S10E36: DO YOU SUFFER FROM DEPRESSION AFTER STROKE?( guest,Serenity Peace)

Hello my beautiful survivors, how are you? This is Karina from Stroke Surviving the Odds, and the mission of the show is for you to reclaim your life, reclaim your identity and everything that has been dishuffled since the event of the stroke. And you know, you can like, follow and subscribe, but I'm not going to tell you all that today you are watching this on YouTube.

So what I want from you is to ring that bell. There is a movement of stroke survivors and of survivors all around the world that is making waves right now. Why? Because it's something that is the amount of it is unheard of. This is something that everybody at one point or another has been touched by.

And today's guests because you know, once a week I have amazing guests that come and not only share their stories of resilience, but share how their stories can impact your life. You know how I'm always saying take my story, flip it into yours. If you don't want to listen to it, please listen to my guests, OK, So enjoy the ride, enjoy the show. And without further ado, I am introducing my guest today and my guest today.

Point blank, I'm going to go right at it. 2013, her life got completely changed. She had a bowel, bowel cancer, bowel reconstruction if I understand correctly, which ended up in her having a ileostomy. Fast forward, her mindset, confidence and identity were all affected but she turned it around and make it her purpose.

So I'm going to let Ilinka Serenity Peace tell us a little bit of her story. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me, it's an absolute treat. It is a treat I was looking forward to me just by the colour of your hair tells me a lot of your personality, so I was really excited to meet you.

Oh, thank you. I'm not going to go grey gracefully, sorry. That is absolutely OK. You, you're in England, right? Where? Where are you? I'm in the West Yorkshire Leeds. Beautiful part of the. World. Wow. OK. So would you like to tell us who you were prior to 2013? Before my diagnosis, I worked in a homeless cell, a homeless shelter for single men. I was the manager of that project, so I had people at the most vulnerable for many, many different reasons. It's not just a bog standard.

They're addicted to a product and that's it their lives to shop. It's not. There's lots and lots of complex and complicated reasons why. And then I managed staff as well within that and helped develop the company to move forward and to be more client based and client focused to make sure they got involved in the right way and moving on and just getting people to thrive and, you know, strive more in their lives as well.

Before that, I'd worked in the what we call the health and social care sector. And I worked in that then for over 20 years before as well, helping people from getting out of abusive relationships, dealing with the mental health and to deal with that. Just all the practicalities of moving house and the practicalities learning how to be on your own again and to be there with your kids, worked in schools. I've had such a variety of vast yeah. And I've always worked with people, not always at the best, you know, with the, with the life experiences I've gone through.

So to me, I'm just carrying that on now. Just specific. OK, wow. Well, that that says a lot. That says a lot about your values and your heart. You're a very empathetic and compassionate person to begin with. Yeah, very much. So. And obviously I've been on my mum, Mumma 2, Grammar of Four and such, ever else. So that's the castle of now.

I was Grammar of Three in 2013, so I was doing all those kind of things as well-being involved in the family. OK. Yeah, OK. Are you OK with bringing us back to in 2013? Absolutely. How did everything come about? See, the thing was because I wasn't of what what they called the classic age. I was 46 when I was diagnosed Over in the UK they say it's about 65 and above that get diagnosed with bowel cancer. And I just had a couple of symptoms. I didn't have a a backlog of symptoms, so I didn't think much of it.

I had a bit of rectal bleeding, but it was only occasional. It wasn't a lot. And then I used to have a bit of a pain in the side of me. I'm beside of me tummy. And that was it. That's all I had. But my daughter kept nagging me and saying can you just go get it checked out and just to keep the peace on the deep and said, look, I'm losing a little bit of blood.

I have a bit of bellyache now. And again did a round of blood test, pulled me in the following day and said, yeah, this is more serious. So they looked at my symptoms and not me, not the me age, which I'm lucky, extremely lucky. Yeah, So wow. So it's kind of like when stroke survivors have a stroke when they're very young compared to, because we used to think that a stroke would happen to people that are a bit older, right?

And now we see that it's happening when they're 19/14/20. So wow, wow. Did your, what was your first reaction? If it's I want to I, I I really. My first reaction was family. How do I protect them? How do I make sure they've got the right support network around them? How do I make sure that I'm honest with them as much as I'm, I was more or less say, I'd say 99% honest because you don't tell everybody everything.

It's not going to happen, is it? So my, I just went straight into mum and wife mode and just protected them, got them the right people around them so that whilst I was going through what I was going through, I knew they had people they could talk to, people they could who would understand, people who could just just even just sit in the room with them.

They didn't have to do anything else, just do that. So that was my first response to it all. It wasn't about me, it was about them. And then my second response was, no, you're not doing that to me because I refused chemotherapy. I just went. Now you're not doing that to me. OK, wow. So you went more of the holistic route?

I did. OK. And, and, and what are the benefits? I, I, I really, I pray to God I don't need to know, but I've known a couple of people that are going more holistic now versus chemo. What's the difference if it's OK to? Ask right. Well, I forgot to say in 2013 I was a Reiki master and also did a lot of crystal healing and work as well.

So that sort of, that was just a sideline. That was just something I did for my own personal interest. And so once I got diagnosed, I worked out what crystals I needed and where I spent most of my time. And most of my time was spent obviously in bed because you spend 8 hours, don't you usually in bed.

So I, I grid the bed with the crystals and such and then when I were asleep, it did, it did its job. And obviously then I did the raking, whatever else then to shrink it all down and wake me. See, the thing that people don't quite understand is how powerful and how strong your immune system is. OK.

So once, so once my immune system got woken up and I'm going hang on a minute, we've got this thing here it needs to go get rid of it. You've. Physically felt the difference. Well, I shrunk it down by 45% before the surgery. Oh my Lord. So the surgeon was like, I don't know what the hell you've done or how you do it. Just keep on doing it.

Wow, wow, wow. The power of energy. Yeah, the power of energy and the force of the divine, maybe. The divine and also your immune system because unfortunately, like many people say cancer, it's part of your body. So they don't, it doesn't recognize it as OK until you identify it and you say say, you know, you sort of have the conversations and such for your head and your body and that and say like, let's get rid of this. OK wow, wow.

So before going to surgery, it needed to shrink. No, I made it. It didn't need to shrink. I made it. I made it. Wow. 45 and you didn't need to. You did your thing. Wow, wow, wow. Because Because I'm sure you can. I'm sure you converted your doctor. Yeah, it was because we're not doctors or scientists, right? They go with science.

They don't really believe in all this healing, holistic stuff. And when he saw what you what happened, he must have been like. Wow, Yeah, he was surprised because obviously with the the MRI scans and the CAT scans, they can see roughly what's there and how's it there, He says. It's not until you actually get in can you actually really see what you're dealing with, he said. But you had shrunk that down.

There was no two ways that the MRI scan had got it wrong. You had shrunk it down by 45%. So it was like, yeah, if I'd, if I'd had longer, I would have got rid of it myself. But because of my family, it was like, I have to have the, you know, the medical treatment. I have to, yeah, repeat them. OK. Just be I won't have done it.

I won't have had no surgery. I wouldn't have had nothing. OK, OK. But they wanted to have that comfort, that security of knowing you were taken in charge by medical professionals. Yeah. Yeah, OK, OK, Well, I knew you were an amazing woman. I told you your values. Your values right from the get go, we can tell. So tell me the fact that you was working in this before and you were working with underprivileged and people that were lost in a way, right?

In one way, shape or form, has it helped? That strength that you gave them, now you had to give it to you? And to my family, yes. And to your family, of course. So did you see a correlation between the two? Did it help? I think, I think when you look back, I think as you go straight into fight mode, it was a case of you don't always evaluate what's going on around you. It's afterwards.

I think it was, I think about week eight of the first surgery. Then it hit me what I'd actually gone through because everybody else had got on with their normal life by then. Because I was at home, I'd had the surgery. I could more or less get on with anything and everything because Mr. McCabe healed up and such and then it hit you.

It hit me quite hard then I must have met it was. Oh, did you? Did you start right off the bat thing? Why me? Or when you fell into the rabbit hole? I think it's more when everybody got on with their everyday things. Then I thought, what the Hell's just happened? Because then it wasn't necessarily going down the rabbit hole so much.

It was just the it's just the brain catching up with what the body's done or what. The body's done. And that's, that's money really. Not the, not the. When you had the surgery like you say that people that have bowel cancer, do they automatically get AII? Need to read the name ileostomy, do they automatically get it?

It depends on what stage of cancer you have because sometimes you can actually have it removed and you don't need to have an ileostomy. Mine was no I shouldn't say that. The cancer was stage 3B so it was the one just. Below terminal. OK, it was serious. It was serious, yeah. They needed to give my bowel chance to heal again.

So they then they said we need to put this I thought tooth and nail not to have this damn bag. I absolutely said hell no. But once they talked and explained and said it'll allow your bowel to heal the best and the quickest and the most effective. We need you to have it. So I agreed, but unfortunately but.

You got to do what you got to do. Peace. Yeah, right. You got to do what you got to do to protect you, your family and and make yourself heal better. I have two questions in mind right now for our listeners and our viewers that don't know what a ileostomy is. Can you explain? I can't do ileostomy is it's a surgical procedure where it brings out the small bowel or the small intestines out through your stomach wall and then it's this like it's, it's quite a dark pinkish colour BLOB. I know it's not a BLOB.

It's actually. It's called. It used to be called. A rosebud, a rose bag, or a stoma it. Looks like a rosebud does your stoma, it really has to be and that's what they used to call it a rosebud and that's then it just your output comes out through through the the surgery. And the number 2, the number 2.

So for you guys, the number two, yeah, but something exciting happened. But before we get into the exciting part, how was your mindset at that point? You were not in the rabbit hole, but you were. After 8 weeks you were like, OK, I'm still here, they're doing them, but I still have to deal with this.

Yeah, I had a really, really bad, bad day. I've only had that form and this was it. And it was fortunately my still my bag products were being delivered and I just felt like I'd had enough. I just wanted to walk away from it all. I just wanted to get out of it all. And the guy come and delivered and he just said you're not right. And he sat with me and sorted me out, made me a made me a drink, let me talk, let me let me sort of get through this black bit. It wasn't long.

It was just a just he just caught me at the right time because I just generally I was sick of being in pain. I were frustrated by I couldn't just go back out there because with this bag and like you say, it's, it's the number 2 and who talks about bodily fluids and bodily functions? Nobody. So you couldn't go out and and if you had an accident, nobody D understand, nobody D give you any empathy. So you, you stopped going out, you stopped doing things. But like I say, fortunately, Charlie Charles, he actually came in that day and he just said something's not right with you, I need to stop with you.

And he stopped. With me who? Who was Charlie? Who? Who was he exactly? Charles, he was the one that delivered my stomer. Bags wow and he saw that you needed to wow, that is an Angel right away. Oh, God, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I, and to this day, you know what I mean. I always say thanks to him when I, when I see him on Facebook Consortium.

I wrote him a lovely letter afterwards and nobody knew by him. That's where I was at. Nobody knew. Oh. My God, I got chills. Wow. Wow. I'm not kidding. Wow. You know, I believe that we meet people when we need to meet them. Maybe it's just once forever, right? You'll never see them again. And in your case, you saw him again. Of course, he was your your delivery person. But that makes it even more special because he saw the progress in you, but that day impacted you. Yeah, it did, because I think the one thing out in the world is where you see this all singing and dancing and yeah, you've got this bag stuck to your tummy, but you're able to go do XY and Z.

But people need to see the bad days, They need to see the flawed days. And I think that's, I'm hoping that's what people see with me, that I will say I've had a rubbish day today or you've not seen me on social media as much because XY and Z and I will go out there and I will say that. And I want people to see that when you work with me, I will be honest with you. I'm going to.

I'll hold some punches. Absolutely. But I will call you out and I will say, come on, who are you doing this for? Yeah, 100 percent, 100%. And I mean, I've seen a few things. I think I followed you in another group as well. So I've, I've been following you for a little bit before meeting in the stroke survival group. I had seen you somewhere else and I knew a little about you, about your hypnotherapy and whatnot. That's another question.

Were you a hypnotherapist before or after 2013? After it was because of I had the I had radiotherapy, I agreed to have radiotherapy but unfortunately that that is annihilated my bowel. They've absolutely ruined my bowel. So I have this is my second ileostomy that I've got now. So in 2013 December had it reversed and then I had three years where I had no control of my bowel at all. So then.

I said to him. You're going to have to give me another one. I hated it, but I said you're going to have to give me another one because I've no quality of life. I'm not. I can't do anything. I can't go anywhere. I'm just stuck to the loo kind of thing. Sorry people out there, but that's what it was like.

So I've got the second one. And then that's when in between that period of those three years, that's when I trained to be a hypnotherapist just to keep my mind going because if you're not, if you're not learning, you're not growing, you're dying. It's how I've always seen life. You know, you, you've got to be moving forward in some way or fashion. So it was originally I did it just as just to keep my brain going, not actually to use it.

OK. But then I noticed a lot of the skills that I've used whilst I've supported people for over 20 years or more were skills that now hypnotherapy have identified that are naturally used and naturally had. Well, when I'm just going to do, I'm just going to do a quick overhaul. When you had your confidence and your mindset and it was bothering you and, and, and you just felt like shit for like a better word.

You felt like shit. OK, serious. I'm. Sorry, I'm sorry, but seriously, what helped you morally, emotionally? Accepting that you can have crappy days, accepting that not everything has to be shiny. Obviously my husband knew when he came home that I wasn't feeling right, but I never told him to what extent I didn't feel right.

I just said I've just had a really rubbishy day. I need a hug, I need some, you know, TLC, which you know what I mean? I've got plenty of, but I think it's once I've been able to talk it through, then it was like, OK, then I need to move forward because I've got too much to live for. I have got, I'm only 46.

Well, no, it's. 47 then. But I just said I've got too much to live for, I've got too much to do. I was gentleman myself saying, yeah, you can have these episodes. Obviously not that proper dark data because I'm not having that again, but you can have days when it is of that bit difficult. But there is always a good, there's always something I'm not saying being grateful for because that's awfully used.

I think be grateful for, grateful for that. But look at something that's gone right that day. It could be that you make you smiled and somebody else smiled back at you. You smiled, or you've nodded your head, or. Yeah, yeah. What? That might be the only smile the other person got today. Or it might be the only conversation. I mean, I'll talk to anybody.

I don't give a flying fuddle. And I can say I treat everybody with respect and talk to them because like I say, that might be the only, like I say, nice conversation or conversation they have that day. So there's always something not necessarily nice, but something that went right that day for you, for somebody else. And I think that's so important is look at the right things. Yes, there are yucky things that go on, but the right things overrule, and that's what I love. That I love that.

That's amazing. Wow. That I hope that the the viewers and the listeners that are stroke survivors are getting what you say, not to go with the plane, not to go with the shiny stuff. Just you be shiny for someone else. Don't look for the shiny, you be for someone else. I think that's very powerful. Helenka.

Helenka is what nationality you said you was. You're not from Finland. No, me, me mum had a friend when she was a child called Helenka and she just said I love the name and that's what my daughter was going to be called so love it I. Think it's great? And when did you start calling yourself Serenity Peace?

That was 2013 because I started up my business to be a crystal healer, A Reiki master, to teach people to do, you know, learn to be Reiki and such. And then I got diagnosed. So that then just all got put on a back burner and Facebook won't let me change my name. They've just said that's the name you've put on. That's the name it's going to stop. I think it's amazing.

Serenity, peace brings peace right away. Right away. I, I, I knew we could go on and on and on. What do you think? I thank my sponsors and we do segment 2 where we're going to talk life changing in design. Are you OK with that? Absolutely, Absolutely. I want to thank my sponsors. I have my very first sponsor supports me like it would not believe. Supports the cause, the mission.

He knows people that they know, people that had strokes themselves. They know people that know people. So the mission is close to their heart like it is to me. So I have two avenues for you guys to be either sponsors. If you think that your business is aligned with the mission of the show, you're more than welcome to become a sponsor. And if not, I also do donation base where every penny is put back into the show, into the production, into the reach to make it better and better and better. That being said, we're going to take a moment, we're going to take a pause and we are going to be right back.

S10E36: DO YOU SUFFER FROM DEPRESSION AFTER STROKE?( guest,Serenity Peace)

Kapitelklicken springt direkt hin

Shownotes

Transkriptvom Podcast bereitgestellt · Zeitmarken springen hin