Speaker 1: This episode of Headgame was recorded on Gadigal Lands.
Speaker 2: August twenty seventeen. And Jamilla Risve is walking into her
Speaker 2: GP's office. She thinks she might be pregnant. Being just
Speaker 2: two years since she and her husband welcome their son,
Speaker 2: she is a little concerned about managing two children under
Speaker 2: the age of three. Her GP orders the usual tests,
Speaker 2: an ultrasound and bloods, With results inconclusive. She's sent to
Speaker 2: specialists for a closer examination. Instead of finding a baby,
Speaker 2: doctors discover a rare tumor in Jimilla's brain. The diagnosis
Speaker 2: triggers a harrowing treatment plan, two rounds of surgery and
Speaker 2: thirty six rounds of radiation, the effects of which she
Speaker 2: still battles to this day. I'm at Middleton and this
Speaker 2: is Headgame today, Australian author and journalist Jamilla Risve on
Speaker 2: fighting a one in a million brain tumor. Now, Jamila,
Speaker 2: you wear many hats, don't you. Yeah?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: Actually, I look really good in hats. That's one of Like,
Speaker 1: that's one of my that's my I don't have one today,
Speaker 1: but like it's my humble brag. I'm someone when you
Speaker 1: get told to put on a hat I look good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I'm someone who, uh most people when they
Speaker 1: describe me when I've left jobs and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: enthusiastic tends to be the word that gets thrown around
Speaker 1: the most.
Speaker 2: I can feel that. I can feel that energy.
Speaker 1: Or any But when you're enthusiastic, you try. You tend
Speaker 1: to want to do all the things right. And I'm
Speaker 1: someone who has always sort of felt like there's not
Speaker 1: enough time to do all the things I'd like to do,
Speaker 1: so try and wear as many hats as i can.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've seen and journalists as well. I'm sort of
Speaker 2: reading through the list and I'm loving it because I
Speaker 2: completely relate to that. You know, jumping from from hat
Speaker 2: to hat, you know, people to people, different environments, different locations,
Speaker 2: surrounding yourself with different people, You're always going to learn
Speaker 2: and grow and become a better version of who you are.
Speaker 2: Take me back though, to your Mama Mia days, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because that's ultimately where it's sort of not all started,
Speaker 2: but that's where you know, you sort of were thrust
Speaker 2: into into the limelight as such, and your messaging and
Speaker 2: then you know your values behind what Mama Mia encapsulated
Speaker 2: taught me through that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, So I'd been working in politics, so I'd very
Speaker 1: much been around media and around that spotlight you talk about,
Speaker 1: but very much not in it.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I was behind the scenes helping prime ministers and ministers
Speaker 1: get their message across. But the worst thing in that
Speaker 1: job you could possibly do was get caught on camera.
Speaker 1: Your job was to never be, never be seen.
Speaker 2: Oh so that's what you were. You were you were
Speaker 2: ultimately were you scripting stuff for politicians.
Speaker 3: And media advisor and buchw of different things.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: And then I could see that the government wasn't likely
Speaker 1: to win, and to be honest, I was really pragmatic.
Speaker 1: I could see a lot of people with the same
Speaker 1: skills as me. We're about to be unemployed at the
Speaker 1: same time, and I was looking ahead and thinking.
Speaker 3: Well what would I do?
Speaker 1: And Lisa Wilkinson tweeted the job at Mamma Mia and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. I clicked on it
Speaker 1: and I applied and I got the job and moved
Speaker 1: to Sydney and it all happened in about two weeks.
Speaker 3: So it was a real whirlwind.
Speaker 2: So you went some Ultimately, you went from the political
Speaker 2: realm into what realm is Mama Mia, because it's quite
Speaker 2: quite a jump from one jib bowl to another.
Speaker 1: And actually I think what Mamma Mia is today is
Speaker 1: quite different to what it was in twenty twelve. So
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, Mia Friedman had turned her blog into
Speaker 1: a website and she had a company that was running
Speaker 1: this women's website and publishing every day and they probably
Speaker 1: had three, maybe three writers I think working there. The
Speaker 1: whole company was about a dozen people. We were working
Speaker 1: out of this tiny little office in Lime Street, down
Speaker 1: by the wharf in Sydney. We didn't have a meeting room,
Speaker 1: so we used to have all our meetings out on
Speaker 1: the balcony because there was a table out there that
Speaker 1: was a bit bigger.
Speaker 2: Good old startups.
Speaker 1: It was a proper startup. It was a proper startup.
Speaker 1: But it really suited me actually because I think to
Speaker 1: thrive in politics, you've got to be happy with chaos
Speaker 1: and you've got to be happy with making what you
Speaker 1: can out of what you've got, and a startup isn't
Speaker 1: dissimilar in that regard. You've just got to hit the
Speaker 1: ground running. There's no time to say, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. Job, or I think I'd be
Speaker 1: better suited to this. You just like you just start right,
Speaker 1: you roll your sleeves up, and you do whatever you're
Speaker 1: asked to do. And I loved working there, and I
Speaker 1: worked there for almost four years. And during those four
Speaker 1: years we went from twelve to one hundred and twenty staff,
Speaker 1: so it was a massive expansion.
Speaker 2: Wow, so you're going along and I take it you're
Speaker 2: working all hours under the sun here right. What was
Speaker 2: the messaging behind Mama Mia? How did that look on
Speaker 2: a day to day basis going into work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was incredibly empowering to work there. I've got
Speaker 1: to say I had a great time. I loved working
Speaker 1: with a lot of women because in politics, certainly when
Speaker 1: I was there, so we didn't work with a lot
Speaker 1: of women. At the time, it was almost all women,
Speaker 1: so it kind of gone. It was a real shift
Speaker 1: from vast majority men who I was working with the
Speaker 1: politics to vast majority women at Mama Mea. It certainly
Speaker 1: was back then a website with a really strong feminist message,
Speaker 1: and I enjoyed that. I enjoyed putting a gender lens
Speaker 1: on whatever happened to be going on that day, whether
Speaker 1: it was celebrity or current affairs or politics or sport, whatever.
Speaker 3: It happened to be.
Speaker 1: And we didn't have a lot of boundaries because it
Speaker 1: was new and it was a startup. There weren't many
Speaker 1: processes in place, not many systems that could be tricky
Speaker 1: at times. But it also gave us enormous freedom in
Speaker 1: that if we felt like launching something new or doing
Speaker 1: something differently, like, we didn't have to ask anyone, We'd
Speaker 1: just do it.
Speaker 2: I find that fascinating. And also, like you said, there's
Speaker 2: no boundaries to it. You can you can ultimately say
Speaker 2: and try and get away with what you can right
Speaker 2: in a pure way. And I found it really interesting
Speaker 2: that you said went from a sort of male dominant
Speaker 2: political realm to being, you know, amongst women and free.
Speaker 2: Did it Do you felt like that give you a
Speaker 2: sense of freedom, a sense of liberation, and a sense
Speaker 2: of power.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe a little bit.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I think I was confused at the start because I
Speaker 1: started working in politics at twenty one, and so I
Speaker 1: hadn't really had another grown up job in my head,
Speaker 1: and so the first thing you do is what you
Speaker 1: think is normal, and so working in politics, i'd been
Speaker 1: there four or five years, and that was how I
Speaker 1: thought the world worked, I suppose, and that's what I
Speaker 1: was used to. And I was really used to quite
Speaker 1: a masculine environment without recognizing it as that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was used to an environment where people were extremely confident.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of bravado and you never admitted
Speaker 1: you were wrong.
Speaker 3: And I walked into this.
Speaker 1: This all being politics everywhere, all these young women every day,
Speaker 1: like sorry was the most commonly used word in the office.
Speaker 3: It was like, Oh, I'm so sorry, do you mind
Speaker 3: if I just go to the bathroom? It was like,
Speaker 3: you don't to be sorry for going to please, please go?
Speaker 1: But there was always there was so much apology, and
Speaker 1: I think it really did start to cement a lot
Speaker 1: of my views around what makes people feel confident and
Speaker 1: why it is that women are made to feel not
Speaker 1: so confident, what it is about society that makes women
Speaker 1: not feel confident, and a lot of that is about inequality.
Speaker 1: It does strip your confidence away a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: And there are people who don't fall victim to that, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but for a lot of women, I think the voice
Speaker 1: in their head has been put there by living in
Speaker 1: a pretty gendered society, and one of the things I
Speaker 1: did love about that Mum and me are setting, is
Speaker 1: I suspect similar to an all girls' school, right, was
Speaker 1: that it did give women a place to thrive without
Speaker 1: feeling like they were being pushed out or muscled out
Speaker 1: because it was an all female environment.
Speaker 2: And how important is that is, you know, to give
Speaker 2: people the opportunity to have an all female environment so
Speaker 2: they can gain their confidence, be around like minded people,
Speaker 2: be around you know that home, shall we say, because
Speaker 2: it is really important because when something goes wrong, you
Speaker 2: go back to your own people. You know, you go
Speaker 2: back to your own circle, You go back to your
Speaker 2: own environment, You go back to somewhere where you feel
Speaker 2: comfortable and confident.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think that, you know, at a personal level,
Speaker 1: I do think there is something extraordinary about being in
Speaker 1: a room full of women and I get a lot
Speaker 1: of enjoyment and energy from that. Having said that, I
Speaker 1: think my preference would be that we had less gender
Speaker 1: segregated workplaces.
Speaker 3: And interestingly, Australia is one of the worst at this.
Speaker 1: If you look at sort of other OECD countries and stuff,
Speaker 1: Australian workplaces are more gender segregated, which means most of
Speaker 1: us work in a workplace that is dominated by men
Speaker 1: or dominated by women. We don't have as many industries
Speaker 1: professions where it's kind of even and sort of if
Speaker 1: you think about it off the top of your head,
Speaker 1: it tends to be true in your own life. You know,
Speaker 1: my kid goes to a school where he hasn't had
Speaker 1: a male teacher. Yet, there's not many male primary school
Speaker 1: teachers other than the principal. Sometimes you don't get as
Speaker 1: many men who are nurses. You don't get as many
Speaker 1: men who are hairdressers. In the same way, you don't
Speaker 1: get as many women who are electricians, or as many
Speaker 1: women who work in finance. We have quite a gender
Speaker 1: segregative workforce, and I don't think that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: I think that betrays a whole lot of inequalities in
Speaker 1: pay and things like that. But also, the best decisions
Speaker 1: are made when you've got a group of people around
Speaker 1: the table with very different experiences and backgrounds. It avoids
Speaker 1: group think. It means that you can challenge one another.
Speaker 1: Usually means you're representative of whoever you're trying to serve
Speaker 1: or sell to, etc. So I'm kind of I've worked
Speaker 1: in these gender segregated workplaces but actually I'd like to
Speaker 1: see on the whole US move to a place where
Speaker 1: it's more usual to go to work and have a
Speaker 1: mix of people.
Speaker 2: Love that. And so you go from this political career
Speaker 2: to jumping in into the limelight, I suppose because you
Speaker 2: went from behind the scenes, people are starting to know
Speaker 2: your name, starting to recognize you, You start to build
Speaker 2: a profile in the limelight. How did you manage that
Speaker 2: and how did that feel when you were subconsciously doing
Speaker 2: it without really realizing that you were right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I think you felt really good. I'm a
Speaker 1: bit of a show off, and you know, I was
Speaker 1: a kid who liked being in the school plays and
Speaker 1: stuff like.
Speaker 3: I quite enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: And also, in politics, being part of a political party
Speaker 1: or a government means that your opinion sort of has
Speaker 1: to fall in step with the government, right, you have
Speaker 1: to parrot the lines of the government, even if you
Speaker 1: personally disagree. And so I found there was a lot
Speaker 1: of freedom in being able to have my own opinion publicly,
Speaker 1: and so I really, I think reveled in it for
Speaker 1: a while. But I did find that as a writer,
Speaker 1: the more I felt like people knew who I was,
Speaker 1: the less well I wrote because I found that I
Speaker 1: started to write scared.
Speaker 2: I would be writing interesting, really interesting, and.
Speaker 1: I'd be so worried about who might read it and
Speaker 1: who might hate it, and if I get criticized, and
Speaker 1: I think, I certainly.
Speaker 3: I'm interested to know what it was like for you.
Speaker 1: I found an effect of my work for the worse
Speaker 1: because I was I'd sort of write something really boring
Speaker 1: because I'd sit down to write an opinion I had,
Speaker 1: and then I'd almost pull back a little bit here
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to upset anyone. There, Like a
Speaker 1: little bit here, and you pull it right back till
Speaker 1: it was just boring. It was a really vanilla.
Speaker 2: There's no substance in it. Yeah, there's nothing in there, right.
Speaker 1: And it did take me, I think, a good few
Speaker 1: years to genuinely be comfortable with the fact that there
Speaker 1: were always going to be people out there who disagreed
Speaker 1: with me, and there were always going to.
Speaker 3: Be people out there who didn't like me.
Speaker 1: And I also think I kind of got there by
Speaker 1: working with a team and watching younger team members come
Speaker 1: through and go through the same thing and sort of
Speaker 1: supporting them. I think it was almost like I had
Speaker 1: to do the teaching to start believing myself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, of course. And how important is it to
Speaker 2: stay true to yourself ultimately through writing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, enormously important. But I also think what you can't
Speaker 1: do is give in to the idea that criticism doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Because criticism does matter, and you should be open to
Speaker 1: taking criticism. But a nameless, faceless person on the internet
Speaker 1: is not the person to take your critique from.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I found really helpful and
Speaker 1: that I used to try and make all the team
Speaker 1: members do back in the day was to sit down
Speaker 1: and assemble a group of people in your head, or
Speaker 1: cut their pictures out of the newspaper, whatever you wanted
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: It could be a mix of people.
Speaker 1: You knew, tro darts of them, and a mix of
Speaker 1: people you didn't whose opinion you cared about, you know.
Speaker 1: For me, it was I remember saying, like, I care
Speaker 1: about my dad's opinion on my writing. I care about
Speaker 1: I was very close to my former boss in politics,
Speaker 1: Kate Elis. I cared about her opinion. I remember think
Speaker 1: I remember saying, I think I care about Oprah's opinion.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a mixture of people I knew
Speaker 1: and didn't know, And so when I did get criticized,
Speaker 1: I would, sometimes practically or sometimes just in my head,
Speaker 1: run what i'd written or what i'd see by those people,
Speaker 1: and I go, what would they say?
Speaker 3: What would they think? And sometimes I call them and
Speaker 3: find out.
Speaker 1: And what I tried to do is narrow it down
Speaker 1: and say, absolutely, I am up for criticism because I
Speaker 1: can get it wrong sometimes, I can be off base sometimes,
Speaker 1: but I'm not just taking it from everyone. I'm going
Speaker 1: to choose a few people who I care about and
Speaker 1: who I respect, and I'm going to think about what
Speaker 1: they would say. And that sort of kept me honest
Speaker 1: and made sure I was, I think, more nuanced and
Speaker 1: careful in what I wrote and what I said publicly,
Speaker 1: but meant that I didn't give in to the horrible
Speaker 1: trolls on the internet.
Speaker 2: While you're going for all of this, you've got family
Speaker 2: in the background, right.
Speaker 3: Well, sort of just at the start.
Speaker 1: Actually, when I was working at MoMA me Or, I
Speaker 1: met my husband, and yeah, we started a long distance relationship.
Speaker 1: Originally he was in Melbourne, I was in Sydney, and
Speaker 1: then yeah, I was working at my meal when I
Speaker 1: felt pregnant as well, and we had our little boy.
Speaker 2: After that, and did your work affect that relationship between
Speaker 2: you and your husband or did you manage to find
Speaker 2: a great balance and everything was work as a child
Speaker 2: as well doing what you're doing. You're definitely double hatting there.
Speaker 2: It's tough, right, oh for sure.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think we had to figure that
Speaker 1: out together in those early days, and I really thought
Speaker 1: I'd just be able to go I was so naive.
Speaker 1: I just thought I'd be able to go back to
Speaker 1: work and work the way that I used to. I
Speaker 1: think I was thinking of a baby like an accessory
Speaker 1: rather than like I just really did not know what
Speaker 1: I was getting myself into. And I had kids, like
Speaker 1: I had my son much earlier than most of my mates,
Speaker 1: and so I didn't really have a model of how
Speaker 1: to do things, and so I didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends who had kids already, and I think as
Speaker 1: a result, I just sort of was muddling along trying
Speaker 1: to figure it out. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: really helped for us, at least was that my husband
Speaker 1: and I shared care pretty early, so we both went
Speaker 1: part time when my son was about five months old.
Speaker 1: I did the first five months and then from there,
Speaker 1: we shared it together, and for me, that has been
Speaker 1: the game changer in allowing both of us to have
Speaker 1: careers that we love and also have really great relationships
Speaker 1: with our son. And that's not an easy thing to
Speaker 1: do because you've both got to want to do that.
Speaker 1: It's got to be financially possible for you to do that,
Speaker 1: and I know that's not easy for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: but I do think in a partnership, if you can
Speaker 1: find a way early to share the care, it.
Speaker 3: Means no one's the expert.
Speaker 1: Because I think the danger for mums, especially if they're
Speaker 1: in a relationship with a man, is that you have
Speaker 1: the baby and so there's already this like, oh, look,
Speaker 1: you're the one that did all the things. You grew
Speaker 1: the baby, so you must know things when actually don't
Speaker 1: know anything. And then you become the expert in the
Speaker 1: baby because you're the one at home. And once you're
Speaker 1: the expert, you're always the expert. And so you know
Speaker 1: all things, and you're in charge of all the stuff,
Speaker 1: and you're the keeper of the knowledge, and you know
Speaker 1: what snacks at what time, and when bottles have to happen,
Speaker 1: and you know when's too late for a nap and
Speaker 1: the more expertise that you hold and nobody else has
Speaker 1: means that you have to be the one doing all
Speaker 1: of the care. And I think what my husband and I,
Speaker 1: probably by accident rather than design, were able to do
Speaker 1: was that neither of us was the expert in how
Speaker 1: to look after our son. And it means that now
Speaker 1: where I would say we're pretty balanced as parents still,
Speaker 1: and we've established those that shared care and that equality
Speaker 1: between us really really early, and it's followed through our
Speaker 1: son's whole life.
Speaker 2: Wow, and what year was your son born in?
Speaker 3: He was born in June of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: And then in twenty seventeen, you feel like you're pregnant again,
Speaker 2: but you have these same sort of symptoms. You think, oh,
Speaker 2: we've got another one on the way, and you go
Speaker 2: to the doctor to confirm. Right, take me back to
Speaker 2: that moment in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I I'd skipped a period and I thought,
Speaker 1: oh God, I must be pregnant. And my first reaction,
Speaker 1: and I will admit, was no, it's too soon, ye
Speaker 1: ready to go?
Speaker 3: Not yet? Not yet. I was gonna wait another year, but.
Speaker 1: The pregnancy test at home said I wasn't pregnant, and
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, maybe that's not right. So I went
Speaker 1: and saw my GP. I wasn't pregnant, and at the time,
Speaker 1: I was on a book tour, and so we sort
Speaker 1: of thought, well, I'm probably just really anxious and sort
Speaker 1: of stressed. My body stressed out doing a lot of
Speaker 1: travel promoting this book, and I'm a bit nervous about
Speaker 1: it all. Maybe that's what's going on. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: my son was only two. I'd only stopped breastfeeding a
Speaker 1: year or so earlier, so maybe things were just a
Speaker 1: bit not back on schedule. Yet. I had a really
Speaker 1: great GP who took me really seriously, which is important.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of gps in that situation would
Speaker 1: have said, you're just a bit stressed, don't worry. She
Speaker 1: had me do some blood tests which showed I had
Speaker 1: no estrogen, and I was like, what was that mean?
Speaker 1: And she said, look, I don't know, because if you
Speaker 1: were in menopause or something early, everything else would be
Speaker 1: different too, like your other hormones would be changing. But
Speaker 1: it's just your estrogen. So she sent me off to
Speaker 1: some specialists and that took a bit of time. I
Speaker 1: think one of the gynecologists was very fancy gynecologist. It
Speaker 1: took me like eight weeks to get in to see her,
Speaker 1: and I also got sent to an endocrinologist, and everything
Speaker 1: sort of happened like they were investigating, but no one
Speaker 1: made me feel panicked. It was very much like, oh,
Speaker 1: I we'll just figure out what's going on with this thing.
Speaker 1: But as part of that, both of them said, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to do all these different tests to figure
Speaker 1: out what's happening. We do do a brain scan, but
Speaker 1: don't worry about that. It's just to rule things out.
Speaker 1: And the day of the brain scan, I went in
Speaker 1: and I had an MRI in the morning, and that
Speaker 1: afternoon I went to lunch with a woman I didn't
Speaker 1: know very well, and I was trying to be more present,
Speaker 1: so I left my phone in the car and I
Speaker 1: had this lunch which I was very distracted anyway, I
Speaker 1: think because of the scan. And I got back to
Speaker 1: the carr and I had a miscall from the GP,
Speaker 1: the endocrinologist and the gynecologist, so I knew something was up,
Speaker 1: and I called the gynocologist just because she'd called first,
Speaker 1: and I called her office and they said, oh, we'd
Speaker 1: like you to come in to talk about the results
Speaker 1: of your scan. And I sort of got up my
Speaker 1: calendar and was like, yeah, okay, when and they said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: when would you like to come in? And this was
Speaker 1: the woman I'd waited eight.
Speaker 3: Weeks to see.
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, now is that up to me?
Speaker 1: And they said, you know what, why don't you just
Speaker 1: come in now? That's when you know things are really grim.
Speaker 1: If the very very busy important people can suddenly see
Speaker 1: you in fifteen minutes, things are moving fast.
Speaker 2: And did you go straight straight there?
Speaker 3: I drove straight there.
Speaker 1: I called my husband on the way and he said,
Speaker 1: he just said, I'll meet you there. So he drove
Speaker 1: and met me at her offices. And I called my
Speaker 1: sister and just said, you need to distract me so
Speaker 1: I don't like to drive off the road. And then
Speaker 1: when we arrived at the gynocologist's office, she saw us
Speaker 1: very quickly and she told me I had the scanchow
Speaker 1: that there was a growth in my brain brain tumor,
Speaker 1: and they thought they knew what it was, but you know,
Speaker 1: it was a bit a bit earlier. And she was
Speaker 1: a gynecologist and this wasn't her area of expertise, and
Speaker 1: she referred us to a neurosurgeon.
Speaker 2: Wow, what's your thought process from the moment you get
Speaker 2: that phone called say listen, come in now, trying to
Speaker 2: keep your you know, what's going on your your alarm
Speaker 2: bells are ringing to sitting down and then ultimately passing
Speaker 2: you on to someone else. Right, what's going through your head?
Speaker 3: It's really hard to describe it.
Speaker 1: I didn't take in anything she said after the word
Speaker 1: she used was lesion. She said, there's a lesion on
Speaker 1: your brain. And after that I didn't take anything in
Speaker 1: for a bit because I was like, lesion, isn't lesion
Speaker 1: a cut?
Speaker 3: And then I was like, how did I cut my brain?
Speaker 1: And so I asked for clarification and she said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like a growth, and my husband said like a tumor.
Speaker 1: And after that, I don't really remember anything that happened
Speaker 1: in that appointment. Thank goodness, my husband was there actually
Speaker 1: listened to some of what was happening. The only thing
Speaker 1: I can say it was just sheer panic, not panic
Speaker 1: that I came down from, Like it was like that
Speaker 1: that that high. I'm someone who's quite scared of heights.
Speaker 1: Felt that's the closest I felt to it is having
Speaker 1: been up somewhere very very very high and being told
Speaker 1: to jump. I imagine that's how I would have, But
Speaker 1: I didn't come down like I felt like I was
Speaker 1: in that heightened state for weeks after that, and it
Speaker 1: just there was no relief or release. Because I'm someone
Speaker 1: who is a real problem solver and I like to
Speaker 1: think about a problem too. I can come to a
Speaker 1: solution or a plan, and you can't think your way
Speaker 1: out of a brain tumor. There's no Once you get
Speaker 1: to what if I die of because of this brain tumor,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no solution to that, right, And I
Speaker 1: sort of could look got trapped in this panic loop.
Speaker 2: I think, just talk to me about the rarity of
Speaker 2: the of the tumor. Yeah, and what your your your
Speaker 2: ultimatums were, because you know you had basically one one
Speaker 2: choice and one choice only. Yeah, And when did when
Speaker 2: did your mind start to accept what was going on?
Speaker 1: So I ended up with a neurosurgeon who was outstanding
Speaker 1: and he was very clear with me, and I think
Speaker 1: the reason I liked him so much was he didn't sugarcoat,
Speaker 1: and so I felt like, Okay, he's not lying to me.
Speaker 1: I had this real fear that people would go, oh,
Speaker 1: young mum, will just soften the blows of things, which
Speaker 1: they were not not going to do.
Speaker 3: But that was my fear.
Speaker 1: And he was so straightforward and black and white about
Speaker 1: everything I felt.
Speaker 3: I felt.
Speaker 1: I felt a lot of trust with him, and he
Speaker 1: said to me that the first time I met him,
Speaker 1: he said, he told me that the tumor was very unusual.
Speaker 1: What I have is called a cranio for ingioma, which
Speaker 1: happens to about everyone in one in a million to
Speaker 1: one and a half million people. You're born with it,
Speaker 1: but you're just born with a couple of extra cells,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't be able to see it on a
Speaker 1: scan until it starts to grow, and for most people
Speaker 1: it grows when they're a kid, so I was kind
Speaker 1: of behind, and I'm really lucky that it didn't grow
Speaker 1: when i was a kid. But he said to me
Speaker 1: in that very first appointment, he said, what you have
Speaker 1: is extremely serious and the next part of this process
Speaker 1: is going to be incredibly hard, and you're going to
Speaker 1: have to be incredibly strong, but we are going to
Speaker 1: get you through this. And I held on to that
Speaker 1: for years to come. I would go back to myself
Speaker 1: and say, he said, we're going to get me through this.
Speaker 1: And I'm a kid who trusts authority. Oh you know,
Speaker 1: I worked in politics, think about authority, and I respect authority.
Speaker 2: I was like, right, he knows.
Speaker 1: So I listened to him and that that definitely helped me.
Speaker 1: But if I'm honest in terms of that panic head space,
Speaker 1: I genuinely don't think I came out of it until
Speaker 1: after the surgery. I think I was close to that
Speaker 1: state for a couple of months.
Speaker 2: And it is so important. It's you know, the old saying,
Speaker 2: it's not it's not what you say, it's how you
Speaker 2: say it. Just those few words are so powerful in
Speaker 2: that moment. And like you said, putting your trust into
Speaker 2: someone is all that you had, the only option that
Speaker 2: you had. You go into surgery. What does that look like?
Speaker 2: What are they what are they doing? Are they cutting part?
Speaker 2: Are your brain away? And you know? Is it? Is it?
Speaker 2: Touch and go? How bad is the tumor? How how
Speaker 2: grown is the tumor?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it was when they found it, it was
Speaker 1: about two and a half centimeters by one and a
Speaker 1: half centimeters. My tumor grows in a really densely populated
Speaker 1: part of the brain. So a lot of the brain
Speaker 1: is gray matter, right, it doesn't really do anything you
Speaker 1: don't want to. You still don't want to tumor there either,
Speaker 1: but you definitely don't want a tumor where it's right
Speaker 1: in the middle of all the important stuff. And for
Speaker 1: me that was the case. So my tumor grows between
Speaker 1: just underneath the optic chiasm, which is sort of where
Speaker 1: your eyesight crosses over, like the I'm going to explain
Speaker 1: this terribly, but like the bit that goes to both
Speaker 1: of your eyes, where it touches in the middle. It
Speaker 1: grows right underneath the hypothalamus, which is responsible for hunger, first, metabolism,
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of other things.
Speaker 3: You couldn't live without your hypothalamus.
Speaker 1: And then just above the petuitary gland, which is in
Speaker 1: charge of all your hormones, which is why my period
Speaker 1: had stopped and I had no estrogen. The blood supply
Speaker 1: to my petuitary was being cut off. So that first
Speaker 1: surgery for me, I've just done a spoiler alert that
Speaker 1: it was the.
Speaker 3: First, which has to be a second.
Speaker 1: That first surgery for me, like if I can take
Speaker 1: myself out of it for a moment. I still am
Speaker 1: amazed by what doctors can do. So to access my tumor,
Speaker 1: they went up through my nose. So they went up
Speaker 1: through my nose with cameras as well as instruments. They
Speaker 1: cut a small hole in my skull once they got
Speaker 1: to that point, and they operated on my brain through there,
Speaker 1: which is a less invasive brain surgery.
Speaker 2: Well so rather than cutting your head open, yeah, they
Speaker 2: went up through your nose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which was still I remember when they said that,
Speaker 1: I was like what, But I didn't even know that
Speaker 1: they could do that. But it's quite common now, and
Speaker 1: if possible, that's how they'll If that's where they can
Speaker 1: get to the tumor best, that's what they'll do. I
Speaker 1: think the whole theme of my health journey is naive
Speaker 1: to like, I just didn't know what I was in for.
Speaker 1: I was so focused on the possibility that I might
Speaker 1: not survive the surgery. I didn't really understand the complexity
Speaker 1: of recovery and what was going to be ahead of
Speaker 1: me because I was not experiencing any symptoms except having
Speaker 1: not had a period. I ran ten K's the day
Speaker 1: before I went into the hospital. I was still I think,
Speaker 1: up until the night before, expecting someone to say, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we mixed up.
Speaker 2: A scared yeah, yeah, we've got it wrong. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: There was this feeling of like, how could I possibly
Speaker 1: be sick? I don't feel sick.
Speaker 2: And sometimes that's the best way to tackle things sometimes,
Speaker 2: you know, it's you know, when you overthink, over analyze
Speaker 2: and overstress, and you know, it can really drain you, you know,
Speaker 2: psychologically and emotionally and physically.
Speaker 1: You know, it reminds me after that, after that surgery,
Speaker 1: it was would have been only been a couple maybe
Speaker 1: two days after that surgery. I remember my surgeon came
Speaker 1: around and I hadn't stood up yet, and he got
Speaker 1: very grumpy with everyone and was like, why isn't she standing?
Speaker 1: And I was looking at him being like, oh, because
Speaker 1: I had brain surgery, and but he was like, no,
Speaker 1: I want to standing. I want her up and standing
Speaker 1: before the end of the day, because it is true
Speaker 1: that the sooner you're up and standing and moving and walking,
Speaker 1: the better for your recovery. But at the time, I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, I don't even know if I can, like yeah,
Speaker 1: but I remember, but they got everyone on either side
Speaker 1: of me, and they had my husband on one side
Speaker 1: my sister on the other and nurses holding all like
Speaker 1: I had so many cords coming out of me still
Speaker 1: in front of me, and the sort of helped me
Speaker 1: slide off the bed and stand up. And as soon
Speaker 1: as I did, I started vomiting and it was pitch
Speaker 1: black like itoked. It looked like tar to me, and
Speaker 1: I remember just thinking, oh, this is it now, this
Speaker 1: is I'm dying like this. It was sheer panic because
Speaker 1: it was black, and my sister, like I remember, she
Speaker 1: grab clenched my arm and so I looked at her
Speaker 1: and she said, this is fine. This is completely normal.
Speaker 1: They knew this was going to happen. You just have
Speaker 1: to ride it out. And she was like rubbing my
Speaker 1: back and she was one hundred percent right, it is
Speaker 1: completely normal. I swallowed a lot of blood during surgery
Speaker 1: and it was just dried. It was dried blood coming up,
Speaker 1: which is gross. Sorry everybody, But she didn't know that.
Speaker 1: She had no idea.
Speaker 3: She just said that she's made it up.
Speaker 2: Oh she did.
Speaker 1: She was just trying to keep me calm because she
Speaker 1: also thought it was like and she was like better
Speaker 1: to die, horb. Yeah, And you know, I do think
Speaker 1: people sometimes our naivety does protect us, and sometimes that
Speaker 1: includes not realizing what we're capable of. And my sister
Speaker 1: would have been one of those people. You know, she's
Speaker 1: a baby of the family. She's the one we always
Speaker 1: looked after, and with me not being the one doing
Speaker 1: the looking after, she really stepped up in the most
Speaker 1: incredible way for my whole family. She supported everyone, including me,
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes we don't know what we can
Speaker 1: do until we're put in the circumstance where there's no
Speaker 1: choice anymore.
Speaker 2: What does the recovery look like? Because, like you said,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you find yourself on a on
Speaker 2: a you know, for in for a second operation. How
Speaker 2: does that journey look up to that second op?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the recovery was tough, uh.
Speaker 1: Not, not least of which that I had quite a
Speaker 1: weak nose afterwards because they.
Speaker 2: Had to take a lot of cart can imagine kill
Speaker 2: pulled the tumor from your from your brain through your
Speaker 2: nose and I don't put it in mid.
Speaker 1: Wow, But to do that, they had to take a
Speaker 1: bit of cartilage out to just make more space I
Speaker 1: suppose in my nose. And the recovery was going all right,
Speaker 1: It was hard and I was so tired, and at
Speaker 1: that stage they just left it with the surgery. So
Speaker 1: it was a very much wait and see what happens
Speaker 1: next kind of situation. But my two and a half
Speaker 1: year old flew a spider Man dole into my nose
Speaker 1: by accident, and my whole nose just collapsed.
Speaker 2: It was like through a spider Man dole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it was.
Speaker 1: And then the spider Man happened, and it happened over
Speaker 1: a few days. It was like a tent and you
Speaker 1: just like you pull the poles out of it and it.
Speaker 3: Just sort of crum crumble.
Speaker 1: My nose just sort of crumpled, and I I remember saying,
Speaker 1: should I get it fixed?
Speaker 3: And my husband was like, yeah.
Speaker 1: But not now, Like we're just we've got bigger things
Speaker 1: to deal with than the nose. We'll deal with that
Speaker 1: another time. But I think that really did add to
Speaker 1: my sense of like like it was this another thing,
Speaker 1: another thing. There was that sort of feeling nonetheless like
Speaker 1: we had a huge party. One of the things I
Speaker 1: had wanted was like I'm going to get through this
Speaker 1: and we're gonna have.
Speaker 3: A big party. We had a big party.
Speaker 2: In so you still got the all clear, Yes, it's out,
Speaker 2: it's done.
Speaker 1: They were like, we've left a little bit in there
Speaker 1: because it was too dangerous to take it out. But
Speaker 1: they weren't expecting it to grow again. They said, good odds,
Speaker 1: we think it's going to be fine from here. We
Speaker 1: had this huge party. I remember, it was awesome. My
Speaker 1: husband I bought a house and this is all in
Speaker 1: a few months, and we moved into the house on
Speaker 1: the Saturday. We unpacked a bit on the Sunday, and
Speaker 1: then on the Monday they told me it had grown back,
Speaker 1: and it had grown back really aggressively, so we had
Speaker 1: to move quite fast.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: In my head, I was it's like when you prune
Speaker 1: the bushes outside the house and then they grow. But
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's not how it works.
Speaker 2: But that was yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Like it just yeah, it had grown back quite aggressively.
Speaker 1: I had my first surgery in January. Formal recovery was
Speaker 1: done by end of March, and they told me that
Speaker 1: the first weekend of July, so it was it wasn't long.
Speaker 1: I was back in hospital again in September.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where's your head space right now? When they tell
Speaker 2: you again that it's going back. Not only is it
Speaker 2: going back, but it's aggressive. We need to get you
Speaker 2: in a sap. Where's your head space go? Just devastating, devastation.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the same shock, of course, because it's not possible,
Speaker 1: because I had some adjustment, but it was just devastation.
Speaker 1: And I remember saying, I can't do it again, like
Speaker 1: I didn't feel strong anymore. I went into that first
Speaker 1: one being a really fit, healthy, strong.
Speaker 2: Thirty, but I hadn't.
Speaker 1: I hadn't recovered I recovered that much and in only
Speaker 1: six months, and I remember just thinking I can't, Like I.
Speaker 3: How will I do it? I don't feel strong.
Speaker 1: I remember saying I don't feel strong, and I think
Speaker 1: I meant that in every sense of the word. I
Speaker 1: didn't feel strong enough. But I was less scared, I
Speaker 1: will say I was. I was terrified still, but I
Speaker 1: had less of this certain sense that I would not
Speaker 1: be able to survive the surgery. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I thought, well, I've done it before, so
Speaker 1: I can do it again, and that that gave me
Speaker 1: more confidence, which is it probably not very logical, but
Speaker 1: I did have this sense of like my body got
Speaker 1: through it, so it must be able to do it again,
Speaker 1: and that probably didn't take into account how intense that
Speaker 1: surgery was going to be, and that surgery was life changing, because.
Speaker 3: After that surgery, I acquired.
Speaker 1: Like quite a significant brain injury, which was necessary like that,
Speaker 1: they had no choice to cut the tumor out.
Speaker 3: They had to. They had to do that.
Speaker 2: So they left the part of the tumor that they
Speaker 2: thought would be okay that was attached a certain part
Speaker 2: of the brain.
Speaker 3: That to preserve the brain if they got wrong.
Speaker 2: Then and that it could potentially have devastating effects on you.
Speaker 2: But now they had to take that risk. They had
Speaker 2: to cut it all out and just take away the
Speaker 2: risk of it ever ever being not not being there
Speaker 2: but ever growing again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they took probably ninety eight percent of it.
Speaker 1: They left the two percent that was directly on my
Speaker 1: optic chiasm because if they'd taken that, I would have
Speaker 1: been blind. So they chose not to. But they took
Speaker 1: everything else, which meant I lost progressively took a bit
Speaker 1: of time, but I lost all hormone function in the
Speaker 1: pituitary gland, which is really considerable impact on your life.
Speaker 1: It means I take seven eight types of medication every day.
Speaker 1: I don't make cortisol anymore, which is the big one,
Speaker 1: because you can't you can't be alive without cortisol. My
Speaker 1: body doesn't balance water on its own, and so without medication,
Speaker 1: I would just be ferociously thirsty and but wouldn't make
Speaker 1: your own properly, Like I'd just drink lots of water
Speaker 1: and then I just it would come out. But I
Speaker 1: would not My body would do what it needed to do,
Speaker 1: and so I would eventually just dehydrate entirely and die
Speaker 1: from that if I didn't have the medication. I don't
Speaker 1: make estrogen or testosterone or growth hormone or prolactin, there's
Speaker 1: so many of them. Progesterone and so just completely changed
Speaker 1: my life, completely change my life.
Speaker 2: Wow, And how has that changed your outlook on life?
Speaker 1: I would say, now, you know, five years after that,
Speaker 1: I am somewhere back near that headspace again. I don't
Speaker 1: feel indestructible, but I feel like I have the same
Speaker 1: enthusiasm and enjoyment and determination for life. But I will
Speaker 1: say it took a really long time to get there,
Speaker 1: Like I had a good few years of really not
Speaker 1: being myself.
Speaker 2: How did you get through that to be where you
Speaker 2: are today?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: To be honest, I think I had to get to acceptance.
Speaker 1: You know, they talk about the stages of grief and
Speaker 1: the stages of grief. I didn't do them in order.
Speaker 1: I just kept like bobbing around in them all and
Speaker 1: not getting to acceptance, going backwards and you know, going
Speaker 1: through the rage period and going through the bargaining period,
Speaker 1: going through the denial. I just seem to go back
Speaker 1: and forth. And I think I did that for a
Speaker 1: good few years. It didn't help that I came out
Speaker 1: of treatment into a pandemic and I live in Melbourne,
Speaker 1: so it'd got locked in my house for a while.
Speaker 3: That didn't help. But I and.
Speaker 1: I won't say that there were moments of joy in
Speaker 1: those years. There were, right, like it's never all dark
Speaker 1: or all light, but I hadn't accepted what had happened
Speaker 1: to me. I kept putting myself in hospital because I
Speaker 1: didn't really accept my own limits. I'd keep trying to
Speaker 1: push and do the things that I live the way
Speaker 1: I used to live, and do things the way I
Speaker 1: used to do things, and then it would end up
Speaker 1: being very dangerous. And I think it did take me
Speaker 1: a good couple of years to get to the point
Speaker 1: of going. You know, I was someone who believed I
Speaker 1: was living life without limits, that I could do anything,
Speaker 1: and to accept that there were some really firm limits
Speaker 1: for me. That didn't mean I couldn't do a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of other things, but that I did have to
Speaker 1: work within those limits or I wouldn't survive. And that
Speaker 1: sounds really negative, but I actually think it was really
Speaker 1: helpful for me once I finally reframed and went, Okay,
Speaker 1: these limits aren't everything, but they are this, and I
Speaker 1: have to respect that or I'm not respecting what my
Speaker 1: body can do. Otherwise I'm expecting my body to fly.
Speaker 1: None of us are sitting here thinking I can fly.
Speaker 1: My body can't do things anymore. It's never going to
Speaker 1: be able to do those things. Unless there's some huge
Speaker 1: scientific revolution. It's never going to be able to do
Speaker 1: those things again. So what is possible for me?
Speaker 3: Knowing that?
Speaker 1: And I think focusing on what is possible for me
Speaker 1: knowing that has been really helpful.
Speaker 2: How did it affect your family and your little one
Speaker 2: and your husband and how's that relationship today?
Speaker 3: Yeah, my husband was just extraordinary.
Speaker 1: I think it was my mum who said he was
Speaker 1: worth marrying just for the first few weeks after I
Speaker 1: got die.
Speaker 3: He knowsed to nothing else. She was like, it was
Speaker 3: worth it. For those three weeks.
Speaker 1: He was so steady, and he figured out really quickly
Speaker 1: what I needed. And that's not what everyone needs, but
Speaker 1: what I needed was like a fierce belief I was
Speaker 1: going to be okay. I needed to be surrounded by that.
Speaker 1: That's what worked for me. I think for some people
Speaker 1: that would be quite distressing, but for me, that's what
Speaker 1: I needed.
Speaker 3: And so he did that.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure he had moments with other people and
Speaker 1: away from me where he had an enormous amount of doubt.
Speaker 1: He must have, but he just did not show that.
Speaker 1: After that first week. He never cried in front of me.
Speaker 1: He never showed Whenever I would bring things up, he
Speaker 1: would be like, no, I'm not worried about that, because
Speaker 1: you're going to be fine. And he was so certain,
Speaker 1: and it was I think like it was his belief
Speaker 1: in me being okay that made me believe it was true.
Speaker 1: But I think after a couple of years of that,
Speaker 1: once I was through the worst of it living in
Speaker 1: that lockdown in Melbourne, I think that really affected him.
Speaker 1: You know, he'd sort of been so stoic and not
Speaker 1: really gotten to fall apart at all, and I think
Speaker 1: it caught up with him for a bit.
Speaker 3: I think now he's doing really.
Speaker 1: Well, but I think he had a tough period then
Speaker 1: it was almost like it was delayed because he couldn't
Speaker 1: feel the trauma at the time because he had a
Speaker 1: job to do. Yes, exactly, once I was okay, he
Speaker 1: could come for par when I was I've written this
Speaker 1: book with my friend Rosie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, broken brains, Yes, we're going to beat.
Speaker 1: It, thank you, which is about which is about all
Speaker 1: of this. But in that book, I talked to a
Speaker 1: whole lot of experts about the experience of people who
Speaker 1: are unwell, and one of the questions I was quite
Speaker 1: scared to ask was around what happens to the children
Speaker 1: of people who are quite unwell and how does that
Speaker 1: affect those kids, because I kind of didn't want to know. Actually,
Speaker 1: for kids who are careers to their parents, not necessarily
Speaker 1: primary carers, where it's all on that kid's shoulders, but
Speaker 1: if they're a secondary care if they're sort of helping
Speaker 1: with the care but they're not the main one, it
Speaker 1: can be extraordinary for them. Most of the outcomes are
Speaker 1: positive that those kids have greater sense of responsibility, greater
Speaker 1: capacity for empathy, that they're more likely to understand the
Speaker 1: importance of putting others first, that they're more helpful, they
Speaker 1: have a greater sense of self and a sense of purpose.
Speaker 1: And I remember hearing about this from a psychologist, a
Speaker 1: child psychologist, when I was writing.
Speaker 3: The book, and just thinking, that's my kid. You're just
Speaker 3: describing my kids.
Speaker 1: Who is that he's that he grew up around all
Speaker 1: of this, and he grew up at two not being
Speaker 1: the person in the house who was first. You know,
Speaker 1: his needs were second, because he was constantly being told
Speaker 1: you gotta be quiet because mum's resting, or you know,
Speaker 1: got to not fly Spider Man into Mum's head.
Speaker 2: That stuff. For a kid to compute that at that age,
Speaker 2: because it's all about me, me, me, me me, they
Speaker 2: should be Yeah, of course, of course, and he sort
Speaker 2: of didn't get to be.
Speaker 1: But as a result, he is such a compassionate and
Speaker 1: kind kid. And you know, I always worry we're going
Speaker 1: to see the damage that me being sick has done
Speaker 1: to him, But he's nine going on ten, and I
Speaker 1: don't see it yet. All I see is that he's
Speaker 1: just an extraordinary person as a result.
Speaker 2: With parents like yourself, absolutely positive that he's going to
Speaker 2: grow up driven, positive, compassionate and pathetic like you are.
Speaker 2: So a final question for you, what is next for you?
Speaker 1: That's really that's the first time in my life I
Speaker 1: think that's a really hard question to answer because I
Speaker 1: really wanted to write this book, and now it's done, and.
Speaker 3: I'm going to now I'm going to figure out.
Speaker 2: What to do next, your next goal, your next purpose.
Speaker 1: Because I've written it with my friend Rosie, who experienced
Speaker 1: some pretty horrific childhood trauma, and we look at her
Speaker 1: experience of mental illness and mine of physical illness, and
Speaker 1: how she has had experience of physical ill health as
Speaker 1: the result of her mental health, and I've had an
Speaker 1: experience of mental ill health as a result of what
Speaker 1: I've gone through. And we've sort of explored this false
Speaker 1: binary we all come up with where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: the mentals over here and the physicals over there, Like
Speaker 1: they're both happening in your body. In my case, they're
Speaker 1: both happening in the brain. These lines we draw around them,
Speaker 1: these barriers, they might be helpful for diagnosis and things
Speaker 1: like that, but they're not helpful as a human being.
Speaker 1: And it's been such a joy sort of having those conversations.
Speaker 1: And I've found that for a lot of people with
Speaker 1: mental health challenges, they found my experience quite validating because
Speaker 1: I tell you, I've been through some of the hardest
Speaker 1: physical stuff a human body can go through. And I
Speaker 1: would have brain surgery ten times over again before I
Speaker 1: had to go through that period of being mentally unwell
Speaker 1: before the first surgery. That was the worst thing I've
Speaker 1: ever done. It was harder than the physical way harder.
Speaker 1: And I know that's helped a lot of people who
Speaker 1: felt like their experience wasn't significant or relevant or important.
Speaker 1: So that's a real joy, I think being allowed to
Speaker 1: talk about this book finally rather than.
Speaker 3: Just write it.
Speaker 2: And why can we get the book?
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 3: Oh, you should be able to get everywhere everywhere, bad bookstores, like.
Speaker 2: I know my books have ended up in some little
Speaker 2: bookstores and you know, probably probably free now. But Jimiller,
Speaker 2: thank you so much. Listen, best of luck with everything
Speaker 2: you do, and send my love to your family.
Speaker 3: Of course, thank you, thank you, thank you for your
Speaker 3: wonderful questions.
Speaker 2: Jimiller's book is called Broken Brains and it's out now.
Speaker 2: You can also follow Jumilla on Instagram. I'll put all
Speaker 2: the details in the show notes. Thanks for joining me
Speaker 2: on this episode of Headgame. If you love listening to
Speaker 2: this podcast, please share it with a friend, or you
Speaker 2: can leave me a review on your favorite listening app.
Speaker 2: I'm Att Middleton. Catch you in the next episode.