Living With Chronic Illness: Pain, Identity, Burnout, And Finding Meaning

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Jeffery Bone, a chronic illness coach, mental health professional, podcaster, and author who has spent more than two decades working in the chronic illness and chronic pain space. Mr. Bone’s expertise became deeply personal when he developed a chronic illness of his own, forcing him to confront the physical pain, mental exhaustion, medical uncertainty, identity loss, and emotional grief that many patients experience behind closed doors.

We discuss Mr. Bone’s path from studying psychology to working one-on-one with people living through chronic pain and illness. He shares how his own health crisis began with a persistent headache and rapidly developed into fatigue, tremors, bladder pain, neurological symptoms, insomnia, brain fog, and widespread inflammation. After seeing numerous specialists without receiving a clear answer, he eventually learned that toxic mold exposure, mycotoxins, immune dysfunction, and common variable immune deficiency were major parts of his condition.

This conversation examines the importance of becoming your own health advocate, seeking additional opinions, and recognizing that the human body cannot always be understood by examining one symptom or organ at a time. Mr. Bone explains how functional medicine, toxicology, immunology, genetic testing, cortisol testing, and other approaches helped reveal issues that traditional medical appointments had missed. We also discuss medical arrogance, the harm caused when symptoms are dismissed, and why a doctor saying “I don’t know” can be more valuable than offering an unsupported diagnosis.

Later, we explore the mental and emotional realities of chronic illness, including grief for the former self, medical burnout, isolation, anxiety, shame, changing relationships, and the feeling that life is steadily shrinking. Mr. Bone shares how creativity, curiosity, podcasting, poetry, writing, and assigning new meaning to his pain helped him build an expanded life instead of spending every day trying to return to who he was before becoming ill.

We also discuss his podcast, To The Bone: Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning, along with books including Broken Bone, Carved Out of Bone, Mold Brain, Chemical Undertow, The Restless Human, The Restless Waiting Room, The Absurd Body, and The Expanded Life.

https://www.drbone.live/

Website: https://coupleonukes.com

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and we've briefly touched upon chronic illness before because sometimes it just shows up out of nowhere. Sometimes it's from a physical accident, sometimes it's genetic, and it's something that we don't think about at all unless we have it or know someone who does have it. But even if we know someone who have it, we don't fully understand the depth of what living with that is like. So I am definitely honored to be having this conversation today to get into the physical and mental tolls of living with a chronic illness. While there are many different types, there are some universal effects and lessons that we'll be getting into. We're here with an expert on the subject, Dr. Jeffrey Bone, who is a podcaster, author, and of course, has personal experience with this subject. So we'll be getting into that conversation today. And Dr. Bone, so great to have you here. Well, thank you very much for having me. I look forward to it. So can you just tell us just a little bit of a brief overview? Obviously, we'll get into the nitty and gritty details of your life here shortly, but just a brief overview of kind of what got you into this, what you do now, and then we'll, you know, go back from there. Sure. I- I've been in that mental health space, uh, with chronic illness for over two decades, and I guess the universe decided I really needed to upgrade my knowledge, so about a decade ago it gave me a chronic illness. So I, I was actually specialized in terms of treating that space of chronic illness, chronic pain, and then I leveled up to developing my own chronic illness, my own chronic pain, so I could learn that much more. So right now I'm a chronic illness coach, mentor, and, uh, like you said, I write books. I have my own podcast, and, uh, that's where I come from. Hmm. Right. As, as you... I am glad to hear you seem to have a pretty positive spin on it. You know, some people would call it a, you know, cruel irony or ironically fated. Yes. You seem to, you know, understand the mindset of, well, we have it now, let's use it, uh, to the best of our abilities to help others. So I, I definitely respect and appreciate that. Oh, absolutely. But that being said, it's kind of like I had my tears, you know? Right, right. I've had my sadness, I've had my anxiety. I, you know, I'm a human before, you know, any of my education or background. Right. And so, you know, I, I step into talking to you today with 10 years of, you know, coping and dealing with it, and being on the other side of the emotional storm. And being able to leverage my experience to be able to assist others, to be able to find a creative voice within myself, and to leverage it the best I possibly can. I could sit here and cry and, and, and talk about how I'm a victim to unfortunate circumstances, but that doesn't really level up the quality of my life. And when you have a chronic illness, you very much want to caretake your quality of life any which way 100%. So before we get into that deeper dive of chronic illness, you know, all that, let's go back to what got you into that space to begin with, especially on the mental health side. You know, kind of educational background, personal interest- Sure growing up and all that. It was a, uh, junior year in high school. It was an elective course on psychology, and I just found it to be interesting. You- you're in high school, you're taking all these classes, English, history, science, math. Right. And it's kind of like, man, I have to pick one of these and I have to ride it out for my life? Th- these classes kinda suck. I'm not, I'm not too interested in this. This... I'm not, I'm not too thrilled. Maybe I'll be a PE coach or something. But, uh, I came across that psychology class, and it was just simply this: I would like to know more about this. This is interesting. I would like to know. So you go to college and, you know, uh, four years and c- have, you know, all different kinds of classes within psychology. I'm like, okay, that was interesting. I would like to know more about that. So I get my master's, then I get my doctorate, and even after my doctorate, trust me, you know, I still needed to learn more. There was still more. Uh, the world of chronic illness, chronic pain, they didn't teach that, you know, getting my master's, getting my doctorate. Um, that was not something that they specialized in, and so that's where I had to find it on my own, being curious, looking. You know, one of the best sources of knowledge on it, talking to patients, talking about what their experiences have been. But also the courses, also the, you know, the extra courses, the continuing education, the podcasts, the books, all of those different things, and talking to some of my fellow peers to be able to collect more information, because the learning never ha- ever stops. Right. And so from that journey of psychology to now I'm specifically interested in the chronic illness side of it, what kind of career unfolded for you? Was it more, you know, nonprofit community work, or was it going into having a clinic? What did that look like? It looked like one-on-one practice. You know, I've been one of those guys that I've always enjoyed just working for myself. I have worked in medical offices before, in, uh, orthopedic offices- Right ... in, uh, small little group practices, but I've always really liked working, you know, one-on-one with people. And, uh, you know, when it came to the pandemic, uh, you know, it, it's like all of a sudden, like, everyone in the world was perfectly fine, everyone was cool with, uh, just doing it video conference style, doing it on Zoom or a phone call, and I found, like, I didn't have to pay for the overhead. And it's like, okay, well, I can do that. And it's like, well, you know, I have this podcast. This podcast reaches all around the world, all over the United States, and I can see anyone around the world or in the United States through the platform of chronic illness coaching. And so one-on-one chronic illness coaching has been my focus And so you mentioned the podcast sounds like it was started pretty early on in what you were doing. What kind of inspired you to do the podcast? I really, like I said, I've always been a learner. I've always been curious, and podcasts have always been a great source of information. I've always, I've always liked audiobooks and, you know, and I've always liked just sitting and listening to stories, and so I'm more of this audio kind of- Right oriented individual. And I found, like, wow, this is great, this is great, and it's like then there was just this little moment where I'm like, well, I wonder if I could do this. And not that I'm gonna have all these sponsors, and not that I'm going to have all these affiliated links, but I just wonder if I could kind of broadcast my voice, kind of like a ham radio style, just kind of like I wonder if I can make it really easy. I could put it on, uh, GarageBand, make an MP3, upload it to Apple and Spotify, and just roll with it. And lo and behold, I could, you know? Right. And the only investment I really made was into this Shure mic that I have, and, uh, and it was kind of like... I, and I like that kind of stuff, the low overhead, you know, don't have to invest too much capital, and I could run with it. I did that with the books. Uh, the, the chronic illness, um, workbook, the poetry books, the, um, other books that I wr- wrote and, uh, the coloring books, I just put it out through Kindle Direct Publishing, and it's incredibly free. And so all I need to do is create these PDFs, upload the PDFs, go to ChatGPT, make a cover, and lo and behold, there I have it. And so it just shows it just needs a little bit of creativity. You need a little bit of curiosity. You don't need $10,000 to put out a book, to put out a podcast. Right, and when you first started podcasting, what was kind of the goal? Just each episode would be a lesson related to chronic illness? It was an experience that I could learn alongside with my listeners. Mm. I, because I've always liked learning, so like, well, why don't I read these books and, you know, try to gather some information about this stuff? And then, and this is kind of funny because I've always been afraid of public speaking, that throughout all of my education- Hmm ... public speaking was my Achilles heel. And so I was always super anxious, and which is also why I was interested in psychology, 'cause I wanted to understand that. And so I was like, oh, I could learn about this book. I could learn about this philosophy. I could learn about this, and then I could share it. Because the best way to learn it is to be able to teach it. Right, right. And I never thought I would be a good teacher in the traditional sense of having to manage a classroom, but I thought, you know, I'm kind of a guest lecturer to your life. If you, you're so interested, you can look up my podcast- Right ... and there I am, the guest lecturer. Right, and now you've been doing that for how long? I've been doing that for a few years, and, and it's, and I've been more consistent with it lately. And, um, and, and there isn't necessarily always a perfect timeframe. Sometimes I put out, you know, multiple ones in a week, and sometimes I'll go two or three weeks and not make one. So the consistency is kind of hit-and-miss depending on life, depending on my own illness. Um, but I've, I've been more consistent with it over the past few years. And, um, I think it was actually Dave Asprey's kind of Bulletproof, um, podcast in to, into the biohacking world. I think that's where I kind of started, and I just found it interesting. Ben Greenfield, uh, Dave Asprey, that's where I kind of started, you know, listening to podcasts on a regular basis. And partly I was moving in that direction because I was dealing with an illness, and I was looking for answers, looking for something outside the mainstream, 'cause the mainstream wasn't giving me any particular answers that was helpful at that time. Mm. So that's where I went into the biohacking world. Oddly enough, Dave Asprey also, you know, became ill from mold as well, and, uh, and so there was a little bit of extra interest in that direction. He has some, um, idiosyncratic aspects to who he is, and he's the salesman tr- through and through, but, you know, the ability to kind of share stories and help people was kind of inspiring to me. Right. So before we move on, I'd love to share the name of that podcast, of course, and who should tune into that To The Bone: Conversations on Pain, Illness, and Meaning. That is my podcast, To The Bone. Mm. No- Obviously a play on the word- ... name pun intended. My name, Bone Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah. Right. Uh, but, and to the degree that sometimes chronic illness, that's how deeply it physically and mentally penetrates you, so I think that's- Oh great for us ... it, it does cut to the bone It's probably beyond that, you know? And so- Yes, through the soul ... we'll, we'll be getting into that, which is actually where I wanna go next You talked about developing a chronic illness, so let's kind of talk about that journey, especially how it started- Oh, yeah and, you know, the, the, the first year or two I imagine are, are the worst possibly. Oh, yeah, 'cause it's the most frightening, the most uncertain, and you're doing everything you can to get back to the old self. Because I was in the office, I developed this headache, and this headache just would not go away, and I ended up getting referred to an ENT. The ENT gives me Flonase, which is nasal s- steroids, and prednisone. Really kind of common stuff. Nothing too wild. But when I took the prednisone, my body flipped out. I became... You know, I had vibrating feet, uh, horrible fatigue, bladder pain. Wow. I felt like I had a concussion. I had a tremor. I had all these things going on. I was a different person through and through, and I wasn't getting better. I'd go to all the doctors, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, just give it a few days. You'll be fine. Give it a week. You'll be fine. Give it a month." Mm-hmm. "You'll be fine." And the time went by, and I was not fine. You know, something was seriously wrong with me. And I go through all the traditional doctors. I see neurologists, internists, other ENTs. I have a sinus surgery. I s- uh, I see a urologist. I see all these different people. They're all failing me, and I tell them it's systemic. You know? It, the whole... It's, yeah, you're looking at this one body part, but it's from head to toe I have issues. I have a headache, you know, that has not gone away, and I had a headache, still have it even a, a decade later, but it's much more faint. But I had a strong, strong headache for every single day for two years at least. And so I'm, I'm trying everything. Everything, everything. And I end up going to a functional medicine doctor because, you know, the traditional route is just not serving me, and he does some blood work and says, "You know what? You may have a mold issue." And so I do a urinalysis. Mycotoxins, the, the problematic, you know, element of mold, you know, I had all of them. And so everything that could be test- was tested in an abnormal range. And so that was problematic, and I tested my office. I, you know, had environmentalists come in, and there was two different neurotoxin molds i- in my HVAC. It was a building that was turned over in bankruptcy a few times. Mm. And it just wasn't very well-maintained. Well, it kind of destroyed my life in many ways, unfortunately. Right. And so I treated with that doctor for about a year, and I got better, but it was never better. It was like I had no good days. And so I go see... I was gonna go to the Mayo Clinic- And it's like, well, before I do that, I have some good hospital systems by me. So let me look at the hospital directory and let me see, is there anyone else that I can go talk to? And so I picked toxicology. I had no idea what toxicology even did, but I felt toxic, so I went there. And he was a nice gentleman. He didn't believe the whole mold thing. I'm like, "I don't care. I don't care. What do you think's going on?" So he took me seriously and, and he tested my immunoglobulins, and they came back clinically low. So part of my immune system wasn't working very well. So I got sent to an immunologist, and the immunologist gives me a vaccine, and then a month later she tests my blood to see if I made antibodies to the vaccine. Well, guess what? I didn't make any antibodies to the vaccine, and with the low immunoglobulins, that means I have common variable immune deficiency. And so I have to do weekly infusions where I put needles into my stomach to be able to infuse immunoglobulins. And a lot of people don't know what immunoglobulins are, but they know about plasma donation. Mm. People donate plasma. People donate blood. Well, when they donate plasma, well, they make immunoglobulins from that. And so, uh, thank you one and all who are out there donating plasma. Because you are still getting that? Correct? Or that was just for a trial period It, it will be for the rest of my life. Yes Wow. Yes. And so it's, um, yeah, it, it is, uh... So I have, I get infections all the time, sinus infections- Mm-hmm ... eye infections, different infections. Uh, I- low-grade kind of fatigue all the time. Uh, I have allergies, and I, you know, through all this I developed, even, like, years later, I developed, like, all these other, like, strange allergies, food allergies. And so I have just, like, this haywire body, and sometimes it doesn't stay the same. Yeah. And so, like, oh, uh, well, I guess you're allergic to dairy and eggs and wheat now. Well, good luck with that. And so it's kind of, like, it's just, you know, what my immune system does. And so it doesn't like to stay put. And, but I will be infusing immunoglobulins, and after we get done talking I have to go infuse some immunoglobulins. Right. And you get used to it. It's not the most fun thing in the entire world. I did not think that I was going to grow up and have to stick needles into my sides, uh, for the rest of my life. But the alternative is dying, and so it's kind of like I'll take it over the- Right ... uh, over the alternative. Right. I'll, I'll circle back to one thing you said, uh, in an episode of my podcast, Beyond Symptom Management: Functional Medicine, Faith, and True Healing. What we spoke about with Dr. Mark Sherwood was actually about looking at the whole system. And what we talked about- Yes ... is how so many people will only look at one part or one symptom, and the body is a complex system. I mean, it's, it, it's- A big... Yes ... all kinds of interwired systems. And so we talked about how sometimes when you isolate too much you're not looking at other things that are being affected or that could be factors. And so we talked about how important it is. One thing that you've clearly done that we talk about as well is we are our own number one health advocate. Nobody cares about your health- Yes ... more than you do. And going to multiple doctors is always advised. You know- Always ... having a degree doesn't make you always right, you know? And- Nope ... uh, different types of doctors- Or believed. Mm-hmm ... yeah. And, uh, unfortunately, I've had a lot of horror stories on the show or talking to people in my personal life of doctors who said something was fine, the patient believes them and comes back, and now it's an irreversible issue. Or, or- Yes ... some people who have even passed away because of something that went, went undetected, both- Oh, and I almost died from the cigs ... especially military side and civilian side, but, uh, especially- Yes ... the military side. Um- No, the VA's difficult. VA's very, very difficult. Yeah. And I know through the system and everything I've gone through, like I had... I couldn't sleep, you know, and be- and I didn't know why I couldn't sleep, and they were throwing all these different medications at me. I did multiple sleep studies. I'd go talk to like the head of sleep medicine and all that kind of stuff. And it really wasn't until I went to the functional medicine doctor, he tested my cortisol through saliva throughout the entire day, and it showed my cortisol was significantly elevated. Well, then I started taking adaptogens to bring down that cortisol, and then I was able to finally sleep. So the traditional allopathic, and I'm not against Western medicine. They save lives. They do every- Right ... but they don't do everything. They don't look at everything. And so that was one thing where it's just like I needed to bring down my cortisol. And another one was I would go, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, you have really high homocysteine." Well, that's not good. And, and so I did further testing. It shows that I have the MTHFR gene, and so I have to bring- I have to use methylated B vitamins to bring down that homocysteine. Hmm. The other doctors would just go, "Well, yeah, that's pretty high," and then they would carry on, and they wouldn't look at the system. They wouldn't look at the big picture. They wouldn't look at easy interventions, whether it's an adaptogen, whether it's a methylated B vitamin, of being able to make the body work better. Right, and I, I will say it's probably hard to have low cortisol when you have chronic illness. I mean, you're pretty stressed out physically and, and mentally quite, quite often- Yes besides everything else going on in your body, especially- Yes ... a body that is declining or ever-changing. And so one thing we, we mentioned there, so you talked about mold exposure, specifically toxic- Yes ... mold exposure. How does that work in terms of did the, did... Was there something in the mold that destroyed your immune system? Or for those of us who aren't familiar with the science, could you break that down for us? Sure. Well, at the end of the day, you know, about 25% of people have a gene, I think it's called the HLA gene, and those people cannot clear the mycotoxins out of their system, and it just kind of recycles within the system. Mm. And so you could have, you know, let's just say there's 10 people in a room. Well, eight of them could be perfectly fine, and two of them could get extremely ill. And everyone would say, "Well, we're fine, you know. This must be just psychosomatic." Mm. And y- what you end up getting is this recycling of these inflammatory cascades, which then creates this condition called chronic inflammatory response syndrome- Okay which basically is everything is on fire from head to toe. You know, I have nerve pain, uh, from it that never went away. I still have nerve pain in my head that never went away. And, uh, oddly enough, a long time ago I had a SPECT scan. And a SPECT scan, I don't know if you know Dr. Daniel Amen, um, but it looks at, like, overactive and underactive parts of the brain based on- Mm blood flow. Okay. And I then got one after all of this mold stuff, and you could see the dramatic change in my brain. My brain looked like Swiss cheese after. It didn't mean that there were holes. It meant that there were just low levels of blood profusion in parts- Right ... of my brain that should have been more active, and it was very damaged by the s- basically the cytokine storm that occurred, you know, with all of the inflammation. Wow. But, uh, yeah, I think a lot of us listening probably were like, "Oh, man, mold just, like, poisons," but you're saying there's a preexisting gene factor- For some people it's a pr- ... on top of it, yeah. I mean- Yeah ... regardless, you should try to keep mold out of all your spaces. I don't care whether you're immune to it or not, it's not a- Yes good thing to have in your life. But, um, that, that is an important fact to denote there. And so you spent a long time trying to get help, and then, you know, you spent a lot of time working in this space beforehand with people suffering from chronic illness. Did a lot of them kind of share a similar experience of not being able to get the medical help that they needed, or it just being a difficult long journey of multiple doctors, of not being able to pinpoint what was wrong? Most people, you know, have kind of like these traditional paths. Uh, they may have arthritis, they may have, uh, lupus, where it's kind of like, oh, we can see the, you know, a blood marker, called ANA. Mm-hmm. You can see that there's this, uh, autoimmune, you know, element going on in the body matched up to certain symptoms. It's kind of, like, pretty straightforward. But there would be a lot of people, and, and more than just a few, where they just didn't fit the traditional decision tree. So you go see the doctor, like, "Do you have a fever? Do you have this? Do you have these symptoms or these symptoms?" They're asking you their decision tree of what they think the problem is, and some of these people just wouldn't fit into these decision trees. Mm-hmm. And they would end up with more esoteric illnesses, um, and they would have to do more genetic testing, or they would have to go to the specialist and hope that the person that they were talking to would be able to understand it. They would end up with connective tissue disorders like Ehlers-Danlos. Um, they would end up with other things that were just not the run-of-the-mill, like lower back pain, sciatic pain. Um, a- and, and sometimes it would be very severe, you know, cases like CRPS, Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. A lot of times I could... People would walk in, I could see their hand, and I'm like, "Oh, it looks like you have CRPS." And they're like, "How do you know that?" It's like, yeah, it's painfully ob- once you see it, you, you can't unsee it. And so, um, not everyone fits into that same, you know, place. And there are other conditions like fibromyalgia. I've come across medical doctors that just, they don't believe it exists. You know? It, it exists. Right. You know, it absolutely exists. But they were stubborn in thinking, like, "Oh, you know what? You know, it's just hysterical women," or something of that nature. They would be just misogynistic with it. Wow. No, it's just the nature of the illness. And, um, and just because it doesn't have a clear, you know, diagnostic pathway where you can just do this clear blood work for it, and they're working on that, um, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, um, when it clearly, clearly does. For sure. I think, you know What I've learned studying the human body and nature is that there are just some things that can't be fully explained or that are just yet to be explained. And I think, you know, it is surprising some of the new developments we continually discover or find, uh, not even of our own accord. Sometimes we just find new rare genetic cases or changes in the body. And so I think you... It's important to be structured and factual as a scientist or a doctor, but also there's- Sure ... that element of open-mindedness to it that you have to have. I mean, that's, that's just, uh, you know, my opinion on it of course, but I think that's really important. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And, and the thing is we're learning all these different things. I, I always like the example of the restless leg syndrome- Mm-hmm ... where people just refuse to believe, "Oh, it's not real, it's not real." They came out f- with a medication for it and it's like, yeah, all these people who are diagnosed with restless leg syndrome, they're like, "Okay, now that we have a medication, we'll recognize your disorder." But prior to the medication it would be ultimately dismissed. And then there's things that are always occurring that they're... You know, someone was just telling me now there's a study that came out that showed this cerebral spine fluid was like leaking into, um, oh, the lymphatic drainage system, and they were thinking that like that is- Hmm actually contributing to a lot of autoimmune conditions. I haven't read anything up on it, someone was just telling me about this, but that's just another example of like, oh, like we've come across this new thing. We have this new understanding. But there's never that when you're talking to the doctor. When you're talking to some doctors, not all doctors, some doctors, they have this arrogance of, "Whatever I know is all that could exist, and if I don't possess it as knowledge in w- in my mind, then therefore it's not going to be acknowledged as a real condition or diagnosis with me." And so I, I think that's just so small-minded of people. And yes- It affects lives ... I don't believe that we should just make up things, you know, left and right, but at the same time we should be patient, listen, and be good medical detectives, uh, to be able to figure out what could be kind of going on. And I just see that people just fall into the, um, uh, you know, they, they fall out of the decision tree and then once they do that it's like, "Oh, you know, go see the psych," you know? "Go see the mental health." Right. "Go... It, it must be that." And it's like there's so many other things that it could be, but they don't bother to look. Like- Right, 100% ... I went through all my medical crisis for multiple years and not one medical doctor, and I'm telling them it's systemic, not one person ever said, "Well, have you ever seen an immunologist? Maybe it's your immune system." Not one- Wow ... ever did, you know? It's kind of like- Wow ... it was never suggested and I just didn't follow up on it. It was never suggested. I didn't know what an immunologist was, and so it's kind of... They're like super allergists. They're allergists, but then they're like the really, really smart, smart leveled up allergists. Right. And so, um, and they well- versed on the immune system. And so it's kind of like, ah, there's just a lack of humility. I don't expect everyone, every doctor to know everything. Right. Like, that's perfectly fine. But so many times the doctor would wanna just have an answer, and they wouldn't just say, "I don't know." He's like, "Let me refer you to somebody else. I don't know." It's like so many doctors, you know, they clearly didn't know at the end of the day, and they just, they used the, what I call the SWAG technique. Mm-hmm. It's the scientific wild ass guess. And so they were just throwing that out, and it just wasn't helpful. The scientific wild ass guess is not helpful. What is helpful is, "I don't know. Let me refer you to somebody." That is helpful. And so, and i- if some doctor said, "Oh, man, I just don't know," it's kind of like, you know what? I appreciate the honesty. It's kind of like, here, let's, let's problem solve who would be a good person to refer to and what specialty that should be. Yeah. And it's like, that's fine. Yeah. That's still useful information to me. But if you get me going on a wild, you know, uh, chase, you know, for some sort of like, oh, it's this medication, that medication, or this, this, and that, and it's kind of like just because you're just throwing things off the cuff, that's not helpful. That's not helpful at all. Not only that, but that chase requires time, and for some of these illnesses or, you know, things happening with our body, that time is further development of more irreversibleness, you know? I mean- Yes ... that's, that's how it is. Some of these things are a chase against time. Now, speaking of resources, besides other doctors and podcasts, you've also, you know, created a couple books. So I'd love to go over those, starting with the very first one you made. The first one I made was a, um, I think it's called Broken Bone, which is, um, my poetry book. And I was just sitting, and I wish I could paint, I wish I could sculpt, I wish I could, like, carve things out of wood or... I just don't have that spatial skill. It just, you know, it was not a gift that was provided to me in this world. But I could speak in, like, short, fragmented, you know, ideas, and short, fragmented ideas were perfect for poetry. So I just started writing poems as a way of kind of journaling my own experience, journaling my own thoughts, journaling my own feelings. I look back on them now and it's just like, oh, like, you know, it's like I don't know always about that. But, um, at that moment it was very cathartic, which is it was a great emotional release, and that's what I was looking for. Anything that I've created, I've ultimately created for myself, you know, because it was out of something that I needed, and I made it, you know, come into this world. And at first it was, uh, Broken Bone, then the second one was Carved Out of Bone. As you can see, I like to play off of my name. And, uh, and there were just ways of being able to be creative. Because when you're sick, and you're ill, and things just aren't going the way you want to, and you feel really lost, finding curiosity in your life will really serve you. Being curious about something, being curious about the world around you, what you could do with whatever strengths and whatever gifts that you have, because that is focusing on the control that you have in this world. And the illness and the difficulty of the illness is so much of the out of control aspects. You know, that you can't control the pain, you can't control the fatigue, you can't control these allergic reactions. But I can control this verse, I can control this rhyme, I can control these different things. And that didn't just, like, make everything magically better, but it gave me, uh, it gave me something that I could kind of rest my mind on, and it made a difference in improving the quality of my life on an emotional basis Right. And now is that kinda what led you into the doorway of creating all these nonfiction books for, you know, helping people bec- was that kind of like an inspiration to it, or did someone tell you, "Hey- Yes ... you should write a book," or what, what was kind of the process? It was the curiosity. It was looking, it was moving towards the obstacles, you know? It's like Ryan Holiday has a book called The Obstacle Is the Way. And looking for, like, what would be an obstacle? Like, oh, I've never put together a coloring book. Let me see if I can do that. So I did three of them. Um, let me see if I can put together a chronic illness journal so people could, you know, be prompted to write things and they could just kind of write on their own and, and instead of just staring at a blank piece of paper. And so I made two of those. And then I got like, oh, like, you know, the pros, the traditional book book of someone's like, "Oh, I have a book." Like, what you're expecting. You're not expecting, "I have a book," and then you hand them a coloring book. It's like that's not what they're expecting. They're expecting the traditional prose. And so, and, uh, I wrote two, you know, specifically about burnout, and one is just more of a general burnout and then one is just called, you know, The Restless Human, and then there's one called The Restless Waiting Room, which is much more of the medical side of the burnout. Because that's something that isn't talked about because people will say like, "Oh, yeah, you know, the person's depressed. The, the person, the person's anxious." But there's a lot of sub- subclinical suffering in that realm of, you know, burnout. All the appointments, all the m- medications, all the pharmacy, all the this, all of that. Mm-hmm. And you're on... When you're chronically sick, you never leave the treadmill. You're always on the treadmill. It's like, oh, it's been four hours, I need to take this medication. I need to take these supplements. I need to do this. I need to follow up with that appointment. I need to get that authorization. I need to go do this. I need to go do that. Chronic illness is always a part of that story, and just h- having pain itself. As I'm sitting here, I have a pain in my head, pain in my foot, and it's always there. It's always kind of distracting, and, uh, the burnout is real. And so oftentimes when I say medical burnout, people will think, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the doctors really have it tough. And they do, they do, but the medical burnout I'm talking about is the burnout for patients. And it's not always... And what I've found most of the time, it's not about like depression, anxiety. It could be worry and sadness. It's not everything that just needs a pill. I'm not anti-pills, I'm not anti-antidepressants, but not everyone needs them and, you know, that there are other alternatives that they do need to be able to find a little bit more peace of mind. Right, and then you also wrote Mold Brain and Chemical Undertow. Can you tell us a little bit about those books? Mold Brain just came from wanting some sort of acknowledgement, uh, to the greater world that, uh, mycotoxins and mold can greatly impact your brain. The anxiety, the attention, the concentration, the depression, the insomnia. You know, it becomes this inflammatory bomb to the brain. Mm. And, um, and part of it is more than anything is that the, it's the acknowledgement that this is real. Uh, that this is a thing, that this is important, that this is not paid attention to, uh, because, uh, people can be living... They talk about it all the time where people that have this mold illness, chronic inflammatory response syndrome, they get in fights all the time with their partner. It's like they're more likely to get divorced. They're more likely to lose their job. They're more like... And again, this, yes, because their brain is on fire. And it's like if people can appreciate the inflammation that is occurring because of the mycotoxin, that they can show these individuals more grace. They can be more patient with these people. I, I, when my brain was ill, at the worst of the worst, couldn't remember my kids' names. The dog was sitting there, couldn't remember the dog's name. You know, it's like I couldn't remember anything. And so it was the... I, I couldn't watch TV because the motion on the TV would make me nauseous. Uh, during Christmastime, the Christmas lights and the movements like- Mm ... would make me nauseous. I'd have to turn away. Sure. I could, I couldn't even look at my phone. I, because I couldn't stand the motion of, of it because it was like I had this concussion. And I just read books. I wouldn't remember anything, but it, that was my place of distraction, was just reading books because my brain was so inflamed. And so I just, it was like this entry into the world, Mold Brain, which is it's real. You know? And it impacts us on an emotional basis. It is not well understood, not well appreciated, not looked for. No, no psychiatrist is gonna ask you, "Have you been in a damp, musty, you know, building or is there mold in your, you know?" Right, right. They're not going to ask those questions, but there are a lot of people that are suffering on a psychological basis because there, there are a lot of water damage mold buildings in the United States. And so there's a lot of people who are on medications for inflammation due to mold that's not really addressing that root cause. Mm. And so it is the, it was a kind of a book of advocacy advocating to the world of pay attention to this. This is real. This is significant. Right. And so that's Mold Brain. And then Chemical Undertow is it, uh, you know, it's subtitled A Guide to Shame and Repair of Medication-Driven Behaviors. What exactly does that mean? It means that there are lots of medications out there that can cause adverse psychological responses. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, there's Parkinson's medications, you know, steroid medications. Um, you know, a big one, and I think it's going to be bigger as it kind of, as we move on in this world, is testosterone. And it's gon- I'm not anti any of these medications, by the way, you know? But I am for the consent and, you know, in giving people the knowledge to say sometimes, you know, this stuff that i- like this person acted out of, you know, character. This person was cruel, this person was mean, this person was impulsive. They were gambling, they lost all this money, they had an affair. They, you know, something happened, and it's kind of like sometimes it's the medication. Sometimes you should ask, you know? It's kind of like- Mm ... is a medication at play of being able to understand it. There's been cases where people have been on these Parkinson's medication and they lose their life savings in, um, in Vegas, and it's been well documented. There's been lawsuits about it, you know, because it will cause more impulsive kind of behaviors. And so people, i- i- but at the same time, and here's the balance, you can't just say, "Well, you know, I cheated on you and, you know, I was horrible and all these bad things happened, but it's not my fault. It was the medication." You know, it's kind of like it may have kind of, quote-unquote, not been your fault, but it's sure as heck your responsibility. And it is not, and it's more nuanced in terms of, like, what you're trying to do. Because most of that book is, is not, like, it's not like, and it gets t- talked about many times, it's not this easy out. Oh, you don't have to be responsible. You don't have to feel guilty. You don't have to feel bad about this. Because most of the book probably is really about trying to repair those relationships, how to talk to people, how to address it, how to be able to approach it, you know, understanding it from their perspective of what it's like to have dealt with you in those situations. So it's not a get out of jail free card by any means whatsoever, but it is how to repair that, how to talk about it, and how to try to make things better with family, friends, a loved one, as well as trying to make peace with yourself, to have some sort of self-forgiveness, to show yourself grace and understanding. Because at the end of the day, it goes back to that word nuanced. It's kind of like you were there, but you weren't there the way that you're normally there because you were chemically altered. Um, you know, I think we see that a little bit more clearly if someone's high on kind of, like, s- some illicit drug or, you know, they're 16 beers deep or something and it's kind of like, oh yeah, that person's drunk or that person's high or whatever it may be. But sometimes it's through prescription medication as well. And that these medications can alter us in ways where it was not known that we would be altered in that, in that way. Does that make sense? 100%. And, you know, we talked also about earlier The Restless Human, and then what about The Absurd Body is another book that you have? Well, you know, that goes into kind of like this existentialism of, of, of this absurdity, and I love Camus, Albert Camus, and the existentialists of, like, the early 1900s, uh, the French ex- existentialist Sartre and, you know, and there may be also be kind of like Heidegger and, uh, Albert Camus. Um, and that's what it is because when we kind of embrace, uh, absurdity, and people are like, "What? What's absurdity?" And it's like, you know, um, Steve Martin's old stand-up routine, you know, that's absurdity. And we have, like, lots of comics, and there's lots of, you know, stuff where it's just like, it's absurd. You know? It doesn't inherently kind of like make sense. Like, I've had pain in my foot for a decade. It... There is no, like, rationale on a per- on a way that, like, on a human basis of like, that, well, this is good for our sur- of our survival for our species. There's no, like, adaptive reason for- Mm ... chronic pain. And but the human brain always wants to, like, make sense of it. We wanna make sense of our existence. We wanna make sense of our purpose, our meaning, why I'm feeling this, or why this event happened to me. You know, people do all kinds of things to kind of find that meaning and structure, and sometimes the best way of being able to do it is to blow up all those structures. Now, if someone has a structure that works for them, you know, uh, that's awesome. I'm not here to blow up anyone's structure. But if people are kind of lost in the like, you know, why me? You know, how did this happen? It's kind of like, yeah, sometimes it is absurd. You know, life can be absurd. You know, there... Sometimes it's the idea that there is no inherent meaning, but the in- the meaning that we put onto, you know, the situation. That, that we have the freedom to assign whatever meaning. So the existentialist, you know, and the, the, the thought of existential, especially when it gets into the mental health world, would look at the pillars of freedom, isolation, as well as community, death, and meaning. And so you want to l- kind of look at it from all those different, you know, vantage points of as you were experiencing the illness. And with existentialism, there's always gonna be a lot of talk of freedom- Because freedom can be overwhelming. Because sometimes we can be aware that we are, like, overly, like, too free, you know, in some ways, that, like, we can almost do anything, you know? And there's so many different choices, uh, which isn't always good because then you'll always kind of second-guess and doubt yourself. But it is the dizziness of freedom and then how isolation, community plays a role. Death, mortality plays a role. The story only lasts for so long. And then what a meaning are you assigning to this life, to this, you know? Like, for my pain, it's like, okay, well, my pain, my illness, well, that's a source of creativity for me, and that is going to be why I am going to, uh, create a podcast. I got a primary immune disorder, and I am going to say that is going to be the driver for my podcast. There is no person out there that says, "Well, you've got a primary immune disorder, so, um, go start a podcast," because that's what people do when they get primary immune disorders. No one's going to do that. It's my freedom to be able to assign whatever meaning it is ultimately to me, and it can be absurd, you know? Because actually the, uh, the coloring books, absolutely absurd. That I wrote poetry, there's absurdity to that, you know? Absolutely absurd. I put my name as, like, a play on words for the titles. Absurd. Absurd. Um, even named... and it's like I'm a narcissist, even named, you know, the, the podcast with my name in there, and, like, that's absurd. But part of that is a nod to my freedom that despite the illness, despite the difficulty, despite the pain, despite the fatigue, I still have freedom of choice. I can still pursue things. I can still create things. I can still grow as a human being Right. No, I totally get that. And then last book here for now, 'cause you'll probably go write more, uh, The Expanded Life. I think that one is definitely, uh, important for everyone who has a chronic illness and is looking for something to read maybe to help shape their mindset a little bit or to see a different approach. Yeah, it, it, it goes back. I've kind of like touched upon the ideas, but when we get that diagnosis, it's kind of feels like it's a series of losses and the world shrinks. Mm. It's like we don't feel so good. We don't wanna go out to the concert. We don't wanna go out with our friends. And, you know, maybe it's hard to keep up with the job, and maybe you're not going to the gym or you're not exercising or doing those physical activities the same way. And it's like losses, losses, losses. World, you know, shrinks, shrinks. And then you just think, like, "Okay, well I'm just going to lose everything in my life to this illness, and I'm just gonna sit in bed and watch reruns." And I'm saying like, no. You're going to grieve the old self, okay? The old self is not something that's available to you, and you'll only burn yourself out trying to get back to that old self. Mm. If you allow yourself the grief, and the grief will always return back. You never get rid of grief, you know, completely because things will come up and y- and grief will just boomerang back into- Right ... your life. Right. But through the passage there, you can maintain that curiosity and find other small ways of expanding your life, opening up your window of awareness and whatever that may be in your own life. You know, it's like I come back, it's like books, podcasts, you know, like that is, you know, opening up the window of awareness. Um, I post stuff on YouTube, uh, I, which I never had done before. Um, I tried TikTok for five, you know, minutes and, um, you know, I post on Threads. I tried Facebook for 10 minutes, and it's kind of like I got curious to see where could I expand? I went to offices marketing, you know, my books and, you know, and it's like I had never done any of that stuff. I had never gone to, you know, doctor's offices to market myself that way. Nothing like that had ever... But that was the expansion. That was me trying new and different things. That was just like, "Where can I grow?" And I, and I think about it all the time. I have a friend and she makes tons of money selling things at a farmer's market, and I'm like, "Oh, that's really cool. I wonder what I could do." And I kinda came up with an idea, but it's kind of like I've been thinking and thinking for months and months and months about it. Whether I do it or not, I may, or I may just do, like, a trial run of, you know, what I wanna create. But the idea was what could I do and get curious about it? And it's like, oh, I wonder how I could do that. I could ask ChatGPT. I could go to YouTube. I could do all these different things, and I could kind of figure this out, and that would be an area of expansion of like... In this part it's an artistic endeavor, but that's what the book is kind of prompting you. It's kind of like poking you to say, "Okay, but what about these other areas? What about these other values? What about these other things that weren't just the old self?" It is the shedding of skin to find the new person within you because, yeah, you have weaknesses, but you probably have strengths that you haven't been using, and this would be the time to learn about them. Right. I agree 100%, you know, especially with the grieving the old life and the things that will come back, but the burnout that can happen and the just, the deep loss when you continue to try to chase that. And I think the expansion, like you said, is not always what we expect. Uh, and I think creativity is a huge part to leveraging and learning and cultivating the most we can from not just chronic illness, but any hardship in our life, you know- Sure is that opportunity to, to do that. And so what I wanna leave us with is what about working with you one-on-one? You've mentioned that before. You know, who should really work with you and reach out to you? Someone that just feels lost in their story. They kind of... We're all stories. You know, we're celebrating the 4th of July. It's kind of like the story of the nation. Um, and, uh, and you'll see all of that, you know, um, you know, you know, in the news or, like, y- it's, like, the beginning of, like, football season. You know, there's a story, the pageantry of football. There's, there's stories embedded in our culture everywhere, and we as individuals, we have our own stories, and the illness reshapes and breaks apart the story. And if you're feeling lost in that story, it's not that, you know, it's not just this traditional I'm depressed, I'm anxious. It's like I'm confused. I don't know who I am anymore. I'm trying to figure out how I can move forward and how I could expand and how I could handle this. Maybe it's how I deal with a partner or whatever it is, but it's really about the management of a story and the new story of who you are becoming Right, and we're gonna have your website in the description below for people to check out your podcast, your books, working with you one-on-one. Uh, whatever way speaks to them the best. You know, you've got a lot of resources available, and so I, I think that's amazing, you know, that you've taken what you've gone through and made into such a platform of resources for people to get help. And I hope this makes... If you're listening and you've had a chronic illness and you've felt unseen or unheard, I hope that has, that this episode has touched you in one of those ways, 'cause we know, and I'm sure you can attest to this, that it can be a very isolating and lonely journey, uh, where not a lot of people relate, and people may be somewhat empathetic or try to understand you, but like we said, that deeper understanding, uh, is so important. So thank you for making those people heard, and that I'm glad that we have podcasting, that we have these resources available to spread- Absolutely ... this information, to spread these stories, and to reach those people who otherwise would just fade away and, and people wouldn't have known why. So I really hope that- Absolutely we're reaching people. And so I wanna thank you for your time today. Well, thank you very much for having me, and you know, such wonderful, insightful questions. Greatly appreciated it.