Vanessa lost her voice

How scary would it be, if you suddenly lost your ability to speak?

There was a story in the news about a man named Peter. When Peter was 73 years old, he had a stroke. He survived the stroke, but he found that he could no longer speak. And it looked like that condition was permanent, because after 4 years, he still had no voice.

But then, Peter was on vacation with his wife Carol, and their son Jonathan. And one day Peter just woke up, and he was able to speak again. He just started speaking, and Carol said, “Peter, you’re speaking!” Then she said, “Don’t stop, keep talking! It might go away again!”

Jonathan was in the next room and heard two people having a conversation and came rushing in wondering what was happening. They all started crying and laughing at the same time. It was a very emotional time because it had been so long.

Later that day, Peter found out that he had had ANOTHER stroke. They wondered if whatever damage the first stroke had done, was now UNdone by the second stroke. Doctors were doubtful of that, but even they didn’t have an explanation. Peter is just happy to have his voice back.

My guest today is Vanessa. She experienced something similar – some kind of sudden, mysterious condition that showed up with multiple symptoms, including taking away her voice.

What makes Vanessa’s story even more fascinating is her career – she’s a speech therapist.

 

 

 

If you’d like to contact Vanessa:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/speechless_slp/?hl=en

 

Her book:

Speechless: How a Speech Therapist Lost Her Ability to Speak and Her Silent Struggle to Reclaim Her Voice and Life –

https://www.amazon.com/Speechless-Therapist-Ability-Struggle-Reclaim/dp/B0DS96R6XT

 

 

Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:

https://WhatWasThatLike.com/230

 

Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.

Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)

 

 

Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):

How scary would it be, if you suddenly lost your ability to speak?

 

There was a story in the news about a man named Peter. When Peter was 73 years old, he had a stroke. He survived the stroke, but he found that he could no longer speak. And it looked like that condition was permanent, because after 4 years, he still had no voice.

 

But then, Peter was on vacation with his wife Carol, and their son Jonathan. And one day Peter just woke up, and he was able to speak again. He just started speaking, and Carol said, “Peter, you’re speaking!” Then she said, “Don’t stop, keep talking! It might go away again!”

 

Jonathan was in the next room and heard two people having a conversation and came rushing in wondering what was happening. They all started crying and laughing at the same time. It was a very emotional time because it had been so long.

 

Later that day, Peter found out that he had had ANOTHER stroke. They wondered if whatever damage the first stroke had done, was now UNdone by the second stroke. Doctors were doubtful of that, but even they didn’t have an explanation. Peter is just happy to have his voice back.

 

My guest today is Vanessa. She experienced something similar – some kind of sudden, mysterious condition that showed up with multiple symptoms, including taking away her voice.

 

What makes Vanessa’s story even more fascinating is her career – she’s a speech therapist.

 

Scott

Do you ever look at someone who’s speaking and think, man, people just take their voice for granted?

 

Vanessa

Absolutely. Every single day. I look at people even beyond speaking, walking, and eating food. Absolutely. They are so blessed to be able to talk, swallow food easily without choking. 100%.

 

Scott

Well, let’s talk about back before this happened. You maintained a pretty healthy lifestyle, right? Yoga and holistic health practices. That was kind of your life at the time.

 

Vanessa

Absolutely. Walking every day, pushing my daughter in a stroller to the grocery store. Like you said, I’m very holistically minded.

 

Scott
And your job was a school-based speech therapist. What does that entail? What would a typical day look like for you?

 

Vanessa

A typical day in the life of a speech therapist– very busy. Every day is different. That’s one of the things that’s fascinating about the career. There’s never two days that are the same. I could go into a classroom one day and it’s dynamic, and the next day there may be a whole set of different behaviors, different challenging cases coming my way. Every student is different. Every student has a unique set of circumstances that they come with. So it’s always something different. It is very stressful at the same time and we have a lot of demands that are placed on us, a lot of expectations. We work on a lot of different things such as swallowing, voice fluency, cognitive disorders, social language skills, articulations– so the expectations are pretty high with speech pathology.

 

Scott

One thing that fascinated me is, in your book – and we’ll talk about your book in a minute here – you said your caseload included several students usually who were nonverbal. I just find that fascinating because– I mean, when I was a kid and in school, I don’t think I knew anyone who was nonverbal. How do you handle that?

 

Vanessa

Yeah. You are so right too, Scott. When I was in school too, I don’t remember, reflecting back – and this is in the nineties – having anybody on my campus– not that I was a speech pathologist then, but as a student, I don’t remember having as many students that were nonverbal, severely compromised verbally. Things are very different now. Autism is on the rise. As we all know, Autism is– I don’t know if it’s 1 in 15, 1 in 10. I don’t know exactly the statistics on that these days, but it just keeps getting more and more prevalent. And autism is a spectrum disorder, so we might have some students that are more verbal or highly intelligent on the spectrum, or we might have students that are nonverbal that require different forms of communication. So it’s definitely going to be more and more prevalent depending on the school site and how many kids you have on your caseload as a school-based speech pathologist. It always depends on how many kids you have on your caseload. You may have 2, 3, 4, 5 that are nonverbal. Some people may have 10, 15, but it changes every year and that’s what’s kind of unique about our profession too. Every year, kids move, kids come and go, and it’s always something different, and it’s exciting too in that respect.

 

Scott

Right. Okay. So this happened later in the school year that you attended a conference. You found yourself to be exhausted. What was exhausting about that conference?

 

Vanessa

So the conference was where we were supposed to go and learn about different methods to help students with complex communication needs. Any student that may be using eye gaze to communicate, they would have to look at a letter to spell a word out, or they would have to blink to communicate all the way to higher technology forms of communication, such as iPads, text to speech devices. So there’s different forms of communication. And really, for me, what was really exhausting about the whole procedure was that it was a lot of new information for me. We were learning how to test students and see what level of communication they may need. There’s a lot of different forms of low tech, high tech devices out there in the market today whereas, 10, 20 years ago, there weren’t these. So it was a lot of learning of new material for me as a speech pathologist.

 

Scott

Okay, yeah. Kind of a little bit overwhelmed with new stuff. And as a result of that, you planned a camping trip and that’s where this whole story sort of begins. Can you talk about that?

 

Vanessa

Absolutely. As you said, the stress, the overwhelm was real – just highly stressful period in my career, not only in conjunction with the conference I attended, but just a lot of high profile cases were coming through the door and I was just heading into spring break and I was at my breaking point and I just looked at my husband and said, “Let’s get away. Let’s go camping with my family, my parents.” And we kind of packed up our trailer and headed out to the desert. We were just planning on being gone for a couple of days, 2-3 days – not much, but just enough time to hopefully just unwind, decompress from the month before, just spend some time out in nature. That’s when my life took a complete detour.

 

Scott

Yeah. It was just fascinating the way this happened because the first day was just all fun, right? Then, it kind of went from there. What happened?

 

Vanessa

Yeah. First day, it was beautiful. We were out riding quads in the desert, looking at all the beautiful wild flowers. It was springtime, it was gorgeous. Just wind in your face, sunshine. So we just went to bed that night after having a great day out in the sunshine – having a great time with my family and went to bed. Woke up early that morning – 4 AM or so – really not feeling great, just those typical achy body feeling sensations where you feel like, “Oh, I might be getting a cold or a flu.” And honestly, I kind of chalked it up to, “Oh, this is kind of expected after a very stressful month.”

 

Scott

Yeah. And you had a very active day as well.

 

Vanessa

Yes. So my body was just kind of coming off this high and I thought, “Oh, crumb. I’m getting sick now. I’ve had that achy flu-like feeling.” And then, later that morning, I went to my parents – because we were camping right next to them – and I just kind of carried my daughter over. She was 3 at the time. I just looked at my parents and my parents could see it on my face. They thought, “Wow, she’s not feeling well. She really doesn’t look well.” I went to my husband and, sadly, we just packed up and went home because I just knew I couldn’t function. I knew that I needed to go home.

 

Scott

I was thinking, when you said that you just told your husband, “We just got to go home,” it had to be pretty bad because you’re now cutting short the little vacation for everyone. Right? So it had to be bad for you to do that.

 

Vanessa

Yeah. I’m usually the type of person that plows through anything. “Oh, if I’m not feeling good”? I’ll still get up and go to work. And there’s a lot of guilt too, thinking, “Oh, we packed up the trailer. That takes hours and days of just planning, thought, process, making sure we had everything in there.” Then, to turn around and have to go home was very depressing for me. But I also know I’m not feeling good and I just–

 

Scott

Yeah, when you can tell something is really wrong, you just got to do it. Okay. So you went home on a Sunday, is that correct?

 

Vanessa

Yep.

 

Scott

Okay. And how did you feel the next day?

 

Vanessa

The next day I was still feeling the same, if not, maybe a little bit worse, and I just kept chalking it up too. Well, this is how colds work. At least, when I get a head cold or flu-like symptoms, I just need to sleep it off. I need to be alone. Let me just sleep. Give me a bottle of NyQuil so I can just sleep.

 

Scott

And were you supposed to be going back to work that week?

 

Vanessa

I was part-time, so I believe Monday I was off. But as the week progressed, I did have to go back to work. And there were days that I ended up calling in sick because, as this week was progressing, I figured– like I said before, give me a couple of days to rest and let me be alone and just sleep it off. It wasn’t getting better. It was kind of getting worse. And I kept just saying, “Ugh, maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow. Let me just stay home another day and rest.” But it wasn’t getting better.

 

Scott

What were your symptoms that were getting worse?

 

Vanessa

I ended up losing my voice. My voice just kept getting a little bit more raspy, breathy-like, nausea. A lot of, like, vomiting but not vomiting. I was just kind of throwing up just liquids because I wasn’t really eating anything. A lot of stiff neck pain, upper body pain. Just a lot of random things that, as the week progressed, I thought, “Well, this is just getting weird.” But it really didn’t make me think along the lines of something catastrophic happening to my body. I just still felt like whatever’s happening is weird. Maybe I need to get to urgent care and just get some medication for this.

 

Scott

Yeah. We’ve all felt that feeling when we’re going to get sick – that kind of achy all over feeling stiffness – and you don’t feel like eating because you’re afraid you’re going to throw up, I can imagine. You would just say, “Yeah, my body just has to work through it. The body knows how to fight against these things.” Right?

 

Vanessa

Exactly. And I’ve always trusted my body. I’ve always had this frame of mind. I’m a healthy eater. I try to manage stress. I try to exercise and do all these things that are good for my body. I’ve never had anything more than a flu or a cold in my entire life. So, my body knows what to do. It’ll heal. Give me time. Let me keep resting. Just keep the NyQuil coming.

 

Scott

So you decided you had to go to urgent care. What did they tell you?

 

Vanessa

Urgent care at that time gave me a IV of fluids because they knew I had been throwing up a lot or just throwing up liquids and I wasn’t really drinking very much to begin with. So they gave me IVs and they gave me some anti-nausea medication because I was very nauseous. I believe they may have given me a painkiller too just because my upper body had so much stiffness and aches – in my upper body’s shoulder neck – and they sent me home.

 

Scott

Did they give you a diagnosis at all? What did they think it was? What was going on?

 

Vanessa

Oh, not at all. They just felt you probably needed to sleep, probably just some weird virus going through your body, just like what I was thinking. I thought this just needs to pass, give my body time, it’ll heal, I’ll go on. So Sunday morning, I woke up and it’s about 1:00 AM or so, and I fell out of my bed. I just kind of collapsed to the side, walked out to the kitchen, and laid on the floor. For some reason, I don’t know why laying on the floor was feeling good at the moment, but laying on just the concrete or the hard floor. My husband eventually walked out and I was just laying there, just stiff, aching. I just couldn’t even muster the strength to just get up off the floor. He looks at me, he goes, “You’re just not getting better, Vanessa. We need to take you in and get some serious stuff done, serious tests,” because he knew that, usually, two, three days, maybe four days, things start turning around and he saw that you’re not getting better.

 

By about 3-4 AM or so, he decided to pack up and drive to the ER. At this point in time, I was starting to see double too. We walked into the ER. Actually, I didn’t walk into the ER. He pushed me in a wheelchair and I remember getting in the ER room and just waiting in the lobby and saying, “I’m seeing two clocks. I’m seeing two chairs. I see two TVs. There were TVs on the wall that I was seeing too. Everything was double. Everything was becoming very blurry for me. So whatever was happening inside my body was rapidly taking off.”

 

Scott

And did all three of you go to the hospital – because you have a little girl?

 

Vanessa

Yeah. At that time, my daughter– because I was not well that whole entire week, my parents were in town and they kind of just took over just so I could stay home and rest, take care of myself. So, thankfully, she was with them.

 

Scott

Okay, so you’re at the ER. They must have tried to give you some kind of answer about this.

 

Vanessa

Yeah. The first thing they did was a CT and then progressed to MRIs. As that first MRI came back through, I had all sorts of horrific diagnoses. First one that I remember vividly was multiple sclerosis, and then they rolled that out because the doctor says, “Well, there’s a lot of things that can look like MS all the way to botulism.” They thought Guillain–Barré at the time, but they quickly discounted that because the nerves in my feet weren’t paralyzed. They did lumbar punctures. They even told my husband that I had neuromyelitis optica, which is basically that I would die of paralysis, a slow paralysis, and they told him to kind of brace for that, which was something I don’t remember, but he remembers vividly these conversations. I was very heavily sedated at this point in time, coming in and out of sedation, so there’s some things that I remember and there’s some things that I don’t remember. There’s some things that I think happened but didn’t really happen.

 

Scott

Yeah. I can imagine him being told that your wife is going to die of slow paralysis. It’s not a big surprise that he would remember that. That would be a traumatic moment. One of the symptoms that was progressing was your right arm. What was happening with that?

 

Vanessa

Again, one of those things that I don’t really remember. I just remember– or he told me that I was telling him my right arm was getting heavy. It felt heavy. Trying to move my right arm to pick something up or to point to something just felt heavy. What was really going on is that this virus that I had was slowly descending down my body, down my neck, causing the neck and upper body stiffness, spasticity. All the nerves in those areas were all slowly becoming paralyzed, and that right arm was just getting heavy because it was losing its function, it was losing its ability to move, and it was just slowly taking over just day by day by day.

 

Scott

I mean, if I’m your husband looking at that happening, it seems like it’s kind of a confirmation that the doctor was right. You’re being slowly paralyzed.

 

Vanessa

Yep. Sheer trauma, sheer fear in his eyes. Yeah.

 

Scott

Yes, of course. And you had to be scared too because nobody knew what was really going to happen.

 

Vanessa

I was scared when they gave me the diagnosis of MS. From that point, memories are very fuzzy. They had me on some serious medication, so I don’t remember a lot of those conversations in the first hospital – this is the first hospital we were at – which, eventually, after about two days in just emergency, they transferred me over to the other area of the hospital, which was the ICU. There’s things that I remember about that ICU that really didn’t happen, which is wild.

 

Scott

Hallucinations?

 

Vanessa

Yeah, I just remember the ICU being very plush and very, like, rich mahogany furniture and wallpaper and that’s not the way an ICU room looks.

 

Scott

No ICU looks like that, right?

 

Vanessa

No. ICU are white with sterile white floors and machines and noises and bright white lights. So yeah, that was kind of interesting for me once I started hearing the stories that, wow, this is not matching what I have in my head.

 

Scott

At some point around this time, you experienced respiratory failure. How was that treated?

 

Vanessa

The respiratory failure is the reason why they moved me from the emergency into the ICU. They knew that this paralysis, this arm was not functioning right. I needed to be intubated. This disease, whatever was going through my body, was quickly speeding up and I needed a higher level of care. So, I was transferred then into the ICU at that hospital, and I was probably there 24 hours, maybe 48 hours, where they ran a bunch of further tests and they were all inconclusive. They just really didn’t have any idea. That’s when they looked at my husband and said, “We need to send her to UCSD,” which I get into in the book Speechless. That’s where they were able to run more tests. They had better connections. It’s a teaching facility. They had better connections with other hospitals that they could send lab work to and that’s when they just made that decision in the middle of the night, “We need to get her over to this next place.” So that’s when the ambulance came.

 

Scott

I’m trying to imagine your state at this time. You were not able to breeze on your own. You also could not speak. I mean, even before they intubated you, you had lost your voice. You couldn’t even move your lips to form words at that point. And could you write things, like, on a notepad? Your right arm was being paralyzed, but are you right-handed?

 

Vanessa

I am right-handed and was not able to write. So when that ambulance comes– and I talk about this in my book because this is a vivid memory that I actually had that actually did happen. As I said before, some of the memories that I have are things that, wow, it really wasn’t that. But I do remember waking up before ambulances were coming to take me to the next place, being in that ICU room, and not being able to communicate, but my husband knew that she needed to communicate, she needed some way of communicating. And my husband at that time, or within those 24 to 48 hours that I was in that ICU room, he contacted one of the girls that I work with and just said, “Hey, look, Vanessa can’t talk. Is there something that she could be using?” As a husband of a speech pathologist, he thought, “Well, there’s got to be something out there that she could use.” My team at work– and I talk about this in the book, which is just so ironic – it comes full circle.

 

He came to my bedside with an eye gaze device that I made at that conference previously. Remember that conference where I talked about learning tools and making tools for kids with complex communication needs? Well, at that conference, I made a communication device for a student that I might have on my caseload down the road. Little did I know that when I was making that, that was going to be my means of communication.

 

Scott

That irony is the theme throughout your whole story. I mean, even the title of your book, Speechless– a speech therapist no longer has the ability to speak. When you say eye gaze – you’re talking about E-Y-E – you would look at a letter and spell things that way? Is that kind of how it works?

 

Vanessa

Yep. I would look at letters and he would decipher the letter that I was looking at by tracking my eyes, or there would be a word like yes and no on it. He would say, “Are you in pain?” And I would look at, “Yes,” and I could answer the questions that way, and he would just look to see, well, look, her eyes are looking at “yes.” Because, cognitively, I was very aware of what was going on. Even though I was sedated, I knew I could understand the language, I could understand what he was asking of me. I just didn’t have that ability to verbalize because I was intubated.

 

Scott

To me, that almost seems like one of the most horrifying things in your story is, if someone is actively communicating with you or looking at you, watching your eyes so that they can see what you’re trying to spell out and say, that’s one thing. But if you’ve got your husband and a doctor talking over in the corner of the room and nobody’s there but you need to get their attention, you have no way of doing that.

 

Vanessa

Absolutely. And that right there, you just nailed it. That causes such immense anxiety. That’s something I have learned as a speech pathologist. You take away somebody’s ability to communicate and ask questions, advocate for themselves in the medical setting, not even the medical setting but anywhere, that just increases depression. It increases anxiety because, for me as being a patient, I was so aware of what was unfolding in front of me. I wanted to know where my baby was. Is she okay? What’s happening to me? What is my prognosis? Am I going to die? But I couldn’t ask these questions. I just had to lay there paralyzed. If I needed to be moved, I was in pain. I couldn’t say, “Move my right arm,” or “What’s wrong with my right arm? Why am I in pain?” Nothing

 

Scott

All I know is there were times in the ICU that the only way the nurse or someone knew that you were in pain or needed something was because of the tears coming down from your eyes.

 

Vanessa

That was a form of communication.

 

Scott

Yes, it is a form of communication and that at least gets people’s attention sometimes. One thing you talk about a lot is your anxiety and just the stress of not being able to express yourself. And you’re right, everyone just takes that for granted.

 

Vanessa

And eventually, I was able to progress to using different kinds of communication devices. It started off obviously with eye gaze, but as things started to change in my health status. It was a game changer for not only me, but for my care team when I was able to at least use my fingers to write. Granted, my writing was very sloppy. It was hard to decipher or use text to speech on my phone. I’ve spoken with my doctor too many times since my hospital stay and he was just like, “Oh my gosh. Once you were able to finally progress from typing letters on an alphabet board and just saying P-A-I-N, W-H-A-T– I said in my book, like, how slow it was communicating, typing letters, and how frustrated they were. But it was such a game changer and I, as a speech pathologist, knew– this is 2019 at the time. I knew that there’s better technology out there. Somebody get me my phone. There’s text to speech apps for phones anywhere you go. Somebody get me my phone. I’m strong enough to be able to use text to speech, and then I could type paragraphs. I could advocate for myself. I could ask those questions like, “What’s next?”

 

Scott

Yeah, you could finally form a sentence rather than thinking one letter at a time and going so slowly.

 

Vanessa

Yes.

 

Scott

Can you talk about– your care was so specific. For example, the muscles were not working to hold your head up, so your head would constantly fall over. And Dale, your husband, knew how to prop up your head with rolled up towels and they trained you and – he mostly – I guess, trained your nurses, like the overnight nurse, to know how to be able to care for you. It’s so specific what happened when you found out there was a different night nurse coming on. That was a point of stress.

 

Vanessa

Oh, the anxiety. Medical anxiety is real. Again, something I didn’t learn in grad school – most people don’t. That nurse anxiety– because for me, my care, as you said, was so specific. There were certain things that I needed. If I were to sit up in bed or to stand up, I needed a certain neck brace and I needed the towels stuck in a certain way. If I was laying in bed, I needed the towels propped underneath my head in a certain way. If not, I say my neck was like a complete wet noodle. It would just fall to the side and I had no neck strength to be able to hold it back erect. So I had a certain care plan, certain things that needed to be done to keep me comfortable. If not, my anxiety would just fly through the roof. Well, every day at a hospital setting, your team changes. Nurses may work three 10 hour shifts or four 10s or whatever to get full time. But then they’re off for three or four more days and you won’t see them for a while and, during those transitions, you never know who’s coming through. So I would always be looking at the clock and I knew– I think the shift change was, like, at 7 PM and 7 AM and I was always looking at the clock thinking, “Okay, it’s six o’clock. One more hour. There’s another nurse coming in. Who’s going to train her? Who’s going to educate her on what I need? Is she going to know what I need? Because if she doesn’t know what I need and my husband leaves, I can’t talk to her. I can’t tell her what I need.” Again, anxiety. It was so high throughout the whole experience.

 

Scott

Yeah. I could feel that anxiety when I read what you were writing. I could also feel when you found out, “Oh, that same nurse is coming back in. I know what she’s like.” Yeah. Just the relief that you felt knowing, “Okay, this night, I’m going to be okay.”

 

Vanessa

Yes. At UCSD, they did a really good job of that. They knew my anxiety was so high around the transitions around nurses, so they always made it a really good point to say, like in the book, “Okay, Rachel’s going to be back on this on-call for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Let’s make sure Vanessa has her Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So-and-so’s scheduled on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or whatever day. So let’s make sure they are always on.” Like, they had a handful of nurses that they kept cycling through me because I was there a month. There were a few times where a new lady would walk in and I’d think, “Oh no, she’s not going to know.” And I would try to communicate with my husband to please let her know, whether it was through typing or my alphabet board, but please educate these people on what I need before you leave because, once he left for the night, I was on my own.

 

Scott

Right. You’re on your own and you couldn’t call for help to him. And all this time, they’re still trying to figure out what’s going on. They don’t have a diagnosis yet. To me, aside from the pain of your body, not being able to speak or even hold your head up, it seems like the pain of not knowing was a really big one. Just the uncertainty.

 

Vanessa

I didn’t know what was going on. That was sheer fear too, thinking, “Am I going to get better from this? Is this my forever? Am I going to be the mom that’s going to be in a wheelchair or bed for the rest of my life? What is my future going to look like?” I was so anxious over that and nobody had answers for me. They just thought, “Well, we’re going to try this medication. We’ll try this. We’ll send your blood work off to the Mayo Clinic or CDC and see if they have any answers.” They were doing the best they could, but everything that was coming back was, “We don’t know. We don’t know. We’re just doing the best we can.” And I knew they were doing the best they could at the time, but it was still unnerving.

 

Scott

At some point you started getting therapy – physical therapy, occupational therapy. Was speech therapy also–

 

Vanessa

Yeah, so in the second ICU at UCSD, they had me doing speech therapy daily. Well, I don’t know about daily, but I was doing a lot of the exercises just in bed. So they would give me a printout of things to try and just work on my own, which was fine. I was a speech therapist. I knew what needed to be done. But as far as PT and OT, I believe they were probably there every day just trying to work on little things like– I don’t want to say little things. They were actually big in those days. But little things such as just trying to sit up on the side of the bed, just sitting up on the side of the bed, and taking a step forward, 3 feet, 5 feet. That was PT. OT may have been working on things with my arm by just trying to, like, get stretchy bands and use those to move, even though my arm wouldn’t move independently. It was just trying to retrain the brain.

 

Scott

So it seems like, even though they didn’t know what was causing this, they were trying to get you moving back toward normal, even though that was obviously a long way away. Could you see yourself making progress?

 

Vanessa

Yeah, it was easier for other people to see progress. For example, a nurse would be gone for 24 hours. She would have her day off and she’d come back 24 hours later and they’d walk in and they’d say, “Wow, Vanessa, you look so much better, or you’re more alert.” But for me, being a patient in the bed, I wanted to get up and go and walk four miles again. I wanted to go back to yoga class. That wasn’t happening, but there was progress. My husband would write on the board in front of me. He would have a list of all my accomplishments and progress. Instead of walking 3 feet, I’ve walked 8 feet. Instead of walking 8 feet, I may have walked 15. An accomplishment may have been walking around the entire nurse’s station. An area of progress would be getting out of bed and sitting in a chair for the day instead of just laying in bed flat. I was at least sitting up. When it came down to actually talking, I’d used this thing called the Passy-Muir valve. That was a valve that was put on my tracheostomy. Well, progress with that was, at first, I could only tolerate it for maybe 5-10 seconds. Then, I had to take it off because it was too fatiguing, it needed suctioning. But then, eventually, maybe, I would use it for an hour and then maybe two hours. So, slowly making progress.

 

Scott

It seems like Dale knows you so well, obviously, but it almost seems like he was built or he has a gift for this. He would quantify these things so that you could see progress. He put pictures of your daughter all over the room. It seems like he knows or he knew what would motivate you.

 

Vanessa

Yes, he did an amazing job. It was a team effort. My medical team was phenomenal. They supported him. He supported them. The communication between all of them was exceptional. It took a village when I was there. He was a rock. He was there whenever he could be trying to motivate me as well. They all knew. And what was really cool about my medical team though also is that they looked at me for who I was. I wasn’t a medical record number. I wasn’t just this patient bed with this really weird virus that’s paralyzing her. She was Vanessa. She’s a speech pathologist. She’s a young mother of a 3-year-old. She’s a wife. She has a life. She was camping last week. Look at her. These pictures are on the wall. You can see on the wall the pictures of me from a week ago, how fit and healthy I was. They knew that’s where I wanted to be, which was really remarkable.

 

Scott

You had an amazing team and I loved Dr. Jared. When he first came into the room, you were pretty skeptical. Who’s this guy? He doesn’t know anything about me, but now he’s one of the most beloved members of your team that you look back on with so much love. I’m going to leave that. People need to read the book and read about how that relationship developed with him over time but, yeah, he is amazing. One time, one of your nurses said, “Hey, let’s go outside.” Were you apprehensive about that?

 

Vanessa

Oh, 100%. I remember her saying that, and I remember thinking in my head, “Are you nuts? Like, really? You really think you’re going to get this body and all these tubes and all that equipment that’s keeping me alive outside? Good luck with that. But okay, you’re the expert. Let’s do it.” I was never one to say, “No, we’re not going to do this.” I was always, I didn’t want to be the patient in the bed that did nothing that fought them. So I was ridiculously skeptical. I thought, “This is going to be a disaster, but, oh, well.” So we got the whole team in there. My husband, PT, I think probably OT went with us, more than likely, the respiratory therapist and my nurse. So I’m going to say 4-5 people came with me to make this excursion happen.

 

Scott

It was like a field trip, right?

 

Vanessa

It was totally a field trip. I remember being pushed through the lobby thinking, “Oh my gosh, what are these people thinking about this woman going through the lobby with all this equipment and what are they doing with this lady? Are they, like, busting her out of the hospital or?” But that wind in your face, the fresh air after 3 weeks of seeing nothing but hospital lights and hospital rooms and people, it was wow. If anybody can ever get their patients outside, somehow, I highly encourage it.

 

Scott

And I can imagine the sound just being outdoors and just hearing the outdoors rather than the constant beeping of machines in your room,

 

Vanessa

Yep. Hearing the bird’s chirp because those buzzers in the hospital room cause a lot of trauma, a lot of PTSD for a lot of us, ICU survivors. Noises. Yeah, it’s pretty triggering.

 

Scott

I know your biggest motivation to get better and get back to normal is your daughter. Can you talk about the first time she came to visit you in the hospital? How long had it been since you’d seen her?

 

Vanessa

I would say approximately 3 weeks or so. I was in that ICU about a month and she came towards more of the tail end of it when I was able to communicate verbally. That was one of the things that I wanted for her. I didn’t want her to see mom laying in the bed, unable to communicate or using an iPad or phone to communicate via text-to-speech. I wanted to be able to at least tolerate – what I talked about before is – that Passy-Muir valve and be able to talk with her verbally, but it was terrifying. Talk about more anxiety– I wanted to be this perfect picture of a mom but, unfortunately, I had the feeding tube in my nose at that time, so we called it the noodle on mommy’s nose. I was covered in tubes. The hospital setting was– I don’t want to say it was scary because Child Life came through the department at UCSD and came through and really tried to make the room look a little bit less scary for her, brought toys in, made it a little bit more fun and engaging for a child, which was a gift, but it was still very scary and caused me even more anxiety. I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be healed and I was not there, but yet I wanted to hold her. I needed that hope that I wanted to see her. I wanted to see that she was okay even though I knew in my heart that she was with my parents. I knew she was okay, but as a mother, it was just terrifying.

 

Scott

And we’ll have a picture in the episode notes of when your daughter came to visit you. How old is she now? Nine?

 

Vanessa

She’s 9 now. And she was just a little over 3 at the time.

 

Scott

Does she remember that visit?

 

Vanessa

Yeah, very little bit, just not much of it. She remembers playing with Thomas, the train engine because she was very much into Thomas the train at that time. But that’s it. She doesn’t have a lot of memories of any of the experiences.

 

Scott

That’s probably good.

 

Vanessa

Yeah. I have enough memories.

 

Scott

It may have been traumatizing for her at the time to see you in that condition. So finally, after a month, you were able to leave the ICU, but you didn’t go home at that point.

 

Vanessa

Nope. I was still needing a lot of serious medical care, so they transferred me. Since I was getting better at the ICU, they transferred me to a long-term acute care center, which is about – I don’t know – an hour and a half away from UCSD. I was there and that is– I thought I was going to die at the first ICU, but the LTAC, the quality of care, the attentiveness of the staff sadly deteriorated significantly. Many times, I thought, “As soon as my husband walks out of that door and I lose my advocate, something dramatic’s going to happen.” It was horrible. Horrible.

 

Scott

Yeah. I was just reading about your experience at this long-term acute care place. I was just pissed off for you because of the way– I mean, back at the nurses station, they were talking about how high maintenance you were and what a pain in the butt and all that they had to do whereas, in ICU, previously, everyone wanted to do anything they could for you. What a drastic change for you. And you still didn’t know, you still didn’t have a diagnosis.

 

Vanessa

Nope. It was awful. They didn’t know how to feed me through my G-tube at that time. Of course, that was my lifeline. I was just wasting away, losing so much weight. Of course, I needed food. I needed food to keep me alive. The fact that they didn’t know how to properly use the G-tube and clean it, and my husband was teaching them– oh my goodness. Just another layer of anxiety, another layer of fear of, “If my husband leaves, who’s going to be here to feed me?” They even got my medication wrong. They had the dosages all wrong. And my husband’s like, “No, she’s not on that anymore.” She’s on this many milligrams because, as a patient, I wasn’t aware of all the medication I was on and how many milligrams.

 

Scott

Right. It’s not your job to keep track of that.

 

Vanessa

Yeah. You’re not thinking about all that.

 

Scott

It was interesting. I noticed that you deliberately did not say the name of that facility, which is probably good from a liability standpoint. Not even any identifying characteristics or anything. So that was a good idea. So at this point, still no diagnosis, being fed by a tube, your right arm is still immobile. Seems like there would be a contrast. You must have been feeling depression and I think, at some point, you were even thinking, “Why should I stay alive anymore?” But on the other hand, you think of your daughter. Was that a conflict in your head?

 

Vanessa

Every day. Every minute of every day, I kept thinking, “If this is my forever, somebody pull these plugs out. I don’t want her to live with this kind of mom. I don’t want her to see this trauma that I’m involved in.” And as a speech pathologist too, I was always concerned of how is this trauma that I’m experiencing going to impact her development? She was 3. She’s in those formative years of her own life. I kept thinking, “How is this going to play into her childhood? Is this going to ruin her childhood if she has a mom that’s going to be incapacitated, unable to really completely communicate well at this time. If this is my forever, I don’t want to continue this life.” But then, at the same time, the devil on the other shoulder, and then there’s the angel thinking, “This child needs you, Vanessa. What’s her life going to be like if you are not here? Who’s going to be there during those years that she needs a mom? My husband’s wonderful. He’s there for her, but he’s not the mother. What is this going to look like if you’re not here?”

 

Scott

You went to rehab for a while and eventually got discharged to come back home. You must have found a good therapist. Right? Is that a specialty for a therapist to specialize in medical trauma? Is that something that they can focus on?

 

Vanessa

Excellent question. I love talking about this. So when a patient gets home from a medical disaster – a trauma that I have been through – I feel like that’s where the healing begins. And not only that, but that, for me, was where the reality of the depression hid in because I see you’re in such an elevated fight or flight state. Your nervous system is just, “Go, go, go.” You’re not sleeping, you’re just hyper aware. You’re just immersed in therapies. But then, you get home and life slows down a little bit, not a lot, but you’re home. You’re back in your environment.

 

For me, walking through the halls of my home which– yeah, I was able to walk at this point. I was walking longer distances. But being back in my home environment was where the depression just hit me like a wall. It was where I walked down my hall and I thought, “Well, I used to be able to shower myself. I can’t even get in my own shower anymore. I used to be able to get back and forth to the toilet with ease and do it all independently. I can’t do these things anymore. I used to walk into the kitchen, make a meal independently, and swallow it fine. Now, I can’t even get to the kitchen and make a meal. And not only can I not make the meal, I cannot eat the meal because I was tube fed and my husband would be there cooking my meal.” So all I did was just sit on the couch and the depression was something I have never experienced, never in my years as a speech pathologist quite understood. It wasn’t talked about in grad school what the recovery was like for patients that had come through the ICU that we treat as speech pathologists.

 

My husband did seek out mental health services. And again, something that I’ve learned by being on the other side of speech therapy being the patient is that people do not understand medical trauma. I thought that would be something that you would go into a mental health therapist and say, “Look, I just got out of ICU 60 days ago. I was this mother and now my identity is completely gone. I am now the mother that’s in rehab. I’m now the mother that has a G-tube for feeding.” And I realized that nobody quite understood the PTSD associated with a medical state. People understand that when you come back from war, a lot of veterans have post-traumatic stress disorder. They have flashbacks, they have insomnia, just the effects of trauma and what it does to their brain. But people did not make that connection that ICU and trying to learn to survive, talk, walk, eat again. Having that kind of trauma in the brain is very similar to what people experience when they have a traumatic event, not only war, but you have a child that was molested, parents incarcerated, these Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). These are all traumas. And I started to really see when I went out there to try to find therapy on my own that people didn’t really understand medical trauma.

 

I went in to see a therapist one time too, and I was grossly underweight because I was tube fed and I had a lot of muscle atrophy because of the paralysis. I looked very sickly. At this time, I had a G-tube, a tube hanging out of my stomach, and she treated me as having an eating disorder as opposed to a swallowing disorder. And I just sat there on her couch crying and just so angry and sad, and frustrated and depressed that here she’s not understanding me. I just say I cannot safely eat food. She thought I had an eating disorder – anorexic. Bulimia – and I was just, again, speechless. There’s ties in my book again but I was just speechless thinking, “Wow, here you are, a mental health therapist, and you think I have an eating disorder. I just got out of ICU. My swelling muscles are paralyzed. I cannot eat safely. If I do eat safely, it could cost me my life.” So now that’s what I’m passionate about.

 

Scott

Yeah. You have actually coined a term – or maybe you didn’t – post intensive care syndrome. Did you create that term or is that in the medical jargon already?

 

Vanessa

It is in the medical jargon. However, there’s not an ICD code that’s used for medical billing and research for it, but it’s definitely something that’s being talked about more and more, and that’s kind of what my passion is now – to get this term, PICS, post intensive care syndrome, so it’s a common phrase language that is talked about in the ICU setting. So social workers are talking about it when their patients are discharged. Educating the family about PICS, about PICS’ family. PICS’ family members have trauma. Family members have PTSD. And just making this common knowledge instead of it being like, “What is PICS?” I talked to a mental health therapist and she thought I had PICA. She got PICS confused with PICA, and PICA is where you’re drawn to eating non-food items like erasers, pencils, leaves, rock, sand. When I was talking to her, she said, “I’m sorry, can you tell me again what it is that you’re dealing with?” And I said, “It’s PICS, post intensive care syndrome from ICU. I have insomnia, I have flashbacks, I have sounds, and all of those characteristics of PTSD.” And she goes, “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you meant PICA. I don’t know what PICS is.”

 

Scott

Oh man.

 

Vanessa

And I just was, like, heartbroken.

 

Scott

Isn’t it amazing? A little typo in an acronym for your diagnosis or for what you were experiencing can change the whole treatment plan because you can’t make assumptions.. You actually got a diagnosis eventually. What was that?

 

Vanessa

So I had a diagnosis of Guillain–Barré, which is very ironic because, in the first ICU and I believe even the second ICU, they tested me for that. But my variant– there’s variants to a lot of different things, and my variant of GBS or Guillain–Barré Syndrome is completely different from the norm. My feet were not paralyzed, so the nerves in my feet were always working. I was able to stand. I wasn’t able to obviously walk miles at the time but my feet at least worked. It was my upper body that was all paralyzed. So the variant I have is called the PCB variant. So P is pharyngeal, C is cervical, B is brachial. Brachial is your arms; cervical, spine and pharynx, everything in your neck, your swallowing muscles, your muscles for breathing, your vocal or your muscles for vocalizing. All of that was paralyzed. So it was all upper body versus lower body. So that’s kind of what threw them off. My variant is super rare. I’ve even gone to the GBS, the Guillain–Barré Foundation. I tried to ask them questions and then my emails just got no response.

 

Scott

Do you know for sure that someone else has had that variant?

 

Vanessa

I have actually come in contact over the years with two different people and when I read about it, it just is yep, that’s what I have. Everything matches my characteristics.

 

Scott

Is there any kind of treatment or cure for that?

 

Vanessa

No. No cures. There’s treatment. I did probably three years of immunoglobulins, IVIG and I started out doing that– was it once every 2 weeks or 3 weeks, 4 weeks? And they slowly started to wean it back to doing it once every month to once every 2 months, and we would slowly start weaning it off. But honestly, I don’t think that really did anything for me. Just what helped me was time and getting to the gym, working out. I have an E-Stim device called a Neubie that I swear helped me immensely, but there’s really no treatment. It’s just one of those things. GBS, they could say, Getting Better Slowly (GBS). That is the best way for me to explain it. It’s just one of those diseases that your body takes time– neuroplasticity, where it’s the brain’s ability to rewire itself and heal those nerves. It just takes time. I’ve heard that nerves remyelinate one millimeter every week, or something really, really, really, really small. So when you’re talking about a nerve that starts in your brainstem and goes down to your abdominal region or your lungs, you’re talking like small little pieces every day.

 

Scott

You got to be in it for the long term, for sure.

 

Vanessa

And you’ve got to be strong mentally too. You got to know that this is not going to be something that you’re going to heal from in a week, sometimes not a month. It’s going to be a lifelong battle, but you just keep showing up.

 

Scott

In your book, you chronicle, in a lot more detail than what we’re able to go through here on a podcast, what you experienced, including all the thoughts and the feelings that you experienced when you were writing that. Was it difficult to write that all out and kind of relive all that trauma and anxiety?

 

Vanessa

Oh yes. It took me 5 years and then, finally, I got to the point and I looked at my husband. I said, “I need to pay somebody to hold me accountable and give me a plan because this book is not getting done.” And thinking about it every day is not healthy for me. But when I finally got to typing it, there were times that I would type a page, a chapter, and then I would close my laptop for 6 months, possibly even a year, and say, “Oh, we’ll get to it tomorrow.” And let’s face it. Yeah, I would say that, but I wouldn’t get to it. That’s why I took 5 years until it was a spring of 2024 where I just was like, I’m done thinking about this. I’m done. Let’s get this done. And we dove into it and we sent it off to the publisher within 3-4  months. That was the best thing I did for myself really – finally getting the story out there.

 

Scott

I know, when I was reading it– I knew it had happened a while back, but when you were talking about your condition of being partially paralyzed with your arm and not being able to speak or barely be able to speak, yet your publicist had just contacted me saying, “Hey, she wants to come on your podcast and tell the story.” I’m just picturing what I’m reading about in the book is like, “How is Vanessa even going to tell me what happened?” But obviously, in 6 years, you’ve made a ton of progress. Are there any issues you still deal with?

 

Vanessa

Yeah, I still have just a lot of those speech issues. There’s still some. I still do a lot of physical therapy. I’m at the gym as much as I can, whether it’s just walking or lifting weights. But I would say the biggest one – and this is just ironic – are those vocal cord issues. I still have a lot of significant vocal cord issues and the swallowing is still not where it was. So there’s still a lot to come. But, most people– I would say pretty much anybody I come in contact with would never know what I live with or had because people– they’ll pick up my book today and say, “Vanessa, I had no idea. I’ve worked with you for two years. No idea you went through this.” Because I’m back, I’m driving, I’m working full time, I’m moving my arm right now as I talk to you.

 

Scott

That’s amazing. I got to tell you, that was amazing for me. I mean, this is an audio-only podcast, so people are only going to hear this, but you and I can see each other right now. When we first connected and I see you– that right arm was just moving all around. I thought, “Man, that’s really some big progress right there.”

 

Vanessa

Yeah. Yep, I don’t need to have a neck brace to hold my head up anymore. I don’t need those towels. I can get in and out of my bed. I can shower myself. Life is so much better than it was. So thank God.

 

Scott

And you appreciate those things.

 

Vanessa

Oh gosh. I look at people and they’re complaining about an ingrown toenail, and I’m just, “Okay. I have such a different perspective.” Different perspectives too about my career and how I treat my students now when they come through the door, how I interact with their families. It’s just this whole different level of empathy for them. It’s just transformed the way I practice now completely – the things that I would target before. Now, I’m more concerned about mental health. If your son or daughter was in the ICU or had some type of medical trauma, how is mom and dad doing witnessing their child go through medical procedures? How is the child doing? How are they feeling? Do they have any effects of trauma or PTSD? Because let’s face it, in the school setting, if you have a student that comes through the door and they have the effects of any kind of trauma, how are they going to learn?

 

Scott

Yeah. And I would think probably most speech therapists wouldn’t think to ask those things. And you probably wouldn’t have either prior to this.

 

Vanessa

No. No. And that’s why I say schools are failing graduates right now. We talk so much about trauma informed and being aware of traumas, but they’re not having these in-depth conversations. And a lot of the podcasts that I’ve been on – and I’ll do that with this one as well – is to drop these into school’s hands and let them know, “Hey, listen to this. This is informative for your graduates when they’re going out and doing their clinical rotations to understand the effects of medical trauma.” Because I wasn’t taught it. I graduated over 10 years ago and there was not a single word of post intensive care syndrome. I went to a training conference in December of 2024, and every course that I took was all about trauma, but out of all the presenters, over three days, one person presented on medical trauma and it was one slide and he talked about it for a minute. So you can see it’s just something that’s significantly overlooked.

 

Scott

Yeah, definitely. What’s your purpose for speaking about your experience or what would be the big goal? What would you like to see happen?

 

Vanessa

More awareness around PICS. I am a huge advocate for ICU survivors and what they have endured. I don’t think ICU survivors get the credit and the respect that they deserve for what they’ve gone through. It’s very overlooked and disability awareness too. I was on the other side living a very healthy lifestyle and now I am a person with a disability and I feel like the world sensationalizes the athlete more – the professional that can throw a football however many yards – but there’s still very remarkable people that have had a medical tragedy happen to them that are still worthy of recognition. I think that’s something I’ve learned as well. People are uneducated about PICS and I really want to raise that awareness. Mental health professionals, social workers, anywhere from pharmacists who need to know this stuff, medical professionals, OT, PT, speech, nursing. There’s just so much that can be done to help ICU survivors that I’ve realized is not being looked at.

 

When I left the ICU, they sent me home with all the medication I needed, all the medical supplies, but nobody said, “Hey, here’s a list of mental health therapists that can help you, or we’ll put a referral in for insurance to get you mental health services.” No, they gave me all the information and put all the paperwork through for medications and tube feeding supplies, but they never stopped to think, “Wow, your life was turned upside down. You’ve completely lost your identity. You can’t drive, you can’t eat. You need mental health service services.” No.

 

Scott

And that’s just because they don’t know.

 

Vanessa

Yeah.

 

Scott

We just have to increase the awareness and, obviously, you are doing that now.

 

Vanessa

Yep.

 

Scott

All right, Vanessa, thanks for sharing your story.

 

Vanessa

Absolutely, Scott. Thank you for having me on. Let me share my story to your listeners.

 

Scott

Vanessa’s story has so many different aspects to talk about. The great thing about her book is that she goes really deep into her thought processes at the various stages. I’ve got a link to her book in the episode notes at WhatWasThatLike.com/230.

 

And if you were listening to our conversation and just waiting for me to ask a particular question that I never did ask, guess what – you can ask her yourself. Vanessa is in the Facebook group, along with a bunch of other previous guests, and 9208 other podcast listeners like you. We’d love to have you join us – come on over to WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook. And when you join  the Facebook group, use the promo code “See You Next Tuesday” to get your first 25 years of membership completely free.

 

Okay, now let’s talk about some listener meetups.

 

I was in Dallas recently for a podcasting conference, and I invited anyone who wanted to come over to a local establishment that sells adult beverages. We met up and had a blast. There was Autumn, who has a dog grooming business, and Danielle, who also grooms dogs on her own but she also works with Autumn – but doesn’t bring her any BIG dogs, only little ones. And there was Robyn, who works  in Ft Worth right next to the stockyards, and she directed a friend and me to where the cattle drive happens right down Main St every day. And I also got to meet Mariela, which was interesting because she just recently told her birth story to Kiona on the Birth As We Know It podcast. We all had a great time and stayed out way too late. But it really made me think, I need to do more of these.

 

And later in the week, I found that I had a day with some free time, so I met up for lunch with Rebekah and her co-worker Ernie at a place called Fuzzy’s Taco Shop. And those two have some stories!

 

Anyway – all of this to say, it really reinforced for me how much fun it is to meet new people, and especially people who listen to the podcast. I’m planning to do more of these. I’m hoping to do a local meetup right here in the Tampa Bay area before the end of this year, and then next year we’ll be in Orlando in mid-January, and in Austin, Texas in mid-March.

 

And all listener meet-ups are announced as events in the podcast Facebook group, so if you’re not in there yet, you need to get over there. I also mention the meetups in my email newsletter. But however you hear about them, I’d love to meet you at some point.

 

Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.

 

And if you’d like to get a t-shirt or all kinds of other cool stuff with the podcast name and logo, you can find the full selection at WhatWasThatLike.com/merch.

 

Okay, it’s Listener Story time! Every main episode ends with a story that was told by a listener. They just record it on their phone, and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com. And guess what – YOU can do that too. Anything interesting that happened to you, that you can tell in about 5-10 minutes. We want to hear it!

 

This story is from a listener who decided to follow her intuition.

 

Stay safe, and we’ll see you next time.

 

(Listener story)

 

The story that I’m going to tell today happened when I was in my young twenties and working downtown. I was in the restaurant business. I was a manager, so I would leave the restaurant pretty late at night. I left pretty late one night. I drove to our local Walmart in town and bought some windshield wiper fluid to refill my car – this was probably around 11.30 PM – and I filled up my car with fluid in the Walmart parking lot. So the Walmart was in a neighboring town– it took me probably about 15 minutes to get from that Walmart back to my downtown apartment that I had at the time.

 

I pretty quickly realized that evening, when I left that parking lot, that someone was following me. Being that I was so young, I kind of went into high alert but, thankfully, my instincts kicked in and I stopped near my apartment, but not right at my apartment. I parked my car and then something told me, “It’s just not right.” So I started to slowly drive away. When I got to the next alley that was open beyond one of the buildings, there was a car sitting there waiting with its lights turned off, and a man was starting to get outside of the car. He was waiting for me to get out of my car and totally freaked me out. I sped off. Thankfully, the police station was right around the corner, so I drove straight there. I called my boyfriend at the time, told him what happened, and it was a pretty scary situation. But ultimately, it ended up just fine. So I’d like to share my message just to remind young women to be vigilant in the late evenings and when you’re all alone. Thank you so much for letting me tell my story.