Breaking the Silence on Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS) and Medical Trauma

In this episode of Living Chronic, Brandy Schantz speaks with Vanessa Abram, author of 'Speechless' and a chronic illness warrior. They discuss Vanessa's traumatic journey from being a speech therapist to becoming a patient who lost her ability to speak. The conversation delves into the profound impact of medical trauma, the struggles of recovery, and the misunderstandings faced in mental health treatment. They emphasize the importance of recognizing and addressing medical trauma, the challenges of living with chronic illness, and the need for greater awareness and empathy in society. In this conversation, Brandy Schantz and Vanessa Abram delve into the complexities of Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (PICS) and the profound impact it has on individuals and their families. They discuss the varied experiences of trauma survivors, the importance of community support, and the challenges of navigating chronic illness. The conversation emphasizes the need for greater awareness and understanding among medical professionals and the necessity of advocating for resources and support for those affected by PICS.

Transcript

Brandy Schantz (00:01.186)
Hi, you're listening to Living Chronic. This is Brandy Shantz and I'm here today with Vanessa Abram. She is the author of Speechless and a chronic illness warrior like so many of us. So welcome Vanessa.

Vanessa (00:17.302)
Hey, thanks for having me.

Brandy Schantz (00:19.896)
So first of all, I really love your book. It's a great read. You can sit down. I like to read before bed to try to help with my sleep. So I was able to sit down and get through it within a few nights. It was just a really easy read, great before bed. But a really great synopsis of everything you went through, which of course was a lot.

you know, one of the themes of your book, Speechless, how a speech therapist lost her ability to speak and her silent struggle to reclaim her voice in life. I mean, that's very powerful. Speech therapists. you know, talk about, you know, your life, you know, turning into your own work. Tell me a little bit about your story and what was that like going through this as a speech therapist yourself?

Vanessa (01:12.608)
It was unreal. Obviously when I went to grad school, it's not something that I ever envisioned in my life being. I never envisioned that I would be the actual therapist in the bed being evaluated for speech and language or tube feeding and swallowing therapy. And it was something I never imagined. for me to be on that other side caused immense anxiety, immense depression. I quickly was able to learn what my patients went

through. It's terrifying to wake up one day, the day before, completely fine, verbal, able to communicate to the next day of, wow, I cannot even vocalize. All I can do is blink my eyes to communicate. It was unreal being the patient on the other side of the...

the drawing board there. was, you know, I woke up in the ICU using an eye gaze device that I used for one of my patients. That was unreal too. I woke up and all of a sudden right in front of me, my husband was using an eye gaze device and I thought, whoa, as you read in the book, this is something that I made six months ago. This is not supposed to be used on me. This is supposed to be used on someone else. Why is it here? And of course, seeing that I just laid there in bed.

Brandy Schantz (02:11.238)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (02:23.61)
Yeah.

Vanessa (02:32.021)
paralyzed crying that's all I could do I couldn't say anything

Brandy Schantz (02:36.192)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's traumatic. And I understood how you felt when I was reading the book. Of course, like so many people who listen to this show, we've had some traumatic event happen. Our health, you know, maybe it happened overnight, maybe for some of us it happened over a long period of time. But I could really feel that trauma that you felt, that you're trapped in this body. can't even, you know, you talked about when you got hot, you couldn't even

take off your own socks and blanket, nor could you tell the nurse, hey, I'm hot, get the socks off my feet. So looking at that from the perspective as the person who suddenly couldn't speak instead of the speech therapist, did it give you any additional insight into what people may be going through or what kind of frustration they may feel?

Vanessa (03:27.402)
It gave me a whole nother perspective on trauma. That is the big thing for me now because as therapists, are all taught, especially in today's world, in post COVID, we're very trauma informed. But it taught me that medical

Brandy Schantz (03:31.578)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (03:39.333)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (03:47.288)
The medical journey and navigating the medical journey and being in ICU is traumatic. It changes you. And I don't care how old you are, if you are a newborn in the NICU or you're a 95 year old woman that's trying to learn to breathe again, talk again, swallow again, it is traumatic and it changes you to the core. It is PTSD.

Brandy Schantz (03:54.268)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (04:12.406)
And you know what? honestly don't even like to say it's PTSD. I don't like that D component because it's not a disorder. We are just a product of what we have experienced. And for me, I have experienced being this healthy, vibrant mom to literally overnight falling asleep, waking up feeling, I don't feel well within seven days, paralyzed in the ICU. And that loss of self

Brandy Schantz (04:18.724)
Right.

Brandy Schantz (04:22.876)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (04:39.66)
was so significant it sent me into this massive tailspin of who am I? I am no longer the same working speech pathologist slash mom slash wife slash daughter slash very healthy, vibrant gym goer and now I am this new person that can't do any of that and I'm sitting on the couch waiting for my husband to tube feed me. That is legit trauma known as post intensive care syndrome.

Brandy Schantz (04:45.434)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (05:09.105)
Right.

Vanessa (05:09.584)
ICS picks that I talk about in my book and people aren't talking about this there are ICD codes for everything else in the planet other than medical trauma and what we endure and you get this is trauma trying to function again trying to get back into the workspace trying to you know for me trying to learn to eat again and not swallow and choke on food in front of my family

Brandy Schantz (05:24.688)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (05:39.088)
Yeah.

Vanessa (05:39.456)
This changes the cells, who you are. And it's nothing that we can just snap our fingers and then get out of the ICU and say, yay, we're grateful for life. We have seen things, we have witnessed things, just like people coming back from war, military veterans. They have seen things, they have witnessed things, they have smelled things, have, you know, the whole body sensory experience. And it doesn't just go away when you come back home.

Brandy Schantz (05:57.18)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (06:08.72)
Right? And you know what I find interesting, and we talked about this a lot, you know, when you've been through something like this, when you've, and when I say something like this, it doesn't have to be exactly what you went through or exactly what I went through. We all have experienced trauma and it looks different for each one of us and has various triggers. But one thing I hear all the time is, you can't, know, PTSD or, know, you didn't go to war. You know, you weren't a soldier. Well, I was a soldier and I did go to war.

And I can assure you, this is the same kind of trauma. I'm, there are days I think I'm far more traumatized by what has happened to me over the last five to 10 years versus what happened to me 20 years ago almost now in Afghanistan. So, you every time people talk about, you can't really be trauma. No, it very much is trauma. And there's nobody who prepares you for losing your life as you once knew it. Nobody.

There's no class to take. There's no seminar to go to. There's no way you can prepare yourself and say, okay, this is it. I'm about to get into it. It's severe. It's traumatic. It's sudden. And it's hard to negotiate.

Vanessa (07:26.222)
Everything you just said is so true. And like I said in my book, I was out camping. I'm thinking, you know, I'm going to go out on a nice little family vacation. We're going to have a good time. We're going to unwind from a very stressful month. And little did I know that I was going to go out for one day, wake up the next day and feel like, wow, I got a really bad case of the flu. And then slowly progress to, wow, I can barely hold my head up. Like I said in the book, I woke up in the middle of night and I fell out of bed and I thought,

Brandy Schantz (07:32.764)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (07:56.229)
This is not right and it's just abrupt and it's something that you cannot prepare for. You know for me I just thought I have a cold I have a flu I just feel nauseous and

but it just came out of nowhere and the loss of self, the grief, the grief that accompanies critical illness is so profound. again, not talked about. Brandy, when I got out of ICU, I lost so much weight from the atrophy and being tube fed. I withered away in days, but I was in there. I was in ICU a month. So you can imagine the weight I lost. And I came home,

Brandy Schantz (08:12.016)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (08:38.768)
The first thing I knew, well obviously I try to set up outpatient speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, but I also knew I needed mental health. The first mental health therapist that I went to see, I told them my story. She assessed me, she looked at me and said, wow, you've lost a lot of weight. You know what she treated me for? An eating disorder.

Brandy Schantz (08:49.243)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (09:00.621)
no.

Vanessa (09:01.684)
Yes, not the fact that I said, look, my swallowing muscles are paralyzed. They do not work. I have a tube in my stomach because I cannot swallow food. She wanted to put me on a program, the same program for somebody with an eating disorder. And I just wanted to scream. I walked out of her office crying because I thought, I'm being accused, not accused, but she's telling me that she, I guess what I'm trying to say is she just misunderstood.

Brandy Schantz (09:18.908)
Mm-mm.

Vanessa (09:31.598)
didn't understand medical trauma. I was just in the ICU. I'm tube fed. I wish to God this never happened to me and I wish I still weighed my previous weight but I don't because I'm being tube fed. I was paralyzed, muscles atrophy but people are uneducated. Nobody knows that this is trauma.

Brandy Schantz (09:31.792)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (09:53.104)
Well, what makes it more difficult is you were re-traumatized by going to the mental health therapist and having her misunderstand what you had gone through. And now you're reliving that trauma in so many ways. You're having to tell your story again. You're having to hear your story doubted in some way or misunderstood. And you're now being diagnosed with something that's completely unrelated.

And that's a story so many of us can relate to because we've been through it and we all get re-traumatized by that over and over and over again. That's the reality of

Vanessa (10:29.686)
You just said something to the doubt. When people doubt you, that hurts. It is harmful, it hurts, it makes us not have hope.

Brandy Schantz (10:32.955)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (10:36.707)
it's the worst.

Vanessa (10:43.628)
And when you don't have hope, you want to commit suicide. You want to die. So when people doubt you and they say things like, well, Brandy, you're 10 years from that diagnosis or Vanessa, this was six years ago. Why are you still having PTSD, PTS? Why are you still crying when you see an ambulance? Why is it that when you saw your daughter go into the same MRI machine that you went into for something completely different, why does that still freak you

Brandy Schantz (10:47.108)
Yes. Yeah.

Vanessa (11:13.552)
It's because it's trauma and we don't snap out of this. This is something that we just have to continually learn to cope with. We have to figure out strategies. It's something every morning I wake up and I think, okay, when I hear this sound, if I see an ambulance, if I have to go to a doctor appointment or get an MRI, like how am going to get through this?

Brandy Schantz (11:25.392)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (11:41.104)
And you what's interesting about it is nobody doubts that when it comes to veterans. We've talked about veterans, PTSD, PTS, trauma, whatever it is, we talk about it all the time. We raise awareness, we remind people, check on your veteran friends, ask them if they're okay, remember the suicide hotline. It's really hard for me to understand as a veteran.

why it's so difficult for people to be able to relate that same thing, but to somebody with medical trauma or a different kind of trauma. I can assure you, know, I, you know, the Crohn's diagnosis 10 years ago, wrecking my life that still sits with me the last five years from when I started having my reaction to Humira until I finally got it, you know, real diagnosis four years ago and then continuing today.

Yeah, I still live with that trauma just like everything I went through in Afghanistan. It's no different. It's not.

Vanessa (12:42.894)
It's no different and it deserves equal attention, but it's not because it's just not talked about. Universities are not teaching their nurses, they're not teaching their doctors, they're not teaching their speech therapists, social workers. I had a friend recently ask me, and she didn't mean this to be hurtful by me, she was just trying to gain more information about PICS, post intensive care syndrome, but she goes, Vanessa is a

of this trauma due to poor nursing and poor doctors and I said absolutely not because I at the first medical facility UCSD that I was at received exceptional care and you've read that in my book. Doctor was attentive to me, they were aware, they did all the things that I needed, they gave me comfort, they decorated my room with my daughter, they would talk to me about my daughter, they did everything perfect.

Brandy Schantz (13:25.766)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brandy Schantz (13:39.089)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (13:39.224)
but the medication, the delirium, the, you know, I was on medical grade fentanyl and Dilaudid and the hallucinations. I talk about it in the book where I was thinking and they were cutting me open. It's not that the medical staff was bad, but they had to do these things to save my life. They had to knock me out, probably to intubate me. They had to do various medical procedures and that medication makes you hallucinate. makes you, and then the trauma too.

Brandy Schantz (13:49.904)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (13:53.766)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (14:01.894)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (14:09.168)
like when I was in the first ambulance I rode in three ambulances but the first one I was seeing like kaleidoscope of colors and so yeah I talked about that in the speechless as well that the medication causes some of this post-traumatic stress and anxiety and you know loss of self it doesn't matter if you had the Rolls Royce treatment your life changes and then you come home and then you

Brandy Schantz (14:18.959)
Yes.

Vanessa (14:39.088)
understand this, you have countless follow-up appointments. And like you said, you're thrown right back into the mix. Go back and see your neurologist. And going to see the neurologist, I talk about my book, I'm vomiting in the parking lot because I'm so anxious and so fearful of the fact that, well, the potential fact that, hey, maybe they may tell me I'm terminal. Maybe if I go in there, you who knows what they're going to say, but you're just constantly, it's chronic, chronic

Brandy Schantz (14:43.782)
Yes.

Vanessa (15:09.048)
PTSD. You're just constantly reliving that fear and those visions and again not talked about.

Brandy Schantz (15:10.064)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (15:18.876)
Well, and I think it's important to point out too, so while everything in so many ways happened overnight for you, nothing was overnight. And again, we all present differently. We've all experienced these things in different ways. But I always say for healthy America out there, healthy world really, have listeners everywhere and the stories are similar no matter what country the person I'm interviewing is in, you think when you're healthy that

something happens, then you go see a doctor, whether by ambulance or by car or however you got there, and the doctor looks at you, probably knows exactly what's going on, takes a test, does a test to confirm this, and then voila, you have a diagnosis, treatment plan, let's all move on. And that's not what happens at all. Blood tests come back inconclusive.

First they come back fine, then they come back not fine. There's a soft science to it that you just have no idea about. If you're not in the world of medicine, if you had ever told me that medicine was actually a soft science based on hard sciences, I would have thought you were crazy. But now I know it is a soft science based on hard sciences. And there's a lot of analysis that your medical team has to do to start to get to what it is wrong with you.

Even when it's very severe, it's not just, you people think, you know, what are the, what's the problem? They can't figure out if it's IBS or Crohn's, or are they trying to figure out the difference between lupus and this, you know, how, how hard can it be? Well, you lost your ability to swallow and speak. You were paralyzed and they still couldn't, they didn't know you, you know, you're in this hospital bed and they did not know what was wrong with you. And that's traumatizing as well.

Vanessa (17:11.498)
Yes, I was just gonna say that I wasn't diagnosed for months. I was tube fed for four or five months and that not knowing what was going on, what my future self was gonna look like.

Oh my gosh, talk about anxiety. Like laying there in bed thinking, I ever going to be strong enough to get behind the wheel of a car again? Am I ever going to be able to be the mom that I once was two months ago where I was walking with my daughter in the stroller? I was going to gym all the time. I was, you know, very active working professional. Am I ever going to be that person again? And yeah, it's, you just said everything that was on my mind.

Brandy Schantz (17:32.54)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (17:59.364)
It's traumatic and I'm so happy we're doing this during Mental Health Awareness Month. It's so important. My physical health has obviously deteriorated. We all know this. This is obvious. It's the mental health that people don't talk about enough and many people don't understand and the trauma and having to relive that trauma, especially as you have to retell your story because we have to retell our story.

It's not over. It's not one and done. It's months of waiting for a diagnosis, sometimes years for many of us. It's treatment plans. It's getting a medication that works and then building up a tolerance to that medication and having to start all over again. It's having to tell your story to each and every doctor you see, doctors who are very unfamiliar with what you went through, doubting what it was, your friends even.

having to explain over and over, no I can't do that, but you look fine, I may look fine but I can't do this. All of those things, all those little things, it's being re-traumatized every day.

Vanessa (19:09.678)
you know what I'm dealing with now is, Vanessa, you wrote a book. You must be totally fine. Like you must, you are a warrior. You must be so strong. And then I have to say, tell them the truth and say, that book took me five years. It didn't come out in two months. I have been sitting on that book for years. And was it easy? No.

Brandy Schantz (19:25.744)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (19:35.416)
Sitting there at all hours of the day and night, 2 a.m. waking up with insomnia from my PTSD and thinking, okay, either I can get up and go work on my book or I can lay in bed with flashbacks. Let me go write this book. But yeah, just because we look and we get out of bed doesn't mean we are okay. Writing the book for me and reliving that, like you said, is like going back into the hospital again, printing out all my medical notes, sitting on Zoom calls

Brandy Schantz (19:43.388)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (20:05.36)
with all my therapists, with my doctors, with my nurses too, sitting through them, through Zoom calls with them and interviewing them again and having them tell me what they remember. I had to walk away from the computer many times and just close it down and.

Brandy Schantz (20:21.66)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (20:24.246)
take an hour or two a day away from it or a year a month because it was just walking back into that world again and again trauma and we're not talking about this nobody realizes it until you've been there.

Brandy Schantz (20:29.18)
And yeah, couldn't handle it.

Brandy Schantz (20:43.192)
It's so, I mean, this is just a really great time to really get into these stories. And I hope that this episode is shared with your friends, your family, your coworkers, because people don't understand and it's difficult to explain. You know, I was telling you, I started the podcast just so I could find a way to stop crying. I just didn't know what to do. you know, could, every time I got up, I got knocked down again. So, you know, it wasn't a one and done. It was just up and down, up and down.

And I thought, well, this might help. And it did in many ways, but also I had to walk away just like you so often. I just took a break. I'm like, OK, you know what? I can't do it. I'm crying. I'm in pain. I can't relive this. I feel like I can't get through to the other end of all the stuff that keeps piling up. It's difficult. And things that might seem like no big deal to others are very painful for us. You know, I recently went to Paris with friends.

It was two friends and then one of my friends, her in-laws, because they were both running the Paris Marathon. And there were so many, you I still haven't been able to really fully talk about the trip and how I felt with my friends yet because I was so traumatized by it. And I don't, it's hard to figure out how do you explain that to somebody without being like, hey, you traumatized me, you know? Because it's just not something you understand, but you know, getting over there. And of course,

I told them before I left, cannot be out sightseeing with you every day. I don't have the capability. And of course, I've done more physical therapy than you could ever imagine. I mean, I am physical therapy central. am always, you know, I miss breathing exercises, yoga, I'm up with my PT for every appointment I never miss. I'm, you know, doing all the balance exercises, you name it, I'm PT central. So I have gotten better, but I just can't, you know, I'm...

I'm never going to be myself again. There's no way to cure this disease. It's here. So I tried to explain that. And I found out when I got there, I was still on docket in this big spreadsheet for every single event. All the museums walking all day. And I didn't want to be the squeaky wheel, so I kept trying. And sure enough, I went down. But in my kind, it was very

Brandy Schantz (23:04.208)
Brandy fashion, I went down while trying not to complain. You know, so was walking with them to a museum, not complaining. And my legs just, they were done. They gave out. I just, couldn't make it. And I saw a little chair and I said, guys, I'm just gonna go right over here and I'm just gonna sit. I can't move. And I ended up spending about five, six hours sitting at a park in Paris, reading a book, but I couldn't move. My legs, they, they could, I couldn't move.

And I finally was able to slowly make my way over to my little car, an Uber back to our place. And somewhere along the way, somebody on the trip said, you know, I thought that you should have always been able to do that. I mean, if you want to do what you want to do, do that. You didn't have to do all the things with us. And I said, well, I wasn't just doing what I wanted to do. My legs gave out.

And then some the comments like, we know that you still get out and run and you're faster than us. I mean, I don't know what to say. First of all, I was a runner. I'm nowhere close to as fast as I used to be. There's a scale here, folks. I slid way down. It might still be faster than you, but that's really far down. Also, I can't run every day.

There's days I can't walk. There are many days I can't walk. And having to explain that over and over again and have it doubted, yeah, it's traumatic. It really is.

Vanessa (24:38.55)
And do people look at you and say, be grateful?

Brandy Schantz (24:42.853)
All the time. gosh.

Vanessa (24:44.066)
You know, you look so good. You're able to walk now at once. And this is my story too. Look, you're walking now. Look, you can drive now. Be grateful. You should be grateful. And some days, no. Some days, honestly, we'll wake up and say, wow, do I want to live another, who knows? Do I have 20 years left? Do I have 40 years left? I don't know.

Brandy Schantz (24:54.66)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (25:09.176)
But is this the way I want to live the rest of my life? I don't know. And it's really hard to just say, I'm going to be grateful today. Like, that just doesn't always happen. And it's not that easy, folks.

Brandy Schantz (25:21.148)
No, I never understand that. Or there's always the at least you don't, right? At least you don't have a missing limb. At least you aren't homeless. Why are these the options here? Traumatic life event that makes me lose my physical capabilities and puts me down for five years or lose a limb?

Vanessa (25:27.406)
Bye.

Brandy Schantz (25:50.118)
How about at least you don't have to understand what it feels like to be in my life? Because it's not easy.

Vanessa (25:50.125)
Yeah.

Vanessa (25:56.322)
And those comments discount how you feel.

Brandy Schantz (25:59.29)
Yeah, it is very dismissive as if you're, it implies that your experiences are less than somebody else's experiences and they're not, they're not.

Vanessa (26:10.784)
And what a lot of the things that we have are also invisible disabilities, the exhaustion. You can't see our exhaustion. You know, you may stand up and walk to the refrigerator, but that doesn't mean that you can walk a mile.

Brandy Schantz (26:16.186)
Yes. No.

Brandy Schantz (26:24.346)
No.

Vanessa (26:25.422)
and they don't see what's going on up in your head. That depression and that anxiety over loss of self, loss of identity is real. People think that we're resilient and I have to sometimes second guess that. Like people talk about kids and medical trauma is another thing I'm passionate about because kids can't articulate this.

But what is going on in a little child's mind? We're able to talk about, I feel anxious about this. This ambulance is making me uncomfortable. But what about those kids when a white coat comes into the room and they clam up, they start having fearful thoughts.

Brandy Schantz (26:49.52)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (26:56.474)
Yeah.

Vanessa (27:01.874)
Or what about these young children that almost watched their mom or dad die or lost their mom or dad in COVID or their grandparents during COVID? They cannot articulate this. They don't know what's going on. All they know is that that hospital or that place or that white coat, that image, that smell scares me. That's real.

Brandy Schantz (27:06.679)
It's tremendous. So hard.

Brandy Schantz (27:12.335)
No.

Brandy Schantz (27:21.87)
Yeah. And it's natural to lash out. And it's also easy to judge the people who are lashing out. If you're a kid, maybe you're just having a temper tantrum or crying and it's, cry, the doctor's here to help you without ever really focusing in on, well, it's okay to cry. You may feel a certain way. Or as adults, we lash out in all sorts of ways. I've had complete meltdowns.

you know, at the doctor, but you know, I just can't take it anymore. I can't, you know, and that's, let me have my meltdown. I'm not, I'm not a bad person, but I'm human. And you're right, people always do say you're resilient. Well, you know what, I guess I am, I'm still alive, but you know what, so was every other person who was resilient up until they weren't anymore. Every suicide was a resilient person at one point.

Vanessa (28:10.37)
Yeah, and I feel like sometimes, yeah, and it's not that easy to just bounce back.

And I think about that so often. People say, look how resilient you are. Look how resilient you are. I just think, I don't know, resiliency to me is this ability to bounce back. Are we resilient or are we just at that point of acceptance where we're like, OK, this is where we are. This is my new body. This is how it's going to work.

and we accept it, I don't know, but you know, again, people always go back to kids, kids are all resilient, they snap out of it, they bounce back from everything and childhood traumas, adverse childhood experiences, ACEs leads to substance abuse, concerns when they're older, cancers, you you name it, anxiety, depression as adults. So kids' medical trauma needs to be addressed too and we live in a world, especially

Brandy Schantz (28:45.531)
Yeah.

Brandy Schantz (28:54.256)
They link, they, they linger.

Vanessa (29:11.088)
coming out of COVID where people were really sick. Kids were hearing really scary words like death and dying and intubation and ventilator. And these are big complex terms. Kids don't know what they mean. All they know is, hey, grandma was in the ICU or dad was in the ICU on a ventilator and then died.

Brandy Schantz (29:17.564)
Yeah.

Brandy Schantz (29:34.384)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (29:35.446)
And those kids grow up having fears and anxieties and depressions without a parent. And again, circling back, this needs to be talked about. We need to be bringing this to the news, getting people help.

Brandy Schantz (29:48.432)
Yes, exactly. And again, I can't emphasize enough. Every suicide was once an inspirational, resilient person. Every suicide was once an inspirational, resilient person. It's a cycle. There are some days I'm out, I'm ready to save the world. I'm heading down to the hill.

I'm going to lobby some Congress, I've got an idea for a bill. Let's get to work. Let's get on this podcast and get some outreach going. Let's talk to people. There's other days, it's hard to get out of bed. It's really difficult to get out

Vanessa (30:25.676)
Yep. Yeah, some days you feel like a warrior and you're super resilient and then the next day you wake up and you're exhausted, your body aches, you're in pain. Yep.

Brandy Schantz (30:39.118)
And some days it's, of course the days I feel worse, those are the worst days, aren't they? And that's part of that living with a chronic illness. Some days I'm like, okay, I'm doing pretty good today. And then there's other days, the fatigue, and no, that's not as the same as being tired feeble. The fatigue, it's just, I can't take it anymore. I start feeling the pain, my legs aren't working. I turn into like a little child. My husband's at work, I'm at home.

I want, you know, something to eat, but I, you know, I can't really get up off the couch and I want, you know, my darn grape snack and nobody's here and I'm throwing my own little fit in the dogs, you know, who are sweethearts. I know they're just looking at me thinking, mommy, if I could get your grape snack, I would. But, you know, every day is so different. And I think that's very important to point out just because

I seem resilient doesn't mean that every day I'm doing great. I have really bad days. And we all do.

Vanessa (31:43.406)
Talking about that fatigue, I was telling a friend just this morning, I sometimes I feel like my body is four feet behind me. Like I'm cruising along and I'm so exhausted. My limbs feel so heavy that my nervous system is not keeping up with my physical body, that it's like dragging behind me. That if there's like blocks on my legs, just...

Brandy Schantz (31:51.396)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (32:10.884)
like I go to the gym and I'm like okay Vanessa let's see if you can just walk another five minutes or three minutes and the legs just feel so heavy and then you know the depression hits in and then when the depression hits in it's hard to snap out of that

Brandy Schantz (32:23.556)
Yeah, it's really difficult. It's really difficult. I don't know how else to say it. And we all go through it. you know, we talk about, we're not talking about it enough, PICS, post intensive care syndrome. And I think a lot of people hear that and they think that that must mean they have an exact same experience like you did. Rushed to the hospital.

Vanessa (32:32.802)
yeah.

Brandy Schantz (32:50.978)
overnight lost your ability to speak, you were paralyzed, I think it was on the right side of your body, all these things and it took many, many tests over and over and over again before you were finally diagnosed with Guillain-Barr syndrome and people think, okay, that's exactly what PICS looks like, but that's not how it looks like for everybody and I think that's important.

Vanessa (33:16.2)
So many people.

Yeah, I've met so many people with PICS and everybody has a different story, different hallucinations. I have a good friend that has a difficult time going into the dental office because of the drills, the sounds, the sections, and reliving all those noises of them coming into the hospital room and trying to brush her own teeth while she was sedated. that is traumatizing for her to the point that it's years from, she's been out of the ICU setting

Brandy Schantz (33:21.296)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (33:32.659)
yes, I understand.

Brandy Schantz (33:43.258)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (33:47.206)
years plural that she still hasn't been to the dentist because of that trauma that reliving of all of that for her. So again everybody has a different experience like I said before my my team and the ICU was phenomenal I was so blessed and I still

Brandy Schantz (33:55.492)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (34:08.546)
have all of these flashbacks, the depression, the anxiety, the exhaustion, sometimes the brain fog too. think, okay, what did I do with that? is the, know, and trying to juggle everything is very overwhelming.

Brandy Schantz (34:16.316)
Okay.

Brandy Schantz (34:21.701)
Mm-hmm.

It is. I tell people often, it's been a while since I had the reaction to Humira. Now, to be clear, the doctors did not catch it for 19 months. So I was left having this reaction for 19 months until I was paralyzed and had just lost so much. My brain was gone. It was just so much had happened to me.

came off the drug and you would think, okay, that's your turning point, everything goes up. But still to this day, if I'm having a flare and I started taking a new drug, which is rare because I am very hesitant to take new medications for good reason. But if I start one and maybe there's a little flare, maybe I just think I feel a flare. Maybe I think I feel my muscles starting to tighten up again and my legs not working. And I panic.

And I can't tell you how many times I've called a doctor in complete panic. It's happening, it's happening, it's happening again, it's happening again, it's drug induced lupus, can feel it, it's getting in my nervous system, I can feel it, I have to get off the med. And they've had to talk me off the ledge more than once. That is trauma. I don't know when it will stop or if, I just don't know. I don't know.

Vanessa (35:41.408)
I I had an answer to that one because I thought, when I got at ICU, I thought by six years I should be totally good. Maybe in six months I'll be fine. I was healthy when I went in. I had a great baseline. I thought, I'll recover from this. Like the trauma, mentally I'll be fine. Uh-uh, I still attend PICS support groups. I sometimes attend two hours a week of PICS support groups. That's six years out. I figured by now I would be good

Brandy Schantz (35:42.928)
Yeah.

Brandy Schantz (35:48.839)
yeah, yeah.

Brandy Schantz (36:02.747)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (36:11.312)
to But no, I still need support. still need my community. It's like, Brandi, you say you made this podcast so you wouldn't cry every day. This brought you your community. This brought you to people like me that you can connect with that help you through it so you don't feel alone. For me, yeah, it's my support groups. It's connecting with other people that have had strokes that, you know, name it. You brain aneurysms, Crohn's, whatever, MS. These are trauma survivors,

Brandy Schantz (36:22.224)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (36:41.232)
survivors that understand what it's like to try to get out of bed, function as a working professional or even another working professional, trying to be a mom, trying to be a wife, just trying to survive another day. And for me, that's what's gotten me through it. If I didn't have people that I could lean on and call or just text at random points of the day and just say, Hey, I'm feeling pretty bad. Can we talk or how you do it? And they'll say,

Brandy Schantz (36:55.504)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (37:11.252)
today's a horrible day here's what's going on I can help them they can help me but without having those connections in that community I talked about that in the book like that's been one of the things I think saved my life honestly

Brandy Schantz (37:16.528)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (37:27.578)
Yeah, yeah, it is, it's a support that's and I think often we feel like we're alone or we don't want to bother people, especially women. I don't want to bother anybody with this. maybe I'm feeling dramatic. I don't, I don't want to be dramatic, but that's not true. And you have to reach out and find your people because it's not easy to survive this. And you know, this is something that happens over and over again.

You're not crazy. You're not weak. You're being traumatized over and over again. And so are we. We're all in it together. We're all going through this. So you're not alone. We feel the same things. And I feel crazy a lot too. And that's why I get on here or go to my Instagram and find my people there and we chat. And it's important because none of us are crazy. We feel crazy, but we're not crazy. This isn't normal to go through this.

Vanessa (38:26.508)
Yeah, I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like, I don't want to tell them that story because they're gonna say, there goes Vanessa again. Complaining about her illness again. I'm tired of hearing about how tired she is. You know, she's going to work. Is she faking it? She must be fine. She's going to work and she's doing all the mom things. She's taking her daughter to the park and...

Brandy Schantz (38:35.045)
I know, yes.

Yes.

Brandy Schantz (38:43.622)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (38:52.348)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (38:55.202)
So I have that personal issue where I think, I'm just gonna bottle this up. I'm gonna mask it. I'm gonna pretend like I'm okay because nobody wants to hear from the woman that's chronically ill, that's tired, that has a hard time getting out of bed. And that's not fair to us though, because we need people to talk to about these feelings, but we don't wanna burden people with our, and it's not drama, this is real.

Brandy Schantz (39:17.148)
Yeah.

Vanessa (39:25.206)
These are real fears, real concerns, real feelings that we're going through.

Brandy Schantz (39:26.862)
Yes. And you know what? Hey, we all learn new stuff, right? I had no, again, I had no idea that medicine worked the way it did. Wasn't until I was a healthy woman, who knew? But now I know, you know, there's no quick fix. There's no one test. There's no one treatment plan. Doctors disagree about things all the time. Your life is just pure chaos so often.

Because it's not just a quick blood test and Eureka. There's not one MRI and ha ha, we got it. And it's hard to explain that to people who've never been through this because they do see you walking with your daughter or going for a short easy run or going off to Paris with friends and explaining to them that vast space between the two realities.

My capabilities range so wide.

And people just can't seem to wrap their head around it. And in a way I understand, because I still can't wrap my head around it some days. I'm like, are you kidding? Are we back here again? I can't tell you how many times I've done this little dance where I do my MRI. The radiologist looks at it and says, hmm, probable MS. And then my neurologist looks at it and says, hmm, I'm not sure. And I'm like, can we ever get to the end of this?

Can we ever get to the end of this? No, and you know, I've been on a wait list for a year to see the one of less than 100 specialists in dysautonomia. I finally have my appointment in June, over a year. I mean, it's so hard and I can't even understand it most days. I think this can't be real. This can't be real.

Vanessa (41:18.286)
I know, is this my life? Is this really my life? I'm like, someone pinch me and wake me up from this bad dream. This can't be, yeah, this can't be not only six years, but I was so fit. was so hot, like you running. What on earth happened? How? How

Brandy Schantz (41:23.132)
Now. Now.

Brandy Schantz (41:30.417)
Yes.

Vanessa (41:35.982)
fall asleep and wake up and there's some virus attacking my medulla and pons in the brain stem? Usually viruses attack your nose or your nasal passages and you get a stuffy nose. How did this virus land in my brain stem and slowly paralyze down to C6? This to me is mind boggling.

Brandy Schantz (41:45.424)
Yes.

Vanessa (42:02.464)
or somebody with a very, in my opinion, perfect baseline. Never hospitalized.

Brandy Schantz (42:02.57)
yes.

Brandy Schantz (42:08.198)
same.

I mean, I was training for Iron Man Chattanooga when this happened. I was like, are you kidding me? How does this happen? And that's the other point. Yeah, I can't tell you many people I've spoke to who said, well, maybe some of this was my fault. I was never healthy. I've always been overweight. I didn't exercise. I eat a lot of processed foods. And I'm like, look, you know what? Healthy weight, being active, eating a healthy diet, not processed foods, that

Vanessa (42:16.684)
Yeah, you're at the top of your game.

Brandy Schantz (42:39.014)
does improve how you feel. It does not keep you from getting something terrible. Trust me. There's more people like us out there. We're all over the place. We were healthy. We did all the right things. And that's one of the things I like to say all the time. Everybody wants to put a blame somewhere. And it's human nature so often when you see something very complex, we want to just make it as simple as possible. Because dealing with the complex, that's a lot to

take ins a lot for our brains. So we want to try to make it as simple as possible. But the reality is, I did everything right. I went to college, I went to grad school, I commissioned as an army officer, I was healthy, I ate right, I was very active, I did all of the athletics, and look what happened. And I even struggle with people who should know. So for example,

You know, as I was telling you earlier, I've been struggling with, you I became an entrepreneur to deal with the Crohn's disease. Having both Crohn's and a nervous system disorder, let me tell you, the hours necessary to run a business, it's not all flexible hours, folks. I'm exhausted. It's killing me. And every time I see my doctor, says, you got to have less stress in your life. I'm like, It's difficult to walk back into corporate America and say, look, I've done, I have some great

experience but I need to dial it back. They're like, no, I don't think that's right. Just retire if you need to dial back. But there's a lot between 85 hours a week and zero. There's just a lot of real estate there, folks. And I was trying to have this conversation with somebody at Veterans Affairs in the vocational rehabilitation. I said, I just don't know what to do. I need something that, you know, I could still work 50 hours a week even.

Not 85. I need to back up. I need to have more 40-hour weeks than 40-plus hour weeks. I need a vacation where I don't have to work on vacation. That hasn't happened in years. And she said, well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. You you have an MBA, you've been in charge of large divisions. You've managed large budgets. I mean, if you're just too sick to do all of that, why not just give up? And I thought, thank you, Veterans Affairs Vocational Rehabilitation Services.

Brandy Schantz (45:05.688)
You know, it's hard for people to wrap their head around something that seems so intangible. And I mean, it's intangible to me too. I don't completely fault you for that. But finding that way to communicate to others what we've gone through and how complex it is and that there are no easy answers, that's a challenge in and of itself.

Vanessa (45:29.571)
Yeah.

I am working hard. have some other people that I've been communicating with lately that are trying to change the ICD codes. And that's been a very interesting conversation. If we can get PICS, get an ICD code for PICS, that's gonna be starting the conversation and getting things going in the right way for people like us. Because it's mind boggling. If you took the time to look and see what some of those ICD codes were or are,

Brandy Schantz (45:37.926)
That's important.

Brandy Schantz (45:51.973)
Yeah.

Vanessa (45:59.968)
There's some pretty bizarre ones out there that I think, okay, there's an ICD code for that, but there's not for, what's that?

Brandy Schantz (46:07.714)
overly specific. Something overly specific, yes.

Vanessa (46:12.648)
Yes, yes, but I just walked into the ICU. I'm walking out, barely able to walk, tube fed, you know, used a Passy Mirror Valve on my tracheostomy to vocalize. I lost all this weight, but yet no mental health services. The one person I go see treats me for an eating disorder. Like, what is going on in this world? So I think, you know, having the conversation, the first step is getting those ICD codes and getting those

conversations in the ears of the medical professionals so they can start believing it because a lot of them think it's in your head you know you're six years out this is this is way maybe you're over that from you know I'm so sick of that

Brandy Schantz (46:52.56)
never say that.

Brandy Schantz (47:00.144)
Ugh.

Vanessa, you know it's interesting you brought up that phrase in your head. I saw a study this morning, I only got to peruse it, I haven't had time to read through it all, but the study was about how much trauma is inflicted by doctors, nurses, et cetera, telling people that their very real illness is in their head, that it's psychosomatic. And I thought of course, I mean,

No surprise over here from us, you know, this, this crew gets it. But doctors, hey, can we read this study? Yeah. Traumatic. Thank you. Stop telling us it's psychosomatic. And look, I've read, you know, I'm not, know, we, we, we re litigate this about a thousand times on this podcast. I've read all the Johnny Sarno books, you know, I'm all up to date with the psychosomatic docs who

Some of them get kind of cultish. And yes, I fully understand your brain can. There is a brain-body connection and it can manifest pain. But you know what? No. My brain did not manifest this, trust me.

Vanessa (48:19.69)
No, I know my body, you know your body. We are not dreaming this up. I wish it was a dream. Trust me, I wish it was a dream. I wish I could just... But no, I would have saved myself a whole lot of money over the years.

Brandy Schantz (48:26.684)
if I could fix this with therapy.

Brandy Schantz (48:37.669)
Ugh.

You know, and I think that's important to point out. You know, we have so much work to do. Like you said, we got to start with the code. got to, we got to educate medical professionals. Got to get that done. That's first and foremost. But you know, beyond that, we really have to, you know, discuss how these things affect others, you know, and what you say means something as a doctor.

What you do as a doctor or nurse means something. And I've had a lot of really great doctors and nurses. I've had some pretty terrible ones. I went 19 months being misdiagnosed. I have a lot of opinions. I have a lot of opinions. The reaction I had to humerus is actually pretty common. So these are things we just need to be discussing. And we need to be talking to the medical community. And we need to be doing a better job.

of communicating all sorts of things, you know, because none of us deserves to go through this. You know, I loved reading about how great your care was. The forward in your book, I do want to point out, is by Dr. Jared Rosen, and he was the doctor who gave you every time you saw him, you felt comforted. And that's so important.

Vanessa (49:43.394)
family.

Vanessa (49:56.852)
he was, yeah, he was incredible. And we still talk to this day. Obviously, he wrote the forward in the book. And as you read in the book, I told him when he departed, he was a student. I said, I'm gonna write a book. I didn't know it was gonna take five years. But he's a big part of the book because he was so...

Brandy Schantz (50:08.986)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (50:12.698)
Well...

Vanessa (50:18.346)
instrumental in helping me navigate not only the medical procedures but the anxiety, you know, for him just sitting by my bedside and not only being there for me but my husband too. You know, I talk about a lot in a lot of these interviews that I've been on since the book has launched. family, post-intensive care family, the family, kids, wives, husbands, parents, they go

Brandy Schantz (50:32.804)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (50:40.709)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (50:48.25)
through trauma watching their loved one fight for life. My husband saw some things and it's talked about in the book when I was extubated. The things that he saw, you know, in the book, you read it, him having to be removed from the situation and what he was going through, seeing me gasp for air and the noises that I was making, the fluids coming out of my mouth at that time, the things that he saw and witnessed have likely changed

Brandy Schantz (50:52.411)
video.

Brandy Schantz (50:57.328)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (51:07.952)
Yeah.

Vanessa (51:18.25)
he is. He's a man though. He doesn't talk about it the same way as you and I are right now. But these things also aren't talked about. Caregivers and their trauma, it's just this big vicious cycle that so many things need to be talked about when it comes to health care trauma that are being mis- overlooked greatly.

Brandy Schantz (51:19.494)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (51:30.299)
It's huge.

Brandy Schantz (51:40.73)
Absolutely. I, you know, of course, men and women, just typically, we do react to things differently. But I think there's even an extra layer there. It's not just being a man. When you're the caregiver, you don't want to feel like you're complaining above and beyond the patient. My wife has just been through so much. I don't want to complain about what I felt when I saw her be extubated. These are very real feelings, you know, and you end up internalizing it.

We have, we know all about Al-Anon meetings. When you are a family member of an addict, we discussed this. For soldiers with PTS, soldiers, Marines, sailors, airmen with PTSD. We understand that family needs some therapy as well. So we already know a lot of this. We know. We just need to apply it to this medical trauma in PICS because it is very much the same.

Same types of trauma, same types of support needed, same ideas. It's the same for PTSD family support groups. I don't want to complain. They're the ones going through it. Well, no, you're going through it with us. Unfortunately, it's a family event.

Vanessa (52:59.214)
My daughter recently, I have these vocal cord issues where my vocal cords don't work as they should. It's called paradoxical vocal cord motion disorder, PVFM. And she has witnessed me at a very young age.

having significant breathing difficulties where getting air into my lungs was very traumatic, not only for me, but for her being five, six, seven, eight years of age and not being able to articulate it. All she would do is just sit there and cry as mommy was gasping for air. So you can't tell me for a second that this young child watching her mother gasp for air, not able to talk.

Brandy Schantz (53:16.57)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (53:31.461)
Yeah.

Vanessa (53:39.576)
hasn't transformed the way she thinks, the way she feels, you know, she would just sit there and cry looking at me and say, mommy, I'm scared. I'm like, I am too, and I could barely talk because I couldn't even get air in. So trauma across the board with family.

Brandy Schantz (53:52.4)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (53:57.004)
Absolutely. We need to do more. We need to do better. You know, we've talked about this a bit. We have some templates out there. You know, we can follow the blueprint of veterans. You know, we know how we can get these things done. So we just need to really get out there and start talking about medical trauma, picks, the associated trauma, reliving trauma. You know, I can't...

You know, I can't remove everything from my life. I have to learn how to deal with certain things. That's just a fact of life. I can't change everything to my way. Can't snap a finger. But it is helpful when the people closest to you, your friends, family, coworkers, can have a bit of an understanding so that they know what to hopefully not say or try not to say. Everybody's going to make mistakes. You know, we're not trying to police everybody's thoughts and words and freak out at every...

wrong turn, but having a full understanding of 360 of everybody in your life to understand that this trauma is something you have to live with every day and little things can trigger it. We're no different than anybody else living with trauma. Everybody's aware of veterans on July 4th when the fireworks go off. So, you know, maybe be aware of the chronically ill people when there's an ambulance that goes by or, you know, suddenly

You see your friend who's been walking around with you shopping or doing whatever and suddenly they can't walk. They need to sit down. You know, just be aware that these are things that are often traumatic. You have to relive it and it's never easy.

Vanessa (55:43.086)
Yeah, a friend of mine, let me hold this up here. A friend of mine sent me this card in the mail and it's a card that you can give to your care, not caregivers, but medical staff. And it's postcard size and it says, I have post-intensive care syndrome due to my ICU stay resulting in cognitive, psychological, and physical challenges. And then it goes on the other side here to talk about what cognitive impairment looks like for them, what the psychological struggles and what the physical challenges are. I thought this was really

cool that if you go back into the hospital setting so they're aware that hey look this medical this doctor appointment may be traumatic for me I may cry I may exhibit these symptoms this is why because I have this and it boggles my mind with all the trauma that you have been through medically for

Brandy Schantz (56:14.256)
That's great.

Vanessa (56:32.686)
years, 10 plus years, that what if you had one person over those years telling you like you need counseling, you need therapy for this, are you okay?

Brandy Schantz (56:43.14)
Yeah, it's shocking in hindsight. One doctor, one. He looked at me and he said, you know, you've been through a lot of trauma. Have you had some therapy? One.

Vanessa (56:53.134)
And that brings up for me, told, just in past six months, I met with a mental health therapist trying to find somebody that did ACT therapy, acceptance commitment therapy. And she says, well, what is it that you're struggling with so I can help you with it? And I said, I have this thing called PICS, have you heard of it? And she goes, yeah, I've heard of it. So then I go on to tell her about the flashbacks and the...

insomnia and things like that that I'm feeling and she goes I'm sorry can you tell me again what it is that that you're struggling with I said it's post-intensive care syndrome PICS and she goes I'm sorry I got it mixed up with pica I thought it was pica pica where you know you the disorder where you're eating non-food items and she goes I'm sorry can you explain to me what PICS is I don't know I don't know what it is and I just my heart broke because I just think how are these professionals going to help

Brandy Schantz (57:34.812)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (57:42.848)
medical ICU survivors, people going through traumatic health experiences if they don't understand this. So this card to me was really, really great. So you don't have to go and relive it. You can just say here, can you read this?

Brandy Schantz (57:52.892)
That's brilliant.

Brandy Schantz (57:58.456)
It's It's brilliant. I am going to use that actually. Thank you. I mean, it's brilliant. So is your.

Vanessa (58:03.31)
Yeah, I'll send it to you.

Vanessa (58:07.384)
But it's good, it prevents you from having, like you said before, relive it and say, okay, I was in the ICU and tell your story for the hundredth time. And just to hand that to them and just walk away.

Brandy Schantz (58:22.94)
Yeah, yeah. It's that, I mean, such a great idea. We need to get that out there. You know, I highly encourage everybody to read your book. It's so great. And, you know, understanding what you went through, I think it's something that everybody who's been through anything medical related can understand. We have those emotions. We've felt that entrapment and that fear.

So it's just a really great book, really well written. And I love how much you're doing to bring awareness to picks. It's so important. So, you know, before we leave our takeaways, you know, number one, what do we have to do to increase awareness for picks?

Vanessa (59:10.168)
keep talking about it. you know, a friend of mine even said, everywhere you go out, if you're in the grocery store, if you're going to a follow-up appointment, just tell the doctor or ask them, have you heard of PICS? If they say no, educate them. If a nurse walks in and you're getting a blood sample for the day or blood draw and you know, ask them, what is PICS? Have you heard of it? Educate. And maybe that one nurse will go on to tell someone else. For me, my big thing and I'm on Equestria

Brandy Schantz (59:23.068)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (59:37.66)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (59:40.134)
now is to educate universities. I'm trying to do speaking at universities, get my book into speech pathology programs. So this next cohort that's going to be walking out treating people like you and I can identify some of these things. I would love one of my 2025-2026 goals is to make a very brief assessment that people can give an outpatient that can screen for these things. So if you came in for outpatient speech therapy, I could look at you and say Brandy,

Brandy Schantz (59:43.056)
Yes.

Brandy Schantz (01:00:03.376)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa (01:00:09.968)
or know, fill this out, or what are you experiencing? A checklist, and I could say, you know what, it looks to me like you're suffering from PICS. You need a specialist that specializes in medical trauma. Here's a list of people that you can call that can help you with this. Or here's a list of support groups. There's like, Brandy, I think there's three, maybe four in the United States, support groups for PICS. How bad is that?

Brandy Schantz (01:00:22.332)
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Schantz (01:00:35.334)
Wow, that's terrible.

Vanessa (01:00:38.446)
So in my opinion, I think there's probably thousands if not millions of people walking the street right now with pics, not understanding why they are forgetful, why they have brain fog, why they're having flashbacks and insomnia, because there's no one talking about it. To be in the United States and to have like three, four that I am aware of is shameful.

Brandy Schantz (01:00:45.797)
Right?

Brandy Schantz (01:01:02.8)
Well, you know what, we have a do out then. Let's take a look at that. How about you and I this week? It's mental health awareness month. You know, there's so much we need to do. There's not even enough hours in the day, but I think, you know, let's take a look. Let's find as many support groups as we can. I'll put it on my webpage at brandyshaunce.com and maybe we get one together. I have found so much camaraderie in my Facebook support groups because I find people just like me. We can ask questions.

Hey, are you also dealing with this? I'm a woman of a certain age going through perimenopause and for goodness sakes, hopefully soon menopause. And it does affect my symptoms, being able to meet other women my age who are going through this. they're like, yes, I become demonic when I'm hormonal. And I think, yes, thank you. I am not crazy. So let's make it a do out. Let's get out there and

you know, really get that message out there because it's important and it's painful. Your book is going to make so much difference because again, you know, so many people listening, you know, they've been through this. But for the people who, you know, have never been through a chronic illness and a traumatic illness, a hospital, ICU, stay, anything of that nature, I cannot emphasize enough.

Every suicide was once a resilient, strong person who overcame something.

Yeah.

Brandy Schantz (01:02:41.628)
So thank you so much for being on Vanessa. If you haven't ordered it yet, it's on Amazon folks. Speechless, how a speech therapist lost her ability to speak and her silent struggle to reclaim her voice in life by Vanessa Abram. I'll also have this in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Vanessa (01:03:00.334)
thank you for having me. This was a wonderful conversation. Thank you. Thank you.