Pushkin.
All right, all right, welcome back.
Make some noise. We're backing on our fest. Hey, it's Maya. Welcome to a very special episode of A slight Change of Plans. We recorded this conversation in front of a live audience at on AirFest, an event that brings people together in Brooklyn every year to celebrate audio storytelling.
Please welcome to the stage, Doctor Maya Shankar and Rachel Gross.
Rachel Gross is an award winning science journalist who's written for outlets like The New York Times and National Geographic. I've heard people compare Rachel to Miss Frizzle, the beloved frizzy hair teacher from the PBS show The Magic School Bus. I totally get what they're saying. There's definitely something frizzlesque
about Rachel's approach to science journalism. Her writing serves as that metaphorical shape shifting school bus, with the power to take readers deep into niche worlds, filling them with wonder and discovery. In twenty twenty four, Rachel unexpectedly became the subject of her own reporting when some strange things started happening in her body that she couldn't explain.
I couldn't control my voice.
Things were not coming out as I intended them, and my body wasn't moving as I was instructing it. It was like there's something getting lost from my brain to my body. I felt like an alien, impersonating myself.
This is a story about suddenly feeling like a stranger to yourself and the curious work of figuring out what makes you you. I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. I of course had to start our conversation with a nod to Miss Frizzle. Fun side note, I too have been called Miss Frizzle, but it is because on a humid day my husband believes that I resemble this fictional character.
To Miss Frizzles on stage is very powerful.
And I've you know, flow dry and all help today. It was so interesting because when you look at your journey as a reporter, you studied fascinating things that I would say or maybe related to your life, but not necessarily where you are the subject of the reporting. And there was a recent episode in twenty twenty four where you ended up turning the camera on yourself because you had something that you had to figure out in your
personal life. Let's go back to twenty twenty four when you first noticed that something was feeling a little bit off in your body. Tell me about that moment.
Yeah, and it's a pleasure to be here, Maya.
It was late in May twenty twenty four, and over the course of a week, these like weird things started happening to my body that I couldn't fully explain. So, like my handwriting and typing started kind of being off, like really awkward and stilted. And when I like went running, instead of it sort of being this background activity like I could think my thoughts while running, I had to like force all my arms and my legs like pumped together.
Like these automatic things were somehow becoming conscious. I go to karaoke every week, and I couldn't control my voice. Things were not coming out as I intended them, and my body wasn't moving as I was instructing it. It was like there's something getting lost from my brain to my body, and it kind of just intensified over a way.
How did you find yourself explaining these symptoms in the moment.
Yeah, Yeah, It's amazing how powerful denial can be. So I honestly never thought of anything neurological. I was just like, that's odd. I feel a little bit like awkward and shaky. And I told some friends and they were like, yeah, when I get stressed and anxious, I also mix up words or I have trouble typing. Why don't you like sleep on it? Give it a couple of days. And
I was like, that sounds right. A friend even sent me an article that was like from WebMD that was like stress or stroke, and I like went.
Through it and the answer was stress. That was like great. But I was like asking people in my life.
I was telling them I felt off that week, which I think is a good instinct to maybe one as a reporter, and so I think I knew something was more wrong than it was outwardly showing because everyone's like, you sound fine. I could hear like a slur in my voice there, like I don't hear anything. And over the course of the week, it was like my body had kind of figured it out before my brain had.
So my heart was like beating faster a troublesleep being, and I kind of started like bursting into tears randomly, and that, honestly like clued me in that this was something important.
Yeah, did you feel that your symptoms were intensifying with each subsequent day?
They were eventually got to the point where I tried to like write in my journal and I couldn't read my own writing. It was like chicken scratch and I couldn't stop my body from kind of having a panic attack. So I ended up going to urgent care, and that's how I eventually learned that I had a bleed in the back of my brain, which I didn't realize at the time, but it was a stroke.
So wow, when you first heard, oh my god, you have a stroke, what was your initial reaction.
Well, the way it was put to me, it was interesting.
It was like they did a CT scan and the PA was like, honey, you have a bleed in the back of your brain, but the good news is this explains your symptoms.
I was like, okay, So I really went into shop.
To be honest, I was in shock for a little while, and I was in hospital room like on a stroke ward and my family came and I still couldn't process the news. It was kind of how the fact that they were so serious and terrified. Kind of helped me realize the gravity of the situation. Yeah, it was just so foreign to me. I'd never thought about brain stuff. That's really weird to say. As a science journalist, everything I write about is all like down here in the pelvis,
and it was just unfathomable. And I think that's why nobody guessed it over the course of the week, Like, why would you think that a healthy thirty five year old woman who was literally writing articles, running, going to karaoke would ever be having a stroke at the same time.
Yeah.
One thing that was so fascinating is that doctors told you you actually got que quite lucky when it came to the part of your brain that was affected by the stroke. What exactly did they tell.
You, Yeah, that's right. It was basically like I won the stroke lottery. They said, this is cerebellum and I was like, what is that. I have no idea what that means. And they were like, fortunately, it's a part of the brain that kind of does motor stuff, which again explains your motor symptoms, your trouble with fine movement. It's like aha, And they said, eventually you will have to get a surgery, but when you wake up, you'd be clumsy, but you'll still be you. And I took
that as very reassuring. One surgeon said, if I had a stroke, I would want it to be in the cerebellum, and I was like, that's I guess great.
Like I didn't know.
I got that this was such a lucky thing to happen, but I guess I'll hold onto that.
Yeah, when the doctor said you will still be you, how did you process that given you felt very much not like you in the preceding week.
Right, I mean, I didn't know what to think because I was in the middle of a totally acute crisis and I absolutely did not feel like me. Besides the motor stuff, I also felt like the gears of my brain were kind of like running through molasses at the end, Like it was really difficult for me to hold on to conversation and to pay attention, to focus and to
find the right word, which obviously feels quite cognitive. So on the one hand, I am like really clinging to any reassurance that I can get and to this idea that this could explain most of my symptoms, But in the back of my head, no pun intended. I think I was, like, there's something wrong. My brain is injured. I can feel the difference, and I have no experience with this. So what I don't know is how much the brain can bounce back, how much it can heal.
I've just never been through anything like this, but like, I'm scared yea. So it kind of went between like trying to comfort myself and being like this is truly an unknown.
Yeah. One of the areas that I've explored as a cognitive scientist is psychological essentialism, and it's basically almost a philosophical inquiry into what makes each of us us right? So is or maya essence is the Rachel essence right? What does it even mean to feel like ourselves? And I'm curious to know in what way did you not feel like Rachel? Was it simply, oh, I can identify these five impairments and that makes me feel not like me?
Or did it feel almost like a binary shift? Like I can't quite even put my finger on it, but I simply don't feel like myself. I would not be able to describe on a checklist all the ways in which I'm not feeling like myself.
Well, first of all that's a mind blowing field and I totally want to learn more about that, especially now. So yeah, it depends at what point because I was still processing how to make sense of all this, But I guess after the show for them months afterwards, it was like I had pictured myself like many people probably picture this Discardian mind body divide, where like, my mind exists and it controls my body, which is my flesh cage.
And there was some like again breakdown in the transmission from like my control commands to the body, and like, I didn't anticipate how off that would make me feel, so let me thank like how it changed my sense of self.
For example, if I had waved a magic wand and some of the impairments resolved themselves, let's say three out of five of the biggest impairments, would that have made you feel closer to feeling like Rachel or do you think again it was more just like a categorical shift, like until everything's resolved, they're just not going to feel like my old self, or there's something just separate from even the neurological impairments that's making me feel different.
No, it would have helped, and I think it has helped over time, as I have recovered a lot of it back.
Yeah, because it was really.
This delay and this distance between how I saw myself in my head and how I was conceptualizing myself and what was coming out and how I was coming off to people. So it's partly like how I'm being perceived, how my intentions are like manifesting in real life, and the amount of effort it's taking to honestly like performed myself. I felt like an alien impersonating myself. Even like being in the subway trying to get into a subway train, I had to be like, wait, you need to go
to the right. Wait, you're going to hit someone. Wait, you need to keep focused on the subway car. So I was having this internal dialogue. I felt like jerky and off and not kind of smooth and fluid and at one with my body and with my surroundings.
Yeah, sounds like so many of the things that it felt effortless that were the results of unconscious processing were now the result of very deliberate conscious processing, And that you're used to being the conductor of your body and mind, and all of a sudden, like the orchestra is not paying attention. It's like, hello, musicians, violinists, feelss, why aren't you playing when you're supposed to do? Like you're off tempo? Right?
Yeah, yeah, And that's exactly how I described it. It was like I hadn't realized there was an invisible conductor that was doing all this choreography behind the scenes and making it feel smooth and seemless. Now the seams were showing and I was kind of now to switch the metaphor, I was like a puppet master, pulling each string individually,
and that took a lot of conscious effort. It was like everything was unconscious kind of bubbled up to the surface and became within my awareness, which, let me tell you, is exhausting.
Yeah. I obviously cannot relate in any way to the magnitude of what you endured, but I have a little anecdote that makes me empathize with what you went through, which is I had a career ending violin injury, and I remember, after years and years of not being able to play in multiple surgeries, I picked back up my instrument and my mind had not forgotten how to play the mentals and violin concerto.
Right.
It was it felt like effortless, and I knew exactly how I would phrase it and what my finger should do, and yet my brain had lost all the muscle memory around how to actually play the instrument, and I would get so frustrated not being able to translate what was in my head into the actual mut that I was producing.
Yeah, no, that's exactly it.
I'm really glad you actually used that imagery, if you do understand. I literally felt like I'd been handed an out of tune instrument because suddenly I was doing the same things mentally and it wasn't producing what I was used to. And that's definitely what I felt in karaoko. It was like I know how to listen to a note and just like repeat it and make the same sound come out, Like I know how to perform this, and suddenly it was like I don't know what's coming
out of me. I can't do all these things at once. Like again, I kind of felt like an alien. I was like, yeah, this isn't me.
I'm so interested to explore something that you mentioned, which is you felt like you had to be an actress of sorts when it came to engaging with your community, right your friends and family, and I imagine that you were presenting to them as normal, but we're feeling at the same time massively impaired. What did that look like in daily life? And how did you figure out how to get your community to catch up to what your mind knew about your actual state.
Yeah, that was the challenge because like in some conditions, I think maybe it was a little bit more obvious. So in karaoke, like everything is kind of magnified, like you're on stage as a spotlight. And I guess I didn't realize until then, but my stage name is Rikira, and I do a.
Lot of hip stuff.
Apparently, like unconsciously, I'm always just like rolling my hips and just like shaking my ass and everything.
So and like that wasn't happening anymore.
So I'd be on stage and suddenly like be aware, like, oh,
the audience looks kind of bored. Maybe you should shake a little or like shimmy Rachel and be like, oh, wait, you have to keep singing at the same time, like wait, sing the words, and I'd like focus really hard on the screen and I just like standing there woodenly, and when you're doing that and you're singing, like I touch myself by Da Vinil's It's not really going to like sell the song I'd I learned, so I'd have like these awkward moments from like I'm really not getting like
the applause that I usually do, Like something's not working. But in my regular life, Yeah, people didn't notice, even my closest friends and family, which was very like alienating. So I got a ton of reassurance that I looked and seemed fine, which like on the one hand, like good on the other hand, than what is happening internally? What is this discrepancy, this like chasm between what I
feel and what people notice. And what I learned is that like, if you do have to perform yourself, you kind of can do it pretty well because you know your mannerisms, how you move through the world, you know the stories you tell and how people react, and if you have to pull every lever yourself, you can. But
it's very exhausting and it's very isolating. As someone who's an extrovert and like really craves like deep connection with people, I wasn't getting that I was just performing and like hoping they didn't notice.
Yeah, and what is sobering high level observation, which is, Wow, even the people with whom we think we have the most intimate connections, are they really only getting a snapshot of who we are and any given moments such that you could pass as quote normal, Rachel, your cognitive impairments.
Yeah, it was.
It was definitely an instance of like passing was the word that came to mind.
Yeah, and yeah.
That was like a philosophical kind of disturbing question I had. On the other hand, I think that people have a lot of unconscious cognitive processes themselves to reassure themselves that the situation is okay. They're kind of like filling in the gaps and kind of projecting what they know about you. People started like finishing my sentences and cutting me off all the time because I was slower to you complete it myself, or I couldn't find the word, and they
didn't notice that was happening. They just thought I had finished the sentence and they knew what I was going to say anyways, And I was like, this is interesting. That's not where I was going to go with that, But I'm observing this now.
Oh my gosh, that is so fascinating. Yeah, you're saying if you love someone, your protective instincts are going to go into full gear in order to protect yourself from the devastating truth that this loved one might be, you know, impaired in some way. You just figure out how not to see it.
Yeah, I think you put that beautifully. But I will say, like I think there's.
It was your idea, some mispriss all.
I mean, stop, no you, But I think there's like love in that gesture, right, because like they were also seeing a part of me that I was having trouble accessing. And like it's true I was in there, and like I was recovering over time, so parts of me were not accessible and not being expressed. But like it was being around people that knew be the most that helped bring that out. So like there is beauty in it,
it's not there's devastation as well. I definitely don't like to sugarcoat, but like I'm also grateful because I was eventually able to access a little more of that and like they kind of like bullied me during that.
After the break, Rachel's cauriosity leads her on a magic school bus ride into her own brain. We'll be right back with a slight change of plans. Rachel's stroke affected a part of the brain called the sarahbellum. Doctor said her motor function would be affected, but outside of that she should expect to feel more or less like herself. But the problem was that Rachel didn't feel at all
like herself. Everyday behaviors things that had once felt so automatic, like how to laugh at an appropriate volume or how to articulate her thoughts out loud, now required thinking an effort. Rachel had questions, and so she did the one thing she knew to do in situations like these, She put on her journalist's hat. And this frizzled it.
But I definitely remember literally being in the hospital room and asking for more research on the cerebellum and being handed a paper that said, this part of the brain is ineloquent and redundant and it doesn't have a role in language recognition and it's safe to operate.
In so have bad it, guys.
Wow.
And I just remember at that moment, like again my thinking was pretty impaired, but just being like huh, Like how can they say what it doesn't do? Because like, how do you really know what any part of the brain does. It's all like mysterious and interconnected. Like to definitively say that it doesn't do that sounds weird, but I kind of realized that, like that was the party line.
But there was this whole like cadre of neuroscientists who were questioning it and saying, like, actually, the cerebellum might be more interconnected and central than we thought. And it's called the downstairs brain, but it's connected to the upstairs brain in a way that we didn't realize until recently.
And it seems like summarizing all these scientists I talk to, every kind of thought and gesture and emotion before it makes its way from inside your brain to outside, it kind of passes through this part of the brain.
It's like the unionstation of the brain.
And so something's happening where this thought gets transformed in some way. We're not exactly sure how, but it might be some kind of polishing or refining process to make it more appropriate to the situation, so that by the time it leaves your brain it's kind of what you intended.
And all this is happening unconsciously, like we're saying, this is all automatic in the background, So you can imagine that when it gets damaged suddenly, like all those tiny little tweaks now are conscious and it's just like overwhelming, and I don't know, learning that made me really appreciate what ceahbellum had been doing, and like, I do hope
that's something that people get out of this. And it also it made me feel like it's kind of this connective tissue between like mind and body and between you and your environment.
It's like working at that interface between the two.
Before you found out that the cerebellum might play this critical role, and you just got that paper saying the cerebellum doesn't do anything.
Yeah, did you almost.
Feel like the science was gaslighting you or that I was denying or undermining your experience in some way? Oh?
Yeah, I mean it is funny because most of my reporting is on medical gaslighting and is on diseases that are considered to be all in your head or to be no big deal that turnout have like.
A very physical basis.
So it was very odd to be put in the patient perspective, to put it mildly, I don't know, to be like I was still putting it together because I was still being told by everyone around me, including every neurologist, like they're giving me cognitive tests or saying you're cognitively intact, you look perfect, you're graduating from occupational therapy, physical therapy.
So like, by their stay, it's true, this part of the brain wasn't crucial, and like I am able to speak and write again, but then like there's something weird. There's still a chasm between my experience and when I'm being told, and I think I was still figuring it
out rather than feeling gas lit. There was one moment where I had started like misfrizzling and like calling scientists, and I talked to a speech therapist who specifically worked on singing and the cerebellum, and she was telling me, yeah, all my cerebella patients, they're.
Really fatigued, like exhausted.
And it's not because like this is the part of the brain that causes more fatigue. It's because suddenly, like instead of being on autopilot, they're on manual, so they're thinking each thing out loud. And the most extreme or obvious way I can explain it is when I was learning to walk again after surgery, I had to literally
tell my feet. I was like, you need to put your weight on the inner corners of your feet, which if you've ever learned to like ice skater, roller skate, that's something that you started being consciously and later becomes muscle memory, like you were mentioning. So it's like I lost the muscle memory. So that's like there are things that are much more subtle, but that's kind of the most obvious, I think, way to explain what the Sarah Beltan's doing.
You know, after a big incident like this one, obviously one can feel gratitude. Okay, I'm grateful it wasn't worse. I'm grateful on having, you know, a pretty significant recovery here, and maybe I'm surpassing expectations by my doctors. But there's also the reality of, oh wow, I'm a working professional, I'm a science journalist. I'm not working with the same raw materials I had before. How did you adapt to this new mental state that was constantly in flux? Right?
You don't know how much you're going to improve over a three month period or six month period. And you know, not everyone here has had a stroke, but a lot of people have dealt with some kind of loss that set them back in some way or prevented them from doing what they love. And so I'm curious to know what your approach was.
I think it's a really good way of putting it. It was really dealing with the unknown that was the scariest.
This is part of whatever.
I want to call it, my thinking brain, the brain I value, the brain that I think of as I. So now how do I incorporate that into my identity? And Yeah, it made me do a lot of soul searching about what I value and what I valued about my quickness of processing, and about my kind of fluency in the world of science and literature and journalism. Like I, like probably many people in this room, I was very much like brought up to value high academic achievement. My
parents were all scientists. I didn't get into that, but like, my dad's a theoretical physicist. My mom's a doctor researcher. Oh my god, stop stop this guzzle.
Quantum mechanics, that's matter physics.
Oh my god.
I don't understand it at all. I just know what he does. Oh my goodness. I even say, people whose dads are theoretical physicists, Okay, keep going.
Yeah, I shaped some very odd progeny so odd curious, and mom's a doctor and my stepmom's a molecular biologists.
So I think hard science was really pushed on me, and like it ended up because I big a science journalists, Like a lot of my job relies on convincing PhD scientists that I am smart enough to understand that their latest research that they have spent twenty years mastering, and to like distill it and translate it to the public without screwing up while stroking their ego while I'm interviewing them. So there's a lot of emotional and other forms of
technical intelligence going on. And yeah, it was a total panic of like, can I still, I don't know, maintain this like status and do what I love?
And it was also a realization.
Of what I love about all this, Like I love being a bridge between science and the public. I love getting to know scientists really closely as like these interesting, quirky, flawed characters like miss Brissil, and I do love communicating, whether that's public speaking or whatever, and I didn't want
to lose that. But I think like the deeper fear in there was kind of losing my connection to people period and through my writing and science fluency and like storytelling, that was how I just connected to the world and connected people deeply. And the idea that because I've lost some memory or the ability to like convey my personality or my humor, that I would just be more like isolated from people. I think that was the really the underlying fear.
Did you have any adaptations you employed at.
The time, Yeah, so I think fortunately I just started like over doing everything, like over reporting, overwriting, writing more stuff down, like writing down outlines to timelines, and I don't know, as a woman in a pretty male dominated field of science journals, something I'm pretty used to that doing like twice as much work to yeah, have the same cut.
As someone else.
But I guess I'm glad that I sort of experimented with what worked for me, and and I like, yes, I did need to find new systems and adaptations and kind of get to know my new brain even as it was evolving, and even though I didn't know exactly how what recovery was going to look like.
So I'm glad I did that.
I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change, so I think I was so stuck in my brain and with this idea that I had to write the same amount the same kind of stuff. I had to ask myself hard questions like why do you need to perform at this level and do this much and be like this much smarter and impress this many people?
Like what.
Is this?
What gives you value in the world? And do you expect to keep doing this until what? Like what is this going to get you? Eventually? So I spent a lot of energy resisting and trying to be who I was and just like struggling behind the scenes and treading water and losing sleep, which was especially bad with a brain injury, and like, honestly, I just hit a wall at some point and I had a breakdown, which involves like kind of losing some short term memory for like
a short amount of time. And that was kind of a come to Jesus for me. I was like, I actually can't just run myself to the ground trying to perform myself in public life because I physically literally can't. It's going to hurt me in the long run, and like it's making me miserable. Yeah, and again I think, right, not everyone has had a stroke but I And but the experience of realizing you're not invincible, whether through aging or any confrontation with loss. Like, I think that's pretty relatable.
It was just a little more extreme for me.
Yeah, So it's one thing to have to come to Jesus moment, but it's another thing to actually practice changing these fundamental principles and these north stars that you've lived your whole life kind of shooting towards. Right. You said you grew up in a high intensity, high achievement oriented household. Tell me about so when you were asking yourself these really thought provoking questions like why do I need to perform at this level in order to feel valuable in
this world? What were the answers that your brain was serving up? And then how did you actually force yourself to slow down and not be so bothered by it?
I did know, deep down like some of the reasons that I perform like that. I know that just based on my personality and upbringing, Like I did want that external validation like so many of us.
I did thrive on that.
And.
I I liked being able to have some sort of platform for like the work I do and care about, and be able to have my voice out there. For sure, maybe I always kind of lived under this pressure or fear of I don't know, disappointing. I think just like the only reason I wore a dress was because when I was introduced to your podcast, I was introduced as a well dressed journalist, and I didn't want to let you down.
So I wanted to make sure that I'm showing up here.
So thankfully I've never been called a well dressed host. Yeah, I was going to do orys that I was allowed.
To, but I Rachel who we did this for each other over two halves of the same person for yeah, yeah, So I think I was partially like doing a lot for like the outer gaze or for like there was a person inside. There was an idea of who I should be in the world, right, And some of that comes to internally, some comes from external factors.
I think.
Yeah, being like an author and a public speaker kind of puts you in the public spotlight in a way that's weird and kind of warps your sense of self. And I did have to get back to like why do I love writing these stories?
What's meaningful about it for me?
And I know one thing I kept going back to was like authenticity, which I know is super overused. I used to be like really allergic to like aphorism and cliche and now I like draw a tarot card every day and do my yoga and I'm like authenticity and gratitude.
But it is true that like.
A lot of a lot of people can be very smart and synthesize things and still information. AI can do that, actually, but like when it comes to really both speaking your truth, and I would like to think that when I tell like patient stories in my work, like getting to the marrow of something and like a true lived experience or doing the best I can, like that takes a different skill set. That's something I really value on that I know, like speaks to people and to whatever extent I can do.
That, Like I really really value that.
Emotional connection, and so like the technical stuff, some of it is harder for me now.
It was really interesting.
Everyone's very I'm very obsessed with Alyssa lu the ice Ginter right, and I feel like part of the attraction. There's a lot of things that are really cool about her, but her fluidity and how at home she is in her body and how she's just like she's like performing joy and ease and fluidity and and like, in some sense, I still strive for that, like that's what I feel is missing in a lot of the way I move
through the world now. But also I'm trying to come to peace with like maybe I'm not as fluid in this world and maybe like I'm a little more jerky and not as like great to watch on the ice, definitely, but like that it's okay to show up that way, and you're gonna draw different things out of people, and you're gonna appreciate the moments when you feel that like flow and being at one. You're gonna appreciate those moments a lot more because they're rare and you're aware of
them now. And I think that's like maybe the biggest gift this is given to me is that heightened awareness of when things are flowing and when I feel like connected or like at one with an audience, in a
room with a person. And I thought a lot about embodied cognition, the fact that we do like move through the world in a body, and I used to kind of dismiss these very physical activities that I do, like now yoga and running and singing, and now I think there's something very special about those moments where like body and mind come together and when you're like emotionally, physically and intellectually present, everything is kind of flowing or connected,
and it's kind of there's like a for singers, there's like a space between your chest and your head voice. There's like a transition that's extra awkward and you're likely to like break your voice during that part, and it's kind of like the transition between updog and down dog and yoga. So there's these like times where it's like it demands a lot of you when it's very uncomfortable.
But I think that if you can and like the gift is that you were fully present and alive in that moment and you're kind of in the world in a different way and experiencing it with a heightened awareness. And I think maybe that's also something that I feared losing with the stroke, was that presence and being aware and alive in the world.
And so now I.
Really really treasure those moments and those experiences, and I guess I appreciate my body more and I think of that as a type of intelligence, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
So I have a greater appreciation for that.
Yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you so much, Rachel forting for long. I know, I feel like we only just scratch the surface. Thank you all for joining us, and thanks.
For time to be here. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Hard Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll send it to someone who might resonate with Rachel's story, and if it moved you, be sure to leave a comment or review wherever you're listening. We love hearing from you, and any engagement with the show helps other people discover it. We'll be back in a week with another episode of A Slight Change of Plans. I'll see you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,
and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Alexandra Garratin, our editor Daphne Chen, our lead producer Megan Lubin, our associate producer Sonia Gerwitz, and our sound engineer Erica Huang. Luis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, So big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. And I have yet another Magic School Bus episode with my husband where I once had to get this horrible procedure called the laryn goscabee where they put tubes up your nose in order to put cameras down your throat in order to look
at your vocal cords. So I was diagnosed with a problem called I get so excited when I talk, I forget to breathe syndrome, and so I had to do speech therapy for multiple months and I had to get the larrogospy because they were like, we don't know why your vocal cords are screwed up. And I'm like, I'll change my personality. I promise, And so I still remember my husband was in the exam room and as we're doing this horribly painful thing, he treated it like the
Magic School Bus. He's like, whoa, there we go. Now we're going down into like there's her tongue, We're going to her throat. It's like, Jimmy, stop it