I'm Not Dead Yet!
A close look at an extraordinary life with Parkinson's Disease. Quirky and irreverent hosts Judy & Travis take a look at this most tragic of events: life with an incurable disease and why it’s important to declare that I'm Not Dead Yet!
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I'm Not Dead Yet!
EP-133 Wheels, Words, and Willpower
When Parkinson's disease progression begins to steal your voice and your stability, what options remain? Travis opens up about a frightening downward spiral that left him falling repeatedly and struggling to communicate - the very foundation of his identity and independence.
"If I can't talk to you and have you understand me, then I am trapped and I'm no different than somebody locked in a cage," Travis shares, revealing the profound isolation that comes when Parkinson's affects speech. After years of managing symptoms with medication and Deep Brain Stimulation, Travis found himself facing a new reality: needing an electric wheelchair and watching as waiters began addressing his questions to his partner instead of him.
The conversation takes an unexpected turn as Travis reveals his experience with Vyalevⓡ, a recently FDA-approved subcutaneous delivery system for carbidopa-levodopa that doesn't require the permanent abdominal port of earlier systems. Just days into this new treatment, Travis describes subtle but meaningful improvements that allowed him to hike at 10,000 feet elevation when he'd previously struggled to take out the trash without falling.
This raw, unfiltered discussion explores the emotional impact of disease progression, the difficult decisions about assistive devices, and the constant search for solutions that preserve dignity and independence. Travis's philosophy resonates throughout: "It's better to be out there doing something cool than looking like you're doing something cool, but not actually" - a powerful reminder that living fully sometimes means embracing the tools that enable participation, even when they challenge our self-image.
Join us for this deeply personal exploration of finding hope when standing at the edge of what feels like a cliff, and stay tuned for part two where we'll continue the conversation about this promising treatment option.
- Co-hosts: Judy Yaras & Travis Robinson
- www.INDYpodcast.net
Welcome to I'm Not Dead Yet with Judy and Travis, a podcast about living an extraordinary life with extraordinary circumstances.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome to the I'm Not Dead Yet Podcast. I'm your co-host, Travis Robinson. I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at age 35 in 2014.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm Judy Yaris, your other co-host. My husband Sandy had Parkinson's disease for 18 years, and I was his care partner.
SPEAKER_02:Today's episode we'll be talking about the Parkinson's disease progression and how that progression can impact your relationships, your self-worth, and all the manifold areas that PD affects your life.
SPEAKER_01:Right. This is a really important one, Travis. And I think that we should start off by saying, I just want to point out to some people, if you have been a listener for a while, and maybe from day one, way back in 2021 when we started, which it's hard to imagine that we've been doing it this long. I think you've heard Travis at different points where he has sounded strong. He has sounded a bit wobbly or guttery sounding, a little bit what's the correct word I'm looking for? I think just difficult to understand at times. Maybe that's a good way to describe it. And as a person sitting across from you, seeing you, I've seen you when you've been smiling and feeling good, and I've seen you when you have been in clearly the most excruciating pain and in really like horrible. So I think for our listeners that have been with us a long time, you've seen the ups and downs that Travis has experienced with his Parkinson's. And so tonight we're going to explore a little bit about something different. Number one, you may notice his voice sounds a lot stronger. And we're going to talk a little bit about what has brought that on. And he's kind of laughing at me right now and smiling. But we're going to take a look at this. And we're also going to take a look at what has led to this new surge of strength that he's feeling at the moment. So let's start off, Travis. I know we touched on a little bit in our last episode about the trip that you had been in Iceland and you had a wonderful trip, and it was a great photography expedition for you.
SPEAKER_02:It was, yes.
SPEAKER_01:And that when you got back, it was really difficult. You were having some issues.
SPEAKER_02:It was, yeah. And it was the kind of thing that any one given day, any one given hour things were not that bad. But when you took a step back and looked at the summary of like day-to-day life events, you know, from falling over trying to get a piece of pizza, to, you know, spending an hour folding laundry so that I didn't fall over while I was doing it. It was a pretty distinct decline. And that's really the only way I can put it is it wasn't like, oh, I forgot to take my meds one day or oh, I didn't exercise one day. It was just every day, everything from any point to any point that you wanted to put any measuring stick to sucked that much more than the preceding day.
SPEAKER_01:Right. You were just on a spiral of going down.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I I know because for a bit there, sometimes Travis and I talk during the week in between sessions, and he was like silent. You know, I didn't hear anything. So then I got kind of worried, thinking, oh, he must maybe he's traveling because he he is allowed to go on trips without telling me, which he does frequently. But um, and that's okay. You could you're still allowed to do those things. Uh you have a man of free will. But I knew that he was somehow going through something a little deeper. And during this time, I think it was difficult for you, not only as your persona, how you see yourself and the strength that you bring to the table when you come to a support group or you talk to people that you first meet, or when you talk to someone that's asking you about DBS and medications. But I think it really impacts how you feel about yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, sure. Because one of the key areas that this downward PD spiral affected me was in my speech, my very way of communicating with the world. Right. My interaction platform with pretty much everyone I interact with from my poodles to my girlfriend and the listeners of this show. If I can't talk to you and have you understand me, then I am trapped and I'm no different than somebody locked in a fucking cage.
SPEAKER_01:Right. That's so true, Travis. And I I think that I've heard you and I've seen you in that position, and I know how stressful that has to be for you.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and it's the thing that I don't think a lot of folks without direct first person experience with PD can really wrap their head around. It's like, oh, your handshake, so that must suck. It's like, no, man, my handshake, so I can't type and I can't write. And then when my voice starts wobbling too badly, I can't even use the speech to text features on my phone or my computer, and then I get real upshit creak real fast because when I ask someone for help, they can't understand me. And the waiter starts looking at my girlfriend when I ordered. Like, what will your retarded fucking stepson be having today? You know, it's really impactful, not only in how I'm treated, but even in the perception of how I'm treated by other people. No friends get angry at waiters on my behalf.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And that has to be a difficult position for you, Travis, as an independent person, to feel like I'll fight my own battles. I don't want you to fight my battles, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right. And that's if I can fight my battle, I just want to order fucking dinner, not have a fight. Right. You know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, I see that. So I think that you've made this shift here, and I want to talk a little bit about it. So as you saw yourself going down this Parkinson spiral and feeling, I'm assuming that maybe you felt a little hopeless along the way. And you rarely hear that from Travis, by the way. If you're a new listener, you might not know this about Travis. But he fights, he doesn't give up, he is always positive, no matter how bad it is. In the next minute, he will find something to feel grateful for and be on to the next step. And I think that you weren't able to do that this time.
SPEAKER_02:Not really well. I mean, I'm a strong believer, Judy, in that we always have a choice, even if we just can change our outlook, not the external situation that we're in. Right. We can always change our outlook. But sometimes changing our outlook does not do a whole lot for us. You know, when you're looking at the bottom of a ramp that you've slid down, and at the bottom of that ramp is a cliff in the air, there's just not a whole lot of ways you can spin that to be positive. Of course. You know? Yeah. And that's just how it is. And that was honestly sort of the perspective I was starting to come up with. Things as we talked about in the last episode here at the house had been challenging for me. Just moving around, doing the ADLs, uh, daily living tasks.
SPEAKER_01:Right, feeding the dogs, getting yourself dressed, going to the bathroom, making coffee, making breakfast, making lunch. I think Travis moved into a new place. It's been what, a month or two since you've moved into the new space, and it's a little bit smaller. It's good, but it's not ideal. And so that presented some challenges for you.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. And even if the size and the layout were all fine, there's the fact that I'm still living in part boxes because we've had to replace everything. Right. And so getting new furniture, it comes in boxes, and there's these huge cardboard piles that we have to get rid of once a week. We go through this big song and dance to, you know, march out all the cardboard to the end of the curb, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:And that became so difficult, and I was falling so often that Sarah was afraid for me to take the fucking trash out.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Which has not been an issue for you up until this point.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And like I just want to emphasize for folks that don't know me, I should be able to take the trash out. That is not high on my level of physical prowess, but it was proving to be too much of a challenge for me to execute safely.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So, with that in mind, you had to make some adjustments.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And I think Travis had mentioned to me before we started this that he had gone on another photography expedition and he was away shooting. And when he came back, Sarah had something there for you at the house. Yes. You wanted what was it?
SPEAKER_02:Well, she she had talked about getting it for quite a while, and we had both decided that it looked like I would probably need it sooner than later. And it was an electric-powered wheelchair. A fucking wheelchair.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Which you have not ever said that you felt like you needed that.
SPEAKER_02:Right. But you know, when you fall eight to ten times in the space of two hours, you start really questioning whether you're stable on your feet. Yes. And so, always solution-minded, I was looking for ways to get around that would be a little safer, but would also be realistic for the things that I still wanted to do. Of course.
SPEAKER_01:And I also want to point out here, in this situation, Travis has a partner, a long-term partner. Right. So it's not just Travis having to make this adjustment, it's Sarah having to make this adjustment. So there's a lot of moving parts here with this. It's not like, oh, honey, we're ordering an electric wheelchair. No biggie. Okay. Right. That's not the way the conversation goes. It's a big conversation. And most people don't want to have that conversation.
SPEAKER_02:Right. We didn't want to have that conversation. And we had told ourselves that, you know, it would be, you know, years down the line, regardless of when that conversation happened. It was always many years from now. Whenever now is.
SPEAKER_01:Whenever now is.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. And the fact of the matter is, is we had that talk again, I think about a week ago, you know, before I left on the trip. And she said, you know, do you think we need to pull the trigger on this? And I said, we might as well, because I don't know when I'm going to need it.
SPEAKER_01:That was smart. So, Travis, for you, you haven't always looked at assistive devices as your enemy. And I know it's hard as a young person, which you are, having to use something like that, or whether you have to use a walker or whatever it is, Kane, whatever you would use. I know that you have always been willing to use an assistive device if you needed it. You sort of let your ego go. You accepted it, correct? Not necessarily saying you liked it, but you have been an acceptance of it.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it's something that I remember an old climbing partner of mine talking about when he was sort of mocking folks that dressed up like climbers but didn't go climbing. He said, it's better to be out there doing something cool than looking like you're doing something cool, but not actually. I like that. So I've always figured that I may be wearing a diaper or toting a cane or in a fucking electric wheelchair, but damn it, I'm gonna show up and do the cool shit instead of being at home where no one can see me anyway. What, looking like I'm doing cool shit? No.
SPEAKER_01:No, not that's not you.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_01:So you had the wheelchair at the house. So let's kind of look at the progression now. You came home, and we're gonna go back like two years, in two years from July. You and I were in Barcelona for the World Parkinson's Congress, and we saw a lot of cool stuff there, so many different things. And I'm gonna give a shout out to Olgock and the new shoes people. We met them, we saw the infrared, that was pretty great.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the light.
SPEAKER_01:The light, the light helmet that looked so cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I mean, we saw a lot of things, glasses. There were so many assistive devices that were so interesting. And some of them have made it to the States and some had not. But there was talk. And I think for those of you that are really digging deep into what's new with Parkinson's and what's available to you, you know that this year there's been a lot of movement within delivery systems, subcutaneous, sublingual. There's so many new ways to get carbidopa, levadopa. And so at that time, a lot of it was still being tested in Europe. It was not here in the States.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Because we have the Food and Drug Administration who, for all the good that they do, they don't do it particularly quickly.
SPEAKER_01:No, seven to ten years to get anything to the market. It's sort of agonizing to see how long it takes them to get things to market. It's stressful for the patients when you realize how long it takes. So I think with keeping that in mind, I think that you had a lot of different things that you saw and you thought were pretty cool and you know you tested them out when you were there. And so now, two years later, you see yourself really losing ground. You feel like your Parkinson's has really progressed quite a bit. And it's been 11 years, so it's a progressive disease. It makes sense. It might progress a bit here or there. And I do want to give some background. He eats well, he exercises every day, he plays pickleball, he does mountain climbs. What else do you do? You do all kinds of things. He installs bars, grab bars for friends that have PD that don't have grab bars in their homes. He's sort of a jack-of-all trade here. And all of a sudden now he's having difficulty doing these things. So for you, Travis, I know that you are always researching and looking into new things. And you want to be cutting edge in every way from your red and purple hair or your orange hair, whatever you have for the month or week. And so you were looking into some of the delivery systems that were available or that were available then, but not really available to us here in the States.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And even if it comes to the States, if it's in the form of a clinical trial, I knew a couple folks who had participated in this when it was a clinical trial. And that's great and all, but I was waiting for the real deal to hit the market. And I'm not too excited when it comes to new drugs. There's not something that generally gets me too excited, but I had progressed from the Carbidoba Levinoba generic cinnamon that I was put on, you know, about 18 months after diagnosis through the various extenders like intacapone and did you ever use Comptan?
SPEAKER_01:That's another extender.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Comptan and some of the adjunct anti-agonists, maybe? Agonist, dopamine agonist.
SPEAKER_01:Not anti-agonist, the agonist. Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That we hear so many horror stories about. And I pretty well settled on an extended release, carbonoba levadoba in the form of Ritari, and an agonist in the form of the new Pro Patch, which is brand name of Ripinerol? No, it's Rip Sagelline.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, Risagelline, right. Okay, Risagelline.
SPEAKER_02:And I'd been on those for a long time, and I eat a lot of those pills in the day.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Can we even talk about that a little bit, Travis? I I want to say, because I hear people in groups go, oh, I'm taking so many cinnamon. I take two, three times a day. I'm taking six pills a day. Can you just say how many cinnamon you've taken? What has been the max you've ever taken in a day for a week or two, or a lot, or even a month or two, or a year or two? What has been your max of cinnamon in a day?
SPEAKER_02:Regular cinnamon, I was taking 24 a day. Yep. And I had the horrible nausea that about one-fourth of the people taking Cinemat get. And so I was taking the pills, throwing up violently, projectile vomiting, taking more pills, projectile vomiting again. And that's when I got DBS the first time.
SPEAKER_01:The first time, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Because I was looking for any option at that point that was not just another fucking pill. Right.
SPEAKER_01:And at that point, Travis, when you had your DBS, it was pretty successful for you, yes? I worked with my teams. Uh Plural. Teams. I just want to emphasize that a little.
SPEAKER_02:Plural. I worked for about four years to get a DBS system dialed in to be as good as I feel like it can be. Okay. And that took me two different DBS units, two brain surgeries, and a whole lot of programming sessions. I mean, like, I was in there every two weeks for six months.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So for those of you that think that you get DBS and they start it and it's it's perfect, no, no, no, no, no. It is a process and it is timing, and you have to fine-tune it and then fine-tune it again. And with each fine-tuning, you may have other symptoms that may pop up, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right. And the DBS may even cause some of those symptoms. Right. The first unit I had had a distinct and decisive impact on my speech. It warbled my speech because the subtelemic nucleus, for those of you who may not be up on your brain anatomy, is right next door to the voice capsule, which is the part of the brain that controls speech. Yes. And so if you have a slightly out-of-alignment deep brain stimulator, or if it's just too broad of a stimulation pattern, or too strong of a stimulation pattern, it can mess with your voice, and you can end up talking Charlie Brown's fucking teachers. Yes. So then you're in this devil can take situation where you're trying to improve your PD symptoms, but you're also trying to not make your voice worse. Because we just started this episode talking about how that compounds your PD symptoms and further isolates you, further impacts all your relationships because your friends, even when they do like you, they don't want to hang around with someone that can't talk back.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So with that said, okay, you had a pretty good run for a while.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:With your DBS. And and I know that you've always been a big proponent of it, that it really helped you, and without it, you would have been terrible. You knew that you would be really terrible.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and and I'm still of that belief and mindset. Okay. And my team, as it is today, still uses the D-brain stimulation as another axes for treatment.
SPEAKER_01:Right. It is a treatment. So this is what we want people to understand. It's not going to cure, it is a treatment. It's no different than them adding if they were going to give you another set of pills or a different cocktail to take on a daily basis. It is a tool.
SPEAKER_02:Right. It is a powerful treatment tool. Very powerful tool. And one that has profound and very fast effects, which is something I like. It's not like the doctor gives you a new pill and says, take this for two weeks and see if it gets better. Correct. You know, I walk into the DBS office and I can walk out feeling the change.
SPEAKER_01:So that's very significant. So now we've established that DBS has really been one of the best things for you.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And those of you that started with us early on, I just want to make this point again that when Travis told me he wanted to do a podcast, I looked at him and said, What? Are you fucking crazy? Like you what? A podcast? And he said yes.
SPEAKER_02:You were thinking, what are we going to call it, Mr. Mumbles and Friends? I mean, speaking clearly was not in my wheelhouse at that time.
SPEAKER_01:No, it really wasn't. But you made a lot of strides. I mean, you started working very closely with speech pathologists. You went into the Parkinson's Voice Project. I mean, you really have put your time into this, Travis. And not without it showing a lot of amazing results because you were doing very, very well there. So I would say it all really paid off for you. But now let's fast forward to a couple of weeks ago or a month ago. Actually, it was two months ago. It was April when you, or June. It was in June when you were at an event, a PCLA event. We'll give a little plug here for PCLA. There are the lunch and learn. We had this amazing lunch and learn with Dr. Ray Dorsey talking environmental issues and Parkinson's. And you happened to come upon a table of one of the pharmaceutical companies. So you want to mention this?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it was the pharmaceutical company, Abby, who makes a lot of PD drugs. And they probably more specifically to this conversation, they made the Duoba pump, which is because it's still available and you can still get it.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:It is an intratestinal delivery system of carbonoba levatopa. Yes. And let me be real specific. There is an operation where they put a tube into your small intestine. It's like a port. And then they have a little port on the side of your abdomen.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:That you can never go swimming with or be submerged in a body of water. Yes. And poses a lifetime infection risk.
SPEAKER_01:Right. But I just want to say people that are on dialysis oftentimes have that same type of port. There are many different medical conditions where people have to have this peg put in. People that have difficulty swallowing sometimes get a peg to help with that.
SPEAKER_02:It's a G tube, and it's used for a whole lot of things, long-term hospice care, all kinds of things. But as someone who's active and likes to go off into the woods where I don't have access to showers and sterile conditions or even clean conditions all the time, and who might be running, jumping, climbing trees, and scrambling over rocks and mountains. I didn't want anything that could, you know, snag my intestine dangling out of me. Yes. And so I was very interested when the rap told me about this new system that they had. It was the same that I had heard about in Barcelona. And it's going by the trade name Biolev in the state.
SPEAKER_01:And just so you know, we're not paid by Avi, and we are not endorsing the product in that way. But Travis, I just want to do a little disclaimer here. Travis is expressing his experience with the drug. And personal opinion. And personal opinion. So I just want to be clear about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, they have not paid me or asked me or even know that I am talking about the drug, and they may or may not be happy about it when I'm done talking. Right. So yeah, there's for that. But I heard that it had gotten FDA approval as of October 20th, 2024. So this was actually in April. So it was just about six months since it had hit the U.S. market. Right. Well, I'm not one to dig around when it comes to treatment that I want that I zoom in on and decide is right for me to try. So I reached out to my friends in the PD community and found three or four of them who had been on this contraption because it's not just a drug, it's a drug delivery system, it's a whole treatment package. Right. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Very similar. Can we say that it's similar to when people use an insulin pump? It has certain qualities to that. I've heard people say that. That might be wrong, but I've heard people describe it that it's similar. Yes, and maybe in size.
SPEAKER_02:Right. If that's the thing that you can recognize and picture in your head is if you know a diabetic who has this little thing that sticks from a tube into his gut, then on the outside, yes, that is very similar.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Just to give people a visual of what it's like the size and what it's similar to. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:And so I talked to a few of my parky friends to get their first person experience, including one that had the same type of dystonia that I had with the face cramps that used to pull my mouth out of shape, which made it hard for me to talk because there was like it felt like I had been hooked by a fishing hook and was getting my tongue yanked sideways and my face off and to the left. And she had told me that it was a real game changer, and I could see that when I video conferenced with her. And so I went to my movement disorder specialist, whom I have a great relationship with. He's awesome. And I told him, I said, Hey doc, what steps do I need to take to get on this here Violev? And he said, You want to do that? Okay, we'll file the paperwork for you. Because it's not covered by any drug program. Hmm, this is a big one. It's not even considered a drug by the drug program. That's interesting. Yes, it's covered under my Medicare Part A. Okay, not for hospitals. Oh. Because it's considered an infusion system that you have to get under the care of a doctor. So similar to the treatments that you get for MS or even dialysis, really. So dialysis might be a strong analogy, but I think it's a little between the insulin pump and the dialysis.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. I know about dialysis a little bit because of my mom, and I did have to administer it for her, and it was a scare, it was scary to do that, the risk of infection and everything, because that was invasive, and she did have a port. And I always felt when I was changing the dialysis bag, I always felt like I could kill my mother if I do this wrong. One one little thing and I could take her out. So it was it was a very tense time doing that. But now this particular experience is not like that. And I think that's what's making this treatment more inviting. It doesn't have that infection factor, I think, right?
SPEAKER_02:It doesn't have the hole in your abdomen to the abdominal part. Okay. It does rely on subcutaneous canola, is the word that they use. Yes. Which, if you can imagine getting a shot from a small gauge needle, you know, one of the very fine needles that stays in you. 24 7. So it's a plastic needle, if that brings anyone any comfort, but it's a needle that stays in you.
SPEAKER_01:So there is But it goes under the skin. It's not penetrating deep into the fatty tissue and everything, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right. It's just under the skin into the belly fat. Okay. Which is why they recommend it. The site in their vocabulary is on your belly, because that's where most folks, or at least most men, carry a little extra subcutaneous matter.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So how long ago did you start this, Travis? Four days. Four days. Five? Okay. Yeah. And did you notice a difference right away? Like, was it something where you just stopped your Ritari and you started this, or you still were taking the Ritari? You still are taking Ritari. You want to explain this transition?
SPEAKER_02:Sure. So the day of, and first let me back up and say that Abby as a company makes incredibly sure that we as the patients are well supported. That one I will give them free of charge. Okay. Make sure that any questions I have, any concerns, any thoughts about questions that I might have, and even some that I don't, are answered in a very fast and efficient manner. That's great. So before Thursday, which is when I started this, I was shipped a book all about how it works and what to expect. And then I was sent links to videos on how to work the pump system, change the medication and changed the cannula and all the other parts of it. And then, in case I couldn't figure it out from a book and a video, they sent a nurse ambassador to my home to explain it in person. Which is fantastic. And to make sure that I could do it. She actually tested me and had me show her, walk her through the whole thing. Wow. Backwards and forwards. And then when I went to my doctor, they sent yet another nurse ambassador to the doctor's office to make sure he had any questions he had answered and dialed the settings and you know tuned it to match. Because I did stop taking Rotari that afternoon and haven't taken it since. Okay. So Thursday afternoon at the doctor's office, I started this and honestly did not feel that much different. Thursday night went to bed. Friday, got up, kind of puttered around. It was the inconvenience of wearing this thing because it is a like a little fanny pack, right? Yeah, it's smaller than a bread box. Yeah. About the size of a slim brick. Not as clunky as a 1985 cell phone, but maybe a 1992 cell phone. Okay. Okay. You know, if that's good. Put it in the bird. That could help. And Friday I had planned, so I stayed up late packing for this photo Safari trip. And I don't know that I felt real good that day either, but I didn't feel as bad as I might have otherwise, considering how late I stayed up and how much stress I'd been under. And I'd just come back from another trip and was planning this trip. And it was something that I did sort of notice towards the end of the night was, hey, I'm not doing as bad as I think I maybe should be. Oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_01:So you noticed a little something.
SPEAKER_02:A little something Friday night. Okay. About 24 hours in. All right. And then Saturday, I got up, packed the car, and with two friends drove up to the Sierras, where we drove up to 10,000 feet in elevation, broke out with some camping and photography gear, and I was hiking around at 10,000 feet, taking photos with my large format camera. And I again noticed that I wasn't doing as badly as I thought I might be.
SPEAKER_01:So at that point, Travis, you made it through the weekend, obviously.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. I came back from my trip, and that's probably when I started to feel the changes most significantly Sunday night, Monday, uh daytime. I really started to notice the effects, and particularly in areas of my speech, which, you know, is the thing that probably most affects the listeners and everyone else who wants to understand what I'm saying. And I want to pause here, number one, because it's getting a little long for one episode, and we might even break this into two.
SPEAKER_01:That's what I was thinking, Travis. Why don't we why don't we take a break and we'll come back and record part two of this episode?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
