The Power of Resilience: Navigating a Brain Tumor Diagnosis

Imagine standing at the precipice of the unknown, your body a sudden traitor and your future a maze of questions. That's where my journey took a life-altering turn, and on our latest episode, we share the intense and intimate story of battling a brain tumor. Our tale is not just one of survival, but a profound exploration of the human spirit's resilience when faced with the ultimate test of a health crisis. We walk you through the fear, the uncertainty, and the unwavering determination that marked our path to healing.

With each heartbeat during that nerve-wracking diagnosis period, we battled a relentless wave of emotions. Jody and I lay bare the details of grappling with the news, the excruciating wait to determine if the tumor was cancerous, and the surge of strength found in each other's support. We also celebrate the incredible medical care we received, thanks to connections that felt like destiny's hand guiding us. This episode is a tribute to the fight and flight woven into our DNA, and the remarkable human capacity to push through even the darkest fears.

As we journeyed through brain surgery and into the trials of recovery, our story took an unexpected turn. Jody, ever the warrior, faced cognitive challenges that upended her life. Her vulnerability in recounting this experience, and the pivotal role yoga played in her recuperation, offers a glimmer of hope to anyone facing their own health battles. Together, we reflect on the power of self-care, the importance of community, and the transformative potential that lies within the ancient wisdom of yoga philosophy. Join us as we navigate this path of resurgence, a testament to the incredible human capacity for rebirth through adversity.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hello and welcome back to Become One Living. My name is Dan and this is my wife, jody.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Hi Become One Living. Ancient tools for modern living. You know what today is.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Yes.

Speaker 2: 0:33

You do.

Speaker 1: 0:34

I believe so.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Today we're recording January 15, 2023. So you may be listening to this a little later on, but today is my nine-year anniversary of a big day. Life rebirth. Nine years ago I was teaching yoga at 6 AM and I remember a trauma nurse banging at the door of the yoga studio asking to be let in, because I always locked the door. If you're late, you're out, you can't come in. You can't come in after the class starts.

Speaker 2: 1:18

No, and I happened to be going in class late because I wasn't feeling well. So I let her in. She told me she was a trauma nurse and she just got off her shift. So we went in class and I taught and the day kept going, but I was still feeling off. I went to work and I was doing energy work Me and Dan both do energy work and I do yoga therapy and I had this woman in this room and I had this woman in this hold, a cranial, sacral hold.

Speaker 2: 1:55

One of my hands was under her butt, near her sacrum, and one was holding the back of her head and all of a sudden my right arm slid from underneath her butt and got stuck in the air, as if I was holding a pizza pie. You know, when the pizza delivery guy comes in the hands up, he's like pizza. So my right arm went like that, stuck up in the air, bent in the elbow, frozen, and I started stuttering. And it just kept going this loop. And I'm watching her watch me and in my mind I'm thinking I'm telling her to call 911. I think I'm telling her, hey, something's wrong. But apparently I was just saying da, da, da, this repetitive word, babble, just babbling, and because of all the years of yoga that I had done. At that time I realized a flip was switched A switch was flipped Exactly.

Speaker 2: 3:09

Oh my God, I love that you got me, and these are some symptoms that I experienced while living with You'll hear in a moment a brain tumor for 15 years potentially unknown to me, and that was the first sign of a stroke. At that point they said seizure stroke. They weren't sure, but the beautiful thing was in the moment I knew something was up.

Speaker 1: 3:38

Yeah, so the hand frozen up in the air and the stuttering were a sign that it was a seizure? Yes, well, interesting enough, the doctors were out on that.

Speaker 2: 3:55

Some doctors said it was a seizure, others said it was a stroke, that perhaps other symptoms were the seizure symptoms, when I would get spacey and lose my ability to be present. That was what A seizure.

Speaker 1: 4:14

The stroke was the pain.

Speaker 2: 4:17

A seizure. The stroke was the paralysis of my arm and the stuttering. Now, after this happened, I sat down on the couch in my little treatment room and I was able to retract and watch myself having the stroke. I knew that something was going on and it wasn't good. And after it was done, I came to and I asked her how are you? And she was crying and she said what just happened? I said I don't know. I said I think I'm channeling that's what I said.

Speaker 2: 5:01

My husband will not laugh during this episode because it is very impactful to him. This definitely.

Speaker 1: 5:12

Deeply affected.

Speaker 2: 5:16

To me. It was kind of funny because I'm coming out of something saying I'm channeling, because it felt like I was speaking tongue and I was doing energy work and apparently there were heavy solar flares. Now, after this happened, she left an hour later. I kept working on her and I felt so exhausted I couldn't drive. I actually was going to sleep at work and due to having a stroke, I had no capacity to realize that's not normal to want to sleep at work.

Speaker 2: 5:52

So I tried to drive home, got in the car and I started feeling really depressed and I know I'm not supposed to call people, but I called the psychiatrist that someone had given me his info. He was a Wilhelm Reichen therapist, which we could talk about at a different episode and as soon as I picked up the phone I went to start to leave my name and I started stuttering, but this time my right arm went completely numb and I pulled over, luckily realizing that I was going to die. That's what it felt like. I felt my heart was going to explode, from panicking, I think. And I saw the cops go by and I thought okay, I could flag over a cop, I could drive to the hospital or I could drive back to work. Not so smart, I drove back to work.

Speaker 1: 6:53

And the man who managed that office saw you there.

Speaker 2: 7:00

Yes. I banged on his door and I said something's wrong. Bring me to the hospital. He said I really don't think anything's wrong, I think you're tired. And he was trying to talk me out of it, not in a bad way. I'm not really sure why he would do that, because I know when something's wrong. And he finally took me to the hospital and by the time we got there I lost all speech and was paralyzed in my right arm and my right leg was dragging slightly.

Speaker 2: 7:37

Now I'm in the ER and I'm pointing to my chest because I can't speak. I'm alone. He's parking the car and they finally got me in. They did EKGs on my heart. Nothing was wrong and by that time the stroke stopped again. So I was ready to go home and they said no, no, no, no, no. And they took me downstairs to do a brain scan and hours later the ER was so packed. It was a Thursday night. I was in the middle of the ER. I didn't even have my own room. My hospital gown was ripped. I remember a breast was hanging out. My friend it was a male. He was disturbed about that. He's like someone. Get her a blanket Meanwhile with life, life challenge.

Speaker 2: 8:31

Yeah. So here I am and I see the doctor running across the ER to me and he says call your family. I said okay, why? He said you have a brain tumor and your brain is so swollen that we we can't even do surgery until the swelling stops and we don't know if you'll make it through the night. I looked at him and I said do you know who I am? I do yoga, I eat healthy, I'm somewhat of a good person, meaning I'm human and sometimes humanist takes over, I'm giving and I'm loving. This can't be happening. And he said I know exactly who you are, your patient number, you have a brain tumor, call your family and we're going to put you on meds. And I looked at him and I said well, why are you standing here? Go get my meds. So he went and I waited two hours till I called you because Dan at the time was living in Colorado going to school for secondary massage techniques structural integration.

Speaker 1: 9:56

Body work yes, Structural integration.

Speaker 2: 10:01

So here I am in the ER. I didn't tell anyone, I didn't call anyone, mainly, I feel, because I was out of it. I was on drugs to stop the swelling, then seizure meds, but I also was in shock. I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I had a brain tumor. Just hearing those words seemed so odd to me. And while I was in the ER, the very nurse that was in my yoga class in the morning was my nurse. She came in and she said oh my God, what are you doing here? And I said well, it's a funny story. And we giggled and she said well, it's not that funny.

Speaker 1: 10:52

So by the time you were able to get a hold of me which is a story itself and you told me I was wiped out. I was out and I barely could make it home. I was staying with my brother. When I walked into my brother's front door he was watching TV and I was speechless. So I walked sort of like halfway into the home and he looked at me and because he's my brother, he's like what's wrong? And he got up and started walking toward me and I walked toward him and I fell into his arms and he hugged me and I was just completely wiped out. I was beside myself and so I said you've got to book me a flight back to New Jersey. And he took care of all the arrangements because I literally was good for nothing. I just saw everything flash through my head.

Speaker 2: 11:53

I remember not knowing where you worked in Colorado and I had to find Dan. He was working at Massage Envy at the time, just doing some extra work going through school.

Speaker 1: 12:06

I'm trying to make me to end too, so I could study.

Speaker 2: 12:11

And they weren't going to let me talk to him and I said this is a matter of life and death. And when I finally got down on the line I said sit down.

Speaker 1: 12:22

Yeah, so I sat down and I told him and when you told me it's wild, like every scenario, but a certain blankness, it's just the weirdest feeling. And it was a good thing that I was sitting down because I just was completely. My energy, was just everything left.

Speaker 2: 12:50

My friends, we're sharing this for a few reasons. One reason is knowing that when you get unexpected diagnosis or unexpected information, it can physically wipe you out and you become disorientated. So I became frozen and just was doing my due diligence. Okay, I'm here and I got to keep everybody. Okay, so no one panics. And also, being on meds because I don't do anything, I don't take aspirin, tylenol, anything, being on all these drugs at the time for my life, which I'm so grateful for, western medicine, I don't know how much of that added to it. But when somebody has a surprise diagnosis, let's say cancer, tumors, anything, ms whatever, I mean anything.

Speaker 2: 13:46

Parkinson's MS, you go into this dutyful state. I got to get through this, so my job was to get through this and then, being a yoga teacher and learning all these teachings, ancient teachings my goal was to do it gracefully and honestly, and that's what we did. So that day I did not leave the hospital for 30 days. I spent a month in the hospital.

Speaker 1: 14:18

In the ER right. It was like a high.

Speaker 2: 14:23

Oh, I was on the trauma Trauma. I was on the neurological trauma unit Because they didn't know where else to put me, because what happened was my tumor grew into the main blood flow in your brain.

Speaker 1: 14:40

So you have this like a skunk stripe, that's what I think of the sagittal sinus has a stripe. Like a skunk has a stripe and it's called the sagittal sinus and your tumor literally was had woven in, had started to grow, you know, root into that blood supply. So it was. It's so, essentially, it had its own blood supply. Some tumors, benign tumors like you had are independent or a space occupying mass that are independent of all that. Of course, being you, this one had to figure out how to get its own blood supply.

Speaker 2: 15:17

So it was growing, it was alive and thriving off of me and because it was growing into the main blood supply, the surgery became even more complicated because if they went too far I could have led to death and potentially died, and then we had to sit with them, wait to see if it was cancerous or not. So the doctors came in and, luckily, because I teaching yoga for years, I texted somebody. I want to say it was a drunk text, but it was really a steroid, kebra, which is a seizure medicine. Drunk text. I was drunk on drugs. I texted a woman and I said hey, I have to cancel my appointment tomorrow. I'm in the hospital, I have a brain tumor. She wrote back what I said yeah, I'll be in a couple days. I got a tumor, see you next week. She said Can I send my friend? And I wrote yes, meanwhile I don't even have a capacity to process, because that's where the tumor was and the stroke.

Speaker 1: 16:34

Yeah, the tumor was in the part of the brain, the frontal lobe, that all the executive function resides right, right Um, decision making, organizing, initiating those types of things, which is amazing that you were able to initiate a text to somebody. Yeah, you're always like that, though.

Speaker 2: 16:55

Well, I think it was from fight or flight. Another thing, my friends, to think about, is when you're in this state of fear or uncertainty, we are able to function to some degree because we're functioning for our life. It was life or death in my mind right, and not my life or death, but I thought, oh my God, what if I don't show up for my client? That's not cool. That's that's where I was thinking and that's actually fear based. Please listen to this, my friends. If we get really caught up and worried about other people, that's fear based, people pleasing. I was one of those for a while, well, very long time. So I was more worried about everyone else in that moment than me, which allowed me to function and bypass executive functioning, because I was what we call limbic.

Speaker 1: 17:52

Right, so this person that you had an appointment with was who?

Speaker 2: 17:56

Her husband was the head gastrointestine.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Yeah, gastroenterologist at the hospital that you were in and he knew someone, a doctor, his good friend was the head of a New Jersey brain. New Jersey brain and spine.

Speaker 2: 18:15

Yes, and he called in his guy.

Speaker 1: 18:18

Yeah, what a gift.

Speaker 2: 18:19

And this doctor, dr Lee, oh my God, so skillful just had come on board a year later, a year earlier for that particular specialty, he only specializes in the type of tumor I had that was in meshed with the sinus sagittal cavity.

Speaker 1: 18:39

I mean how do people not believe in divine intervention or just that everything's divine, divine timing, everything's kind of meant to be in some some regard. So we learned that the tumor was a walnut or a golf ball, like they said, between the size of a grape and a walnut.

Speaker 2: 19:03

Yes, and I had different options. Keep it in. Do radiation stay on seizure meds?

Speaker 1: 19:11

But the doctor yeah, so when you're the the, the man who was looking at all of the information and the images came to your room to look at the images with you and come up with the decision. He said and we could go up the right. He said we could go up the nasal cavity.

Speaker 2: 19:28

No, they were wrong. So because a CAT scan and an MRI are different if you all don't know that and I mean I know you probably know it because the names are different but when they're doing CAT scans they're a lot fuzzier than MRIs. So at first they thought with the CAT scan it was a peanut and they were going to go up through my nose. Then they realized that's not happening. They had to and I'm going to just share some details.

Speaker 2: 19:57

So I just want my friends to know that, if it's, sensitive yeah, they had to cut my scalp and saw my skull open, remove part of my skull and dive in. And I was under, and not so much because I do remember a lot, because they had to cut each nerve slowly and consciously. So there was a whole team in there to make sure that they didn't sever feeling in my arm, my speech, my life. So they did not know, we did not know what was going to happen after brain surgery. It was about six hours long, and so does that. It was so beautiful.

Speaker 2: 20:47

Dan and I sat and we talked about the fact that I might not live. We talked about I might come out paralyzed and we talked about I might come out not being able to talk. And that is when the power of yoga Let me say this, the power of the system of yoga, came in handy, because I am not only my speech, I'm not only my body, I'm more than that. And I thought who would I be? How am I going to be in the world if I don't have those abilities anymore? And I sat with that and cried and Started to dive deeper and deeper in this whole time at the hospital waiting. It was about five or six days before they actually could do surgery. And I was alone in the dark Because I my eyes, I couldn't see, I couldn't handle looking at screens or anything, and I was so sedated I slept a lot, but I just sat with the whole constructs that I created in 39 years of my life.

Speaker 2: 21:57

I'm a yoga teacher, I'm a yoga owner. I do this, I'm a storyteller, I'm this and in one instance, snap, boom, I'm nothing. Disease, circumstances, life, it doesn't care who you are, it doesn't matter how great you think you are or how generous you think you are. If something's going to happen, my friends, it's gonna happen. So I'm asking you now do you have tools to, to navigate what life gives you? And I had tools. I had friends. Not Friends in this way of I mean, I had friends that came to support me, but I mean I have friends that are conscious and have tools that they use. And those friends that use their tools Made me and helped me use my tools.

Speaker 1: 22:59

Yeah, they, they supported you and being held and they supported you. I think they're in a great way, reflecting you know that you were capable, you, you had tools, you had been practicing yoga already for a really, really, really long time. So I I Mean there's no way to prove it, but I get the feeling that, had you not been the person that you were all the way up into surgery, that your recovery, how expeditiously you got through the cognitive speech therapy and got your speech back in order and figuring things out and organizing things, I mean today it's like crazy. You're like the most organized entrepreneurial business owner, yogi, that I've. I've witnessed. It's really together. So you made it incredible recovery.

Speaker 2: 23:54

Let's talk about that. The tumor sat in executive functioning and for Periods in my life I was severely depressed Because I couldn't start or initiate a project like the dishes. When I first met Dan 13 years ago, he walked in my house, dishes and clothes were all over. I had to kick clothes out of the way for him to walk into my home and I thought I was a slob. I thought I was dirty. I had all these ideas. I had no idea a brain tumor was growing in the area that Wouldn't allow me to do the dishes. I Couldn't start a project. I would stand in front of the sink or stare at my clothes and think I'm too depressed. It had nothing to do with depression, it was. There was no connection. There was a tumor blocking the connection and we had no idea. I had no idea. I couldn't get organized, I couldn't sustain a project, I couldn't meditate. Now, finding all that out was a relief, but when I woke up I Was stuttering and barely had any speech and you had work to do.

Speaker 2: 25:16

I had a lot of work to do. I couldn't feel my right arm. Still I Did wake up. The nurses were giggling. I woke up and I said, wow, what time is it? How long was I in there? And as soon as I could get up I walked the hospital rooms with my IV and A couple days later we found out I had a blood clot in my sinus sagittal cavity from the quarterization of the surgery. Now, because I had a blood clot, they had to keep me and Give me blood thinners.

Speaker 1: 25:52

Yeah, and the typical blood thinner that is usually given was it kumudin your body was resistant to.

Speaker 2: 25:58

Yeah, the blood thinners weren't working.

Speaker 1: 26:01

So they did. They used a drug that I think they were experimenting or testing in Europe, that had not been Completely approved for use here, but the doctor felt strongly that this is probably the route to go and it was Think it was Zeralta or Zeralta, yeah, something like that, but it was only used for lungs at the time and they didn't know if it would work.

Speaker 2: 26:27

But they felt we got to do something because they couldn't let me leave. So 30 days in the hospital couldn't? All I could do was sleep, and I had read a book about a woman Having a stroke and how important sleep was. So we wouldn't let anyone come visit me, it was just a few people were allowed in yeah, we tried to, yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:50

We did try and I slept a lot. I did you, I did All the speech therapy and occupational therapy and I got my speech back. I meditated, we dissolved the blood clot and my neurologist one day came in, took off his surgery hat, sat down in a chair and like slid down and said to me who are you? And I said what he's like, who are you? Why do people care so much about you? I said I'm really confused, dr Lee, I had no idea.

Speaker 2: 27:28

He said I get calls every day Asking to see your paperwork, because there are other doctors that I know, that were in the hospital, that work with him, that know me, and he said and their wives and these people, they're all asking how is Jodi, what's going on? And he said who are you? Why, why? And I said I'm just a yoga teacher. And he said Just a yoga teacher. He said that's what you do, you just, you just teach yoga. I said yeah, and Someone said to me you've impacted many lives. It was as if I had died and I got to see my Obituary and I got to see what people said about me. So every year Facebook gives me memories and I get to see all the beautiful posts that people wrote about me and all the support that I got, and it blows me away that I have Engaged with so many people and have touched so many in a positive way that they cared.

Speaker 1: 28:45

Yeah, it's a testament to the path you've chosen and the history you built of Sharing what you've learned from the people that you followed. You know Yoga, philosophy and all those things that you take into your classroom and share is super touching and moving. You're, you're, you're a teacher that you know. It's like in our new office and somebody comes back, they came to find us in our office and it's like, oh my god, I haven't seen you in years and people come, literally come back to visit you.

Speaker 2: 29:14

If they're in the area, you've impacted people and my friends I wanted to share with you. That was never my intent. My intent was never to teach people, inspire people or motivate people. All the practices that I've learned and studied were intended to make me whole. I have experienced much more than just this very incident. Dan jokes that I have nine lives. I still have three left, so watch out. But after brain surgery, because it was very stressful, I then experienced chronic illness for multiple years, and that's a whole, nother episode Multiple episodes.

Speaker 1: 30:11

But the common thread through all of that is your lifestyle of yoga and the tools of yoga and that the system is. I mean honestly, after surgery. I went to visit you that one day and you had the back of the table inverted and your legs were up the table and you're like I was doing legs up the wall.

Speaker 2: 30:33

If you don't know what that is in a hospital bed.

Speaker 1: 30:35

In a hospital bed. And another time the nurses came to see you and they couldn't find you and you were aside the bed on your mat doing yoga on the floor, and they were panicked because they couldn't find you. So you're right back to yoga. Right back to, I mean right back. I mean it's just become who you are.

Speaker 2: 30:56

We need to do our practices so that our practices just do us. Even the way I ate. At the hospital, I chose what I ate. I didn't eat as much. I knew I was laying around what can I eat to fuel me? I became educated and when the doctor said you need to read like this or learn how to read, because I wasn't comprehending at first, so I'm reading, and it was just imagine watching a child open a book and the child's looking at the book and they're not really reading it, they're just pretending. That's what I was doing. And when they asked me to say my ABCs, I proceeded to say them and I watched my husband and my mother start crying, and I had no idea why, because in my mind I'm singing ABCD, efg. That's not what was coming out of my mouth. And it took me months to formulate my ABCs, my one, two, threes. There was detailed lists that I had to eat. Brain surgery changed me, and a thought I'd like to share besides all of this is I learned that I don't like the word recover.

Speaker 1: 32:36

What word do you prefer?

Speaker 2: 32:42

Become more resilient, because recovery if you look up the word recover, it means to go back and get what you lost, to go back and to bring something forth. I don't want to be who I was before brain surgery. I'm not when we use these words. I have to recover. I have to recover. I don't have to recover. I need to integrate what is what just happened and get back up again and just keep going with what's here in the moment, not relive and say I want to be who I was before. Please think about that.

Speaker 2: 33:20

If you are experiencing something, an illness, a situation that you oh I want to recover this. If we're not growing, we're dying, just like a plant, plants if they're not growing and being nourished, they're dying. That's us. I don't want to go back. I want to be able to live with what was what happened to me, and I am and do I have 100% recovery? I say no, I don't. I don't believe I'll ever be 100%, because I get tired quickly. Sometimes lights bother me, but for the most part 99% of the time because of the tools of yoga, neurosculpting, which we'll talk about, which was created by Lisa Wimberger. That was key in my recovery.

Speaker 1: 34:22

No doubt you pursued those things with vigor, not that you hadn't before, but this really seemed to turn you on. I'm not sure what it was, but I know that you were wanting to discover yourself and move forward and learn and upgrade everything, live. It almost upgraded your passion for living consciously.

Speaker 2: 34:56

Yeah, when they were bringing me in for surgery. This is. I'm going to wrap it up with this. I want to leave you all with this. I was asking God or the universe, whatever word you want. I was just saying someone, give me a sign, please, what is happening here, and they wheeled me into a unit, part of the hospital that wasn't even open yet. It was still under construction.

Speaker 1: 35:28

I think it was the kids.

Speaker 2: 35:29

It was the surgery surgical room. The operating room was for a child yeah, it was for children. So they wheel me in and my nurse is going, going, going, going, like bing bonging all over the place. And I grab her arm and I go what's your name? And she said Grace. I said Grace, slow down, slow down, breathe with me. And we breathed. I said there's no rush.

Speaker 2: 36:03

We go in the ER and I look up on the ceiling and there's a mural a painting of a parrot of a McCaw parrot that my father had and my dad passed it's, I think, 12 years now but an instant reminder and support and divine message that everything's happening in the right way.

Speaker 2: 36:34

And that I'm supported, that physically people aren't there, but they're there. And as I went in, there was so many people around me for the surgery and I went under and I said at that moment if I live, I will meet everything unresolved in my heart and in my soul, so that I could live life more fully. And so here we are, become one living tools, ancient tools for modern living. This was just one experience of mine and ours together that has made these tools more important, like Dan said. That's why we're doing these, this podcast.

Speaker 1: 37:31

And you all are invited to join us on this journey.

Speaker 2: 37:38

Yeah, reach out at, become one living at gmailcom, with any questions or ideas for us to talk and share about, because we're just getting started. So thank you for humoring me and listening if you're listening, because it was definitely a major death in my life so that I could be reborn. Thank you.