Bowel Moments
Real talk about the realities of IBD...On the rocks! Hosts Robin and Alicia interview people living with Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, or indeterminate colitis (collectively knows as Inflammatory Bowel Diseases or IBD) and the medical providers who care for our community. Join us to meet people affected by IBD- we laugh, we cry, we learn new things, we hear inspiring stories, and we share a drink.
Bowel Moments
Globe-Trotting with IBD: Josie's World Adventure
What happens when you decide to throw caution to the wind, decline your PhD acceptance, quit your job, and travel the world for 10 months—all while managing Crohn's disease? Friend of the show and health psychologist Josie McGarva takes us along on her extraordinary global adventure, revealing both the challenges and profound joys of pursuing dreams despite having IBD.
From the medication logistics nightmare of switching from the medication she was on for a long time to one that she can more easily travel with, to having her mother smuggle medication internationally hidden inside fluffy socks, Josie's preparation for this journey was an adventure itself. With refreshing candor, she shares her experience navigating living and volunteering abroad while traveling on a tight budget of just $1,000 per month.
Josie's travels have taken her from the breathtaking mountains of Patagonia to the vibrant temples of Thailand, with meaningful stops volunteering at hostels, dog rescues, and teaching English in remote villages along the way. Through food poisoning in Thailand, 28-hour bus rides in Argentina, and confronting roosters at dawn in remote villages, Josie demonstrates remarkable resilience while never losing sight of why she embarked on this journey: "I'm finally healthy, which is why I have to go."
Beyond the travel tales lies a deeper narrative about identity and chronic illness. Having been diagnosed at 13 and sick throughout her formative years, Josie reflects on how being in remission has allowed her to question how much space IBD should occupy in her future life and career. Her powerful message resonates far beyond the IBD community: limitations are real, but with creativity, determination, and support, dreams remain within reach.
Links:
- Our first episode with Josie
- Our Research Roundup episode with Josie and Stacey Collins, RD
- Josie's Instagram account
- Workaway- volunteer while traveling site
- The Workaway opportunity with Dani and the dog rescue
- Fundacion Animal Chile
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Hi, I'm Alicia and I'm Robin and you're listening to Bowel Moments, the podcast sharing real talk about the realities of IBD Serve on the rocks. This week we brought back friend of the show, josie McGarva. Josie is a health psychologist who's living with Crohn's disease and right now she is on the adventure of a lifetime. She and her partner have been traveling around the world, and so we talked to her all about preparing for her trip, getting her medicine while abroad and all of the amazing things that she's seen. We know you're going to enjoy it as much as we did.
Speaker 2:Cheers, Hi everybody. Welcome to Bound Moments. This is Robin.
Speaker 1:Hey everyone, this is Alicia and we are absolutely delighted to welcome back to the show for the third time. Josie, I think right.
Speaker 3:Third time Great times.
Speaker 1:Josie McGarva. Welcome back, Josie.
Speaker 3:Hi, thank you so much for having me. I love you guys. I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:You've had so many things happen, and so we are very, very excited to have you give us a life update in just a moment and to talk about all of that. But first, of course, question for you is what are you drinking? I'm drinking a cup of coffee.
Speaker 3:It is 8 am where I am in Thailand right now.
Speaker 1:So coffee. That is so funny. It's like the exact opposite time for Robin. So Robin, what are you drinking?
Speaker 2:I am her usual regular water and sparkling water and I have fancy Topo Chico sparkling water, lime with mint.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good. I love that one. It's so good. So I got real excited. I decided to go a little wild. I am drinking I had to look it up A blackberry sidecar. Oh, I know right, it's gin. A little bit of bitters, some triple sec and muddled blackberries and that's it.
Speaker 2:That sounds very good.
Speaker 1:It's sour, guys, it's real sour. And I'm also drinking water as well, Because this is again my new year's resolution every year is to drink more water. I fail every single year, but I continue to try. But so, so, so excited for a life update from you, Josie. So next question for you is tell us your life update story instead of your IBD story, because people can go back and listen to your episode about your life story and the other episode we have with you if they would like to know more about that side of it. So life update please.
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure. So last time we talked, I came on with Stacey and we talked about our research that we presented at Crohn's and Colitis Congress, and I did that through Northwestern. I was in a graduate program for health psychology, from which I obtained a master's degree, and then I moved back to Denver, was living in Denver, I was working at Children's Hospital on the inpatient psychiatric unit where I met my wonderful, beautiful, perfect girlfriend, hannah, and I was there for two and a half years working in pediatric mental health crisis management. It was an intense job and a job. Years working in pediatric mental health crisis management. It was an intense job and a job I've done before. I might have talked about it before, but I came back in a different role this time, now that I had a fancy master's degree. I was working there and my girlfriend was in a master's degree for social work and I had been accepted to a PhD program for clinical psychology at UC Denver. This was like a year ago, actually almost about a year ago. I got accepted and that was a huge, huge thing, because that's hard to get into a PhD program is hard and it's what I thought I had been working for, what I thought my dream always was I was going to be researching cardiac health and spirituality and the relationship between the two, which was super cool and super exciting, drifting away from IBD a little bit. But there's not many people doing IBD psych research, as I'm sure you people know, you listeners know. So there's not a lot of place for me to do that specific niche thing as a student. If I were to get a PhD, that's what I'd do, but in the meantime not a lot of room for it. So I got accepted.
Speaker 3:It was a whole saga actually. I had the interviews and it was like three months of time before the decision date for all PhD programs across the country. I hadn't heard anything within that time. This was the only school that I got an interview to, so I had this one chance. I hadn't heard anything back. Two days before they needed a final decision, they told me I was accepted to this program, which means I probably wasn't the first choice. There were probably people above me that they asked and then those people then declined and that's why it took a while to get to me. But in that time I had just convinced myself that I wasn't going to get it because I hadn't heard anything. Why wouldn't they have told me if I didn't get it yet but turns out I was accepted? Wouldn't they have told me if I didn't get it yet but turns out I was accepted? Um and two days to decide is nothing.
Speaker 3:I was like me and Hannah were on our way to Florida to go to Disney world with her family. They're a big Disney family. It's new to me, but I'm embracing it. So we're on our way there. I'm like how am I supposed to make a decision right now? But I told them yes, because if I said no I couldn't take it back. But saying yes, you know I could always change my mind. I told them yes and a few weeks after that I was just like so anxious for that. The next few weeks I couldn't sleep. I was like did I make a wrong decision? And I'm a very decisive person. I like take pride in my ability to decide and like know the way that I'm going. So not knowing was feeling really uncomfortable in my body. Like not knowing if this was right.
Speaker 3:Meanwhile, my girlfriend was trying to decide if she wanted to continue her master's program right now, being that we both work in mental health. Already, we were both 12 hour shifts every day at the hospital. We were already burnt out. So we're both like, oh my God, we're going to more school to learn to do more of this stuff. Like, why is this what we're dedicating our lives to right now? It's just trying times, especially in such an intense setting.
Speaker 3:So one night we were just talking and I have to pay tribute to my sister and my cousin A year ago they did a trip around the world. They're three years younger than I am, but they graduated college, saved up some money, and they both just went traveling. So I had some sort of glimmer of hope that this was possible. Like, oh, you can do this. You can just leave everything and go see the world. Okay, that sounds pretty cool. So one night Hannah and I were talking about if we wanted to go to school or what we wanted to do, and I said I just want to travel the world, and she said I do too. I was like okay, wait, why haven't we ever talked about this before? Why is this the first time we're saying this? So we decided we would work through the summer and then at the end of October we had money saved up. Hannah sold her car. We moved all of our stuff back into our parents' houses.
Speaker 2:And we started traveling the world. Where did you start? And then, where did it go downhill? Because I mean, you made this plan, but you still have IBD. Where did it go downhill?
Speaker 3:Because I mean, you made this plan but you still have IBD. Oh, yes, still have IBD. So we made this plan. At the time I was taking Stelara, which I've been on Stelara for. I don't even know how long it was probably five or more years at this point. That's the medication that got me through all of my abscesses and fistulas and an ostomy bag and 20 plus surgeries. I was on Stelara throughout that whole thing. I've been in remission for probably two and a half years now. I don't know. That's kind of crazy. I don't even have to count how long it's been because it feels like stable. But I've been in remission with the Stelara, so that was like my tried and true. I love this thing.
Speaker 3:But Stelara is a medication that comes in the mail. I was taking it every eight weeks and it has to come refrigerated and packaged at a certain temperature and then you have to store it in the refrigerator until you administer the shot. Obviously, united States insurance companies don't ship abroad. I actually I didn't know if they would. I had no idea what was going on. Oh, and I quit my job, so I don't have insurance anymore because I'm over 26. My one word of advice if you want to travel the world, do it before you're off of your parents' insurance, because it's a bitch to get your own figured out and without work helping you. So anyways, I talked to my doctor and said I need to get off of Stelara or I need another option because I'm traveling the world. What am I going to do?
Speaker 3:At first we thought maybe I could convince someone from home to come visit me every eight weeks and bring me my Stelara medication to take. But going through customs in different countries, the regulations are just different everywhere you go, like one place they'll take away your nail clippers and another place you can get through with a full bottle of water and your whatever. So that wasn't the best idea. My doctor pitched Rinvoque, which was a medication that I'd only seen commercials about. I hadn't ever really heard about it much because I've been in remission. I've been like kind of absent from what's new on the scene in as far as drugs go. My doctor pitched Rinvoque and we decided I'd switch to Rinvoque because it's apparently even better than Stelara. It's a once a day pill. It does all the things that Stelara is trying to do, but without having to poke yourself with a needle, and way easier to carry around when you're traveling.
Speaker 3:For RENVOQ they recommend you get a shingles vaccine because it is really deteriorating on your immune system, more so than a lot of other IBD drugs, and you have to get the shingles vaccine within a certain amount of time before you start the RENVOQ, because the shingles is a live vaccine. So if you get it while you're taking the RENVOQ, because the shingles is a live vaccine, so if you get it while you're taking the RENVOQ, then you'll like get shingles basically. So this was a whole other ordeal. I wanted to start the RENVOQ a good few months before traveling, just so I could see if it actually worked, if I actually liked it.
Speaker 3:Because who wants to be abroad on a new drug but with having to get that vaccine, my insurance changes and pharmacy changes, I started RENVOQ like three weeks before I left for traveling, which was pretty nerve wracking. Everything's been fine so far. As far as taking it, I haven't had many side effects. When I first started it I got really bad acne, which is a known side effect of RENVOQ, and I've been blessed with no acne my whole life. So I started like breaking out on my face and my chest and my back and there was one night. I was just, oh, I was freaking out, I was like look.
Speaker 3:I have bumps all over me. I've never had this before. I was on Stelara before and Stelara was doing fine. So now, why did I switch? It was like a whole breakdown and it's scary. It's scary when you've been on a medication that's worked for you for so long and you're changing it for no medical necessity. I didn't need to go on RENVOQ. It was just a kind of a gamble. If I wanted to live my life the way I wanted to, I needed to make this change. So I did it and, like I said, it's been good. Renvoq has been treating me well.
Speaker 3:Receiving the RENVOQ is a whole different story. On my old insurance that I had through work, I was with Acredo, which I don't know if you guys have experience with Acredo, but I think they are the absolute worst pharmacy to exist. They're the only ones I've ever had, but they're horrible. They used to not be. I don't know what changed. Something changed and it's phone call after phone call. No one knows what you've already said to the person that you've talked to before, and it was like whenever I wasn't at work, I was on the phone with Acredo trying to figure out how to get my medication. It's like what I was saying before we started recording having IBD is a full-time job, even when you're in remission, like I thought, oh, I'm no longer sick, everything's fine. No, if you're taking medication and you have to deal with the healthcare system, you have a whole nother job.
Speaker 3:So that was super stressful. Like I didn't even have a chance to be excited about leaving on this travel journey because I was so stressed out about figuring out how I was going to get medication and stay well enough to travel. Oh, and before I left, my mom was like, are you sure you want to go? Like you're finally healthy, are you sure you want to make a medication switch and go do this thing? And I told her, which I think is a good message for people. I said I'm finally healthy, which is why I have to go. Like I've been held back so much because I was sick and now, yeah, maybe I'll get sick again, but I'm not sick right now, so I need to take advantage of the time that I'm well enough to do this thing and honestly if it means that I'm going to have a flare, at least I'm in Thailand.
Speaker 2:You know like I'm not sitting on my couch. You could have a flare again anyway, so you might as well be in Thailand. Yes, I'm not sitting on my couch at home. You could have a flare again anyway, so you might as well be in Thailand. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3:So that's why I took the gamble, switched the meds, whatever. Okay, so I'm jumping all around here, but I was using a credo for a pharmacy. Then, because I quit my job, I had to switch to Medicaid. So I am off of any insurance. I'm on Medicaid, which is awesome, like Medicaid honestly does really great things if you can get on it.
Speaker 3:It takes some time to go through the application process and you like can't apply until you're unemployed, until you have no income coming in or are making under a certain amount. So that was also kind of scary. We like I quit my job a week my last day was a week before I was leaving for this vacation and you can't apply for Medicaid until you're no longer employed. So there was like a week time period that I had to find out if I was going to qualify for insurance. If I didn't, I would have paid for some private insurance.
Speaker 3:But it's crazy amount of money. Even without a job. It was going to be like $300 a month for what I needed, and I'm on a tight, tight budget here. I'm going to have no money when I get back. Like I'm using my money for this trip. So any money that I could save was worth it, so I switched to Medicaid. I know I'm on the RENVOC. When I was on a credo I was struggling to get 28 days of medication filled in time of my RENVOC, like I was. It was coming up close to when I had to leave and I had only the amount of medication I needed until I had to leave. I wasn't going to have any to bring with me, so I called my doctor.
Speaker 3:I was like Dr Nichols shout out to him Please help, I have no medication, what am I supposed to do? And he let me come to the office and pick up some samples. So I had extra meds from him and then we leave. But our first stop was Florida. Again, a Disney family with my girlfriend. So another little trip to Disney, we're in Florida.
Speaker 3:I was hoping that Acredo would send my meds to Florida because they can ship. We're in this country still and I was trying to get a 90-day supply also so that I didn't have to get it as frequently. But it didn't come in time. So I call up Stacey good old Stacey and I was like what do I do? She said I have some extra samples, I'll send them to you. So she overnights me some samples of Enroque. So I'm stocked up for like 60 days from my doctor's samples and Stacey's samples. Nothing from my actual pharmacy, actual place I'm supposed to be getting my medication. No, and I've been working on this for two months.
Speaker 3:It wasn't like I started this last minute it was. I can't, just thinking about it makes me stressed. It was horrible. That time was horrible. Anyways, as soon as my Medicaid hit, as soon as I got switched over to. Now I think I'm with CVS specialty pharmacy.
Speaker 3:I was in Argentina. That was our first stop. You asked where we went first. It was Argentina, which I'll go back and tell more about it. But I'm in Patagonia, argentina, sitting in this hammock, this hostel, and I get a call from CVS and they were like hey, what's your address? We have 90 days ready to ship to you. And I said what A credo could never do that. Thank you so much for this call. This is like the best news I could have ever had. So I have them send it to my parents' house. Now our plan with Renvoke is the medication will get sent to my parents and then my parents will send it to me wherever I am.
Speaker 3:International mail is questionable depending on where you are by the time I need my medication. I was in Chile and my mom is going to the FedEx to go ship my medication. So she goes to start looking up the laws of sending mail internationally and it's like do not ship drugs, you cannot ship anything. You will go to prison if you ship any drugs internationally. So she calls me freaking out. I can't send this, I'm going to go to jail. I don't know what we're going to do. You need to find someone to fly to Chile to bring you your medication because we can't send it in the mail. She's freaking out.
Speaker 3:So I go on my Instagram on it takes guts, shout out, follow me, and I asked a poll. I was like has anyone ever had medication shipped internationally? Please give me some advice? A ton of people responded, like people who have studied abroad, people who don't even have IBD, who just needed, like whatever their prescription medicine is, people who went on mission trips, all these different people. They're like yeah, I've done it, it's fine. If you're worried, here's some tips and tricks. One of them was individually wrapping every pill in a cotton ball and then putting the cotton balls in the package to look like like um, packing peanuts, you know? Like who's going to question that. Another one was like get really thick socks and just like put the pills in the socks, or or like disperse them throughout a bunch of different things.
Speaker 3:So my mom is asking me, like what are some things you need? What can I send you that I can hide this medication in? Anyways, by the end of the whole thing, she sends me a package to Chile and it costs like $200 because of the amount of extra stuff she put in here to hide all this medicine. And it comes. It gets to Chile, at this house that we're staying at, what this family we're staying at. They try to deliver it and had this extra unexpected tax on it that I had to pay in order to get the package. I wasn't in Chile yet. It just showed up to this woman's house and she's like they're asking for money and I said, okay, I promise I'll pay you. Please Can you just give them the money I need this package. She pays the FedEx people.
Speaker 3:I get to her house, there's the package. I open it up. There's like two pairs of huge, fluffy socks that, like I couldn't even wear in the warmest weather and we're in Santiago, chile, in the summer like nothing I could do with these socks, and one pair was for Hannah. So Hannah's like putting the socks on. She's like, oh, there's medicine in here. It's like taking all the pills out of everything.
Speaker 3:But luckily my mom was able to send me almost I think she sent me 60 days of medicine to Chile. So I got that medication there and then we had a layover in LA on our way to Asia and we stayed a few nights in LA. Hannah has family there, so we got to see her sister-in-law and my mom sent more medicine there. That was way less drama because within the United States we didn't need the big socks or anything. And now I'm good until April.
Speaker 3:Right now it's February, so I have enough medication with me until April, and at that point I do have family coming to visit me. So someone will just bring the meds and luckily there hasn't been issues in getting them from the pharmacy. Knock on wood, you guys too, please knock on wood, for and yeah, renvoke's been working. I figured it out, but the amount of stress it was to make this happen was almost almost not worth it. There were a lot of times I wanted to just throw in the towel and be like okay, let's just go on short trips here and there, like this whole 10 months abroad thing is I don't know if it's going to work. I don't know if it's worth it.
Speaker 2:Okay, but now you have to tell us about the trip, because it's totally worth it.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's worth it. Okay. So a big caveat to this whole trip. Like I said, we are on very limited budgets. We're trying to travel with $10,000 each for 10 months, so that's $1,000 a month, which is really hard when you're buying plane tickets. I don't know if we're going to make it. We're like 10 months was the goal, but also, $10,000 is how much we have. So if we don't make it, we don't make it. We see what we see and it's going to be great regardless.
Speaker 3:But how we're managing at least to save a lot of money is we're doing volunteer opportunities throughout our travels. So there's this website that we use. It's called Workaway, where people from all over the world can sign up as a host. So maybe you have a hostel or you have a school, or you have a farm or even just a family home where you need extra hands, and you put up this ad and in exchange for someone coming and doing work for you like four to five hours a day of work you give them a free place to stay and a lot of times they also feed you. So that saved us a ton of money. And also Hannah and I both are people who really like to help and we'd get bored if we were just being tourists all the time, like there's places for us to be tourists and it's awesome and we love that part of our trip. But we also want to feel like we've lived in a place and like gotten to know the culture, and the best way to do that is to hang out with the people who actually live there. So Workaway was like the perfect solution for us for both of these things Saving money and seeing the world the way we wanted to. So we signed up with Workaway and we're at our fourth Workaway right now. We've been traveling for three months and each of them is about two weeks, maybe a little longer. Some of them want you to stay for longer, but the ones we've done have been about two weeks.
Speaker 3:So our first Workaway that we had scheduled was in El Calafate in Argentina, which is in Patagonia, the very south of Argentina, but we left a few weeks before that. Our plan was to go to Buenos Aires because we wanted to see the big old city. So we're in Florida, we leave to go to Buenos Aires. We had a layover in Atlanta, but we get. Our plane was delayed to Atlanta. When we got there we were like running to make our plane to Buenos Aires and it pulled away from the gate as soon as we make it there. So we missed our very first flight out of the country. And then the next flight wasn't until the next day, but the airline luckily put us up in a hotel for the night, so we were fine.
Speaker 3:But then we learned that our flight that we got rescheduled for had been canceled. And then we're trying to look to reschedule other flights to Buenos Aires. Nothing is going to Buenos Aires. We somehow get rerouted through Peru. So we're on a flight from Atlanta to Lima, peru, and as soon as we get off the plane in Lima we see that our next flight to Buenos Aires is also canceled. So at this point we're like in our first foreign country in Peru. We're like how do you get on the Wi-Fi? How do you charge a phone? The outlets here are different, like we're not cut out for this.
Speaker 3:And turns out that there was a strike in Buenos Aires for transportation workers, so there were no flights going into the country. The airport was shut down, but no one told us that until we got to Peru and someone was able to say yeah, you can't get there. So we had the option of either okay, let's just scratch Buenos Aires for now, let's stay in Peru. That'd be cool. But Hannah's dad had lived in Peru for a while. So Hannah wanted to wait to go to Peru with her dad, like down the line, sometime, and experience it with him, which totally fair Respect that as long as I get to go with them.
Speaker 3:So then we decided to go to Argentina. The only place that we could fly into in Argentina was a city, more like a town, called Salta, which is in the very north of Argentina, and we'd heard about Salta. We'd heard it was a cool place to go, but it was just like we didn't plan on it. So we ended up in Salta, which it was a very cool place. Actually. It's just like a little town with big cathedrals and like people wearing cowboy hats, like the gaucho people of South America. It felt like what I envisioned South America to feel, like there's, like donkeys on the hills with all this fog behind them. We were like driving through the mountains. It was so beautiful and so cool and we were there for five days about.
Speaker 3:We booked a flight out of Salta to go to Buenos Aires. Turns out, the strike was still going on five days later. So that flight also got canceled and the only way we figured out that we could get to Buenos Aires was on a bus. So we took a 28 hour bus ride from Salta to Buenos Aires and this bus was, honestly, more comfortable than an airplane. It had like seats that reclined and you could put your feet up. But 28 hours on a bus is tough, really tough. So we took the bus, we slept a lot of the way, we like downloaded some shows so we could keep ourselves busy, but it's just like the adventures that you come across. The things that we're doing are just things we never would have expected, but I think that's kind of part of why we're doing this. We made it to Buenos Aires, which is a beautiful, beautiful city. If anyone is looking for a place to go that's like feels European but isn't as mainstream as Europe. Buenos Aires is really cool. We were there for probably about a week too, and we met a lot of really cool people. That's also part of what's awesome about this trip is just meeting all of these awesome travelers.
Speaker 3:In Salta, I was fine as far as eating the food. Handling my food was fine. Buenos Aires was a little bit of a different story. I had a lot of digestive issues when we got to Buenos Aires. We're just eating things that I'm not used to, you know. Just a lot of like needing to use the bathroom, and Hannah is a perfect travel companion. She's like helps me find the bathrooms anywhere we need to be. I'll like tell her I think I'm going to need the bathroom soon and she's like okay, let's find one right now. We don't want to like be waiting until the last minute. So there was a lot of sneaking into restaurants or Hannah buying a little coffee so I could go use the bathroom. There's not a lot of public bathrooms, which I think is an issue in the United States too, but I've found it even more abroad like less public bathrooms even in the places we've been, which is always a little bit stressful. Even when I'm doing okay, it's still. It's like okay, what am I going to do in the case that I'm not doing okay? But Buenos Aires was beautiful.
Speaker 3:And then we ended up at our first work away in El Calafate at a little hostel called Red House. If you ever are going to Patagonia, you will likely be in El Calafate. It's like one of the main places people fly through to see all of Patagonia. Please stay at Red House. It is amazing, you will not regret it. They have hostel-like dorms, so like bunk beds where you can sleep in a shared room, but there's also private rooms. So if you're wanting to go for a little more luxury, there's private rooms, but it was just the most awesome place. So we were there for two weeks and our volunteer duties were just helping set up the breakfast every day and then helping clean up at the end of the night, and we did some housekeeping here and there too, but I just I would love to go back to that time. Everything we've done is awesome, but that was just like such a first awesome introduction into this volunteering that we're doing.
Speaker 3:And El Calafate is situated on Lago Argentino, which is the biggest lake in Argentina. It looks like an ocean, but it's like bright blue glacier water and I just loved it. Look at pictures, look at my Instagram. You'll see it there. It was awesome, and we went on so many hikes. And Patagonia has been like my dream place to travel since I was a kid. I grew up in Colorado. I love the mountains. Mountains are where I find my most peace, so it was just a dream.
Speaker 3:So our time in Argentinian Patagonia ended. We moved over to the Chilean side of Patagonia. We were in a city, puerto Natales, which is the closest town to Torres del Paine National Park, which, if you like, see pictures of Patagonia. It's probably in Torres del Paine, the photos that you're looking at. We stayed there just for a few days. We didn't have a volunteer job here, we just were here so we could hike. Puerto Natales was really cute. It was on like fjord land. It reminded me of New Zealand. If you love New Zealand, it was very similar to that Lots of water, just really cool place to be.
Speaker 3:And we went into Torres del Paine National Park. You just take a bus in. Oh, a good caveat People don't tell you how much it's going to be to be in Patagonia, argentina and Chile. Patagonia is an expensive place to be. It's like a huge tourist destination, so that makes sense. But they get you every way they can Like. You have to take a bus to get into the park and that bus costs $30. And then, once you get into the park, you have to take another bus that costs another $10. It's just like it adds up when you're traveling on a budget. So be prepared, we're picking expensive places to go and it's not the best for our budget, but you know we want to see what we want to see.
Speaker 3:So we did a hike in Turisopaine, which was also beautiful, but that was like a really trying day for us. There were a lot of clouds and we didn't get to see the big view at the top of this like 13 plus kilometer hike that we did, and we had also hiked more than 13 kilometers the two days before. So we're like tired, we'd like to hike, but we're not like let's go, get on, let's do every mile we can, sort of hikers. That was a trying day for us and for our relationship there. We travel really well together, but on some days it's just like oh my God, you're the only person I ever talked to and we're hiking up this mountain right now and everything sucks and I'm just going to take everything out on you. So if you're choosing to travel with your partner, make sure it's someone who you're really solid with. I give that word of advice. Anyways, ended up being a beautiful hike.
Speaker 3:We ended our time in Patagonia and it was really sad to leave Patagonia because both the Argentinian and Chilean side were beautiful, and then we went to Santiago, chile, which is where this whole saga with my package came, with the pills and the socks that my mom sent. We were in Chile and we did a volunteering job here in Santiago. We worked at this family's house the owner of the house her name is Almendra. She was wonderful. She's like a singer and she's just like a homemaker, but she had this beautiful garden in her backyard like plum trees everywhere and tomatoes and peaches and just everything growing. You would walk out the door and you would just smell like fresh peaches. It was so perfect. We were there with three other volunteers there was a man from Albania, a woman from Taiwan, a guy from Germany and when we first got there, there was another girl from Germany and also people from Romania there volunteering. So, like we've learned so much about Germany and we haven't even been to Germany, but it's just because we come across all of these German travelers who just tell us all this stuff.
Speaker 3:Anyways, we worked there at this place, and the family was vegan that we were staying with, which I tried to be vegan once and it didn't go well. I just I don't like to have restrictions on what I eat because of all the trauma I have with what you can eat, what you can't eat. Like as an adolescent with IBD, my whole life was are you eating enough? Is it the right amount of nutrients? Is this going to make you sick? So any sort of dietary restrictions that I've tried to put on myself as an adult just out of like curiosities or morals, have been harder than I wanted them to be.
Speaker 3:So I was nervous coming into this house. I knew they were vegan. I knew that we had to eat vegan. They made us food, but also sometimes we'd have to cook our own and also like to get protein. As a vegan, you have to eat beans and lentils and things that usually don't sit well in my stomach. So I was really actually quite nervous to go here. Turns out I was great. My stomach was better than it had been this whole trip eating this really clean diet, which was cool. I'm still not vegan, but it's good to know that if I need to be, I can do it in a way that works for me.
Speaker 3:The food was so good. That was the best part of that work away. After being in Argentina for so long, too, it was really nice to have like really good, flavorful cooking. Shout out to Almendra and her. Okay, this is confusing. She lives with her son and then the father of her son, but they're not together. Almendra dates girls and then the dad is just there to also be in the son's life, which I think is so cool, so modern and it was really awesome. But Ricky, the dad of the son, also made great food.
Speaker 3:We ate really good there and we just helped in the garden. We helped like around the house, we helped cook. We were just there to help this woman take care of her huge garden. Then we went to every work away. Every volunteering hasn't been so good, but I do think that this next one was probably my favorite one.
Speaker 3:We were in the hills of Chile. In between if you're looking at a map, in between Santiago and the coast, a town called Quintay is what's on the coast in this little tiny. It wasn't even a town, it was just like residential area with lots of land. But we worked at a dog rescue and there were 46 dogs and four horses and Hannah and I are obsessed with dogs, like a stray dog on the street where they're petting it for 10 minutes before we're going on to the next thing, like we cannot get enough of dogs, so we were so excited to be here. The dog rescue is called Fundacion Animal Chile. You can follow them on Instagram and they take donations. Actually, and it's just one woman named Donnie who, out of the goodness of her heart, just rescued dogs and set up a whole shelter for them. She took dogs who were on the streets, like living in bad situations, dogs who had been abused, like dogs who had been really traumatized, really old dogs who just weren't getting the care they needed. They're not like dogs up for adoption, they're dogs who just like needed a better life. So if you have the means and the heart for animals, this is a really good place to look at and send some money if you want to.
Speaker 3:But we were there for again another two weeks and it was the most beautiful thing. It looks. It's weird being in other countries and being like, oh, this looks familiar, like you think that other places of the world are going to be so different and foreign and new, but it like it looks like where I grew up, like pine trees and hills, and which was really nice it felt. When you're away for this long and living out of a backpack, it feels really cool to have a reminder of like where you've been. We would wake up in the morning and we would walk the dogs through the hills, like take them on a hike. We'd have to do them in batches because some dogs couldn't see the other dogs because they'd fight, or some dogs were just like really angsty. We joked that it felt like our old job at Children's Hospital, like we were in the inpatient psychiatric unit for dogs. You had to make sure that the door was closed for the one kennel before you'd open the door to the other kennel. We never had any fights, everything was fine. But we're like, okay, of course, this is where we ended up, so we can't escape what we're meant to do the acute care. But we were there for two weeks. There was this one dog that I fell absolutely in love with and was like trying to plot how I could take this dog around the world with me so that I could have it as my own at home. But alas, the dog is still there. Yeah, that was an awesome place. Also, if you are interested in traveling, a really sustainable way to do it is this work away and volunteering, and you don't have to do it long term like us, like you could go for just two weeks to Chile and volunteer and then go home and, if you like dogs, this is a good place to be Like. Seriously, I can't plug it enough. It was awesome, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 3:And then after that, we went to the coast of Chile and we stayed in a city called Valparaiso, which is the, I think, the second biggest city in Chile after Santiago. Hannah said it reminded her of San Francisco. I've never been to San Francisco, but it's just like a lot of hills and a lot of color and a lot of like culture and grit and like passion. It was, that was our favorite city that we've been to so far. It was so beautiful and it's right on the coast. So we got to spend time on the beach, which we both love, and just like feel the culture of Chile, which was cool To compare Argentina and Chile.
Speaker 3:Argentina felt cleaner, felt more European and like the people, there are a lot of immigrants similar to the United States, like white people with blonde hair. Like Hannah and I didn't stick out. Really, it didn't feel like, oh, you're in Latin America. Chile is like, yeah, you're in Latin America. Like we're playing our reggaeton and we're like eating our spicy food.
Speaker 3:You know, chile was a little more what we thought, what we expected from going to South America. Those were the two countries we spent time in down there and I speak Spanish, which was really helpful. Hannah does not speak much Spanish. She knows some, but she was looking to me a lot. So if you're ever going to South America, they don't speak English as much as if you were in Mexico or somewhere closer to the United States, like the Spanish was helpful Chilean accent impossible to understand. We got there and people were talking to me and I was like I don't think I actually know how to speak Spanish anymore.
Speaker 3:After being in Argentina and being fine, it was like such a shock. The Spanish is so different. But we loved our time there and that got us two and a half months into our travels and then we took a plane from Santiago to LA. We had a few days layover in LA. Unfortunately, we were there right when the big fires were happening. Where we were you couldn't really tell that it was going on, but it was just like you could feel it in LA. So that was a shock and devastating. We're in Los Angeles, fires are happening. We were there for only a few days.
Speaker 3:I got my next batch of medicine sent to me and we got on a plane to Japan, which we had planned to go to Japan on this trip. But we were going to originally wait to go in the spring to see the cherry blossoms and also, hannah's brothers already had a trip planned to Japan, so we were going to go meet them there. But after Chile, we thought our next stop would be Thailand. But every flight had a layover in Japan, and I'm a big skier. I have been skiing since I was two years old. It's like my favorite thing in the world to do. So, hannah being the best girlfriend she is, she was like why don't we just stay in Japan for a few days so you can ski? Like we're going to have a layover there anyways, why wouldn't we just go? I was like wait, really, you're serious. And she said yeah, of course I am Like, let's do it. So we booked a flight to Japan.
Speaker 3:We ended up in Hokkaido, which is like the island. Well, hokkaido is a state, but it's on the island at the very north of Japan, and we were there for five days and Japan is so freaking cool. I think it might be my favorite country that we've been in yet, even though it was only five days. It's just like South America was a different culture than what we're used to, but it was like things I'd seen before I'd traveled to Mexico, I'd traveled to Central America Like I kind of knew what to expect. Japan is just like okay, you are somewhere else, like, first of all, I don't know what anything says, this isn't even our alphabet, you know, it's like that could be a picture I don't know what it is and they're just. Everything is so orderly, everything is so clean, the food is so good. It was just. It was like awesome.
Speaker 3:So we went there and we went skiing at a ski resort called Moiwa, which is like part of Niseko, and a lot of skiers will know this stuff because Japan is like the? It place to go skiing right now. But we stayed at this tiny little lodge with this amazing little couple who owned it, the man of the house. His name is Shinya and he is the avalanche forecaster for all of the Niseko mountains. So he's like 70 something years old, but he's been doing this for 50 years and it was so cool. He like barely spoke any English, but like the words that we could exchange were great. He would just tell us stories about, like, all the stuff he's done. He's traveled to Patagonia, he's traveled to Nepal. He goes all over the place to do these amazing adventures. I like, so wish that I could have spoke Japanese to actually hear about his life, because I got a sliver of it. But yeah, he's the avalanche forecaster, so every morning he goes out, he like tests the snow and then he writes a whole report and sends it out to the mountains, so you know what to expect if you're going into the back country. It was really cool, really cool. He told me I was a good skier and that's like the highest compliment I've ever received. But we skied in Japan. Japan was great and we were only there for a few days. We are going back. And then we came to Thailand and that's where we are now.
Speaker 3:In Thailand, we started out in Chiang Mai, which is a city in the North of Thailand where there's a ton of temples, like a temple on every block, the most beautiful Buddhist temples, so ornate and just like. I can't even believe that it's real because I've never seen anything with my own eyes. That's like actually real. You go to Disney World again. Who thought I would have talked about this this much and like Epcot and you see, the like Thailand land and like everything just looks fake here, because I've only ever seen it in a fake way, but it's real, and we walked into this one temple when there was a worship going on and these monks were just like chanting the song and there were civilians in there too, just like sitting and praying and singing the chant and it was so beautiful. I do yoga too and like my yoga studies were really rooted in Buddhism and like the tenets of yoga rather than like here's how you do downward dog. It was the best yoga teacher training I've ever done. But it feels so cool to be here in Thailand and like see where this lineage has such deep roots.
Speaker 3:The first day we're in Thailand, we were staying at this hostel that was like known for partying and Thailand is a huge party place. I did not know that Hannah doesn't drink. I like have left my party ages back in my ski town days and tell you Hannah doesn't drink. I like have left my party ages back in my ski town days and tell your I'd have like I'm too old for this, but Thailand knows how to party. So one. The first night at our hostel we went to a lady boy show, which is a drag show, but in Thailand they call them lady boys, and let me tell you that was the best drag show I've ever been to. It was so amazing. These girls were working hard and they were like seducing this old man in the audience the whole time. It was so funny. Anyways, I got very drunk and the next, oh, we sang karaoke. It was the whole thing. The next day I was so hungover so I laid in bed like the whole day.
Speaker 3:Hannah went out and explored and then it was Lunar New Year. That's why we came to Chiang Mai at this time, because it was Lunar New Year and they celebrate here and we were like how cool would it be to be in a place that celebrates Lunar New Year? So I'm hungover. Finally I get enough strength. We go out to Chinatown for the night and we saw this like oh, we watched this like child beauty pageant. That was the highlight of the Chinatown Chinese New Year. It was like a literal, a kid's beauty pageant, like picture toddler and tiaras. That's what we were watching. But we sat through the whole thing because we needed to know who won. It was so great. Some of them, like their talents were like this one girl did a little pom-pom, like cheer, for like two minutes and that was her talent. But some of them, like, did a whole dance and it was really good. It was hilarious to watch.
Speaker 3:But we ate food from the street stalls and we were trying to be safe. We were trying to say, okay, we need to eat the things that are, like, cooked in front of our face because we don't want to get food poisoning. Lo and behold, that night I wake up in the middle of the night with food poisoning and we're in a hostel in a dorm room that has 15 beds in it. So it was like it was a lot. I was sweating, I was in the bathroom for hours, pooping, throwing up at the same time just horrible, and for anyone that sucks. But for a person with a digestive illness, like the flashbacks that are coming back while you're throwing up it was horrible. I think it was neurovirus. We've deduced that we think it was neurovirus because neurovirus has a certain smell to it. Sorry, I'm getting graphic, but maybe this is the good podcast to get graphical.
Speaker 3:Anyways, triggering Hannah was fine. She was like helping me, she was bringing me my medication Thank God, I have a lot of Zofran Zofran saves lives and we ended up moving to a hotel room. So we were like double paying for our hostel and our hotel. But we just needed a space that was not with 15 other people and with my own unlimited bathroom. And the next day I was feeling better. And then we like got some food. I ate some toast. We were walking around a little bit, we were sitting by the pool and Hannah went to the bathroom and she came back and she said I just had diarrhea. I was like, oh no, here it goes. And then 10 minutes later she went back to the bathroom and texted me and she said I just threw up. I was like, oh shit, okay, so I go back to the hotel that we had just checked out of and I said, hey, we need the room again. So we get to the hotel room again.
Speaker 3:Hannah was sick for the next 24 hours. Luckily I was feeling better so I could take care of her. But anyways, our first five days in Thailand I was hungover and then I was sick and then Hannah was sick. So we've been in Thailand for like a week and a half and I haven't seen much of it because it's been a rough go and I expected that I was going to get sick on this trip. Did I think it was going to be the first night in Thailand? No, but it was just a matter of time. Thailand has just it's been hard on us so far. We it's just a matter of time. Thailand has just it's been hard on us so far. We had some mix up with our flights. We had a long layover in the airport. We didn't get to our hostel till really late. It's been a trying country for us so far and also so different, like probably the most culture shock yet.
Speaker 3:But now we're at our next volunteering place where we're teaching English in a little tiny, tiny village in the really far north of Thailand, on the border of Laos. It's called Puchipha, is the village that we're in and we're staying in this house, if you could even call it a house. It's like there's rooms, there's four rooms, but there's no furniture. It's like all wood, like the floors and the walls and the ceiling are all made out of the same kind of wood. We sleep on little mats on the floor, which I think is traditional for an Asian culture. Our toilet is a hole in the ground, our shower is a bucket with a scoop that you pour your water over you, and we've been here for two nights and it's going okay so far, but it's only been two nights and we have two weeks here, so we'll see how it goes. But the kids are lovely. The families, like the parents of all the kids that we're teaching, make us food and they'll bring us food at our little house because we don't have a kitchen there or we'll eat with them. Right now I'm in one of their homes doing this call because there's no Wi-Fi at the house we're staying at. She came this morning to pick me up on her little scooter and I got on the scooter with my laptop and came over to her house. She gave me coffee and it's really nice because in the work that we did at the hospital we both taught like mental health education to these kids. That was like the bulk of our job. So we both love kids, we love teaching.
Speaker 3:It's really hard to teach a language to people whose language we don't speak, but they know their ABCs and some of them know past, present and future tense. So we're getting there. Yeah, some of the kids are our go-to people to like communicate things. They have to speak between us and the parents because they know more English than the parents and definitely more Thai than we know. Oh, and it's a Hmong village which Hmong is like started in China, I think, hmong culture, but they've since immigrated all over the place, so they're speaking Thai here, but they also speak Hmong. And I think tomorrow we get to go to like a durian farm and we get to dress up in classic Hmong outfits and pick durian and it'll be great. It's just an adventure. We really do not know what we're getting into each day, but that's why we did this. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:I am curious, as you've been plotting where you're going to go, have you also, because of your inflammatory bowel disease, kind of done a little like sneaky look to say, if something were to happen, here's the place I know I could go to get care? Or is that not factored in because you are doing so well? Yeah, honestly no.
Speaker 3:I have not been looking at that stuff and maybe I should be, but also I haven't needed to so far. Part of the insurance battle was that because we're on medicaid. Medicaid only covers care in colorado. Bear insurance wouldn't really cover out of the country care either, but they have like emergency procedures if you need it, like different private insurances, but medicaid strictly covers in colorado. So additionally, we had to purchase travel insurance, which if anyone's doing a trip like this, you should get just because it helps for, like, if I were to die, my travel insurance will ship my body back to the United States and that would be covered. So that's good to know.
Speaker 1:Or if you had a ski accident, then you'd have something to fall back on just in case.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly. So the travel insurance should be able to support me if something were to happen. But also, in a lot of countries, healthcare works completely different than what we know In every country it does. So I don't even know if they'd ask to look at my insurance, truly, if something were to happen.
Speaker 1:It's a lot more affordable in a lot of countries. So yeah, I think you probably would be okay, for sure, I hate to say that.
Speaker 3:America. I've heard from people who got really sick in Thailand and Thailand's healthcare system isn't great, just like the facilities of a hospital isn't very good so they've been flown to Malaysia to get better care or I think Malaysia is what she said. This was one person who got dengue virus from a mosquito and told me this whole story the things that can happen. There's a point where you just have to not think about what can go wrong, because so much can go wrong and if you're thinking about it all the time, you're going to have no fun.
Speaker 1:You know Exactly. Yeah, you can't live your life with anxiety. I mean I think there's. I mean don't go do stupid shit, like there's. Just in general, it's wise rule to just not do stupid shit, but at some point also, you just have to say like stuff can happen every, I could fall down my stairs now and hurt myself. Like it doesn't, I'm not going to not live in my house or climb stairs, you know. So you have to decide what you want to do and make compromises, you know, and not live in anxiety. It's that's wise, exactly.
Speaker 3:I don't think we ever imagined being in a place quite as rural as we are right now, in this little village Like Chiang Mai is the closest city and it's five hours away, a five-hour drive. But this work away that we did, we thought we were going to be in Chiang Mai and then we got there and they were like we really need help in this village. Would you come to it? And we were like, okay, sure we'll come to it. Like we're doing this because we want to see the culture and this is quite a different culture than anything I've ever seen. There's like rubber tree farms all over the place and chickens walking across the street all the time and like, like I said earlier, roosters crowing out the window. Like I couldn't sleep last night because a rooster was just going on all night long.
Speaker 1:So it's really cool. I'm sorry, I really do. I really hate roosters. They're yeah, I'm sorry, I really do. I really hate roosters.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't think I really like them either after this.
Speaker 1:They're a menace. I know it's like even if you were a vegetarian you'd be like I'm going to eat that sucker, so okay, so you're going to be there for two weeks. So then have you already sort of plotted out where you're going to go? Or like is this a spur of the moment? Like, okay, next is this one? Like, where are you going next?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we have a rough idea of, like the countries we want to see and that's about it. We're really doing spur of a moment travel, but I truly think that's the way you have to do it. If you're traveling this way, because you can never like we'll get to a place and people will say, have you heard of this place? Like just word of mouth, of the best things to see, the best places to go, so if you were to plan it out and like book all your flights, you know you'd miss out on a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3:I think we're going to spend more time in Thailand. We have to go to the South and like see the beautiful islands and the blue waters, and the food is very different regionally in Thailand, as it is in many places. So up here, I think, what we're eating is mostly Hmong food. And then next we're going to Vietnam, where there's this famous trip called the Ha Giang Loop and you ride on the back of a motorcycle or you can rent your own motorcycle and it's like a four day journey through the hills and the mountains of Vietnam and then, along the way you like, stay in different families' houses. So we're doing that and then, along the way you like, stay in different families' houses. So we're doing that, and then we have another volunteer job in Vietnam, and then after that we'll go back to Japan, where we'll visit Hannah's siblings, and we're going to go to Disney World Japan, because we're a Disney family now.
Speaker 1:That is so weird. But okay, I'm not a Disney person, so people that are the Disney people, I do think it's like some sort of weird cult that you've joined but it's really cute, Like it's a cute cult For sure a cute cult, for sure a cute cult.
Speaker 3:I like give it a lot of hate, but I have so much fun when I'm there. It's a cool place to be. They know how to do it. I'll tell you that, yeah, they do. They know hospitality for sure. And then, after Japan, we will head to Europe, which I know. Europe is like a whole continent, so we're in Europe. I don't know, italy is at the top of our list. Neither of us have been there and I'm like saving up all my money to eat pasta.
Speaker 1:How long were you with Hannah before you decided to do this? Because this is the ultimate trial for a relationship, is what you are doing, so I am so curious how long you were together.
Speaker 3:We've been together now a year and a half a little over a year and a half, and we left three months ago, so we'd been together over a year before we left, which for me, that's my longest relationship. For Hannah, that's her longest relationship. So for us it's like okay, we're in this, but that's like nothing in the grand scheme of life and relationships. Right Before we left on this trip, we traveled to Iceland together, which we had planned before. We decided to do this around the world whole journey, and in Iceland we rented a van and drove around the ring road for like 12 days. So we were living in a tiny little space and it was like raining all the time and everything was wet, and we didn't really have a plan for Iceland either. We're just like not I love a plan, but I've learned to let go of a plan for traveling Like it's so much easier to not know what you're doing every second of every day, at least the way we're traveling. So Iceland gave us a really good insight of like are we going to be able to do this for 10 months together? And the answer was yes. We just work really well together, and maybe because we met at work where we had to work so closely as a team. We like naturally we already knew that we knew how each other functioned and worked. Yeah, it's been really so easy.
Speaker 3:A lot of people that we meet are traveling alone, like solo traveling big trips around the world, and that's so cool, but I don't think I could ever do it. I just I need someone to like be bouncing my ideas off of and something that feels like home and, as cheesy as it sounds, like Hannah, is that for me? Yeah, it's a newer relationship, but it's also like the most serious relationship either of us have ever had and the most like future that we see with a person. It's been great it has. I wouldn't want to do it with anyone else.
Speaker 3:Like I said, my sister and cousin went traveling the world together and I was invited to go on that trip and it didn't line up with, like what was going on in my life. But also, I just truly don't think I would have been able to do it like the way that my sister and I she's my best friend but we hang out for two days and then we're like have had enough of each other. We need a break for a little bit. So if you're going to travel with someone, you got to pick the right person for sure.
Speaker 1:It's definitely a test of your relationship, especially being gone, as long as you are Like it's not, like you're like, okay, well, we only have to make it three more days and then I can, you know, poop in my own bathroom or I can do my own laundry, or whatever. It is Right, you know, like it's definitely uh, uh, it's a very different. So, yeah, she's like a treasure yay, she is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like we're the only people that each other sees some days, you know. I mean, we see all the people on the street, but like the only person that the other person talks to. Luckily, we like to talk to each other. On this trip, I'm like trying really hard to not have expectations. I think that's a really big lesson that I've learned Like no expectations for what we're going to do, for how long we're going to be traveling, for where we're going to go, and also trying to not have expectations of like a huge epiphany, like this is what life is about, you know, because I had a really great life before this and now this is also a really great life and everything can be true. This traveling can be just 10 months of traveling. It doesn't have to be like I'm a whole new person, like I eat, pray, love and all of a sudden I'm like better than everyone else. You know, that's not what I'm looking for out of this trip. It's just what I wanted to do and I was able to make it work, and when I get back, I'm going to have maybe a thousand dollars to my name. Hannah won't have a car. We have nowhere to live Like we have our parents' houses but we don't have like a place to go back to. So the when we get back is like more intimidating than the traveling is right now. And also to say, like part of the reason I decided not to do the PhD, I think, and part of what I realized when I was in my grad program at Northwestern is that my whole life has been IBD. I was diagnosed when I was 13 and I was really sick until I was 21. Like I, there was no relief in that whole time. So my whole adolescence was IBD. It was doctor's visits, it was the hospital, it was like I had blinders on. So I thought, of course I thought I wanted to be a gastroenterologist Like that's the job I saw happen all the time. It was that or my dad owned a tree service, so it was like cutting down trees or being a GI doctor were the paths that I saw in front of me. And then in college I discovered health psychology and that's how I then got into that field of things and I still love it. I still have a passion for it.
Speaker 3:But being in remission and being away from the doctor's office for myself has really given me another view on, like, how much space do I want IBD to take up in my life, now that it doesn't have to? Before that was like so it was so healing for me to be so involved in the foundation, in advocacy, like having my Instagram page, talking to other people with IBD, like I needed that because that was my life. But now that it doesn't have to be my life, I really have to ask myself the question of where does this fit in? And I'm sure it's going to be my life again. I'm in remission right now, but I am in no way under the impression that I'm in remission forever and that's just the way that you have to look at it.
Speaker 3:As someone with a chronic illness, I think it is, and getting sick scares me more than anything because it was just so hard on me and like I've finally had enough space to unpack what happened when I was sick, to like think of all the trauma that I went through and how it changed my development, how it changed my friendships, how it changed who I am Some of it for the better, some of it I could have done without. So it's just it's like a lot of big life questions right now. You know, I always thought that I was going to do this thing and I was on this path and like I was always looking ahead, like I said. So being in the present moment is something that's been really challenging for me. That's why I love yoga.
Speaker 3:Yoga is like the one time I can get present and be okay with being present and also be in my body and feel good in my body, which was so such a foreign feeling to someone who was sick all the time. But yeah, like I want to be in the IBD space, but do I want it to be my whole life? And then what if I do get sick again? Also, I go home and I have to go to the doctors and talk about my own IBD. I don't know, it's just it's I'm at a, I'm at a crossroads and this traveling is giving me like a good chance to not really think about it. But then when I get home, it's like okay, kick it into gear, let's figure out what's next.
Speaker 1:I do think that's a hard debate and I'm sure you are not the only person to face this. There isn't a right answer. There's just the answer that's right for you, and I think figuring that out and just being in the present moment and living in the time that you have right now is just such a beautiful way to honor where you're at. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a question and it's a debate that I'm lucky to be able to have, like I'm so lucky that I am in remission and able to think about putting Crohn's in a box, because I never thought I'd be able to do that Like it never felt like that was possible.
Speaker 2:Josie, I'm so grateful that you came back on the show. Thank you so much for sharing all of your adventures with us and your challenges with us, but unfortunately it's time for me to ask you the last question. So, for the third time, what is the one thing that you want the IBD community to know?
Speaker 3:I think right now, what feels most pertinent to me is that you can do the things that you want to do even though you have a chronic illness. It's going to be challenging, it's going to be harder for you than a person without a chronic illness, but you can make it happen if you want something bad enough. And would I have said this when I was sick and getting surgery every six weeks? No, hell, no, I wouldn't have said this. But I've gotten to the place where I can do what I want to do and even if I was still really sick, there's like little pockets of joy that you can find to do the things that you want to do, whether that's go see a movie or, like, eat the freaking popcorn, even though you're not supposed to eat popcorn when you have Crohn's disease, you know like, do the things that you want to do because IBD is just a little piece of your life, not your whole life.
Speaker 1:Thank you, josie, so much for coming on. We can't wait to continue to see your adventures on your Instagram account. Thank you, everybody else for listening and cheers everybody officially. If you liked this episode, please rate, review, subscribe and, even better, share it with your friends. Cheers.
