Interview with Kelly Hof, her journey with degenerative disc disease

Kelly Hof, RN, mother, chronic warrior discusses her battle with degenerative disc disease and how she has overcome her disease and learned to thrive.

Transcript

 
This is Brandy Schantz, and you're listening to Living Chronic. Today I'm speaking with Kelly Hof, registered nurse and podcast host herself of the birth journeys. Welcome Kelly. Hi. Good to be here. So today we're gonna talk a little bit about your experience with chronic illness. You have both asthma and degenerative disc disease, and I know that even though you come from a medical background yourself, you're an rn.
When you were first diagnosed with degenerative disc disease, You were in medical school. Mm-hmm. . And of course your father is also a surgeon himself. Mm-hmm. . So you have a very unique perspective because you are in the medical field, I think. Uh, so tell me a little bit about what it was like when you were first diagnosed with degenerative disc disease.
Well, first of all, it took a while to get figured out what was going [00:01:00] on, um, at the beginning. , it was hard to decide whether it was my back or something else going on cuz I was having, um, recurrent urinary tract infections at the same time, um, which was also painful. So, , we. I went on medical leave and did some physical therapy and I had a little bit of improvement and so then I came back the next, um, I believe it was the next semester to medical school and started all over again.
Started, um, yeah, basically started all over again cuz I tried to get through the first semester and it didn't really work out and I felt like I haven't had improvement in my pain, but I was still having all these urinary. and they tended, they got worse when I went back to medical school. Um, so I noticed that sitting down in the class and sitting down to study [00:02:00] was a huge problem.
So all that physical therapy I'd done kind of got erased after I came back because I was doing so much sitting. Um, and on top of that, my urinary symptoms were getting worse. So there's a whole lot going on trying to figure out what was causing the pain. We ended up, I ended up passing some kidney stones,
Cause what we thought was chronic urinary tract infections was some developing, uh, kidney stones. So that was interesting. Um, we had to do a lot of studies to see if, if it was u t I versus. Um, a kidney infection versus kidney stones. And they didn't actually really see kidney stones. They just saw some Hy Nephrosis, which was some water in the kidneys.
And what ended up happening is I passed what was just, it looked like sand. It was a whole bunch of sediment. Um, and finally that kind of [00:03:00] what they call renal colic, the. It's just like your kidney is trying to pass the kidney stone, squeezing it out, that kind of thing. Um, spasming that went away, but I still had the musculoskeletal pain, so, After going through all that.
On top of that, I actually had to have the surgery cuz I had, I had a cyt on my wrist and it was causing like numbness in my hand. There was so much going on. Also had my wisdom teeth out all at the same time. Oh my gosh. Yeah, just, just pretty cheering, just a lot. So it's just, I was like, I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm having to focus a lot on my health.
and it's really hard to focus on school when all this is going on with your health. So I took another break from medical school, which turned out to be the last break from medical school because I didn't go back, but during that time, I was trying to work, I was a Spanish interpreter before I went to medical school, and so I went back to work as a Spanish interpret.
And I noticed that I couldn't work [00:04:00] for more than like four hours at a time without being in excruciating pain. I would go and, um, I would go see patients and it was kind of a joke cuz we all shared an office and I would just, I'd bring a towel and I would stretch on the towel and then after stretching out would kind of have to like lay down underneath the desk.
And people just had knew that I had like my little nest under the desk. Because I was in so much pain, I'm just, I'd just be like, okay, call me when it's my turn to go to the next patient. acting and overcoming to the next level. Yeah, it was just like, I was like, I'm not gonna just stay at home. I'm not gonna make this something that is gonna stop me from doing anything.
Anything. Right. So it was just rough. So I went back to physical therapy. I found, I went to a chiropractor. It didn't really help. Um, at the time. And then one day I was, and we had figured out by all by then that there was evidence of degenerative disc disease because I'd had enough [00:05:00] x-rays and MRIs to be able to look and see what's going on.
And they said that I had the back of a 60 year old woman and I was in my twenties. Oh my. So . So I then started having issues with. I guess you could call it chronic bronchitis. The definition of chronic bronchitis is bronchitis for more than six months, and I was working in a children's hospital during H one N one, so like you do , you get sick and get mm-hmm.
Chronic bronchitis. There were times that I had to, I remember going down to the children's ed when I was the only interpreter on and I was like, Hey, since y'all don't actually need me at this moment, could you maybe, um, hook me up to a breathing treatment, charge my insurance, and then right when you need me again, just call me back out here while I just go die.
I knew that it was chronic bronchitis herself. I feel your story. Yeah. And all the pain associated with it. Yeah. I was like, I'm gonna, [00:06:00] I'll be here to help you and I, I can put down this breathing treatment and walk over to the next patient and talk for you. Which I did a couple times actually , and then I called my manager and was like, listen, I need to leave for 15 minutes to go pick up these inhalers at C v s cause I need to get started on my steroids.
It was nonsense. . And so, um, all that was happening at the same time. I was having chest pain, which who knows what that was from. Turns out later, after I had repetitive chest x-rays, that I had broken ribs from the chronic bronchitis, which I no longer have chronic bronchitis, cuz it, after a while it went away.
I don't think it's a chronic, chronic, chronic bronch. It's like once you get past six months, you can call it chronic bronchitis. And then, you know, after like nine months or whatever, , it went away. Well, congratulations. Thanks. But the asthma didn't. Yeah, so the asthma didn't. The asthma's still there. So I was going through all that and one day [00:07:00] a massage therapist came during social work appreciation week.
We, the interpreters were in the social work office. We had an office with the social work office at this particular hospital, and they. Had massage, they had a massage chair for everybody. And I went in to get my massage and I was like, oh, thank God, cuz I can't make it through this day without it. And the lady was asking where my problem areas were and I kind of pointed.
To my lower back and hip. And she said, do you have hip problems? And I said, well, I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's just radia radiating pain from this area where the disc is bulging in my lumbar spine and every other part of my spine . And she said, yeah, but you are pretty, this is, you have a lot of tension in this hip.
And she said, I work for a chiropractor that I think could actually really help you break down where all these problems are. And. On each specific area because I don't think it's just your back. I [00:08:00] think you've got a lot going on. And I was like, okay, well that's probably true. So I went to her chiropractor and what I would do is I'd go, her name was Joan, the massage therapist,
I remember she would do a massage and I think my insurance paid for four massages at the time. So we had like, yeah, it was like a four week. Situation where I was able to do four a massage before each treatment and after doing all that for four weeks, the chiropractor. Said, you know, I would expect a lot of improvement.
We've done X-rays, we've, we've done MRIs cuz she had sent me to get new ones just to see if there was anything else that she could see. She wanted the views that she wanted and she did x-rays in her office and just really wanted to know what was going on. And she said, you know, I would expect a lot more improvement at this point, so I'm gonna stop the therapy for now because what I want you to do is focus on.
the inflammation. So I'm gonna send you to this pain [00:09:00] clinic that I work with and I was kind of resistant cuz I'd been to pain clinics before. I'd had trigger point injections, epidural injections, a lot of stuff, but not, not as extensive as what she was proposing. Mm-hmm. . So this clinic, they did injections.
They did them as, as frequently as the F D A would allow. They didn't, they were not conservative by any means. They just really attacked the problem. So since I had lumbar and thoracic involvement, I was able to get epidural injections in both areas. So what they would do, if I remember correctly, cause this is a like 20 years ago, I believe we did a injection every week and we would just alternate areas.
So one time would be in the thoracic. In the epidural space and then the next time would be in the lumbar spine. And it was very, it was very difficult. Like I had to, I, I believe by then I was working full-time because I needed insurance and . So, so that was [00:10:00] hard. Unfortunately, that's the way of things, or part-time or something, whatever it took for me to get insurance through the hospital.
Cause I couldn't afford it anymore. And back then, that was before the Affordable Care Act. So having, having, um, a medical issue. Really made it commit condition. So they could, I mean, they could drop me at any time, so I, I had to get it through work. So we ended up doing every, every week we would do an injection, so I had to get F M L A for that.
I ended up getting it for my asthma because I was so sick all the time. And I would go every Friday for six weeks. So I had to be off every Friday cuz I would go in, I had to have somebody drive me because they would give me verse head. , which is an anti-anxiety med, and it makes you really super loopy.
Mm-hmm. . And then they would do this epidural injection, and then I would have to be in recovery for a little bit and then somebody would have to drive me home and I'd have to not do anything like no heavy lifting, no extensive movement because I had just had an [00:11:00] injection into the epidural space at my spine.
Um, so we did this for six weeks and by then I was able to go back to the chiropractor. and I didn't have as much inflammation in those areas. And so then she began doing these treatments and it was actually really helpful. Oh, that's great. Yeah. So then things like the physical therapy exercises that I had been, Taught to do, started to help.
And I felt like I was kind of on the way to recovery or management, I don't even know if you call it rec recovery, because it's a degenerative disease, right? So it's never gonna stop, right? It's never gonna stop getting worse, but we can manage it. And so I feel like I'm 44 now, so I was 27, 26, 27 when all this started going on.
Um, I've managed to have, I was told I might not even be able to have kids because of all the pain. Oh, wow. Yeah. . If they were saying, with all of the instability of my spine, it might be, uh, horrific. But I was like, you know what? I'm gonna try anyway. So [00:12:00] children. I found a chiropractor. Yeah. I found a chiropractor that treated women who are pregnant.
Yeah. So that was very helpful and we were very proactive with that. But just being proactive with exercise. Chiropractics, uh, choosing a career where I could be flexible and not be sitting down all day. Cuz as I had mentioned before, I learned that sitting down and studying all the time was not helpful.
Just putting all that pressure on my spine. Um, so yeah, that, I mean, I'm not gonna say I'm pain free cuz I'm not, but it's very manageable, manage and I think that's, You know, the lesson learned, that's what I hear from every chronic illness patient. No, my chronic illness is not going away. It's there forever.
I can't cure it, but I can learn to manage it. Mm-hmm. and still live a very fulfilling life. . And of course, you know, I, because I know you, I know you have two children, so you were able to have children and you also work as a [00:13:00] registered nurse now. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. That was a, that was a good career change. what?
Just from interpreter to rn? No, str From interpreter to medical school to rn. So I rn, you're right. Yes. Right. I had to go back to school. . Mm-hmm. and retake a whole lot of classes because for whatever reason they did not count the anatomy and physiology from medical school and from my pre-med. Oh, that's interesting.
When I went to nursing school, cuz it had been too much time from my pre-med and medical school, they didn't call it anatomy and physiology. They had blocks and so they had an anatomy and or they had a physiology block. , but they couldn't, it didn't directly translate, and so that was annoying. So I had to take a lot of prerequisites over again, but it was stuff I already knew.
It was at a community college, so I was able to use my status as, by then, I was full-time at um, [00:14:00] or close to full-time. At the hospital. Yeah. When I did my pre-reqs, I was full-time and then I backed off to part-time when I went to nursing school. But they um, paid for a lot of those cause I went to community college.
no shame, man. Saves money for those of us that don't have a lot of money to spend. Right. Big money saver. Well, and my parents had already helped me with like the college, college aspect, right? Yes. They had already paid for my first. , which was in Spanish and they paid for the pre-med. And so when things just kind of went si and they paid for the medical school.
So when things started going awry, it was like, let's put together a plan. Let's figure this out. And I was finally working full-time and could manage, cuz in, in medical school you can't manage to go to work and go to school. And they, and the hospital I worked at offered tuition reimbursement and so I was able to save money and I was able to, Pay for my, I [00:15:00] actually, yeah, I was able to pay for my, um, nursing school, uh, prerequisites.
And then my dad helped me with a lot of the nursing school because I went to an accelerated program at a private school just to get through . I paid for what I could and then the rest, my dad was like, all right, cool. You, you can have some help with that. So thank you, dad. Yeah. , having a dad step in is kind of amazing.
I didn't, I didn't have that my father said, Hmm. Good luck figured out for the rest of the way. And that's when the Army came in and gave me a scholarship. Yeah, I probably, I probably, I talked to my parents about that cuz my grandma was a, a sergeant in the Marines and I was like, okay, so then I'm gonna do R OTC in college.
And my mom was like, hell no. All about it. They were like, oh, they're paying for the tuition, right, and the books and you have a job. That sounds great. . Yeah. My mom was like, no, you're not gonna go do [00:16:00] that, . We didn't really think about the war happening and all that. Well, it was, I mean, the time that I was going through, I think it was when the.
No, the Gulf War was in middle school. God, I'm so old.
It's all relative. I, I mean, well, the Gulf War, I think I was in eighth grade. Yeah. I like to joke with my husband Steve, because he was in the Gulf War. He's a little bit older than I am. Yeah. Gulf War was middle school, and then we got involved in, look at me and say, and how old were you? Yeah. I think I was 13.
Well, and that's when we learned, like my mom was like, you gotta understand the politics of war. And she's like, if, if we're just going to war for oil, I'm not sure if I want you to put your life on the line for that . I was like, Hmm. Hadn't thought of that
free school, but [00:17:00] and was thankful for it. But, . They're, I'm still paying for it to this day, but, uh, you sure are. Yeah. The chronic illness is what came with that. They, they gave a lot of stuff to me, but, um, I was appreciative for the preschool back then. Yeah. When you were young. Let's take what you can get, right?
Yeah, exactly. So, so fast forward, of course, you're a registered nurse now. You get to work with babies. I know you work with the maternity ward. Yeah. So you get to do something that you love. So you really have done a lot with. your life to make it fulfilling, which is mm-hmm. , you know what I like to talk about, um, when we talk about chronic illness, how have you made your life fulfilling despite having a chronic illness?
One of the things I found interesting about you, of course, you being in the medical field, I thought, well, she must know , how to advocate for herself. At the doctor because it took me a lot of learning. I mean, there was a learning curve. I thought, well, my goodness, these people went to medical school. I studied [00:18:00] business in poly sci.
I don't know anything. Um, so it was, it took me a long time to learn, and I thought you must have had it from day one. You've said that you're better at advocating for your patients. Yeah. So what's your It's a personality flaw. , but I think it's a, it's a personality flaw that a lot of people have. Yes. Oh, there, there's what?
Okay. We've got, we've got Owen trying to, we have kids. Is he okay? Do you want me to go grab him really quick so that he'll stop screaming? Or do you want him move on? We can move on. It's fine. , we love kids that make appearances. Okay. , I think it sounds like the nanny's. Got it. Okay. So, um, yeah, I just, in general in life, it's harder for me to advocate for myself than it is for me to advocate for other people.
I just, maybe I have. You know, a clearer vision of what's going on when other people are involved. Um, probably, [00:19:00] I don't know, when you're in the thick of it, it's hard to advocate for yourself, but I do have some tricks up my sleeve to help me advocate for myself, and that usually is since I'm, it's hard for me to process things in the moment.
So if somebody,
If somebody recommends something, you know what? He just wants a hug. I'm gonna go . I'm gonna go give him a hug really quick.
brandy: Okay. After our quick hug break, now we're gonna talk about the tips you have
Track 1: Right
brandy: advocating.
Track 1: for yourself. Um, it's okay to have to step away and process things, and I think that's what I've learned. Um, you don't have to necessarily make the decision in that moment because just like with anything else, you can feel pressure, you know, like if you're at the car dealership or whatever and they're trying to.
Get that sale or whatever it is. Sometimes you just have to step away and take a moment to process. Um, getting second [00:20:00] opinions in my world, second opinions usually look like calling my dad . Um, but I do have it like since I have been living with this for almost 20 years, um, I have a lot of people that I work with that have helped me.
my chiropractors have helped me find people. Um, I'm trying to think of who. Oh, when I was working in New York, I found the surgeon, so most surgeons, except for the very first one that I went to when I was in medical school, and maybe we should go back and talk about that. , most surgeons have told me that they don't wanna operate.
And honestly, I feel like that's the mark of a good surgeon. when they say, no, no, I would rather not have you pay me to do this Operation . Um, because I don't think we're gonna have a good success rate. Whereas the [00:21:00] ones that are just really hungry to do the surgery, those are the ones you'd wanna steer clear of.
So when I first was having these issues with my back, one of the doctors at medical school sent me to an ortho clinic, um, that was part of the university. , um, medical university hospital system is what they called it. And as you do, I saw a resident and the resident was just, I'd gone for epidural injections.
So that was what I made the appointment for. And he came in after looking at my x-ray saying that he wanted to do a spinal fusion. And I was just like, what? I'm 27 years old and you wanna fuse my spine? That's insane. And. . I argued with him a little bit and he didn't seem to want to listen. And so I was like, you know what?
Um, I'm just gonna leave. And I walked out.
brandy: Mm.
Track 1: I, they, when they, the desk was like, do you need to check out? I was like, do I, because I'm not coming back . [00:22:00] They were like, oh, okay. And I was like, yeah, I just disagree with the assessment that. doctor had and I'm, this is not what I wanna do. So you always have a right to walk away.
You don't have to be pressured in doing something. Yeah.
brandy: Yeah, that's a good point. I learned the hard way when a doctor's gonna give me a medication. I don't have to say, okay,
Track 1: Right,
brandy: you know, this isn't a directive. When the doctor says I'm gonna prescribe this, I now say, well, what is it and what are my alternatives? And then I go home, do some research,
Track 1: Mm-hmm.
brandy: then I'll call back and say, okay, I want this, or I
Track 1: Mm-hmm.
brandy: all.
I would like to go down a different path, or I want a second opinion.
Track 1: Mm-hmm.
brandy: you're right, it does take a while to learn that, to say, hold on, let's take a step. Let me take a look at what you recommend
Track 1: Mm-hmm.
brandy: then I'll get back with you.
Track 1: Right. Especially if it's in a situation where it's not an emergency, you know?
brandy: Yeah. Emergencies. I've [00:23:00] never asked too many questions,
Track 1: Right. , you kind of just deal with the ramifications later because you want this person to save your life the way that they know how, versus if it's something that's gonna affect your life down the road and it's gonna be a daily thing, you really need to be a huge part of that decision.
Because I've had medications that just really didn't work for me. I went down the the opioid route for a little bit, but thankfully I'm allergic to them. I don't know if you've actually, I wouldn't call it a true allergy. I, it was just a severe intolerance.
brandy: Right.
Track 1: I would itch until the medication was outta my system, and pretty much I would vomit every 15 minutes until it was outta my system.
So just constant itching and vomiting. I remember I got the medication and it was supposed to be a long-acting, I think it was Ultram, so it was long-acting. It was the 12 hour, and I took it and I went to the chiropractor. And like, which was only 15 minutes from my [00:24:00] house. And I was told since it was like a long acting steady dose, it wouldn't really affect my ability to drive because I was gonna have to take a, you know, taking a 12 hour medication is gonna, you're gonna have to figure out how to live your life around that, which includes driving.
And it hit me on the way back from the chiropractor, I had to pull over the side of the road and start throwing up. So I was like, this isn't gonna work. And I, I was in bed for 12. just throwing up every, every 15 minutes. It was miserable. So that didn't work out.
brandy: Probably for the best.
Track 1: Yeah, . Now we know that you shouldn't be taking opio opioids chronically.
brandy: did not tell you that
Track 1: Mm-hmm.
brandy: years ago. I
Track 1: Mm-hmm.
brandy: having a small hip fracture in the army and the first thing they gave me was an opioid. Just like. Because, you know, and at the time I was so tiny and, you know, wasn't used to anything. It just knocked me out for like 12 hours
Track 1: Mm-hmm.[00:25:00]
brandy: But, uh, nobody thought twice about it.
Track 1: Yeah.
brandy: I'm glad we've gotten through past that
Track 1: Yeah,
brandy: for certain.
Track 1: for sure.
brandy: Yeah, so I always ask this of everyone. So I wanted to ask you, what do you wish you knew when you were first diagnosed with your chronic illness?
Track 1: Man, I should have thought about this cuz I ask people this all the time.
brandy: by
Track 1: Okay.
brandy: with this podcast, after however long I end up doing it, maybe hopefully for some years to come. I'm gonna end up writing a book about this
Track 1: Right.
brandy: has something so insightful
Track 1: Yeah.
brandy: I feel like I can just keep writing them down at this point.
Track 1: So I'm gonna go to a kind of a dark place with this one because I think everybody with a chronic illness needs to hear. I, in my twenties, I wasn't married, I didn't have a family and I didn't have a career per se. I wasn't planning on [00:26:00] being a Spanish interpreter for the rest of my life. And I'd gotten to the point where I was so ill that I was living in my parents' basement because I just didn't feel safe living on my own.
And just a whole lot of other life changes were happening at the time. So it was just the place where I needed to be, and I really was just like, If this is the rest of my life, I just, I want, I want it to be over. I don't wanna do this anymore. I can't live like this. This is awful. Chronic pain is horrific.
And what is the end game? Is this gonna be like, am I gonna be able to achieve anything that I wanna achieve? I can work for like four hours if I'm, if I'm willing to put up with excruciating pain and I can barely function. So like, what am I doing here? . I think what I would want to know is that I will figure it out, and it's not necessarily forever now, that's not the case with every chronic illness [00:27:00] or you know, if someone's diagnosed with cancer or something like that.
You kind of have to do a different, you know, you have to plan differently for that, and that's just making the best of what's left sometimes. , I, I didn't know that there would be a time that I would be able to manage, uh, the pain and the chronic illness and that I would have, I would learn steps to mitigate the symptoms of my chronic illness that made it possible for me to go on every day.
And honestly, I am at the point now where I forget, like when you, when you contacted me about chronic illness. What does she want me to talk about? , it's not that interesting. And then I really have to dig deep and go back to those days where I was, I, I don't know that I was, I don't think I would say suicidal.
I was just, the practicality of going through life like [00:28:00] that was just really, really hard to wrap my head around and not being able to. really envision what my life would look like in the future because I didn't know that I would ever actually be able to mitigate my symptoms and find a solution that made it so that I could be productive and do the things that I wanted to do, which included, you know, get married, have kids, have a career, all those things.
And even after I got married, I wasn't even sure if. . I wasn't sure how miserable pregnancy would be. Now, I'm not gonna lie, pregnancy is miserable, but , it wasn't necessarily miserable for those reasons because I was able to mitigate the chronic pain symptoms. So yeah, I would just tell myself that You will figure it out.
You can figure things out.
brandy: I think that's probably one of the most important things. I've been through some dark places
Track 1: Mm-hmm. ? Yeah.
brandy: when you're just faced
Track 1: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
brandy: this going life [00:29:00] forever?
Track 1: Mm.
brandy: I figure out how to live like this?
Track 1: yeah.
brandy: But like you said, we do find a way,
Track 1: Mm-hmm.
brandy: it's, you know, through a new pain management program, new medication finding. A way to, uh, work around your disability. I love that you became an RN
Track 1: Mm.
brandy: that enabled you to work throughout your disability, and I think that's very inspiring. I know many of us are going through that right now. People listening today are saying, well, I'm trying to figure out how I move forward in my career with my chronic illness. So it's really great to hear an inspiring story about going back to school, becoming an RN, and finding a way. live your best life with the chronic illness
Track 1: Mm-hmm. . I mean, there were times, I mean, I just wanna paint the picture because it wasn't easy. You know,
brandy: no,
Track 1: I was, I glossed over the hard parts a lot. . I mean, yes, I would lay under the desk, but I would also have to stand up in the back of the room. When I was [00:30:00] in class, oftentimes I was on F M L A for a lot of that time.
I would, um, in order to proje protect my job. And it just felt like that would be forever. And honestly, I don't use, I don't have M F M L A anymore because I have a flexible job where I can pick up when I am able to. Yes, exactly. So, , there are ways to figure all of this out, and so it doesn't have to be, you don't have to fit into society's mold.
You, you can mold society too.
brandy: I like that you
Track 1: Yeah.
brandy: in society's mold. You can weld society to fit you,
Track 1: Yeah.
brandy: but that's what people are going through right now.
Track 1: Right.
brandy: with a chronic illness, what you might be in it today, might have been in your past, it might be coming up again in your future, but we've all been in a dark place where things are very difficult and you're just not sure how you're gonna move forward. So I think these inspiring stories are really meaningful
Track 1: Yeah.
brandy: it shows us [00:31:00] that there's a way
Track 1: Well, and if you're, if you're one of those people that's in the darkness right now, just know that the space you're in right now is normal
brandy: mm-hmm.
Track 1: and everybody with a chronic illness has been in that space. So you're not alone, even though it feels alone, and you can reach out to other people that have been through it and you're not.
Find the answer by reaching out necessarily. You're not, you're not gonna have somebody that's gonna hand you the answer, but you, you will, you have the tools that you need to, to fit your, to fit into your life so that you can move forward.
brandy: Absolutely. That's great advice. thank you Kelly. Thank you for
Track 1: Sure.
brandy: Chronic today. Again, today we were speaking with Kelly Hoff, registered nurse, friend and host of the Birth Journeys podcast.
Track 1: Thank you.
brandy: you.