Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. So like I said the last so my last recording I was going to work to what was probably the worst shift I've ever had. It was just really really stressful so they had me on so when I typically do is one-on-ones, so that's like I sit with literally just one other person and I'm just watching that one other person which is fine. Like I can do one-on-ones just fine. I had a two on one to where I sit and I have to watch two people. And that was stressful only because and this in my opinion was a really bad one-on-one at least to put me on because as a patient safety associate, I can't really like do much other than like watch people I can't really, like touch them and like move them and like I can kind of help them walk and stuff, but I can't like restrain them. I can't so the patient that I was sitting on was trying to leave. Which I would have had a better handle on had I not been at have- having to sit and watch a different patient while he's also trying to leave and it was just a shit show. And I already get anxious as it is sometimes and my heart rate's like f****** pounding in my ears and I'm kind of freaking out and trying not to like have a panic attack. So somebody had to like sit on them for me. And so I sat for somebody else while they watched my people so they can get so there's a tech that could get him back into his bed and stuff like that. But you truly see especially like from my standpoint how people like misconstrue the healthcare like like healthcare services versus like f****** like service the service industry. because it's really grey area sometimes because you want to give people the best carry that you can but sometimes they don't they misconstrue the best care that you they can with waiting on them like hand and foot and it's f****** annoying. Um, because obviously you want people stay to be comfortable, but when you have nurses with f******* seven to one ratio. You can't be waiting on these people hand and foot nor should…

When I was a senior in college, I was studying abroad in Ireland. And I've got two siblings. My middle brother came to visit. So he flew into Dublin and then rented a car, drove across the country. I was basically on the opposite coast. drove across the country to meet me. We spent some time in the village that I was studying in and then we kind of drove around the country a little bit. So one of the places that we went- this is just kind of a funny aside- was in the north and we're going to Giants Causeway is the place. And I fell asleep while he was driving and when I woke up, he had been driving on the wrong side of the road for I don't know how long. I think, he was really tired or not even like he wasn't sleepy, it was like he was so fatigued from the travel and his brain wasn't, you know, he wasn't tracking and so I remember screaming at him to get on the correct side of the road and then I think on our way back from the north we went into Dublin again, and that's where we got tattoos. So his is on his wrist. And it's my handwriting and it says "do more" so he has- I'll be honest. I think it's kind of stupid, but he's got a couple of different tattoos that say various things on his body and that's what he wanted. So I wrote that out a ton of times when we were in Belfast. I remember on this napkin and today I see it and it's not like it's terrible. I've always had pretty good handwriting but I would say I've gotten better with like kind of that modern calligraphy kind of thing. And so I look at it just, you know reminds me that at the time I was not great at it, but I think that's maybe part of the charm.

That's when I heard it. "Wapa wapa wapa weeee" That sound froze my breath. My hair stood on end and my cat flew from my arms. I was squeezing the life out of him. The blanket sailed over my head. When my heart began to beat again, it started in a hyperspeed. It was beating in my throat. I started to shake. I knew I was going to vomit. I was gasping for air. I heard horrible little choking noises coming- I heard these horrible little choking noises and realized they were coming from me. It was so dark under the blanket, but there was danger looking outside the shelter I had thrown around me. I snuck my arm out slowly, slowly, slowly so that no one would see the movement. I felt for my phone. Gingerly I touched it and snatched it back into the hastily made sanctuary with me. I dialed 911 the conversation went something like this: "911 operator, This is 911, What's your emergency?"  me: gasping for air quietly, so no one would hear, trying desperately to give sound to the voice that was squeaking from my mouth. "911 operator: Hello. Is anyone there? Please state your emergency." Me squeaking and hyperventilating: "I'm here. Please, send the police." 911 operator: "State your emergency, please." Me: "There's an intruder in my home. Send a cop to get me out." 911 operator: "You have an intruder in your home ma'am, where are you?" Me still hyperventilating now crying as well: "I'm under the covers on my couch." 911 operator: "You're hiding under the covers on your couch, ma'am? Me hiccupping hyperventilating and crying: "Y-y-yes!" 911 operator: "Why?" me: "So the intruder don't get me." 911 operator: Let's see if I have this right ma'am. You're hiding under the blankets on your couch at 2:10 in the morning. So the intruder in your home won't get you." Me: "Yes, that is exactly-ly right, right. Send someone please." 911 operator: "Does the Intruder have a weapon ma'am?" Me: "Yes.Yes! Big- big teeth." 911 operator: "ma'am, could you please calm down? I'm having a difficult time understanding you- did you say teeth is his weapon?" Me: Yes. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God! 911 operator: I have your information pulled up here ma'am.  Can you tell me what exactly…

First he was sick for so long and then he passed away. And we were all just like starting to get used to like get past that that missing, that grief of having somebody gone. And then here we are having a memorial service and it starts it all going again. But it was it was a really nice-er – nice time with like I say service, but it was like a potluck in my mom's backyard. She has like a couple acres and we didn't know how many people were going to come. We were planning for as many as a hundred because of the that's about the size of the church. So well, the church is probably more like 150-200 but you know, some people are not gonna make it so we were planning for a hundred and like 30 or 40 came which was such a relief because it was just gonna be this is the first time that I've been anywhere more crowded than a doctor's office in two and a half years. so like starting with a thing with a hundred people, I was not looking forward to at all and I still would have if I could have gotten away with not going I would have not gone because of you know, worrying about health stuff because as I've mentioned before I am a- Well, I don't know- Well, yeah, I guess I'm still technically a cancer patient. Like hypothetically there's no cancer. They don't think there's any cancer in me anymore. But I guess I'm still taking a pill every day for like five years. So, I guess I'm still in treatment. but yeah, that that makes me more nervous about COVID-y stuff because I had it already but I wasn't a cancer patient when I had it before and so I well now I've got a stupid underlying condition. Or at least if I don't still I don't still have the underlying condition but I guess even people who are recovered cancer patients have increased risk of negative stuff happening even though yeah. so it was a big weekend because the first time I've been around a lot and I was able to you know, it was outside. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gone because 40 people inside a building that's just like That's a big old dollop of nope right there. There's…

It's been a week. Like I mean to say, I don't know. A lot of changing things this week. I can't label it good or bad. I guess just like unpredictable, I guess. I got reached out to by the MI, MI Diaries research team. Turns out last week, I was the 1000th participant to sign up which was so cute. I thought I might have been because I I saw the sign or the flyer and I signed up and then that week, I'd got an email that like, oh, we got our 1,000 sign up person. I was like, oh what are the odds it's me? And then I got an email and the team had given me some MI Diaries swag, which is pretty cool. Some awesome stickers. What else, what is there? I think I have the bag right next to me. A cute like handwritten note, I got some stickers, some treats, and yeah, that's just overall pretty cool.

When when I was in my twenties, I used to frequent a Irish bar. I was actually in — I was 20. And I would go in there every weekend and listen to the music and have a bite to eat, get a beer. And when I turned 21, my mother wanted me to — she wanted to buy my first beer. And I told her, “Hey, let's go, let's go to the pub. It's really a great place.” And we walked in, and the bartender said, “Hi, [name].” My mom just looked at me and said, “How do you know her?” “Oh, she's here all the time. Do you want your regular?” he says. My mother just looked at me and told the waitress, “You need to card her.” And the waitress refused to card me because they'd been serving me for a year in the pub without ID, and now here I was finally turning legal, and they didn't want to know that they were serving me for a year without being legal. It was funny.

So I graduated from college on April 30th, and, as I was walking out of the arena to find my dad after the ceremony, um, I kind of was meeting up with him, and this guy with white hair and sunglasses recognized the two of us, and it took me a second and then I recognized this guy, too. He’d lived about seven houses down the road from us when we were living in Ohio. Um, and he was, his house was on my walk to the neighborhood park, and my dad and I went to the neighborhood park pretty much every evening that the weather permitted, so we were always walking by this guy’s house. He had five boys eventually. I didn’t really wanna play with boys that much, but they had a lot of cool yard toys, so I would play by myself with their Hoppity Hops or in their sandbox or something. And my dad became good friends with this guy that appeared outside of my graduation ceremony, and I thinking they contacted each other like sometimes, maybe talked on the phone like once a year a little bit. When my dad went to visit his relative that were still living in that part of Ohio, occasionally he’d go see this guy, but we had no idea he was gonna be at my graduation ceremony at this sort of small — smaller, not really small — um Christian college, but it turns out um one of his nephews, who is actually like from down South, not even from the Midwest, was at my college as a soccer player, and he’d been there like the whole time I had been there. I didn’t know him, ‘cause I didn’t interact really with the soccer players, and we were very different majors, but so this guy I knew when I was really young was at this ceremony, unbeknownst to me, there to watch his nephew graduate from the same school of like thirty-seven hundred that I was graduating from. And it was a really small world moment because this neighbor remembered me when I was, before I could talk, when I was just in a stroller being taken to the neighborhood park, and he knew me like when I was a toddler, in elementary school, and it was kind of one of those small world, things come around moments. And…

But the best one was so, you know, I get the call coming in and the first thing we do is we like ask them for their name and information so we can look them up in the system. And she -- she gave me her name and I'm like, “Wait a minute. I think this is my fifth grade teacher.” And I only had her name to go on, like, I didn't know what her address was or, you know, anything like that. So I helped her with what she needed and everything and then kind of as we were wrapping up I said, you know, “I'm sorry to like ask but did you used to teach, you know, at whatever elementary school?” And, and she was like, “Yes!” And I was like, “Okay, so you were my teacher, like, I don't know how many years ago,” and many because it was fifth grade, “and like I just want to tell you you were my favorite teacher in elementary school.” Because I really struggled especially like I had a really terrible fourth grade teacher, and I was diagnosed with ADHD that year and she didn't believe it and just thought I was lazy and was just really mean and like humiliated me in front of the class and stuff. And so I was kind of on this brink of like hating school, and then this teacher really turned it around for me in fifth grade. And, but the best part, she was like, “Okay, so what's your name?” And I, I said what my name was and, and she was like, “Did you wear glasses?” And I was like, “No that was the other [name] in our class.” And, and then she goes, “You had dimples, right?” Which I do and people always comment on them. And I was just like, “Yes!” Like I thought that was so amazing that she could remember that after all those years, and it was just so fun to like get to talk to her and tell her that she had, you know, meant something to me.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. TW: Mentions of physical abuse and trauma You'll just be out doing something. For example, there was one time I was in a grocery store and I walked past this guy who looked a lot like my dad, and my household was very abusive growing up. And my dad, my dad, my dad was physically abusive among other things, and I hadn't spoken to him in like three years at this point, hadn't seen him or anything. And when that happened, you know, sh** just started going through my mind. I don't remember, I didn't remember, just everything like that I was grocery shopping for, just completely out of my mind. My boyfriend was talking to me, I don’t remember anything he said. I wasn't really listening at that point. And you know like, my breathing started picking up and I, my brain was flooded with like, fear and anger and, and mostly fear. And so I started sort of having a panic attack and like all of these, whoo, all these memories of like different times that abuse happened throughout my life from him went through me. And I think I ended up having to go to the bathroom like my boyfriend noticed it and he led me there and I did -- there's a thing called grounding you can do where it's, it's basically it -- they've showed it on f***ing Better Call Saul. Like Saul's brother, he does this, it's called grounding. It's where you, you look at things you can see, and you listen for things you can hear, and you feel around for different textures and you notice them. You purposely take a second to notice them, and it's essentially a distraction and a way to pull yourself back into reality. But yeah flooding is a serious thing if you experience it often, and it can really f*** up your life because if that sh** happens at work, which it’s happened to me, happens enough time, you're f***ing fired.