took eight years to bring her left brain back online, to bring her two hemispheres into balance, to choose which left brain parts she wanted back and which only obscured the world as one. Took a stroke, the loss of her left brain to force awareness of her right, contemplative mind. She wrote she wished there were a safe way to induce this awareness in people. Well, there is… Jesus' Way is a dive into the right mind by living as if all life is one, experiencing loving the enemy while relinquishing the dominance of the left mind, selling off everything that obscures us as one with. Want a really short elevator speech on Jesus' Way? It's a way of having a spiritual stroke. You'd have a lotta ‘splainin' to do, but at least you'd have their attention.

Dr. Rukhsana Mirza interviews ophthalmology residents Drs. Rita Vought and Victoria Vought on their recent study investigating clinical characteristics that impact ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack risk after the first retinal artery occlusion or amaurosis fugax among adults. From their Ophthalmology Retina article, "Stroke Risk after Ischemic Ocular Events: Insights from an Electronic Health Record Database." Vought V, et al. Stroke Risk after Ischemic Ocular Events: Insights from an Electronic Health Record Database. Ophthalmology Retina, 2026. Volume 10, Issue 7, 764-773.  For more information about submitting to the Artificial Intelligence in Ophthalmology Special Collection, please visit https://www.aaojournal.org/ai-in-ophthalmology or email aaojournal@aao.org.

Episode 26-32 Insulin Resistance- The "Silent Killer" You Probably Have, But Don't Know It Do you have Insulin Resistance? That's a question you should know the answer to. Why? Because Insulin Resistance is linked to nearly every major chronic disease. Diseases such as High Blood Pressure, Diabetes, Alzheimer's, Stroke, Parkinson's, Fibromyalgia, Multiple Sclerosis, Obesity, Heart Disease, and Autoimmune Disorders.  Insulin Resistance is also something very few doctors talk about. Why? I honestly don't know. But what I DO know is this: YOU need to know about Insulin Resistance… AND you need to know how to find out whether or not you have it. This is especially true if you are over the age of 30 as the majority of American adults HAVE Insulin Resistance and don't even know it! On this episode I talk about Insulin Resistance and how to determine if you have it. Give this episode a good listen and, as always, be sure to share it with a friend.  Thanks!  ———————- Want to learn more? Continue the conversation regarding this episode, and all future episodes, by signing up for our daily emails. Simply visit: GetHealthyAlabama.com  Once there, download the "Symptom Survey" and you will automatically added to our email list. ———————- Also, if you haven't already, we'd appreciate it if you'd subscribe to the podcast, leave a comment and give us a rating. (Thanks!!!)  

           * This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Please consult with your health care provider before making any health-related changes.

  Episode: 140 Taking Charge After Stroke: Self-Determination and Recovery with Vivian Fu   In this episode you will discover: ● The Conversation Is the Intervention — A structured, facilitated conversation that centers a person's identity, hopes, and vision for their best day produces measurable improvements in quality of life and independence a year after stroke. Connection isn't soft — it's evidence-based. ● Reframe the Expert in the Room — Take Charge asks clinicians to resist offering advice, validation, or direction — and to trust that the person with stroke already holds the wisdom they need. The hardest part of the facilitator role is staying out of the way. ● Self-Determination Is Not a Luxury — When people with stroke are supported to set their own direction, outcomes improve, costs decrease, and the effects last for years. Building systems that protect that autonomy isn't idealistic — it's what the data demands.   Welcome to the Aphasia Access Aphasia Conversations Podcast. I'm Katie Strong from Central Michigan University and a member of the Aphasia Access Podcast Working Group, a community dedicated to supporting better aphasia care.   Today I'm speaking with Dr. Vivian Fu, a stroke neurologist living and working in Kelowna, British Columbia, the unceded territories of the Syilx / Okanagan people. Vivian trained in Aotearoa New Zealand, where she completed her PhD running the Taking Charge After Stroke trial. Take Charge showed that people with stroke who were supported to follow their own self-determination had much better quality of life and independence a year after their stroke. The second Take Charge RCT showed that two sessions about six weeks apart produce better outcomes than one session. Vivian strives to embed the Take Charge philosophy in her daily practice, and is focused on improving access to high quality stroke care for rural, regional, and underrepresented populations.   I have been looking forward to this conversation. What drew me to Take Charge was how it reframes the question entirely — from what does the clinician do for this person to what does this person want for their own life. That shift is deceptively simple, and as you'll hear, the evidence behind it is anything but.   Let's get into it.   Katie Strong:  Welcome, Vivian. Vivian Fu: Thank you so much for having me, Katie. I'd like to start off with my Pepeha. This is an introduction in Te Reo Māori, which is the indigenous language of the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, and I'll just translate each line. Nō Hong Kong ōku tīpuna. My ancestors come from Hong Kong. I tipu ake au ki Aotearoa. I grew up in Aotearoa, New Zealand. E noho ana au ki Ki-Low-Na. I live in Kelowna, British Columbia. Ko tēnei taku mihi ki ngā tāngata whenua o te rohe nei. I like to pay my deepest respects to the first peoples of this land. I live on the unceded territories of the Syilx and Okanagan peoples. Ko tēnei taku mihi ki ngā maunga, ki ngā awa, ki ngā roto, ki ngā Papatuānuku, o te rohe nei. I'd like to pay my deepest respects to the mountains, rivers, and the lakes, and to Mother Earth. All these important landmarks that have been here for millennia. Nō reira, tēna koutou, tēna koutou, tēna koutou katoa. Therefore, hello, hello, hello, Ko Vivian Fu tōku ingoa. Lovely to be here. Katie Strong:  Well, I'm so glad you're here. And I wanted to start off today asking about the Take Charge program that you've been working with, and talk to me about how that began. What was the origin of that? Vivian Fu:  Sure, so really this work began in probably the late 90s early 2000s when clinicians in Aotearoa New Zealand realized that there were different outcomes for people who were Māori compared with non-Māori, and I guess an important point to illustrate is that in Aotearoa society we view things in a very bicultural lens, and by that I mean Tangata Whenua, who are the people of the land, so indigenous people of the Māori and Tangata Tiriti, so everyone else are people of the treaty. It doesn't really matter where you come from, but you are a person of the treaty if you live in Aotearoa, and so it's a bicultural lens, and so we always look at things in that way, and that's how our kind of entire society is grounded upon that. And so when we look at health outcomes, what we could see back then, and unfortunately what we, in a way, still see now is that Māori were experiencing a stroke at about 20 years younger than non-Māori, and they were more likely to die from their stroke, and also more likely to be severely disabled. And so there was a difference in life expectancy, a difference in overall rehabilitation access, difference in overall outcomes, and so it started off with Professor Matire Harwood's work. She is Tangata Whenua, and in her PhD, she was looking at why there were these differences in outcomes and wanting to address them. And so that started off with the Māori and Pacific Stroke Study, which was essentially conducted in just Māori and Pacific people in Aotearoa, New Zealand, out of many different centers around the country. It was a four arm study.. It was a randomized control trial, and it looked at a conversation, which was labeled as the "Take Charge" session, but it was, it was really a connection and a conversation versus a professionally made DVD from the New Zealand Stroke Foundation about people's experiences and stories after stroke. And then the fourth arm of the trial was getting both of those interventions, and there was a control group. So there were three active groups in one control group. And what the researchers basically found was that anybody who had received this session of discussion and connection did much better a year after stroke in terms of quality of life, independence, and caregiver strain. And so that was the first sort of indication that there was something in that conversation that was really important. Unfortunately, it didn't really take off in terms of being able to be implemented, and so then Dr. Harry McNaughton, who was Dr. Harwood's supervisor wrote multiple grants and tried to get this session into much more of a bigger trial with some some type of implementation, and that's where I came along and we essentially did two things. We operationalized the intervention into something that had a bit of a framework, so with a bit of a booklet and a bit of a structure to follow. Really looking into what was it about that conversation that was so powerful and made such a difference to people, and tried to put those things into practice. Then, secondly, to conduct a second trial in New Zealand out of seven centers for people with stroke who were non-Māori and non-Pacific, because the struggle that we came across was that it was only shown to be effective in a small group of people, but not in everybody, and so we had to do things backwards. And so that was really where it all began, from these principles of self-determination, so Tino Rangatiratanga, which is a really important principle in Te Ao Māori, and in the world of Māori, but also knowing that Māori and a lot of indigenous peoples, we think of health as this concept called Te Whare Tapa Whā, for example, which is the house with four walls. So a person is never just their body and their physical health, there are other walls that keep the house upright. So mental health, spiritual health, and family health, whānau is so important, and feeling as though you have strong foundations in where you belong is also really important. So it's that really holistic look at health of an individual and how we can address all of those things in an intervention is really where it all came from. Katie Strong:  Thank you for sharing. I appreciate the backstory, and also just the idea of what you're thinking about from a holistic health standpoint. I know our listeners are probably curious, some of them might not have heard about Take Charge before, so this is the first time of them hearing about this, and so I was hoping, Vivian, you could give us an overview of what the intervention is, and then maybe walk us through what a session actually looks like in practice. Vivian Fu: Yeah, absolutely. So I'll talk you through the session in the way that it was done in the larger Take Charge trial. So this was done in 400 non-Māori, non-Pacific people with stroke, and our trial there had three arms. So there was a control group, there was a group that received just one session, and then there was a group that received two sessions six weeks apart roughly. The sessions were provided by a trained facilitator, and they were timed roughly somewhere between three to 18 weeks after stroke. So quite a large window, really, depending on when the person with stroke was ready to receive it. So the short version of what it looks like is it's based off the booklet and it's done face to face. It's a conversation and the facilitator is trained at the beginning to really try and establish a relationship…to build a relationship. There's a concept in Te Ao Māori called Whakawhanaungatanga, which is really sort of seeking another person's identity, recognizing who they are as a person, and trying to build connections. And so I guess in English, we think of that as building rapport, building trust. And so it in our trial was done face to face. We have also looked at ways of doing this via telehealth as well, which is, you can imagine, is a little bit different. But that step is really important, and we knew that it was important also in the initial Māori and Pacific trial, because the facilitators who were trained were actually ethnicity matched. So that's something where I think it came quite naturally in that trial, but in the second trial we really wanted to ensure that a relationship was built, and then there are three pages, initial pages in the booklet that look at different things. So the first page is looking at how the person has been affected by the stroke, and then asking them to think about actually who they really are as a person. It's a very simple concept, and a very sort of simple question, but for many people that's the first time they've really been asked that and have had to think about that. So anything that comes to mind that they can relate to, you know, who they are. An individual, and what it is that they love, so for example, for me, I would say, "I'm a mum, and I'm, I'm a stroke neurologist, I am a painter, I'm a poet, I'm someone who loves going for walks in hikes," and, you know, so those kinds of things, and it, and it kind of really builds on on that person's identity and who they are in the world. And so that's that sort of page one. It's really about establishing identity and sense of self. And then the second page is talking then about my hopes and fears. And that might be a tricky one, really, for a lot of people to start talking about and thinking about. They may not want to express that, they may not have been asked that. Sometimes it brings out a lot of emotion, and that's why that initial beginning part of establishing trust and in a kind of a psychological safety space is really important. And then the third page is imagining or envisioning what my best day looks like. And you can be as wild and fantastical about that as you like. When we train our facilitators, we asked them to do these exercises as well themselves, so they can get a really good sense of what that's like, and I had a lovely training session with community health workers from Tanaha First Nation in Cranbrook, BC, and one of one of the attendees in the group said she'd love to have breakfast with a Sasquatch, and so that was absolutely, you know, it was so culturally relevant, so important. Katie Strong:  That makes my Pacific Northwest roots just smile there! Vivian Fu: Exactly! Just so unique to that individual and to where they are in the world. And it's not something you can, you can pluck out of a textbook or pluck out of anything, right. It's where they are. I love that activity. It's quite magical what comes out. And then after those three pages are done, then there are some pages that are specifically related to goal setting, which may or may not be relevant to the person in front of you, things like a physical page, emotional, social, financial, health management type pages. And that really is a way to think about or encourage the person to think about, or we know what are the things that do matter to you, and and what are the things you would like to achieve in the long run, and what are some ways you might be able to break that down into achievable steps that you would personally want to do. But the session in practice can look like anything out of that. It can look from a person at session one being completely clammed up about not wanting to dig deep or not not being ready to engage in that. Or just kind of being, you know, keeping it all to themselves, and thinking about it, and ruminating about it, and then session two, looking very different after they've had that six weeks to think about it themselves. It can look like blank pages, or it could look like a person coming up with all sorts of brilliant ideas. Hopefully, you know, we always encourage if they can write the person with stroke as the one who is writing in the notebook. They keep it. They stick it on their fridge. They do whatever they like with it. They write in it in their own time, but it's completely fine to have blank pages. It's completely fine to have nothing come out of that conversation, nothing verbal, but it's just a space to an invitation to dig deep, and if there's something to say to feel heard. And I guess there was another question. I think that's quite important with regards to what the facilitator is doing, what are they not doing, and the facilitator is trained specifically to listen and ask questions and reflect the ideas that are being expressed by the person with stroke, but what they're not doing is they're not offering any advice or suggestions or pathways forward or how abouts or what abouts. They are not, and this is probably the hardest part. They're not passing any judgment, and that includes good judgment. So, by saying something like, "oh, that sounds like a really good idea", which seems like a really normal response from most people, it kind of implies that there are other ideas that are less good. Or the person with stroke might feel as though they are needing to have that kind of external validation, that external approval, and, and what we don't want is to for them to feel like they're doing this or saying this or thinking these things for the facilitator. We want them to think about it for themselves. And so all we encourage people to respond, is "oh, so you'd like to ride your bike, that's really interesting. How, how do you think you'll, you'll go about doing that?" You know, it's, it's much more neutral, but reflective way of speaking and listening, I guess. Katie Strong:  I am curious, how long is the training, or you know, what kinds of.. what we didn't talk about this, but I know people are going to want to know. So, what does it take to be trained? Vivian Fu: This is quite funny. This is a thing that sort of been on my mind ever since we've started implementation around the world, and I have this ultimate goal of operate like actually making the training have some type of qualification and fidelity, and some structure. There is structure, but it's essentially myself or Harry doing a Zoom with people, and it takes maybe say four hours. But ideally, what we'd love to do is to have sort of recorded videos, and then we'd have live sessions, and then we'd have assessments, and then you get a certificate at the end. I have neither the budget or the… Katie Strong: There's always the next step, for sure. Vivian Fu: I'd love to be for people to be able to say, "Oh, I'm Take Charge trained" and for them to be able to like "Look, I've got this qualification, I'm Take Charge trained, I know how to do this," and especially for if we were thinking about doing it in more clinical trial settings, I think that's really important, but also, you know, for people, you know, to have on their CV, if they're moving between jobs and things, I think it's so useful. But yeah, basically people get in touch with myself or Harry and say, "Hi, we'd like to be trained, can you fit us in?" And we just do it for free. Katie Strong:  Lovely, I love it. And the other question I had as you were talking was how long is a typical session or or is there is there length? Vivian Fu: So in the trial what our facilitators did was they because it was face to face and they had to drive between people's houses, they booked in the session, usually at 10:30 in the morning, and then another session, I think, if I remember correctly, either maybe it was 1:30 in the afternoon. And so you can probably surmise that for people with stroke, usually the 10:30 slot is the most popular. And you know, some people would would prefer to wake up earlier and be ready earlier, so they might ask for something like 9 o'clock and then they might usually go for about an hour and a half to two hours if it's a good going session, and they're really digging deep, and there's a lot to say. And often you know that first half an hour is, "Here's a cup of tea and a biscuit. Let's get to know each other. Tell me all about what happened with your stroke." That kind of stuff, so that listening and connecting stuff actually takes takes a while to establish, and I think people just allowed for that time. Then they'd do a second session in the afternoon again. There are lots of things, you know, cognitive problems, fatigue is a big one. So, if people felt like they couldn't keep going, the facilitator would say , "That's totally fine, we'll book in for, you know, do the rest of this another time, is that okay?" It was fine to really just, you can truncate it and break it up as much as the person really wants. Katie Strong:  Thank you. I appreciate the extra information. You had a recent publication in 2025 with some colleagues that looked at this work from a qualitative lens.  You came up with some themes about doing things my way, coming to my own wisdom, and they're just so deeply related to identity, and what struck me was the contrast participants drew between Take Charge care and standard care, where they described being put in a box receiving scripted advice that had really nothing to do with who they were as a person. And when someone gets to tell the story of who they are to a genuinely good listener, something shifts. I was just curious, if you could think about what you think is happening there, or what you found in your study. Vivian Fu: Well, I think for the most part, as a, you know, as a clinician, if we think about from the moment the person has a stroke, they disempowered from that very moment.  Something happens where they just aren't themselves, and they are brought into a merge. A bunch of things happen to them that they can't really even speak up about. You know, they're popped in a scanner. They might get thrombolised, you know, all these things are happening. And the person doesn't really know what's going on. There are a lot of important qualitative studies that have been done, looking at that element of feeling disempowered, and what somebody in New Zealand study described as feeling gut-wrenchingly emotional. You know, experiences that that aren't heard and aren't ever expressed to to anyone in the healthcare side and aren't dealt with, and so, if you think about that, just that trauma of having a stroke and then going through all of that stuff, and you know, ending up in a bed somewhere on a ward with strangers on the other side of a curtain, and it's really pretty traumatic. And so I think what was powerful with Take Charge was it's an it's an opportunity for someone to finally tell their story and feel heard and for all that stuff to just come out. And a lot of the time you know people might say, "Oh, well, you could talk to your family, you can talk to your kids, or, you know, whatever. Once you get home" but actually, a lot of people don't feel like talking to those who are closest to them about how much it affected them, and there is still an element of stigma. There's still an element of, "Oh, you know, you look great physically, you to someone we know having had a big health scare, and then kind of coming back into that. But there's there's a real dissonance between what is going on inside a person and and how other people are reacting to them coming back into "normal spaces". And so I think the ability to tell your story from the very get go. You know, all of the messiness of it. All the things that went wrong, and then to have somebody listen to that really gives meaning to it and makes it real, but it also helps that person really reestablish their sense of power to regain some power from that that they had lost. And there's a lot of power in story, and I think the kind of, you know, lovely thing about it is that sort of all indigenous cultures sort of be like, you know, First Nations, Māori, Gaelic, a lot of cultures really put a lot of value in the power of storytelling. And that is how historically things were really passed down, and so I think it's through that ability to be able to feel heard and to tell your story that then the person who is speaking can actually hear themselves say things out loud for the first time. And then understand the power and the value and the worth in their words and their experience, and that is that process of coming to my own wisdom, is "Oh, actually, you know, I do know about my body. I am, I am the expert, not these people in their white coats, or you know, with their expertise, I am the expert. I know what I need. I can plan my rehabilitation. I can go back to the things that I want to do, and this is how I'm going to do it." And it's that, that kind of reestablishment of confidence and strength and hope that is so powerful. I think. Katie Strong: I agree. I agree, Vivian. As you know, our listeners are primarily speech language pathologists working with people with aphasia. We also have people with aphasia that are listening, and researchers as well. But you know, the capacity for language being disrupted by aphasia. I was just curious, with Take Charge, as you've studied it, is you know, really a talking therapy with writing, and, and those sorts of things, and so I was just curious, you know, what would it take to extend this kind of intervention to people with aphasia, and what principles would you want to most preserve in the adaptation. Vivian Fu: Yeah, thank you. That's such an important question. We certainly, in the Take Charge trial, included people with aphasia in the trial, and the way that we sort of just included them was if they could understand or the consent form and could mark an "x" on the form, we'd be happy to to have them included, and so we had people with mild to moderate and moderate to severe aphasia in the trial. And we hadn't made any specific changes or tweaks to the intervention, the facilitator just did what they could with what we had. But I think what has come out of reviews of the implementation of Take Charge now in New Zealand is that it is really important for us to look at how we can adapt the intervention for people with aphasia. I think for the facilitators in the trial, what they did was they allowed a lot more time, so the usual two and a half hours became three and a half hours, and that was fine if the person could continue. But also I think from the report we need to look at alternative ways of how we can complete some of these activities, whether it's providing images where people can point, whether it's a lot more inclusion of their family, their whānau important people to them who can help with, you know, subtle guidance, and, and, and having sort of lived with the person now, can read their non-verbal expressions a lot better than a stranger, a facilitator can and can help with the guidance of participating. And really, while Take Charge has been translated, I think, now into seven or eight different languages, we really need to adapt Take Charge to other communication needs and other languages, but what I.. so my role.. sorry, I didn't.. I'd actually say this, but my role in the in the large trial was as the blinded outcomes assessor, so I went around at one year after stroke. I traveled around to the 400 or so different other people, participants' homes around the country, and I sat in their living rooms, and I listened to their stories again. And then I did all of their outcome instruments and got all of their outcomes done, but I did not know which group they were allocated to. And then I locked all the data, and then I'd say, "Hey, so which group did you get Take Charge or not?" And it was really, it was good. I think out of the 400 there were only two people who, when I turned up, actually had the booklet on the table, and so you know, I just ignored it, and then, but yeah, it was, it was really good in terms of sort of blinding and masking, and then sort of having a guess as I was going through and checking where things were at. It was such a privilege for me to, as a stroke doctor, I think you know people don't usually get to do this as a physician, but to, to meet so many different people with so many different stories, and a number of people who still had moderate to severe aphasia, and and were telling me about the impacts of that on their life. But we were still able to communicate a year after stroke, and so I think it is so important that we don't exclude people with cognitive and communication difficulties. We have to adapt the things that we have to make it work for them. What I'd love is to be able to have some kind of focus group with people with aphasia, and, and show them Take Charge, and realize, oh, what can we do? How would this work better for you? Katie Strong:  I love that, and well. Well, and we haven't talked about the materials yet, but I do have to say they're so accessible, or they're very accessible from a visual standpoint as well. Vivian Fu: Thank you. Yes, we are actually modifying them and making the font bigger and having better graphics. We started off with stick figures that Harry drew, and then I think we're actually making them a lot nicer in terms of the graphics, but what we do have at the moment is actually available online for free, and you can just download them as a package. It's if you Google it, it's the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, or www.mrinz.ac.nz  and then under programs, and we spell that as p r o g r a m m e s, and then under programs slash forward slash stroke, I think is where it lives, and at the bottom of the page you should be able to download, a training package and the booklet itself. Katie Strong: Yes, lovely, and we'll have the links on our show notes as well, so you can check those out, listeners, if you're interested. So, thank you. You have two randomized controlled trials that you've talked a little bit about, and a cost effectiveness analysis and qualitative work, all pointing in the same direction that the cost data suggests that Take Charge actually might save money, and that is remarkable, and lots of evidence showing that, but still, it's a challenge in implementing into standard practice, and I was curious if you could talk with us about what you think stands between what the evidence shows and what actually gets implemented. Vivian Fu: Sure, gosh, I love this question. It's it applies for so many interventions, I think, specifically for Take Charge, it's a number of things. So definitely the stuff that affects other interventions being implemented, but for Take Charge itself, it started off with a huge amount of disbelief bias, so people, you know, even after I presented the main results of the second trial at the European Stroke Conference in gosh, when was that? 2019 pre-COVID in Milan. So this is a huge international stroke conference, and this was a plenary session. People stood up and took photos of the results and went, you know, there was this collective gasp throughout the audience of 6000 odd people, but there's just this disbelief that something as simple as a conversation can make a difference to people's objective quality quantitative outcomes, like the, you know, Bartel or the FIM, what they, you know, what their physical outcomes are like at a year. And what their quality of life is like. I think for people who are stroke researchers, a lot of the focus is on that initial 24 to 48 hours after stroke. And you know, that that's kind of where that's kind of where all the funding goes, isn't it? So it's the pre-hospital stuff, and then the interventional things you can stick catheters into and thrombolysis, and you know that's, and that's all great. You know, I, as a stroke physician, I love that part of stroke as well, but to think that you could possibly do something at three to 18 weeks after stroke that could change a person's outcome by a year, and actually we've got a long-term follow-up study now that says that those those same magnitude of changes are still present at five years between the groups is, you know, kind of gobsmacking. And people just go, surely you've fudged this, or surely this can't be true. And so there's this huge disbelief bias that stopped us from being able to publish initially, and it was only after I presented the results in Milan that that we got accepted into a journal. And we'd been trying for about a year beforehand, and, and so there's, there's that disbelief. But also in the way that it has to be provided, you know, it's probably considered quite labor intensive. You know, one on one home visits, and that's why people of other researchers who do believe in Take Charge are now looking at providing take charge in different ways. Like I did a telehealth trial in Canada, in southern Alberta, when I was there as a fellow in Calgary, and there's potential other work that's being. Done in Australia with Take Charge, looking at providing it by computer avatars, by even maybe even AI, and maybe in a larger sort of telehealth format. And so you know other ways of doing it, but I think ultimately it's kind of cultural inertia, because you know, "We've never done this, this is not part of who we are. Why would we need to start something new?" There's probably kind of an established way of thinking about clinician and, and patient, rather than person with stroke, in still in how we practice, and this idea that the therapist and doctor are experts. And so I think it really challenges that dogma and challenges clinician's role, and therefore there's a resistance to accept that this is something that is useful and helpful, and actually doesn't, you know, you don't need to take it personally. You're still doing great work. Take Charge is just a tool that helps supplement everything else that's going on, and so there's a lack of time, and I think we also get quite, as practicing clinicians, we get quite tunnel visioned into this, you know, hamster wheel of go to work, treat all these people, go home. We just keep doing it. Hoping that things will get better for them, but, you know, we, it's only when we start looking at alternative interventions and alternative things that work and start trialing them and being open to that, that I think things will really start to change. We've certainly had interest from random little parts around the world. I think it's been translated into Latvian. I've got people from Sweden who are interested. A little hospital in Germany, and then parts of it's been trialed in pilot studies in the UK. And Harry and I last year trained a whole bunch of occupational therapists in Hong Kong, so you know it is, it is kind of picking up, slowly but surely. Katie Strong: Well to me, you know, most stroke survivors, or people with stroke, as you're referring to them, have chronic challenges, and so all of the early intervention, while important, doesn't necessarily help somebody navigate that longer term change. And so I love that this is just such an empowering way of putting that power back into the person's life, which it seems like it is showing up n in the results that you're sharing. Vivian Fu: Oh, absolutely. I mean, if we think about it, if we just think about thrombectomy and thrombolysis, somewhere between five to 15% of all people with stroke are eligible, and then receive the treatment. That leaves what?, 85 to 95% of people who don't get to receive that. And even after they receive the treatment, there are consequences of stroke that are beyond the physical that don't you know don't have any other thing to address them apart from our routine care, so I completely agree with you. Katie Strong: Well, thinking about what clinicians might be able to do tomorrow or you know, in the near future, for our speech-language pathologists or other practitioners who are listening today and are feeling the pull of this work, and you know, really encouraged by it, but are you know working in an embedded productivity driven impairment focused system, what's one thing that they could do differently in the very next clinical encounter that they have? Vivian Fu:  We have a paper, I think it's written. Oh gosh, where did it.. where did it get published? I think it was published in Practical Neurology. It's titled something, something intrinsic motivation. I should know better. Katie Strong: I'm going find out, and I don't think I read that one, so I'm gonna find it, and I'll put the link in the show notes for everybody. Vivian Fu: Sorry,Harry about the promo, but yeah, I'll send it to you, but essentially it's written to give some guidance on how you can embed Take Charge into your daily clinical practice. And it's written for neurologists, but honestly it applies to everybody.  One of the key things is when you have that next encounter, obviously you know therapists do this a lot better than doctors do, but they ask a lot about, you know, what's outside of the person's life and what's important to them, but maybe move away just, you know, from the very practical questions like "How many steps do you have going in and out of your house?, and How do you hang up your washing?", or whatever, but it's, you know, really much less functional, but more, "Who are you? Tell me a bit more about yourself. What do you love doing? What gets you out of bed?" You know, if I might, the one that I like to use a lot on my ward rounds is, "If you weren't in this hospital bed right now, where would you rather be? What would you rather be doing?", and I do that on my rounds, and it's incredible, because you know, I'll hear all sorts of things, "I'll, you know, be on my boat fishing out on the lake", or I think this lady was like 84 or something. "I'll be with my girlfriends, we'll be having coffee at Tim Hortons", you know, and it's just, I don't know, it's something so unique to that person that I could never, you know, they're in their hospital pajamas with a whole bunch of stuff stuck to them, and I can't envisage them doing that, and yet I'm like, I want you to imagine yourself there. Where would you rather be? Okay, so everybody, that's our goal. It's not to get her home or to get her walking again. Our goal is to get her back in Tim Hortons with her eight friends, having coffee, like that is what this person loves to do. And I think that you know that inquiry, that it shows you care, it shows you see them as an individual, and I think it completely shifts your rehab focus, and then you can ask more questions about that, and they, you know, then you have this whole conversation about about what their life is like. And I think that part of being seen, even if it's only within 60 seconds, makes such a difference to that person. So that's one thing. The second thing I'd be, you know, doing is I'm trying to involve family as much as possible, as much as the person wants, and basically, just seeing them as an individual makes a huge difference already to the way you practice, that would be what I'd focus on. Katie Strong: Agreed, agreed. Well, Vivian, is there something you wish people asked you about this work that they rarely do, something about Take Charge or stroke recovery more broadly that you think the field hasn't quite caught up to yet. Vivian Fu:  Oh gosh, this is a tricky one. I think one thing we ought to recognize is that everybody is doing the best that they can with what they have. And you know, we're not as clinicians on the ground on the front line, we're not involved with funding decisions, and what projects get funded and which ones don't. And there will be the ambitious amongst your listeners, who I really hope will be like, "Oh my gosh, I can apply for this little grant, and I'm going to pilot this, and I think we should give this a go with our people." and I think that is absolutely a great idea to have. And, and I would, myself and Harry will do everything that we possibly can to help support such projects from where we are. I think the important thing to think about is that every little bit that you do makes a difference, and to not feel as though, because you know your funding runs out, or you don't get it, or the world is such a bleak place that you know it's not worth continuing to try. Because people with stroke who see you do this work, they will be grateful for it. And also the patient partners I've met that I've spoken with, and all of the people whom I've interviewed with the qualitative work, they're also happy to be part of something like this. And so even if it's a pilot project. Even if it's, you know, something that may not last, you'd be so surprised at how much momentum you can build with a movement of people who see the value in this and then take it further and further, And that's what I've been really impressed by, and kind of stunned by in all these different locations around the world who have contacted me. I've just been like, "Wow, can't believe [this]." There's this wonderful group in Hunter Medical Research Institute down in Australia, who basically took Take Charge back to their own unique Aboriginal community, the Gamilaroi peoples of that particular area of Australia. They have, like Canada and like the States, they have 1000s of tribes and lots of different groups that all speak completely different languages, but they took it to their local group, and they broke down, take charge into little bits, and then rebuilt it into an intervention that just works for them, and it's called "Yarning Up after Stroke", because what they do is they have a yarn. They yarn, and that's the way they tell their stories. It's yarning, and so you know, I just think it's incredible. Like, they got funding for it, they did it, and now it's an ongoing project that just keeps on in the community being provided to their people, and it's fantastic. So, I think it'll evolve. I love to see how it evolves, and I certainly don't think of, you know, this isn't the kind of intervention that we go around patenting and making a ton of money out of. It's the kind of intervention that everybody makes their own, and hopefully with a lot of input by people with stroke, Katie Strong: I love it. Thank you. Thank you so much for being our guest today, and sharing about Take Charge, and your generosity in sharing about the intervention, and if people are interested in reaching out to contact you, so thank you so much, Vivian. Vivian Fu:  Thank you so much for having me. I hope I haven't spoken too long. Katie Strong: Oh no, it's perfect. Vivian Fu: I'm always happy to be contacted, and yeah, very happy to support anyone who'd like to explore this further. Katie Strong: Thanks so much. On behalf of Aphasia Access, thank you for listening. For references and resources mentioned in today's show, please see our show notes, available on our website at www.aphasiaaccess.org. There you can also become a member of our organization, browse our growing library of materials, and find out about the Aphasia Access Academy. If you have an idea for a future podcast episode, email us at info@aphasiaaccess.org. For Aphasia Access Conversations, here at Central Michigan University in the Strong Story Lab, I'm Katie Strong. Dr. Fu's Email  dr.vivianfu@gmail.com  Resources and Readings Fu, V. (2019). Taking Charge After Stroke: A novel, community-based intervention to improve the lives of people with stroke. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Taking-Charge-After-Stroke:-A-novel,-intervention-Fu/3bc1dbb271f425c72e146510088856e3aad8683e  Fu, V., Fernando, K. M., Bright, F., Riley, J., McPherson, K., & McNaughton, H. (2025). Coming to my own wisdom: A qualitative study exploring the role of the Take Charge intervention in stroke recovery. Clinical Rehabilitation, 39(3), 377–387. https://doi.org/10.1177/02692155241310770 Fu, V., Weatherall, M., McPherson, K., Taylor, W., McRae, A., Thomson, T., Gommans, J., Green, G., Harwood, M., Ranta, A., Hanger, C., Riley, J., & McNaughton, H. (2020). Taking Charge after stroke: A randomized controlled trial of a person-centered, self-directed rehabilitation intervention. International Journal of Stroke, 15(9), 954–964. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747493020915144 Fu, V., Thompson, S., Kayes, N., & Bright, F. (2025). Supporting long-term meaningful outcomes in stroke rehabilitation. Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, 25, 17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11910-025-01403-z Harwood, M., Weatherall, M., Talemaitoga, A., Barber, P. A., Gommans, J., Taylor, W., McPherson, K., & McNaughton, H. (2011). Taking charge after stroke: Promoting self-directed rehabilitation to improve quality of life - a randomized controlled trial. Clinical Rehabilitation, 26(6), 493-501. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269215511426017  Te Ao, B., Harwood, M., Fu, V., Weatherall, M., McPherson, K., Taylor, W. J., McRae, A., Thomson, T., Gommans, J., Green, G., Ranta, A., Hanger, C., Riley, J., & McNaughton, H. (2022). Economic analysis of the 'Take Charge' intervention for people following stroke: Results from a randomised trial. Clinical Rehabilitation, 36(2), 240–250. https://doi.org/10.1177/02692155211040727 McNaughton, H., & Fu, V. (2023). Intrinsic motivation. Practical Neurology, 23(6), 489-492.  https://pn.bmj.com/content/23/6/489  McNaughton, H., Gommans, J., McPherson, K., Harwood, M., & Fu, V. (2023). A cohesive, person-centric evidence-based model for successful rehabilitation after stroke and other disabling conditions. Clinical Rehabilitation, 37(7), 975-985. https://doi.org/10.1177/02692155221145433   Medical Research Institute of New Zealand. (n.d.). Take Charge rehabilitation resources. https://www.mrinz.ac.nz/take-charge-rehabilitation-resources World Stroke Organization. (n.d.). Taking Charge after stroke: A person-centred approach to life after stroke [Webinar]. https://www.world-stroke.org/what-we-do/education-and-research/education/webinars/taking-charge-after-stroke-a-person-centred-approach-to-life-after-stroke  

00.00: Intro 02.40: Stroke the arm of your partner 07.35: How many friends do Aucklanders have 12.45: Top 6 - Headliners about bread 15.45: You can now study to be an influencer 20.00: Joel from L.A.B & Dick from Synthony Interview 25.45: Shannon is heading to Aus 32.45: Is it weird? 43.40: SLP - How do you type on, by swiping or tapping? 48.30: What did a podcast change about you? 1.00.55: Fact if the day 1.06.10: Chole Gong Interview 1.16.40: Hayleys gym tick 1.19.35: What food did you miss when it was gone? 1.29.40: Food divorce See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do you do when the most evidence-based intervention you have is also the one your patient is "not allowed" to receive? Constraint-induced movement therapy has decades of research behind it, yet its exclusion criteria — especially around cognitive impairment — rule out a huge share of the stroke survivors clinicians actually see. In this episode, hosts Erin Gallardo, PT, DPT, NCS, and Claire McLean, PT, DPT, NCS, talk with neuro OT Briana Elson, MS, OTR/L, BCPR, CBIS, about her decision to try modified CIMT with an 86-year-old stroke patient who had significant cognitive impairment and underlying dementia — a textbook exclusion — and why his profile, a left-handed man whose affected side was his dominant hand, made forced use feel natural and salient rather than confusing. Briana walks through how she built the protocol around safety and supervision in inpatient rehab: getting a physician order for the constraint mitt, educating and enlisting his wife, keeping a consistent daily schedule, breaking the three-to-six hours into non-consecutive blocks, and removing the mitt before late-day sundowning. She shares the outcomes that surprised even her skeptics — meeting the minimal detectable change on the Box and Block Test and a standardized motor scale within roughly thirteen days, plus real gains in grooming and feeding independence — alongside the honest caveats, including that his cognition never improved and that real-world delivery never looks as clean as the published article. It's a practical, encouraging conversation about reading the research, respecting its limits, and giving more patients a shot at an intervention they're usually told they can't have.

Personality Changes After Stroke: How Ben Sautter Discovered His “Hyde” and Became a Better Man  For nearly a decade, Ben Sautter carried a story he didn’t fully understand. He was a respected superintendent for the City of Helena, a devoted father, and a man his colleagues trusted. He was also someone who, years earlier, had been convicted of drug trafficking and spent over a year in prison, a period he now describes without shame or remorse, feelings he says he simply didn’t have access to. “I never felt guilty about doing anything,” he told me. “I never had no shame, no remorse. I still don’t.” Then, on a morning in 2017, Ben woke up with his left leg buzzing like an electrical current, from his hip to his toe. He dismissed it as sciatica, worked out to try to shake it off, and drove himself to a doctor’s appointment while slurring his words. By the time he reached his physician’s office, she recognized what was happening immediately: Ben was in the middle of a stroke. What followed wasn’t just a physical recovery. It became the beginning of a profound psychological reckoning one that reshaped how Ben understood himself, his marriage, and the two very different versions of the man he’d been his entire adult life. What Personality Changes After Stroke Can Actually Look Like When people talk about the effects of stroke, the conversation usually centers on physical deficits: weakness, speech difficulty, mobility. Less discussed but just as real for many survivors are the personality changes after stroke that surface in the weeks, months, and even years that follow. For Ben, this didn’t show up as a dramatic before-and-after moment. It took roughly six months before he began to notice his own cognitive shifts, and years more before he could name what he was experiencing. “I feel like two different people,” he eventually admitted to himself, a recognition that came into sharp focus only after his wife, Helen, described what she called his “Jekyll and Hyde” pattern: a caring, grounded version of himself, and a sharper, more reactive one that could surface without warning, particularly under emotional pressure. Ben also discovered something else in the process something many survivors don’t expect. Before his stroke, he says he operated almost entirely on three emotions: happy, sad, and angry. It wasn’t until his wife introduced him to a “feelings wheel” years after his stroke that he realized how narrow his emotional range had actually been. That flattened emotional landscape, paired with a striking absence of guilt or fear around risky behavior earlier in his life, points to something researchers increasingly recognize: strokes can affect not just movement and speech, but emotional regulation, impulse control, and self-awareness, particularly when the affected regions touch circuitry involved in processing feeling and consequence. The Unexpected Overlap With PTSD One of the more striking parts of Ben’s story is how he came to understand his own symptoms. Watching a 60 Minutes segment on a military veteran with PTSD, Ben recognized his own thoughts, words, and behaviors reflected back at him patterns his psychologist at the VA had already been treating with PTSD-informed techniques, without Ben fully grasping why. “That’s when I realized my family suffered the stroke as much as I did,” he said. This overlap isn’t unusual. Post-stroke psychological symptoms hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, difficulty processing what happened can closely resemble trauma responses, even in survivors who never experienced combat or acute crisis in the traditional sense. Recognizing this early, and getting connected with the right kind of psychological support, can make a meaningful difference in how survivors and their families move through recovery. Turning Reflection Into Change What makes Ben’s story remarkable isn’t just that he noticed these changes; it’s what he did with them. Nearly ten years after his stroke, and after years of separation from his wife, Ben sat down and wrote his memoir, Mr. Hyde and Me, in just ten weeks. “I called this therapy on steroids,” he said. “Writing this book was incredibly therapeutic.” The process gave him a framework to finally understand the dual nature he’d lived with since childhood, shaped, he believes, by an upbringing where feelings were dismissed, and risk-taking was treated as fun rather than dangerous. “That guy that I was, that guy’s gone. I am not going to be that guy ever again.” — Ben Sautter Today, Ben and Helen are reconciled. He describes himself as calmer, more deliberate, and a better listener than he was before his stroke, not despite the personality changes it triggered, but in some ways because of the self-awareness they eventually forced him to confront. As he put it plainly: “We would not be having this conversation if I hadn’t had a stroke.” If You’re Noticing Changes in Yourself or a Loved One If you or someone you love has experienced personality changes after stroke emotional flatness, increased irritability, impulsivity, or a sense of feeling like “two different people” you’re not imagining it, and you’re not alone. These changes are a recognized part of many stroke recoveries, and they respond well to the right combination of professional support, honest communication with family, and time. Ben’s full story, including his path through incarceration, his stroke, and the years-long process of understanding his own mind, is available in The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, where survivors share the tools that helped them navigate recovery, available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. If this show has helped you, you can support it at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. Jekyll, Hyde, and the Stroke That Changed Everything: Ben Sautter’s Story (Interview) Bill’s Book: The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened Support Bill on: Patreon Bill’s one-on-one coaching program: Momentum Highlights: 00:00 Introduction – Personality Changes After Stroke 03:51 Realizing Something Was Wrong 12:51 Discovering His Dual Personality 21:05 Living With Only Three Emotions 31:50 Where the Pattern Began 39:55 Writing the Memoir That Helped Him Understand Himself 50:37 Stroke as a Catalyst for Change Transcript: Introduction – Personality Changes After Stroke Bill Gasiamis (00:00) Welcome back to Recovery After Stroke. I’m Bill Gassiamas, and today’s guest is Ben Sautter, a stroke survivor from Montana who in 2017 suffered an ischemic stroke caused by a carotid artery blockage. Ben was in his mid-50s working as a superintendent for the city of Helena when he woke up one morning with his leg buzzing like it was electric and his speech starting to slur. But this episode isn’t really about the stroke itself. It’s about what the stroke uncovered. Ben spent decades living what he now calls a Jekyll and Hyde existence, including a period of incarceration for drug trafficking that he says he felt no guilt over at the time. And after his stroke, that started to change. We talk about emotional flatness, PTSD like symptoms he didn’t recognize until years later. The marriage he nearly lost and the memoir he wrote in just ten weeks that finally helped him understand himself. Before we get into it, if you haven’t already, check out my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, over at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if this show has helped you, you can support it at Patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke, and you can help me keep it going so that we can get to one thousand episodes. If you’re feeling stuck in your recovery and want more structure and one-on-one support, I also offer a coaching program called Momentum. You can find out more at recoveryafterstroke.com/momentum. Now let’s get into it. Here’s my conversation with Ben. Bill Gasiamis (01:42) Benjamin Sautter welcome to the podcast. Ben Sautter (01:45) Thanks much for having me. Bill Gasiamis (01:49) Can you tell me a little bit about what life was like before twenty seventeen and the stroke? Ben Sautter (01:55) Well, I was on it back then before the stroke. I was had a job that I really enjoyed. I was working for the city of Helena as a superintendent of streets and traffic division. And life was going really good for me there. And then it kind of came to a an abrupt halt. Bill Gasiamis (02:15) what was life like as far as what kind of work were you doing? What was family life like? Ben Sautter (02:23) Well, our family was pretty close at the time. We have two children and we were busy, we were really close, busy traveling. We had a motor home, we had lots of fun. we hunt and fish, a lot of outdoor activities here. We we have a little cabin that we spend all our weekends at. if we weren’t traveling, that is. so Home life was pretty good. My wife and I were struggling a bit before I had my stroke. but we were a close family. And and work was good. I I I’d progressed up into mid-level management and I I had great great people, great staff underneath of me, and we got a lot of good work done for the city and had a lot of fun at work. work was going good. Everything was going pretty good. Bill Gasiamis (03:25) Was there any sign that something was amiss with your health that perhaps there was something looming that wasn’t going to be fun? Ben Sautter (03:36) No, I was I was in great shape. I had had no signs of anything coming. so it was yeah, it was out of the blue. The stroke was out of the blue. Realizing Something Was Wrong Bill Gasiamis (03:51) What was that day like? Was there any kind of deficit deficits that you experienced that gave you a hint that something was going wrong? Or how did it evolve? Ben Sautter (04:00) Well, I woke up in the morning to go to work, I knew something was funny and I couldn’t figure it out. I think when I woke up, I got I get up early and to get in before my first crew was in the mechanics were in at six. So I was in before that. But when I woke up my left leg was just buzzing like it was electric from my hip. To my toe. And I didn’t comprehend. I was thinking it was like a sciatic something because I had a little sciatic pain from time to time in my right side, even though I knew this wasn’t the same, but I didn’t have the cognitive awareness of what was going on. And so I I worked out in the middle of it thinking maybe it was. muscles in my back and if I exercise did go away and and it didn’t when I and I went on into work and my my mechanics were nervous. I I was starting to slur my words and and I I kind of felt it. I a I asked him I think if I was slurring my words And they just kind of smiled at me. And I went back up to my office and then another one of my other supervisors came in and he sat down. He could tell something wasn’t right with me. And then he left and they were all getting together to come and check me out, and I left. I I had a a meeting, or not a meeting. I had a doctor’s appointment out at the VA Fort Harrison at for 7 30 that morning. And so I was I was late and I think I d I think my doctor called me and I was on the road driving out there and she I told her kind of things were funny and what was going on. And she said, Well, you need to get out here, get a ride out here. I said, Well, I’m driving. She said, God, no. I th she pretty well could tell she thought I was having a stroke right there. And I drove out there, I went upstairs to see her and they took me right down to the emergency right there. Bill Gasiamis (06:39) And Did they immediately diagnose that you were having a stroke? Ben Sautter (06:47) We’re getting a little blurry on me right there. I I I don’t really remember what they thought right at the time, right at that moment when I was in the emergency. I know a couple hours later they came to me and there was no doubt about it. They they knew then they had speech therapists in and a neurologist in the room and that’s so it took a couple hours to for a sure diagnosis that I was in the middle of a stroke. Best I remember. Bill Gasiamis (07:27) Hm. It’s pretty common that yeah, pretty common that you’re not gonna remember exactly what was happening at that time. Things were compromised. That makes complete sense. how long before well rather at some point you’re told that you had a stroke, how do you take that information? Ben Sautter (07:48) I don’t know that it it didn’t go over my head, but I I I wasn’t devastated. I and because I wasn’t I I was familiar with stroke, my father’d had strokes and he’d been paralyzed and lost his speech, so his were very severe. So at the time I I wasn’t feeling that I was that impacted by it. I knew some things were going on, but looking back I can tell I just didn’t have the the awareness of what was happening to me, even though I knew it. but it it just didn’t feel serious to me. Bill Gasiamis (08:34) It didn’t sink in, perhaps. Ben Sautter (08:36) yeah, I w I would say so. Certainly not the gravity of it. and it actually it took quite some time. I’d say at least six months, really, before I started being aware of my cognitive deficiencies and and wondering. asking myself questions even though within a week’s time I was at VA Salt Lake to have surgery on my carotid artery. So all that happened and I was still it’s not that I was in denial. Well, I didn’t think I was, but now looking back, I that could have been what it was. But but I was aware. I knew it happened. Gosh, I had surgery. I I understood it all. I saw the MRI. I saw the mark on my brain. I had the surgeries I said. but I it it just the seriousness of it didn’t sink into me. Cause within Bill Gasiamis (09:50) Mm. Ben Sautter (09:50) two weeks, my doc cut me loose, my surgeon, I was up in the woods hunting. Full tilt. They gave me they said, go ahead. So that kinda helped me believe that I the word what what I said, I dodged a bullet is how I put it. And even though I didn’t really dodge the bullet. Bill Gasiamis (10:19) so you said that you had about six months where you kind of had no real awareness or your cognition was impacted. What obviously your cognition was was impacted, but what other deficits did you have? Ben Sautter (10:40) I would just say the cognition, the physical part, I had that numbness in my leg. I didn’t even have a limp from it, but my whole leg f well, it’s still somewhat for for years was like I say, like it w my whole leg was stuck in a light socket, just buzzing like electric from my hip to my toe, and and that lasted a long, long time. my leg got real heavy. I had to like I say, I could it didn’t show that I was limping or anything, but I had to work at that to not let it show. I had to make sure I high stepped kinda so my toe didn’t drag and I didn’t trip. I had to be very well aware of that to make it look like I was okay. But but really physically it didn’t show. Bill Gasiamis (11:43) Your introductory email to me about joining me on the podcast was interesting. what you had seems to be a catalyst for some change in your life. Like what occurred to you, the stroke, the hospitalization, the challenges that you had to come seems to be a catalyst for change in your life. Before the stroke in twenty seventeen, you said your wife and yourself were going through some difficult times. but you were busy at work, you had a a whole bunch of other things going on. but there’s another side of you, there was another side of you at some stage that you were living a life that you were living that’s not quite the run of the mill standard lifestyle. Tell me a little bit about that. And was that lifestyle that you’re gonna to tell us a little bit about now? Was that something that you lived until your stroke? Discovering His Dual Personality Ben Sautter (12:36) I’m living that still right now. that dual personality. And after the stroke, it was it might have taken a couple of years of me looking back. I was finally looking back, wondering who that guy was, that other guy. I I would say to myself. I feel like two different people. And it wasn’t until after the stroke, I think, that I really asked that heart or asked that question, or said that to myself, that I feel like two different people. And that came from questioning the things I did when I was younger. I was pretty wild guy and I did things that didn’t seem like me, yet I know I did all those things. Well hell I I got arrested, went to prison. So I know I was doing stuff that I shouldn’t have been doing. But back then it was Pretty easy to do. And I it it wasn’t, it didn’t feel like me doing it. so after the stroke, I really started asking questions, trying to, trying to look back to understand. And I never got that understanding until I wrote that book last year. And then it all just poured out. And I could see the dual personality and and and I still am that dual guy. My wife is able to recognize that more now, and when she s tells me about it, I can really see it when she explains it, especially what I say. I I say things I say things that I don’t mean that aren’t me, that I don’t understand why I say those things. It’s and I named it Hyde. And it Hyde speaks different than I do, than Jekyll. Bill Gasiamis (15:11) How old were you when you ended up in prison and how old were you when you got out? Ben Sautter (15:16) I was thirty two when I got arrested and I was only out for like thirteen months so I was thirty thir about I was thirty four when I got out. Bill Gasiamis (15:28) And the stuff that you went in for, what kind of things were you doing that ended you up in prison? Ben Sautter (15:38) I was I got arrested for drug trafficking. Bill Gasiamis (15:42) And at the time was there a certain amount of disassociation from the behavior? And did you kind of find yourself doing things that you just weren’t, what was it, maybe like connected to logically? How how did you find yourself being in a situation that you now describe as this was not? U or it was another U.S. Ben Sautter (16:14) That’s good question. I have to say I don’t really understand yet where I was back then. It I I had to that it had to be that disassociation because I was a legitimate guy. I worked, I had jobs, I had good respect from people. I I was a legitimate man all day long every day. And I just slip out and Did stuff. I I d I had no feelings about it. I I wasn’t I never felt guilty about doing anything. I never had no shame, no remorse. I still don’t. I don’t feel those feelings. They just aren’t in me. Even after the book, after writing that and starting to understand that I don’t have those feelings, which I still don’t, but way back then. I didn’t give a s I didn’t give a first thought to any of that illicit stuff I was doing. It was opportunity and I just went and did it. Didn’t give it a thought. Bill Gasiamis (17:31) Got it. And then when you ended up coming out of prison, did you go back onto the straight and narrow? Did you still double? How was life after that? Because it was thirty years almost, you know, between your incarceration and then your stroke. So I I’m just trying to set the scene just so I can ask you the next question later on about the stroke. So what was life like after the incarceration? Ben Sautter (17:56) So and I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately and writing about that. And that I had to make a very conscious decision. And and the way I put that, prison didn’t rehabilitate me. I had to make that decision that okay, I want to go back there. I need to I need to watch I need to watch over myself. and keep myself out of trouble, which all those big crimes were the problem, but little things, I I went hunting, I was a poacher, I I trespassed, those types of things. I was very careful not to be caught speeding in a car or any of that, drinking and driving. a little bit I’d find myself doing that and that was a difficult thing to overcome of to quit drinking and and so I was I’d find myself drunk behind the wheel and I I finally again made a conscious decision decision but it took a little time to work out of that to finally draw a line in the sand. In fact it wasn’t until a year or two after I got married that I finally just quit drinking completely. And that was good. That was a good move. so it was w I can’t say that it was a struggle, but it was risky for me out of prison that I didn’t get caught at those littler, less severe law breaking. Bill Gasiamis (19:53) Yeah. Ben Sautter (19:54) Yeah. Living With Only Three Emotions Bill Gasiamis (19:55) So what I’m hearing here is a you’re you’ve described yourself as Hyde. There’s a Jekyll somewhere here as well. and and also in your description of your behaviour and the way that you weren’t associated with it, or you have no feeling about something, or you know or you have no connection to what it meant when you were breaking the law. It sounds a little bit sociopathic and it sounds like perhaps there was a some kind of a what people might describe as a psych as a psychiatric kind of challenge or issue there. Has that ever come up in a conversation with anybody? Ben Sautter (20:41) No, more the compartmentalization dissociation. I lived with and I didn’t know this until twenty twenty one or twenty two, I lived with three emotions, happy, sad, and angry. That’s and and I learned that when my wife brought out a feelings wheel. And she brought out this feelings wheel and sh she’s saying, tell me which Where you land on some of these, and I thought, well, happy and sad and and angry. And that’s about as far as I went with it. And once in a while I’d feel a little something, but not really very much. So so that’s when I learned I was operating on three emotions. That’s all I ever had. So that really showed the compartmentalization and the disassociation right there. psychopathic or psychopath has never come up even with my psychologist. she never identified that but I just saw her for the first time since I read wrote the book a few weeks ago and gave her a copy of the book and she was a little bit wide-eyed and surprised. at the book and she’s reading it. So what kind of conversation we’re gonna have now will be really interesting to go back and see her. But but answer to your question, no, psychopath, no, just compartmentalizing Bill Gasiamis (22:26) Yeah, so sociopath, not psychopaths. Yeah. Ben Sautter (22:28) Sociopath, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (22:31) Sociopaths tend to be people who in the moment can’t connect with the behavior, good, bad, indifferent, and then later on have the ability to kind of notice that the behaviour was inappropriate in some way, shape, or form, and kind of have well, maybe not regret, but kind of some understanding of behavior being inappropriate. Whereas psychopaths are completely different, like they have no empathy, no nothing, right? There’s nothing there. So that’s a that’s kind of not where where where I was headed. I wasn’t asking Ben Sautter (23:06) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (23:07) that. But it’s interesting that you describe these two separate, separate versions of yourself. it’s not uncommon to how I describe myself after the stroke, but I didn’t have a Jekyll and Hyde streak in me. But I had a line in the sand. The stroke seemed to take my brain offline for a little while and it allowed me to connect with other parts of my body. Specifically, I talk about connecting with my heart and it made me more empathetic and more able to kind of access what what my values were rather than what my head thought was the right thing to do or what what my head thought was the right approach or the right way to go about things. So it seems like the stroke has played some kind of a similar role in your ability to reflect on your past in a different way, th in a more associated way compared to what you had done before. Is that accurate? Ben Sautter (24:07) Absolutely. we talk about the stroke not being all bad for me because I’ve become far more aware. and that awareness is big, not just of my past and who I was, but being able to listen so much better and be more aware of what I say, think, and do. much more so. So so yeah, the stroke has I the stroke has been good for me in in a lot of ways, cause causes some of those difficulties without a a doubt, but I think my wife would agree that I’m a better person, despite the change in moral compass after the my incarceration, but I still was a Jekyll and Hyde, and I still am today. I she can see me come in and out of it much quicker than I have any idea. not necessarily on a daily basis, on an hourly basis and in conversation. She can see by what I say. Bill Gasiamis (25:27) what’s better about being able to listen more? you said that you you were able to hear more or pay attention better in a conversation, for example. Why is that better? Ben Sautter (25:37) The understanding, the understanding of the person I’m talking to, and the understanding of myself and and listening listening to hear rather than listening to respond. So though that’s really that’s big for me because I used to be so quick. I’d hear something, I could make decisions, I was very impulsive. I’ve I’ve really rein that in to calm myself down and and just listen better, be slower, more deliberate, more purposeful. All all all of those things are much better for me. In fact, I didn’t have any of that before before the stroke. I was full tilt on everything. I I thought I did. I thought I was very considerate, concerned, and listened, but in comparison, no. That wasn’t me. Bill Gasiamis (26:37) I it you said it’s better for you. Like why how is it better for you? How has it improved your life? Ben Sautter (26:44) I’m not banging heads so much. I I I let people have their thoughts, their opinions, and and I don’t take offense to to that. So everything’s calmer and and I I just don’t have the head banging I used to have. Bill Gasiamis (27:04) Why is it important for people to have their opinions and their thoughts? Ben Sautter (27:08) Well, I’m right and you’re wrong. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Everybody wants to be right and and think that that everybody should agree with them. That’s that’s how I see it now. It’s like, and if yeah, I’m right and you’re wrong. And I that I don’t do that anymore. Bill Gasiamis (27:31) Got it. Got it. This part of you that your wife still sees that you’ve kind of been able to rein in, like is it a sinister side of you that she sees? Is it the conniving side of you? Is it the the the one that’s possible to be led astray? Which side of it does she still see that kind of attends these conversations with your wife? Ben Sautter (27:55) I d I I’m not sure how you how you name this. perfect example is if I I d slip up, do something wrong and Helen will bring my attention to it, I’ll say, Well, I just did that to see if you’re paying attention. So I I try to deflect things. I I have that I definitely the inferiority or or or and on myself. We’re all our own worst critic, of course, and and I I really feel self conscious. I know my deficiencies and I I go back and forth. I I know my deficiencies and I live with it. I’m okay with it. But sometimes if someone says something to me, Helen, one one time it’s okay and I get by it, one time it’s like it hits and it hurts. And and I I react, I try to deflect, I say things, hide comes out of me and and says things like to hurt back. And and so I’m and she’s getting better about not letting me do that. And the sooner she says something now, if she says something right away, I go, yeah, sorry, I did say that. Whereas before I didn’t remember saying things and I would say that. She’d say, You she’d wait too long and then tell me you said something. Well, I wouldn’t say that, I don’t think those things. That’s Jekyll saying, I I I don’t even think that. I I I didn’t say that. You took it wrong. Now I’m more believing that Hyde would say those things and and if she comes back quick enough and I can I’m right there. I’m like, yes, yeah, you’re right. And I I can apologize, but I’m getting better and better at not saying those things. and and catching myself now, which is big, to to stop it before it happens. So I I as we talk through this, I am starting to be more aware of Hyde, what he says, what he thinks, and certainly what he does. I I conquered that long time ago. But what he says and what he thinks, I’m starting to catch that before I go wrong. Bill Gasiamis (30:36) You I’m gonna make a lot of assumptions now. You seem very unassuming as a sixty-three year old man who lived a dual life, you know, went to prison and all that. You know, you you wouldn’t pick that up from meeting you on a Zoom call or in person per se, right? and often often people who kind of live double lives, etc., There’s a an underlying cause, something that happened earlier on in life that caused them to take on a certain persona or to be a certain way or to get through a certain difficult time in their upbringing or the circumstances by which they found themselves in. Did you have a origin story? Was there something that you can think back at that perhaps that led you to take the on another persona in certain situations, or is it just how you’ve always been? Where the Pattern Began Ben Sautter (31:33) The way it came out in writing my memoir, it was from when I was little, really little, and there was two things about it. We didn’t talk about feelings. Yeah, when you get hurt, you d you don’t you don’t cry about it, or you just don’t cry about it, you don’t feel anything. And my dad was a risk taker. And he was so a lot of fun. He taught me some of my worst habits, if not most of them. And and I followed in his footsteps. Risk was inside exciting. Terror was exciting. Being scared was fun. That’s how my dad taught me. And you add that with no feeling, no fear. you just it was easy I said earlier. It was really easy to go do those things shouldn’t do. It was fun and and there was money in it and calculated risks. no problem. It was just no problem. Bill Gasiamis (32:46) Your wife seems to have found something in you that was likable enough to kind of overlook that stuff or or to not see that stuff as being a real issue. Wha what do you think it is that she saw in you that kind of had her be okay with hanging out with a guy who had been incarcerated and perhaps had these tendencies to switch between these two personalities? Ben Sautter (33:13) Well, the incarceration I told her I thought I told her everything. I told Bill Gasiamis (33:18) Ha ha. Ben Sautter (33:19) her I told her enough for me to think I told her everything. And she felt that she saw me pay my dues and She didn’t know a lot up until this last year. she didn’t see the dual side of me. Even though we struggled, she thought it was just me being me. Now it’s so much more clear. And and she’s the one that came up with the Jekyll and Hyde when I was halfway through the book. And stories were coming out she’d never heard before. And that’s when one day she said, You’re like a Jekyll and Hyde. And that really changed the framework of my story. And and it showed me or helped me understand myself, the the dual personality. It still took a little bit to build it through the book to get a full understanding of it and draw a clear picture, but By the time I was done with the book, it was easy to see the dual personality. Bill Gasiamis (34:42) Did your wife what did she like about you though? Like there was s she’s been around for a little while by the sound of it. Ben Sautter (34:52) Yeah, we’ve been together over thirty years. you’d have to ask her that. I I think well, I’m a fun guy. I I was caring and I I that Jekyll guy’s pretty decent fella. You know, I’ve I’ve successfully in business and I’m I’m a hard working guy. I I just that side of me, Nice guy. I think there was a little intrigue probably from my past that I I was an exciting guy. I did a lot of things and and even though once we met, I was really trying to taper down and really trying to get a hold of myself and which I did and and w we did really, really well together for quite a few years and and then I think I wore wore her down with that dual personality. Not think. I know I did. She finally it was too much for her and and and things kinda went south for us. We I I I can’t imagine even though I watched what I put her through, I don’t know how she lasted. she left for a lot of years after my stroke. We split up for a lot of years and and I I’ve made some changes. Bill Gasiamis (36:30) So have you been able to reconcile? Ben Sautter (36:33) Yes, yes Bill Gasiamis (36:34) Okay. Ben Sautter (36:35) we have. Bill Gasiamis (36:36) Do you think anything that you and I have just discussed, anything of that would have been possible if you didn’t have this stroke? Ben Sautter (36:47) Well, I would say no. No. Not unless I’d a wrote the book and it happened like it did. But before the stroke, no, I d I I couldn’t get there. I wanted to, I tried. We we had a lot of conversations, but I just it was like a wall. I I just couldn’t see through it. I couldn’t get through it. I just couldn’t get there. So no, we would not be having this conversation if I hadn’t had a stroke. Bill Gasiamis (37:16) That’s fascinating to me. That’s just fascinating to me that you’ve had this turnaround. And not not to say that turnarounds are complete as soon as the stroke happens or that things are easier or different or better or whatever. But like there seems to be a genuine willingness to discover what this newer version of yourself could be like and could emerge into an author, somebody who wrote book. somebody who’s reconciled with your wife, somebody who’s admitted all these things that you’ve admitted and kind of made a concerted effort to not fall into those traps. Again, you’ve associated with things. And it’s all because of a stroke, because of a carotid artery blockage, or was it a dissection? What was it? Ben Sautter (38:10) It’s just a a blockage above the Y in a little piece of it. I got so lucky. It was a huge blockage and a little tiny piece flaked off, hit me Bill Gasiamis (38:23) Uh-huh. Ben Sautter (38:23) right up in this side, and that’s why they had to go in and remove that chunk of plaque. And Bill Gasiamis (38:30) Yeah. Ben Sautter (38:31) yeah. Bill Gasiamis (38:33) And it’s kind of it seems like it’s for you at least this experience has been really positive, other than the of course risk to your physical well being and your life, right? Seems a lot of positive has come out of it. Ben Sautter (38:51) I would have to agree with that. And and I know Helen would too. I’m I’m much different. I’m a much better person than I was. I so yes, the the stroke you know, I don’t think there’s many people can say that the stroke has done me more good than bad bad. The physical part of it has been a challenge, but I I push that every day and and I’m I’m working hard with that still. But the cognitive part of it, yeah, I I’m a better I’m a better man now. Bill Gasiamis (39:29) Hmm. you’ve got a copy of the book in front of you, I believe. Ben Sautter (39:33) Yes. Bill Gasiamis (39:34) Show us the the book. Tell me a little bit about how you came to write it. Like what’s the what what why did you feel the need to write the book? Writing the Memoir That Helped Him Understand Himself Ben Sautter (39:50) So I actually started the book in twenty sixteen before I had the stroke. And I it my intention was to write a bunch of stories about all the crazy things I did, crazy things that happened to me. Just a book of stories is what I was gonna write. And once I got serious about it last September, I sat down, got out what I had, and And once I started I couldn’t stop writing. I wrote this book in ten weeks and it just poured out of me and it’s nothing like I ever would have thought I could write. it has good value. It has value for anyone that reads it. Bill Gasiamis (40:40) So it’s a 10 year project that took ten days to ten weeks or ten days to complete. Ten weeks to Ben Sautter (40:46) Ten weeks. Ten weeks. Bill Gasiamis (40:48) complete. So that’s really cool in that like the idea was already there, germinating. It it took a while. you had to overcome certain things. You had to probably move beyond, you know, certain parts of your your your transformation to get to the stage where the book was possible. it sounds like you put in work with your family, with yourself. How long have you been seeing a counselor? Ben Sautter (41:18) Right after the stroke I started seeing my psychologist and and it’s interesting to me really early on she had me doing work that was for PTSD. And she would give me lessons to bring home. And they were for the for the veterans that suffered from PTSD, which I never knew anything about it. It was kind of a phantom thing for me, because I didn’t know anything. And and I’ll be honest with you here, one night on 60 Minutes I was watching a veteran with his wife and daughter being interviewed on sixty minutes and he had the PTSD and that family was talking about him doing the it saying, doing, thinking, the exact things I was doing with my family. And that really just hit me hard. No wonder I’m doing PTSD work because the stroke is the same thing i i in a sense. And that’s where I learned so much watching that segment that night. I learned about myself, my family. And that’s when I realized that’s when I realized my family suffered the stroke as much as I did. That came to me. Bill Gasiamis (42:51) What’s interesting is I asked you about things that might have happened in your past that may have been foundational kind of things that were responsible for these two personalities of you. You mentioned your dad, your upbringing, some of the stuff that he would get up to and how you were kind of influenced by him. But y I just heard now that you’re a veteran. So did you actually attend did you serve as a veteran? Ben Sautter (43:19) I did. I did a couple of years in the Navy in right when the Vietnam War was getting was ending. In fact I was in in April of seventy-five is when it ended. And I never went overseas. I was shore duty in California. I was at NAS Alameda and and that’s a pretty big piece in my book of of my time in the Navy, which is quite a story. but I I didn’t suffer any any I didn’t go to I didn’t go to war. I did not go to war. I I Bill Gasiamis (43:55) Or no battle no battles or anything like that. And and do you think the PTSD was from something else, perhaps? Ben Sautter (44:04) I think it w just from the stroke. Just from the stroke and I didn’t know it. that’s what I got from that sixty minutes segment is is the cognitive things that I was saying that and didn’t understand what the stroke did to me. I thought I was fine. I went to work back to work a couple months after I had the stroke. I worked for a couple months and I realized I I wasn’t cutting it. Bill Gasiamis (44:36) Whose idea was it to go to counselling after the stroke? Ben Sautter (44:46) I don’t know that I don’t remember, but I would say they probably just assigned me to a psychologist to to to see where I’m at, help me through it. VA Ford Harrison is phenomenal, those people. great staff there. So they just were taking care of me, I think. I don’t remember it. Bill Gasiamis (45:06) Yeah, might have just been standard part of the approach to helping somebody who’s a VA. Ben Sautter (45:14) That would be my my my guess that it was just part of their program. Bill Gasiamis (45:20) And it sounds like you were pretty willing or or were you resistant at the beginning. Do you recall how you felt about being in counseling? Ben Sautter (45:29) Yeah, I I was fine to go there and really really like this psychologist I see and and the other ones. I’ve seen numerous psychologists there and yeah, they I always feel better coming out of there than I do when I walk in. So no doubt. Bill Gasiamis (45:51) Have you expanded on your happy, sad, angry emotions? Ben Sautter (45:55) I’m I’m pretty even now. I don’t get too wild. When I first had the stroke I was very emotional. I was tears in my eyes over almost nothing. it was quite a struggle for Bill Gasiamis (46:13) That’s common. Ben Sautter (46:14) s some years. And and now I I I’ve I’m very well in control of my emotions and to the point that I’m I might be a fairly boring guy. I like to have fun. I laugh a lot. I’m not the wild guy that I was, but so so I I don’t have much anger. I don’t have much sadness. My anger y my sadness used to turn to anger. So I really had happy and angry is really what I had. I I don’t go there anymore. Life is too good for me now. I don’t I don’t have sadness or anger. Bill Gasiamis (46:55) every so often you say a couple of things and it triggers me to ask you the next question again. And it’s kind of my job to probe. And this is not a counseling session, but it’s very fascinating. Was there perhaps some kind of a personality disorder there, like a like a bipolar or something like that? Because you’re describing like happy, angry, or do you know there’s no in between and it’s very bipolar ish. Whereas I know it’s not bipolar. Because in Bipala they’re described as being happy and really, really kind of deep, sad extremes. But you seem to occupy a similar kind of space does that ring a bell? Did anyone ever bring that up, perhaps? Ben Sautter (47:38) No, I’m I’m I’m d just too happy all the time, always not in the good mood that I always used to be, but I lived pretty happy life. I I just didn’t let the rest get me. But when I went off in the weeds, I my anger was would get away from me. Bill Gasiamis (48:01) That’s a great way to describe it because that’s tend tends to be how anger is. Like it just kind of builds up and builds up and then it gets away. And if you do that often enough, it becomes really easy to get to anger. And what people don’t realise is that anger is also and complaining and all those types of things also releases dopamine in the brain. There is a reward that people get for misbehaving Ben Sautter (48:26) Mm. Bill Gasiamis (48:26) and expressing anger. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it. There is the there is also the I I’m trying to achieve something or get something done or I’m trying to intimidate some someone or I’m trying to you know get a child to take action somewhere where they frustrated me or whatever. So there there is a a a th this underlying purpose for anger, but also it’s a rewarding to the brain when you act out in an angry way. Ben Sautter (48:58) I think that’s a really good point. When I was younger, I would break I would look to break something. I would get so mad I just I would break something and then I felt good about it. Okay, I got that broke. Now I’m now I can be happy again. So just exactly what you just said. Interesting. Hmm. Bill Gasiamis (49:19) Yeah. That is interesting. It’s interesting and fascinating. Stroke as a Catalyst for Change This has been one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had because we’ve barely spoken about the stroke and how you experienced it and what it did to you. But it seems like we’ve spoken about it enough in that it was a catalyst to something new, something different. And often my attempt has always been in these interviews is to tell people about the fact You know, we share a story of what life was like before stroke for people. And then we sure share the story of like what happened during the stroke time and then what happened after. And if you’re currently in the stroke moment, it’s really, really hard. You you don’t know where things are headed. There’s a lot of uncertainty, a lot of change, a lot of experiences that you never saw coming, you know, things that are happening. You might be experiencing your body differently, your cognition differently. your hearing, your speech, it all might be different and it’s extremely full on in that moment. And the idea is, well, let’s continue with the conversation and try and move and and paint a picture of what life might be like for somebody, even though they’re going through a really hard time five, six, seven, ten years down the track, you know? And you’re in the 10 year mark and it’s taken you 10 years to get here, write a book, reflect on your past the way that you’ve been reflecting. mend your relationships, become more aware of your behavior, the one that served you, the one that didn’t. And it’s not really a story about stroke, but it’s stroke seems to have been the catalyst for an opportunity for you to look at things a different way and for it to break certain patterns that were embedded that now have been able to be in kind of like fizzled. You know, the edges of them were fizzled away so that something could enter and you know, like throw a spanner in the works and change the way the cogs moved. and it’s just fascinating that stroke can do that. if we didn’t talk about that part of stroke, that good part of stroke, people might only see stroke as only ever being a terrible thing that happened to them, which I also understand if somebody feels that way, because there’s a big spectrum of how people are impacted by stroke. So I don’t wanna take that away from people who are suffering. but you you know, like the shift and the change that you’ve had through a stroke is just night and day, it’s phenomenal. Ben Sautter (52:07) One of the bigger things I think I’ve learned that goes with that is It’s been a few years ago I learned that that guy that I was, that guy’s gone. And I am not gonna be that guy ever again. So I I’m looking at at the guy that I am, who I believe is a better guy than I was anyway. So that’s been a good thing. And I think that comes from my wife and from my psychologist at the VA that it it’s There’s no more who I was, it’s who I am. And and that’s come a long ways because of that, I Bill Gasiamis (52:51) Yeah. Ben Sautter (52:51) believe. Bill Gasiamis (52:52) And who you’re becoming by the sound of things. Ben Sautter (52:55) That too. Yes. Yeah, because I I do that’s a really good point. I do know I will get better. I will be better as time goes on. But you gotta keep you gotta keep working at it. Bill Gasiamis (53:10) Yeah. Being better and getting better, does that mean that the f the the way the leg feels is different or can the the the way the leg feels not necessarily go back to normal and you still are getting better, you still are improving, even though your leg perhaps stays Ben Sautter (53:29) Lake skiing. my pain is way, way, way down to where I don’t my pain is nil. I can go well, I I do a lot of needles, I do a lot of injections, I do a lot for it, but those are getting less. so th I’m hurting less, I’m hiking better, I ride my bike a lot, all those things. are I’m gaining the numbness, the tingle’s gone. That electricity thing like your fingers in a socket, that’s all gone. The s hard stiffness is down in my lower leg and my foot, so my leg’s better. yeah physically I’m getting better, better better. Bill Gasiamis (54:22) Yeah. Where can people go and find the book? Ben Sautter (54:27) Amazon. Amazon. Mr. Hyde and Me. The name of the book. Yeah, I’m Bill Gasiamis (54:32) Yeah. The links will Yeah. Ben Sautter (54:35) this is me. This picture is me on Bill Gasiamis (54:38) Yeah. Ben Sautter (54:39) the corner, on the corner of Wilson and Main Street in downtown Bozeman. Bozeman, Montana. So took a took a lot of thought to get to make that picture and to get that shadow just right. So my shadow guy facing into him head on. And been a lot of been a lot of reward doing this. This I called this therapy on steroids. writing this book was incredibly therapeutic. Bill Gasiamis (55:14) Yeah. I can imagine. Ben, thank you so much for reaching out. Really appreciate your conversation and your honesty and I really wish you well with your recovery ongoing. Ben Sautter (55:26) And thank you. This is one of the better conversations I’ve had about my my situation ever. So Bill, I can’t thank you enough. I appreciate it and I’ll look forward to this all turns out. Bill Gasiamis (55:40) Well, that’s it for another episode of the Recovery After Stroke podcast. If there’s one thing to take from this episode, it’s Ben’s line. That guy that I was, that guy’s gone. I’m not going to be that guy ever again. A stroke took something from Ben, but it also gave him a level of self-awareness and emotional range he says he never had access to before. And it helped him rebuild a marriage he thought he’d lost for good. If you want the full story, Ben’s memoir. Mr. Hyde and me is available on Amazon. You’ll find links in the bio. And if this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you’re looking for more tools for your own recovery, check out my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened. It’s available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. If this show has helped you or someone you love get through their journey with stroke, you can support the show to help keep it going on patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. And if you want to work with me directly, my coaching program Momentum offers one-on-one support and accountability for stroke survivors who feel stuck. More at recoveryafterstroke.com/momentum. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you in the next episode. The post Jekyll, Hyde, and the Stroke That Changed Everything: Ben Sautter’s Story appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

Episode 45   Spinal Cord Stroke | Stronger After Stroke In this episode of "Stronger After Stroke," Rosa Hart, BSN, R.N., SCRN, stroke nurse navigator for Norton Neuroscience Institute, sits down with Maggie Rasche, whose life changed in an instant at age 17 when a rare spinal cord stroke left her paralyzed during a typical school day. Maggie shares her remarkable story of survival, resilience and recovery. What began as mild tingling quickly became a medical emergency that led to 29 days in the intensive care unit (ICU), two life-threatening events and months of intensive rehabilitation. Today, Maggie is living independently in college, driving, traveling and pursuing her dream of becoming a civil engineer. This episode is a powerful reminder that stroke can happen at any age, that recovery is possible and that determination can overcome extraordinary challenges. In this episode: ·      A rare spinal cord stroke in a healthy teenager ·      The warning signs that appeared that morning ·      Why fast action and emergency treatment mattered ·      Spending 29 days in the ICU and surviving two codes ·      Relearning how to breathe, speak, eat, sit up and walk ·      The emotional moment Maggie spoke for the first time after receiving a tracheostomy ·      How determination fueled her recovery journey ·      Returning to school and finishing exams from her hospital bed ·      Life after rehabilitation and thriving in college ·      Hope and encouragement for stroke survivors and caregivers   Key takeaways: ·      Strokes can occur in young, healthy individuals. ·      Early recognition and emergency treatment can save lives. ·      Neuroplasticity allows the brain and nervous system to continue adapting during recovery. ·      Recovery timelines are unique, and progress can continue long after the initial injury. ·      Family support, advocacy and perseverance play a critical role in healing. Who should listen: ·      Stroke survivors ·      Caregivers and family members ·      Healthcare professionals ·      Rehabilitation specialists ·      Students interested in medicine and neuroscience ·      Anyone looking for an inspiring story of overcoming adversity Want more inspiring stories and real-life resources? Subscribe and share "Stronger After Stroke" with someone who needs a little extra support navigating life after stroke. For more support after stroke, check out the programs available both virtually and in person through Norton Neuroscience Institute Resource Centers: https://nortonhealthcare.com/services-and-conditions/neurosciences/patient-resources/resource-center/ If you enjoyed this podcast, listen to Norton Healthcare's "MedChat" podcast, available in your favorite podcast app. "MedChat" provides continuing medical education on the go and is targeted toward physicians and clinicians. Norton Healthcare, a not-for-profit healthcare system, is a leader in serving adult and pediatric patients throughout Greater Louisville, Southern Indiana, the commonwealth of Kentucky and beyond. A strong research program provides access to clinical trials in a multitude of areas. More information about Norton Healthcare is available at NortonHealthcare.com.   Date of original release: Aug. 10, 2026

Dave Brisbin 8.9.26 You may be familiar with an elevator speech. Whatever you have to offer, if you can't articulate who you are, what you do, why it matters in the time it takes to get to your floor in an elevator, you've lost the opportunity. Jesus' Way is purely experiential, not cognitive, but we still need an elevator speech to concisely understand what it is and isn't or we'll be digging holes where there is no treasure. We each need our own personal speech…but generally, it's not a path leading somewhere else. It's how we follow the path we're already on, growing awareness of the unseen Oneness of all things in two complementary ways: living as if oneness really exists while relinquishing everything that obscures it. Only way to see who we really are in relation to what really is. In 1996, a neuroanatomist had a stroke. Function by function, her left hemisphere went offline, leaving her entirely in her right mind. The left brain is the source of ego awareness, linear order, sense of separation and physical boundaries, deep ties to the past for threat assessment. The right brain is all about the present moment, flow, sense of oneness, experience without judgment, identification with everything. She watched with clinical fascination as her left brain faded, each area stopping function, her fear and horror muted by the overwhelming peace and oneness she felt as never before. Took eight years to bring her left brain back online, to bring her two hemispheres into balance, to choose which left brain parts she wanted back and which only obscured the world as one. Took a stroke, the loss of her left brain to force awareness of her right, contemplative mind. She wrote she wished there were a safe way to induce this awareness in people. Well, there is… Jesus' Way is a dive into the right mind by living as if all life is one, experiencing loving the enemy while relinquishing the dominance of the left mind, selling off everything that obscures us as one with. Want a really short elevator speech on Jesus' Way? It's a way of having a spiritual stroke. You'd have a lotta ‘splainin' to do, but at least you'd have their attention.

The Daily Quiz - General Knowledge Today's Questions: Question 1: What is the French term for a killing stroke delivered as a merciful act? Question 2: What is the common name for cercis canadensis, the state tree of Oklahoma? Question 3: What is the term for a two words that are pronounced the same but have different meanings? Question 4: Which word is defined as 'coastal navigation; the exclusive right of a country to control the air traffic within its borders'? Question 5: Which word is defined as 'a small shoot growing from the root of a plant'? Question 6: Which word is defined as 'having a good sense of smell'? Question 7: What is the word for an auxiliary building near the main one? This podcast is produced by Klassic Studios Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time in 4 years we are pausing the podcast for a couple of weeks. I love doing it, but sometimes life has other plans. There is a lot going on behind the scenes, and while I am ok, I need to free up space for family and medical appointments.I'm not fully disappearing and will be recording in advance. While I'm away we are releasing some of our most listened to episodes.Returning to normal life after a big challenge is hard for any of us, but what happens when your ‘normal' is competing in sports at the Olympic level?That was exactly what happened to Sami Kennedy-Sim who, after competing as an Olympic level skier, found herself in hospital recovering from a stroke at the age of 24.Somehow, after that, she returned to the Olympics.In this episode Sami shares:- Her journey to becoming an Olympian- Why it's ok to want to quit- The exact moment she started having a stroke- How she was told she would not be an Olympian again- Her journey to returning to the OlympicsKey Quotes “You can choose to see obstacles as speed bumps or road blocks. A speed bump you slow down and then you carry on. A road block, you may have to quit altogether.”“Unless you give people the experience to challenge themselves they're living in comfort zone land.”Find out more about SamiYou can find out about Sami's coaching and other businesses here: https://www.samikennedysim.com/Or you can follow her on Instagram: @samikennedysim Disc WorkshopIf you want to take part in our next Disc workshop check it out here: https://trialtitude.as.me/DISCprofileYou can get involved with the podcast onlineOn facebook in our community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeusOr on Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus If you want to find out more about what Ali does, check out her business via the website:http://www.trialtitudeperformance.com.auFor her other business you can find it through the websites:www.altitudefitnessarmidale.com.au Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Jann and Caitlin welcome Jen Agg, a prominent figure in the Canadian dining scene an intriguing author. She discusses her journey in the restaurant industry, her new memoir 'Table Boss', and the challenges of caregiving after her husband's stroke. They also touch on the evolution of Toronto's restaurant culture, and the importance of customer experience in dining. Jen shares her insights on love, relationships, and the realities of running a restaurant in today's world, all while making us laugh. She shares insights on the challenges faced by women in the restaurant industry and her connection with the late Anthony Bourdain, and the importance of self-care practices for resilience.  More About Jen Agg: Jen Agg is a restaurateur in Toronto, owner of Bar Vendetta, Grey Gardens, Rhum Corner, Le Swan, General Public and Cocktail Bar. She is the co-host of Restaurant Impossible: Last Call on Food Network. She's the author of I Hear She's a Real Bitch and Table Boss: How To Build a Restaurant When Your Life Falls Apart (A Love Story). Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and more. https://www.instagram.com/jen___agg/ https://torontolife.com/food/jen-agg-restaurant-impossible-last-call-reality-tv-show/ Read Jen's books:  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/authors/2134211/jen-agg #ASKJANN - want some life advice from Jann? Send in a story with a DM or on our website. Leave us a voicenote! ⁠www.jannardenpod.com/voicemail/⁠⁠ Get access to bonus content and more on Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.patreon.com/JannArdenPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.jannardenpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/jannardenpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.facebook.com/jannardenpod Chapters: (00:00) Introduction to Jen Agg and Her Impact on Canadian Dining (02:49) Rapid Fire Questions: Getting to Know Jen Agg (06:04) The Journey of Success and Its Challenges (08:52) The Evolution of the Toronto Restaurant Scene (12:02) The Black Hoof: A Turning Point in Dining (14:58) The Reality of Restaurant Ownership Today (18:01) The Importance of Customer Experience in Dining (20:47) Caregiving and Its Impact on Love and Relationships (23:57) Navigating Love and Caregiving After a Stroke (29:24) Navigating Caregiver Burnout (30:00) Public Perception and Misunderstanding (31:47) The Impact of Social Media on Public Figures (34:58) The Role of Criticism in Public Life (38:12) Understanding Anthony Bourdain's Influence (43:24) Self-Reflection and Personal Growth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8.5.2026 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Trump Can Deport Haitians. Family Says ICE Stroke Was Preventable. Black Judge Targeted Tuesday's primary results are in and we'll break down all of the biggest races. A federal judge officially ends Temporary Protected Status. Now the Trump administration can move forward with efforts to remove hundreds of thousands of Haitians who have been living and working legally in the United States. A North Carolina family is pleading for help after the patriarch suffers a stroke in ICE custody. Florida's white Attorney General James Uthmeier is going after a Black federal judge. He's asking congressional leaders to open an impeachment inquiry into Judge Nancy Abudu for her prior work for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was recently indicted for fraud involving donor money. We'll talk to the Black man who two white women harassed for his ID at a suburban Chicago hotel's swimming pool. We'll talk about how the surge in data centers is worsening electricity costs for Black families, and it's leading to some evictions. Black Star Network Partner: Chapter Chapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options. ____ Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Note From The Host: Jewel's music, her work as a singer-songwriter, has had tremendous impact on American culture, and worldwide. Since arriving on the scene as an artist in the 1990's, her lyrics and sound have been woven into the fabric of our lives. I was excited to sit down with her to hear her story firsthand, and she's the kind of guest I'm grateful for, the kind of person I'm honored I get to share questions with. You walk away from the talk with a lot to think about, and maybe just a bit wiser. But I did not expect to feel the depth of Jewel's genius in the way that I did. She's been in the spotlight for over thirty years, adept at giving interviews, so beautifully comfortable in front of a camera and in front of fans---whether on stage or on Instagram---that you think that practice, that ease is what's coming through in the conversation. And then you realize, she is the embodiment of ‘a way with words'. She's thoughtful and wise. She's whip-smart. And that's why I titled her cover story, Stroke of Genius. She lives the depth of her music. As she shares ahead, much of her music was written ‘as if angels were standing by'. Jewel shares wisdom about investing in oneself, and facts around mental health, the subject of her extensive activism. You'll hear the stories of her one-of-a-kind upbringing; I was eager to get her unique perspective on motherhood as both a pop culture icon raising a teen son today, and as someone who was raised in the way that she was. We dive into her visual-artist self, she talks songs and tells nostalgic stories of both life and career, whether delicious or difficult. I'll leave you here to listen to the inspiration that is our November 2025 cover star. Discover more + Shop The Podcast:Mate The Label Organic Stretch Midi Legging Schiaparelli Leather Sock Boots The Pearl By John Steinbeck Fools Crow: Wisdom and Power By Thomas E. Mails Designs for Health Periobiotic Silver Hydroxyapatite Toothpaste Lansinoh Lanolin Nipple Cream Nandaka Adaptogenic Coffee

Send us Fan MailDescription: An immersive reading of Morning Tea by Michael L. Wynn with reflection on atrial fibrillation, strokes, space and time.Website:https://anauscultation.wordpress.comWork: https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.0000000000214487 References:Wynn ML. Morning Tea. Neurology. 2025 Dec 23;105(12):e214487. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000214487. Epub 2025 Nov 20. PMID: 41264895.

Friskare äldre och bättre behandlingar gör att fler överlever sjukdomar som tidigare var en dödsdom trots ökande övervikt och diabetes. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radios app. Programmet sändes första gången 11 februari 2026.Trots en global mediebild fylld av kriser visar utvecklingen något helt annat när hälsodata granskas över tid. Fler människor överlever idag sjukdomar som tidigare innebar en säker död, som cancer, stroke och hjärtinfarkt. Äldre generationer blir både friskare och mer robusta, vilket syns i såväl fysisk funktion som i kognitiva tester. Långsiktiga förändringar i arbetsmiljö, kostvanor och medicinska behandlingsmetoder har haft avgörande betydelse. Samtidigt syns tydliga trender i världen där satsningar på vaccinationer, sanitet och primärvård drastiskt minskat den tidiga dödligheten och gett en snabbt stigande medellivslängd.Utvecklingen är dock inte utan utmaningar. Övervikt och diabetes ökar i alla åldersgrupper och i många länder. När fler lever längre förändras även sjukdomsbördan, och icke‑smittsamma sjukdomar blir vanligare. Nya läkemedel kan komma att påverka framtida utvecklingskurvor, men tillgången är fortfarande begränsad.Den samlade bilden visar en värld där hälsan förbättras kraftigt, samtidigt som livsstilsförändringar formar en ny karta över risker och möjligheter. Det är en utveckling som förändrar synen på åldrande, välfärd och global hälsa – och som fortsätter att överraska.Reporter: Gustaf Klaringustaf.klarin@sr.seProducent: Lars Broströmlars.brostrom@sr.se

To be brave is a CHOICE to move forward._________________________CONNECT: https://www.linktr.ee/klsurvivor101https://youtube.com/@karinalemire?si=SSkJgcm5EwtPmfL5WORK WITH ME:https://forms.gle/uGGdz3D675y5B8oa8SPONSOR THE MISSION:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lgkIFVU-BLwN6LS6UNotGa97mLOwVSb0/view?usp=drivesdkMEDICAL DISCLAIMER: Any content used in this or any episodw of SSTO are those of the creator and sho7ld never be replaced for physician professional help.#strokepodcast #stroke #brainstemdissection #lifeafterstroke #bravery #braveheart #accountability #acceptance #selfimprovement #bipolar #manifesting #mindsetshift

Next of Kin After Stroke: When Your 19-Year-Old Has to Decide For You Kylie Ralston was 56, living alone in Sofia, Bulgaria, and getting back into shape after a divorce. Three mornings a week she ran. On the morning everything changed, she was doing a local park run with her friend Rebecca when she slowed to a walk, then tried to run again and couldn’t. “It was like the message wasn’t getting through from my brain to my legs,” she says. No headache. No fatigue. Nothing that felt like an emergency. She finished the run, registered her time, and went home. It wasn’t until she collapsed getting out of the car that anyone understood what was happening. By the time Kylie reached hospital, she had suffered a left frontoparietal haemorrhagic stroke, a spontaneous brain bleed roughly 7.5cm across, with none of the usual risk factors. No high blood pressure. No cholesterol history. No aneurysm, no AVM. She was placed in an induced coma for four days. When she woke, she couldn’t move her right side, and she couldn’t speak. What “Next of Kin” Really Means When a Stroke Hits Abroad Kylie was a permanent resident of Bulgaria, not a citizen, divorced from her daughter’s father, and living on her own. When the hospital needed someone to authorise emergency surgery, there was exactly one person available to make that call: her daughter, then 19 years old, splitting her time between her separated parents’ homes. It’s a detail easy to skim past, but it sits at the centre of this episode: next of kin isn’t a role most of us think about until a hospital needs an answer immediately. Kylie hadn’t nominated her daughter out of any formal planning process; it simply fell to her, because she was the only adult relative in the country who met the age threshold. A 19-Year-Old Signing Consent-to-Operate Forms Kylie’s friends contacted her daughter directly. She rushed to the hospital, and unconscious, unable to advocate for herself, her mother’s care now depended on decisions made by a teenager under enormous duress. Kylie’s first memory afterward is her daughter arriving in the ICU in a hairnet and scrubs, holding her hand, telling her she loved her. It’s the kind of moment that rarely makes it into conversations about stroke recovery, because the focus so often lands on rehabilitation milestones: walking, speaking, returning to work. But before any of that, someone has to be legally empowered to say yes to surgery, and for Kylie, that someone hadn’t expected the responsibility for another few decades. The Gap Between Acute Surgery and Real Rehabilitation Bulgaria’s acute care, Kylie and her friend Nicole Nott both stress, was world-class surgery within roughly two hours of the stroke, the kind of outcome her friends still describe as a miracle given the size of the bleed. What came next was a different story. In the public hospital, physiotherapy visits totalled two sessions. There was no speech therapy. After 14 days, still unable to move her right side or speak, Kylie was expected to go home. Her partner, Guido, refused to accept it, and the couple began privately funding rehabilitation themselves. This is a distinction worth sitting with if you or someone you love is navigating stroke recovery in a country or even a region with limited public rehab funding: acute survival and functional recovery are not the same fight, and they are not always resourced the same way. When a Friend Becomes the Rehab Team Nicole Nott, an occupational therapist and Kylie’s friend since they were 16, found out about the stroke through a message she initially suspected was a scam. Within days she’d cleared her schedule and flown from Australia to Bulgaria. What she found in the private rehab hospital was a caring but under-trained care team, kind staff with, as Nicole puts it, “no rehab expertise.” Nicole spent close to two weeks restructuring Kylie’s room and routine around basic stroke rehabilitation principles: approaching from Kylie’s affected right side to address her spatial inattention, built-up cutlery to force use of her weaker hand, a balloon tapped back and forth for shoulder strength, word games layered on top for speech practice, pegs and curtains repurposed into arm exercises. She also pushed back hard against hospital staff who tried to stop her from helping Kylie transfer to a shower chair or toilet, at one point being told outright she wasn’t permitted because she was a woman. Her single goal before flying home: get Kylie toileting independently again, for dignity as much as mobility. Kylie called her from Dubai airport, mid-transit, to tell her it had happened. Living With Aphasia Fourteen months on, Kylie’s right-side weakness has largely resolved. What remains, she says, is the hardest part: expressive aphasia. “I can’t express myself like I used to.” It’s a small, telling detail of the condition that even the phrase “I can’t” is itself shaped by the aphasia; the words available to describe the loss are affected by the loss. The Unexpected Gains Both women point to what came out of the crisis alongside the hardship: Kylie’s relationship with her daughter deepened. Her circle of friends in Bulgaria proved itself in ways she hadn’t anticipated. And in the rehab hospital, her partner Guido proposed something; he told her he’d already decided before the stroke but simply hadn’t gotten around to asking. If this episode raises questions about who is legally positioned to make decisions for you and whether that person actually knows it, it may be worth a conversation with your own family before a crisis forces the issue. For a deeper account of navigating identity, recovery, and unexpected transformation after stroke, Bill’s book The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened is available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. If this show has helped you, you can support it at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. Kylie Ralston: Stroke, Bulgaria, and the Friend Who Flew Across the World When Kylie had a stroke abroad, her 19-year-old daughter became her next of kin, and a friend flew in to help her recover. Bill’s Book: The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened Support the Recovery After Stroke On Patreon Highlights: 00:00 Introduction – Next of Kin After Stroke03:47 The Day of the Stroke08:55 Rehabilitation Challenges in Bulgaria16:32 Coping with Language Barriers22:08 Reflections on Healthcare Systems32:50 Setting Goals and Achievements38:29 Family Dynamics and Support Systems45:36 Finding Meaning in Recovery54:44 The Impact of Caregiving58:22 Reflections on Recovery and Gratitude Transcript: Introduction – Next of Kin After Stroke Bill Gasiamis (00:00)And one of my first horrible thoughts was, is this a dreadful hoax? Is someone, you know, is this some horrible scam? And it made me feel quite sick actually And then I rang her son who lives in Australia and he’s like, Yeah, I’m so sorry. I haven’t told you. Yes, it’s true, mum’s had a stroke. Bill Gasiamis (00:16)Welcome back to Recovery After Stroke. I’m Bill Gasiamis, and today I’m joined by two guests, Kylie Ralston and her friend Nicole Nott. Kylie was 56 living in Bulgaria when she suffered a left frontoparietal hemorrhagic stroke, a spontaneous brain bleed with none of the usual risk factors. Nicole is an occupational therapist and one of Kylie’s closest friends since they were teenagers. And when she found out what happened, she got on a plane to Bulgaria to help. In this episode, we get into what it means to have a stroke far from home in a country where you don’t speak the language, and public rehabilitation funding barely exists. We talk about who becomes your next of kin when you least expect it, what it’s like to advocate for a friend inside a hospital system that won’t always listen. And what recovery actually looks like 14 months on, before we get into it, if you want a deeper look at identity, recovery, and unexpected transformation after stroke, my book, The Unexpected Way That Stroke Became, the best thing that happened, is available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if this show has helped you And you can support it to keep me on the path of getting to a thousand episodes, you can do so At patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke Bill Gasiamis (01:37)Kylie Ralston and Nicole Nott, welcome to the podcast. lovely to be here, Bill. Thanks for having us, Bill. Kylie, tell me a little bit about what life was like before the stroke. I was very active and I had a full life and I was working full time. and I was living in Sofia in Bulgaria, in my on my own, in my own apartment. I was renting, actually. and I was getting back to fitness. So I was g getting I was running regularly. So two two or three times a week I was hitting the gym and hitting the tr the treadmill. And that had been happening for like a few month like six months or something like that. but before that I was very fit and active. What kind of work were you involved in? I was a HR work. I was a ha HR leader and so I had my own consultancy I had a team of people that I’ve managed. I had thirty five people, so and that they were people in Germany, Poland, Czechia, Portugal, France, so everywhere in in Europe, basically. Yeah. Wow, how how does an Aussie end up in Bulgaria with staff or clients in that many countries? short answer is I came here with my family, so with my ex husband. and shortly after I arrived we separated and and ultimately got divorced. and I stayed on because my daughter is here. So she was only eleven at the time and I could just couldn’t leave her. The Day of the Stroke So you were living at home with your daughter? she was sharing her time between between us both. Yeah. got it. Okay. So both parents are there. So your daughter was going backwards and forwards. On the night of the stroke or on the day of the stroke, can you take us through that? What were you experiencing? Was there anything unusual that happened that made you think something was wrong? How did it go down? I was with my friend Rebecca. And she was running ahead of me as she she was faster than me, so sh and she often often ran ahead of me. and I’d slowed down to a walk and when I started to run again or try to run again, it it was like the message wasn’t getting through from my brain to my legs. And I thought, that’s strange, that’s that’s really odd. ‘Cause I didn’t feel like tired or anything and I didn’t have a headache and well stuff like that. and I just walked through the rest of the park run. And then when Rebecca saw me coming to the finish line, she waved me over and she said, come on, let’s go register your chip. and so I did that. and she said afterwards that there was a little bit of fumbling with with my phone and there’s a there was a little bit of fumbling when I put my jacket on, but other than that, I just seemed exhausted from a run. do you recall after the experience of feeling exhausted from the run where you ended up? Did you need help? Yeah, I do. So so she didn’t notice that I wasn’t talking because I n I’m normally an endless talker, so I she didn’t notice that I wasn’t talking. And she said that that that is one thing that should have alerted her to what was happening. but it it didn’t. And so I’d caught the bus to the park run and her husband was there and so he drove me home. And I j I remember the journey home and when when we when I went to get out, I just couldn’t. And so and Mark came around to my side of the car and help tried to help me out and I just collapsed against him. And so then that so then they said, quick, something’s wrong something’s I don’t remember what they  They they said, you know, they basically took me straight to the hospital. Yeah. And also rang Guido, my now fiance, but my partner at the time. Uh-huh. So you you went from the run, attempted to go home, and then from that attempt to get you out of the car, actually into your home, it was pretty clear that that wasn’t gonna happen and you ended up in hospital. so Did you guys drive to hospital? Do you recall that? Yes. Yes. We do how far is it from your home? it’s pretty close. I don’t know about kilometres or time, but it’s but it’s like ten or fifteen minutes. Yeah, so it’s not too far. But they didn’t know what was going on, of course. They just knew something wasn’t right and then they figured one of the best things to do is just get it to a hospital. You get to the hospital Do you know what happens after that? Do you get admitted? do you get tested for anything? I suppose what I’m asking is when is the first time you realise that that you’ve had a stroke? When do they report that back? When I came out of the coma. So I was put I was put into an an induced coma straight away. so I I obviously don’t remember anything of of that. and but Rebecca’s told me afterwards. so she’s filled in the f filled in the filled in the blanks for me. and by that stage her husband thought it was a stroke. So she’s he said he said to the staff at the hospital, we think she’s having a stroke. And so yeah. So how long were you in the coma, do you know? Has somebody told you how long it was? Yeah, four four days. Four days, okay. And do you know what kind of stroke you had? Yep. I had a left Frontoparietal hemorrhagic stroke. Wow, that’s a good effort. So you had a brain bleed. Yep. Do they know what caused it? No. It was spontaneous and I didn’t have any of the risk factors. So I didn’t have high blood pressure, a history of high blood pressure, but admittedly I’d hadn’t tested my blood pressure immediately before the stroke. but you know That’s un that’s unlikely to be the cause. And I didn’t have a hi a history of high cholesterol. and so they just and I didn’t have an aneurysm and I didn’t have like what’s the other thing? The An AV AVM. AVM, yeah, I didn’t have any of that. And how old were you? Fifty six. Okay. So you had a spontaneous Bleed in the brain. That happens. People do have that happen from time to time. And sometimes they don’t have any symptoms leading up to it or anything like that. and this is the bizarre nature of like there’s an unlimited number of ways, unfortunately, for people to have a stroke. Now, you woke up in hospital four days later. What kind of deficits did you have? I couldn’t move my right side and I couldn’t speak. Okay. Now I’ve got an idea of well, I haven’t got an idea, but my mind immediately kind of says like if you’re in hospital in Bulgaria, that’s not a hospital in Melbourne. That’s not the Royal Melbourne hospital where no shit is unreal, like it’s perfect and it’s got the highest technology and it doesn’t matter how many things we can bitch and moan about the system being here like compared to Bulgaria, my expectation is that we’re world class. Perhaps that’s not the case in Bulgaria. Would you agree with that statement? I would have agreed before and my my my expat friends here would have agreed before, but now we’re all saying maybe Bulgaria is better than we thought. That’s brilliant. Awesome. Okay, so Rehabilitation Challenges in Bulgaria As far as like medical interventions and all that type of stuff, you felt like that was handled like any other world class hospital would have handled it. Yeah. In that in that s it in that stage it was. but there’s no like that was a public hospital and there’s no there’s no public funded rehab after. or or very li very little. So so that’s where that’s where Australia is ahead. So when you knew you had deficits, was there any rehabilitation whatsoever? Did you get any of that while you were still in hospital? Minimal. So the the physio came to see me twice. and so that’s so that’s all and I got no speech therapy and stuff like that. and but when I was discharged from the public hospital here and went and so they they expected me to go home from the public hospital. And so Guido said she just can’t like like what what the fuck? After how many days? After how many days, how long? Fourteen. Wow, your right side was still offline and you still had problem. Yeah. Okay. So we we just paid for paid for private rehab. got it, right. Yeah. And how long were you in private rehab for? another like two months or something like that. Right. Okay, that’s pretty cool. So i even though you couldn’t access it publicly, you were still able to Access a private now. Are you a citizen in Bulgaria? Not a citizen, a permanent resident. Okay. So do you have are you as a result of the fact that you’re a permanent resident and not a citizen, do you have different things that you are able to access because of your status? No. no. I’m it’s I have the same rights as a citizen. The only one the only right I don’t have is I’m I’m not able to vote here and I’m not I’m not able to work in other EU countries. Got it. Okay. So that’s pretty traumatizing, the whole experience, and then to have to deal with overcoming your left side and your speech deficits after the two month mark, roughly where were you at where you where you are now? Because you kinda sound pretty good. Okay. No, yeah. no and and the other thing the other thing that I must say about Bulgaria is I don’t speak Bulgarian. very very little. So that was a problem. Yeah. I can imagine, yeah. so maybe you can come in here, Nicole, and and talk about where I was at when you came to see me, because that was very very very early on in my in in the private rehab hospital. Yeah, Nicole, tell me a little bit about what it’s like to receive a phone call to find out that your friend has had a stroke. I was absolutely hellish. the way I found out is I got a message through social media from someone saying, Hey, I’m a friend of Kylie’s and she’s in hospital in Bulgaria. And one of my first horrible thoughts was, is this a dreadful hoax? Is someone, you know, is this some horrible scam? And it really, you know, it made me feel quite sick actually thinking this is that’s not someone I know. It does look like a name I’ve seen in Kylie’s kind of social media world. And then I rang her son who lives in Australia and he’s like, Yeah, I’m so sorry. I haven’t told you. Yes, it’s true, mum’s had a stroke. and I was kind of beside myself because by training I’m an occupational therapist, but Kylie and I have known each other each other since we were about 16. and it was really hard to get the information that I wanted as a friend, but also as a health professional. I was wanting to understand what kind of stroke is it? Where is it? What’s the rehab? What can we do? How’s it going? And at that stage the information that I had was that you know, it was really seriously affected the speech part of the brain and obviously the hemiplegia, the weakness down the right side and knowing that Kylie was right handed. so, you know, it’s the friendship part that your heart’s breaking and it’s also the therapist part that’s wanting the information to be able to, you know, reconcile it for myself, professionally what that was going to look like as a consequence for Kylie. Yeah, and you’re so far away, so you really can’t do anything and kind of have to like take information second hand, third hand, and be kind of in a position which is really uncomfortable for, I imagine, a friend, but also a therapist, right? So as an occupational therapist, that’s not the information you work on. You work on actual facts, scans, reports, like a whole bunch of things. So are you also playing it out in your mind? Are you kind of Doom thinking it, like are you how does it affect you personally? I think for me I was all I was really very conscious of not stressing other people. So like friends, family, because sometimes when you are a health professional, you know, you have knowledge and information and you know, you sometimes you you’re keeping that to yourself to some extent because you do know what can happen to people and you do know what consequences can be. So I was really trying not to ask too many questions of people as well. but I was seriously desperate for information. And so I remember I’d gone to a party and I didn’t really want to go because I was actually, you know, upset and stressed for Kylie. And I did end up going to a party and during the party I was really kind of outside having a bit of a downer really by a campfire. but I got a phone call or a message to say that I think you’d said some words, Kylie, and were kind of waking up. so you’re still in the acute hospital then and that you’d been able to move your leg a little bit, I think. Yeah. And you know, joy in that moment. And yeah, I felt very, very far away. And then What happens over the next few days? Like do you guys continue to communicate somehow? Do you keep getting information? Are you being updated? Yeah. Yeah. I wasn’t able to get my into my phone or my any of my devices. So I wasn’t able to able to because I couldn’t remember my password, right? And so and and I tried like d different ones and I you know I just got locked out. So and when I was able to get in then that made it it made it easier t because I was able just text short messages. So so Nicole and I kept in touch that way. and before English-speaking Before you came, Nicole, I think I was talking, but not not not as well as I am now. Yeah. So was it, Nicole, in your mind, you were always going to fly over to Bulgaria and beath your friend? Or did you guys have to work that out? Like what happened now? It’s so cool that you get to have a somebody in your corner that is also a Fred, but also a medical professional in the exact field that you’re struggling with now. Right. Like how do you just drop everything and go overseas and be with your friend? Yeah, well, very grateful that I had an up to date passport. So that was that was a good thing. Kylie, it was interesting because the texting, like if I go back and look at that history, it’s like you can see the progress in the texts. So you can see that Kylie was using kind of more single words and having struggles with spelling and putting sentences together. And then over time, you know, they became more fluent. but the thing that happened was that Kylie and I were talking and she was able to you know, she got some speech back and we were talking. And she was just saying about the rehab care that the the the kind of caring staff just seemed to have no rehab expertise. So the physios were amazing. I think they were great. There was no active speech therapy for Kylie. I think we ultimately found an English speaking speech therapist but who still had Bulgarian as a first language. And there’s very few occupational therapists in Bulgaria, seems to be some expats. And Kylie was talking to me a jab about just you know, really basic things like not being taken to the toilet. and that’s probably what broke my heart. It’s like I cannot leave her in bed, not being able to go to the toilet. I just can’t do it. And so I just said to my partner, I think I just need to go to Bulgaria. And luckily I’m self-employed. So I just kind of cleared my schedule, got on a plane and yeah, I was just I suppose I’m incredibly grateful to have the skill. incredibly grateful to have the financial ability to do it. and yeah, and the skills to do it. And you know, you don’t always get an opportunity in life to do the right thing, or sometimes you don’t make that decision and later you think, Why didn’t I do X, Y, and Z? I try not to live my life like that. I try to actually do those things. So, yeah, I got on a plane and basically arrived at the airport, got on a train straight out to see Kylie at the Rehope Hospital. You’re a real superhero. I’m very grateful to Nicole. Yeah. I rec you know, my story is kind of well, it has a similar kind of thread to it. I one of my best friends is a radiographer and he was a radiographer at the Royal Melbourne Hospital where I was a patient for nearly two and a half years because I was in and out with a number of brain hemorrhages. I had three in total in the same spot, but over two and a half years, then I had brain surgery. And I can’t tell you how many scans I had, but being a radiographer, he was the one who was in the room taking the photos through the MRI. Yeah. And then he would come out. And he would tell us what he saw in the RI, which was against the rules. that’s why I won’t name him. But but that meant that we didn’t have to wait a month to get our results and the the meeting for the results was just more of we’ll go through the process and and have the meeting. Yeah. And and and it was like and I regretted my life when at school I used to throw his books on the roof of the canteen just to mess with him going to s to class late to get in trouble. and I’ve apologised profusely for that and thanked him every day for the fact that, you know, he was able to lend his well, you know, he was able to be in the room. He was able to have that conversation with us and he was able to ease our minds. over that two and a half year period and then you won’t believe it. Like his daughter had an AVM at seventeen. And she went through that and and has recovered from that somewhat now in the last few years. and I got to be I mean I hate that I had to be this guy, but I got to be the guy that supported him through that really acute phase and There is just nothing to describe what it’s like to be able to a repay the favor. and then but B, when I was in that situation to have somebody kind of well, you know, like put their arm around me and really walk me through every stage. Me and my wife and my family walk us through every stage of that part of it, other than intervening as a brain surgeon. But he was the one that put us in char in in touch with my brain surgeon. like Everything that happened was just the most amazing experience to be able to be guided like that. And I know it’s a privilege and many people don’t get that opportunity. so I see Chris, I haven’t told him this in person. I see him as like a bit of a superhero, but he doesn’t know that. I’ve told him I love him in the way men tell each other that they love each other by s abusing him and swearing at him and telling him that the team that he follows is terrible and all that kind of stuff. Reflections on Healthcare Systems so you arrived in Bulgaria. take me from the airport to the hospital. Like what happens? How is that? Actually the flight was really good. Customs was pretty easy. There was some annoying folk in front of me who I wanted to punch in the face and tell them to hurry up, but I was just, you know, needed to to get there. Kylie’s daughter met me at the airport. And then we got the train together out to the hospital. So, you know, obviously I’m seeing my first sight of Bulgaria. I’d never been there before. so not really taking a tourist route at this point. so went out to see Kylie. And, you know, when you just eyeball someone and I, you know, just thank God I’m here, I’m in front of her. Her she’d had a shaved head. she had some pretty spectacular surgical scars, a couple of very big scabs still on her head. she looked skinny, she looked pale, she had started doing a little bit of movement and the hospital room was really kind basic and crazy. Her friends had funded a pressure mattress for her that didn’t exist. And some of these things I had been liaising with Kylie’s friends in Bulgaria about what could we do, how you know, what do we want to prevent? So we want to prevent anyone pulling on from. Her weak shoulders and like don’t let anyone pull her by the arm. this is how I want, you know, to help her with posture in bed or in sitting. and you know, like speaking in single kind of actions at a time and just take your time, say something, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just allow Kylie’s brain to, you know, take that information on board. Don’t speak for her. and when I got there, it was really clear that. She had an inattention to the right hand side as an effect from the stroke. So then I was a bit of a ball breaker, rearranging the whole room. No, no, no, no, no. Where, you know, everyone come from the right, everyone sit on the right. no cutler, you’re not allowed to have your phone in your left hand, you’re having your phone in your right hand. I’d taken some things with me from Australia to Bulgaria that I thought she might need. like some built-up cutlery, because I wanted her to use her right hand to feed herself. I took a couple of kind of activities that I thought we could do to look at some retraining for the right arm. what I’ll still bring with me, try to remember now. Benjamin. So yeah, just try kind of going into early stroke rehab principles. Yeah. Did you go there well you went there as a friend. But when you were there, were you able to be a professional and also have a conversation with the local team? Kylie and I laughing. Do you want to tell that story, Kylie? Which one are you thinking about? Where I got told off. No, I don’t remember that. well, Kylie was in act like, you know, there was still quite a lot of weakness, but she was also so determined for her own rehab. And in the system there their carers really don’t have a rehab focus. They have a I’ll provide you a meal focus and I’ll occasionally do some cleaning and I’ll occasionally change the bed linen and but really not a rehab focus. So I’ve personally found it quite easy to help Kylie to like stand move. And so the very first weekend I was there, it was a long weekend and what I didn’t realise later was that they were actually quite understaffed. Which worked in our favour because I was helping Kylie to get onto a shower chair, taking her to have a shower, us taking her to the toilet, because prior to that time they were just, you know, using pads for toileting because Kylie couldn’t stand up or move on her own. And because I’m trained, I found it very easy. She’s a lightweight person and she and I just work together and I could do that. I think it was the Tuesday, person who I refer to as Nurse Ratchet. remembering now kind of intercepted me bringing Kylie back from the bathroom to her room and just like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. What are you doing? Stop that, stop that, stop that. and you know, she and I are having a bit of a a discussion. And basically she’s refused and I’m allowed to move Kylie. So Kylie is sitting out in the corridor. I think I’d luckily kind of covered you up for privacy. and she’s like, No, you’re not allowed to move her. I’m gonna go and get the physio. I think at least forty minutes went by and then she comes back, well, okay, and I said, Look, I am a trained person, it’s easy, it’s safe. no, I’ll think about it. And then after I think another fifteen minutes she pushed your chair into the bedroom. And then I think it was probably another fifteen minutes where she just decided to move Kylie herself at that point. even though that was out of policy and the physios had to do it. And then it was all this discussion with me that you can’t do it. And in the end it was you can’t do it because you’re a woman. Not strong enough, you know. so yeah. Then Kylie and I kind of would go on clandestine missions because again, from a rehab point of view, being able to stand transfer, it’s putting all the weight through the leg, it’s giving feedback to the brain. I really wanted to make sure Kylie’s bladder and bowel were gonna work properly. And you know, sitting in bed and that’s just not ideal. So then Kylie’s like, Nicole, I want to go to the toilet. I was like, I’m banned, I’m banned, Mother Nurse Ratchet, I’m not allowed to take you. And I was like, shit. So I would go on a little mission, go look down the corridor, make sure she was nowhere to be seen. And then I quickly stole the shower chair and then I found a bucket. And so Kylie and I were doing secret Wii missions in the bedroom. until w on one of our missions I just hadn’t quite got the bucket in the right place. And so then I it was also then later on a cleaning mission. So it was it was a pretty crazy environment. yeah, just for that lack of t whole team approach to rehab. Whereas, you know, in Australia the nurses would all be rehab trained. They would be transferring someone physios would come in, speech would be coming, OTs would be coming. So I was kind of desperately trying to convince Kylie or to get her rehab to a standard where she’d be able to come back to Australia to get some more rehab. You know what’s good about this conversation other than the hilarious nature of it also is that I as an as a person who hadn’t had a stroke before my hadn’t known anyone who had a stroke before my experience, if I had come across somebody who had had a stroke, I wouldn’t have known what to look out for and what to say to support them in a situation where perhaps something was being neglected. Because I don’t know what I don’t know. I’m not a professional, right? Just like those nurses and therapists that weren’t specifically trained. Yeah. In certain things. I mean, you may as well be not only talking a different language, but you may as well be making it up as you go because as far as they know, now this is what we do for stroke patients. This is how we handle that. is it a lack of understanding of what r stroke rehabilitation requires, or is it a lack of resources, or is it a little bit of both? Do you feel in Bulgaria when you were there? I think I think it’s a lack of of all all of that but it’s the lack of maybe money. So it’s a lack of training. So th there’s there’s not enough there’s not the the nurses or the orderlies or whatever they’re called here, are are aren’t paid very much. So they so And t just like, even though I was in a private rehab hospital, so you would have expected that more. It’s you would have expected more, but I just think that they just don’t have the money to to train those people. Yeah. it wasn’t really a role, was it, Kylie? Like they really were more like housekeepers in a sense. It was more like cleaning a meals. I have to say the physios were excellent. and a lot of the physios had good English as well, which was for your rehab was so important. because again a lot of the carers they would come into the room and you know, again, just from a speech therapy point of view, in Australia, say if someone came into the room who was the person who did the menus or filled up the water bottles or the cleaners, Kyler could have spoken to all of those people and had   incidental communication the whole day in English. But because of all of those p incidental people coming in didn’t speak English, you know, reasonably in Bulgaria. it just for me, I was worried about the lack of just exposure to English language as well. So not even speech therapy, just incidental language through the day. Which is very helpful and people don’t realise how helpful it is to be able to speak to a nurse about how you’re feeling or what’s happening. Yeah. And all the usual stuff. And Kylie’s chatty and friendly and she would have just been having conversations galore, but it just it it it couldn’t be. Yeah. Yeah, it’s another another barrier. so you know when you go overseas, it’s your friend and you’re a professional. How do you handle that? Because you know, like are you emotional? Are you trying to put a lid on it? Are you allowing yourself to Gonna be emotional. How does that work? We had some killer laughs, didn’t we? I mean, I’m a joker anyway. And so, like the first time Kylie got to do a poo on the toilet, I just did a poo dance for her. So I I felt half my job was you know, cheering her up and keeping it light and having fun and chatting about stuff we would just always chat about. as well as doing as much rehab because it was very exhausting because, you know, p after a stroke, it’s very fatiguing. you know, so to Kylie was really tired and needed lots of rest. So and because I had just you know, obviously dropped tools to go over quickly, I was just working sometimes. So I just have my computer and if Kylie was asleep I’d just stay with her and and her partner Guido as well, who was there with her as well. So just, you know, emotional support wise. But Yeah, I do some work. And I stayed in Kylie’s apartment. So I w was I just stayed at her place and I I train out to see her each day at the hospital. W how many hours would you spend in hospital with her? What do you think, Kylie? you would often arrive at like ten in the morning and you wouldn’t go till like five in the evening or six in the evening. Yeah. So technically visiting hours kind of finished at six. So I just try and stay most of the day. A full shift. Yeah. Yeah. Unpaid. Unpaid labour. Slave driver. Yeah. yeah. But nah. That’s what friends are for. I very what I very much wanted to stay the whole day because I did really, really wanna like especially the toileting thing. I just really wanted that. Setting Goals and Achievements I had this bit of a goal for myself for Kylie that she would be able to take herself to the toilet before I left the country. So just from a dignity point of view, from a mobility point of view, transfers, you know, bladder control. So yeah, that was one of my big goals. And she rang me when I was in transit at Dubai Airport on my way back to Australia and said, Nicole, I just took myself to the toilet. Wow, that’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. And and I was having physio two physio sessions a d a wi a day. So I was having other than Nicole. So I was having like about one session about of about an hour in the morning and one session of about an hour in the in the afternoon. Got it. You Kylie seem like pretty mm chill, pretty calm. how are you handling it though, emotionally? How’s the aftermath Treating you because there’s a little bit of you know, there’s all that acute stuff. It’s awesome when your friend is there, but then your friend goes home, right? So how how does that transition kind of happen? Yeah, I might start crying. because I’ve just recently spent seven months in Australia. So I I went to Australia in October last year and I came back in just in May. and I had more rehab there. So I had I had student led rehab at at first and then I got in got accepted into Birch, which is the brain injury rehab community and home in Ad in Adelaide. so that’s that is is a whole team of people. So I had I had physio and I and a occupational therapist and a a e exercise physiologist and a speech therapist and stuff like that so I th that’s really good. now the most frustrating part for me is the aphasia so I I can’t I can’t express myself like I used to. Yeah. You know what I love about interviewing people who have aphasia is when they say I can’t in a sentence to describe something to me it triggers the part of the condition which doesn’t allow the words to come out. It’s so interesting. That happens so so often. And it’s just a for me, I noticed this I’m saying it just from a perspective is maybe I can’t is not the right word. I don’t know. You might remember this, you might not, but maybe I can’t is not the right word. Maybe the right word is Something that helps you get to the word that you need to get to. And okay, now that’s just me, the uneducated stroke survivor on a phasia guy. Like I don’t know about that. But it’s so interesting, it happens every time. but then Nicole goes home, you go home, your partner is kind of now taking over the caregiving role, and you still have some deficits. phage is one of them. what about your right side? How offline was it? I I also moved in with Guido after the after the stroke. So so that was that was a has was ha was and has continues to be a challenge because we’re still getting used to living together because we weren’t living together before. and I was very in very independent before. And I was living in Sofia and he and he and I now live in a in a village. So I live in in a village just outside of Sofia. And I’m not driving yet. but I was medically cleared to drive in Australia before I left. So I’m going through the process here. so anyway, all of all of those things together make it very challenging. don’t get me wrong, I I l I love him, but but you know, and and I d and and I made that decision because my apartment is was was on the fourth floor and th there was no lift. Wow. Yeah. So back to your question. When I was when I was when I came here, when I was discharged, I continued with as an outpatient and and the physio continued to come at home twice a week. So I was having more physio maybe like five times a week. and like it were ha had started to come my right side had was all already back online, but I would I was just working on building strength and and I would get still very tired. Yeah. And did your daughter end up coming to live with you as well? No. but she she at the beginning she she was my next of kin. So at the ripe old age of nineteen, she signed the consent to operate forms. yeah, so that was that was very difficult for her. I didn’t know that at the time, obviously. but yeah. And did that happen, did she become your next of kin because your former partner, her dad, and you had separated and then his that role wasn’t gonna be his anymore. It’s just passed down to the person who was the closest to you. Like how did that happen? Family Dynamics and Support Systems We’re divorced. I I’m divorced from her dad. Yeah. So he’s definitely not my next kin. Right. So that ha changed after the divorce and she was the only person you could nominate because she was over is there an age limit to the next of kin? Eighteen. Yeah. Okay. So she had hit that criteria, you nominated her and then at nineteen she got to make a decision. Which she never and you never would have expected ever for that to be a thing. I didn’t nominate her, it would just happen. So I was I I was unconscious at the time that she signed those forms. So yeah. So my friends actually contacted her. and she she rushed to the hospital. so it was all under duress. It was like this is what happened to your mum, you’re her Next of kin, whether you like it or not, you have to decide. Yeah. Far out. Okay, that’s pretty full on for a 19 year old. Yeah. Yeah, seems like she did a good job. How did she handle this whole mum’s not well situation, this stroke thing? Like how did she deal with it? she was very good. my first memory actually is of her coming into the ICU with with the with the whole, you know, the whole like the the hairnet and the mask and the and the and the what’s it called the scrubs. Scrubs, yeah. and she held my hand and said t that she loved me. so that was pretty special. And incidentally I have an a another memory of Guido coming into the ICU as well and singing singing to me. So he he said that he said that I always wanted him to sing and he refused before. And so did did I want him to sing to me now? And I squeezed his hand or on the on the left he’s was holding my left hand and I squeezed his hand and so he knelt down beside my bed and started singing. Wow. Can he actually hold the tune or is he hard to hear? Yes, see he’s he’s very musical. Okay. Thank God. If my wife had asked me to sing a w if I had asked my wife to sing, it wouldn’t have been a good experience at all for either of us. Yeah, he was he was a busker in i in his younger years. Yeah. and now he decided to come good. Fair enough. Well that that’s important. You know, things like that are important. It lightens the the mood and it makes Yeah. You kind of feel like your family’s around and that you know you know, maybe kind of things might be all right. Like it gives that glimmer of hope. Is that how you received it? Yeah, I did. yeah, but I’m also very, very determined. So I’m a I’m a very normally very strong woman and so everyone said to me that if if well not to me, but w we had a we had a group WhatsApp chat so and I was added to it later and everyone said in that that if anyone can get through this, Kylie can. Yeah. So you know when you’re told you’ve had a stroke, you wake up with all the deficits and everything. Are you like how do you take it? I woke up, couldn’t use my left side. I I did not for one minute. It did not cross my mind like for one minute that this is not a good thing. Like I mean, clearly I wasn’t able to move, etcetera. But it never kinda went a lifesaver, I’m fucked. Like I never had that happen. Me as well. yeah. I I’d I’ve never thought that. I don’t know whether I even thought that It was n like you said, that was not a good thing. I just put one foot in front of the other and or not literally, but the Yeah. Metaphorically. Yeah. Metaphorically. so one foot in front of the other and just got on with it. Yeah. Nicole, like you come across in your work, you come across a lot of different versions of patience, right? Like you get people who might just be by design more negative to a bad experience and then people that are half class full to a bad experience. Just from a professional perspective, what’s the difference like when you’re trying to rehabilitate somebody that has kind of that different mindset? From perhaps what Kylie and I described. Yeah, I mean I’m probably in the last half full camp as well. So as an OT, I suppose we always meet people where they’re at. because everyone is a combination of their past experiences, aren’t they? So and cultural things, like there’s a very significant cultural differences in how people respond to pain or disability and expectations of kind of family and I suppose cultural expectations in Australia are even about you know, what what what should be publicly available. So, you know, from an expectations point of view, I think a lot of it is based on, you know, previous experience. So as a therapist, we’re obviously there to support, you know, emotional well being, physical well being, and try and find the things for people that connect with them. So meaningful, like OTs are our absolute core is meaningful occupation. So how do we find something that’s meaningful to that person that we think is going to get them from kind of, you know, here to there and it’s gonna be very different different motivators, you know. Kylie is probably, you know, very self motivated as described. Sometimes it’s about people really have a d strong desire to get back to work, or people have a really strong family structure that they want to be able to get back to do something with their family. So finding the way or the thing hopefully that’s going to motivate them. But we certainly work with people who you know, have a high level of distress from what’s happened to them and and on an ongoing basis. One of the things I’ve got a little quote on my desk that you can’t see here, but it says, I’m still me, just a different version of me. And it’s what someone one of my clients told me recently who has MS. and often we find need to find the new version of someone. and the new meaning for someone if that, you know, needs to happen. So that’s our great challenge, I suppose. That’s a big job, especially very early on when identity is so tied up into who they were literally days ago. You know, like a week ago. The mobile person, the working person, the money making person, the father, the mother, the whatever. Finding Meaning in Recovery And then, you know, you’re dealing with a physical crisis, the existential crisis, the identity crisis, like you’re dealing with it all in the one moment, and you’re trying to get them to sort of see, well, you know, you’re still you and how we’re gonna move forward with the still you person, like we’re still gonna move forward with that person. And then later does come an adjustment of what that you looks like. did for me like it’s a massive adjustment into what me looks like. But my identity wasn’t so much tied up in a one label specifically, although, you know, I s I was the person who felt like they needed to be the main breadwinner, you know, that you know ran a business that did all these things. I I had a big strong identity. But I think one of the things this is going to sound weird or might even sound logical depending on like w who you are and why you’re listening to this podcast. But for me, the fact that my brain went offline was a really good thing because it and that allowed my emotional side to come to the fore. Like it really enabled me to see things with a different intelligence, you know, and access part of me that my emotional intelligence perhaps that I hadn’t that I perhaps suppressed previously, you know, and just battled through things. And that kind of allowed my identity to come with me, it allowed me to leave some stuff behind and allowed me to bring into my identity this emotional side of me, you know, which who cried, who got excited about new and different opportunities, you know, that my head didn’t convince me out of. You know, so there was a lot of silver linings that I didn’t I wasn’t able to iterate back then. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that it was a silver lining. But now and a few years later, after it all happened, I was definitely able to talk about those silver linings. Kylie Do you you’re fourteen months or so out, right? So maybe you’re not there yet, I don’t know. But are there some silver and I know a hundred percent Nicole was one of those silver linings, I get it. but do you see some silver linings in this whole saga? Yep. I do. my relationship with my daughter got stronger. Yep. So that was all s that was definitely a silver lining. and you know, I I’m was very grateful before, but it cemented how g how grateful I am for my circle of friends. Yeah. Kylie’s friends were amazing. Yeah. Your friends were amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Big family still in Australia is is there a big family in Australia, Kylie? Not not a big one, but my mum and dad are still still alive. So they’re they’re in Melbourne. and my sister is in on the Gold Coast and my brother is in Melbourne as well. Yeah. And my and my son is in Adelaide. Okay. So you still have some family here, but then you were able to create a community in the years before the stroke in Bulgaria. Yeah. you you were doing it a little bit tough after the stroke. Yeah. Correct. Yep. So that’s spot on. Did you Nicole tag team with some of those people as well? Yeah, so Kylie’s friends were beautiful and they were looking after me too. So When I was in Bulgaria, they were looking after me, you know, giving me dinner and what have you, and kind of giving me emotional support as well. And I think they were grateful that I was there from a skills point of view, like they were doing a beautiful job of supporting Kylie emotionally. But and I did kind of train them up a little bit in in some rehab as well, you know, how to help with approaching from the right and how to communicate and also just even doing some activities. Kylie and I had the balloon and we were tapping it back and forward to each other for strengthening up the right arm. And then we’d play some kind of word games as we were doing that for some speech therapy. So I was educating her friends around that kind of stuff. But the other thing, Kylie, that you and I have spoken about is, you know, after the stroke is knowing what’s important and how to let some sh shit go that would have been, you know, annoying or you know. focus on something and now it’s just you you just know it’s just not important. Yeah. Being able to just let crap go. Correct correct. and the other silver lining is that I got engaged. Yes. Did he propose soon after? Yes, in the in the rehab hospital. what a romantic Yeah. But he but he said that he’d already decided before the stroke that he wanted to marry be ma be married to me. So he just hadn’t got around to asking me yet. Yeah, fair enough. That stroke has a way of interrupting people’s plans and the things that they think they’re gonna do. so Nicole you normally treat your patients. They get to a stage. Usually they’re a lot better than they were when they first met you. And part of what you do is you send them off into the big wide world like a kid. I’ve grown you know, I’ve raised them, you know, like they know how to comb their hair now. And you kinda send them off and it’s kind of bittersweet, I imagine, but also a very important part that the people who you’re helping get better actually go off into the world on their own. And stop needing to be supported by you. I know there’s some people who need more support and that continues for longer and some people who don’t get enough and it and it’s never enough. But what’s it like knowing the job is not done, but you still have to leave and go home? that was heartache. I mean, Kylie and I both balled our lies out. it was a long flight home. Yeah. Yeah, it was a long flight home. with lots of reflections. I suppose the good thing at that point was Kylie was easily able to speak on the phone or message each other. So and also, you know, I think at that stage maybe I got to see the brain scan and I was just like, my god, how have you even survived this? ‘Cause I think was it about a seven centimeter bleed, Kylie? Yep. seven and a half. Yeah. To be precise. It truly felt like a a miracle. And again, full kudos to the surgeons in Bulgaria, truly, for that acute care. Because I think Kylie, I feel like you were in surgery in about within about two hours or something after the stroke, which is phenomenal. And, you know, your friends really saved your life. taking you straight to the hospital and prevented like, you know, more serious outcomes from the stroke. So yeah, so for me, I was proud of myself as well. and I, you know, I like to live my life by thinking I can look myself in the mirror. And I felt like I can really I’ve got a tear, really look myself in the mirror. Yeah. Doing the right thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You came to the need of somebody who was in need and needed specifically not only your love and support as a friend, but also your skills. Like you had the complete package for them at that time. How long did you end up staying in total? Was I ra away about just under two weeks probably with the flights and everything like that? So yeah. so yeah, leaving was leaving was horrible. But the goal of being able to go to the toilet was met. and also just the skills for, you know, skilled up a few other people and Kylie, you know, had her good networks. I also went out to Kylie’s property out in the village to have a look at any home modifications. So that was another kind of OT type role that that was done. and she’s got an amazing property out there, but it is kind of needs a bit of love and so that was also just reassuring her partner too, like reassuring Guido that no, look, Kylie’s got this. There were a few times where it was like, Nicole, I don’t want her to do this. Like I’m like Guido, she’s safe. She can do it. She’s got sitting balance. She’s okay to sit over the side of the bed. She can wiggle sideways. But he was anxious. And so again, part of my job was to reassure him to make sure that he let her do things. and didn’t step in too quickly. And so as an O T, we’re all used to like sitting on our hands and taking time and letting people struggle a bit. And it was hard for him to let Kylie struggle. So to just encourage him to let her struggle a bit so that she could do it herself and just wait. Just take the time, especially with communication. so yeah, I I kind of obviously knew there was a lot more rehab to be done, but I also had seen Kylie’s determination and that, you know, she kind of knew what to do. and and so that was I I was grateful again for that. Kylie, what was it like when your friend had to leave? I was heartbroken. The Impact of Caregiving I felt like she was a lifeline and I felt like that that had been cut because obviously she speaks English and obviously like Obviously we have a really good relationship. and I felt like I was in a like how do I describe it? In a in a sea of not n of people not understanding. So yeah, not my friends, but the hospital staff, basically. So not the not the physios. Like Nicole said, the physios were exceptional. but, you know, just the hospital staff. Yeah, just generally speaking. So did you feel like she had put you on the right path? Were you more confident with kind of where she left you as opposed to where you guys started and was that enough to kind of give you the foundation for what you needed to take responsibility for when she left? Definitely. yeah, definitely. Yeah. Man, w what a kind of interesting whole situation. You know, if this was fifty years ago, there’s no way anyone’s going anywhere to help anyone with anything. you know, like your hospital s experience in country like Bulgaria after what they’ve been through would have been completely different. You know, your s the chance of surviving telling your story is probably s you know, very much decreased. I know this is gonna sound weird, but like it’s never been a better time to have a stroke in in most of the world. Like let’s face it. the the possibilities are just endless. I’m a miracle from all the medical professionals that put all their time and effort in. I am eternally grateful to my occupational therapists and physios and surgeons and people who invent X ray machines and people who make C T scanners and The plastic bottles where drips go in, like every single thing is just an an absolute miracle of God or medicine or science or I don’t care what, like whatever you want to call it. And it just to me, it you know, here’s a really terrible situation and here and and but look at all the amazing things that came out of it. Somebody from the other side of the planet to be able to come over and intervene in that way, train people up. Like, man, it’s the Perfect like feel good story, you know. Everything’s going okay, things turn shit, and then something good comes out of it and yeah hopefully there’s more good to come, you know. Like, man, it’s just an amazing experience. I just feel really privileged to be able to hear it and share it further. No, not not not me, personally. but now that you say that I will s I will think about it now. the most thing that that Nicole and I reflect on is, you know, like like we’ve already said, how good was that my friends got me to the hospital quickly? How good was the the surgeons the surgeons because it could have all gone wrong. or gone gone a different way. so that’s the stuff we reflect on more. and just just like my amazing recovery. Reflections on Recovery and Gratitude Because I recovered so quickly and so well, like I’ve thrown everyone away here. So so my new my neurologist, my my physios, ever everyone here is like well, back then was like really surprised. So we it’s when I first walked into the n neurologist, she said, like, wow, No one expected you to recover that quickly from such a severe stroke. Yeah. That’s such a good outcome. I like to I like to think that those things wouldn’t have been possible without your most amazing superhero friend Nicole. Nicole, your final thing I’d like to kind of run by you is that your whole career you’re working towards making things better. Yep. Like for people who are going through all really difficult times. have you had you ever dealt with a family member who needed your intervention or family friend or someone like that that needed an intervention with your specific skills before this? man. yes. So when I was quite a young therapist, probably in my early twenties, my dad told me that his One of his like great aunts or cousins elderly relative had had a stroke and she was in hospital and I didn’t really know her. Like she wasn’t someone in the family that I I had knew had known. And I said to Dad, I’ll go and visit her in hospital. And and so I went to the hospital and I found out she was in this room and I walk into the room and there were four people. And I see this gorgeous little old lady who is all crumpled in her chair and squashed and nearly falling out. And I I just walked in and I was horrified. And I just walked straight over to her. And I just said, look, can I help get you more comfortable, get you into a better position? And then I realized it was it was my own relative. and I said to her, I’m Nicole, I’m John’s daughter. you know, dad’s asked me to come and see you. And and she just said the most cutest thing ever. She said, when you walked into the room. You just look so lovely and I hoped you were here to see me, but I I wouldn’t have known what I could have done to deserve that or something something dead cute. anyway, she’d had a very dense stroke and they were basically saying that she wasn’t a candidate for rehab and that she should go straight to a nursing home. And her daughter was a nurse. And she said, Nope, Mum’s not going to a nursing home and she ended up taking her home and I used to go every night after work and do rehab with her. she ended up being able to walk quite with a pretty awkward gait and a and a stick. but she got back to, yeah, walking and living at home and I just again always think that if she didn’t have her daughter, the nurse and myself, she probably would have ended up not not walking. Yeah, being in a nursing home. It’s not that quality of life. So there’s people who definitely go through that. And what I love about you sharing that part of the story is there’s people listening and they’re paying attention and maybe they haven’t been given the amount of therapy that they feel they deserve or need. And maybe that’s going to trigger people to go, you know what, stuff this, I’m gonna find a way to get more therapy, I’m gonna ask. I’m gonna hassle some people, I’m gonna be a pain in the butt to some people, I’m gonna do more. for myself to get me further. I love that you shared that part of the story. That’s kind of the unique experience that a that a a seasoned occupational therapist can kind of impart on us who are early on in the recovery about like how you need to advocate for somebody or yourself for more physical therapy. And and even if you Can’t access that people listening and watching YouTube channels. Go to YouTube. There are a ton of awesome therapists on YouTube showing people how to do exercises at home. Yeah. And I mean, I just took some really basic things. We s I, you know, stole some things out of Kylie’s flat to take in. And Guido’s son gave me some toys and we use those like stacking things to, you know, do rehab with Kylie’s hand. I took some pegs from her house and we made an activity of pegging up the curtains to do shoulder and arm rehab. So you can often do a lot without, yo

A Book Club Edition, Coach Bruce is joined by Amy, Erin, Patrick and Tim to discuss, Perseverance: How a Determined Athlete Tenaciously Overcame a Stroke.McIntoshRuncoaching.com https://runsignup.com/justarunner?resetDonation

Leading brain health and neurological organisations are warning the country is training specialists only to lose them, due to a lack of funded hospital positions. The Neurological Alliance, is calling on the Government to fund two additional public hospital neurology positions every year and commit to developing a national neurological workforce strategy to plan for the future. The Alliance represents 20 New Zealand organisations including Stroke, Dementia, Parkinson's, and Epilepsy New Zealand, who advocate collectively for the interests of the estimated 1.5 million New Zealanders living with neurological conditions. Chair of Neurological Alliance, Rich Easton, says the shortage of neurologists is already significant consequences across the health system including long wait times and declined referrals. Chair of Neurological Association - which represents neurologists - Dr. James Cleland says the ageing workforce is not being replaced fast enough, and more training places are desperately needed.

In this episode of the NCS Podcast Currents series, host Lauren Koffman, DO, MS, speaks with Gisele Sampaio Silva about the Currents article, "Breaking Barriers: How Brazil's RESILIENT Trials Redefined Stroke Research in Latin America." Sampaio Silva discusses how the RESILIENT trial demonstrated that mechanical thrombectomy can be delivered safely and effectively within Brazil's public health system. She explains why researchers needed to evaluate the treatment in a middle-income country with significant regional differences in hospital resources, prehospital transportation, imaging access and stroke care infrastructure. The conversation also explores the partnerships and advocacy required to conduct the multicenter trial, including support from Brazil's Ministry of Health, international researchers and industry collaborators. Silva reflects on how the trial helped pave the way for the approval of mechanical thrombectomy within Brazil's public health system, the persistent gaps in access across the country and the importance of expanding international research partnerships to improve stroke care in resource-limited settings. To read the full article, visit NCS Currents. The views expressed on the NCS Podcast are solely those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or official positions of the Neurocritical Care Society.

What happens if we manipulate the weather?That was a question that scientists addressed in a recent study about cloud brightening and its possible effects on the El Niño storms.The benefits could save entire towns from the storms, but the consequences could greatly outweigh the benefits.Stroke and spinal cord injuries affect millions of people. But breakthroughs in recovery have been singular.Battelle and Ohio State's NeuroTech Institute have partnered to create non-invasive rehabilitative, wearable technology.Two of OpenAI's most capable models hacked into Hugging Face, an AI startup. The AI did this unprompted with limited guardrails, raising concerns about the technology's capabilities.Guests:Dr. Jessica Wan, climate scientist and postdoctoral researcher, University of ChicagoJustin Sanchez, Battelle Tech fellowJon Snyder, CEO, NeuroLifeRussell Holly, director of commerce content, CNETphoto: Tony Gutierrez / AP

In today's #podcast episode, I interview Maria Garcia. I ask Maria about her recovery from a devastating stroke. Maria also shares how that event changed her life but helped her discover a calling. I also ask Maria about her book Breaking into the Light.   Show Notes and Resources.   Want to be a guest on Inspired Stewardship? Send Scott Maderer a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/scottmaderer

What if a patient who is years — even decades — out from their stroke could still make meaningful gains in their affected arm? In this episode, host Erin Gallardo, PT, DPT, NCS, talks with Mason Hearn, PT, DPT, NCS, about Vivistim, the FDA-approved paired vagus nerve stimulation system for chronic ischemic stroke, and why the "paired" piece — stimulation delivered in the same moment as intensive, task-specific therapy — is what makes it work. Mason breaks down the triple-blinded RCT behind the device, why patients an average of three years post-stroke saw two to three times greater improvement on the Fugl-Meyer, and how the real-world results coming out of clinics are landing even higher. This episode gets into what the protocol actually asks of patients (90-minute sessions, three times a week, 300–500 reps), how at-home "swiping" turns everyday tasks like getting dressed or cutting into a baked potato into neuroplasticity-building practice, who is and isn't a candidate, and how therapists can think about screening and advocacy without feeling like they're "referring someone for surgery." It's a hopeful, practical conversation about giving chronic stroke survivors real agency over the next stage of recovery and the clinicians who can open that door for them. Learn more at: Vivistim.com https://www.vivistimacademy.com/ Here is the safety profile: http://www.Vivistim.com/safety  

How Making a Stroke Recovery Documentary Helped a Former One-Percenter Reclaim His Life Shayne DeMarce spent most of his adult life defined by physical strength. He rode Harleys through the Canadian Rockies in every season, ran a plumbing and heating business, and had recently begun prospecting with a one-percenter motorcycle club drawn there, he says, by the brotherhood at a time when his wife’s cancer diagnosis and a failing business were pulling the rest of his life apart. Then, on a low-speed group ride at under 20 kilometres an hour, his back wheel slid on loose gravel. To avoid landing on a fellow rider, he dove off his bike into a ditch and broke nine of his twelve ribs, his collarbone, and his scapula, punctured a lung, and tore his aorta. What nobody caught for another thirteen hours was that he’d also had a stroke. A Low-Speed Crash With High-Speed Consequences Shayne’s accident is a reminder that the danger in a fall isn’t always where it looks like it is. He walked away from the crash site convinced his injuries were broken bones, painful, but familiar territory for a man who’d spent a lifetime playing football, doing judo, and dirt biking. It wasn’t until he was in the truck heading to hospital, feeling suddenly and inexplicably worse, that anyone suspected something else was happening. By the time doctors in Edmonton confirmed it was a bilateral carotid artery dissection that had cut off blood flow to his brain, the left side of his body was already gone. He spent five months in hospital and ICU, then seven more in inpatient rehab. Non-weight-bearing for most of that time, he had to relearn how to exist in a body that no longer matched the identity he’d spent decades building. Losing the Body He Built His Identity On “I was a physical guy,” Shayne said. “My job was physical, everything about me was physical. So it wasn’t just my identity; it really was who I was.” For a man whose sense of manhood was tied to strength, work capacity, and being able to hold his own, losing the use of half his body wasn’t just a medical setback. It was, in his words, “very humbling.” The turning point came from an unexpected source: a blunt question from the principal at his rehab facility’s education centre. When Shayne told her his only goal was getting his body back, she asked him plainly, “So what if you don’t get your body back?” It’s a question that stroke survivors and their families rarely get asked directly, and it’s often the one that needs asking. Shayne describes it as heartbreaking in the moment, and something he’s since come to be grateful for. Why He Turned to a Camera Instead of a Gym That question pushed Shayne toward a skill he’d never have considered before his stroke: typing, then editing, then filmmaking. He describes teaching himself to type as doing more for his affected hand than any of his occupational therapy, and it opened a door to something bigger. Once home, he noticed a gap: plenty of content from doctors and news stations about stroke, but very little from survivors themselves, talking honestly about what recovery actually looks like. So he started the UpStroke Podcast. Then, within days of getting home from inpatient rehab, he set himself an ambitious goal: make a full-length stroke recovery documentary about his own experience, and finish it within six months. No film background, no crew, no guaranteed audience just early mornings, self-taught editing, and a refusal to let pride keep him from trying something that scared him. Making a Stroke Recovery Documentary From the Ground Up The finished film runs 55 minutes and represents hundreds of hours of work planning, scripting, filming, and re-filming after the inevitable rookie mistakes (forgotten microphones, unrecorded interviews, background noise nobody caught until the edit). Shayne interviewed his own kids and friends for the film, describing the process as “ripping the same band-aid off fifty times a day for six months straight.” What makes a stroke recovery documentary like this different from a polished studio production is exactly what makes it valuable: it was built by someone still living the recovery it documents, using the same self-taught persistence he’d once applied to fixing pipes and riding through winter. Screening the Film for the People Who Understand It Most The most meaningful moment of the entire project, Shayne says, wasn’t a premiere or a review; it was screening the documentary at the rehab facility where he’d been an inpatient, for a room that was roughly 80% stroke survivors and staff. He remembers patients in that same gymnasium who never had a single visitor in six months, and he now sees his film and podcast as a way to reach exactly those people: the ones running out of hope in a system that doesn’t always have room to give them much of it. A New Club Shayne no longer rides with the one-percenter club he’d started prospecting with before his accident. He describes his community now as “a bunch of stroked out strokers,” the friends, fellow survivors, and families he’s met through the podcast and the film. It’s a different kind of brotherhood than the one he set out to find, but by his own account, it’s the one that’s carried him. His documentary is now available free on YouTube, so that as many stroke survivors, caregivers, and healthcare professionals as possible can watch it. If Shayne’s story resonates with where you are in your own recovery, Bill’s book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, walks through ten tools for recovery and personal transformation built from these same kinds of conversations: recoveryafterstroke.com/book. If this show has helped you, you can support it at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Footer Disclaimer: This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. The transcript will be available soon… The post The One-Percenter Biker Who Turned His Stroke Into a Documentary appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

Watch this wonderful video of the amazing Katherine Wolf here. --------Thank you for listening! Your support of Joni and Friends helps make this show possible. Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Become part of the global movement today at www.joniandfriends.org. Find more encouragement on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

When sultry actress Sydney Sweeney shocked the world with a red hot advertisement for American Eagle jeans, it sparked a conversation about selling sex and controversy. The crew has its opinions and arguments but the conversation of course devolves into just what jeans make a bodacious behind look best? From Rockies, to Lee to Girbaud, we ask the important questions, like "What is she doing with those pliers?"   Thanks for joining us for this week's #JCWPodcast #JCWArchive. Please don't forget to Like, Share, and most importantly, Subscribe--to make sure you get the latest John Clay Wolfe Show materials as soon as they're released! So keep an eye out for those acid wash stripes...and we'll see you Saturday

Motor Racing Networks broadcast of the 2003 Power Stroke Diesel 200 from Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Tragedy of Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations Guest: David Pietrusza The 1920 election cycle begins with a physical and political crisis as President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive, debilitating stroke in October 1919. This event leaves him frail for the remainder of his life and turns the League of Nations into the central, polarizing issue of the upcoming campaign. Historian David Pietrusza notes that while Wilson viewed the League as his "crusade," the Republican Party was deeply divided between isolationists and those seeking specific "reservations" to protect American sovereignty. Amidst this, Theodore Roosevelt — who many believed would be an "unstoppable" candidate for 1920 — dies in January 1919. Wilson reportedly reacted to his rival's death with "hatefulness" and "vulgarity." As Wilson's inner circle masked his declining health, the political stage was set for a transition from his rigid internationalism to a new era of Republican leadership. (1)1920

Baby D is back, and catches up with Rory and Mal after two weeks of not seeing each other. The gang shares some of their weekend plans, including Jay-Z’s Yankee Stadium shows, Love Island watch parties, and more. Justin Bieber, Madonna, Shakira, and BTS are announced as FIFA World Cup Halftime Show performers, 50 Cent receives three Emmy nominations for his Diddy documentary, Future and THE-DREAM prepare for new albums, and Kodak Black reveals the group name with Kendrick Lamar and Ye. Finally, a caller inquires about how to tell his partner that she has bad breath, and the guys give some innovative solutions. All lines provided by Hard Rock Bet Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store or https://www.boostmobile.com/promo/25-foreverSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.