[00:00:02] What You Want, When You Want It, Where You Want It. This is The MESH. Hey everybody, I'm Amy Chang, a nurse, a mom, and a health coach, and this is Healthy AF, where honesty and humor and heart meet real talk about feeling good again, inside and out. We're cutting through the noise, dropping the guilt, and reminding you, getting healthy isn't about perfection.
[00:00:30] It's about choosing yourself, one loving decision at a time. Let's get into it. Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of Healthy AF. I'm so glad you're here with me today. This really is the last week in June. I know that Carla and I podcasted all about our Camino experience, and I said, it's going to be all of June. It's going to be great.
[00:00:53] And when we finished our four episodes of June, my producer Moose was like, there's five weeks in June. Dang it! So here's your bonus fifth Monday in June. I had scheduled to do fun and play as the theme of June. And if you received my newsletters, you'll know that I wrote all about fun and play.
[00:01:19] The beach trip, the family vacation, the young cousins, the picture of us being broccoli heads. It was all good times. And something happened for me this week that I wanted to share. There's two things that are kind of like coming together for me, and I just wanted to bring them into your sphere and see if it resonates with you.
[00:01:44] I am doing a book club, and it starts in July. Now, periodically, Healthy Life, Health and Wellness Coaching does book clubs, and they're a little bit different from other book clubs you might be used to. You might be used to like you read the book, and then you all sit down and discuss it. And that's fun. That's not what this is. When Healthy Life, Health and Wellness Coaching does a book club, we do a coaching book club.
[00:02:11] So literally, we get a book, and we have reading assignments every week, and they're always short because I struggle on the reading end. So I'm very cognizant of like, please, dear God, don't give me 75 pages to read in a week because it's not going to happen. And so we do a short reading, and then we come together on Zoom. Usually, I don't know, five, six, seven, eight of us.
[00:02:36] And we talk about what we read in there, but also how it applies to something we're working on in our life. Might be a relationship, might be our fitness, might be, you know, I don't know, any of the things that we're constantly like trying to kind of tweak up. And we do that in a coaching setting.
[00:02:59] So actually, it's a group coaching, short, limited time period group coaching that we use a book to help us become inspired and cultivate those insights that happen when we get inside community. I love doing the book clubs because they're free, really. It's a suggested donation of $25 to a nonprofit. And I love supporting my community in that way.
[00:03:29] And I love making coaching available to people in that way at that low or zero price point. And I also love creating community. People from all over the country pop on the Zoom and do the book club. So it might be the neighbor you live beside, but it might be somebody from Indiana or Montana. And we're all talking about the same things that we're dealing with.
[00:03:58] And it's just a beautiful, I can't replicate that in individual coaching, the community and the inspiration and the love and the safe spaces. I can't, you know, replicate that. I'm in an individual coaching session. So book clubs for me are just a ton of fun. And this summer, we're going to do this book right here, No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler. Now, it's relatively small. Okay.
[00:04:25] You can see my dog ears already turned down. And also, if you're listening to this, the YouTube will be crazy because I'm moving around. Um, also like it's, it's not terribly big, like print. I mean, small print, like it's okay. Like some of the pages have some breaks in them. So please don't be intimidated. I have a lot of people who are like, I've never done a book club before or, oh my God, do I actually have to read it? Or do I have to read it every week?
[00:04:53] And I'm like, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Everything works out in book club. Okay. Just show up. Do a little reading. You're going to be fine. So we've got book club coming up. And the reason I chose this book, No Cure for Being Human, is, um, the length. We can do it in four weeks. So, you know, it's, it's a 50 page read a week, basically.
[00:05:17] And, um, one of the reviews I read instantly said, mentioned that this book is all about how we strive and work and tweak and grow to evolve ourselves into versions of ourselves that we want to be.
[00:05:47] And also to protect ourselves. And that gets me right in the gut. It's a sticky widget, I guess you'd say. I love to grow personally and professionally. I think that's fun. And I've made my life's work out of that for the last decade. Right? How can I be better? How can I serve in more capacities?
[00:06:16] How can I keep myself sane so that I can serve? Um, how can I grow in the way I communicate with people? How can I grow in the way I love people? How can I grow in the way I love myself? And I think if you're wired kind of like I am in this eternal learning and growing, this lifelong learning and growing and evolving, sometimes that's fun.
[00:06:41] And every once in a while, you might catch yourself striving for that growth with a motive, a hidden motive of making sure nothing bad or hurtful happens in your life. I know that I can get caught in that.
[00:07:00] And this book, No Cure for Being Human, the author writes about her becoming diagnosed with stage four, I think, colon cancer at 35 with a small child. And she's done everything right. Right.
[00:07:26] And I'm interested in what this will open up for me and my own path on when am I growing and learning and preparing for me? And that makes sense.
[00:07:41] And when am I growing and learning and preparing out of the lie, the bold face lie that if I'm prepared enough or smart enough or good enough, that nothing will happen to me. So another reason why I wanted to bring this up this week is I'm recording this podcast on a Thursday.
[00:08:10] And two days ago, my dog died and it was very unexpected. And this is how I'm so glad that I had already started reading this book and I had already started thinking about book club and, you know, what I'm hoping to get out of book club. And what I'm hoping other people might want to get out of book club.
[00:08:33] So my sweet dog, Jenny, I adopted her September three years ago, September 23. And when I adopted her, she's a beautiful German shepherd girl. And when I adopted her, they told me that she had some heart failure and would be on heart failure medication. So I'm like, OK. And I mean, I knew she's 10 years old and she's on a heart med. OK, I am basically her last chapter.
[00:09:01] I am adopting her to love her up, to be her companion. Maybe she'll let me be her companion, I'm thinking. And and just give her the best life she can have in the, you know, whatever, two, three years she has left on the planet. And a few things happened. One is she did not just let me be her companion instantly.
[00:09:26] The day I picked her up in Virginia, I was her mama and it was very clear that I was her mama. And she was very protective over her mama. Not like biting people or barking, but like at all times having her little German shepherd radar ears on wherever mommy was. In January of that year, right after I got her, three months after I got her, I had to take her to the emergency vet. She had thrown up some weird stuff.
[00:09:55] And during the scan, they found that she had a mass on her tumor, on her liver. So at that point, I had a, you know, 10, almost 11 year old dog with heart failure and a liver tumor that was likely cancer. And so I knew right away, I don't know, maybe we have a year. I'm not sure she I just had to take her to the emergency vet. We might not have long at all.
[00:10:25] Well, she made it two and a half more years after that. And by the time I was leaving for my Camino, getting ready to leave in April, I noticed in March she was really slowing down. And she didn't want to eat a whole lot. And thank God for that nursing background, right?
[00:10:54] I know what that means. I know that that can mean that her body's trying to shut down. So I had a talk with Jenny before I left on my Camino because I was going to be gone like 15 days. And I said to Jenny, listen, if you need to die while I'm gone, you can die. But I really want to be with you. Came back. She is still trucking. I'm like, okay, this is great. Right?
[00:11:23] We were having to feed her sweet potatoes. And then when the sweet potatoes didn't entice her to eat, we fed her ground turkey. And then when she didn't want to crunch on those hard kibbles, we made her smoothies and treated her teeth because I think she had a little infection, a little sore tooth in there. So we did that a couple of weeks before she died. We gave her the clindamycin for her tooth. She started eating a little bit better again. And about every two days, she rotated on what she wanted to eat.
[00:11:51] Sometimes she'd take the ground turkey. Then she wanted the roasted sweet potatoes. Then one night I just fed her treats for dinner because that was all she wanted to eat. So I knew she was getting sicker. And I had done all the things. I had tried to outwork her demise. I got a second opinion. I took her to the doctor and got her re-scanned so I'd know exactly what we were talking about.
[00:12:21] I got her ultrasound a couple weeks before she died so that I could see, is this heart failure that's making her so wimpy? Or is this the cancer? What's going on? I really nursed it up, right? And I was working real hard with her to get food in her to make sure she was hydrated well. Monitor how much she was exercising and what her energy level was. Got that second opinion. Started her on some homeopathic remedies.
[00:12:52] Made decisions about like, there's no way in hell I'm doing chemotherapy. But, you know, we might be open to some different options. And got the number for hospice. Got the number for the animal Reiki person, right? I had a plan. I really had done a lot of thinking, planning, preparing, learning about like, well, what do these options look like?
[00:13:22] What organs do we think are most likely to go? Is it primarily in her liver or are kidneys going to shut down? What should I be looking out for? I mean, I worked this problem like a Rubik's Cube from basically day one when we found that mass. So that I could be prepared. And not only help her, but, you know, protect me.
[00:13:45] I also went ahead and did things like, think about like, okay, well, if it metastasized to the brain, what does that look like? I was prepared to make a decision about putting her down and had some conversations with the vet about that. And I really thought that I had outsmarted life. And I was prepared for what would happen on Tuesday morning.
[00:14:13] And I wasn't. Tuesday morning, we got up and had a normal morning. I had brought home a twin mattress from my mom's condo when I cleaned it out last week and laid it on the floor so that I could have lots of snuggles with Jenny. And we did that. She went outside for her morning outside trip, came back inside, didn't want to eat. I sat right beside her drinking my coffee, giving her some treats.
[00:14:41] Figured that I would get her some flounder out of the freezer with some blueberries and strawberries, see if that's something she would be interested in having. It was sitting out on the countertop thawing. I sat down for my coffee, looking up like fruits and veggies I could give the dogs. It was a normal morning. She got up off of her little mattress, took about three steps like she was going to throw up.
[00:15:11] And then she fell. Her back end fell out from underneath her and she seemed to be rigid and struggling. I wondered if she was having a seizure. I wondered if she were choking. And in about five minutes, she was gone. So I had not planned for that. I couldn't outwork.
[00:15:38] So even knowing what I knew and even being prepared for hospice and even being prepared to put her down, I still had thoughts like, oh my gosh, should I Heimlich her? Should I do CPR? What should I do? What is there for me to do right now? And what there was for me to do was sit with her as she died. And I did that. But I'm so grateful for my nursing background.
[00:16:03] And I'm really grateful that I've been with a lot of beings as they have passed on and was pretty comfortable with being with her, even though it was traumatizing. It was traumatizing. We didn't expect it. And it just has me thinking about the swift changes that happen in your life.
[00:16:31] And you cannot outlearn them. And you cannot overprepare for them. And you cannot protect yourself from that swift change. And that's why I think this book is going to be a really great read for us this summer. Because if it's a husband leaving or a dog dying or a job ending,
[00:17:00] life just gets lifey sometimes. Learning is great. And I hope I'm always learning. But I also know I can't use growing and learning to outlife lifing. So I hope you'll join us in the book club. We're starting July 1. I'll put the link in the show notes if you want to join in. It should be a ton of fun.
[00:17:28] We're going to meet every Wednesday at 1030 in the morning for about an hour through July. Actually, the first four weeks in July because July has five Wednesdays. So we're going to meet the first four weeks in July. So if you have that time, we would love to have you join us. If life sometimes catches you unprepared, maybe we can get some new mindset shifting and some more spaciousness around how we deal with that.
[00:17:58] The other thing I wanted to mention before we wrap is the upcoming episodes for July. I'm super excited. I have a friend of mine, Michelle, coming in. She has really transformed how I approach my breathing. I'll let her say more. But I'll also have just a link in the show notes today for Michelle Gallagher and Nandi Breathwork.
[00:18:27] It is amazing because life is going to be lifey. And breathwork is one of those tools we can put in our toolbox to really help those nervous systems settle down, to help us get grounded, to help us let go of thoughts that are not empowering thoughts or running out of fear and discovering that fear-based motive. So I'm super excited. You can look forward to that coming in July.
[00:18:59] I think that's all I have for you today. I'm so glad you were here with me. I will see you in July. Hopefully, I will see you for my book club. All right. Y'all take care. Enjoy your summer. Thanks for hanging out with me today on Healthy AF. I hope something you heard helps you take one small, kind step toward your healthiest self. If you love this episode, hit subscribe so you never miss a conversation.
[00:19:26] And if you want more support, head over to myhealthylife.coach to connect with me. Remember, you don't have to do it perfectly. You just have to start choosing you. See you next time.
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