No End In Sight

Michelle Irving talks autoimmune hepatitis, migraine and vertigo. Michelle also shares a lot about her spiritual and emotional experiences of illness, her focus on self-compassion, and how she’s used Greek mythology to build a map that makes sense of the chronic illness cycle. Transcript I’m Brianne Benness and this is No End In Sight, a ...

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R A A Dakar talks ME and fibro, the isolation of chronic illness, and mourning the person you used to be. Transcript I’m Brianne Benness and this is No End In Sight, a podcast about life with chronic illness. As usual, here’s a quick plug for my patreon campaign just in case you’ve been enjoying ...

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Mahalah May talks chronic constipation and incontinence, fibromyalgia, vaginismus, and IBS. Transcript I’m Brianne Benness and this is No End In Sight, a podcast about life with chronic illness. Of course I’m going to start by reminding you about my patreon campaign just in case you’ve been enjoying the show and also have a few ...

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Suzanne Lahna talks chronic migraine, medication side effects, and making hay while the sun shines. Transcript I’m Brianne Benness and this is No End In Sight, a podcast about life with chronic illness. First off, I want to thank my new patrons Meredith and Sari! My patreon campaign is a really simple way for listeners ...

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Crew Dog from One Sick Vet talks connective tissue, mast cell activation syndrome and veteran disability services.

Brianne: I’m Brianne Benness and this is No End In Sight, a podcast about life with chronic illness.

[guitar riff]

Drew: Hey this is associate producer Drew Maar. Before we get started, we wanted to remind you that No End In Sight has a newsletter. It’s full of updates about twitter conversations happening in our hashtag #NEISVoid, book and article recommendations about chronic illness and disability, and links to new podcast episodes and miscellaneous other media. If you are comfortably able to support our work, there are paid options available, but all core content will be free. You can take a look at previous newsletters and subscribe over at NoEndInSight.substack.com. Today we’ll be talking with Crew Dog from One Sick Vet about connective tissue, mast cell activation syndrome and veteran disability services. A few content notes for this episode: There is talk of the military throughout this episode, including a mention of the Gulf War, Desert Storm, as well as 9/11 and the ensuing wars around thirty minutes in. And Crew Dog and Brianne refer to the pandemic a few times throughout the episode, but they do not talk about COVID or lockdown very extensively in this episode. Before we start, here’s our disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Make sure you talk to your practitioner about any questions or symptoms.

[guitar riff]

Brianne: So I like to start just by asking people, how was your health as a kid?

Crew Dog: Which is an interesting question because like you, it’s a lot of retrospective work for me, and I would have always said that my health was excellent.

Brianne: Yeah.

Crew Dog: And I think that’s still a fairly accurate but what I’ve come to recognize is that primary parent is sort of in denial about health issues. And so they always told us that everyone in our family had excellent health.

Brianne: And that’s how you knew, Right.

Crew Dog: So I really don’t have the same history of... that some chronically ill and disabled people do of not being able to do sports or having pain that prohibited me from doing things. I was a very active child, but I now believe that I have a connective tissue issue. And that... I can look back now on incidences where I got hurt and I was in pain and adults told me, “You don’t have any broken bones. So you’re fine.”

Brianne: Right, right. So there’s no pain cause. That’s the only way pain happens.

Crew Dog: Exactly, “If it’s not a broken bone, you have no pain. Go away. Shake it off.” But I can look at a significant incident when I was in about eighth grade. And at the time, at school in PE playing basketball, I received a very severe sprain to an ankle. And, of course, we also didn’t have health care when I was a child. So there was a lot of things that we didn’t pursue care for. But it wasn’t until three, four years ago when I was working for... with a physical therapist for a different injury that I... you know, she sort of explained to me that there’s three ligaments that go across your ankle, and I’m now convinced that I ruptured one of them.

Brianne: Eugh!

Crew Dog: It was a sprain, but I think that I completely ruptured one of those ligaments. But we didn’t have healthcare. So I got an ACE bandage and crutches for a couple of weeks.

Brianne: Maybe some ice.

Crew Dog: And I spent a whole summer running and sort of trying to train my foot to go back into the correct position. Because it wanted to cheat outward. So...

Brianne: The guard rails were off.

Crew Dog: Yeah. So I was very fortunate that I was able to be very active and do everything that I wanted to do physically as a child. But I do think that I was accumulating connective tissue damage all the way along, and it was never recognized or treated.

Brianne: Yep. I can see how that would happen. Oh, scared eyes. Yeah, and that is of course, very relatable to kind of look back and go, “Oh, those might’ve been significant injuries, but I wasn’t thinking about them that way at the time time, even if I was injured for weeks at a time or a month at a time.” I feel like there’s a piece of it that’s like... yeah, when you were a kid and if the people around you think it’s not a problem, then you’re like, “Okay, I guess it’s normal to do this,” or whatever it is. Especially if your condition is genetic and the people around you also had similar experiences. Yeah. Woof. Okay. So that...