74 - Samantha Lengerich Pt 1: Climbing Hills Instead of Mountains

Join nursing student and Salt Lake City, Utah native Honored Guest Samantha Lengerich as she talks about having lived in Australia not once, but twice, dealing with debilitating panic attacks, her journey through extremely challenging mental health issues during nursing school, how medication turned mountains into hills, and more!

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and good afternoon. I mean it's at least afternoon where we are right now, when we are right now, here in the middle of October. I don't know if this is gonna age well, this will be very fascinating. We have yet to experience Halloween and all the goodies. Fall is just starting and here we are. You're gonna probably, people might hear this even at the start of spring, who knows? It'll definitely be winter at least. So very confusing for us all. It doesn't help that we're both blondes, both my honored guest and myself, so. This will make for a very entertaining episode. That being said, before I have my amazing honored guest introduce herself, just a little bit of a warning, as I've done on occasions past, there will be, we're gonna hit some pretty sensitive subjects. And our amazing honored guest is very open about that. And so, if at any point you feel, for lack of a better term, triggered, or if it's bringing up some feelings that maybe you're not ready to deal with, Just skip over about the first 20 minutes to a half hour and get to the lighter stuff. This is one of those rare episodes where we're gonna kinda just dive into the heavy stuff first after our honored guest introduces herself. And then we'll come out and do, we'll end all on a light note for sure. Because yeah, we're not afraid of crying, but we do sure enjoy laughing. So maybe we'll get a little bit of both, who knows? With that, no more flapping my guns. Would you mind introducing yourself for our lovely audience? would love to. My name is Samantha. I am a senior nursing student at Gonzaga. Although by the time this airs, I may have graduated and that's scary because I will graduate in May of 2025. It'll be shortly after your episode airs, but I imagine it'll come out before May. But just can't, to hear you say that even gets me excited for you. I know, I know, it's crazy. Yeah. so where are you from, Samantha? I grew up mostly in Salt Lake City, Utah, but I grew up all over the globe. My family lived in Australia two different times. So I say I'm from Salt Lake, but half of my childhood was in Australia. So a little bit of home in both places for me. that's amazing. okay, I mean, we have to ask before we get into the heavy stuff. Military family? Like, why, why, and why in Australia twice? So my dad is a mining engineer, but I get the military family a lot. But he and my mom decided he got an opportunity to go to a small Aboriginal mining community when I was three years old. And him and my mom decided they wanted to move the family and they did it once. They loved it. We moved back to the States. He got another opportunity in Perth and they decided that's what they wanted to do. So I moved about. four to five times before I even turned 16. my goodness, that's, that's, I mean, it's amazing to listen to, not fun to do, that's for sure. I mean, I think I loved it. Like, they've asked me if I regret it almost and you meet so many people and there's things that I can say I've done that if we had never done those moves, I wouldn't change anything about the whole thing. It was pretty awesome. that's incredible. Plus, I mean, in your back pocket for all those, you know, moments where you need a fun fact, you can say, well, I've been to Australia twice. Or, you know, I mean, I've lived in Australia twice. That's actually, I feel like a step up from I've been to Australia twice. So keeping with those very light hearted early standard questions, you chose three words to describe nursing school. We'll talk about them at the end, of course. But in the meantime, what were they? Give us a little tease. Well, my three words were empowering, intensive, and revealing. I like all three of those, but I usually do. So I suppose we'll just wait and see why you chose those at the end. Also, yeah, gosh, yeah, I'm gonna keep this in there. So I literally, you're the second honored guest. My first, as you and I were talking about prior to recording, this is our first back-to-back honored guest experience since the summer. And so, so much fun. The first honored guest had the luxury of me texting them shortly, like within 10 minutes of starting. and I don't think I did the same to you now that I'm thinking about it. There's one more standard early question, and you take all the time to think about it that you want, and we'll cut out that silence. But there's one more standard early question that I've added that I feel is very revealing and fun. What are three of your favorite songs in life right now? And this is a part where it will all this can go out like you take the time you need. It was like as I'm talking, I went, I didn't texture this. my gosh. No, please do. That's what a lot of people do. I'm like, yeah. It's a horrible question. Yep. see. Let's pull up my running playlist. That's generally where this goes well for me. My three favorite songs at the moment, the first one's called The Comeback. I listen to it for every nursing exam, just for a little confidence boost. It's one of my favorites. My second one is 85 by Andy Grammer. It's a great running song. It's very fast, makes you go faster. And then the third one is Fighter by Christina Aguilera. those all sound amazing. And maybe I'm being blonde. Did you say who the comeback was by? let me see. That one is by Danny Gokey I love the comeback because I feel like that is very applicable to what we're about to talk about. So that was a perfect segue into the content warning that I established before. Samantha and I met each other some time ago. during that time, she was in the cohort during which this crazy idea of starting a podcast came to be. And it was in part because of her cohort and things that they told me and things of that nature. Samantha was one of the ones that was like, yeah, let's go. Let's early adopter. Her 30 second promo clip is one of the early ones that we got, one of the very first ones we obtained. And then it came time to do it and Samantha's like, I'm not in a good space right now. I cannot do it and I don't think I'll be able to do it all summer, if at all. And I'd love to do it if I can come back to it. And then, you know, out of the blue, here she is. She says, hey, I'm ready to go. So the reasons why that happened, I feel like, Samantha, to sum it up not eloquently either, is that you've lived a lifetime over the course of this last summer. Because it sure, after reading what you had sent me, feels like it on my end. And it's something that we are not strangers to in our family ourselves. So with that. I'm going to try and do my best to shut my yapper and let you tell your story because I feel like it's going to benefit so many people. Yeah, so guess I'll just start kind of where school ended last May and things ended and I knew I was staying in Spokane. I work as a nurse tech here. So I knew I was staying and I knew a lot of my friends, almost all my friends that I had established at college were leaving, including my long-term boyfriend was going back to Seattle to work his summer job. And it caused I knew I had a little bit of anxiety about that, that having to be alone for almost four months, living in a house where you've previously had roommates and you have this amazing social system, so all of a sudden you're gonna work a whole lot of hours and not have anything at home. It was just a really daunting thought. So I spent most of May at home. I actually went home for about a month just to spend time with my family and had a blast, had an absolutely wonderful time with them. Got back to Spokane and sure enough, I was just a little bit of a nervous wreck. It was difficult transitioning to a new floor. I worked on peds oncology over the summer. I ended up loving it, but it's hard when you start a new group of people and a new routine and you never really know what's expected of you. So there was the stress of that, the stress of living on my own. I'd done it before, but it's always a little bit harder when you're in a longer term relationship. My relationship was one of the things I really struggled with. doing long distance. And so that was a, it was a very large adjustment. And around the start of June, I was going to work and all of a sudden I wasn't sleeping. Like at all. I was just waking up in the middle of the night. I wasn't feeling good. Before I go to work, I got super nauseous and it just, it spiraled from there. I was, it went from kind of feeling isolated to all of a sudden having panic attacks pretty frequently. And I can remember the first panic attack I had. It was at work and I was setting up a patient room just for an admin, pretty routine. I knew what went in the room. All of a sudden I can remember I'm trying to write their name on the board of my hands, just like uncontrollably shaking. And I was like. Okay, I had one cup of coffee. that's, let's think this is ridiculous. So I just tried to ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. And it turns out with a panic attack, doesn't work. So I ended up like hyperventilating and all of a sudden I was like, I'm gonna throw up and I'm gonna cry. Like this is just right now, the world is ending. Things are closing in and I cannot breathe. And so I hid in the bathroom for about 20 minutes. and just sat on the floor because the world was spinning and I can't, I could not breathe was the biggest thing is I felt like there was this pressure in my chest that I just could not get air into my lungs. And that was terrifying. That was one of the scariest things I would say in my life that I've experienced. It was a moment of pure fear and they kept happening and I didn't tell anyone about it because I didn't know how to talk about it. So I was now having them every day. And that causes anxiety all on its own because you feel like something's wrong with you. And I was convinced that something was very wrong with me, that there was a medical problem, was a mental, something was very, very wrong, but I didn't know how to tell people. I didn't know how to talk about any of it. And thankfully, Even though we were long distance, I have a partner who is very attentive and knows me well enough to know that even though I didn't want to admit I wasn't OK, he could tell very clearly could tell. And I think I hid it for about two weeks that something was really going on before he picked up on it. And I can remember the day he did pick up on it. It was I think I had the day off and it rained in Spokane. And I was so anxious and I felt like my room, the walls were just, I could just feel everything getting smaller again. It was like, need fresh air, I need to go outside. And I walked out, totally forgetting it was raining, like didn't have a jacket on or anything, and I just walked in the rain, freezing cold in the rain. And I was texting him while doing it and he's like, I can literally see that it's raining on the forecast. Like you need to go home, this is not. good idea. But I was hysterical. Like I was jumping in puddles. Like it was the weirdest thing because I went from like about to have a panic attack to hysterical. It was almost a manic episode. It was really, really disorienting at the time. But it was that day will stick in my head forever because there were thoughts I had that day that I never thought I would have. That was the day where everything had culminated to a point, was about the end of June by this point, that I was so done fighting. I didn't want to anymore. I didn't want to have a panic attack. I didn't want to go into work and dread working. I thought for a period of time, I was like, my God, what if I hate nursing? Like I've now dedicated years of my life to this goal. This is what I've worked for. And I'm having panic attacks before I go to work and at work. What if I hate nursing? Like I don't have a plan B. This was, there was never another option in my head. So that was equally as terrifying to go, my gosh, what if I hate nursing? What if I hate pediatrics? The thing I thought I wanted to do from the start and that's the cause of all of this. So was a very, very frightening period of time. And unfortunately that day when I was walking in there and I can remember standing on the bridge by Gonzaga and just wondering. what would happen if I And that's not something I admitted to myself until probably August that that thought was there because I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed that I was having an intrusive thought to which I would want to do something like that. And I didn't know how to talk about it. I didn't even know how to admit it to myself. And that I'm proud to say that now I can talk about it, but for a long time, I couldn't. And so that day was really monumental for me. because it was the day I think my boyfriend went, crap, like, the intervention is needed now and we need to talk. And that was the day that I would say things were at their worst. And that was a really impactful moment. and kind of the turning point too. in a sense, it didn't get better for a while, but my boyfriend actually, after that. Texted. We had talked, we had talked for a long time. He, we had done hours of phone calls in which I had had a panic attack and like about thrown up or one night I made my nose bleed. Like it was just a random things that like he had started to see and the discussions that we had had, And it finally came to a point one night without me knowing he texted my mom and was like, we have a problem and I can't help her. He was like, I'm ready for her to come live with me in Seattle or she needs to go home to you because this isn't, she's a bit, I read the text later, so I know what it says. It was pretty much she's in a really bad spot. I don't know how much she's told you, but I'm seeing signs of depression. And she's not okay. And so the next morning I got a call from my mom and she pretty much went, what the heck? Like, what's going on? You have to talk to me. And so I kind of told her, but I don't think I necessarily told her everything. I hadn't, she's my mom. I didn't want her to freak out. My mom also doesn't get anxiety. Like I admire her deeply. because she just doesn't worry about things. She doesn't, she just does her thing. And she is bold and she is fierce and she is passionate and doesn't care about what other people think or what's gonna, like she is a strong independent woman and is the definition of it. I am not like that. And so it was, her response was kind of suck it up and get through it. Which ended in me hanging up on her. And we've later worked it out that she has come to understand a lot more of what I had to go through. But she had my dad call me because my dad does deal with anxiety and very severe anxiety that we saw a lot when we moved. Actually, every time we moved, my dad had a lot more anxiety and his work causes him anxiety. he was able to kind of, we spent probably two, two and a half hours on the phone where He walked me through a lot and we worked through maybe some of the causes of it. And for the first he was like, you're lonely and you're anxious about the fact that you're alone. And I have no doubt that's how it started. That I was anxious about being alone. I was anxious about a new job. I was anxious about starting senior year. School had ended. So now I had nothing to do with my free time. So in my free time, I just worried. And that was, that was what happened. And so once we kind of got to the bottom of that, he helped me work through like maybe some coping strategies we can go through. And he asked, he's like, what do you need right now? And I was like, I want a hug. I want a hug. And I can remember just saying it in the most vulnerable, like I was crying. I'd been crying for two hours. And I can just remember saying, just, I just need a hug. And he's like, I'm calling your uncle who lives in Spokane. Go get a hug. And sure enough, not 10 minutes later, he called me back and he's like, they're expecting you in half an hour. Like I didn't say much. They just know that you're coming up. And I was like, okay. And sure enough, I showed up and my aunt gave me a hug. My uncle gave me a hug. And I was able to just be around people, which at that time was so, it kind of re-centered me a little bit and made me go, okay, there's more than what I'm going through. They're so good. Like there's still good things that I can look forward to. And that was an intervention at the time that I think saved me from going down the very, very dark path that I had started down. but after that, it didn't end. kind of thought like, okay, so we've worked out, I'm lonely. Like I'll meet up with a couple, I'll make new friends. Like I've got a couple people I don't really know that are in Spokane. Like I'll reach out. I'll go see my boyfriend this weekend. Like let's just solve, like it's okay that I'm lonely. That's fine. But like let's. try and do things. Let's go for hikes. Like, let's try and get out of this funk. And none of that worked. Like, I was anxious for no good reason. Just every day, I...anxious feeling that the world was gonna end this... I couldn't breathe. Like, I just remember, like, taking a deep breath and it feeling like your lungs aren't getting big enough, which physiologically doesn't make any sense. But it doesn't make any sense that, like, no, I'm actually, like, they're not getting bigger. Like... My rib cage is too small. And jitters and nausea and just all the awful symptoms of anxiety. And continuing to have these panic attacks. And so finally I took, my boyfriend and I had kind of talked and I was like, okay, I need to go back into therapy. Because at the start of the semester when I had you as an instructor, I had been in therapy because I had gotten really anxious about school because that's kind of the first semester that things go from like, yay, I'm in nursing school to crap. Like this is not easy. crap, like this is a lot more work than geriatric clinical. Like that's real here. And so I had been in therapy and like worked through how to deal with stress in school. And so I reached out again and ended up back in therapy. And this time it was a lot more serious and like we weren't just working through school stuff. Like we were working through. a lot of why I have anxiety and what we were gonna do about it. And after weeks of doing that, like once a week sessions, I still had these, like my thoughts were getting better, but the physiological feeling of anxiety wasn't going away. And I couldn't, I was so frustrated, because it's like, don't understand what's wrong with me. Like my head is no longer wanting, having those intrusive thoughts. Like we're past that. But this is debilitating. Like I can't sleep. I'm taking melatonin every night, which is not something I love doing. I, I was giving myself more migraines. I was like, this is not healthy. Like I need a different solution. And at the time I was very opposed to going on a medication. I had this idea that if I went on a medication, I had failed. In my head, I had seen people deal with anxiety and that's... They can solve it. You can just address your thoughts, address your pattern. mean, they say, you know, thoughts affect feelings, which affect behaviors. Well, if you can fix your thoughts, hypothetically, you should be able to change everything else. And I saw medication as a failure and it took a lot of my boyfriend going, no, no, that's not, that's not what this means. Like this is not, no, incorrect. But it was actually a conversation with my dad. I called him and was like, I think I need to do this. I think I need help. And I had actually set up a meeting with my primary care provider back home on telehealth before telling my dad this, because I wanted to know what her honest assessment was of when she talked to me, what she thought. And she pretty much came out and told me, yep, you have generalized anxiety and panic disorder. There you go. There it is, here we are. want an SSRI and I was like, okay, so now we're at the point where I've got a medical professional telling me I probably need to go on this. And I knew it wouldn't be short term. This isn't something you just take and it gets better. So she gave me a beta blocker for panic attacks for when they happen. And she gave me a Lexapro. And I talked to my dad and was like, I don't know that I can do this. I don't know that I can admit failure and give up and just take a drug because I don't think drugs have answered everything. And fundamentally, I'm solving it with a drug instead of addressing my problems. And my dad was like, no, wrong, incorrect. This is you taking control and saying, you know what? I have anxiety and I'm going to choose every day to live with it and to fight with it, to fight it, to go through life. with it. You have done all the steps and you need the condition was I had to stay in therapy and see that through. So I did. And you have, had to learn how to deal with the thoughts because those medications take six weeks to get again. It's not fast. and they have side effects that you experience. I was nauseous for about three weeks, which was super fun. and so my dad kind of looked at me and he's like, If you're going to do this, you need to commit to it and you need to believe that it's going to work. You need to believe that you can do this and that if this is accepting help and it's going to make that mountain a hill, you can still claim responsibility. This is you claiming responsibility for what you're going through. And that was really, that was powerful for him to go, you have to commit to it and you have to believe in it. because we can tell you, the doctor can tell you, your boyfriend can tell you, you can do it. But if you don't believe that you are capable of overcoming this and that you are going to do it, it's not gonna matter. And you will continue to have anxiety and you will continue to have panic attacks, but you have to commit to it. And that really stuck with me, that there's an element of anxiety that I like the phrase willfully tolerate. You have to be willful, you have to want to put up with it. You can't make it go away. We can't make anxiety go away. I'm in the hardest semester of Gonzaga's nursing school and I still get anxiety. Like, should have seen me before the midterm. Not as bad, not like very anxious period of time. You're never gonna make life stress and anxiety go away. But you can willfully put up with the anxiety. and you can choose to continue to live and work through it. And that frame of mind, that shift that happened was monumental. It took weeks, but that was one of the things I needed to do to overcome that challenge was to work through this, not submitting to it and not admitting a failure and kind of not just giving up on myself. and choosing that even though it's hard, I can do it. And that was huge for me. And then when the anxiety medication kicked in, it did take care of those physical symptoms. I now sleep better at night. I feel like I can breathe. My running pace is improved all of a sudden. Like, things got so much better physiologically, and therefore they got better mentally too. Like the first day that I didn't think about the fact that I was anxious was weird. Because for three months, all I could think about was I was anxious. And if you ask me what I did this summer, I can tell you major highlights, but I actually don't remember going to work every day. Like, I don't remember. Like, it's just a blur. I just remember being anxious all the time. That's how there was. And now it's a totally different story. I still have anxiety and I still have to work through it, but I have not had a panic attack since this summer. But even if I were to have a panic attack, it would be okay. It's not the end of the world. And I'm not afraid of that anymore. Anxiety is there and I willfully tolerate it and I work through it because that's a part of life. But I 100 % think that the medication was the correct option for me. And I will stay on that. The doctor is not letting me come off of it until spring because he doesn't let people come off of it in the winter because it's also an antidepressant and you don't want to come off of that in the time of day where we have like eight hours of sun. So I'm going to be on it for a while. And honestly, it'll probably be after nursing school doesn't get better, then you're a new grad and you're trying to figure out what you're going to do. again, it makes that mountain that I was having to climb into a little bit of a hill. I'll take it. I can climb the hill, but a mountain was too much. And that's the analogy I use for people when I'm like, yeah, it does work. It significantly helped me. And my boyfriend will be the first to tell you that I'm a totally different person than I was six months ago. And that this is the person that I am. And over the summer, was a large battle of losing myself completely to the point where I was ready. looking at a bridge going, happens if I jump? So now I'm, now I'm back on my feet and doing really well. So that's the journey of why I couldn't necessarily talk about things over the summer, because I was in the thick of it and didn't know how to talk about nursing school and what was going on. I was such a mess for about four months. So it was a long, it was a long process, but I'm very grateful that I had. my boyfriend and my dad especially to help me navigate. my dead heart. just... Hugs. Hugs to you, friend. I just can't... my gosh. Thank you. Thank you for, you know, opening that up and being willing to share that because you're not the only one who's been there. You're not the only one who's going to be there. And I genuinely believe that someone hearing this is going to... Either they're going to recognize it when it happens or it's already happening or they'll know someone where they go, my gosh, like that's... I need to reach out. need to, you are the, your experience this summer is essentially what we in the nursing field, you know what mean? We talk about empowering our patients, right? And, and you, you've just modeled that completely. You are now here on the other side of that. And I, I dare say better for it. Obviously what to do, I wish you went through it. No, you know what I mean? It's like, especially the dad me, I'll take that away. I tell my kids the same thing. I wish I could take that away from you. But because I can't, because that's not an option, now the option is, you know what I mean? Does it cut your career short? Does it cut your life short? Or do you come out the other side of that? You come out stronger, you 100 % do. that's, it's not a moment in my lifetime I'm necessarily proud of, but I am proud of the fact I came through it on the other side. And that's what I remind myself is when it gets hard, I have overcome all of my worst days. And I've had some pretty bad worst days. So those moments make you stronger. And as cliche as it is, that's sometimes on the worst days, that's what I remember is you have overcome all of the crap life has thrown at you so far. And. of you to be able to remember that too. I have to say I love that your dad added that and you have to believe it. It's one thing to be committed to it, whatever that it is, but to believe that it'll help and to believe that it'll, that's a difficult, that's sometimes, correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like sometimes that's the most difficult leap to make, right? It's the most difficult in everything. mean, going into a test, if you don't believe you're gonna do well, I guarantee you it's not gonna go well for you. Like you have to believe in everything you do that you are capable of doing it. Running has taught me this. You can go out and say, I'm gonna go run Bloomsday. But if you don't believe that you're capable of doing it, I've done Bloomsday with no training. Like. You can totally go run seven and a half miles and there's some big hills in there and you can just pull it off. But if you don't believe you can do it, you're not going to finish. And running has definitely taught me that. Nursing school has taught me that, that when I walk and do an exam, I go in there with my held, held high, knowing I have done everything I possibly can. There's nothing more I could have done. And I'm, I'm perfectly capable of. of doing this. I'm perfectly capable of answering whatever they throw at me and sometimes it's wild. you just, if you don't have that belief in yourself, you're not, you're setting yourself up to not do well. And that's, that was a huge lesson coming out of this summer for me was you have to believe you're capable of doing. Yeah, there's a lot of different, I've heard a lot of different variations on the theme just as far as like, you you talk about the positive manifestations and you need to, you know what I mean? Like you need to speak these things into existence and there's an element of that, but even if you look at it strictly from a logical side as opposed to the heart or the soul, but you look at it even from a logical side, yeah, that'll help. Like if you are genuinely saying that and you reach a point where you believe it, because conversely, the opposite is true. You know, those that are told over and over, either by themselves or by loved ones or by whatever, that they can't make it and they're not good enough. you know, eventually that thought becomes a belief. And when it becomes a belief, it becomes powerful one way or the other. Samantha, got nothing else to talk about, that's it? This is, this is, your episode's done, like holy cow. Let's do this, let's do this. I, we're pivoting at the last minute here, looking at the clock. So, once in while somebody's got enough to say that they, it's obvious they're gonna be a double episode. You are looking like that to me. So that being said, we're kind of pivoting here at the last minute. If it's all right with you, I know that you have one more kind of sensitive subject to talk about, a little less sensitive than what we've done. Just for those that are listening or have gotten to this point, you're like, my gosh, they're still going, okay. No, it's a little less sensitive, but there's some stuff in there. So how about we chat about that and jump into the rest. We'll keep all the lighthearted stuff, the nursing stuff into the second episode, sound good? Okay, so let's just... why don't we just, you just jump, you've already started talking about your family, so tell us more about your family and the things that you wanna share about that. So I will start, we've met my mom and dad. My mother is a wonderful human being. She's overcome a lot in her life too and she has taught me that there is strength in knowing who you are and just being bold and confident with it and she's a wonderful person. My dad is driven and wonderful as well and has supported me in all my endeavors. Love him to death. And then I have a 16 year old brother who is also a wonderful human being, but he's also a 16 year old boy. And there's days that sometimes I get a call from my mom and she's like, I'm shipping your brother to you. So yeah, let's just say I'm glad I don't live at home anymore. 16, yeah, not, no, if I have like, in the far future when I have kids, 16's not an age I look forward to. But he is a wonderful human being as well, and our relationship is something I cherish very deeply, because he's a wonderful human being, but also because he's the only sibling I have left. I lost a brother when I was four, Jacob was two. And I do remember some things, but. I was four, you don't remember a whole lot. that losing Jacob, but also having him plays, it is part of who I am. And it is a large part of who I am and why I went into nursing and why I believe that nursing is a beautiful, beautiful career and a choice. Jacob was born with epilepsy. We didn't know that necessarily at the time. He was just having seizures. he was also globally developmentally delayed. So he could not walk by the time he was two. and he couldn't roll over on his own either. So we think the reason he passed was he threw up in his sleep and couldn't roll back over. So it wasn't even like, there was nothing that could have been done to prevent that. but obviously for several reasons, was a traumatic experience in my childhood. I do believe that part of the reason I'm so independent is because I was four and when my parents lost a child, I lost them for a little bit too. And so my mom will tell you I was the best child at playing alone. I was just super good at it. I knew how to entertain myself and I knew how to keep myself occupied. and that This carried over, I'm independent, I don't really like asking for help, not really a thing I do well. And I think that's why. I also think that, you know, the reason that kind of developed too is when you're four, you don't understand death. It's not a concept that you really understand. So as I got older, I had to understand what losing a brother really meant and what you lose there. You lose a friend, you lose the middle child that sits in between you and your other sibling and breaks up all the fights or, know, Tyler lost the opportunity to have a brother, even though he wasn't born yet. So there's definitely, there's some of that too, that like, as I got older, I had to learn what that loss meant for me because my parents had dealt with it by the time I had kind of my head around it. So that's definitely part of the independence piece. But. Beyond that, what Jacob taught my family and all four of us will tell you this, that Jacob taught us how to love unconditionally. And that is something that those two words, unconditional love, if I hadn't already have been talking, I think those might've been my first words because it's just preached in my family from my parents that when Jacob met someone, didn't matter who they were, he smiled and he laughed. and he was happy. In every picture I have of him, he is laughing and smiling. And I have a beautiful memory that I know is mine because I've asked my mom and she knows nothing about this. She's like, I didn't tell you about it. So, like, this one I can choose is mine. It's just the two of us sitting on the ground in Australia, actually, playing with pool balls and just laughing with one another. You know, we're four and two, like, you entertain yourself with anything. so, not throwing literally, but like rolling them back and forth to one another. And we're just laughing. And that's so beautiful to me because it just, it pictures this perfectly that no matter who you are, we're going to show you love. Despite the fact that Jacob couldn't talk, he couldn't communicate very well, even though he was two. And you know, he had these seizures and he needed so much extra help. We had bars that he had to hold because he couldn't pull himself up by himself. So even though he needed all of this, not only did Jacob show us unconditional love, but we showed it for him. And I see that through my parents that they gave everything to Jacob because of who he was, not despite it, but they loved him for who he was. Yes. And that is something for me that drew me to nursing. It absolutely inspired me as I got older that if I can't love that way every single day and I can't give that to other people, then I don't know what I'm gonna do because that's who I am is to have that open heart and really be there for people. So your experience with Jacob, I imagine, informed, and your family, and all these amazing qualities that you're talking about, I imagine informed who you are and maybe the direction that you've gone in in life in becoming a nurse. You've already established there is no option B, no plan B, you wanted to be a nurse. So if it's all right with you, why don't we put a pin in it there and we'll pick this discussion up in the second episode. so that those who may be have skipped this first part based on the difficult stuff that we're talking about can hear this part of the story if that's okay does that sound like good plan samantha all i'll see you on the flip side then