108 - Lisamarie Pietragallo Pt 2: Embrace the Suck

Continue with nurse practitioner, entrepreneur, and Pittsburgh, Ohio native Honored Guest Lisamarie Pietragallo Moreschii as she waxes eloquent about her only regret, starting to live her life in her 40s, navigating cancer and a rough marriage, not getting stuck in nursing, integrative medicine, her passion for functional medicine and optimal health, and more!

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Transcript

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Welcome back to the second part of the Lisamarie Experience. Yes, I did leave out her last name, her surname, because I'm not butchering that. So long story short, my first of all apologies to Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, anyone who might be up there in age and still playing professional sports. If you happened to stumble upon our little podcast and happened to listen to that exact two minutes, one minute of intro. I mean, we respect you. We just, you know, it's time to move on. We love you guys. Go, go, go. Enjoy the money. Enjoy your life. Anyway, okay. Enough about that. Somehow I'm gonna get like, I don't know. It'd be great if I, I don't know. Would I be upset if they wrote me and said, you know, cease and desist? Like if I get a cease and desist from their attorneys? Or would I actually be excited about that? Cause they heard this podcast, right? Like, yeah, I think there's an element of that. They'll be like, Lisamarie and Eric, we're gonna find them and. Anyway, nothing against you. Anyway, we're just gonna leave it where it is. I liked Russell Wilson the guy and he, you know, he gets a bad rep for certain things that he shouldn't get a bad rep for and then he gets too much credit where he doesn't deserve it. But that's what we think of all the professional athletes and public figures, right? Okay, so enough about that. Let's just jump right into the, because I know there's a lot more to talk about as far as you and your life and I wanna jump right in. But before we do that, there was one question that you had answered on the little forum I sent you. And I really loved your answer to that. I'd like to know, leading the witness, Lisamarie, do you have any regrets? And my answer is always the same. I have tried to live my life that I would not have any regrets. looking back on my many years as we established, the only regret I have is trying to cram that square peg into the round hole. And I think as nurses, we want to fix people. even at our, you know, the expense of ourselves. And I feel like I, I don't want to say wasted a lot of years because, know, life brings you everything. brings you your experience even in bad times. But I'm happy to say I'm lucky enough. I feel like I refer to this now probably as act five, you know, as you go through life, I, you know, my first nursing career, first marriage have amazing kids and I recognized during that time that I needed more and I was giving a lot of myself up and now fast forward to everything I've done. I mean from my mid 40s I finished my bachelor's, got my master's, worked on a PhD, had eight amazing years as a nurse practitioner or 10. 10 amazing years as a nurse practitioner in internal medicine, geriatric psychiatry, and to be lucky enough to have started my own practice a year ago. Again, that is something that was, I don't know, like kind of crazy as a nurse practitioner to be like, okay, I have my own practice. mean, you know, there's a lot, especially in the states I'm in and licensed in, there's a lot. to do, you know, to get that in order. But I wish I had maybe 10 years of the 20 I spent, you know, in a marriage just because you, you know, you make that commitment, you have the kids and all the reasons you stay. So, and I laugh, I say I started to live my life in my forties and it's been awesome. I have an amazing husband. We've got five amazing kids, couple grandkids, and it's, and I'm literally living my passion. So it's, so now I have to stay healthy because I need to I need to live long and prosper, Spock. and to enjoy this period of life, right? Like that's the, I always say, you I've said it before, you go to work, you how you doing? Bob, how you doing? Sue, how you doing? Whatever. And a lot of people, what do they respond with? Well, you know, I'm living the dream. And it's usually, you know, with a very sarcastic undertone and all things, but legitimately, like it took me 40 plus years to live my best life. You know what mean? Personal life, professional life, and all the things. I can't say that I echo kind of what your life, that parallel. But just the fact that it's like, oh man, again, you what they say, the things you wish you knew 20 years ago, but it would have been wasted on you 20 years ago, because 20 years ago, you wouldn't have listened to what you had to say, even if it came from you. So it's like, So you touch on, and very briefly, or not very briefly, it's up to you. You've already kind of touched on those challenges that you've faced in life. And I want to shine the light on that just for a moment between your cancer diagnosis, that rough marriage. I don't know if there's anything you necessarily want to expound on those things, but more importantly, those are obviously huge personal challenges. How do you, Lisamarie, how did you navigate those challenges? probably, well, well, you know, the cancer is, is one thing you just kind of deal with it and push through. And that was, that was unique because we, I found out I was pregnant the day after I had got the cancer diagnosis. Um, so that, yeah, that, and again, I think this is what made me question a lot of, you know, It made me look at alternative medicine, functional medicine, and the bigger picture because I was told by three different surgeons to terminate the pregnancy because I was 23. was young. I could have more kids. And I said, okay, what's the research? What's going to happen? Will this baby have three heads? What are we looking at? And they said, nope, spontaneous abortion. The baby just won't survive the pregnancy. I said, okay, that was an easy decision for me to make. It wasn't my decision. we just, you know, whatever you believe in, God, higher power, whatever, put it in their hands. And I'm happy to say that that is my 32 year old daughter who I have two grandchildren with. So a lot of that, to answer your question, just really kind of just having faith. You make the best decision that you can make at that time. And because I also had three different treatment plan options, one very conservative, one very drastic, and one middle of the road. And because I was pregnant, because they couldn't do radiation until, you know, they waited until my second trimester to do the surgery, then waited until I delivered and six weeks, I, you know, I could nurse at for six weeks and then they would radiate me. So, and because it was metastatic, I was like, I just want this stuff out of me. So I went for the more drastic surgery. They severed my long thoracic nerve and I ended up having horrific shoulder injury because of that. But I'm happy to say I found it. I got some treatment this past year and I'm back to golfing. Yesterday, I guess so I'm very happy this year. Yes, it took it took 30 years for the muscles to waste away and me to lose, you know, pretty much most of the use of my left arm. But um, yeah, but it all came back. So it's amazing. So do your research because there's that's that's kind of, you know, why you go down all these different rabbit holes and my big thing for researching because there are so many different things out there. But anyway, that was, you you just have to stumble through and make the decisions that are best for you at the time. Do I regret that my shoulder's a mess? Yes, but living like, you know, without total fear that, I still have cancer. It's still there, they didn't get it all. So, you know, and I say to people all the time, health decisions, that's why we need, as nurses, as educators, I think we're as much educators, we are nurses and caregivers. And our job is to present all the information that we have available to us and explain. So people need to be empowered to make their own decision for their health at the moment. And it might not be the same decision. You're going to have five people and you might have five different decisions, but that should be their right to decide. What's the best course of action for them? And then the marriage thing, again, you take the good, you take what you learn from it and you move on. And again, I think no hard feelings for anything and anyone. It is what it is and you can't carry that burden because it's worse for you to carry the negative emotions and the negative feelings that takes up space. So, you know, and I saw it doing, you know, geriatric psych. I was doing nursing home geriatric psych during COVID and you can't like, you can sweep some things under the rug for a time, but you reach a certain age where all of that stuff just comes. flying back. So you have to deal with things at some point in your life. Otherwise, it just eats away at you. And that's in the form of emotionally as well as physically. Like there's genuinely, there's research out there that shows, you know, those stressors, those everything comes out in a physical manifestation. And I mean, there may be some 20 somethings right now going, yeah, I know, I've felt that. You know what mean? It's a real thing. I'll never forget my grandma, God bless her. One of the two greatest heroes in my life. And she's, I'll never forget you, I sat at the table. I mean, I was like, I don't know, mid late teens. And we're talking about stress and all the things that's kind of entered the vernacular of the public consciousness. And she was very much like, my day we didn't have stress. You just did it. You just did the things. don't, living through the Great Depression and all that, it wasn't this whole, you But we recognize stress for what it is. it's definitely, there's some physical manifestations that can happen there of the things that you're going through. So nursing students going through nursing school. 100 % get those hobbies that Lisamarie was talking about, know, carve some time out. We've had plenty of honored guests that said, don't forsake those things. Don't just cocoon in the, you know, in the world of nursing student studying and I have to get straight A's and no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. B is for balance. Go back. Yeah, that's, there was a fantastic educator, previous honored guest. That's a B is for balance. And that's what she learned it. She's like, espouse that. So now we're just gonna pass it on. So, With that Lisamarie, thank you, and all of that, so inspiring, like I feel like we just could have ended right there. Like, you know what I mean? Just what you've been through and also the fact that I'm not talking to this bitter, cantankerous nurse, you know, A, because of, you know, nurse experience over the years and B, because of life experience. And those things have a tendency, like you said, to build stack and maybe turn this into a version of ourselves that we never envisioned ourselves being or wanted to be. So. Thank you for modeling that and for describing that and talking about that. So with the remaining time we have, just kind of want to, know, partially because, man, I'm tired. I'm just going to go lay down in the back. I'm going to mute my mic. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Lisamarie portion of the... No, but you take control here. We want to hear about your career. You kind of touched on your career progression, but for the sake of us type A, you know, timeline people, if you want to take us down that road... like for nursing students, man, okay, I'm gonna be a XYZ nurse and I'm gonna be that for my entire career. That was me. I'm gonna be peds oncology nurse my entire career and I'm gonna work nights my entire career. Guess what two things I'm not doing these days? I'm working nights or in peds oncology. So tell us about your career progression. And then that of course is gonna naturally feed into what you are doing. I'm so excited for this part. Tell us about your ventures. You said you've had your own practice for a year. You're chasing your PhD. What, as I understand, you're a bit of an entrepreneur. So tell us more about that as well. So we want to hear past, present, and future. Lisamarie, the professional. All right, well first I want to just touch on you mentioning the cantankerous nurse. And I have seen many of them. And I will say that I have always loved being a nurse from day one. I have loved it. One of the reasons I love it so much is because as I mentioned before, there's always room. If you're bored, go to something else. Try travel nursing, try this. There is enough to keep you motivated and enriched, for lack of a better word. So don't get stuck. I think the cantankerous comes from when you are just stuck in the grind. You know what? When you get in that comfort zone, it's boring. It's really boring and you get cranky and stale. So nursing allows you to move around and learn and expand your knowledge base. Mm-hmm. That is how you can fight that. But to that point, maybe that's why I'm not a cantankerous old nurse. So I've always, again, because of my personal health issues, and then in my 30s dealing with hormonal issues, and I kind of didn't like being put in the box of, well, you just need, you need this pill or you need this because this is your problem. And I was like, you know, I don't like like don't even don't even tell me oh, this is what we do for everybody who has that problem. Well, I am not everybody. Exactly. I'm not everybody. So, um, I I sought a lot of holistic and traditional medicine throughout my personal life. And then as I was going through the geriatric psych, my youngest patient was 19 years old. when I first started seeing her. And she ended up in a nursing home because she was 600 pounds and didn't recover from an illness. And at 21, the last time I saw her, she was 21 before I left that job. And I thought, I loved her. She was just adorable. She was the sweetest thing. She had lost a couple hundred pounds, but because she had so many issues, Um, because of the obesity, um, she had a lot of eczema, horrific psoriasis sores all over her body and she refused to get out of bed. And again, you know, that's her right. We can't force her to get out of bed. Now in my day, we got the dark ages, right? But, but you know, we didn't do her any service because this poor girl, 21 years old. I'm getting all emotional here because I'd go to see her and she's younger than our youngest kids and I'm thinking this poor girl has no life. And I don't want to say she didn't understand but I don't think she understood the severity of it because her muscle wasting was so bad the most she was getting was up in her electric wheelchair to sit outside. 21 years old. So that kind of really pushed me. professionally into saying, okay, well, I'm not old enough to retire. I'm going to be working, you know, for at least 10 more years. And I needed to really be able to feel good about what I was doing rather than being the quote unquote pill pusher that I was called many times by some old, contiguous patients. Because that's what I did. I was the medication manager. I didn't do therapy. I made sure, you know, everyone's medication. was okay. And it just, I don't know, I needed more. I needed to be more than the pill pusher. So actually, you know, 10 years ago, I thought about getting a, you know, IFM or whatever, any functional medicine specialty out there. And I just jumped in and I think it was a conversation with our youngest daughter one day last year that She was having major issues at 26 and I'm like, we have to find you a functional medicine specialist. And my opinion is, that, you know, and I would say to every one of my patients who asked me questions about it, you know, in traditional medicine, I would say they're kind of like snake oil salesman. You have to find a good one. Some just want to, you know, some just want to put you on supplements and not really know what's going on, but you, you know, you need to find a good one. So I guess I sought out to be a good one. So and last year I work in my very intensive one-on-one program I pretty much work with patients for five to six months and I Kind of like you said, I just want to it's all about hormone balance. It's all about hormone balance What I that's how I started my practice and what I realized was if your gut health isn't in line, then you're never going to be able to maintain weight loss even if you lose weight with extreme measures, and you're never going to be able to maintain that hormone balance. again, you have to learn and pivot. When you know better, you do better, right? So, throughout creating that practice, I kind of came up with my unique process in I created a lab panel that gives me a really good look and you know, it's for It amazes me how inexpensive blood labs are when you're not when your insurance isn't paying for them if that makes sense like With a cbc and diff for two dollars and 80 cents or maybe three dollars and 20 cents I can I can find out so much and it it now kind of amazes me and And like what our normal values were in traditional medicine, you know, I'm looking to find a disease 10 years before it happens, at least in functional medicine. So, and again, you know, for people who aren't familiar, know, functional medicine is we specialize in root cause. We like unpack the suitcase and figure out what's causing the high blood pressure, figure out what's causing the kidney issues. And again, in... I say 50 hit me like a brick wall. I was diagnosed with primary glomerular nephritis in my 50s. And it took them seven years to still not give me any answers and couldn't figure anything out. We were just waiting and waiting for my kidney functions to fall off the cliff. And I became my own first patient last year and did a functional medicine, gut tests that I do with most of my patients. And I had an overgrowth of two bacteria that are directly related to chronic kidney disease. And I'm happy to say now that after a year of now, you know, there are no quick fixes in functional medicine and I have reversed and my primary symptom has been gone now for months and my blood work is all normal. So it's it's kind of crazy when you start doing the deep dive into things but so functional medicine can be holistic but functional and integrative medicine is I take the best of both worlds and I say I have a lot of tools my tool belt and We use them when necessary. So I pull up I use food first Supplements when we need them because there's nothing I hate more than people who are just taking supplements because they heard they were good Yeah, yeah. mean, there's a way to use them. They should be used with intent and rotating in and out with for a certain purpose. And, you know, then I use, we use my prescription pad when it's absolutely necessary. So it's kind of cool to be able to do that. And really, I started off with some really unhealthy people. And I think because of that, I'm getting a lot of unhealthy people, which is awesome because, you know, mean, by the time people are coming to me in my one-on-one practice, they have been getting the run around and they're on pill after pill after pill and they're not feeling better and things are getting worse and, you know, because every medication, it only works for so long. So it's pretty, it's... Honestly, the most rewarding thing I have done to be able to help people on a level and get the messages I'm getting, like, I mean, people couldn't leave their house because they didn't have the energy and they... So to really deal with health issues at literally the cellular level is amazing. Now, it's not for the faint of heart because, I mean, I'm spending two plus hours with each... patient, like four patients a day is an eight hour day, an eight hour day, because there's so much involved in it. But, it's pretty awesome. So because of that, I created this unique way looking at gut health, metabolism, and hormone balance. and I'm now taking this huge five month protocol and breaking it down into a series of group programs. So this year I launched an educational platform, basically. So I have my one-on-one practice and I'm licensed in four states. So I work with people one-on-one in my practice in those four states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Florida. And, with my, and again, because insurance doesn't cover it, it's, you know, all cash and I'm, you know, basically it's a concierge platform. You have access to me because you can't do this kind of intensive work really by saying here, I'll see you in three months because a lot of it is, you know, diet based. So, I'm, I've broken, I'm breaking my big, big program down into a series of educational programs. So there'll be group. programs where they'll meet with a health coach and It's pretty cool. It's it's really kind of cool how it kind of spins off into like educational platforms so I have like a membership portal that you know, you can log into and I record a series of Educational videos and teach you what you need to learn and then we have group sessions to make sure everybody's on track so It's exciting because it's a lower price point that people can access functional medicine and functional medicine testing as well. Yeah, I, there's two thoughts here. The first of which of course is, okay, I mean, I don't have a bent towards functional medicine. That is not to say I'm anti-functional medicine. I'm just saying I don't, you know what mean? I grew up on processed foods. You know what I mean? Like there's my background, right? As many others and all the things, blah, blah, blah. My single mom did a wonderful job raising us with what she had and what she could. All that to say, so therefore it's not in the forefront of my mind. But listening to you, I'm like, my gosh, like I wanna, my gosh, like you're inspiring me to want to, you know what mean, look into that more. So that being said, if you're doing that to this stubborn old coot, then I know you're doing it for anyone else who might be listening. I know there's others that are going, my gosh. So if listeners happen to be in those four states, I don't know that I have many out in those four states at the moment, but anyone who is listening out there are going, Lisamarie, how do I get connected? But also with your online platform and that sort of thing, where can we find you? This is all idea number one. How do we, you know what I mean? Well, my practice is optimal health and well-being and My the educational business is Lisamarie NP so LisamarieNP.com and then and that's actually where you would start That's the the start of everything The springboard yes, but I'm on Facebook social media Lisamarie NP on Facebook and Lisamarie the NP on Instagram and you'll see me talking all kinds of stuff. I kind of look at, and I kind of see your point because functional medicine, again, because you have a lot of people just trying to cram weird things down your throat sometimes. So I like to think of it as like, it's common sense, know, but again, going back to the first episode when we were talking, the best healthcare is a collaborative platform. So, and this, know, everyone who comes to me has their PCP. I work with their PCP. And it's awesome because for me to, for that patient to come back to me and say, okay, my doctor said that whatever you're doing is great. So keep doing it because he's never seen my lab work look so good. So it's kind of cool. And honestly, I kind of feel like I have, You know, I kind of have that you have to do better because people aren't familiar with it and they really aren't sure how it works. And it's like, well, no, it's just kind of common sense. We just, you know, have to dig deep and we work on the cause of the problem. And, you know, we work together, you know, I'm not taking anyone off medication. I'm sending them back to their, their PCP saying, Okay, your blood pressure's a little low now. We need to have him make, or her make adjustments. So I'm a huge collaborator and I think that's the way patients get the best health. Fantastic. I'm not gonna have you redo that part, and what I'm saying now is probably gonna make the episode. We had, in the first episode, we had our first glitch that I haven't had in over 100 episodes now, where she completely froze on my end and I completely froze on her end, and it just happened again, but only for a shorter period of time, but I said uh-oh in the middle of that. So if you, I know that the editing on this is, I use Riverside to edit, which is great, I know there's better ways to do it. We're the most professional unprofessional podcast around. All I wanna say is, if you hear uh oh, in the middle of what she's saying, and it has nothing to do with what she's saying, I was getting up to grab my phone to text her, to say here's a little peek behind the curtains everybody. I was gonna text her to be like, it happened again. uh oh, Lisamarie. Anyway, okay, so, ignore it if you heard it. If I can get it out, you guys are be like, what in the world is all this, anyway, I don't understand. Okay, so we. digressed a little bit there, but no, and I love that and I love too that you know you're talking about being better, getting better, so that you can be better and I love that drive that you have. That's the kind of drive that just inspires me to continue with that drive myself. Never settling, right? Like never, you've got this amazing practice, you've got patients coming in, sometimes there's lack of motivation for some people like, alright, I've made it, I've achieved. You know what mean? Nursing students, when you become a nurse. and you finally get, however many years in, whatever your specialty, whatever area of nursing you practice in, you'll get a certain number of years in, you go, okay, I don't know everything, but I feel comfortable, this is great. Don't live there. Don't be tempted to live there, because that's how you become the cantankerous old nurse, right? We were talking about that, one of the reasons why. going, circling all the way back to what I was saying, there was a second thought that I had, hearing you talk about all this amazing stuff, and that's just to point out overtly, to nursing student or potential contemplative potential nursing students. And that is that here we are talking about a stellar example of how, you know what I mean? We had, there were episodes with one Vanessa Arbuckle who talked about how she hasn't worked a day of inpatient nursing in her life and she's done a number of things and fantastic. And here's yet another example of, okay. What does, you know, I can literally go anywhere with my nursing degree. This is what this looks like. You can then, you know, go higher, step higher, do, you know, I don't want to say higher, I to say more advanced. More advanced degrees, which gives you more freedom, which gives you the ability to create your own business. Lisamarie's got her business that is helping people. I've got my little business that's doing its own way to help you people. And those are the things that we're like, we're just not satisfied. Like, let's just keep going. I'm still doing bedside nursing. I'm teaching students. I'm doing a podcast. Lisamarie is like, I'm gonna get my nurse practitioner. I'm gonna start working on my PhD. I'm gonna get that PhD. And then I'm gonna continue to better the health of individuals in four states that I'm gonna guess counting. Lisamarie, I can't imagine you're gonna stop there, All that paperwork in the background. I think that's enough. We'll see how the group program goes. I love it. All right, so anything else you wanted to share about that before we close with our traditional questions, Lisamarie? Yeah. point, I think to all the nursing students out there, and I would guess you probably have some people who are thinking about going to nursing school maybe, I think it is a fantastic starting point and I always recommend to people, know, there are still RN programs out there I believe, depending on what stage you're in. So the extra, what, six months? maybe a year it takes you to get that RN degree over an LPN degree. Now, I've worked with amazing LPNs. There's nothing against them. But if you're putting that time and money into the education, that RN opens more doors for you and it is a stepping stone. So if you wanna do more or wanna go to college or whatever, don't have the time, don't have the money, get that RN. go to work, get some experience under your belt, and then you go on. Let them pay for it. The mom and me, that's one of the reasons I said that it just makes so much sense because it's a quick way to get the education, get the entry-level position, and then you can always go back and finish and build on it, case in point, and never stop because that's probably what kept me young. Hahaha, yeah. but they might, and we'll talk about that when we're done recording this, because there's one little ask I have of you when we're done, and it's a whole different thing, but we'll talk about that after. No, that's fantastic. So let's, we'll wrap around, there was something else I was gonna say. Gosh darn it, you made me think of something. No, no, no, I was the one that squirreled off of what it was that I wanted to bring out in that. Yes, what you were saying reminded me that there are so many, quote unquote, no better words in the nursing field. You know what I mean? I don't know. For some, it's having an uneventful shift. So uneventful shift can sometimes be some of the better words you've ever heard, depending on where you're practicing at and that sort of thing. But what just popped in my brain for whatever reason, nursing student nurses will tell you... Every to a last to every last woman every last man will tell you two of the best words in all of our profession are unencumbered license and unencumbered license gives you the ability to do all of these things whatever that license looks like You know to your point about the LPNs, know at least in the state of Washington and especially my neck of the woods But I think on the west side as well LPNs are quote-unquote falling out of favor There's always a place for LPNs. think LPNs and LVNs for those that are down south. I think I've heard that term down south a little bit more. know, licensed practical nurse and licensed vocational nurse for those that are unaware. When I was going to community college, we had the opportunity to sit for LPN exams, the NCLEX for the LPN, at the year mark, and then we finished out the RN degree like you're talking about. and they still highly recommended it, whether you're stopping at the LPN point or you're gonna go on to the RN, and they had their own education and encouragement as far as that goes, they said still sit for the exam. So if you're in one of those programs and you have the chance to do both, like Lisamarie said, I could not agree with her more fully, go for the RN, just push all the way through because that will, at some point we had some more. wiser, experienced nurses in their, you know, dare I say it, 40s and 50s. my gosh, how are they still alive? Says someone in their 40s and 50s. So, but they were joining us in our program. They were LPNs that were being forced out of their jobs. They had to go back and get their RNs. So just know that just because something's a thing, it might limit you in the future. And so if you can not stop, don't stop. And if you have the opportunity to sit for the exam in the middle, go for it because by golly, A, it gave me something to fall back on in case, you know, those other three quarters didn't work out for some reason. But the more specific reason was because then it gave you practice for the RNN class, which we all get to sit for. So on that note, Lisamarie, I, I, anything else pop in your brain while I was talking before we close in our traditional manner? I love it. All right, then with that, what were the three words you chose? describe nursing school and why did you choose them? life-changing challenge. that, it makes a nice little phrase, but it literally, mean, nursing school alone will change who you are as a person because of what you, it's like a boot camp, what you endure, what you're expected to do. The bar is pretty high. I have not come across a nursing program where the bar is not high. And then, you know, that sets you off. You will make amazing relationships and you won't be the same person and you should just always, go reach for that bar and keep raising it. Because, you know, life is a journey. Nothing stops. Nothing stops. So it's pretty cool how, you know, at this point, the old lady looking back at things. Yeah, you know, I really wouldn't change. I wouldn't really change much. So embrace it and enjoy it and, you know, learn from the bad and enjoy the good. Yes, and tolerate the ugly. I don't know. Yeah, you can't do anything about that, You can't do anything about that, so you just have to let it roll off your back and okay, whatever. you go. And or if it really sucker punches you, feel the feels, let it out, we've talked about that, find somebody, you know what I mean? Yeah. And get, walk through that, don't shove it down like Lisamarie was talking about. And then you become the cantankerous old nursing home person down the road who you're just like, all these things are gonna come out because you never dealt with them. So don't do that to your future caregivers and family. I used to tell my kids, embrace the suck. You know, there's no way but through. So, you know, bad stuff's gonna happen. You need to accept it. I think the better you are at accepting it, experiencing it, and then getting through it, it's the only way, it's the only thing you can do. And you just said, the better you are. my gosh, how do I get better at it? By doing it! That's the sucky part. It's the only way you get better. You just do it. Yes. Yes. it's like the band-aid. I say to patients, you know, when we're taking away highly processed foods and they're Mountain Dew, it's a band-aid. Do you like to rip off the band-aid fast or just like hair by hair? It's your choice. there you go, there you go. Okay, so, and maybe there's overlap, maybe there's not, maybe you've already talked about it. But if there was one thing you want someone to walk away from listening to your episodes, the one thing you want them to remember, besides our positions on Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers, can't wait to hear from you guys, other than that, what's the one thing you want people to walk away from your episodes remembering? I hope that they know that they are, if you're a nursing student, you're doing the most amazing thing. Congratulations for being wherever you are. Just enjoy it, enjoy it. And I hope you're inspired and you can say, well, God, I'm gonna be like that old lady and start a medical practice myself when I'm in my 50s. There you are. And imagine how much farther functional medicine will be in, you know what mean? You know, say in 30 more years. honestly, it's really moving into traditional medicine, I think. So that's a good thing. Yeah. I can't thank you enough. say it to everybody, but it doesn't make it any less true I just can't thank you enough for taking that a couple hours of your time this morning and just enlightening us Enlightening us youngins. I should say I can't wait to grow up someday and be like you Yeah, that's it. We're all waiting to grow up. There was a meme I just saw last night it had to do with it was this video and it It came from a movie. It was a movie clip and I don't know what the movie was. But this older gentleman, I'm assuming is like the father of this other guy and they're talking to each other. But the older gentleman is musing about like, you know, he said something specifically about when I was 19, I shaved my face and all I saw back at me was the 19 year old and I never could not see that again. Meaning, and the whole point of it was, I'm not doing it justice in any way, shape or form. But the whole point of it was, None of us are prepared to be adults. So there's another, here's another nugget for you guys. We're in our 40s and 50s and we're still not prepared to be adults. It's, you just kind of fake it, I guess, until you never make it, right? In that regards, yeah, we're just learning along the way. Exactly! It's a journey and, you know, life is short, so enjoy it and never, ever get old. And I'm not saying age-wise, I'm saying mentally. Stay young, play, have fun. You know? I still play video games, I still go outside, I still do the things, and you know what? It's great. That goes all the way back to episode one. Your first episode, I mean. With hobbies, get your hobbies, find your hobbies, nourish the hobbies, and allow them to flourish you. Lisamarie. so much fun. Oh, likewise. Thank you so much for your time. for those that I meant to lead off with this, here's another blonde moment for you guys. Meant to lead off with this, but now that we're an hour and a half later, Lisamarie, prior to this hour and a half, she and I go way back. Prior to this hour and a half, we had known each other for approximately a combined maybe 20, 25 minutes. So we're at two hours in our friendship here, and I'm grateful. for those couple of hours. And I just hope you that you remain in touch and maybe we touch base with Lisamarie in a couple of years down the road when the Feeding Our Young podcast movement is still going. So awesome. Best to you and just keep taking amazing care of your patients and encouraging those around you. Thank you.