When Pushing Through Makes You Sicker: Chronic Pain, Opioids, and Redefining Resilience | Nancy Deyo

What happens when the mindset that made you successful starts making you sicker?

Former Silicon Valley CEO Nancy Deyo set out to climb Mount Kilimanjaro after a painful business setback. A serious spinal injury on the mountain began a 15-year struggle with chronic pain, opioid dependence, anxiety, depression, and a medical system that often doubted what she was experiencing.

Nancy shares how she stopped treating resilience as endless endurance and began rebuilding her life through acceptance, adaptation, self-trust, and support. Her recovery did not mean returning to her old life—it meant creating a new one that honored her body without surrendering her purpose.

In this conversation, you'll hear:

• How a Kilimanjaro injury changed Nancy's life
• Why chronic pain and mental health cannot be separated
• How opioid dependence can develop during legitimate pain treatment
• What medical dismissal does to a patient's sense of reality
• Why pushing harder can sometimes delay healing
• How Nancy rebuilt her identity, education, career, and relationships
• A healthier definition of resilience based on listening and adapting

Nancy's message for anyone who feels stuck: you are not alone, advocacy matters, and there may be a way forward even if it looks different from the life you expected.

Learn more about Nancy:
Life Inside Pain with Nancy Deyo

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Transcript

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0:57

Nancy, why don't you start us off by telling us about your journey? Nice to be here, Travis. I was a very hard-charging, very ambitious CEO working in Silicon Valley until my business started to run out of money. And like so many companies in Silicon Valley that start up, nine out of ten of them fail, but the ones we love to talk about are the ones that make it public and are a big hit. But for me, I ended up having to sell my business to my arch rival, which was like a stab in the back. So after that happened, I thought I have to do something really significant to prove that I'm not a failure, to prove that I can still succeed at something really big. So I set out to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I had always been fascinated with high altitude climbing. And my husband and I had spent time in Tibet and Nepal and India and Peru. And if it wasn't one place, it was another. Just the closer we could get to the sky, the better. But I decided that I had to go and summit one of the seven tallest peaks in the world. And that stood in Tanzania, Mount Kilimanjaro. So we trained hard for it. I was sure this was going to be my redemption. But on the weeks before the climb started, I injured my back training on a broken stairmaster of all things. But since I was an athlete, I just kind of compartmentalized it and shoved it down and said, I'm doing this climb anyway. I have to do this. I have to prove myself. And so I decided to go to Africa. And the first day of the climb, I was already in trouble. I had to relinquish my pack to a porter because I couldn't stand the weight of it on my spine. And the second day I was having difficulty sitting. And so after the hike ended, I had to go and lie down until morning, hoping that my back would recover by the time it was time to hike. And on the third day, the team fashioned me a back brace out of duct tape and an inflatable pillow to hold my back together. So as the days wore on, things got worse, the altitude got to me, it was pain and scree and rock until there I was at 16,000 feet, unable to move my legs. And I felt like somebody was driving a steel rod through my spine. And I had two thoughts. The first thought was that I could actually be bleeding out. And I could end up with my name on a rock like so many other climbers had done who had tried to scale the world's highest mountains. And the other thought I had was I've been so aggressive my whole life, pushing through everything, trying to force my way from one goal to another. And I tried to do this on this mountain and it is not working. And you might think, Travis, that that would be the moment that my definition of what it meant to be resilient would change. But sadly, it took 15 years of hell and chronic pain that followed. for me to learn that resilience had to be finding a different way to live. So that was the beginning. Well, we're on the same page there because with my so I have a s a seizure disorder and those started back in two thousand nine and it took me let's see, until two thousand twenty-four to actually start really getting the help that I need and that was years of anxiety and depression as well. And looking back I was like if I knew back then what I know now, I would be a completely different person but It took me years to actually start building up that resilience. How true that is and how many years pass before we often figure out the thing that's right in front of us. And that was my story as well. It's this crazy it's I I love seeing the overlap, even though we lived like two different things. Absolutely. So, you know, unlike what I thought, I didn't die that night on the mountain, but I got carried down on piggyback by two porters who were strong enough to get me to safety. And I thought, okay, now I'm a ~ mess, but at least I can go get medical help. So my husband and I ~ were evacuated to Nairobi, Kenya, where an orthopedist Took a look at my an MRI and an x-ray that was taken and walked into my room and said, I have great news, you're gonna be fine. You just need bed rest, which you can do right here in the hospital in Nairobi. So I spent the next week under the gentle care of lovely nurses there who fed me pain pills and gentle comfort while I tried to sleep my way to recovery. And when I wasn't any better, I ended up traveling to London where I saw another orthopedist who looked at my films and told me I was fine, but I just needed physical therapy. Which I did. And sadly that went nowhere. And by the time the third doctor, my hometown doc in San Francisco, gave me the same diagnosis, but just put me on OxyContin this time, I just felt this huge disconnect. I knew something was deeply wrong with my body. I thought something was really, really hurt internally. But the message I was getting from the doctors was totally different from that. And that's when your reality just starts to shift and you start to wonder am I crazy? Am I making this up? I just I trust my body. I know it's I think it's telling me the truth, but reality starts to crumble beneath you. The crazy thing is it took Several more months, a lot more testing before a doctor finally realized that I had fractured vertebrae, a smashed disc, and that I needed a spinal fusion and I needed it right away. But the unfortunate thing was by that time I was very chemically dependent on oxycontin and the dosage had kept increasing as my pain escalated. that's that's scary stuff. And sometimes it's just me thinking this out loud. I feel like the the medical or doctors can be really quick to prescribe stuff instead of getting to the bottom of what really needs to like what work really needs to be done. Absolutely. And you know, my story was really not that different. After surgery, the pain was excruciating. The oxycontin became fentanyl. And to say that I was anxious and depressed would be a huge understatement. It was like my life had just turned upside down and unable to sit, I had to spend my days lying down. So, you know, there I lay, not a CEO in a business suit, striding across an airport, but I had on hospital pants and a hoodie and I was stuck lying down with a pile of opioids next to me on a table. And I just thought, I I don't I don't even know who this person is. I don't recognize myself. I don't know what's happened to my life. And I still remember the first time I went to see my surgeon after my fusion. And I was in so much pain I'd been lying on the floor of his waiting room because I just couldn't sit. And He they took me back into the exam room and he walked in and he had my films in his hand and he said, Your surgery was just flawless. I couldn't be happier. And I said, my God, my pain is like an eight on a scale of one to ten, which by the way, I hate the pain scale. I'm I would imagine most of your listeners do too. Yes. It's just so unhelpful and so not individual, but un unrelated to that, I did tell him it was an eight on a scale of one to ten. And he He looked at me and and he looked me straight in the eye and he said, You know, you seem really nervous. I I just I feel like I need to refer you to psych. And in that moment, the words anxious and depressed were melted into my medical record. And as I'm sure many of your listeners have experienced, the moment that is documented in your record, it can change the kind of care that you receive.~ yeah, for sure. And it's that's almost comes to be the only thing that they they want to think about. Absolutely. So, you know, my s my short story from there is that for five years I continued to be tested. I ended up hospitalized multiple times. They never found anything, either in orthopedics or pharmacology or neurology or physiotry. The tests always came back normal and they just had done everything that they could, but the pain was escalating and so was my opioid use. So in an act of virtual last ditch desperation, I went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for a three-week pain rehab and drug detox program. And, you know, it's a very aggressive program that I have to admit, looking back pushed me harder than I even used to push myself, which still was ridiculous and over the top. But in week one, they pulled all the opioids and all the supporting drugs away. And we can talk about withdrawal separately, but it is so real and it's for me it was physical, it was neurological, it was emotional. It was very difficult. And in weeks two and three they forced back physical function. So I went from laying on the floor of the conference room to starting to walk, forcing myself to sit. Forcing myself to do the activities of daily life. And I started to feel a sense of hope because I was actually getting back on my feet. And I remember calling my pain doc the last day, and I was pretty high. And I said, This program's like amazing. I'm off the drugs. I'm back on my feet for the first time in five years. And I remember he was really metered and understated. And he just said, Okay, I'll see you when you get back. And I I was kind of pissed off. I mean, I remember thinking, Yeah. why isn't he happy for me? I mean, I feel like my life is starting to turn around. But I got home and two days later, I was in the ER for intractable pain. I just I couldn't handle the push. It was too much, too fast, which sadly was what my doctor had suspected, but had obviously supported me in. Doing the program because I thought there was nothing else for me. And 10 days later, after being tested every way from Sunday, he walked in and he said, You know, your tests just aren't showing anything. You know, I we will help you as much as we can with the pain, but we're gonna discharge you and send you home. And in that moment, my husband turned around and went. looking for a nursing home to put me in. I was 45 years old and that was not where I belonged, but the medical system had done its best. I was a complicated case. There was nothing more they could do for me. And they were basically sending me home to a different life. And I realized that it was kind of on me and it was up to me at this point to find my way to a different future. And maybe the all this pushing I'd been doing all my life, which continued when I got sick, and every time I'd feel this much better, I'd jump back up and end up crashing and having a setback that set me back further than I had started. So that pattern I realized of pushing might be actually making me sicker. Instead of better. And at this at this point, how many years has this how long have this been? What does the timeline look like? it had been six years. Six years? Yeah, six years of living horizontally on the opioids, really with no hope for anything but a a continued life of this pain and anxiety. So it was Yeah. a pretty morbid place to be. But I realized that I had to do something differently if I had any hope of any semblance of a life coming back. And I started trying everything. I tried energy healing, I tried hypnotism, I tried rapid eye movement, I tried a shaman. I just thought I have to go outside of what is being provided to me by Western medicine. And none of that worked. But thank God the Mayo Clinic had referred me to a wonderful therapist named Susan. Who had worked with breast cancer survivors on finding a new normal after diagnosis. And we were sitting one day. I remember I was lying on my couch and she was seated in a chair next to me. And she said, You know, I feel like you think your only options are to fight, which is what you usually do, or just to give up. But you don't have to do either of those. You just have to give in a little, enough to stop fighting yourself. And what She was really talking about was acceptance and maybe having a terrible day without labeling it a failure. And she called it the new normal. And I remember saying to her, I hate that. I hate that phrase. I just hate that because it represented this This is dull, black and white, monochromatic, horizontal, awful life that I was living. And it wasn't. Who I used to be and it wasn't how I saw myself, Mm-hmm. but I realized I'd have to let go of that person and try to start over if I'd any chance of living a life that wasn't this doomed existence that I was living. Yeah, it's it's so frustrating that it took takes so many years to get to that point. But I I w I do have a question for you here. Please~ so you've described your opioid ~ dependency. What do you wish people understood about how easily chronic pain can lead someone down that road? Wow. For me, the crazy thing is it started the day I got carried off of Mount Kilimanjaro. You know, usually it starts with surgery or after a a a hospital visit or a bunch of testing. But a famous mountaineer who was filming an IMAX movie on Kilimanjaro had run into my husband who was telling him the story of my injury and getting carried off a mountain, and he handed him a handful of Vicodin, which is an opioid, and said, you know, I always carry these with me in case somebody breaks a leg or an arm and they have to get to safety before they can be extracted. And I hope this will help you get to Kenya. And little did I know that this opioid dependence for me, they didn't just relieve pain, they just taught my body that it couldn't function without them. And I think I just I wish that what people knew was that suddenly you're not taking them to feel better. You're taking them because you're afraid of feeling worse. And what becomes tolerance builds and dependence follows, and then suddenly you might even be seeking them.~ I would say that I was on the red line between dependence and addiction, but it's a very scary. Feeling to know that it's something that you need. And for me, I Yeah. think my realization happened years later when I Mm-hmm. was lying with a friend, lying down when a friend was visiting, and I was obsessed with not engaging with her and not visiting, but I was obsessed with my next fentanyl patch. to the point where I asked her to go and retrieve it out of my medicine cabinet and put it on me a day before I was supposed to have it, because I thought she would do something that my husband wouldn't. Yeah. And I remember she had tears in her eyes when I asked her the question. And I just realized, I think we both realized that I was really in trouble. Yeah, that's so just so scary to me that it all that and it's just doesn't even take that much time. I mean I've seen some friends go through you know, being addicted to the painkillers and stuff and it heard s their stories of how they had to get off of them. And it just is scary because you just never know what can happen. Absolutely. You know, for me, I failed the first time at the Mayo Clinic because that detox, I ended up relapsing. And I think even I think opioid relapse rates are as high as 60%. I think they're really a high. Yeah, they are pretty high. Yeah. Not sure if that's the right number. But I did ultimately get off the drugs, but it took me, you know, 15 years of dependence. And it took an entire year under my pain doctor's very, very intentional care. And each step of peeling back that onion was really like Chinese water torture. I mean, everybody who's gone through it will recognize this. At every step down the ladder of your opioid use, you'll go through sleeplessness, probably nausea, anxiety. Sometimes I felt like my skin was crawling and I had to take Valium to calm myself down. And it took weeks for my brain to regulate. And when it finally did, we'd have to start over with the next step. And at each step, my terror was that the pain would return in force. I mean, that's always the scariest thing for anybody who's covering, masking the severity of that pain or dulling it with an opioid. Is that the pain will return? And would you s say that was like the worst part of the withdrawal is ~ just imagining that the pain would return? Such a good question. You know, I could deal with all the other symptoms. I really could. I got adjusted to being sleepless. I got adjusted to feeling a little bit sick and to not eating. And the anxiety had been part of my life for as long as I could remember. But the fear of pain, that was the thing I couldn't control. It was terrifying. And now I wanna I want to switch gears a little bit here to more Sure. of the anxiety, depression side of things. Did you know that that's what I'm trying to think of how to phrase this. Let me re ask this in a different way. So when I was going through my medical problems and I was experiencing anxiety and depression for the first time, I didn't know what it was and I was in denial about it for years. What did that look like? for you when it came on. Did you were you aware what you were going through at that point? Or did it take you some time to actually admit, Okay, well, I have something mentally wrong as well. A pretty optimistic person most of my life, and any anxiety that I might have had as a kid was pretty low-lying and pretty not serious. So I felt like I was struck after my injury with something that was just the heaviest cloud over my head. My limbs were heavy, my speech was heavy, I felt like I was. Crawling my way through peanut butter. I mean, it's a it was a really frightening feeling that, you know, not wanting to get out of bed. And even if I could, I'd have to be lying down anyways. So the future is pretty grim and it's very easy to kind of catastrophize that your life is over. And, you know, were there suicidal thoughts? Actually, yeah. I mean, it was so bad. That I'm not certain whether it was drug-induced or not, but I had been put on Adavan, which is a really, really powerful benzodiazepine and anti-anxiety med that's usually used after surgery, but I was put on it because my anxiety was just off the charts. And after a couple of weeks, when I was running low on prescription, I called the pain team at my hospital. To get a refill, and they said, You've been on it long enough. Stop. I mean, just like that. No titration, no nothing. And I went into such shock that I remember calling out to my husband from our bedroom one night, and I said, I'm gonna hurt myself. Something really bad's gonna happen. And we rushed to the ER and Turns out not only was I depressed and just anxious out of my mind, but I was going through huge withdrawal from being yanked off of a very powerful drug. So I think these things are just so inextricably entwined sometimes it's really difficult to know like what truth is. But all I know is it was dark and it was heavy. Yeah, I can definitely relate to you there. It's the there's so many pieces of your story that over like connect with mine or overshadow mine is it's kinda it's kinda cool to see. Not that I want anybody to go through anything like this, but I I love to hear the stories and how they connect. Absolutely. I mean, the whole reason I think you do what you do and I do what I do is that maybe somebody will see themselves Mm-hmm. in our words and maybe something that happened to us or something that we did will create a new idea. Because I mean we all we can't do this in isolation. We have to do this as a community and the supports that we need. may not be live supports in our household. They might be coming from somewhere else, which includes being online. I mean, Mm. Yeah. it's funny, at the time that I was sick, the online world was very nascent. So there weren't online communities of people that could support each other.~ and I remember that my doctors thought I needed something and they sent me to a a live in-person support group, which existed at the time. And my husband and I walked into this room and I had to lie down, which was normal for me. And we started going around the room, introducing each other. And 90% of the people in that room had stage four pancreatic cancer. And I thought, my God, what am I doing here? I mean, I this this isn't fair for me to be a witness to the pain in this room. Where are the people that have chronic pain who are for one reason or another, living like I'm living. But there wasn't, it just wasn't understood well. It wasn't defined well. And there wasn't pain wasn't even considered a disease in its own right until like 2011. And that was 10 years after my injury. So I think that there just wasn't the framework for supporting people like there is today. And I'm so I'm grateful that there are places like what like your show where people can come and they can hear stories that give them some hope. Yeah, for sure. And that's a huge reason why I'm doing this is I I want to give people hope because when you're in the thick of it of the depression and anxiety and the pain and whatever it is that you're going through, you do. You tend to feel very alone. But and I remember I for the longest time I thought, Well, I'm the only one dealing with this stuff. I'm it's only me. Nobody else has gone through anything like this. But that's not true. The more I speak up and the more I talk to people, the more I realize how wrong I am, because I believe that everybody has a story. I completely agree with that. I mean, it may be hard. Sometimes it's hard for our loved ones because they're not inside our bodies. And somebody who isn't chronically ill or in chronic pain or is experiencing that kind of depression or anxiety can't it's hard for them to put themselves in your shoes no matter how they try to empathize. But for anybody who's gone through it, they know. yeah, for sure. I Yeah. I remember so I've I've always been the anxious one in my marriage until these few years my wife has dealt with some anxiety problems because she got diagnosed with a a thyroid issue which Mm. causes anxiety. And she I think it was like last year, the year before, she pulled me aside and she said, I finally understand what your anxiety wh why you do the things you do. She said before now I've never understood it. It's I said, because you haven't lived it. You've been on the outside looking in, but it's completely different when you actually are going through the motions yourself. Absolutely. You know, I think these things can be really tough on friendships and on marriages. Wonderful. And I mean, thank God my marriage survived, but we both became really different people. My husband became my caregiver, I became a patient, our spontaneous, you know, independent lives ended. And we almost had to get to know each other again and recommit to a different kind of person, a different kind of bond, a different kind of marriage. And when it comes to friendships, I think if if a friend who loves you hasn't gone through what you're going it's really hard to know how to help. It's also really frightening to see that friend go through something's that's so dark and so. difficult because they can't fix it. And I can't tell you how many friends just slowly drifted away because there was nothing that they could do. Yeah, and it's and with my mental health issues,~ one thing that I've seen with friendships is I've really had to set up And it and Mm. it's if somebody like didn't understand or kind of brought something negative into my life, I would just say, You know what, I need to be done with you because that's how you're gonna treat me because I can't deal with it emotionally. Absolutely. In in fact, sometimes it was even as simple as not being able to handle a friend's healthy energy because it would send me into a pain or into worse depression or into worse anxiety. So I think all of these relationships are really tricky, which just reinforces how important the community of people who are who understand really can be. Yeah, for sure. And this leads me into another question. Just there was something you said in that last part that made me think of this when you were talking about your husband and you know, re rebuilding yourselves. ~ Let's see. There's so there's to me there's a difference between getting your old life back and building a new one because, you know, your reality's changed. Where did that distinction become clear to you that you needed to build something new? The distinction was so clear that day I described when I got discharged from the hospital after Mayo Clinic, and my husband went looking for nursing homes for me. And we both knew, even though he brought me home, that life as we knew it was over. And it was up to us to create a different life and a new one. And that I had we had to focus and I had to focus. On the things that I still could do and not everything that I couldn't. And for me, that was, you know, having to live lying down because I was going to be horizontal, but I could still use my brain. And that was functioning. So in the column of the things I could do, I could still learn. I could still think. I could still communicate. And it led me on this path that was key to my recovery that I would have never expected. But I decided that since I could still learn and think that I wanted to go back to grad school. I mean, I had given up the idea of being a CEO. I knew that would never happen again. But I thought I could still learn. And so I applied to graduate school at a university near me in San Francisco. And I got in and the f my first instinct was I'm gonna defer because I still have to lie down and I've gotta go in like a like everybody else, like sitting and walking through the world. But I realized that I had to start maybe before I was ready. And that meant going to grad school just like I was lying down. So I went to graduate school at age 50, lying on an army cot that I poured into my classroom in a little personal shopping cart and set up in about a minute. And I still remember orientation day. We were all introducing ourselves and all my fellow students were seated at these round tables. And they were half my age, by the way. And I was lying down in the back of my army cot. And when it was my turn to introduce myself, I propped myself up on like my elbow so that my head would be more at the level of their heads. And I said, Hey, I'm Nancy. I had this bad injury. I'm out Kilimanjaro. And I'm gonna be like you see me here lying on this cot. in class, but I want you to know that I'm okay with it. So you can be too. And I said this with this confidence that I completely did not feel because I was terrified and just sure that this was going to be the biggest disaster ever. and that I maybe had a 50-50 chance of getting through grad school without having such a huge setback that I'd have to drop out. But, you know, within that safe container of that university, I spent the next 18 months lying down on a cot, going to class, being surrounded by a group of what I consider to be much younger people ~ who supported me in ways that I could have never imagined. And one day we were talking about refugee refugees in ~ the Sahel in Africa. And the prof said, I want you to take a minute.'Cause we've been talking about the identity of these refugees. I want you to think about your own identity. And I want you to write down what you are and what you aren't. And then we'll share it out. And that was so easy for me. I thought when it time came, I'm I wrote this stuff down. Everybody else is kind of muttering, like taking their time and not really sure what they were gonna say and I raised my hand and I said, you know, I used to be a CEO and a wife and a sister and a daughter and a community member. And now I'm this chronic pain patient, period. And I have this disability, and society is not ready for people like me who can't sit up. And I could barely get that out of my mouth. And my classmates started interrupting me. And they said, No, that is not how we see you at all. And you've been a great contributor for the past year. You just you have a lot to give. You just happen to do it lying down. And that was a big moment for me. And I just thought this thing does not define me. And there's so much that I can still do. I just need I just have to keep rebuilding a different life. And so from grad school, I started, I went back to work lying down. I started traveling again like I had done with my husband, but this time on three coach seats lying across them. So I'd be Nancy Dale's Nancy Dale seat one, Nancy Dale seat extra seat two. And I would lay down instead of sitting up on airplanes. And I just realized there's so many ways to be in the world. You know, we are all so unique and so different. And it's all fine. So it just gave me a sense of possibility and purpose while still respecting and really honoring all those limitations that I had. Yeah, for sure. And I I love that story with the with your grad cla grad class and how they perceived you because Mm. it was completely different than what you were thinking. And I I love that because it's it shows something about those students. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean they had so much empathy and they they saw the person. They didn't see the the, you know, physical Okay. position. Yeah, and it's it sounds to me that you basically just had to learn how to trust yourself again to do these things and to do them differently than you have known. my God, that's so true. I learned first of all, I had to learn to trust my body, to listen to it, to adapt to whatever the reality was in a given day, which is wonderful in terms of staying in the moment and keeping present. And then whatever it was telling me, I had to adapt and focus on what I could could do that day. And that was actually the key, like the There was not a silver bullet, if you will, in my recovery, but that was key to a mindset that allowed me one day after another to start to heal. I I absolutely love that. So now compared to think back to when you're you were ~ Silicon Valley CEO to now,~ how has your definition of resilience changed? Ha ha. I used to think resilience was just about like rebounding and the big victory comeback and pushing through and enduring everything at all costs. And I just know that that's for me, it may be true for some people, but for me, it's not at all true. I mean, resilience is about embracing reality, adapting to what my body and my mind are telling me. is possible and then working within those limits to do the best that I can. It's really different. And you know, Yeah. Yeah. if I had a message for all Silicon Valley CEOs, I would urge them to maybe think about it a little bit differently. But I I certainly understand the mentality because I lived it myself. Yeah, but and that's we're on the same page. And but my my resilience has changed over the years too. It's Yeah. but we're we're pretty close to how we think there. It's there's with the I feel like with the professional world there's just this whole different mindset of what resilient being resilient should look like. Absolutely. Well, you know, our whole culture defines worth based on performance and productivity and and resilience. And that's the way that we do we have defined what success looks like. But you know, I have a very different picture of that now, thankfully, and I'm grateful for that. Even though if somebody offered me a do over, I would never climb Pilomancharo again. I certainly Okay. don't regret the person that I've become. Yeah, it's this is great. I love it. But for those so for those ~ someone who is listening, who appears successful and high functioning, but is privately falling apart what you want them to understand about listening to what their anxiety, depression, pain or exhaustion may be trying to tell them. I think it can be really, really hard to listen to what's real, which is what your body and your mind are telling you. And I think we are trained to sublimate that and to put on the good face that we have to put on to keep going. But I would say pay attention to those signals because that is the most authentic thing that you can get your arms around. And if you don't pay attention to it now, it will catch up to you. And it will catch up to you in a moment that you don't anticipate that you may not want. So I think if we can walk through the world, whether it's Silicon Valley or the world of health with our eyes wide open, I think we're all gonna be in a better position to do our best, whatever that may be. Yeah, I I love that answer. And so but now I'm thinking, sorry, I'm kind of all over the place here. It's kind of how my brain works sometimes. What does your pain, chronic pain look like today? This will sound miraculous, but I really, in terms of the chronic pain that I used to have, I would say that it is gone. I have been able to reframe what pain feels like in my brain at this point. I can attribute discomfort to too much working out, to a day when I didn't get enough sleep. Maybe I didn't relax enough and I can understand it and sit with it and then move on. So it's transformed.~ but I would also say that as I got stronger from grad school, from going back to work, a very, very deconditioned body started to strengthen. I then hired a personal trainer who I worked with every week for seven years to build back the muscle that I had lost in the first 15. following my injury. And I think that as I got stronger, the pain started to recede in and of itself. So I think both things were happening at once. But thankfully, you know, as you see, I'm not lying down. I'm sitting here and I'm okay. So ~ Yeah, that's it's it's really yeah, it's nothing short of amazing sometimes I think, but I understand how I got to where I am. That's that's really cool. And it's Thank you. it takes a very I give you kudos 'cause it takes a very strong person to do what you've been doing and get past that. Because I feel like there's so many times I feel like we make ourselves, you know, stuck because we can't see that there's something good on the other side that ~ maybe this pain can go away or Well, it took me so long to realize that everything I had built my life around, which was like discipline and control and pushing and working harder and outrunning everybody and outlasting everybody, wasn't gonna work in this phase of life, that it was making me sicker. And if I hadn't figured that out, I'm not sure where I would be, honestly. I think I might be still stuck. And it it just is sad that it takes so ~ many challenges to get to that point. And then but for me, there was a time where I thought it was all over and then the seizures came back full force at the end of 2024 and it just broke me down again. But that I that would probably be my turning point. So I I it's like I'm thankful for them, but not thankful for them because without them I don't know if I'd have this podcast. Absolutely. I think that anybody who's gone through what you have gone through, what I have gone through, has a different relationship to gratitude. So yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. And you you definitely have to learn how to practice self gratitude with all this stuff. Can agree more. And I'd love for you to dive into more of your ~ life inside pain, the your publication. Yes. So on Substack, I write a bi-weekly column called Life Inside Pain. And really pe it's pieces of this story, but it's more reflective because I've figured some things out in the years since I've gotten well. And I feel like I want to share them back with people in case they're going through their own illness, they have their own chronic pain, maybe they're they're grieving some huge loss in their life when the old methods aren't working and they're stuck. So I think there's a way through and I just hope that the stories and the anecdotes and the insights will make somebody recognize themselves in my words. That's that's great. And s we we need more people like that to share their stories. And which leads me to my next question. How do you distinguish healthy perseverance from overriding your body's signs? wow. ~ I think that Healthy, I don't think perseverance is my bad word. I think if it's healthy, that that to be steadfast can be a very good thing because it doesn't happen like that. It's always a process and it's a long road. I think sublimating your body signals, you know, pain's not the enemy. It's information that most of us have been trained to ignore. And we need to be able to pay attention to the signals that they're giving us. And I think that if you can do that, healthy perseverance can be your friend again. Yes, for sure. This is this is great. This is I I say this I every episode that I have, but this is like a free therapy session for me and I ask Ha ha me too. It's I'm like and sometimes like I feel like the questions I ask are ~ could almost be selfish because it's things that I think of and I'm like, how will this person answer this? Well, if you're asking it, your listeners are asking it. So Hey. I think you're anticipating everything they're hoping to hear out there. So this one kind of goes back to we we talked a little bit about how when you were diagnosed with ~ anxiety and depression, how the doctors could only focus on that. What do you wish physicians better understood about the psychological effects of living four years without a diagnosis? I think that I wish they understood that ambiguity is a really horrible place for a person to be when when they when they just need an answer. And I think when the diagnosis isn't clear, everybody gets uncomfortable, including the doctors. And I think the crazy thing about that is that sometimes when nobody has an answer, the answer becomes the problem becomes the patient. And I can't tell you, I've poured over 2,500 pages of my medical record, which is what it consists of after 15 years. And the things that I've read about myself were very sobering after all that time. It was more than anxiety and depression. It got so extreme that I would read things like. One ER doc wrote that conversion disorder and factitious pain and malingering have to be considered. And like honestly, I thought I have no idea what those words mean. So I had to look them up. And it basically meant that there was nothing, the symptom, there was no underlying cause of the symptoms. Factitious pain meant that there's a good chance that I was making them up. And malingering meant like maybe that I was intentionally put. Trying to manipulate the system and maybe I was drug seeking. And this is a doctor's need to find a different diagnosis when there isn't one. And, you know, it is incredible the way that those things can change the kind of care that you receive. So I wish that doctors understood, and I think it's much better than it used to be, that mental health and physical health are inextricably entwined. And that you can't say whether pain creates anxiety or whether anxiety worsens I think it's all interrelated. I a hundred percent agree with you. And it's it's crazy because I went through neurologist after neurologist and it's because they couldn't find a brain tumor. They couldn't find something operable. So they're like, Well, look just put on get this medicine and the medication actually made me hallucinate. So it just caused a bunch of bunch of other things that I could go off on, but it's it's it's just crazy because that's there there's a side of it that I feel I I feel like you're right that they're starting to understand it more, but there's still stuff that they can do to to help out the patients of that area. Yeah, I think the healthcare system is excellent at acute injury and acute illnesses because there is something that can be fixed and they're quite adept at doing that. I think when things become chronic, things become more ambiguous and less clear and everybody gets nervous. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's very true. But I wanna make one more point about what you said too is reading through your your medical history. That's that's gonna be a scary thing sometimes because I did the same thing and I saw things in there that I was like, well I never thought of that and they never told me that. Absolutely. Absolutely. But you know, hey, we have a right to we own our medical records. So I think it's it's probably a good thing. It was it was actually with time and distance, it was a healthy thing for me to read the medical record. I'm thankful I didn't read it at the time when I was so lost and so sick. I think I wouldn't have been able to handle it. He ~ yep, I'm I'm the exact same way. It was years after every I went through everything that I read stuff, because back in the day I would have it just would have made me worse. Absolutely. So we just have a few more questions here. How can we validate anxiety and depression without automatically assuming they the root cause of someone's suffering? Mm. Well, I think the first thing that would be really great is to destigmatize anything related to mental health. And, you know, I used to have so much trouble acknowledging any mental health challenges while at the same time I I would be quick to share any physical challenges. They should be out in society, embraced and empathized with. In the same supportive way. But I think that there's still a lot of stigma associated with mental health challenges. Yes, there is. Why would you w on that topic, what would you say is like one of the biggest stigmas in today's society with health? I think that if you have a mental health issue, a challenge, that you are less than whole, I think that you are categorized as an other. I think that you are not viewed as a successful, thriving human being. And I think, first of all, because everybody's got issues, I think that that's just fundamentally incorrect. But I think it's not a fair assessment and it's not an empathic assessment of what we go through as humans. It's very, very well said. I completely agree. And ~ a last question here that I have is somebody that's d you know, struggling right now and is just feeling stuck, what do you say to that person? The first thing I would say is you're not in this alone. There are people that can and want to support you. Find an advocate. If you can't advocate for yourself, you it's necessary to navigate the healthcare system and get this the help you need. If it's not you, maybe it's a partner or a Best friend. And then I would say sometimes things look really dark, but there is always a way through as long as you are able to reconsider. What your life might look like. I absolutely love it. That's that's great. There's a lot of words that we can take from there and like even me I can use. So like Mm-hmm. I said, like I said, free therapy session. And kind of just two follow-up questions.~ where can people find you in your work? So on Substack, I'm at NancyDo D E Y O.substeck.com. That's where they can find Life Inside Pain. I'm on most social media channels like LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook. And I have a forthcoming memoir, which is probably more than a year away. So I won't say much about it, but I've written the story because I feel a moral sense of responsibility to. Share this in the hope that it will lift up somebody else. Awesome. And I always say that ~ with ~ all episodes that I do, if I could just if I just lifts up that one person, that's where my head's at. Like I just takes one person. Just that one person, yeah. Kudos to you, one person at a time. Yep. And last thing here is ~ we've covered a lot of ground in this episode. Is there anything that you'd like to bring up that we did not discuss? Boy, I don't think so. I would just say that resilience is so much more than through and bouncing back. And when you think you have to out endure and outlast, maybe there's another way. I agree. Well, Nancy, thank you so much for ~ spending an hour with me. I really admire the work that you've put into yourself and the resilience that you've built and what you're doing with your story. I think it's important that you're telling it and I I know there's somewhere out someone out there that needs to hear specifically what you have to say. Well, thank you, Travis, and thank you for what you do and for the community that you're building. I know it's appreciated. And thank you to all the listeners. if this resonated with you, please give us a follow. And the best thing that you can do for us right now is give us that five-star rating on any podcast platform that you're listening on. Thanks again. Until next time.