Hi everyone, it's a Chronic time. It is Monty and joffriend Brooke don.
Very nice, well done. And we did put a poll up about didn't we and asked people if it was annoying having you see.
And totally I believe it. I was because I'm done with doing it. But at the same time, I don't really know how to start it without singing now, because I've been doing like a show and te podcast for seven years now, icronic for however many months that I can't stop chalk. I'm sorry.
I don't find it annoying, so it's fine.
Apparently a couple of you do. So for those of you that do, I'm sorry because it would be so fucking annoying. Just skip through the first ten seconds.
Yes, and speaking of annoying, there is something I've been wanting to talk to you about.
Oh, here we go. I love that you wait to use this as the forum to bring up so annoying.
Yes, and I know that people who are listening will be like either one side or the other. Yeah, but you have started doing something within our communication that has surprised me. Oh what voice notes?
Oh yeah, I have a voice note.
I fte a voice note.
I know why the thing is that I need to communicate with you quite a lot. I don't want to call you all the time. I hate calling, and you don't enjoy calling it either. So the way you and I communicate via text, for some reason, really confuses each other, like we're constantly like, what do you mean? What do you mean?
Confuse? Yes? And can I say that is because a lot of what you say it doesn't not.
Make I tend to not proofread, and then it goes through to you and you have to decipher it.
And also sometimes I think that you just automatically think I already know what is in your head. I think I do, what are you talking about? How do I decipher whatever this means?
I feel like we're connected enough that you should know what's going on in my head. But I agree, I just I'm going to blame the ADHD. I just quickly get it done, send it to you, okay, and you have to decipher it. But it's easier to send you a voice note and communicate that way, Like then I
can get everything out. You can hear my inflections, so there's nothing where I'm being shitty, and it just gets it all out and I max out at three minutes, just a quick little dip into your day to hear what's going on.
But it's easier for who for you? But is it easier for me?
No?
Because I have to be somewhere that is quiet so I can hear your voice message and then if there are like points or things I need to do or take from that, I then have to write them down.
Yeah, and I none of that's my problem, like none of us.
So this is what I'm trying to say. People who send voice notes are selfish. It's selfish. Really, yeah, could come at me. I don't care, even selfish.
I'm so sorry. I send them to everyone. We've got to build the doing little things on our house at the moment. And the other day I sent him one and I was like, this is a whole other step. That's to the build on, Matt, not on all right, the very ablest of you not to let me send voice messages. It's too taxing for me to get on the phone and call you. That's what the problem is.
Anyway, God, okay, all.
Right, take it on. I'll take it. It probably won't change.
Or at least cap them at a minute. Don't send me like a six minute one, because that's just rude.
Good compromise. I will do that. I'll do that for you anyway. It is brooken Monty. Now that she's got the vent out of the way, this is our obviously our iconic podcast where we chat about all things chronic health issues. Speaking is Monty, and I'm going to kick it off with chronic migraines', chronic fatigue, pots, m cass, fuck knows what else.
I don't even know what that is. Oh my god, stop adding to this.
I don't really know either. It's masked sal something. I'm going to dive in one of these episodes to pots and mcass because they're becoming more and more stuff's being known about it, but I don't even know what they stand for.
I just got them pots. Yeah, I feel like I'm hearing a lot more about pots. Actually, I know Tiffany Hall has talked about having pots, and also I listened to the Messy podcast with Christina Applegate and her daughter has pots, right, and she suspects that she has that as well. Yeah, I'm hearing more and more about it, but we'll delve more into it.
But go on, you offer up what you've got on.
Your look, I'm just gonna go with MS, just the good old MS. I feel like it trumps everything else.
So you've got so much other shit there. Let's just scurry their mess queen. Anyway, I wanted to just kick off straight away. We've been getting so many messages from you guys, which honestly is just the best. And this one's from ger Or Ger is her name. I don't know how to pronounce it gurr or girr. Okay, anyway, thank you so much for in This is what she wrote. I just listened to the episode about chronic illness. It was so validating as someone who is chronically ill. I
felt every word in my heart. I am healing lyme disease. I only recently found out it is in my body. I don't say I have it. I'm not taking ownership of it. I've been on a sixteen year journey to get to this point of finding out what has actually caused the fibromyalgia, functional neurological disorder, the non epileptic seizures, facial palsy, loss of speech, loss of use of my legs, etc.
Etc.
So thank you for being real and honest and brave for sharing how hard it is to deal with chronic illnesses that nobody understands unless you have it. This just I read this and it resonated to me because when you read sixteen years, I'm like, holy shit, that is so long. And then I realized how long mine has
been going on for. And it's so confronting when you realize how long you've been living your life with something so chronic and just battling it, and then you end up getting used to it being your life.
Yeah, it just becomes part of who you are.
Doesn't it. Because I first got sick when I went Aubrey to do my radio apprenticeship I call it where it was breakfast radio, and it was the first time I moved away from home and I didn't want to go, like it was the launch of my career, but I didn't want to go. And the stress of it and the lack of sleep caused glandular fever, which then went into chronic fatigue. And that has been with me ever since I was twenty two and I'm now forty three,
so a long time. And then I've had migraines since I was eleven, on and off, so I'm like, fuck, it's majority of my life now that I have been fighting something.
Yes, yep, constantly a challenge for you. More so probably in the last five or six years.
Yeah, Like the fatigues always been hectic, but the last I would even say, the last year and a half is when the migraine's kicked up to a whole other gear. But yours is quite new, chalk, So is it almost something that you're still getting used to. I don't know if you ever get used to it, but do you know what I mean, it's still a very new lifestyle for you to be chronically ill.
Yeah, that's an interesting question. I feel, am I getting used to it? Yeah? I guess I am. I'm learning to listen to my body more. You know a lot of people say, oh, you've got to listen to your body, and it's hard to know sometimes what that means. But I feel like I finally understand what that means now, so for me anyway, and so I feel like I'm really in tune with my body and I know when something's not right. But look, I don't know, like it's
been a massive adjustment. But I'm also not the type of person to dwell on it. I mean, certainly there are times when I get down and it's frustrated, angry, but mostly I've just got to get on with it. Get a new symptom and it's shit, and you might be upset for a little while, but then you've just got to get on with it and keep on moving.
Yeah, you're very much like that, I think a lot of I think more so now than ever, I feel sad for myself. I feel sad for the girl who has missed out on so much or has had to alter her life so much, like when I look, because there's so much I can't do, and the way I parent is not how I thought I would parent, Like I feel kinde Yeah, I feel really ripped off, if I'm honest.
It's almost like you go through a process of grieving your own life and what you used to do or what you thought you were going to do and it hasn't turned out that way. And that's certainly the same with me too, Like I thought that I would be able to be chasing my kids around all the time and going surfing with them and all those kinds of things,
and it's just not a reality. Most of the time. Career, we've both had to really change our careers because we're not able to work in the same way that we used to and that we want to.
It's not that long ago that for you where you can where you're like, oh, I'm not this person. I mourn my old life where I remember for maybe the first ten to fifteen years of me being unwell, I was like, this is not me. I'm not this person, Like I want to be the old me like I would. I think of when I was younger and I would go out to clubs until the sun came up and
just constantly be social. And that's so far from the person I am now, So at some point it's clipped over where that old me is such a foreign version and I am now like identify so much with being chronically ill, and I think with ger or Gur, I'm so sorry where she said she's not taking ownership of
her lime disease and she's healing it. Really, when I read it, it was like something clicked where I was like, hold on, I've got to stop fighting against this, like a fight against my mental health and my physical health because I hate it so much that it's hard to make I'm never gonna love it. But it's almost like I need to somehow feel or do this radical acceptance of going, this is your life, fucking deal with it and find the joy more and you don't have to
like it, but it is what it is. And with each thing I do, I'm healing as opposed to the fuck is another thing. I'm trying. Like that's how I view everything.
Yeah, yeah, that's a really beautiful way to look at it, to be healing rather than fighting.
Yeah.
I don't really know how exactly lime disease works and if you can heal and go into the remission type state. I'm not from.
Chicks another episode we should do on this My only reference of line.
I know what you to say your lander from the House Rights of Beverly Hills.
And also I think Selena Gomez or Justin Bebber one of them had it did like I think, like it originates from a tick bite or something like that, and then it just reads havoc with your body.
Yes, but I don't know if you can heal it. And maybe you can, and maybe that's the way she's looking at it. I'm not sure. I guess I don't feel like that myself because I can't heal mys it's just that's just the way it's going to be. But if there was a chance I could, then perhaps that would be beneficial to use that language rather than fighting it all.
Because I feel like that's where obviously our situations are so different. But I still feel like chronic migraine. I will always have migraine, but I feel like I can heal myself more than where I'm at now in terms of I think I'll always have chronic fatigue. I think I'll always have migraines, but I can heal myself a lot to a much better place than I am. That's what keeps me going is having that.
I guess what is healing to you as well? Is it you still having because I'm just gonna tell people that might not know, but cronic migraine is defined by fifteen days or more in bed a month, So being bedridden for fifteen days a month, which is huge. So for anyone that thinks, oh, it's like a bad headache, like chronic migraine is so not that, it is so much more than that. When you talk about healing, are you talking about you want to get less than fifteen days?
Yeah?
Or you say I want to be able to find the joy even when it's shit.
I don't know how it would be possible to find the joy. I think there would need to be more acceptance. And so I have bursts where I have fifteen days, I've had six weeks in bed. At the moment, I've got something that's working, so I'm out of bed more often than fifteen days. But I had a four day bender the other day and I was really angry. I was angry the whole time, and I was fighting it and I was scared. I'm like, shit, it's back full time.
I'm going to have to go into hospital. I think when those kind of things come up, I need to be more accepting and go these happen. These are a part of life. You might be out for four to five days now, so just surrender to it. I find it really hard to surrender. But in healing, I also want to get the duration of stuff down. I want to get longer out of my day by midday I need to lay down with chronic fatigue, like I want to get more slabs of time where I'm well.
Yeap, yeah, I think that's a good goal to walk to work towards.
So in terms of the fact that you can't heal or get rid of MS? How do you compartmentalize? This is what I find incredible about you is you're like, I'm just going to get on with it. Do you think because it is black and white in terms of you can't get rid of it, that you have to accept it more? Possibly?
Actually, Yeah, because I am a real doer and I am a solutions driven person. So if I knew I had something that I could fix, I would do everything in my power to fix it. But I know that I can't do that. But I can do things to make my life and my day easier. So I still I'm into anything the healing, and we've talked about all the loose stuff that I love. I do all of those things to help myself and to put myself in the best fighting position. Like I go to my strength
classes three times a week. I try and eat the right foods, do all those things I can to keep the inflammation in my body low. But I can't fix it. So I think from pretty much, I would say straight away, after I had a few days or a week to digest what had happened, I just went into this is my life mode. Yeah, Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
We do have another message from one of you, Courtney, thanks for sending this in and you can send us anything at any time, any comments, any questions, voice memos. We love Show and Tell podcasts. Is where you find us on Instagram. Even though I did just fully can the oh.
It is so fine to do it in this context because it isn't welcoming.
That's not welcoming at all.
But in this context it's different because it is so nice. Like when I heard Courtney's voice note, and there's been other people that have sent voice notes, it's so beautiful and I feel like I can connect with there on a different level totally with voice notes, whereas I connect with you anyway. So whatever, I don't send you a voice note.
Here we go again. Okay, here's caught Iny's message.
I'm only part of the way through today's app, but I thought I drop your voice note because you love them. And share some wisdom from my specialist who said to me that most people who live with chronic illness and autoimmune disease are overachievers. He actually calls it the overachievers disease because we put our bodies and our minds on a level of stress that other people may not, and
we're really bad being sick. We continually push ourselves and so that's something that we all really need to be mindful of and treat ourselves with more kindness through the hell's journey.
I think that's so interesting, isn't it?
Again? I was like, Oh God, because we've talked about before, how you know so many people view the word ambitious dirty. If there was three words we could use to sum up you, and I took it, one of them would be ambitious. Like we've always had goals with like you, I'm like often say you're a dog at a bone with stuff. What we want to guess? Brooke will fucking message the manager sixty four times to get that guest on. Yeah.
I have that in me a bit for sure. I think a lot of people that I've worked with would probably say I'm a very nice, fair person manager, but also like I will get shit done and I will
make it happen. That's definitely my personality. And this is interesting because I have heard a lot about high achievers but also people who were perfectionists and how that can lead to chronic illness because you put so much pressure on yourself and you take on so much stress, but because you have this whole kind of demeanor of perfectionism, you don't want anyone to know when you're stressed or you're weak, so you don't take the days off and you don't do those kinds of things. Do you reckon
the people you do? Yeah? Look, I would say one hundred percent, not anymore, not at all. I have slowed down a ridiculous amount and I'm so much happier for having done that. But yeah, possibly, I think it's also would you say you're a taybe a personality?
So can you explain the personalities? Again? I always get confused.
So taybe A is like perfectionist. You can be a bit of a control freak, ambitious, driven, know what you want, that kind of personality.
Would you say that down?
Yeah, I would say that's you part of me.
I don't know about the perfectionist thing. I think a lot for me is get it done, and it's often wrong, Like the other day, like I'm the one who posts our stuff on social and I fuck up constantly because I put it up and I'm like, oh god, and then I'll post another one and not realize my brain works at such a crazy speed that I make mistakes so often, so I don't know if I'm a perfectionist, But then I get down on myself for making those mistakes, So I guess that is a perfectionist kind of I think.
So I would say you are a bit. Yeah, I would say we both are quite a bit. But I think that's different because that's a big part of that's your career side of things. Yeah, I think from a personal life point of view, I've really let that go. But I think I was in the past, but I've really succumbed to that because just by the nature of this podcast and us talking about Connie Gilness, it's not perfect.
It's completely messy. And I think because at first, well, I tried to still work full time and do all the thing things because I wanted to still I didn't want to be weak or be perceived as being weak. But in the end I couldn't do that, and I think that's been good for me in a sense, just to let my guard down a bit and not care, like I don't care what people think.
I feel like you with this have almost like you've always been like this, But I feel like this has made you so much stronger, and I'm going to get emotional, but I just like I admire how you just get shited done. You know that you have had to alter your life in ways that you never thought imaginable, and your strength is fucking phenomenal, chick, It's just unbelievable, really, And I just I envy you because I don't.
Feel like that.
I feel like you're the one out of the two of us that lifts us up and we can get on with this, We can do this anyway.
I just I likewise think that you're amazing in the way you handle it is amazing. And we have different challenges, right I don't spend fifteen days a month in bed. I might have other challenges, but that's not one that is a huge challenge in your life. That is a massive thing that you have to live with and deal with. So would I be the same if I was in your position? I don't know. I don't know.
I know anyway, we're doing the best that we can. But just so you know, like I see you and I just think you're incredible. Lost anyway, cheeseball moment over, Let's get out of you, Okay, bye bye, Everyone, reach out to us. We love to hear from you and we'll chat to you soon. Bye for now, wait