Inner Spark

Episode 1 Finding the Inner Spark!

• Casey Taton • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Hey friends, welcome to the inner spark podcast. I'm your host, Casey Tatum. If you're looking to hear stories of transformation and personal growth, this podcast is for you. My guest and I will be sharing those sparking moments that has changed them into living a more fulfilling, authentic life. I'm so excited for you to hear each unique story. So sit back, relax, and let's get started. Hey friends, welcome to episode one of the EnerSpark podcast. I'm your host, Kasey Tayton. This podcast is about sharing stories of transformation and personal growth. My guests and I will share their stories of moments in their life that changed them. Let's be real. We all have a story, right? I mean, everybody I know has a story. The amazing thing about everybody's story is everybody's story is unique and the story also does not have to define you. I called the moments I went through a major life shift, also where I found my inner spark. It was the moment I realized my illness was not defining me and I was on a mission to see life differently. This illness clearly changed me for the better. I will share my sparking moments and dig deeper into those, as well as my guests will share their sparking moments that changed their life to see the world differently.

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A little backstory on who I am. I'm Casey, your host. I'm 41. And I live in the Midwest. I was born and raised in the Midwest and I still live here. I love the, like growing up on the lake, brought me so much joy and it still does. It was a great bonding moment for me and my family. And we still every year go to table rock lake as a family vacation.

We all have those places that those happy places. That is my happy place then. And still, when I was young, I grew up an artistic roller skater. I have been competitive all my life. In middle school, I switched to playing soccer, playing golf and running I also played these sports throughout high school. I love sports and I love the community of being in a sports. Just being in a group of people, like minded people that love doing what I did. I also loved that I had an amazing family that always supported me, even my grandparents. I would travel states away and my grandparents were always with us. I'm going to consider myself super blessed. I was one of the only few that my grandparents went along on every trip they could make to get us through our sports and to cheer us on. So today I'm grateful for those moments. After high school, I went to college. I loved it. I'm not going to lie, you guys. I didn't love high school. I only loved high school for the sports. I was really only there for the community. That's just who I am. I got into college and I loved college. I actually didn't play sports in college. I'd hurt my foot in high school and decided that sports weren't worth it anymore. I would just play for fun. But I loved the medical field. I loved everything about it. You guys, I was like a college Nerd. I couldn't get enough of it. I have family that works in the medicine field And so I loved every bit of that and I took a dive into that. I took more than a dive I took a deep dive. I wanted to learn everything about it and not just in one field. I started working at a doctor's office when I was 18 years old I worked my way through college I worked for a doctor, right out of high school when I was 18, I loved it so much. When you have family in the medical field, I just took a deep dive into it, and I worked my way through college. I started in college, I wanted to study it all. I studied sports medicine, I went away for a summer and studied that. I wanted to be an athletic trainer. I went into radiology school,, I love radiology school, but decided that really wasn't what I wanted to do. I went into dental assisting school. I worked as a phlebotomist. I went to AMT school, and then I ended up being a scrub tech, going to surgical technology school and working in the OR. I worked in the OR for a long time. I loved it. I thought it was my dream job. I thought it was my dream life. At this point, I was in my 30s. I had a house, a car. I thought I had whatever kid dreamed of, whatever person dreamed of, you know, you go to college, you go to school, you get the house, you get all those things. I had all those things. I had a great group of friends that I worked with. I love my shift. And then my life stopped. My life completely shifted.

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I got sick. I lost my job. My life stopped.

And they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I fought for a really long time. I looked up to the doctors here. I, sorry, you guys, this is an emotional story, so just hang with me. I looked up to the doctors here and I got told they had no idea what was wrong with me. I got red flagged. I remember being in the hospital and them telling me that I was going to have to live with a feeding tube. And my first thought was my gut didn't just stop on its own. My second thought was, I love the lake. The lake is my happy place. And if you put a feeding tube in me, my life just already came to a little bit of a stop, but it's coming to a complete stop because I will never be able to get into the lake again. And so somewhere in me. After lots and lots of testing and fighting and fighting with the medical field, I got the chance to go to Mayo. I was first diagnosed with gastroparesis here in my hometown. That's when they were going to put the feeding tube in me. And then I went to Mayo. I spent weeks up in Mayo. And during this time, I want to tell you guys, I'm so thankful for the community and my parents because when my life stopped, I say my life stopped as I was going to lose my house. I lost friends. I lost a lot. I had a friend that came in town and she just looked at me and said she stayed with me for a few weeks. And she said, you know, Casey, I never realized how sick you were. I never realized how much your life really stopped until I was living in your shoes. I think you need to write a GoFundMe so you can get the help you need to get better. I was not good at asking for help. I didn't like it, the feeling of it. I didn't like the feeling of airing to everyone that I needed help. during these times, I'd also ask for help in our community, at a local organization, and I was denied. I was denied because I, I didn't have kids and I was a single female. And so I couldn't get that help that way. So this was my way of getting help. She suggested I set up a GoFundMe. Um, sorry, I get stuck in my throat there. You guys asking for help was so hard and was such a challenge. so my friend sat down with me. She was a family friend and, um, my father is a small business owner. So I asked my parents like, Hey, we're going to write this GoFundMe to give me the help we need to get these diagnoses. And my father was not for it. He said, I'm a small businessman. You know what that looks like to me? It looks like I can't help my child. And I remember looking at my dad and say, it's not you've already helped me so much, Dad. I had a long fight before I got to this journey. It was about two years of fighting through stuff that my parents supported me. And my mom, she's a beautiful lady, she just said, Well, I don't really like it, but you're going to do what you're going to do. So we wrote this GoFundMe, my friend wrote it for me. And, we sent it out in the world. And it talked about what I was going through, how my life had stopped, how my life had shifted. And a lot of people responded. It gave me the support I need and the help I needed to get to Mayo Clinic. So Mayo was my first trip. My mom and I went, we went a couple times and we spent weeks up there., I had a doctor up there. I've seen several doctors and I had a doctor up there. The first one was like, I can put you on all these medicines, send you back home and just go from there.

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And I can also send you to see one more doctor before you go back home and see if he has any other suggestions.

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Just didn't feel very encouraging, but I decided to say and see the next doctor.

So, I had my first doctor up there that believed in me. I'm going to tell you guys that's the best feeling because we all need somebody that believes in us. I told him my story. I told him my journey. He agreed with me that I wasn't crazy. I wasn't all the things that my hometown had put on me and that I really was sick and he was determined to help me. So he sent me to get testing and it wasn't even his specialty. That's what's probably where the magic is, is I say it's a god thing of I got to meet this man who wasn't even a specialty, but it was like, I know what you have. I did the testing or went and saw another doctor and that doctor there was like, no, he pushed it on my stomach, was like, no, I don't think you have this condition. So they thought I had MALS, which is median arcuate ligament syndrome. And it's where the ligament crushes the artery. So it basically is stopping all the blood flow. So during my fight, I was unable to eat. Um, eat very much, drink very much, and I went through a lot of losing weight, gaining weight. They were putting me on medicine that was killing my immune system. So at one point I, I was large and puffed up on steroids, which those aren't fun feelings when you're fighting with something and you're so sick. So I go and see this doctor and he sent me to go see the other doctor. The other doctor's like, I pushed on your stomach. You don't have moles. So I go back and see this other doctor, his name is Dr. Loftus, and I'm crying. I'm like, you said this is what I have, this guy's saying no. He actually wasn't even in office that day, or he was done seeing patients and they made an exception and let me see him as I was standing at his desk bawling and he said to me, I believe this is what you have now, and this doctor is new to our clinic and I'm going to send you elsewhere, I'm going to send you outside of our clinic. So he sent me to the Cleveland Clinic, and I had my first laparoscopic surgery. That surgery did not go well. I thought it went well, but in the end the surgery did not go well. they actually ended up hitting my aorta and stopped the surgery. So they didn't get the ligament cut all the way. And so I was home. I didn't even know that at the time. I was up there for a few days, flew home, it was a laparoscopic surgery and I actually read it in a surgical report. So I called the surgeon and he said, yeah, we had to stop the surgery. You have a clip in your aorta. I was in shock, like no one told me this while I was there. My next thing was, what do I do now? I came home so excited that I was going to live and have my life back. So I went back and saw him and And he said, well, open surgery requires a different team of doctors, me and more doctors, because we're opening you up. So during that time, the doctor, decided that he was leaving for Dubai because they were opening a clinic in Dubai. So I lost my surgeon. I remember feeling hopeless and Something that I thought my life was going to be back to normal wasn't over yet. I went on to fight and I was in a Facebook group the community was honestly the one thing besides my own inner fight that kept me going. I was determined I wasn't going to live like this. So I got to see a doctor in Connecticut. I flew there and I had open surgery. I was there over the holidays and it was me and my mom. We were there for about three weeks and, I came back home. And if you if you've ever fought illness, you know what it's like to be down for cold flu, anything like that. I am not a person that sits still, you guys. So this was the biggest challenge of my life. Sitting still, laying in bed, not feeling well, not having any energy and just wanting to be able to eat and drink and keep it all down. So I was so excited after my open surgery, I came home. And I started being able to eat, drink, live a little bit more, a couple, months into it, I had another test done and it showed that my artery did not stay all the way open. The good news is, is that I saw another surgeon, I had that gut feeling of this is not what I want to do and not what I'm ready to do, and I chose not to have the other surgery. So right now I'm still living and I'm going to choose to live like this and keep going because the artery is still giving my stomach enough blood for me to keep going. So during this battle, I had these moments of doubt of, I live

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this life of what do I do?

I had this life. I don't think I can go back to this life. Living in the OR was a very demanding job, a very fast paced demanding job. I worked tons of hours and I loved it. However, that's not who I was. So I really didn't know what my purpose was. I really didn't know what to do, where to go. But I was also tired of living in bed. And when I got better, I was like, what do you do now? And I had a friend reach out to me who was doing parties in the hospital. She was doing birthday parties with another group. And she said, asked if I wanted to come help. Of course I did. Right, that was giving me a purpose, a purpose to get out of my bed, and a purpose to live and be useful. I went and helped her, I learned kind of what she was doing, and one day she looked at me and she said, Hey, these parties aren't really going anywhere. The staff isn't really responding to me, we're really not getting through to the hospital, I have a son at home. She's like, Would you like to take over him? Would you like to see if you get a better response than I do? I was like, well, yeah, of course. I don't really know how that's going to happen, but sure. I will, I will make something happen. So this became a life changing moment for me. And it was truly my inner spark because I started doing these parties for the kids. I reached out to the community because I had no idea how I was going to pay for these. Now six years later, you guys, these parties are still going. These parties light my world up. We started with birthdays. Now we do milestone. We do end of chemo. We do end of radiation. We do sunshine bags for any kid that's been there for like more than a few days because. Let's be honest, the hospital is not the best place, it's not the funnest place, but my mission was to bring joy to any kid in the hospital, and it still is to this day. I want to bring smiles to any kid facing any battle, and it doesn't matter what you're going through, what the timeline looks like. You're in the hospital and I want to make it not feel like a hospital or and just see the families So I have an organization little moments big dream celebrations. As I mentioned, we've been doing this for six years I rely on the community. So, when I say there's this moment in my life that's shifted, this was that moment. I now found my purpose and my joy of what lights my world up. I will go deeper into a little bit more of my medical and more of, these parties. But through this transition, I started doing other things. I started doing breath work. I found this great community. Kathy Heller has an amazing community. I found her, and I got to start doing other things, seeing other ways of living life. I also started seeing a natural doctor. So really it was a huge shift in my life of, it was like an eye opening experience Sometimes we live in these boxes. And all we see is what we're doing. And when your world stops, you're forced to see things in a different way. It was the best thing that's ever happened in my life because now I can relate to so many more people on different levels. And now I enjoy deep connecting with people and I've gotten that opportunity and every course or all the classes I've taken, we like break out in these pods and we get to deep connect and I've made some of the best friends of my life and they're my soul sisters. I have gotten to go on a retreat since then. I got to travel since I had been sick. Last year, it was actually, yeah, last year, it's 2025. So in 2024, I got to go on a podcasting retreat. Which is why y'all are here. I decided through these courses and through all this that my story needed to be told, that I'm not alone in this journey, and I want every single one of you to know that your story matters. It doesn't matter what you're going through, what you've been through, those stories, they're important. Our stories and we're letting that go and I'm ready for you guys to go on this journey with me. See how people have changed and I want to hear your stories and I can't wait to introduce you all to every single person that I have met that's been on a different journey than I have. But still managed to find that inner spark. So I hope you all stay with me. I'll dig into all this a little bit deeper as we go along. Thanks for tuning in today. And let those sparks fly. Thank you for tuning in to another episode. I hope today's story inspired you to embrace your own journey of growth and change. Remember, transformation isn't always easy, but it's always worth it. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review. If you found something that sparked you in this episode and may spark a friend, I encourage you to go share it with them. If you have your own story you would like to share, I would love to hear it, so please reach out to me. Until next time, friends. Go have some fun, and let those sparks fly.

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