How Chronic Illness Affects Your Body, Mind & Relationships | Nikki Roberts

What happens when chronic illness, fertility struggles, and a hysterectomy force you to let go of the life you planned… and rebuild from scratch?

In this episode of the Tell Me About It podcast, your host Cait Muir sits down with Nikki Roberts - a former high-achiever turned chronic illness advocate.

Together they unpack her journey through endometriosis, multiple surgeries, hysterectomy, miscarriage, and navigating life with invisible disabilities.

You’ll hear stories ranging from medical gaslighting and traumatic healthcare experiences to the emotional toll of losing fertility and redefining success.

You’ll also hear how Nikki transitioned from a science-driven mindset to embracing holistic healing, nervous system regulation, and a more intuitive approach to health.

Tune in to discover

✅What it really feels like to live with chronic illness and invisible disability
✅The emotional impact of hysterectomy, menopause, and fertility struggles
✅Why so many women experience medical gaslighting… and how to actually advocate for yourself
✅The link between trauma, stress, and physical health (nervous system dysregulation)
✅Moving from perfectionism and burnout to acceptance and slower living
✅The gap between Western medicine and holistic healing approaches
✅Why women’s pain is often dismissed - and what needs to change
✅Using humor and storytelling as powerful coping tools

Key moments:

00:00  Intro
00:01:00 Meet Nikki Roberts
00:02:23 Janice the ovary
00:06:00 Two uteruses three kidneys
00:11:38 Pap smear horror story
00:19:30 Hysterectomy grief
00:32:14 Science meets woo-woo
00:36:30 BMI scale exposed
00:41:30 Palliative ward wake up
00:54:20 What RA actually is
00:58:30 Spinal surgery
01:04:00 Losing Erin
01:17:00 Mermaid energy
01:22:00 Redefining success

If you've ever been told your pain is “normal” or your dreams need to shrink to match your diagnosis - press play.

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👉Find out more about how we can work together:

https://iconiccoaching.com.au/coaching/

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👉Connect With Nikki Roberts

https://www.instagram.com/mamas.rheum/
https://www.instagram.com/fullysick.life/

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👉Here’s how to connect:

https://www.instagram.com/tellmeaboutit__podcast
https://iconiccoaching.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

She's been a scientist, a singer in a cover band, an international flight attendant, a state manager for benefit cosmetics, a gym boss, a copywriter. Now she's writing a book and fighting like hell for people with invisible disabilities, and her name is Nikki Fucking Roberts.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

So I was 27 when I got diagnosed with RA. Rheumatoid arthritis. Your body is little messengers that uh attack foreign viruses and things, attacks your own body. I have had wrist erosion, three jaw surgeries. My left jaw is 100% titanium now. Let's call him Dr. K. Okay, Dr. K me in the steric. Then he says to me, I told you to stay away from boys. You don't need a boyfriend, you just need a vibrator. And I was like, shook. I was fucking 17. That's another thing also that I learned about with the hysterectomy. The doctors never ever say to you, your pain will be gone, but let's work on your pleasure. There is no concern for female pleasure. It's like you've had your babies, your work is done, you're useless now. Just be just be grateful.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

This podcast is being recorded on Gubby Gubby Land. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this land, our country, and elders, past and present. I am Kate Muir, and thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Tell Me About It Podcast. Today, I am sitting down with someone who has lived more lives than most people dream of. She's been a scientist, a singer in a cover band, an international flight attendant, a state manager for benefit cosmetics, a gym boss, a copywriter. Now she's writing a book and fighting like hell for people with invisible disabilities. And her name is Nikki Fucking Roberts. And honestly, I have been counting down the days for this chat. It's been like two months of trying to get you in.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

I'm really stopped.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

I don't know what to talk about. And then you introduce me, and I'm like, wow, that's a lot. You've got to be on and on. A bit busy.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

I'm so excited because today we're going to talk about what happens when your body basically stages a coop against your entire life plan and how you rebuild everything from scratch when the version of success that you were chasing really no longer fits what's going on. We're talking chronic illness, grief for the life you thought you'd have, the absolute mindfuck of letting go of perfectionism, and how Nikki went from go hard or go home to learning how to just flick. Also, she named her problematic ovary Janice. And I kind of want to start there because I think it's so fucking friendly.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Do you know how I like I if I say that to someone with a deadpan face, they're like, sorry? And you'll be happy to know that Janice, okay, so where do I begin? I was seeing my amazing pelvic physiotherapist, and I'd seen her post-hysterectomy, so it would have been 2019. In like a clinical setting. She was, she's a South African lady, she's freaking awesome. She got kids similar age to me, and she was really helpful in kind of dealing with the setup down there, posthysterectomy, like everything, you know, womb out. I had two wombs as well. My my two-bed womb apartment, I used to call it. And I saw her recently in a different clinic, and it was really kind of serendipitous because she sat me down and she sort of said, Okay, so last time you saw me, things are very clinical. I was very much, you know, book-led, I guess, science-led in that regard. But she said, This time you're going to find that I have a bit of a different approach to things, and I kind of treat from a more somatic perspective. So Jeremy calls her the fanny fingerer because she obviously gets right up in there. I'll say I'm going for today, and she'll be like, oh, I've gotten bomb. But she she knew that my ovary had to come out. I'd already lost one ovary, and we were dealing with the problematic one that was left over. And she said to me, We we were discussing menopause and grief in in the way that menopause and hysterectomy is essentially really uh it's a lot of finality in closing that chapter of being without the child bearing years. And yeah, you know, the the kind of we we kind of moved more in towards the energy of of the organs, and she said, you know, even though the organs aren't there, I'd had both uteruses taken out, fallopian tubes, cervix, and at that point my left ovary. And all of a sudden I've started the hormone therapy, and I've had uh cysts come up on my remaining ovary.

SPEAKER_03 5:09

So they're the fucking worst thing ever. And it was bad enough. I've had 23 ovarian cysts removed and drained before. 23 horrid. 23. I've had 31 surgeries of that region. Oh my god, I thought I was bad. I've had like well, I mean, you had two, you had uteruses as well.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

Yeah, horrendous periods always found out at 16, had an ultrasound. They said, You don't have overvariances, but you actually have two uteruses. And I was like, How does that have affected you? Like, well, yeah, we knew that. We so she it was really like back then, I was in high school, and you know, we didn't really have the internet that much back then, so it was like, well, fuck, do I look in like journals to find out what will happen? And all I saw was like miscarriage, spontaneous abortion, blah blah blah. Because essentially the the two wombs that I had were smaller than a single one because it was the same kind of space, but mine were very much like a T section. So normally, you know, you have your uterus and it's like a triangle. I had like vagina cervix and then hooker, hooker left, uterus there, then hooker right, uterus there. So they were really, really separate.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

And I think if you don't laugh about this shit, like what are you gonna do? Do you know what I mean? Like, even when you call it the fanny finger, like I was having a PAP test about three weeks ago, and my doctor's like, oh, you can do it yourself. I was like, Oh, I'm here already, you just do it. I was like, and he's like, Oh, most people are really uncomfortable. I was like, I've yeah, I was like, I've had about 40 people up on a jeans in the past few years, like it's nothing, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Medical students come in to my surgeries because they'd never seen a bicornearite uterus before. Yeah, and they're like, Do you have two products vagina? And I'm like, no, just one vagina, thanks. One vagina, one cervix, but two of everything.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Of course. So it's like one vagina.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

And then yeah, yeah. So I I used to call them my twin turbos. My my two youths, my two bedrooms. So for for when when they we'll be talking about my we were talking about my ovary, weren't we? The problematic yeah, it's okay. Cycle back, cycle back. So, yeah, so her horrendous, I've you know, you know that she's a drill, horrendous, endo, cysts, all of the things.

SPEAKER_03 7:46

So being told that it's normal for you to bleed that heavy and for that long and that inconsistently and be in that much pain. And please go and have some panel. Babe, I've had five. Like, I'm I starts to decide. Like, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_02 7:59

Panel is like putting a band-aid on a hambridge. Like, no, throw a band-aid down a hallway. That's how effective it is when you're in that much pain. It's like when you go to hospital, they're angular stuff. Have you had any paracetamol? I'm like, no, bitch, that's why I called you. Like, it's not, this isn't the level of panadol. This is so much further along, you know. Like, and I'd like, I mean, you're probably the same as me. You've been labeled a drug seeker or had that kind of, you know, people judge you instantly.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

I've yeah, I mean, I'm also like you though, where I don't take any pain relief at all unless it's like unbearably bad. Because when I do take it, I want it to be effective. But I also now up here, I'm a patient of Budram Private Clinic, like hospital. That's where my doctor works, my fertility doctor and everything works. So now I'm actually like when I go in through the ED there, so it's like you pay your 300 bucks or whatever to be triaged straight away. They page my doctor and they usually give me like fentanyl or something straight away because they know that by the time I get there, like I'm done. I'm not going in and wasting anyone's time in emergency, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 9:08

So you have a specialist team that is so holistic and that you have that rapport because I mean the amount of times I've been to regular hospital, I've I've always paid privately for everything, which is why I'm fucking floated as shit. But everything, all my surgeries my entire life have been private apart from my appendix surgery.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

Well, you get the doctor you want to. Well, that's it. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

You can find that I have a great team now. Like all of my specialists have about 20 fucking specialists, but they all like my the guy who did my breast reduction was like, Oh yeah, I was over in France with Michael, your jaw surgeon at the soccer. And I was like, okay. And then my rheumatologist is like, Oh, yeah, Michael, I know Michael. And I'm like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_03 9:58

It's like I was like, yeah, so that's so funny. My GP here, Dr. Shield, and my fertility doctor, Dr. Boghiatsis, lived together in Mount Isa for five years while they went and did their placement out there, five months. Sorry, while they went and did their placement out there and they know each other.

SPEAKER_02 10:15

I'm like, how do you think it's crazy? But I honestly think now, now that I'm moving in more into a woo-woo, like that's something that's just it's more than serendipitous, you know, like it's more than coincidental. There is a certain person you're drawn towards when you're searching for something that you need. And with that person comes all of their, you know, all of their circle of people that can help. And when you find someone who has the same value system as you and has the same understanding and the same temperament, like the amount of doctors that I've been to that have just been fucking brood cunts. Like I oh so many, but I finally have a really good team. Really good team.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Yeah, I feel exactly the same, and I'm really happy for you that you have that because I honestly feel like I can book an appointment with my specialist anytime, ask him the dumbest fucking questions, same for Cam. Like, and and like it doesn't matter, and like you've just got that support there.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

But you're people, you know, the twos and ones. Yeah, if you're gonna be fucking around in my body and cutting me open and smit, and I'm gonna be like laying laying their makeup as anything, like people that I trust. And and circling back to that as well, when you mentioned your pap smear, two things came to mind. One was my sister and one, and she clutched so hard that the speculum flew across the room. Oh god. But I just started those. I my very first pap smear happened to coincide with the day the Twin Towers went down. So I was in high school, I had the day off school.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

I was going to the US that week with my family. We're flying to the US to visit family. Crazy. Everyone knows where it happened, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Everyone remembered that when Diana died because my mom was like howling.

SPEAKER_03 12:09

We we were in Hamilton Island or one of the with Sundays, I think, watching that on TV, like what the fuck? And like I was a kid, I didn't really know. Even with the Twin Towers, I was only 12, I think. So I was like, I didn't, I guess, understand the gravity of it. Like I knew what was going on and stuff, but like I didn't understand.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

It doesn't seem straight away. Yeah, it was so weird. So weird. Yes. I yeah, so I was in my bedroom, I was in grade 11, I think. And I took the day off, mum came in, turned my TV on, was like, oh, this has happened in America, and I was like, oh blah. But this this gynecologist that I went to see, he was someone who was recommended to me by my mum, by my auntie, like all of these women in my family had been to see this guy, and they're like, he's great, he's you know, he's so lovely, he's really good with patients and whatever. His wife is the receptionist. And when I met him, I I initially, because I was young and naive, I thought, oh, this is just what this is just what a specialist is like. It feels like it's just what you know, he's uncomfortable. This discomfort I'm feeling is just situational. But the very first time I saw him about endo, he put me on the pill, but he knew about my uteruses. And he said, you know, I won't do any examinations or anything today because at that point I was still a virgin, I was 16. And then I went back probably six months later for my first Papsmir, because I'd I had a steady boyfriend and I'm was sexually active. And my mum came in with me, and you know, everyone was talking about Twin Towers, and and I was just like kind of distracted. But I went in and he said, Okay, now I'm gonna get you to step into the next room and we'll do we'll just do an assessment and internal stuff. And I was like, Okay, so mum waited in the waiting room, and I wish I had after the coming. I wish I had a follow my dark.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

I was gonna say it's wild. I was wild thing you didn't when you were done. I was 15 when I had my first Papsmare. 15, yeah, because I was the same thing. I was it was in a relationship with somebody else. You know what this guy said, so let's call him Dr.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

K. Okay, Dr. K. What's me in the stirrups? We can call him Dr. Dr. Trump. Yeah, we'll call him Dr. Trump. Me in the stirrups and looked over and said, Oh, what do you call that? Is that a a landing strip? And I was like, and he goes, Well, so many of my clients have that. And I was like, I'm fucking I'm just 17, you're commenting on my pubicette. Then he says to me, You don't, I told you to stay away from boys. You don't need a boyfriend, you just need a vibrator. And I was like, Shook, right? Gross. Were you the two gross? Yes, I didn't know. I was fucking 17. This guy's got his fingers inside me, and I'm like, talking to you about sex toys when you're vibrating and a landing strip of cubic hair. And I went out to Mum and I was like, Mum mortified, probably looked quite as gross. This is what? And she's just like, oh, you know, he was she didn't understand, but she's like, he was probably just trying to make you people that generation don't understand. They just say they, you know, they're very, yes, doctor, okay, doctor, that whole, you know, baking food generation.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

Well, oh, women of that generation have also tolerated sexual harassment forever as well. Do you know what I mean? And it was also just expected to get over.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Well, I'm like feeling fucked, like feeling sick walking out past this respect. Absolutely violated with his wife, and she's like, How did she go? And I'm like, you know, fucking second twin tower just exploded. And I'm like, I've just been, I'll never forget that day. It is so stuck in my brain. I then stupidly went on to have my first endo surgery with him. And commonly with uterine anomalies, so having the two uteruses, quite often you'll have an anomaly with your endocrine system or your kidneys and your epinephrine, because the epinephrine system develops at the same time as your sex organs. So if one mutates, it's couple, the other mutate. Yeah, right. So everybody starts with the double, and then there's a septum that comes up and opens, so it joins together to be the one uterus. But I actually also have a third kidney. Or you're someone's over a fever, two ureter's extra extra. So usually, you know, a gynaecologist would be like, Oh, that's abnormal. I want to reach check the kidneys, but he didn't do that. So when they do the surgery, as you know, they clip your kidney, your ureters to the side so they can operate. So he could easily have severed the third ureter, not knowing it was there, because he didn't do enough investigation into it.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

And correct me, kidneys are quite close to the outside too, so extremely easy to see as well, aren't they? Like they're like on the outer. Yeah. And and you can't mistake a ureter.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

A ureter looks like a ureter, it's a fucking tube, you know? Like, yes. Oh, I wonder what that. Oh, I've clipped that one, I've clipped that one. What's that one? You know, like he could have easily just cut through it. But anyway, he also, my bowel, which was very common in all of my surgeries after the fact, and even now, without having a uterus, my my bowel and my uterus would always get stuck together. And then my bowel and my water get stuck together. Yeah, that happens. But he decided that he would cut them apart, and I later found out through seeking uh gynecologists of my own choosing that that was actually far beyond his ability and certification. I was gonna say they're meant to have another doctor there present for them to do that that occupation.

SPEAKER_03 18:08

Because I've even had it, I've even had it before, actually. My last surgery, no, it wasn't my last surgery, my last surgery before I moved up here. It was in November of 2020. So it was the end of Rona. My dog died that month. I'm having surgery, like absolutely cooked. And I had cysts and endo in my urethra, and also like all through, you know, the normal areas. And yeah, I know that there were three surgeons there that day. So it was my urologist, my gynecologist, like OBGYN, and then yeah, a bowel specialist or a colon specialist, one of them anyway. But they were like literally tagged to me, like, no, we didn't have to have them all here.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

But so that and then I've since Imagine if you can imagine something like can you imagine if he had a ruptured my bowel? All these like wounds, and then you grow septic. Oh my god, no, no, no, no, no, no. And that was my first encounter with a specialist. So I thought, I'm like, wow, are they all like this? Like, is this is this normal? But like, I've since had a couple dicks. That sounds really bad. A couple of dickheads, had more than a couple of dicks on my dick. A couple of dickhead doctors that I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum. Like, God, guys. But back to Janice, like back to Janice, my ovary. So my remaining ovary, she was being a bitch. She was, it was kind of like, you know, I was talking to Manny, and I said, you know, I I I rushed into my hysterectomy because my my RA was so fucking bad and so unmanaged that I was just slammed as pain all the time. And I I couldn't be the best mom. I had a hysterectomy when Remy was like, I think four months old. So really soon after having him by a cesarean. And when when I was telling her about the metaphor, she's very big about feelings. Like she she wanted me to connect, like she's basically fingering me. She's saying, like, so when I pressed here, like what emotion comes up? And like I might, like, one time I fucking giggled and I thought, Whoa, this is weird. Like, and I said to Jeremy, I'm like, I giggled, and he was like, What? And I and I said, She she told me to just leave my feelings, okay? And and then she was like, Something will come up, and if it comes up, you just say it, and she's like, What do you need? And I was like, sex, and she was like, and then I was like, Oh, like, this I think because I was so scared of like hurting myself or getting UTIs and all that kind of shit that I put on the more. Yeah, I'd love that you just lean into the feelings a hundred of gray. Screaming it out, scream, sex, and I got home and I was like, Jeremy, we have foam work, and he was like, Okay, what do you mean? But yeah, about the grease thing. Like, I listened to this podcast that these doctors did, and I wish I had listened to it before I had mystery my hysterectomy because they were talking about this thing called a menopause dueler. So when you know, obviously the beginning of of the childbearing years, you you have a dueler or a you know, a midwife. Yeah, but in closing that chapter, it's so final, but there's no closure. You know, you you feel less of a woman. I felt less of a woman. I felt like you know, my place I were both my babies, they were both in the left view, by the way. Both in the left. That's funny that they're in the left. They like the left. And it was funny because when Poppy, I hang on, I'll call I'll come up to that. Janice, Janice, focus on Janice. So we're in the appointment and she's like pushing near my ovary, and I was like, oh. And she said, You need to, we need to make a story about it. Like, we need to be able to physically, with the removal, have a symbolic, some sort of symbolism around getting rid of her. So it was like, Thanks, but no thanks. Like, you've tried your best, Janice. You really have. But unfortunately, I don't need you anymore. So I said to Jeremy with like a dead emotion out of me. He said one place and I was like, we need to plant a we need to plant the Janice. He's like, is Janus? I was like, my ovary. And he was like, okay. So he goes to Bunnings, right? And he comes home and he's got a plant. I'm like, where did you get babe? And he knows, I hate pawpaw. So he got me a pawpaw tree. So I was like, so iconic. Like, so he does a call for me. And I put her in and I, you know, I pushed the dirt around and he held he held the hose on it and like looked the other way. And I said a few words for Janice. And I said, Look, Janice, you know, you've served me well. You've been a bit of a pain in the ass at times, but you know, our times come to an end. And I wish you the best. Guess what? The fucking plant is thriving. It is thriving. It is like growing. It's growing. It's growing. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 23:10

So I loved it. I love the the backhandedness of choosing a plant that you can hate. Like my husband would do something like that. He would feel like, oh, you know, like avocados, we'll get you an avocado something.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Like it's almost like he's like, because you hate it. And I was like, I fucking love you. Like, I fucking love you.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

And yeah, she's thriving. That's the perfect prank. Like, that's the perfect prank level. Like, I love that so much. I love that you named it too. It's actually an anxiety technique when you're in this thing and you're in this viral, you're meant to talk to yourself in third person. Yeah, because it takes like it dissociates you and it makes you like actually like look at yourself from the outside. So you're like pulling yourself out of the situation. So I love it.

SPEAKER_02 23:53

And then I'm talking negatively about my body as much, you know. Like I'm not like fucking.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

I'm like fucking yeah, I've got one uh one severe underperformer and one that's okay, but they're pretty average at best. But I know. Well, I'm you know, the hope for me is when I finish having my babies, then I can just have the whole lot taken out. I just I can't live in this much pain, live with periods that go for three weeks, like in 35 and six.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Like common to you, babe. Like, I uh then the amount that the way my life changed when I had my hysterectomy, even though I felt rushed into it and I knew it was the right thing to do, and I knew I wasn't gonna have any more kids, but it's just that choice being taken away. There's something so powerful in the chapter closing and being like, well, fuck, what what if you know? I mean, I looked at it from a point of view as like one was amazing, two was a bonus, three would just I I am being more responsible to my existing children to not want to further my family when you know I struggle to look after myself sometimes. So two was perfect. Remy was an absolute rainbow baby. Can I tell you something really crazy about Remy? So we were trying to conceive probably from when Poppy was one, they're three years apart, but when Poppy was one, we're trying, trying, trying, trying, nothing was working. We did an intra-uterine insemination, which is what we did with Poppy. Um it was actually funny that I told people that she we when she was conceived, there were three men in the room, and everyone's like, but there was like the doctor, Jeremy, and a medical student holding the probe. Because when he did the thing, how they go up into the cervix into the uterus, because mine straight up, he'd keep pulling it out, venting it to go around a corner. So fucking put your indicator on, we're going around the corner. Meanwhile, I'm passing out. I'm like, oh basebagel response, just like passing out. Every time he went through my cervix, I passed out. So he was he was doing it and he did the right one. And then when he did the left one, I was watching it on the screen and it made a fart noise. And so I always tell Poppy that she came from afart, and she fucking loves it. Like she loves that.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

I love that so much. And this is what I mean by like, I think you've got to, you know, wherever you can, I guess it depends on your sense of humor, but you've got to kind of make light of these situations too, you know. You've got to have a laugh about it.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

So we tried again, did a week and then I stopped trying. And I was like, okay, we're gonna do IVF in 2018. If you know, we're gonna stop trying for now because my RA is so bad. Went to a Stevie Nicks concert, had no period, was horrendous. Plots everywhere, in the fucking toilet, temporary toilet, like having fucking contractions and like just the worst time ever. And Stevie Nicks was amazing, and then I came home and like a week later had amazing sex, and then was like, cool, didn't think about it. And then one day I tried to have a coffee and I was like, I can't drink this coffee, and I knew something was that. But just after the I, I ended up having a really early miscarriage. So I was in, I knew I was pregnant, and I I was having pains and I knew that I'd have implantation pain, but I was like, this, you know, this doesn't feel right. And I didn't tell my parents for whatever reason, I just didn't tell them, and I was very close, very close. Yeah, but that's it. I didn't want to disappoint them if it, you know, didn't happen. And I just have this feeling that it wasn't right because I was in a lot of pain. So sadly at home, went into hospital, had to do the whole shebang with the witch's hat and the toilet to catch the bits and all that stuff that's very traumatic. And it's it's horrendous. And anyone who goes through it, and it doesn't matter how far along you are, I agree. You know what I mean? It's not just the death of a bundle of cells.

SPEAKER_03 27:43

Yeah, we had one, we had a miscarriage boxing day, didn't know I was pregnant, had a house full of people, as you do, had all these friends staying with us, and then we had another one, our last transfer. It was about it was August in two years ago, and we got the confirmation that the IVF had worked, so we're like over the moon, excited, and then like the blood test two days later, they're like, You've lost it. I'm really sorry, and that's why we pissed off. I was like, I just need to get away from fucking everybody, and it it's really sad, you know. When it doesn't work and when it doesn't take, you're just like, but when it takes and then you lose it, you're just like what's it like? Glimmer of hope and then utter desk, you know, despair.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

So that happened, and yeah, and then I had horrendous periods, went to see me next, came home, had amazing sex, and then couldn't drink a coffee and was like weird. Found out I was pregnant, we didn't find out what we were having. I had a feeling was a boy, but then I also thought Poppy was a boy, and I had like gender disappointment and thought that like I was quite cried for a day. I was like, fuck, Nikki! Like you've all you've wanted is a kid, and then you have you're pregnant, and you're like disappointed. But then I just like again, it was the story I made up in my head of me having a little boy and what that would look like. And then, you know, 12 hours later, I was like, oh my god, I'm having a girl, and I was so excited. But one of my main issues with wanting it to be a boy, my main motivation was I don't want her to have endo, you know, like that fear of like uh if if I have boys and that's absolutely foreign, you know what I mean? Like that experience, yeah. You don't want her to experience all of this. But then someone else said to me, the beauty in that, Nikki, is that you've been through it, so you're the best person to advocate for her if it does happen.

SPEAKER_03 29:23

So anyway, Remy was huge. I think the whole thing is changing around that now, anyway. Like, I feel like there's endoclinics, you can get early diagnoses. Like, I remember being diagnosed, I was late teens, I think. I can't really remember, but you know, then I had high cell blood count through pap smears twice. Like, I had surgery for that. My mum had hysterectomia when she was like I swear she was late 20s, I think, like 29, something like that. Everything out, like it was just a different, it was just different. I think everything's like changing and and thank god, you know, taking women's pain seriously is changing. Like, I even remember when I got my uh first high-level PAP test result. I got the call and was like, hey, you've got to go to the doctor's tomorrow. Like, this can't wait. And I went to the first doctor who came really highly recommended. And she was like, you know, I'd like to explore like uh hysterectomy off weather treatment or like more advanced treatment. And it was actually my mum that advocated and was like, mm-hmm I don't, I'm not really happy with that. Like you're 18, like that's not kind of, or maybe I was 19, I can't remember. But then we went to my other doctor who was my doctor for many years, Dr. Sabari, and he was awesome. And he was just like, Cool, so we're gonna take a biopsy today. And they were like, Yeah, you don't need numbing or anything like that. I I fainted. It was that painful. They take chrome biopsies out of cervix. And then yeah, four days later, I was in in having surgery, and like I I'm a teenager, like I barely one stage of my life, like, yep, I've slept with one person at this stage of my life. Like, I'm literally a baby, and it's just like it was just so bad women are in for then. Fuck this. Yep, and it was just like, and even like I even remember having like uh the implant on those things as well. Just like, no, they made me critical.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

My boyfriend at the time called it, called me Nikonon because I was like different person, so I was Nikonon until I until I got the implant out, and I was like, Nikki's in college.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

But yeah, just think like that. And then do you know what? My husband goes to the doctor for fucking back pain, and then they're like it! Like, yeah, right. I go in and I'm like, I've got severe pain, I've been cramping for days, it's actually unbearable, I'm bleeding non-stop, and they're like, Oh, come back if if pain persists. I'm like, no, the pain is persisting, that's why I'm here. It's so fucked up.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

What do you mean? That there should be a level and of anesthesia for any kind of you know, fucking procedures and you get the gas now to get more green whistle or something, you know, because I think you do get that now. I think that's changed.

SPEAKER_03 32:00

I genuinely think you do actually get that now with this. But more up. But how did you I want to talk about you're obviously a scientist, so you've got like a very strong science background. How did you then make that transition into more like holistic like wellness and like exploring, I guess, eastern medicine as opposed to western? Like that must have been a really difficult change because you're like kids brain, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

I basically was a straight A student and high achiever in high school, total nerd, thought uh yeah, three kidneys, two uteruses, over retrieving. Even my blood is a positive, like honestly. I'm owneg. I'm owned. So I went in high school, I did really well with marine studies. I kind of topped the class, and my dad was in the navy and stuff. It was kind of like you know, alignment, I guess, in a way. And I I just had that pressure on myself. I actually wanted to be a hairdresser, teenager, but I forced myself to listening to your story the other day and just thinking about how fucked people were to like apprentices, and and I would see it in a salad. I'd be like, they are so mean today. Oh my god. Yeah. But having having been good at something and thinking, fuck, what am I gonna do with my life? And then saying, you know, parent the parents saying it's all about the OP, and the teachers saying it's all about the OP. And I ended up having uh hemiplegic migraine towards the end of my grade 12 exams, and they sort of said, You can like I couldn't talk, half my body went numb, I couldn't see, like it was insane. I I get blindness when I have migraines. I've got heteroonestheba, which is fucking embarrassing because he was a Bronco at the time, but I was watching his sister play netball with my best friend, and I I couldn't talk, it was horrendous. But they said, We'll give you an average if you don't want to do the QCS, and I was like, No, I want to do the QCS, and I'm getting an A for the QCS, even though I'd be in hospital. So very studious, and I wanted to go to uni. I was felt like I was expected to go to uni, it was just a pressure I put on myself. My parents never sort of said you have to go to uni. So I did science and I I enrolled in a Bachelor of Marine studies, which was, you know, you could be in aquaculture or you could be a park ranger. It's a very, very specific field. So a little while into that, and obviously preceding that, I was just having endless issues with endometriosis. So I changed my degree to just a science degree while I kind of figured it out. And I've had a few surgeries by that point, and I started doing subjects like I did sex 101, which is fucking cool, about like all failure and stuff amazing. Did quite a few psychology subjects, and then obviously like animal studies and anatomy and stuff like that. And this whole time I was at uni, I was just having insane amounts of pain. I ended up deferring, and I had one semester left to do. Eight years later, so it would have been almost 11 years since I started. I realized that it was gonna run out and expire, all this work that I'd done, and I had one semester left. And I was living in Melbourne, I had RA at that point, I was working in retail and singing in a cover band, and I was like, I want to just finish this. So I enrolled cross-institutionally at Uni of Melbourne and finished my last semester that way. So I still graduated from EQ, and it's so funny because at the time when I started, you didn't have to have a major. So at the ceremony when I got my actual degree, it was like Bachelor of Science, majoring in nursing, a bachelor of this, and then it was just Nikki Roberts, Bachelor of Science, and that was it. And I was like, that's me! I have a nothing major, but I it's a pretty, it's a pretty certificate that sits on my wall. That's about as far as it goes. But in saying that, my conversion over into more Eastern kind of perspective of things and working into more of an energy science point of view. You know, I'm someone who's read and done research papers and and things like that, but the I think I noticed the the confirmation bias and the way that uh science was represented in the media and the way that everything was skewed to towards males. Everything was, you know, there was just no, there were no studies.

SPEAKER_03 36:33

Why are we only using men for everything? There's been more research into men's erectile dysfunction than there has been to women's infertility. So this is the thing. But you know the story behind the BMI. Okay, so that's one of my notes for today. So tell me about that because so fucked up. I'm obviously open-based in my BMI. I'm OBI, yeah, thanks.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

So I so the BMI was discovered by a mathematician in the I think it was the 1800s, don't quote me on that. But it was a study into it was supposed to be a study into like a demographic of the ideal male between 1830 and 1850 by Adolphy. So mathematician to study populations of men, and back then the ideal body type was that of a basically late teen, I think it was European man. So very, very slender, yeah, very young. That was that was what the BMI was based on. It was never, ever, ever created to be used at an individual level. It was only to be used as, you know, a population study of groups of men. And having that as and and this goes right back into racism and all these kind of sexism, obviously, because it wasn't women weren't even in fact. It was never to be used on women, it was never to be used on an individual level. It was based off the belief back then that obviously different cultures have different body types. African Americans have a higher muscle content, they have more fat content, you know, in their in their body, in their backsides and places like that. Just genetically culturally, yeah, that's right. So culturally back then, obviously, there were slaves, there was, you know, racism, there was all of these appalling things. Yeah. But these people were considered to be the elite and the you know, the creme de la creme and and the the the ideal body type was a second teenage European white male, right? So the fact that it was never done on men, never done on women, it was never supposed to be used on an individual level, and then to make it even fucking worse, they changed the barometers for it. So the people that were healthy then became overweight, the people that were underweight became healthy, and the people that were severely underweight just became underweight. So they've moved the parameters so that people are actually higher than they are. Now, BMI, I'm so passionate about this because BMI is what caused my eating disorder. We learn about it in high school in me, yeah, and we had to do a food journal. So I basically stabbed myself so I would have you had to do that in high school? Yes, the beginning of grade 11. We learn about BMI, we had to do it through diary.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

That's okay, that's crazy in itself because all your body hangups start in high school, right? Like everything like that starts in high school. I mean, I remember my mum literally like looking at photos of me and my friends or me and my cousins and like pointing out how different our bodies were. And I was just always so conscious of it. I remember my uncle saying something about me and my cousin, who was three years older than me, about being underdeveloped and like just really like attacking belittling language. I remember the boys. I was super athletic. The boys at school, I was super athletic, and they called me Anna because they thought I was anorexic, but I was like a sprinter and a runner. Like I used to do long distance running, I used to do boxing, like I was so fit, and then you hit your 20s and you don't fucking eat, like, because you just want to stay like that. Because God forbid if your bodybuilders, it's horrible.

SPEAKER_02 40:24

I remember my grandfather saying to me at my 21st, like we're serving, I think they were like mini sausage rolls, and he's like, Don't eat too many of them or you'll lose your beautiful figure. And I was like, Hill, you're my grandfather grow. You look back on that stuff now, saying you're like, My mum just whole life has been about wanting to be smaller, and that's because of the weight. My mother is weight obsessed as well, absolutely weight obsessed. My mum learned that her worst came for her size, and her mum was a fucking psychopath, hater. How did you how did you overcome anorexia? It's actually a really cool story. I got so obsessed with weight and BMI and stuff like that. I got so obsessed I used to have a glass of water and I would weigh myself after drinking water to see if I'd gained weight. Like it was it was ridiculous.

SPEAKER_03 41:20

And I remember the amount of times I used to weigh myself. It's actually really alarming. We don't even have our own scales now.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

I can't, and if I ever get weighed in a doctor's office, I ask them not to tell me the number and I don't look at it. Like, don't want to see it, don't want to hear it, because it will send me into a spiral. I will download my fitness pal and I will start restrictive eating and punishing myself and all those kinds of things that you do when you have a disorder eating with food. But what happened was I was in grade 11 and I had really bad stomach pain for like two weeks. The doctor said it was like a bacterial infection, put me on antibiotics. It didn't get any better. So my mum was worried because normally I bounce back quicker than that, and she took me to emergency because she said, I think that you might have appendicitis. So went into hospital, had a fever, had all of the the hallmarks of of appendicitis. So they took me in and they took it out, and it was at Red Cliff Hospital, and they didn't have enough beds in a recovery unit. So they put me in the palliative care wing of the hospital. I'm coming out of anesthesia and I'm looking around with essentially dying people all around you.

SPEAKER_03 42:45

All around there. Wow. That's hard. It's hard enough to go in there and visit someone, let alone if you've got to actually stay so eye-opening, Kate.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

Like I had someone beside me, this little old man that that couldn't use the bathroom and he was just basically sitting in a toilet chair all day and and trying to get in and out of bed. And then there was a woman across from me in some palliative care, and her teeth kept falling out and she fell asleep. And like both in diagonal to me was like, you know, coughing and was it wasn't on like was on liquid food. Like and and it just it was just the thing that I needed to make me go, what the f am I doing? So I I had like my family come visit, and you know, mum bought me a donut, and I just remember looking at it and going, fuck man, like that woman over there with the liquid like nasogastric tube, what she would give to have a donut, you know? So it kind of made me go. That was scary because when they got in there it was just about to rupture. It was really it probably had it. You know how you can get endo on it now in your appendix? Yeah, so it makes me want.

SPEAKER_03 44:00

So fun makes me wonder. Well, fun story about an appendix. I don't know if I have one because I can never find it. Maybe I'll find yours as well. I've never been able to find well, maybe. And wouldn't surprise me. I'm kind of underperformer body-wise. You seem to be like a over the top, but you know that every time you go in for like an ultrasound or something, you go into emergency, the first thing they rule out is appendicitis that they can never find my that is ever. So crazy.

SPEAKER_02 44:26

That's nuts. I mean, if you don't need that, I guess. You know, we don't need I think it was like evolutionarily it used to process like cellulose from from leaves and stuff. If I remember, yeah. So it's an evolutionary thing. It's just uh an extra appendage that we don't actually use.

SPEAKER_03 44:44

That's so funny. That's crazy that it was like that real gratitude feeling of like fuck what that person would give, like to have a donut, to live a normal life. I've got all that white like. And it wasn't like an immediate fix.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

It took why am I worried about what people think of me? And obviously at that age, like I would have been what 15 and 16. And and at that at that age, you know, that there's so much going on around you, and your hormones, and you feel do you just feel everything more deeply? And I think seeing how having not really experienced death at that age either, and then being in a palliative care wing as a teenager, and just like it just really made me very people die. And it's yeah, and it's so it was it was another thing that now I think back on it, you know, it makes me feel like I I hate the empty platitudes of like everything happened to reason, and at least you don't have cancer, like the amount of times I've had people say, Oh, I don't try to yoga, or like turmeric. What about turmeric? I'm like, if you told me if I rub fucking turmeric into my nipples and do a rain dance and stand on my head, I'd pride it. You know what I mean? Like fucking three times in a circle and you know, anything.

SPEAKER_03 46:11

Someone told me it was like, it's like anything though. I mean, I suffered with severe acne like my whole life. Like, I get really bad breakouts and stuff like that. And I remember my mom being like, oh, well, you didn't get that from us, you know. Like, I've never had a pimple in my life. And I'm like, well, it's actually genetic, and actually, both my parents have had siblings that have had really bad acne in their lives too. And I'm not blaming you for having something. I'm just saying, Mom, look up recessive. Recessive. Yeah, literally. And also, like, people would be like, oh, it's diet, it's this, it's that. I'm like, guys, I've got stage four endo, I have polycystic ovaries, I have so many other things that contribute to this. It's got nothing to do with my diet. I'm a very healthy girl. Thanks for the advice that I didn't ask for, though. Funnily, to that though, you know, like I'm very woo-woo in the way that like I believe that your body gives you signals. For example, when you you lose your voice, I believe that's you like not speaking your truth or not having the ability to talk and things like that. And like, I know that when you get foot pain, it's about being ungrounded. And like, I believe in that stuff. Like, I'm I'm woo-woo about that stuff too. But funnily enough, since I've ended the relationship with my parents, I've not had a single endoflara, I've not had a single breakout. I my hair has never grown faster in my whole life. Uh, my skin is like normal, like, and I have never been that like that in my whole life. So, since getting rid of that stress of having a relationship with my mother and everything she tortured me with, I've just, I'm like a whole new person. Cam's just like, you are so calm, you are so like he's like, You're just different. And I'm like, isn't it funny?

SPEAKER_02 47:46

No, the energy that shifts with that stuff. 100%. And the more that I'm leaning into that, and the more that you know, I used to obviously I met Nikki from House of Bliss talking about RA. Her mum had RA, has RA, and we connected that way. And you know, she's always done Reiki and energy stuff. And I've always I've always felt something, but I didn't know if it was like psychosomatic. I didn't, I didn't know if like it was just because I was running down for a moment, and yeah, you know, and it was a nice, it felt nice and it was a nice environment. But the more that I sort of look into it and the more things that are coming about, and similar to you cutting out your parents from your lives, the one system of my life that I have never invested in, I've done the physiological, I've done the physical, I've done, you know, the medical, all of the things. The one system I have consistently neglected is my nervous system. And there's so much stuff coming about that being dysregulated, being in constant flight or flight, you know, having had trauma, all of these things are manifesting uh physically, and having having my nervous system constantly on edge and not being regulated, then my children aren't regulated, you know? And it's so fucking hard. It's so hard not like I yell, I'm a mum that yells because they don't listen to me otherwise, you know. But like having a daughter who is on the spectrum and you know, very much like her father, which isn't a bad thing, it's just a lot, a lot. No, you've got two of them, two of them. And and I'm trying to regulate her when my heart rate is like 120 beats per minute and I'm like hyperventilating, like it just doesn't work. Doesn't work, gotta settle the self before you can co-regulate. So that's something that I'm really leaning into more as I'm getting older and and moving away from, you know, like when you're young, you think your parents know everything, that you think they they've got it all right. You think that doctors are the be-all and end all, that they can't do anything wrong, that they're the authority. But at that point, you don't know any better. You know, you're only kind of you're only kind of consuming what's being presented to you. But the older I get, and I think the fact that I have that science background, the more I'm able to disseminate and pick and choose bits of of research from different fields and learn all of these things, you know, like I only love that so much because so many science people are like. I was so rigid, Kate. I used to be like that. I was so rigid. I was like, nah, these are the facts. But the issue is even writing, you know, like a journal article myself in uni, your your journal article or your research paper, it's going to reflect what you want it to reflect. You will find the evidence for it to support it. Whereas, you know, because there hasn't been a lot of funding, or like you said, there's more into erect cell dysfunction than there is into women. Yeah. Of course, men's pleasure is always more important than women. That's another thing also that I learned about with the hysterectomy was that all of these specialists that I go to, they they would say, Yes, your pain's gonna be gone. It may come back, this, that, and the other. And when I listened to this podcast, this woman that was talking about having the metaphors do all up and all that kind of thing, and having a ceremony, one of them burnt all of her tambourines and pads and like, you know, had a had a bushfire in the backyard and and all this sort of stuff. The symbolism behind all of that was so powerful. And having having that grief of of like mourning a part of your body that you have lost, the doctors never ever say to you, your pain will be gone, but let's work on your pleasure. Not one doctor thinks about sexual pleasure from surgery and everything that affects. But no doctors actually say, as a point of you know, the pros and cons of sex might be less painful after hysterectomy, but it's gonna take a while to get there. But we want to get you there. There is no concern for female pleasure, it's like you've had your babies, your work is done, you're useless now. Just be just be grateful, you know, like that, just be grateful mentality. And yeah, and like I want to have sex, I want to have good sex.

SPEAKER_04 52:47

You know, that would be awesome.

SPEAKER_03 52:48

That would be awesome. It's just not a thing. It's such a funny thing, it's a funny thing, isn't it? And you know, the the the paradox to that for me has been that I've actually had worse experiences with my fertility health with female doctors than I have with males. I actually feel like the males have listened to me more. My experience has been better with them than it has been with women. I almost feel like women are a bit dismissive. I'm like, just because you don't experience it doesn't mean that I don't. I have I agree with you. I have a friend who's only have male done. I've got a 100%. I mean, like, I've got a friend who literally got her period when she was 15. I got mine when I was nine. I was in grade four. We were running home from school. I remember the classroom I was sitting in and everything, horrible. But my mum, I think, also got hers really young as well. I think she was in about grade four as well. But I've got a friend who got her period at 15. It has been three to four days every 28 days, not a drop of pain, light enough that she can live her life. And she's like, I can't even imagine going through that. Like, she's like, it's yuck enough just having my four days of like normal bleed, let alone yeah, let alone she's like, you know, I know that she tries to call me sometimes and I'm like, day one, can't talk, gotta be in the fetal position, you know. Like it's yeah, it's crazy. But I think just yeah, I've actually found the men more compassionate in my life than I have a hundred plus. So I've had some things great. Yeah, I want to talk also because you speak briefly about RA, but explain what RA is because as well as everything else you have going on, you've also got what is seemingly an invisible disagreement.

SPEAKER_02 54:17

So on top of all the endo stuff, which in my in my thinking, I feel like endo should be classed as an autoimmune disease because it is your body's tissue and it is attacking you in the way that the prostyglanins, the cramping, all that kind of thing, it's part of your own anatomy that's making you sick. Yep. But along with that, a lot of people that have endo also have an autoimmune disease. Like it's becoming more comorbid. So I was seven when I got diagnosed with RA. So at this point, that's I had been in the temperature. So RA is inflammatory autoimmune disease. So you you know, you hear arthritis, people think old people arthritis, like, oh yeah, my nan's got arthritis, my mom's got arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis is not wear and tear, which is osteoarthritis is. Rheumatoid arthritis is where the synovial fluid, which is the liquid around your joints, the tissues, the tendons, the joints themselves, are deemed to be a foreign body by your own body. So your body's little messengers that uh attack foreign parasites and viruses and things are overactive. So instead of just attacking foreign bodies, it attacks your own body. So in that process, I have working. I have had wrist erosion that I can't get back because my rheumatologist, a woman, funnily enough, didn't take me seriously. And I had to beg to get to get ultrasounded to show her that I have my wrists were in fact very swollen. I have very thin wrists and they they didn't look swollen. But shock and surprise, they were really swollen. So by the time that it's diagnosed, a lot of the time damage has already been done that can't be rectified. And and and obviously, along with that, I've had three jaw surgeries. Now my left jaw is 100% titanium now. My my RA ate away at my TMJ joint to the degree over two years, a two-year period, it went from the disc being a little bit crumpled to the disc being displaced and eroded. And then the next scan showed bone erosion. It was just a mess. Basically, the mandibular head of the joint had just collapsed.

SPEAKER_03 56:44

That's t that's terrifying. That's really horrible.

SPEAKER_02 56:47

You'd like to talk, you use a TMJ, you eat, you use a TMJ, you yawn, you use a TMJ. Like it is such an essential part that you just don't think about. And and to be honest, before I had RA, I didn't really know much about autoimmune disease. I knew that you know MS was an autoimmune disease, and I had friends with MS. But I I, you know, I was the same arthritis, old people disease, but this this is systemic, which means it can affect your heart, your lungs, your liver, your eyes, your skin, everything. So I've also got cardiomyopathy in my heart now as well, because of that. And yeah, my it's moved to my my sancchoroiliac joints and my pelvis. So, but at one point I was walking with a cane, and now I'm leg pressing 150 kilograms. So I've I've I'm constantly trying to be stronger and be more for my family, which is challenging. But I have a sick mobility scooter, and it's so fun. I love that. You're getting to erase the whole people.

SPEAKER_03 57:54

It's just it's such a vibe and it's so comfortable. I love that so much. And like, look, it's obviously gone a long way because you also had spinal surgery, but you mentioned that actually you went to have spinal surgery, which was like the lowest of lows, darkest before the dawn, to then being talent spotted by the beautiful and incredible Erin Green, who we miss so much. Tell me about spinal surgery because that is hectic.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

So Remy was two and a half, and I'd breastfed him for two and a half years. He all through my surgeries, through my, you know, hysterectomies, all of the things. When you're pregnant, obviously you get laxity in your joints and things. And I remember he was a big boy. So I remember putting him down in his bouncer, and I just kept going, and I kind of just fell, and I felt something give in my back. And it was my my L5S1 disc had ruptured and was pressing against the uh sciatic nerve into my leg. So I managed to correct it enough with physio that I didn't need surgery at that point, but then I slipped on cat vomit in my full-way, probably eight months later, and then I just put it that's so gross and random at the same time and horrible. Henry, he's he's a big boy, big boy. He's 16 this year, he's my first baby. I got him when I was flight attending because I didn't want to be alone anymore when I finished attending. Yeah, slipped on cat vomit, ended up having to go in a hospital. I had just weaned Remy off breastfeeding because I had to start taking Lyrica for the nurse pain for my back. But then the back winked so bad that yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't get to the toilet. Like I couldn't get up. I was crawling before that and like leaning on the wall trying to get to the toilet, and it got to a point where I was like, this is ridiculous, I have to call an ambulance. Smack bang in the middle of COVID. So I couldn't have any visitors, so I went from you know, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, having my family there to being in hospital for five days and about to have swine surgery. So I had the surgery, it was a wheel. It was pretty horrendous because it was COVID. There wasn't a lot of like it was no contact. I remember being in the pre-op room in theater and they brought me up too early, and I could hear drilling and hammering and like sores and stuff. And I I just I had a panic attack. I ripped off my hospital gown and I just started sobbing. And some one of the nurses, who was in there alone, one of the nurses in theater came out. She was like, Are you okay? And I said, Oh my god, like the the sound of that. I was like, What it, what did what are they doing? And she's like, They're doing what you're about to have. And I was like, Why couldn't you break to me? Why that's me? So she's like, Yeah, that's what you're you're gonna have. And I was like, fuck. So then I just I like hyperventilated, and she was like, I'm not supposed to hug you, but I'm gonna hug you. And I was like, I was so grateful for that because it was fucking hurting. Just be like, oh no, that that's something like more, but nothing that you're in love.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:02

Like you don't even actually have like, I don't even like dentist drilling sounds, I don't even like when I go to the chiropractor every week and he cracks my back.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:10

Sometimes I'm like, oh my god, I don't even know. Or like the beginning, so that they could do surgery. And I was just like, but in saying that when I came out, pain was completely gone. So it was recovering. I was recovering from that, and I was laying in this very bed right here, and I got a message in my inbox from and Erin Green, and I was like about you already. And she said, Hey, I've my name's Erin, I've seen your writing on Colina's website for Jones and Co. and on Nikki's from House of Bliss. And she said, Love, I really like your vibe. Can you send me your portfolio? And I was like, three days post-op spinal surgery, and I was like, sure, I can do that. Just I'm on morphine, just check back in with me in like two weeks. Two weeks later, she checks in, she's like, Hey, and just checking back in to see how you're going, and like if you've got them the portfolio yet. And I was like, I don't really know what that is. I was like, I'm gonna be honest, I don't have a portfolio because like I don't really believe in myself. And I just did the writing just for fun, kind of thing. And I was like, Do you want us to have a coffee? So she was like, Yeah, let's have a coffee. So we went down to Valorian, we had a coffee, and she said to me, She's like, You don't realize what a gift you have. And I was like, shook. I was like, what do you mean? I'm just a mob. Like, I just had my spine operated on it. I'm just like, what? And she said, I want you to rewrite my greenery and co website from top to bottom, plus all the automated emails, like like the you know, missed card, abandoned card, and all that, and and also her Wit Some Day collective. I want you to do those, and I'll build your website. And it just went from there. And then she was just this little angel in my life that I was just like, and she was so fucking stubborn, man. I remember going to her house and we were working on the website, and she had an ovarian cyst, and she was like, she called Brad and she's like, I've I've got to go to hospital. And I was like, I'm gonna take you to hospital. She's like, No, no, no, no. I ring her later that day, and I'm like, she's like fucking carin. She fucking drove herself to the hospital and she's in the hospital on her laptop. I was like, excuse me, no, no, don't do that. But it was just mind-boggling.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:41

Like, I think anyone, if you didn't know Erin Green, how do I even describe her? The first time I met her, she scowled a glass of champagne in front of me and then hugged me and said, You're such a fucking vibe. I've been following you for ages. Like, I really want to be your friend. And I was like, shut up. And I said, like, that's how our friendship started at one of the women in front. Well, we'd met a couple times, but then like properly at the women in front event, the first one that happened. And like, Ez was one of those girls that like someone would say they were like, Oh, I've got this goal, or something like that. And like, she would follow up. She would remember, she would remember everything that you said about yourself. She was such a girl, and she was events. She ran a marketing agency, a homewares company, everything. And then she tragically passed away at 28 from yeah, medical incident, and it's crazy. Okay. So well, she wasn't, it wasn't her time. I still just I don't think it was her time. I still stand by it. I don't think it was her time. She had so much more to do, so much more to get funeral.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:41

Seeing the hundreds of people that were there, there would have been over a thousand. Every single was the biggest person I've ever been to in my whole life. It was every single thing. There would have been every single person was saying, Oh my god, I just talked to her yesterday. Oh my god, I just messaged her. Oh my god, she she created this. I'm like, she was this otherworldly alien gazelle light. She was she was just everything, everything to everyone, you know? And and I had her at my house a week before she passed, and she wasn't feeling good about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:18

Yeah, we caught up and we caught up for a coffee the week before and then ran a com like a virtual seminar thing two days before to the Wednesday before, and I think it was the Saturday morning was the incident Sunday, she passed away, and it was just it was it was fucking crazy. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

And she wanted to have an episode with her next plan. Yes. And she said, Hey, I'm hosting a social media thing, I got a spare ticket, come and hang. And I was like, Okay, cool. And I was messaging her that morning, and and I sent her a photo of me in my kit meals at my 21st, and we're just pissing ourselves laughing about it. And then I was late. Sorry, Pipe. And I I got Jeremy to drop me off, and and I walked around the corner and I saw an ambulance, and I just knew I knew. Knew it was her. And as I walked up to Molly and Rose, they wheeled her out in front of me on the gurney. She came like they wheeled her out. I just stopped. I saw her. And she wasn't moving. And they put her in the ambulance. And I just stood there, it was Brad and watched them work on her for like a long time. And then a senior paramedic came and was like, you know, and I and and people didn't realize how serious it was, Kate.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:30

Because everyone else was like, she's a seemingly healthy 28-year-old who'd been, I don't remember she'd been out of the fucking rank clophosis.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:38

I was like before fucking useless.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:42

Three times in a neurological condition. Three times. Not once did they run a CT on her.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:48

Not once. But do you know it's like the thing that's etched in my brain is seeing Brad at her funeral when he was like, I remember he couldn't talk. Like I remember he was like, he got someone else to make a speech for me because I was like, I just can't do it. But he was walking out holding her mask and his face will scar me for the rest of my life. I just remember thinking, like, fuck, this is the person you're planning your life with.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:13

He knew when we were standing at the ambulance, you know, like he knew. And I heard them say that she had a blown pupil. And I knew that that was I knew that that was it. You know, that's it. And then I was messaging Brad and her mum. And and she said, She's an ICU. I love man and oh she's a mess. And she's and then the next day I said, you know, do you want me to go walk karma or something? Like you want me to can I do something? And you know, as she regained consciousness, he said she's not going to. And then I had to tell everyone. I had to tell everyone at the event that morning, and and and tell them. And and you know, a few people were there when when it when it actually happened, and I just my heart is with them because it was so traumatic. Yeah. And I didn't even see the event, I just saw her body being into the ambulance.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:07

Yeah, I just remember the group chat you and Lila had started. I'm pretty sure there was just a group chat with all of us. And one of you had messaged us a Sunday morning being like, She's gone, guys. I remember just sitting there. I was in a rental, and I remember just sitting there in my like on my bed on my own, just thinking 20 fucking eight. Like like 20 fucking eight. This perfectly seemingly healthy person without a brain and your reserve. And just like if that's not the sign to be like, go and fucking do what you want to do. Oh man, it was just so fucking horrific. I think about her a lot. I think her all the time. I think about her. I she comes to in every reading I have, every single one, she's there. Fundraising. I am everyone.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

I my kids, my kids were there when I got the message from Brad that she wasn't at a regate consciousness. And I I obviously started like sobbing, and I was on the back deck. And my kids were really little then, and they my youngest Remy, he's just like me. Poppy's just like her dad. He ran and got his teddy bear and gave it to me because I'm upset. And we kept finding ladybugs everywhere. And so now both of my kids call ladybugs errands. Yeah. Oh, Jay's baby uh Jay's bridal shower with cleanup. And we had this big group photo, and I was wearing these glasses. One of the last messages she sent me, I had my clear Os the Wileys on, and she said, Where did you get them? I love them. And as the photo was being taken, a ladybug landed on my glasses and stayed there for the entire photo. Like there was like 10 photos, and it just stayed there, and then it went from my glasses onto my shoulder. And and I was just like, It's her, like it's gotta be. And then another time I had a grasshopper, I was laying on my back in the pool. Grasshopper landed on my nose in the pool. Like I'm looking up, and there's grasshopper on my thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:12

Right? I was like, get Erin. It's so funny. I think it was before the woman in front sandstone event, which I was presenting at as well. And I got there and I said to Lila, oh, I had a psychic reading the other day, and she like Erin came through and she said to say to you, I hope the balloons worked out. And Lila was like, I've had this shit show of the time trying to get these balloons and stuff like that. And it was Erin that sorted it out. And like, and Lila cried, and she was like, What the fuck? And I was like, Yeah, she just told me to say that, but I didn't know because I didn't have anything to do with the organizing of it. I just helped out with things on the day. And she was like, That is fucking wild. So I love that every person I speak to just loved her so much and had such a positive experience with her. And I guess that kind of brings me into my last point, which is she was the one that encouraged you to go into your copywriting business. So you've done the flight attendant, you've done science, you've been a singer, you've done all these things. Now, even amongst everything you have going on with your beautiful family life that's chaotic and crazy and amazing, and also with your chronic illness, your visible disability, everything. And around that, you run a copywriting business.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

So Erin's the one that got me started in it. She gave me that push that I guess I didn't have a lot of self-esteem being chronically ill, and you know, a lot of people would just say, you know, don't let it define you. And I'm like, well, I like it's part of who I am now. Like it's just the way that it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:39

I'm so condescending anyway, because you know, I know this of myself, and Cam will speak to this as well, which is like I have days where I'm 200%, and then I have the next day, even an hour in that day, I can be at like 10%. And like I can literally have a day where I'm like, it even happened one day when we were on holidays. Like, I just had a day where I was just like in a lot of pain and feeling really flat. And he's like, we don't need to do anything today. Like, let's just chill out, sit in the pool, like, look, look, not do anything today. Let's not go to that activity we planned. Like, let's not, and like it's so hard when you don't have people that respect or understand that like I'm ever gonna bail on you unless I need to, but if I need to, I eat it.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:18

I am so I worked out with Jeremy. Like, I cannot explain to you how in love I am with this man. I feel like 13 years old and I want to climb him like a tree. Like, I actually I am who when I was uh in high school, he was a student at my school for a little bit, and I was obviously a straight-A student, I was a nerd, had long blonde hair, blue eyes, and I was you know skinny and whatever. And I have this really cool friend Lori, who's still one of my best friends, she's Poppy's godmother, even though I'm not religious, which I just wanted to give her that honor because she got us together, so yeah. Okay, I love that. Um she and I used to go watch bands play because I was like into punk and like metal and you know, so yeah, I'm still emo, right? Emo's not dead, just gotta flip that corner.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:13

Not emo as I'm not emo as much as I'm like, I'm like Vetallica slipped off corn. Like emotion.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:20

So I went to watch his band play, and he was a drummer and he had a mohawk, and he was so hot. I was just like, oh my god, I'm stuck like an hair. And he was best friends with Lori, and he smoked cigarettes and he was a bad boy, and it was like so cool, and he had these like delicious lips, and I was like, Oh my god, he's so hot. But I was always so scared to talk to him because he was so hot and so cool, and I was stuck from bed. Yes, so intimidated. And then he later told me that he was too intimidated to talk to me because I was too pretty. So we were both like checking each other out from afar. But I was in Melbourne, I was really sick, I was really, really unwell, living on my own. And Jeremy hates social media, but for whatever reason he had Facebook at that time. I was FaceTiming Lori, who was living in London, and she was like, You need to move back to Redcliffe and marry Jeremy and have his babies. So I was like, okay. So I went onto Facebook. I liked about 15 photos in the span of about 13 seconds, and then went, oh, fucked up, like backed off. And then I'm I'm I put my last uni assignment in and I went to Veggie Bar to meet a friend for dinner, and message pops up, saw you were on my profile today, and I was like, Yeah, hi. And he was like, and then and then the bartender asked me out. So I'm like, on my computer, Jeremy's talking to me. Ronald's like, oh my god, bartender. He's like, Oh, I've missed my chance. Like, no, you haven't. And so he sent me his number, and from that day onwards, we were inseparable, like long distance initially. He would send me chops, he wrote me a song, he flew down to see me. We like I just knew with him. We started trying for kids straight away because he knew about all my endo and stuff. But this man, he if I if I had to write down on a piece of paper everything I want in a partner, it's just him down to colour, down to the colour. Well, I did.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:14

I did write a list, I did write a list of everything that I wanted in a partner, and I remember family members and other people in my life being like, oh my god, you're so picky, like you can't be that picky. And I was like, I remember I got to the point where I literally used to say to people, Well, I'm so sorry that you're right. Like, I was just really condescending. I was like, fuck you, if you're gonna if you're gonna attack me. Do you know what? Thank God I was picky because I married to the best person ever, and he fell into my lap. We met at a wedding when I was really young, and he fell into my lap again. He moved from Victoria for me. Like, I'm so glad that I was picky and I waited for that right person, and I just enjoyed my single time and I enjoyed meeting. Yes, but like, oh, going on making it. Yeah, my god, I was on the apps for so many years, and I was just all freaks.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:59

Like all of them.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:00

See, I was never on the apps when I was living in Vic ever. But when I moved here, I didn't have a social circle or anything. So I remember I was on it for like two months, then I turned it off, and I was on it for like another two months, and that's when Cam came back into my life.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:15

I had given up as well. I was like, and then and I'd actually being a flight attendant, I'd had a little fling with one of the Collingwood players who was like quite you know, figure, public figure at that time. And I said to Mom, I was like, I'm just gonna get knocked up within a day if I'll play out, like giving her a side eye. She's like, Okay, okay, whatever me, grandkids, I'm happy, whatever. But then Jeremy and I reached next time. Oh, she's so good. She's just I she just wanted grandkids. She knows, but she they love him so much.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:48

That is that is the absolute vess. I love that you've got so many people that just so like blindly support you and so much love around you. Like, I know you speak of Jeremy, you speak of your parents, all of that, but we've come on an absolute journey today, and I fucking love that. And I knew it would be. Yep, yep. Two yappers, get two yappers on a podcast. So sorry. But from science degrees and cover bands to flight attendant life, corporate beauty, chronic illness, Janice the Ovary, hysterectomy, grief, the beautiful Remy Rainbow, therapy breakthroughs, energy healing experiment, experiments, and the ongoing request uh quest to just frolic through life. I am in awe of you, and I want to finish this with like tell me about the frolicking because I love that word, and knowing you, I love you.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:38

So many people are so I got funny last year where I was like, I'm fucking I'm fucking done being like sensible, like you know, I'm still a responsible adult, I'm still a parent, but I I really wanted to find who I was, and I I'd realised that if I just brought things back to to a simple way of life, to appreciate, you know, I'm I'm big into grounding now and getting your feet in the sand and sun on your face, all these things that I'd shied away from because of medicines or whatever, you know, they're like that and all that kind of shit. I I really decided last year that I was a mermaid. I was like, I'm a mermaid, it's just what I am. I'm just always meant to be a mermaid. Because number one, it's so good for my RA. There is no pressure on my joints. I'm completely weightless. But there's this amazing beach just down the road. I go down in my mobility scooter, I hoon down the little sand, down the little hill, and I parked up. I've had people come down that recognize my scooter and think I've thrown myself off the edge of a cliff into the ocean because it's just sitting there on its own. Meanwhile, I'm like fucking frolicking with the fish in the water. I got like a jungle snorthable, and I just I remember Tegan and Nikki and Sophie saying to me, like, what's your goal for 2026? And I was like, to frolic, like duh. And they were all like, Of course, of course you're gonna frolic. So I'm just I'm trying to bring playfulness and fun back in amongst all the seriousness because honestly, my life revolves around my kids and medical appointments. So whenever I can get a little pop apiece in there, frolic in the ocean, be a bit silly, go skinny dipping, all of the fun things. I just love it. Yeah, just I just love that frolic.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:23

I think I'm gonna get it tattooed for me. I think it's like even even now on social media and stuff, I feel like it's quite trending. Like people like, we need to have more whimsy, we need to have like more dope things in our house, we need to do more like inner child things, and it's fucking beautiful. That's one of my girlfriends. Yeah, I was saying that to one of my girlfriends who's literally just broken up with the super successful business coach, just broken up with a bit of a man child, and she was literally just like, I am literally just buying everything like pink and colourful and bright. And she's like, I put my two sons' bedrooms a bright color for them, and like made them their own like little sanctuaries, and she's just like it's so good. And I was like, that's literally what I'm like. That is my shit that makes me happy. Like, do we need a bright blue or velvet blue sofa? No, but it makes no fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:13

I'm the same with my kids. Remy's always been very fruity, let's say fruity. He loves, he loves like he would wear a ladybug dress. He the other night he put on about 15 of Nana's necklaces and did it, did started twerking in front of me. Like, he is just so free in himself, and I was so worried school would like get that out of him. But he's like, they're like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he was like, a penguin, and he everyone drew what they wanted to be. There was like doctors and nurses and stuff, and he drew a penguin. And I was like, I fucking love that for you, Remy. You're gonna be a penguin, you know what I mean? Like, just be where you want to be, just play.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:52

Yeah, I love it. Go play. I love it so much. So uh, not hard to tell that you're a copywriter with the name of your social handles. So you've got physic.life. Which I love because you're fissic. I love, and also mama's room, but it's mamas.r-h-e-u-m as in short room room toward arthritis. So I love that. My favorite type of like social handles. Love, love, love, love, love. Any final words, my girl? Uh, I guess that no.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:30

Go and play, do something playful. Go and go and follow, put your feet in the sand, go and laugh, put on fucking lib biscuit and scream it out the window of your car. Just like, just play. We've got to play more. The world is so fucking chaotic and serious right now, and it's really easy to get emotionally drained by that, but you need to be fulfilled in yourself to be able to make a difference on a community level to be able to then have an influence on a global level. You know what I mean? Like you've got to, yeah, you've got to act locally, you know, to think globally. That makes any sense.

unknown 1:22:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:11

Yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:12

I love it. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking us here, there, and everywhere and sharing that, and just just showing people that, you know, slowing down is okay, working hard when you need to is okay, but above everything, it's like success means something different to everyone.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:32

And I I remember I was supposed to speak at the woman in front event at the Leeds Club, which is down the road from my house, but I ended up having to have my ovary out that day. And my entire speech for that night was about success and how success looks different for everybody. Success for me is a healthy, happy life. It's not a monetary figure, it's not you know, a belonging. It is health, you know, and and you've got to your success has got to be tailored to your individual values. Like it's got to be.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:02

And success looks different for everyone. I love that. Thank you so much, Nick. I love you so much.