You, guys.
I don't know what to feel this week. I am happy, I am sad. I am just a mix of emotions right now. I don't know if you can tell.
But it's just me.
It's just Mandy. This week, Tiffany sadly couldn't be here. She is on a plane somewhere over the United States, somewhere over Idaho, I don't know, on the way back from taping The Real in Los Angeles. So I'm here on my own tonight taping the show. But like I said, I'm not just sad. I'm also really really excited. I have an amazing guest joining the show tonight. I have low key been stalking stalking Sharon Epperson for the past three years throughout her career at CNBC, where she is
the senior Personal Finance correspondent at the network. She's actually been there for twenty one years. It was just a couple of years ago that I ran into Sharon at an event at United Nations. I think it was around Women's History Month or some sort of gathering when we were both in the same room at the same time, and I knew I just had to grab her. I had to try and get her on Brown Ambition. So I talked to Sharon's. She was so sweet to me,
so nice, so supportive. So I followed up with her, you know, you follow up with the email trying to get her on the show, and then it was crickets, y'all. It was a little bit awkward, and you know, I tried to send the casual follow up email. So Sharon, did you get my email Brown Ambition?
You know?
Remember me still didn't hear back anything, And it wasn't until this past fall in September that I finally realized why. In late twenty sixteen, Sharon suffered a brain aneurism, a traumatic brain injury that required months and months of rehabilitation.
She was out of work for thirteen months, and ever since I heard her story, I knew I had to get back into with Sharon, first of all, just to tell her how excited I am and happy to hear that she's doing well, but also to have her come on the show and share her story with you guys. Because as much as Sharon's story is about health and what happens to us when the unimaginable finally occurs, it's
also a financial story. It's also how do you cope when you have to leave your job for thirteen months to deal with a health situation that's out of your control, and that comes on so suddenly, in the middle of nowhere and without further ado, I wanted to welcome to the show, Sharon Epperson. Sharon, thank you so much for coming on Brown Ambition.
Great to be here, Thanks for having me.
First, let me say I answer emails. I don't usually take a really long time to answer emails. So now that you know me, now that we're friends and we're going to do more together, you should know that if you email me, I will email you back pretty much right away if I can. And when I don't, something's happened, and in this case, something major happened.
Right, So take me back to that day in September what was it again? Twenty sixteen?
In September twenty sixteen, Actually, on September twenty first, twenty sixteen, I was get in the middle of the busiest fall probably of my career. I was planning to interview the Treasury Secretary later that week. I had just come back from hosting a Financial Planners Association conference. I was looking forward to going to a Charles Schwab Conference in a few weeks to do a show, and I was really,
really busy. I also am a mother with two kids, so my son was starting high school, my daughter was in middle school, and it was the first couple weeks of their school year as well. And so I try when I can. I tried then, but now I do it a lot more frequently. But I try to get my time into exercise and take care of myself. And I was actually at the gym. I'd already had my spinach smoothie that morning, and I was at the gym starting to exercise, and I really was just starting.
I wasn't doing anything.
Terribly excruciatingly difficult or anything like that. I was actually just doing some stretching and lifting some light weights. And all of a sudden, I was in a yoga post and I felt the worst sensation I've ever felt in my head and something that I can't really describe. I don't get migraines, but it didn't seem like a very bad headache or migraine.
It was just something that was very unusual.
And I also had difficulty moving my neck, and I didn't know if I had just pulled a muscle or something.
I just didn't know what had happened.
But I immediately left the exercise class and went to my car, which was kind of funny because then I was like, what am I supposed to do now? Because I came with my head, which means I probably shouldn't be driving. So I texted my husband and I said, you know, can you come pick me up? I don't know what happened. My head really is bothering me. And I text him in all caps and he happened to be close to home at the time and was able to come to me in a short while, which was very, very crucial.
To all of this. But we still didn't know what it was.
And I thought again that I just wouldn't be able to go to work, probably because I just wasn't feeling well, but I would go home and rest and see what happened. And so I emailed my job let them know I probably wouldn't be coming in, and then my husband went to go get me a coffee and came back and I said, you know, I really still don't feel well, and he took me to the doctor's office. My doctor wasn't available. I saw the doctor that was filling in for her, and he says, now I'm kind of this part.
I'm in and out of really remembering what happened, but he said that I just really didn't look well, ad been nauseous, I was complaining of my head. I was talking about this worst pain I'd ever felt in my life in my head, and he thought, I need to get her to the emergency room right now. She needs to get some imaging done and get a CT scan. And so my husband took me to the emergency room to a hospital nearby and actually a hospital in your new neck of the woods.
That's excellent.
And so I had that CT scan and the last thing I kind of remember was the emergency room physician saying, you have bleeding in your brain. What they discovered was that a blood vessel on my brain had basically exploded. And so what happens with what's known as a brain aneurysm is it's almost like a balloon, like a little bubble on the blood vessel, and it grows and grows and grows, and then eventually, you know, it's like you put too much air in it put too and it gets too weak and it pops.
And that's what happened.
What I remember was after basically having the CT scan at White Plains Hospital, then going to Montafior and being in the in the o R and having the anthesiologist putting me under. That's the last thing I remember. But the thing that I wanted to that I actually haven't shared, that really touched me was I wasn't scared. I wasn't scared.
And I don't know if it's you know, faith alone, or just the environment I was in, or how wonderful the people were that were taking care of me, but when and the last person that I saw before I went under was the anesthesiologist who was an African American woman, and I looked at her and I said, you're my doctor, and I just start smiling, like.
Oh my god, this is like so cool. And that's the last person I saw.
I never saw my neurosurgeons before I went under, and I now love them dearly, both of them as well. But that was the last person I saw, and that was pretty profound for me. She I knew she was taking care of me, and I think she.
Did obviously hindsight is twenty twenty, But looking back now, were there any signs or any you know, indications that this might be a risk for you.
What I've learned and what I had to learn kind of more recently, because it took me time to be well enough to kind of do the research and took me even probably longer to be emotionally ready to understand what had happened to me. But I did have a propensity to get an aneurysm. I'm African American. African Americans are twice as likely as whites to have a ruptured brain aneurysm. Women I did not have more aneurysms. Women have more aneurysms than men. And I also have three
relatives that passed away from brain hemorrhages. Whether or not they were aneurysms, I don't know, but my maternal grandfather and great grandfather and my mother's oldest sister all passed away from brain hemorrhages, and family history is another risk factor that I never knew, didn't consider, never told a primary care physician ever in my medical history about it, because they all three of them passed away when I was before I was a toddler, so I didn't really
think about it, and I never knew the statistics of the propensity, the greater propensity for Black women, And I think that's something that I want everybody to understand and be really conscious of when you have a migrain or when you're not feeling well with you anything with your head and youarticularly if you already have high blood pressure, or if you're a smoker. It's something to really watch out for, and also to really talk to your family
members and find out what happened. My cousins, now that I've told everyone exactly what happened and about our family history, my first cousin was like, I didn't know what grandaddy died of. I had no idea, you know, because her dad didn't talk about it. So it's important. That's a time that we don't want to remember because we've lost a loved one, but it's very very important to understand what has happened, you.
Know, Sharon, I have to say, just listening to your story, I'm sitting here and I'm realizing I only know two people in my life who have had a brain bleed, suffered a brain aneurism, and one of them is you. One of them is also a friend of mine from college, DeShawn Maria Harris, who five years ago, just last just as past March, it was five years passed away in her sleep from my brain anurism. DeShawn was only twenty five. I want to say it. You know, I'm thirty now,
Deshaun was only twenty five when this happened. It wasn't it. You know, Seeing someone close to me, not just an age, but you know, someone actually knew passed away from that injury was a huge wake up call for me at the time. But I guess it wasn't until talking to you today, and I'm putting two and two together. You know, the two people I know who've had brain aneurysms were African American women, And it's like you said, African Americans are twice as likely, wasn't it to experience this type
of injury? And that's just I'm having a little aha moment here. It makes me want to just call all my aunts, all my cousins and tell them to see a doctor asap.
Yeah. I'm in a mother's group with about one hundred African American women, and among our group, at least four people have had a family member that has had a brain aneurism, and one is still It's just a fiver but has significant neurological issues, and the other two have passed away. And so as you said with your friend Deshaun, and I'm so sorry to hear this, but it's unfortunately
that is what usually happens. Forty percent of the time, people are killed instantly by this injury, and those that survive. Of those that survive, the majority of them two thirds of them have some type of neurological issues, some type of neurological deficit that is significant.
And what if I know you're I think your inclination when you first felt that pain in your head, you know at the gym, was you know, okay, walk it off. Well, you know we can manage this, call husband, have him come. I mean, I think a lot of especially women, the instinct is to just push through it. You know, there's other things. You have a busy day ahead of you, work, kids, responsibilities.
You don't have time to have a headache, right. What can you say to that in terms of taking the time to listen to your body and to actually you know, take those things a little bit seriously. You know, you're you're the one who can feel your own pain and speaking up and kind of being an advocate for yourself.
Well, I'm I'm definitely the type of person that goes at one hundred and twenty miles an hour, or I used to.
And I had.
Truly the biggest week of my career. I mean, I was going to interview the Treasury Secretary in the Obama White House when there was an Obama that White House, you know, and I was invited by Treasury to come down and to participate in a conference and to do this big interview. I was looking forward to doing a lot more, having a lot more visibility on CNBC, anchoring a lot more, doing a lot more of the type of personal finance stories and segments on NBC that I
wanted to do. And I was about to, you know, really start a whole new chapter in my motherhood in terms of, you know, shepherding a high schooler through the process and a middle schooler through the process, and then boom, it all just came to a halt.
And so.
I guess I could have powered through it, but it was just so unusual that I knew I needed to stop and do something. But also, my husband truly saved my life, because if I didn't have someone else to say it to, or if someone else who knew me love me and knew what I should be looking like, and obviously I didn't look like myself and insists that I go to get medical treatment right away.
I may have just kept going.
If that had happened at work, would I have necessarily stopped, or would I had to keep the game face, the TV face going and keep going.
I don't know.
So everything happens for a reason, and I'm glad it happened when it did and where it did, And though I was on my way to work, I hadn't gotten there yet. All of that stuff is very very important. I'm also one who never misses a doctor's appointment. I kind of have been very blessed to have a career where I have a company that has provided health insurance, so I know that that's often a reason why people don't necessarily get the treatment that they want.
They're not covered.
But then sometimes they don't get the treatment because they just don't get the treatment. And even those who are my colleagues that cover healthcare sometimes don't go and get to the doctor's office they need to. And it's just so important because we research all the time. We're constantly Mandy reporting stories and interviewing people and researching new things, and I think there's nothing more important than researching yourself
and knowing what's going on with your own body. And if you aren't getting regular medical care, you can't really understand when something is going wrong because you may feel okay, but the testing may not show that you are okay, and you want to get treated right away if something is not correct. So I think it's very very important to pay attention to your body to know what is happening.
But then also you can do all that and this can happen.
I mean, one of the things that is definitely in my family that I am aware of, and many women and many African American women can say the same as cancer. And so I am religious about my mammograms and ultrasounds and everything annually to make sure that I am getting tested and make sure that I do my own examinations and everything, because I have breast cancer survivors and those
who have passed away from cancer in my family. And I had actually gone for those tests just a couple of weeks before this happened, So you know, you can you can be diligent and something and sometimes things can just go wrong. But if you know that you're supposed to feel a certain way, if you know that you normally wouldn't be, you know, kind of feeling this pain and dozing in and out of consciousness and feeling nauseous and all of that, you know, then you won't power through.
But most of the time, I will say, when I hear of someone who has not had a successful outcome, either they've passed away or they are there, they have suffered, you know, really severe neurological issues, their family members or they themselves will say, I just powered through it. You know, I just powered through it. And it can be it can be deadly to do that.
Now, you said, you feel like it's a miracle to even be alive. But I didn't want to gloss over the recovery time. I mean you had to Yes, you survived, which was amazing, but you had to take time off of work months was it? And also like relearn how to walk. So can you talk about the period after the after surgery, the recovery and the impact it had on your family and you know, in your career and your finances.
So the recovery period is not over.
I you know, I would people always say, and even early on after you know, the first couple of months, you look great.
You know what's really the problem? You sound good?
You know. I was able to speak pretty much after I had been in debated in all of those things. But once I was all the tubes were gone, I was able to pretty I was able to speak and speak pretty clearly, whether or not other people realized. I was making the right connections in my speech and I was communicating effectively with which is, you know, as a TV reporter, what I've done my whole career.
That's a whole other thing.
And that took a very long time to feel comfortable enough to return to my career to do.
And I was away from CNBC for thirteen months.
I spent two and a half weeks, two weeks in intensive care, a couple of days in the hospital after that, and then I moved to a rehabilitation hospital where I stayed for two weeks and every day I had physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. And my physical therapy was indeed learning how to walk and maintain my balance again, learning how to go up the stairs, learning how to I didn't really have to learn how to dress myself
and all those things again. But I didn't need initially need a little assistance or someone to just watch over me and make sure that I did things correctly. I think the biggest issues were definitely my balance, and it was very strange to not walk for two weeks and then have a physical therapist come into my room and I see you and say, okay, we're going to try to get you up now, and I thought, I haven't even really sat up fully. You know, it's going to
be very difficult, and it was. It was very scary. And the first walk that I took that seemed like a marathon but was just walking from my.
Room and I see you just a couple rooms.
Down down the hallway, it seemed like such a long road, and that road had so much pain on it because there were people in those rooms that I knew probably wouldn't make it, and there were people in the rooms that looked like I probably had two weeks prior right after my surgery, and there were family members that were devastated trying to figure out what the next steps were going to be. And I remember thinking, I just have
to look at the door straight ahead. If I look in these rooms, I'm going to fall down and my therapy continues. I mean, I think as having a brain injury, I think having a neuropsychologist who really understands the impact that a brain injury can have. You cannot see it. I don't have a visible scar. People figured something happened because I cut my hair off. I never had short hair for four decades. They so they figured probably something might have happened about that.
But you can't see it. So if you can't see it, people think you're okay, and it's not true.
There's still difficulty in terms of fatigue, in terms of stamina, in terms of focus, in terms of memory that can last for months and months and months, for years and years and years. And as a social worker told me just today, actually, you know, people used to say that recovery was in stages, and now they realize that it's two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, two steps back, that it just ebbs and flows.
Like that, and that is very true.
And as soon as I start to feel like I can I can work that twelve hour day, I can do these things, and I'm going to switch this and do this so I can make this, and then I'm going to go this and take the kids here, and then the next day I can't move. I'm just exhausted, And it's a different kind of exhaustion. It's actually has we say I'm just wiped out for a brain injury, you know, survivor, it's cognitive fatigue, and it's a real thing.
It's it's a medical condition. I was like, great, I don't have to say I'm just wiped out anymore.
I can actually say I have cognitive fatigue, and people, can you know know that I'm that I that I sound like, you know, I actually have some a medical condition, because it really is. So it's it's a long process, but most important for me in terms of recovery, I wonder what people mean when they say that, and do they mean when you know, when, when will you be recovered? Or are you seem fully recovered?
Does that mean they say I'm I seem just like I was before? Because the person who I was before.
When one hundred and twenty miles an hour, did several things at the same time, was probably not in the moment very often. Because I was in five moments at the same time. I was never present when I was speaking to this person or that person because I was answering this email while I was talking to this person on the phone and doing all these things, and most of us multitask on a daily basis. Now I try hard not to do that or not to do that
to the degree that I was doing it before. And so in a lot of ways, in terms of my recovery, it's really a journey as a different person to a
new place. And so that's why I see it as truly the greatest blessing in my life, because I am now able to be a person that has been awakened and that has been enlightened, and it can be more mindful about what they're doing and hopefully, I think for others to see that I'm doing I am recovered in that I'm able to do that job, but I'm doing it differently and better than I've ever done it before.
Well, how did you discuss your condition with your employers, Because when you return to CNBC it had been what you said thirteen months. Like you said, like a lot of people who have problems or conditions that aren't you know, can't be seen with the human eye. How did you approach having that discussion and explaining to the people you work with that you're not the same sharing anymore and you need to approach your work differently, and were they receptive to that.
Well, CNBC has been absolutely amazing. They've been extremely receptive, extremely supportive, and they were supportive throughout my entire recovery to my husband, my family in that they were not pressuring me in any way to say you better come back, or you won't have a place to come back to, or anything like that. They were honestly concerned about my health and the whole way through, and they continue to be And I think part of that is because I
have been there for such a long time. I mean I never imagined that I would be at the same place, the same employer for twenty one years. But I have been your a unicorn, right so they've been able to see my dedication to my field, my work, and my brand, but also to CNBC. And I am really committed to my employer in that way, and they've been very very
supportive of me along the way. I spoke to a woman a few weeks ago who said, you know, I have a major illness or I've been through a major illness, and I never told anybody.
I work with.
And I think that that's everyone has their own way that they deal with it. I'm not saying that everyone has to tell the employer everything, but you know, as personal finance journalists, Mandy, there's another reason why you have to be upfront.
Is that in order to afford.
To be sick, if that's the way way to say it, to be enable, in order to finance a recovery a medical condition and the journey that it takes to get better, it takes insurance, and it takes if you, if you're able to get it, great health insurance, disability insurance. And in order to get the insurance, you have to show what's wrong with you. You have to be able to document what is wrong with you. And I completely understand that, and I know that that's the way the business works.
Now from the patient perspective, I can say, it's so daunting, and it seems so callous, and it seems why would I want this to happen to me? You know, why do I have to tell you every little thing that's happened. If I just give you the bare basics, you should just believe me, because I wouldn't want to have a brain injury. But because I've had to go to so many specialists, neurologists, neurosurgeon, neurologists, neuropsychologists, my interness as well,
and all of that, I have enough documentation. Then also as a journalist, as you know, working for a media company, I have the documentation and the research to show why I also needed to be out of work for a
year and off the air for thirteen months. So I think that has also helped me be able to show to my employer from a totally you know, without without having any of the emotional tie that we that we have to show that I really do need to have this time because it's a medical necessity and no one wants.
I don't want to relapse. I don't. I don't that's not really the right word. But I don't want to be sick.
I don't want to continue to not feel well, and I don't want to try to power through and work through that because that's not going to benefit the company, and that's certainly not going to benefit me.
Now, you you touched on something earlier that that really hit home for me, which was disability insurance. Recently, we had an episode, one of our most popular episodes of twenty eighteen. So far all around the power of life insurance and had it to how much you need and the importance of it. Right now, I think what we what we could talk about today, especially with you, is disability insurance, because sometimes it's not that you pass away
and you're incapacitated, because you're not. You're no longer here and able to provide for your family. But what happens if you you know you're here, you're alive, you're breathing, and yet some happened to you to where you can't provide and you're going through something and you might need
some protection there. And I'd love to if you could talk about the disability insurance coverage, you know, if you had it, and how it helped you, and what advice you would give to others if they're thinking, you know, when they fill out their insurance forms at work, Oh, disability insurance. What's that? I don't care and kind of skip over it.
Never skip over it.
It's probably the most important insurance that you can have. Certainly, life insurance is important, but you're far more likely to be disabled while you're working than to pass away and your disability maybe just a couple months but it could
be years, and it's so important to have. If you have the opportunity to get disability insurance through your employer, absolutely take advantage of it because as a group disability policy, it's going to be much more affordable in terms of your premiums, or it may be that you don't have to pay for it at all. The way some companies work,
as my company did. You can get short term disability insurance through your company and you're not paying for that, and that is one of the benefits of the company. Then if you are disabled longer than six months, you need to have long term disability insurance, and.
That may come at a cost. It may come as at.
A premium that is taken out of paychecks, payroll deductions or something. And some people may say, well, I don't want to do that. I got enough whatever they give me for free. Of course I'm going to take that, but I'm not going to pay for anything out of my own paycheck.
Do it because the likelihood is that you're.
Going to then have more of your income covered because you've put more money into this disability policy.
But also the thing to keep in mind that I was not aware of until this happened to me.
Was that the long term disability insurance that you receive because you've put premiums into it, this is now a tax free benefit. So the income of yours that is covered that you're getting may it's not going to be one hundred percent of your salary or one hundred percent of your your income, but it may be forty sixty percent, and that is going to be a tax free benefit,
so you're not paying taxes on that money. If you live in a high tax area like New York or New Jersey or Connecticut or many other places, and you're paying a lot in taxes, that can be a significant difference between being pretty close to what your salary or your take home pay was and being so far away from it.
How are you ever going to be able to pay your rent or your mortgage.
So it's really, really, really important to first take advantage of the disability insurance offered by work, whatever's given and it may be a free benefit. Then see if it's possible if there is an option to get even more disability insurance and to opt in by actually paying part of the premium. Do that because you might get a
higher percentage. And then Finally, if you don't are not offered it, or if you're just one of those people that wants to make sure you have even more protection by a private disability insurance policy, it is not cheap at all. It is you know something that is it's like any other insurance. Why am I paying for that? Nothing's happened to me. I feel fine, But you just
never know. And I about fifteen years ago, was doing a lot of freelancing in addition to working for CNBC, and I thought, you know, I want to make sure that all of the income that I'm getting is covered, and so I'm going to take out a private disability.
Insurance policy on my own.
And my husband did the same thing, and it was a very very smart move because that was a little bit extra that I was able to get from the private disability insurance company to really make sure we would be able to pay for all of the expenses that we have.
Now with your disability insurance and the health insurance you were provided through CNBC, and you were fortunate to have what were some of the you know, give me a sense of the medical expenses that you guys have incurred. You said, even yourself, you're still recovering, so you're still going to physical therapy and you have these you know, these these costs that are still part of your life from what happened to you.
Well, I must say, I kind of I look at what I have to pay for my copays and my what I have to pay out of pocket, and you know, it may be thousands of dollars, but not hundreds of thousands of dollars or close to half a million dollars, which is probably about what my care was the cost of my care, at least initially. And this is not ongoing, This is just you know, in the emergent situation, it was I'm sure if I had no insurance, it would have been very, very high, but it was something that
was manageable because I did have insurance. It was also manageable because I have talked about it so much and I know you write about it all the time as well, the importance of having an emergency fund. There could not have been a rainier day for my rainy day fund, and so the fact that I had emergency fund was key, and it meant that I didn't have to do what many people may have to do, which is dip into their for a one K or the retirement savings or
something to pay for a medical bill. I didn't have to do that because I also had had the emergency fund.
So did you have to deplete your emergency fund or was it just a good chunk of it that was.
I did not I did.
I did not have to deplete it. No, I did not have to deplete it. And I was fortunate that that I was able to, you know, manage. One of the things also keep in mind is when I'm when I was in the hospital, when I was in the rehab hospital, when I was home and on you know, relegated to like one floor for a month.
I wasn't eating out, I wasn't driving, and.
Have gas bills I didn't have. I didn't have to dry clean anything.
Oh, so all of those expenses that can really add up.
And I also had no desire.
I wasn't going anywhere, and I had no desire to really eat anything fancy. All of those expenses, eating out, shopping, I didn't have. So that also helped in the sense that even though my income was less, my expenses were also less.
And you mentioned earlier, you know, when you went back to work in twenty seventeen. It wasn't the same Sharon Emberson, the same one hundred and twenty mile an hour Sharon Epperson. And I'm really you're really touching me in the part of my brain I try to ignore, which is maybe slow down, stop multitasking. It feels like one hundred and twenty miles an hour, you know, And I just kind of keep telling myself, Oh, it'll slow down.
You know.
Next year will be the year when you can kind of step back. But I think speaking to you has been helpful for me because it's, you know, it's you don't want to get to the breaking point. I love you to talk about some of the changes that you've made since you've returned to the office, through your career, through your family, any any sort of changes you put in place as a result of what you learn from the experience.
I don't want to say that there is something wrong with being driven or wanting to excel in many areas, and I think your career has just been remarkable because I've been stalking you as well, so I know how many things you're working on and how successful you and Tiffany have been in creating your own brands and working within brands to make them even better. And I think that's remarkable, and I think that is something that is commendable.
But I also think that as you're doing these things that are so fantastic, I, at least when my career, I never stopped to appreciate them. Almost at any point, I would just try to get to the next thing. And so what I do now that I never did before was really try to take a few minutes a day and just.
Be present, be still. I mean, it seemed like the weirdest thing.
It was one of the first things I learned in one of my therapy sessions was to stop and just be still. And you know, then you think about all these things and you're, you know, okay, but just telling me to be still. But I got to do this,
and then I have to do this next thing. But eventually, over the course of five minutes or longer, if you can do it, you may be able to really just be have your mind almost completely blank for a moment, so that when you come back into it, you realize how much you have that is so good, and how much you're doing that's that is not only great for you, but great for so many other people. In terms of Mandy, all the information that you are sharing and that you
and Tiphany are sharing. So that's something that I never did before. I never really stopped. So now I start my day by stopping, so rather than like jumping out of bed getting everybody ready for everything. And I don't do this every day. Sometimes i'd still jump out of bed and just start going, but I just try to take a minute, actually three to five minutes, and.
Just pause, give thanks for.
Waking up, for being there, being here and being able to continue my day, and kind of asking for some guidance on how I'm going to be used that day to do the best that I can. There are sometimes I don't I haven't been doing this as regularly as I should, but I that I'm supposed to take breaks during the day, so I had already put in my calendar before I got sick, this is the time I need to take a break to have a snack, so
that I wouldn't like binge eat. You know, you're working so hard for twelve hours and then you're starving and you have all the food that you shouldn't have because that's what's available.
So I was so I would.
Take camera watching me with my cup, oh, my cup of mixed nuts. I've sid my lunch and dinner all.
Right, exactly exactly, so you know, I had my breaks well for eating. But now I need to have those breaks to take five minutes to just walk around the office, or just take a minute to go into a conference room.
Shut the door.
I hope, hope it can pick an empty conference room to sit, just sit there for two minutes, for five minutes, and it's my work is not going to suffer for those few minutes, but I'm going to be probably in a better place and sometimes more energized when I come back to my desk to start writing again. So I'm trying to do those things. And the other thing is sleep, because I do still have suffer from the fatigue in
the stamina and lack of stamina a bit. I do try to sleep more when I can, and sometimes I just have to because I just can't go anymore.
I have to, I have to just rest.
So those are some of the things that I've that I've done differently, but I think I never really understood what it meant and I'm still learning. I'm still such a novice about what it means to be mindful and what it means to meditate, what it means to relax.
Not great at it, but I'm trying trying a lot more to do it, and I think it makes when I am able to, when I am able to then focus on my work, I think I deliver much more efficiently, and I think I'm hope that it's received even better because I've really, I've really put put myself into it
to get it, to make sure it's right. Some of it is because I have to, because I have to focus more now, but I think part of it is because I'm more mindful of wanting to really help hope that my readers and my viewers understand that I am with them right now. I'm not thinking about timillion a million other things for these few minutes we're together, and I'm talking about taxes because it's just so awesome, because
I really do get excited about these things. So I want, I want, I want that to come across.
And so it's not so much that you pulled back, it's just you've sort of reoriented yourself and approached your work a little bit differently. Yeah, I I my mother had has a psychological slash neurological condition that it's called fibermiagia, and it's really difficult. It's not something you can see, and it's also very hard to diagnose, and even doctors
are don't agree on what it is. But just the the interactions with family and friends and trying to explain her condition to family and friends and and and you know, even I'll raise a hand and play it, you know, and be honest about what I went through seeing her go through that. It's really hard to see your mom, this superhero to you one hundred and twenty mile or every day of your entire childhood and teenagehood and young
adulthood all of a sudden have to slow down. And you know, I had to even learn how to get to know this new mom in my life and what
she was going through. And I just wondered if you had any situations where you felt like it sounds like you had a really supportive family, friends and people at your office, but you know, any any cases where you had to sort of advocate for yourself or or you felt like people around you weren't really understanding just how differently, just how differently you've become, how different you've become since this all happened.
I felt like that a number of times with friends that I've had for a decade or more.
And saying, you know, you look great, What really is the issue? You really look great? And this is when I was still in the rehab hospital.
So I'm thinking, I'm in a rehab hospital. Don't you don't see anything differently that I'm doing. But because I could speak, because they know that this is it was a severe injury, severe illness, severe affliction, but I didn't seem I didn't show anything. I was able to move my arms, I was able to walk slowly, I was able to at this point a month out, I was able to speak clearly to them, but they so it was it was hard for them to see.
And I wanted to, you know.
At one point, I remember a friend coming to visit me and saying that I look fine and what was.
Really the issue?
And I wanted to just scream, you know, I wanted to say, you know, you can't see this. I feel completely changed. I feel completely changed and completely devastated in the sense that I can't imagine the week that I had before this happened and going back to it, and that was that was a month out, so I mean, I had a long journey and I feel much more comfortable. But even today, I don't think I could.
You know, I was.
Contemplating a five am flight the other day to you know, or five am arrival at the airport to get on a six am flight to go somewhere and speak and then you know, go to a reception and then you know, speak the next day. And I thought, you know what, I can't do that anymore. I don't think that that's
a smart idea. It's just too much and to be able to explain to people very honestly, you know, I need to be prepared and be ready to speak, and all of that I can't come in the day of and I need time to rest and make sure that I'm in good shape to do that. And people seem to understand, but you do have to advocate for yourself
because people will not necessarily see it. And the other part that and I'm much better now, but the other part that really is difficult for people to understand is you look fine, you're here, you're alive, you should be so happy, and you're constantly emotional. It is a psychological, neurological issue and being another medical term emotionally labile, and having these mood swings is part of what happens to
someone who's had a brain injury. And so just hearing about something or watching something or seeing something on TV that's maybe slightly sad or maybe not even sad to some people, but it just hits you a certain way and you start crying or your reaction maybe another reaction that would not normally seem appropriate. That kind of emotional filter is a little bit skewed, and so that's something else that's very difficult to explain to friends who may be like, why is she reacting that way? Why is
she saying it that way? And it's not trying to be mean or trying to be you know, you know, gross or sad or I think it's just that's how you feel. And so I was talking to survivor today and she was saying, you know, just going into a place or going past a place that she remembered having gone there for surgery or gone there for you know,
medical treatment, she just started crying. And I completely understand that feeling, and I completely understand doing that because it's just it's a very it can your emotions just hit.
So hard, and that's very hard for family.
Members to understand and to see. And I had with young with younger, they're not they're not babies, but having a twelve year old and a fifteen year old as well as my husband understanding those mood swings and knowing that I was having them and and.
You know, that was hard. That was hard.
And it's not like it doesn't happen ever again, you know, it's still again. It's two steps forward, one step back on a on a daily basis.
And I wanted to talk about your work with the Brain Aneurysm Foundation. You mentioned a couple of times speaking to survivors. Is is that party of recovery too? Do you feel hearing stories from other survivors and kind of building a network of support through your work with the foundation?
Absolutely.
I mean the way the way that I found out of about the risk factors about brain aneurysms and about family history and the propensity of African Americans and women to have brain aneurysms was by just googling, doing some research and then landing on the Brain Aneuralism Foundation web page. And so for anybody who wants to know more information about brain aneurysms. It's a beafound dot org and I
that has become my new passion. No one ever would want, would wish something like this happened to them, But because it has, and because I am able to speak about it, and because I have covered personal finance and ask people to divulge some of their most painful or most challenging and or most triumphant personal finance situations, I've felt like I must share my story and I must explain how my story kind of also delves into the personal finance
journey that I took, but also the medical journey that I took. The Brain andres and Foundation is an excellent resource for survivors, for caregivers about and for those who've lost their loved ones about what this really is, how it happens, what types of treatments are available, what the recovery or you know, existing with a brain aneurysm, what that means, how that feels, how that can manifest itself
emotionally physically. It's just been really really important for me to understand more about what happened to me and what could happen next. And I try not to be you know, I don't look at it as worst case scenario.
I look at it as being well informed.
So I want to know when my children should be tested. I want to know when I should be tested again to make sure that I don't have another one that could happen, because they develop over years, not over a couple of months, and so this is something ongoing that I will constantly have to monitor. But I also am just astounded how little information and funding and research goes on about brain aneurysms, because it does impact one in fifty people. One in fifty people is walking around with
a brain aneurysm. Most of the time, it's not a problem, nothing's ever going to happen to them. But about thirty thousand people a year out of those six million that have a brain aneurysm will have it rupture, and those ruptures happen frequently. Every eighteen minutes there's someone who has
a brain aneurysm rupture. And because of the likelihood that someone is going to pass away if that happens two out of five or that they're going to have a serious neurological issue for the rest of their life, two
thirds who survive. It's important for people to understand what this is and to understand what they see and when they see a coworker who doesn't seem like they look right, you know, take them to the hospital or suggest that they go to the emergency room, or offer to cover whatever they're working on so that they can go home early and try to take care of themselves. And the same goes for your friends and your family members, to
just be aware of what's happening. I was recently on Capitol Hill speaking to some congressional leaders about brain aneurysms, and there is so much funding in medical funding, federal funding toward medical research and areas that are very important cancer heart disease, there is so little funding given toward brain aneurism research, and so part of my work with the Brain Aneurism Foundation also is to raise awareness so that people will also be willing to donate and give
to hopefully coming up with some early detection initiatives as well as improve treatment and care for those who have brain aneurysms. So I created the Sharon Eperson Chair of Research and it will be awarded for the first time this September two year, basically almost to the day on
my two year anniversary. Have my brain aneurysm, and the goal of the Chair of Research is to provide a research grant to a scientist medical professional so that they will be able to look into early detection, come up with better remedies or more technologically advanced perhaps remedies in terms of figuring out who has a brain aneurysm, who is more likely to have a brain aneurysm, and how
best to treat it. So I'm hoping that that is something that will continue for my lifetime because it's I think it's so important for people to be able to have the very, very best care, and in order to do that, we need to make sure that we have the best technological advances to figure out what is causing these and how they can be treated.
What an amazing way to turn such a traumatic experience into such a positive, you know, light for the future of research in this really important area. Congratulations on that. You know a lot of what we spoke about in the episode about life insurance is about your legacy and what you'll leave behind and not just thinking about the here and now. And I think that's such an amazing take away from your story, Sharon. Thank you for sharing it.
I wanted to leave. I wanted to leave you guys with kind of just a recap, you know, whether it's a brain aneurysm or something else, you know, something another traumatic, unexpected, the worst case scenario. I think that's what we're all in the back of our minds afraid to think about. But we should all at least take some time to
think about it. And I wondered if we can just wrap up by reviewing some of the key steps anyone can take today to make their lives and their loved ones lives a little bit easier if something like this, God forbid were to happen from them. So I assume you'd start by saying, beef up that emergency fund. What else would you add to that, Sharon, I.
Think one of the key things to do is automate all of your financial life as much as you can.
So if you can do direct deposits for your paycheck, if you can do automatic bill pay for your rent or for your mortgage or for your utilities, if you can make sure that you have all of your accounts in one place so that you know where to find them, using something like Mint or some other service that can aggregate all of your accounts if you can use the password manager and make sure that someone that you really trust and really love has that information as well, so
that anything happens to you. Because you've automated your life, you want to make sure that they're able to get in there and help you in terms of figuring out how to make sure the bills get paid and everything, and that would be helpful to make sure that someone has that information, your password to these accounts. The way to make sure legally that it's the person that you really want to have all this information is to make
sure you've done proper estate planning. So your health care proxy the person who's going to make health care decisions if you are unable to do so, figure out who that person's going to be. Who's going to be the person who's going to make the financial decisions if you're unable to do that. And if you're a parent, make sure that if you and your spouse or mom and dad are not both there, who.
Is going to be able to take care of these kids?
Who is going to be the guardian for these children. I was able to use my estate plan. I had to use my estate plan because I wasn't able to say what kind of surgery I wanted, or where I wanted to ultimately go for my hospital, or any of those things. My husband had to do that because that's his role as my power of attorney for health care and as my power of attorney for financial issues. He was the one who handled all of the finances or
was in charge of the finances. But to make it easier because he was overwhelmed at being at the hospital with me every day, we had it automated so we didn't really have to worry about when that check had to go out because it was automatically going to get paid.
So those were really really key.
To managing our financial life when I was particularly gravely ill. And the other part I would say is definitely to have the insurances that you need, so don't go without health insurance or disability insurance. And finally make sure that you do have that emergency fund. You can forego perhaps
the fabulous vacation and just do a nice vacation. I mean, I'm trying to talk about putting a nice sum, not just not having a coffee one day and adding up, and that's a way to start, but you really need to think about what you can cut out to make sure you have the savings that you need, and the first step is to figure out what that is. Many people don't even know how much they spend per month. So if you can figure out how much you might need just for one month, Ideally people talk about a
six month emergency fund. Some people can't really fathom what they spend in one month, So just start there and start small and slowly build it up and realize. And to me, trying to figure all of this out and having some of it planned already and some of it that I've had to now go back and say I should do this a little bit differently, even with my own personal finances. It's a blessing. It's the greatest gift
of being given another opportunity to get it right. And it still may not be perfect, but I think I'm doing a much better job.
Well. Sharon, Thank you so so much for being so candid, for being such an amazing guest, for sharing your story and keep sharing it. You know, like I said at the beginning of the show, I was explaining to Sharon, our audience is exactly the kind of person you guys. Brand ambition listeners are exactly who needs to be hearing this story. You know, African American women are the majority of our listeners, and I hope that you guys are listening.
And if you don't think that you're at risk, you know, tell a friend, Tell a friend, tell a friend, so the word gets out. And I'll be sure to include a link to the Brain Inurism Foundation website in the show notes, so definitely go check that out. And Sharon, lastly, just let people know where they can find you on Twitter, Instagram Where are you at these days?
You can find me on Twitter at Sharon Underscore et person E P P E R s O N. And you can find me on Instagram at Sharon Epperson CNBC. And you can also you like and follow my Facebook page.
Awesome. All include links to those in the show. To you guys, Sharon again, thanks so much.
Thank you.
I'm really glad to be on the show, and thank you all so much for listening. And please tell your girlfriends, tell your mom, tell your cousin, tell your sister, tell everyone. Just take care of yourself, remember to focus on yourself, focus on being on the moment, in the moment, and treasure every single day because you just truly never know