Episode 36: Navigating Health Scares in Midlife: The Visible and the Invisible
Health scares in midlife come in two forms: the visible ones you feel, like a back that goes out and won't recover, and the invisible ones you can't, like a cholesterol number that flags a problem you'd never have noticed on your own. In this episode, Brent and Rob each put a real one on the table. Brent walks through the lower back injury that sidelined him for three months and the month he wasted letting AI tell him what he wanted to hear. Rob shares his long history with elevated cholesterol, the heart testing that followed, and what his sports cardiologist actually told him about navigating it. It's a real look at how you respond when your body sends a signal, and why how you navigate it matters more than the scare itself. Plus a colonoscopy prep story that has to be heard to be believed.
Links, resources, books mentioned:
Topics we are covering in this episode:
The difference between visible and invisible health scares
A four-level framework for how people respond to a diagnosis
Why relying on AI for self-diagnosis can make things worse
The role of alternative therapy in injury recovery
What heart and cardiovascular testing can reveal that you can't feel
Balancing the things that keep you healthy against the things you love
Transcript:
Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.
Brent (00:01)
Rob, one thing I've noticed with the people that we hang out with in our age demographic is how we now greet each other with the injuries that we have, the illnesses that we're dealing with. It's starting to dominate the conversations in a way that never did back in our 30s and 40s. Why do you think that is? And as you're explaining that, can you share with us your colonoscopy story?
Rob (00:45)
You're going to make me go there. So I'll answer your first question, Brent. The reason I think why we talk about it so much is because the frequency of which in which it happens. I mean, every day I get up, something weird is happening with my body. We go see a doctor and we're getting different diagnoses for different things. And so it's something that's so frequent inside of each one of us that we're dealing with. And it's a very common thing with other people to deal with it. So it becomes either a funny story that we're sharing with somebody, a warning story that we're sharing with somebody, or an excuse to get out of doing something because something is bothering us, something hurts, something didn't go as planned physically. So I think those are the main two reasons why it ends up becoming a big part of every conversation. Oh, I saw my doctor the other day. And that takes over a nice portion of a dinner conversation.
Brent (01:35)
Or it's I'm going to see the doctor because of this. You know, it's crazy though. It shows up so much. And sometimes I'm like, why are we going there? There's other things that we could talk about, but it's top of mind. So now let's dig into the real one here. So just to set the stage, because I was actually witnessing not the whole process, but your colonoscopy story is certainly one that is worth sharing.
Rob (02:03)
All right. So first off, I'll just let my the entire audience know totally clean. I don't have to go back and get another colonoscopy for 10 years. So I'm very happy about that. And this started in my preparation for the colonoscopy. And what I've learned since then is there's different ways that different doctors prescribe and suggest that you do your preparation for having your colonoscopy done. And my preparation was a combination of Gatorade. So thank goodness I didn't have to drink that really disgusting, like thick mucus drink or whatever. I got to use drink Gatorade. But I actually had to put additive into the Gatorade and start the colonoscopy with a couple of Dulcolax pills, so some laxative pills. And so I go to the grocery store to get ready for the prep about a week in advance, and I buy all the supplies I need for my colonoscopy, and I'm going to get the pills, of which I need to take four, two at night and two in the morning to be prepared for my procedure. And I look at the options at the pharmacy, and I got either a bottle of a hundred, which I've never needed pills like this before. I could buy a hundred of them, or they had this little box and it was a four-pack. And I look at the box, I'm like, oh, it's a four-pack of Dulcolax. That's that must be the colonoscopy pack. That must be a normal thing. So I bought the four-pack. Didn't think anything of it. Fast forward to the day before my preparation, I get ready, open up the box, and these are the weirdest pills I've ever seen in my life. I'm looking at them like, this is odd. It's the bit, it's a giant pill. The thing is like, I don't know, an inch and a half long, and it was really waxy. And so I'm like, this is weird. So I pop the first one in, pop the second one, and it was really hard to swallow. I'm like, this is weird. And so I sit down on the couch, I'm in the middle of prep, and I just keep stewing in my head, like, what the heck? Why that was the weirdest pills I've ever taken. And so I go and I pull the thing back out of the garbage, and lo and behold, I never put my glasses on while I was at the grocery store and I didn't look at the package. I didn't swallow pills, I swallowed the suppository version.
Brent (04:12)
I can't hold back.
Rob (04:16)
Yeah. So of course, I start panicking right away, and I don't know what to do. So the first thing I do is I call the doctor's office and I have to leave a voicemail because it's after hours, no one's there. So I leave a voicemail hoping they'll get back to me. Like, what do I do? What am I supposed to do? So I, of course, Google it and it says call poison control. So I called poison control to find out what I should do. And the guy goes, You can hear him chuckling, but trying to hold back. He said, Yeah, so it's not fatal. You don't need to worry about it. It just probably is the wrong dosage for what you need. And it's going to take a little bit longer than intended to actually work. so you might want to just look to see what your dose was supposed to be, and you can still take a couple more of the regular pills, is what they gave me at poison control. And so that is the colonoscopy story. Luckily, I was also able when I got to the hospital. Of course, the nurses ask me, how was your preparation? And I'm like, Well, you didn't listen to my voicemail. And they go, What are you talking about? And so I shared the story with the nurse that was asking me about my preparation. And she was laughing so hard, she went and got the other nurses at the hospital to come listen to the story. So I'm sitting there like four or five nurses sitting around me just to listen to me talk about the fact that I swallowed a suppository in preparation for my colonoscopy.
Brent (05:32)
If you are those that are watching this on Apple Podcasts, because you can now watch an Apple podcast, I am in tears. I mean, because Rob called me and he said, Hey, I just got to tell you what I did. I'm like, what'd you do? And it's not that most people want to talk about colonoscopies, but he's like, I just got to tell you about my preparation, what I decided to do. And, you know, I like the fact that you added in I didn't use my glasses. So that shows that midlife is fully kicked in, can't read, you know, it's too small a print. And at the store, you're like, I'll just go with the four-pack, the fun four-pack. You know, that's just a colonel.
Rob (06:17)
Colonoscopy prep kit. That's what I thought it was. I thought they should have actually advertised it as the colonoscopy prep kit. Yeah. Should have read a little bit more.
Brent (06:24)
Yeah. So you survived quick.
Rob (06:27)
I survived it. Yes, I did survive it. I gave everybody a really nice laugh. I've told the story a handful of times since. It's not that embarrassing. At least I'm not that embarrassed. I just can't believe I did it, and I can't believe I was able to swallow something like that. never having actually seen a suppository in my life, I guess now I know what they look like, so I won't make that mistake again.
Brent (06:48)
You just put it in the wrong end, Rob. It just you know, it's just funny that process like, why is it so waxy? Why is it so big? No human should be swallowing this. Well, no, this is bizarre. Technically, they shouldn't.
Rob (07:00)
No. No. So for our audience, we actually want to have a little bit of fun with this story and fun some fun with your stories. Today we're going to talk about health scares, but we want to know actually if you have a funny story as well, something from a health standpoint that's a funny story. We're going to ask you to actually message the show and leave us a voice message with your funny story, then we hopefully can play it for our audience in a future recording. And for those of you that Brent mentioned on Apple Podcasts that are watching on video, those of you that actually leave us a message, if you also in that message tell us what color cups Brent and I are holding up, we're going to send you some midlife circus swag. So all you have to do is message the show, leave us a voice message with what color the cup is and your health, your funny health story. We want to play those at a future episode.
Brent (07:46)
And just to show you how easy this is, is I'll flash my phone. And this is a prior episode of Midlife Circus, but if you look at the player for Apple Podcasts, you'll see a new thing that says turn video on or turn video off. It is that simple. So there's certain podcasts we're in the front end of this, and you'll see some of the episodes that we have. We're going to do more field trips and things outside, and just to show you some of our experiences in the video is going to be something cool to see. So we just wanted to show you how easy it is. And it's also the same thing. Rob mentioned message the show. All you have to do is go to the show notes, just scroll down on the Apple Podcast Player or any podcast player, and it'll say message is so. You click that, it'll give you an option to either leave a voice message or leave a text message. In this case, if you want some swag, you got to leave a voice message. It's that easy.
Rob (08:44)
First five that leave a voice message, we'll get some swag.
Brent (08:47)
Very, very cool. All right, so that leads us to today's conversation, Rob. It's about midlife health scares. And there's really two takeaways from our conversation that we're going to have today is the first is midlife health scares are inevitable. They're a certainty. They're going to happen. Unfortunately, we're not in our 20s and 30s where a lot of these things just don't happen. You don't have to take a colonoscopy in your 20s, typically. So there's things that we just got to realize this is going to happen. Typically, there's two types of things we're navigating in midlife, the invisible and the visible. We'll talk a little bit about that. But the key question here is what are you going to do about it? And if you've got something that you're dealing with, it's what are you going to do to navigate that? And are you going to own it? So we're going to start out the conversation with what we call visible health scares. These are things that you can feel and you know something is wrong. Let's say you broke a bone, let's say your stomach is, you got some stomach issues that are kind of bothering you. Let's say you got that nagging, you know, ankle injury, whatever it may be, these are things that are visible. You can see it or you can feel it. And it's not kind of hiding in your body. It's like there's a signal happening. So we're going to start out and talk about visible.
Rob (10:07)
Brent, you've actually mentioned your visible health issue a couple times on our podcast. You had a back issue that going back a few months ago. I think for a lot of us, especially men, as we get into midlife, our back and lower back is more prone to having issues. Could you just share with our audience a little bit about what that issue was? What was going on with your back and what started it, what caused it? And then we're going to get into what you did about it eventually.
Brent (10:33)
So this goes back for me several years, back to my teenage where I had a sports injury in my lower back and it kind of recovered from it, and then it would just resurface periodically. And this is like the lower back that's kind of getting into the pelvic area on the backside. And so it was just an issue that would reoccur and then it would just disappear. But back in November, when we were set, it was at the end of November, and we were setting up decorations for the holidays, I was pulling a bunch of boxes out of our storage or just you know, out of our basement. And I just kind of leaned funny and it just felt odd. It wasn't like a big twinge or tweak or something that I'm like, oh boy. It was just like, oh, that's a little sore. Woke up the next day, my back was a little stiff. Following day after that, I did a normal exercise workout. I kind of ignored all the signals that were happening, did some exercise. We actually got some snow. I was shoveling snow. And then about four days later, I literally could not stand up. I couldn't barely get out of bed. And the only comfortable position I had was laying on my back or laying on my side. And it was at a severity that I know, Rob, like we couldn't even record podcasts.
Rob (11:50)
Like I couldn't stand-you canceled like three or four of our recording sessions because you couldn't even sit upright in a chair for more than just a couple minutes.
Brent (11:57)
I couldn't sit in a chair, I couldn't sit in a car, I couldn't stand. And so it was a really uncomfortable thing that took place. For me, I knew this one was different because in the past, I would just recover within, I don't know, you know, a couple weeks. But this one was a lot different.
Rob (12:15)
So, how long did it last actually for you, Brent? How so from late November, you're moving around boxes. How long did it actually last before you can actually do all the physical activities that you wanted to do?
Brent (12:26)
It was a little over three months. Okay. And I would say the first two months of that was completely no activity whatsoever. I've never experienced, I've had some bad injuries in my life. I broke my neck a long, long time ago skiing. So yeah, that was a something where I couldn't, you know, I had a long recovery, but this was a kind of a random injury that I literally could not function for a few months. It was so, so challenging.
Rob (12:53)
So walk us through the so you had the injury, walk us through what you did about it. So, what was your diagnosis process? How did you approach dealing with this back injury? It's something you said had been kind of a recurring theme, but not to the extreme that it was this time around, given the fact that usually within a week or two, you're up and at it and normal again. So, what was this process? How was it different this time?
Brent (13:15)
Well, I in hindsight, I looked back and I made a mistake because I relied heavily on Dr. AI. And I was on Chat GPT, and if ChatGPT didn't give me the answer I wanted, I'd go to Gemini. If Gemini didn't give me the answer, I'd go to Perplexity, and I just was using that and I did that for about a month.
Rob (13:34)
What was the answer you wanted? So you actually it's interesting you said that. Is it they gave me and not the answer I wanted, so I kept asking the question. What was the answer you wanted?
Brent (13:42)
You'll be fine in a couple of days. Literally, or hey, you've had this in the past, just give it about a week, it'll start to get better. It was actually getting worse, but what was happening is it's like do these stretching exercises, do these things. It's just an algorithm. Like I got to just I'm just talking to myself here. I'm like, every day I would spend hours researching this injury and looking at diagrams and watching videos and taking it over to YouTube. I'm trying to self-diagnose this and actually self-recovery. But what was different about this diagnosis is the pain was very severe. Like I couldn't put socks on, I couldn't, like it was just so strange. I'd never experienced something like this, but I was being so stubborn, Rob. And I was being stubborn because I just did not want to go see a doctor. Because sometimes when you have a bigger injury, a doctor's going to tell you what you don't want to hear. So when I look at this, I think there's a way that, you know, you and I have talked about this. There's four typical responses you can have to any sort of injury or diagnosis, whether it's visible or invisible. The first is we'll just call it a scoring of zero. That means you do nothing. Zero, hey, somebody tells you need to get a colonoscopy, you're like, that not going to do that. That's zero. You do nothing with it. Number one, kind of the next level is you're informed. So you might go get a test done, you might go see a doctor. Number two is well, I'm going to do a little bit to address it, but it's a little bit more part-time, and you just kind of say, Oh, it'll get better, and I'll just do a few of the stretches they tell me. And then number three, you're just all in and I'm going to fix this, I'm going to own it. What I found is I got stuck because I was stuck between really zero and one because I didn't want to do anything. And I was being informed by an AI tool, but I was just saying, I'm going to get better, I'm going to get better, I'm going to get better. And I really what changed for me was a good friend of ours up in the mountains. He's had lower back issues. He's like, You got to stop the madness. He goes, Here's my doctor's number. Call him. He's an orthopedic surgeon, get an MRI, and get some truth behind this. So I did, and I called him and randomly he gave me his cell phone number. I which I didn't even doctors do that. So I think he was with a patient. He just answered, and I'm like, he's like, Yeah, yeah, let me call you back. I'm like, oh, this is strange. This is a well-known doctor in our community. And I was just like, okay. but that was a really interesting process for me, Rob, because I actually then started to look at a couple different things to explore. But I'll tell you what, I sat on it too long. I had a month of literally just trying to solve it myself. When something's severe like that, I'm not prepared for that. I'm not a doctor. Like I don't know anything about it outside of what Dr. Google and Dr. AI tell me.
Rob (16:52)
Well, your description of you were somewhere between a zero and a one. Zero is doing nothing, one is informed. I'm actually going to probably say you were closer to the zero, actually, even maybe even negative, because you were using Dr. Claude, Dr. Chat, Dr. Google to actually tell you what you wanted to hear. And the algorithm is built to actually tell you what you want to hear. So, oh, do this and you should feel better. Do you feel better? I feel a little better because I did some stretches, not knowing you may have been actually hurting or exacerbating the problem a little bit with what you were actually doing, because you were telling AI what you wanted to hear. You actually, it's built into the way in which you ask questions in it. So actually, it was probably closer to a zero or negative one or two because it may have been actually pulling you back versus just sitting on the couch waiting for this thing to get better.
Brent (17:40)
I was so stubborn. I mean, I was essentially gaming it by asking it questions, knowing that I would get a response that I like to hear. And it was so strange because it's like, yeah, you're doing great, you're recovering. Give it another week. And I'm like, okay, I'll give it another week.
Rob (17:57)
Here's a study from the Mayo Clinic that actually verifies exactly what I'm telling you to do. Now it may not be your issue, but here's a study that actually is telling you exactly what you wanted to know and hear.
Brent (18:07)
I have to say on the flip side, Rob, I do get value out of using some of these tools to research certain things. But in certain instances, you got to know when to say when. Like, when do you want to talk to a human? And the human responses are different than the AI responses because they've got repetition. They're actually looking and talking to you and asking you unique questions. But it was a really challenging time for me. And in hindsight, you know, would I do it differently for sure? But I guess I had to go through it.
Rob (18:42)
Yeah. So three months, a back injury, three months. It took you a month of doing really nothing, maybe even actually causing damage. So once you finally talk to this doctor, and great you got the cell phone, that's actually pretty cool to have a specialist cell phone now. what did you end up doing? What'd they do for you? And how did you address your back issue?
Brent (19:03)
So there's a couple of things that I did is when I saw the orthopedic surgeon, you first do the x-rays and then you do the MRI. And the MRI did confirm that I've got some degenerative discs in one of my, you know, discs. And so, okay, that's there. Then he said, you know, there's so many routes that you can go. And I really appreciated his approach. He's like, yeah, you could do surgery and you could do disc replacement, but he goes, that's the last thing I want you to do right now. And then he said, There's this other procedure you could do. I don't want you to do that either. I want you to focus on getting healthy and taking your time to get back in. And I also started working with, and you're familiar with this individual in our community, there's an individual that does some alternative techniques. It's called soft tissue work. And I had used him in the past for other things, and I went and saw him, and he was, it's like physical therapy, but it's different. They use different techniques and tools between kind of the chiropractic, physical therapy. And he started working with me and he gave me specific things to do that were very counter to what I learned from the AI tools and the patience that he pushed me, and both doctor and they're both doctors, they both said you have to be patient in your recovery. Not my greatest strength, Rob. Like, I just want to go for it and say, what's the magic fix here? And they're like, there is no magic fix. This is a time thing. So if you think you're going to go skiing, you might get the last few weeks of the ski season. If you think you're going to start to do some of the other activities like spring golf, probably not right out of the gates. How about trail running? Nah, not for a little while. So it was an eye-opening experience for me. But what I would say is I learned a few things because not only can you go down the orthopedic route, and some people like to do that right out of the gates, but this alternative, you know, whether you go to like a soft tissue specialist that I did, a lot of people use massage therapists or they do acupuncture or chiropractic work or PRP stem cell replacement. There's so many routes you can go. That was a part of my journey to say, what can I do? Because I know because I've had quite a lot of surgeries from injuries in my life, the moment you cut yourself open, it typically will introduce something else down the road. It can. You know, and I've had spine fusion when I broke my neck. Well, that actually makes my lower back issue a little bit more challenging because my spine was altered. So there's different things that they were able to teach me. And but I can tell you patience was the number one, which was so hard to do.
Rob (21:46)
I'm glad you brought up the alternative therapy component, Brent. And I've seen the same soft tissue expert for different things that I've been dealing with and little niggles here and there to be able to allow me to keep running and things like that. How I would describe it is it's the Worst 15-minute massage you will ever have, hyper focused on a certain spot on your body. It hurts, it brings tears to my eyes every time I see this individual. However, the outcome afterwards feels absolutely incredible. Takes about a couple of days, and I'm bruised. I got like pinpoint bruises on my body from some of the work that they do, but it actually helps me fix the problem. Did you actually ask your doctor about that altern alternative therapy? And what was the doctor's reaction?
Brent (22:28)
It was really cool. He was very open to it. And he was familiar with the individual, so that was a good thing. But he said, Is it as long as you are working with a specialist that understands this type of injury, then I'm comfortable. But if you're trying to do something that's really far out there that is not something that has, you know, the studies or the science behind it. And I'm not saying don't go super alternative. I'm just saying what the doctor said to me. So he paired it up to say, I think this is a good thing. Do this for a while. I don't want to see you for a while. And, you know, let me know if there's an issue that comes up. And thankfully, I haven't had that.
Rob (23:11)
Well, it's interesting that your doctor was not only just familiar with the resource, the alternative therapy is actually they knew the individual. And what I've found is I've started talking with just physicians, alternative therapies used to be thought of as kind of like quack science, right? It was, you don't go see a chiropractor, it's not going to actually really help it. But in recent years, as I've seen doctors, they've said, oh, you might want to try chiropractor. You might actually want to go and get a really good deep tissue massage to help alleviate this problem. It's not just take this pill or just rest. I'm finding a lot more physicians are understanding of the alternative therapy and promoting it for their patients. And in almost any geography, alternative therapies are available and something you should definitely ask your doctor about. It's not just go under the knife, as Brent said. It's not just suffer and deal with it. There might be resources. And we live in a town of just 5,000 people. We have specialists in sports massage. We have specialists, a soft tissue and spine. We have a bunch of different chiropractors in a town of 5,000 people. So I think you can actually very easily find alternative options that might help alleviate some of the problems that people are having.
Brent (24:18)
I think the one thing that we want to put out is the disclaimer on this is Rob and I aren't doctors. And we're not saying do one thing or another. We're just sharing our own personal experiences. I've had a lot of success with some of the alternatives because I do get concerned about going under the knife or doing something really extreme. But I've also had to go under the knife because that was the only option that I had. So you've got to find out what works for you and where is your mindset at that point in time and do your research. And that's a great way to use the AI tools is to say, what are my options? Not solve this for me and just hope and pray, which that didn't work at all for me.
Rob (24:57)
Or use AI to help you ask the doctor more informed questions, to actually figure out. And that's what I've experienced using AI for is if I'm going to go in to see the doctor about something, I'll have it actually help me with some of the questions I should be asking. So I can actually help move me along a path to actually solving the problem. So, Brent, where are you at today? What have you done since you got the diagnosis? You started seeing a soft tissue specialist. Tell us about how you're feeling today, but also what are you going to be doing right now and going forward that's going to help prevent this from coming up again?
Brent (25:28)
Well, thanks for asking the question. I feel great. And we did that surf trip, you know, earlier in the summer, and I was really nervous about going into that. And I felt great. I didn't have any back issues. And so what I've been doing is I've actually elevated my response to that level three, which is owning it. And I now exercise very, very consistently five days a week. I'm doing core, I'm doing strength, and I think that's what's getting me through it. I'm also paying attention to the signals a little bit more. And if I feel a tweak or a twinge, I usually pull back. In the past, I usually tried to push through it. But I'm also aware of different signals of just saying, is this exhaustion, is this fatigue, is this you're just sore because you did something you haven't done in a while. So really good example is yesterday. I usually, by this time in the summer, I'm usually running three days a week and doing long distances. I've only run a couple runs. And yesterday I did a six and a half mile run, which for me usually is like a no-brainer. I was exhausted, Rob, after that, because I only run a couple times. I was testing my back. I felt great. And the difference here is I woke up today and I needed to do a strength workout. Usually I would abandon it because my body was fatigued and tired. I'm like, oh, I got to take a break. I didn't allow myself to do that. I said, this is part of the routine and regimen that you now have to own. It's a part of your life. And so I did it and I'm actually glad I worked out this morning and I didn't give up on it. But I know that's part of this in my life today, is if I'm not doing core exercises, if I'm not doing some strength training, that my lower back or other things will creep up. And I don't want to miss another winter or a summer or another season because there's something that I could have done to prevent that. Now, it could all come back. I know there's a reality with injuries and just being an active person. But if I can be as proactive as possible to help prevent it, then I'm going to do that. And I'm glad I'm doing that. So I'm about three or four months into that routine and I'm sticking with it and it's and it's showing up. So I'm happy with that.
Rob (27:45)
Are you going to avoid doing the things, Brent, that may have caused the problem in the first place? So moving boxes around, have you stopped doing that? Are you asking the boys to do it more? I mean, you have a 20-year-old and an 18-year-old in the house. Are you asking them to move stuff around or are you still doing that stupid stuff? Because I bet you're still doing the stupid heavy lifting with boxes and moving things around and grabbing things off a top shelf that you may not need to grab, and someone else can do it for you.
Brent (28:10)
So there's a yes and a no there. So definitely the stubborn side of me does a bit of it. I do leverage my kids or other people to help out with certain things more than I've done in the past. But the one thing that I do is there's techniques to lifting a box. There's techniques to moving things. And where we live, you know, there's techniques to shovel snow. You know, there's things that you can do and you just can't take it for granted. So I'm a little bit more aware of that. But yes, Rob, I still move boxes and I still do things, but I'm certainly pausing. I just don't do it out of the like a normal routine. I think about it to say, hmm, should I do this? And my kids would be happy to help. They never complain. They're like, sure. So I leverage that when I can for sure. A little bit of it.
Rob (28:55)
And I'm proud of the fact that you actually got your workout in again today being a little bit sore because it wasn't a run that would actually cause you to be more tired. It was that strength thing. Strength exercise is actually going to help prevent the issues with your back going forward. So good for you.
Brent (29:09)
Yeah, thank you. Okay, Rob, we're going to transition from when we started the conversation, we talked about there's two types of health scares in midlife and really just all of life. One is the visible, which we just talked about, something you can feel, something you can see, but there's the invisible. And an invisible one is one of those that you may get a diagnosis, something may come up in a blood screening or some sort of physical that you cannot typically see. Maybe you can't even feel it, but it's something that you need to be aware of and take care of. I find that these are very challenging. So for you, in the last six months, you've actually had two invisible health scares. Can you take us through those?
Rob (29:56)
So in February was the first one, Brent. And I go in and get a regular physical. As I mentioned, the doctor, we both have the same primary care physician. He's actually a friend here in our neighborhood. And go regularly, annually go and get a physical. But I decided this year that I was going to go see a dermatologist again. And it's been a little while since I've seen a dermatologist. Skin cancer runs in my family. my mom, my sisters, my grandparents all had skin cancer, and I assume that I will have an issue with it at some point. And so this would have about been about four months after my primary care annual physical. I went and saw a dermatologist for the first time in about two years, and she found a small basal cell sarcoma on my forehead. And I say small, Brent, I'm holding up a little pinhead. That's bigger than what the size of this little dot was. I didn't even notice it. I had something else I was going to have her look at. And she said, I'm not worried about this thing on the side of your face. I'm actually worried about this little dot right here. I think we should do a test on it. And she had the full body exam to make sure there was nothing else but pulled out a small piece. And I didn't notice it. I never would have noticed it if I hadn't seen a specialist to actually identify it. And she cut out a small piece of it and actually I had to get Mohs surgery to go and actually take out a big piece after it was tested and identified as basal cell sarcoma, that I had to actually go and have a bigger piece of skin taken out of my forehead. Luckily it was on my forehead, so it's completely visible to anybody that wanted to see it. And that was the first scare I had this year.
Brent (31:33)
And tell me a little bit about you had shared with me that the dermatologist did make a funny comment to you on how they the incision that they made.
Rob (31:44)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my young female dermatologist, it was on my forehead, very happily pointed out to me that I shouldn't have much scarring, and you probably can't see much scarring on my forehead at all. My young dermatologist friend now said that she was going to place the scar mark or the cut mark and stitch mark in an area that I already have a wrinkle, so it actually will just show up like a wrinkle. It won't look like I have a scar. So not only am I getting you know surgery on my face done, she's going to help emphasize the fact that I'm getting old and I have wrinkles on my forehead, and no one's going to notice this, Rob.
Brent (32:18)
Welcome to midlife, welcome to midlife, wrinkles and all.
Rob (32:21)
Wrinkles and colonoscopy.
Brent (32:23)
All right, so you've talked a little bit about that. Was your first one that came up, and that was skin cancer. So you're navigated that. You actually navigated that with a lot of grace because you knew, you know, if you think about back to that response as you owned it, you did a three, you got it removed, and you moved on. So now you probably have to get testing, you know, once or twice a year. And it's not hard to do on the dermatology side of things. They just go in and they just evaluate your skin. One of the things that we have where we live in the mountains of Colorado is we're at a higher elevation. So skin cancer, we're closer to the sun. So skin cancer is a little bit more prevalent. So, you know, that's something that we do see across our friend group that everybody's got their little issues here and there. And, you know, you've got to protect yourself from the sun.
Rob (33:10)
And the dermatologist said that in Colorado, one in three people are going to have actually this version of skin cancer because of the sun, the number of days of sun that we get, and our proximity being at higher altitude, that it's a it's a very common issue in our state, and actually a lot of states that have quite a bit of sun exposure.
Brent (33:29)
So now the next one, and this is to me, we'll put this in a little bit more serious category, not a little bit. It's definitely more serious, and it has to do with your cholesterol. And so I know you've had elevated cholesterol almost your entire adult life. So maybe you could just take us back when you first learned about it and some of the things that you've been doing just to navigate high cholesterol.
Rob (33:53)
So I've had borderline high-risk cholesterol since I think really my first major blood test in my 20s. And it's never been something that I'd been medicated for before. It was elevated, but not at the point of needing medication. And I grew up, Brent, I think you did as well. I'm going to do everything I can to avoid taking a pill if I have to, right? If I can, if I can adjust lifestyle and things like that. And it kind of bounced. In my 20s and 30s, it bounced a little bit, but never to the place where I was going to need a prescription to actually manage my cholesterol level. And then in my 40s, the doctor told me that if I didn't reduce it, it was actually going to be a prescription that was going to be needed. And I was going to need to go on a statin. And again, I'm going to do everything I can to avoid taking a medication as long as possible. And I'm going to try and see if I can actually manage it with lifestyle choices. And I've been active at that point in time in my 40s, I early, late 30s, early 40s, I wasn't as active as I am today. I gained a little bit of weight, and I really focused early on just diet and exercise. There's two simple things the doctor said. And the diet I went on at 40, and I've talked about this before in previous episodes, is I was like 99.9% plant-based. You can pretty much call me a vegan. And the doctor said, if you can't reduce your cholesterol, we're going to actually put you on a prescription. I went 100% plant-based. And next time I had blood work done, the doctor said, Wow, what did you do? Have you been taking a prescription? Have you gotten a prescription from somebody? So I dropped my cholesterol so far that there was no medication needed at all. So the diet actually had a very direct impact on my cholesterol, and it worked for about 10 years of me not needing any medication at all for it.
Brent (35:35)
So when you say 10 years, what how strict were you at the beginning? Because I've seen other people go through similar experiences where they changed their diet very drastically, and it works for a while. So maybe take us through that 10-year period of time. You went all in. Did you adjust that all in to kind of bring us to our current state?
Rob (35:58)
So it has adjusted a little bit in most recent years, but the all in was I didn't eat any meat at all. So no dairy, no fish, no beef at all, no chicken, none of that actually, no eggs that actually hit my diet. I completely cut out eggs. Now I say 99.9. Every once in a while, a little bit of fish snuck its way in there, and it was out of a little bit out of my control. It was like the only option, either go hungry or have a little bit of fish. And so I had a little bit of fish, which I chalked up to. Well, that's the healthy fats. Fish have the healthy fats. That's what everything you still you read and you hear about. You know, I knew well enough to say when everybody says butter's good, I knew that probably is not good for me. And so I avoided that. and so for I'd say five of those years, I was very strict on a vegan plant-based diet. And then over time, it just became too hard to stay on that diet. you know, different scenarios would come up. We would go over to a friend's house, and I didn't want to have to, you know, justify or just have the salad or make friends, you know, create a custom meal for me. I can have dinner at your house because you and I eat pretty much the same, and your family and I, our family eats the same. And so, but any other place we went, it became really difficult. And I didn't want to be that person that, well, I'm on a special diet. Can you cater to me with the dinner you're offering to make for us at your house? And so it got a little bit looser. I would still say to this day, Brent, I'm about 80%. I did the math, a little bit better than 80% plant-based. That so that, but more does creep in a little bit with a little bit of eggs, a little bit of dairy, and a little bit of fish. I don't eat pork, chicken, or beef really at all. Maybe once a year I'll have one of those. and that's really kind of a special occasion if I have something like that. But the diet control of my cholesterol level worked for about eight, eight, nine years up until just recently.
Brent (37:50)
And were you testing on a regular basis? So, like doing blood tests. So once a year you'd meet with your physician just in your annual health screen. Is that how you would kind of monitor it?
Rob (38:01)
Absolutely. Yeah. So annual every time, and I every once in a while I got one off on my own, I would actually go through a diagnostic center to do a blood test on my own every once in a while. But through my annual exams, and it kind of stayed at the at the you know, borderline risk level, but it was low enough that I didn't need to take any medication until just didn't need to take it any more serious until just recently.
Brent (38:22)
So, what for you, when you say most recently, did you start to see your numbers change over that, let's say last three or four years, like they were starting to creep up, or was it just more of a surprise more recently? Like, wow, this jumped up a lot back to a level that's a concerning level.
Rob (38:41)
So they bounced a little bit, a little bit, but they were kind of starting to creep up just a little bit. And the last blood work I had was almost a year ago, and they were the highest it had ever been. And I had been eating healthy, I had a healthy diet. My exercise was actually really solid. I just got done running an ultramarathon earlier that year. I continued running during the summer and fall. I'm very active in the summer and fall, and it was the highest it had ever been. And I didn't do anything. So I had so going back to your levels, Brent, I was informed. So the doctor said, here's where it's at, but your other risk factors are low. And I said, Great, I'm going to stay and keep doing exactly what I'm doing because other risk factors are low, even though this number's high. I'm going to be I'm informed. I'm not going to actually make any lifestyle changes or any changes at all regarding this elevated number until the doctor tells me I need to.
Brent (39:31)
And that's the trick, right? You start to look at it, you're informed. So we go back to our levels. Zeros, you just you avoid it. You wouldn't take the blood test at a zero. You're doing zero. One is you took the blood test, you got the results, you're just informed at that point in time, but you really didn't make any sort of modifications. What was the conversation with your doctor? Because I know then you started to consider other tests, but was it, hey, we really got to get your arms around this, or what was that conversation?
Rob (40:02)
So it wasn't a conversation with the doctor, it was a conversation with my spouse. Okay. And that's so it, so it was a high number. And the fact that other things had actually started to enter back into my diet a little bit. So a little bit more cheese. I was at not at 100%, I was at 80% plant-based. And Tara was really nagging me to try and watch my diet. And Brent, it was really, avoid donuts and sugar and cookies and ice cream. So she was justifying that. You know, you should eat stop eating all of this stuff too. Not just a little bit, but all of it and it get rid of it in its entirety. Now, she doesn't eat sugar at all. She's actually kicked that habit, which she's incredibly healthy for having done. I don't want to do that. I'd want to keep eating that stuff. And so she was bugging me enough that I actually asked my doctor to run some additional tests. And really the additional test was to get a calcium score so I could prove to Tara that my diet wasn't bad. And yes, my cholesterol is high, but nothing else is wrong right now.
Brent (41:00)
So, for those that are not familiar, it's called coronary artery calcium scan or CAC, and it's a quick CT scan that measures the calcification plaque in the arteries of the heart and gives you a number on your cardiovascular risk that cholesterol numbers aren't going to do. And so you now did this test, you made a decision to go do it. I think you did it on your own behalf too, right? In the sense of like, it's not hard to well, he gave you the referral, but then you just paid for it because it's not that expensive, correct? It's not that expensive, but I had to have a doctor actually give me the referral to request the test. Okay. So you do this test, and let's talk about what you learned from that test. Because I think you already had this data set, and that's one thing that's nice about health, is you can get all sorts of different angles here. So you have this one score that says my cholesterol is at a level that it's never been, it's elevated. So you're like, okay, what's the next test I can take? You've decided to do this calcium score test. Tell us about the scoring itself, because I know there's different kinds of like scales within it. And then if you're open to it, can you share what yours was?
Rob (42:16)
So the scoring goes from zero, which means there's no plaque buildup in your arteries, to 400 is the high metric. And 400 is high plus, anything above 400. And there's different things in between what it might mean for treatment. And this is my first time having this test done, and I get a score of 443. And I had to go look it up. So I was waiting for I had the calcium score done, I was waiting for it to show up in my medical records online so I could actually review it. And I get an email that says medical records are up, urgent schedule of appointment needed with your physician. Like, what happened? So I see that. I go and read what it says, and it says 443. You're very high risk for coronary issues. You very much need to see your physician now. And you, I saw you guys, you and Carolyn, like a day after actually getting that diagnosis. I was out for a walk, and I just got to share that with you. That yep, this is what I heard today. And what that went through my mind when I got that diagnosis or got that result was not knowing any other detail besides I'm at the highest number point, given my age and everything else, I'm above what the thing says is high. I'm hoping that it's going to say I'm at like 10 or 50, and so I'm going to have ice cream as much as I want. That's what I'm hoping it says, and it gives me the exact opposite thing. I'm going to be the person that's going to go out and run a marathon and have a heart attack while I'm not running a marathon. That's what's going through my mind at that point. And screw this diet thing because I've been trying to eat healthy and it's not working at all. This exercise that I've been doing is not helping at all. I might as well just, you know, go back and become a vegetable sitting on the couch and doing nothing because I don't want to die. And I all the things I love to do might be putting me at higher risk. So I'm just going to take some prescription medication and I'm going to have a life that is indulgent and I can't fix it myself. That was my initial reaction to the whole thing.
Brent (44:18)
When you came by our house, so you and Tara were out on a hike and you guys just stopped by our house. And Carolyn and I were shocked. I don't think I've talked to you about our responses, but we were both like holy [expletive]. And we were sitting there going, we already knew around the elevated cholesterol. Now we saw this number. I had never heard of that test before. So I had to do my research. And we were both like, what's going to happen here? Because you're incredibly active. You know, you eat a pretty healthy diet. You and I both talked about the quantities. You've referenced in previous podcasts that you do want to lose about 20 pounds. So that kind of elevates the seriousness of that. Then there's this whole medication type conversation coming into play. And so our minds are racing because we're now doing our research, just try to better understand it. And what I would say is from an outside eye looking in, I hear you, Rob, because the first thing you said is like screw this. Like I'm trying to eat healthy, I'm trying to exercise. And you did a little bit of the why me thing, you know, just because it's like, why is this happening? And you were not actually why me comparing to other people. It was just why me? Like, why am I doing all this stuff? But that is such a response for the invisible things in our life, the invisible health scares. Like, so be it. And I've dealt with that personally. Like my father passed away from a stroke at age 58, and he had no signs of a stroke. And it was actually a blood clot that from an injury in his shoulder from several years prior that released and it actually went into his brainstem, and he had a stroke and he died 48 hours later. And I look at that and I'm like, this was a healthy individual. He did a triathlon just prior to that. I mean, he was doing all these things, and all of a sudden his number got called. So those are the things that go through your head. But maybe take us through the process since then because you've come to a different path, I believe, just based on talking with you. Is the easy route is to give in. The hard route is to say, I need to learn more, but I can't do what Brent did is be Dr. Googling this because that actually only creates a lot more anxiety, especially in your situation where you're like, I got this number, I got this number. And so what did you, what have you done since then?
Rob (46:48)
So I went through a very similar process, Brent, early on of what you shared was, you know, I, of course, Dr. Google got involved. Here's my score, here's my here's my cholesterol level, and just look it up online. I've also created an agent in AI to actually just help me with health and actually have uploaded all of my medical records going back a handful of years, and I uploaded this score. And of course, it's going to, you know, very dire circumstances, you urgently need to go see somebody. That's what I hear at first. You sent me a study, so I really appreciate the study you sent me that I was able to go and read and research about masters and middle-aged endurance athletes having high calcium scores and having calcium scores that are very elevated given the exercise that they do and a bunch of studies that are going on around that, which kind of contradicted my worry about what was going on from both my cholesterol and the calcium score that I got. It actually gave me the information that I wanted to hear. It's like, oh, wait a second, you don't have a problem. You're an athlete, you're a hardcore endurance athlete. You don't have to worry about this. Yeah, your cholesterol is elevated, but you're on the healthy side of the equation. So I went down that path and actually had AI go back and forth, actually looking at all of that information, look at the study, compare it. And I took all that information to see my doctor. And so I finally actually went in pretty quickly because I got this urgent message saying you need to schedule an appointment right away, which is really scary to have, you know, I'm having this test done and now I got to urgently go see a doctor. Something is major, something is really wrong. It gave me a bunch of questions to ask my primary care physician. And he couldn't answer all the questions that I had, which led him to referring me to a cardiologist. And in that referral, I asked for someone with a background in sports because of these studies that I had been reading. So I didn't just want to see any cardiologist. I wanted to see someone that actually was going to be maybe a little more fine-tuned in the area of having some information around what else might be causing this, not just the fact that I have high cholesterol and I'm going to die soon because I have a heart issue.
Brent (48:50)
So when you did that, and I think the important side of this, Rob, is I sent you that article because it was another data point for you to take into consideration. It's not a get out of jail free card article in the sense like, oh, well, that answers that. I'm just fine. It's actually another data point for you to have a conversation with your cardiologist. And what it did in that article is it did recommend finding a cardiologist that has experiences with athletes that may be doing these high endurance events. I mean, you did, you've done some huge things. And so essentially the article, for those that haven't read anything like this, is saying, hey, if you put a lot of strain on your heart through activity, is you may experience kind of the hardening of arteries just because your heart's been working really hard, you know, doing these events, and you've been doing these events for, you know, 10 odd years. So that is something I wanted to give you that as a data point, but not as a, you took it the way I hoped you would take it, as like, okay, this is another thing for me to think about, but it'll help me with my questioning back to the cardiologist. So you've now met with your cardiologist. What was the result of that conversation and what did you learn from it?
Rob (50:03)
So I was really excited to have her share with me the some of that study information without me having to prompt her for it, which was an early indication that I might be seeing somebody or I'm seeing a person that actually has some knowledge here. And what she helped me understand was more about what the calcification process was, what a calcium score did, why, and the study, Brent, is called the athlete's calcification paradox. It's the unknown component. And what she helped me understand was there's a lot of unknown with heart disease and heart issues that are happening. And the fact that my arteries might be calcified and really hard, or they could actually be soft plaque, and that's going to be the one that actually ruptures and causes the heart attack for me. They don't quite know. And what she shared was of all the indicators that they look at, they look at diet, they look at exercise, they look at blood pressure, all three of those things are very good for me. I have a good diet, my blood pressure numbers are really good, and I exercise on a regular basis and do big exercise, big events. My heart rate or my calcium score is very high, and my cholesterol level is moderately high. It's not super high, but it's moderately high. And she just walked through the options. She said, at this point, you know, these markers say there's a problem. These other things say there's not necessarily going to be a problem. And sometimes the healthiest person, you mentioned your dad, is the person that has a heart attack, even though all the markers show they shouldn't. And so, with some of this medic, some of this the science that we're looking at from a heart disease standpoint, a little bit is a flip of the coin. And so that made me feel both better and worse. It's like, wait, you can't solve this for me. You can't do anything about it. It's a flip of the coin, it's unknown. And she prescribed a moderate dose statin, which we talked about why I should do it. If it was just the calcium, calcium in my the calcified plaque, we probably wouldn't have done a statin necessarily, but because I have calcified plaque and the higher cholesterol as just a safety and a precautionary measure to bring my LDL cholesterol down and hopefully address that portion of the equation a little bit better. The side effects are pretty minimal, and I actually haven't had any of the side effects that may cause issues with somebody taking a statin. And a lot of studies have come out recently saying people should take statins earlier in life with even lower cholesterol levels than I've presented with as just a way to prevent any heart issues or heart coronary artery disease later in life.
Brent (52:35)
So as you think about this, that is also not a get out of jail free card. Like you there you have to look at this holistically. So I'm assuming there's other tests that you are going to take into consideration. You've now established a relationship with your cardiologist, which is really important, that there's going to be routine, you know, screenings and things that you're going to do because there is a seriousness of this. And this is why we're bringing this into the conversation. In midlife, we're all going to navigate health scares. The question is, is what do you do with it? And we've talked about these invisible, we've talked about visible, they're completely different. And I think there's a stubborn side to all of us, and a stubborn side is I'll just get better, or that's not going to impact me. But we can also hear the stories of somebody who passes away at a young age, or somebody that decides not to do the colonoscopy and or doesn't do a fit test. There's other tests you can do for colon cancer, and they get that's a pretty deadly cancer if you get diagnosed with it. So there's different things that come into it. So, how would you how do you think about it just through some of the experiences that you've had? And you've talked about routine physicals, you've also talked about meeting with a dermatologist. We're at a stage in life that these things can be important. So, how does this now fit into your lifestyle?
Rob (53:59)
So, your levels, Brent, that you shared earlier, zero is just put your head in the sand and I'm going to do nothing about it. And not even do nothing about it, is I don't want to know what I don't know. That's maybe the thing that a zero does. And I would say for our audience that is approaching things that way, there are things that you could absolutely prevent in the future. And I want to have a long, healthy life. We've talked about health span. I want to be as healthy as I can for as long as I can, because there's a lot of things that I want to still do in my life. And by taking control and becoming informed, you then can make informed decisions and actually take action. Now, I could also, because I'm now on a statin, I could actually change my diet and say, well, I'm taking a statin. That's going to fix everything. I don't need to stay on this diet anymore. I haven't chosen that path because I want to try and control as many of the controllables that I have. I'm a control freak. We've talked about that before. I'm going to control as much of the things that I can so that I can have that healthy life for a long period of time, not just be healthy today, but be healthy 20 years from now. And so I'm continuing to do those things that I know I needed to do to stay healthy. You can get regular blood work. You can do that whether it be through your doctor or through a private party. There are diagnostic centers that make it as easy as they ship the kit to you in the mail. You attach something to your arm and you mail it back, and they actually have it on ice that you mail it back to them in. And it gives you really good informed data. So you don't even have to go to a physician to do this, you can do this out of your home. You can actually ask for tests to be done. And I you mentioned the calcium score test that I got. It was just a couple hundred dollars. It's not covered by insurance, but it gave me some additional information so I can make an informed decision. I'm not just jumping onto a low volume statin, which is what I could have been prescribed probably early if I asked for it. I'm on a medium dose because the markers tell me I likely need a little bit more than someone that has just my cholesterol level because I have an elevated calcium score. So it's actually becoming informed and actually going maybe above and beyond what normal care would look like. My next step of thing for me would actually be to get a coronary CT angiogram. And that would be where they actually do a 3D rendering of my heart and they can actually look at blood volume and how much blood is flowing through and actually how calcified is the plaque. That's a few thousand dollars. So not something I'm going to do today, but it's something I might do in the future, so I'm informed to be able to continue to make great decisions. So my health span is really good 20 years from today.
Brent (56:27)
And you know, the reason why we're talking about this on the podcast for our listeners is that we care about you and we care about our listeners. And in midlife, we're all in this journey together. And we recognize that in your 20s and your 30s and in your 40s, you can kind of bypass a few of these steps. We're not trying to be alarmist. We're not trying to say, go do this test or another test. As we disclosed earlier in our disclaimers, we're not doctors. We don't have all the answers. But what we want to do is just share with you a few of our stories and some of the things that we see. We all know there's a lot of resources available to you. Your primary care doctor can help you through your own fit, you know, your own health journey. And you may need to see a specialist. And I've learned so much, not only through your experiences, Rob, but my own personal experiences and experiences, my wife and your wife and our friends. And we started out with some funny stories. Everybody's got funny stories about things that are happening in their life, and some you want to share, some you don't, but that's just part of the stage that they were in. So, Rob, as we close out our conversation today, I have a question for you. And it has to do with navigating your own personal health. So, what I want to know is what are you going to do over the next 30 days to continue this health journey and really tackling, let's say, this elevated cholesterol and so forth. But I also want you to answer a question that I've had and I haven't asked yet is why aren't you going back to something that worked for you specific to a 100% plant-based diet? Because that seemed to work at one point in time and then you veered away from it. So, two-part question is plant-based diet, but also any other things that you're taking into consideration over the next 30 days.
Rob (58:11)
Are you calling me out on the fact that I could have fixed this with my diet even more? Brent? Thanks. Thank you. Yes, I am. I am consciously not doing that because of the other parts of my life that bring me joy. And the other parts of my life that bring me joy, which I think are just as important. I want to be able to go to a friend's house and have dinner and actually be okay at their friend's house and not be a burden. I don't want to be the person that doesn't get invited out. Or I'm the special having to order and ask for the special thing at the restaurant, which I do from time to time do that. I don't want to actually have that cause issues in some of those social networks and social relationships that I have. I don't want to impact those because I see those as just as important as the things that I can do to affect. That's one of the things I can do to affect is give me a happy heart by being around people and having an interaction with people that actually brings me joy. So that's the answer to your question. Why am I not going 100% plant-based? It's really hard to do that. And it's really hard to do that and enjoy other people's company. Beyond that, I mentioned this in an episode earlier this summer where we did the five challenges back and forth. What am I doing right now? My goal is to drop 20 pounds over this summer. And we challenge ourselves to five big things over the summer. My goal is to drop 20 pounds. I'm doing that through diet and staying on the diet, but it's more about portion control, not the content, but portion control. So that's my big focus over the summer is from our five challenges to try and actually lose a little bit of weight, which will have an impact on my visible issues, so that back issues, my feet issues, or leg issues, but losing the weight will also help me with my cholesterol. And the way in which I'm going to do it is reducing alcohol and volume of food.
Brent (59:56)
Yeah, it's interesting the way you describe that, Rob. I don't think we have an answer one way or another. Is that the right thing to do or not? You have to do what's best for you based on the things that are important to you. But if we go back to the conversation that we had earlier this year with Dr. Lipton, and he ended with sometimes it may not be the meal you're having, it's the meal that you're having, the people you're having that meal with. And so what you described there is that balance. But I think the key here for you, Rob, is you now have this awareness of, yeah, when you're by yourself or you're just at home, if you can just dial it in. But then there's times like we did that trip to Costa Rica earlier in the summer, they had amazing food and we all were trying different things, like there's different environments, but it that's not the norm. The norm is you're at home, you're traveling with Tara, you can control a lot of these variables, but there are times when you want to get the social on and you really want to, you know, interact with people. And I'm with you. There's certain times where you're just like, I just want to be a human with everybody else. So there's time and a place. So to wrap up our conversation, the goal of this discussion today was to really talk about midlife health scares. We're all going to have them. They come whether you want them or not. And the real question, if you go back to the kind of self-rating system that we were describing, are you going to be the zero where you do zero about any of the things that you're dealing with? Are you going to be a one where you're informed? Are you going to be a two where you kind of partially address it? Are you going to be a three and say, you know, I need to own it? And I think there's a time and a place for all of them. We're not advocating for one thing or another. You got to own your own health. But where we want to leave you is we do care. And we want you to know that these are things that you can do and you can own. We shared of our own personal stories, and I'm sure you have all of them. And once again, if you have any funny ones, we'd love for you to share it on Message the Show. And as Rob said, for five people that do share a voice memo to us or a voice message using the message the show feature on your podcast app, we will send you some swag. So as we close out every conversation, we do something where we share a story. sometimes it's related to gratitude or a connection that we had recently. I got to share a pretty cool story, Rob. Is a colleague of mine messaged me recently and said, Hey, can we touch base? And I said, Of course. And I have not talked to him in 15 years. And he had said that he picked up what we were talking about via some of the messages we put out on LinkedIn for Midlife Circus. And he goes, I am right there with you. And he was talking about a transition in his career. And he said, My wife listens to the podcast, I listen to it. And Doug, I just want to thank you for reaching out because we had a great conversation. I can't believe 15 years went on. We could have gone on for days and days and days of just sharing stories. But he was just talking about how some things that we talk about is just like it's playing out in his life real time. So thanks for the reach out. Thanks for messaging me. And we look forward to connecting with you all soon.
Lena (01:03:10)
That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlife circus. And be sure to join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcast so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder the opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice. This show is for entertainment and inspiration only. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the Big Top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.