Cancer Blows

Routine checkups aren’t supposed to flip your world upside down. But for Korrie Medina, they did. In this episode, Lyndsay Soprano sits down with Korrie to talk about what it means to keep living your life while battling cancer.

Korrie opens up about the shock of her diagnosis, the rollercoaster of treatments—chemo, radiation, brachytherapy—and the way cancer doesn’t just touch your body, but everything: your mind, your relationships, your career. Lyndsay shares her own story too—what it’s like to go through the medical system, the emotional fallout, and how women are so often expected to just keep going no matter how brutal it gets.

They talk about the messiness of it all—how cancer can change your life in a heartbeat, how asking for help feels like a risk, and how it’s easy to lose yourself in the chaos. But they also talk about strength: how to hold on to joy, to find moments of light, and to keep moving forward even when you’re running on fumes.

This episode is real, raw, and a reminder that no matter what you’re going through, you’re allowed to take up space and put yourself first.

Find Korrie Medina Online Here:
Instagram: @korrieanne
Facebook: Korrie Medina

Find The Pain Game Podcast Online Here:
Website: thepaingamepodcast.com
Instagram: @thepaingamepodcast
Facebook: The Pain Game Podcast
LinkedIn: Lyndsay Soprano
YouTube: The Pain Game Podcast

Episode Highlights:
(00:00) Introduction to Chronic Pain and Trauma
(03:19) Cervical Cancer Diagnosis Journey
(04:07) Understanding Cancer Staging and Treatment Options
(10:08) The Hybrid Approach to Healing
(12:33) Chemotherapy Experience and Its Effects
(18:12) Emergency Surgery and Its Complications
(23:27) The Importance of Mindset in Healing
(25:19) Embracing Happiness Amidst Struggles
(26:18) The Mind-Body-Soul Connection
(27:39) Navigating the Aftermath of Treatment
(28:38) Understanding Brachytherapy
(30:36) The Brutality of Medical Procedures
(31:32) The Aftereffects of Radiation
(33:45) The Reality of Menopause
(35:45) Hormonal Imbalance and Mental Health
(37:40) Reaching a Breaking Point
(39:09) Seeking Help in Crisis
(41:31) Reflections from the Psych Ward
(43:40) The Importance of Self-Care
(45:49) Empowering Women Through Adversity

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about
the game of living in and with chronic pain and trauma,
getting to the heart of how to heal. I am
your host Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan on
discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, holistic practitioners, loved ones,
and anybody that is interested in having their voice heard

(00:26):
in the chronic pain and trauma world that we live in.
So we have partied hard in our lives, right, we
have lived life.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
We've lived life hard.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
We've lived the sex, the drugs, the rock and roll life,
and then life kind of starts to catch.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Up with you. You know, when did it start to catch
up with this?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
And this doesn't even necessarily mean that you had to
be like drugs and partying and rock and roll for
life to catch up with you. But I am only
speaking to that because me and my guests of live
a fricking hard life, and we've partied hard, and we've
lived life to the fullest. And I feel like I
am on for sure my seventh or eighth life, absolutely,
and I'm exhausted, and my body hurts, and my every

(01:15):
single aspect of who I am hurts. Every single day.
When did my body start to feel me? When did
it start to fail me? I have very specific incidents
of when it did start. When did our body know
that it was getting sick?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Though? Right, it talks to us.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
It gives us little signs, gives us little nudges here
and there and everywhere, and we ignore them. I know
I certainly have, and I did for a very long time,
because you know, whatever, it's gonna be fine, everything's going
to be good to go. And then you're like, fuck,
I can't walk, or fuck what the hell? And it

(01:53):
goes on and on and on, and a lot of
it is us women far more than men, and then
here we go, now we're sick, and now we're getting
sick and tired of being sick. And why so the
body keeps the score. We say it all the time.
But one of the things that we do as women,

(02:13):
as men less men than women, because we have more
body parts that we have to take care of than
you guys ever, will have to routines, right, we all
have them. We have to go in for our routine checkups,
which we all kind of stink at. And then when
we do sometimes those routines are like, oh, my god,
what the hell are we going to do? We go

(02:33):
to our doctors for all of our routine checkups. We
bend over and we cough, we spread and we open
our legs wide to get everything we need done. Here,
we get our blood draws like good little girls and boys.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
We do our stool samples.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
We do all of the things, and then surprise, you
have cancer.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Your career's gone, your body's wrecked.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Then you've got menopause that kicks in like full force,
all of a sudden.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Overnight, and now you're off to the psych word. Holy shit.
Do you want to talk about this?

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I sure do, so let's dive in without further ado.
Here I would like to introduce to you today my guest,
little miss Hatty Toddy Corey Medina, Hello, my darling.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
So my girl Corey here was in the cosmetology field
for over twenty five years. She's the mother of two
grown men and has gone through hell after being diagnosed
with stage three C cervical cancer. We're gonna talk about
what that little sea means because I didn't know what
the hole that meant? All right, So I'm rolling out
the red car before you, babe. It's about time you

(03:39):
got here. By the way, because we've been talking about
having this conversation for over a year and we finally
got together. There's been a lot that's been going on
that's gotten in the way of you being able to
even do something like this, So thanks again for joining
me today, my sweet love. Of course, i'd like to
quick start with how you found out that you had
cervical cancer and what happened that with your gynecologists, and

(04:01):
let's take it from there.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Get ready, guys, get ready.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Well here we go. Well, just like every other woman,
I went in for a routine PAF spear and then
there was a little silence in the room and my
gynecologists is like, well, it's all black in the here.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Wlack.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah, black like my soul.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Let's kick this off. Let's kick this party off right there?

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Uh no, for real, but no, but it was visibly black.
How like the tissue was black. And so you know,
you get the little purper with her and her nurse.
They do. They decide they're going to do an emergency biopsy,
and this is where it all kind of went south.

(04:52):
They're in there, they're you know, they're talking to each
other and they go in there with the forceps and
they pull out what looks like a chunk of literal
black raw sewage. I've never seen anything like it. It
probably looks like, I don't even know what to say.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
It looked like, well, black raw sewage kind of gives
us a good visual and also a smell as well.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
So it's like if you put your hand down your
pipe of your toilet and pulled out whatever is in there. Ooh.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
I mean we talked about writing hard and living hard.
I mean this is a bit much core.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, but but I'd like I talked to you before,
you know, I thought, oh, just like my pussy stink, Like,
how did I get used to this smell? And like
I didn't know that it didn't No, it wasn't a smell.
So that's what's scary, is like I really didn't have
many symptoms except for a regular bleeding, which at the

(05:52):
time I was forty seven forty eight, So I thought, oh, well,
I must be a perimeno base. You know, I'm having
like breakout bleeding whatever, you know, no big deal, which
is why I went in for my routine pap anyways,
is because I thought, oh, I must be impyramento pause. Well, no,
it turns out no, my insights are dying and I

(06:13):
have cancer.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
So that's insane surprise, surprise, it's the total kind of
surprise party that all of us women love. So okay,
So all of a sudden, so you're there and you've
got all this black goo grossness coming out of your JJ,
and the whole room is kind of in a standstill.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Everyone's a little quiet.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
So now what So you know clearly there was something wrong? Uh?
And yeah, I mean uh, And you know she knew.
She knew, you know, visibility speaking like you can tell.
She kind of kindly let me know that something's very wrong.

(06:55):
She didn't technically say the S word at that moment,
but she said, you can expect possibly these outcomes. So
blah blah blah. Fast forward. You know, I get sent
to an oncologist and we do you know, further testing.
You know, that was like a month later, and turns out, yes,

(07:17):
I do. I do have stage three C cervical cancer.
It was three C means that you're on the very
cusp of going to stage four. What that means to
like delay person is if they tell you three C
be stoke, because it's the point before it starts spreading everywhere,

(07:39):
So that means you caught it in time before it's
about to go ape shit everywhere. So that's a good
thing to hear in I guess, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
I stayed three C is better than stage four, right A, yeah,
the one yeah, so's it was a good thing to hear,
you know when you know the term so okay, So
we end up getting diagnosed, So then what's next what
happens in this for you?

Speaker 3 (08:06):
So when you diagnosed, you know, you get with your
oncologist and you discuss your options, just like many other
things that even positive things that go on in your life.
You know, you discuss your options, and you know you
can go the alternative route. You can go chemo radiation,

(08:28):
you can do clinical trials. There is a lot of
things on the table for you and for all cancer patients. However,
I was just kind of at the point where it
got to like too far in the process to start
an alternative therapy in my doctor's opinion, and with the

(08:52):
opinions of you know, certain family members, and you know
they want to see you alive, okay, so they're not
the one going through cancer. They don't understand and all
they want for you is the CEO life. No one
wants to lose a family member, right.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Nobody wants to lose anybody. Well, I mean there's a
couple of people that I would actually like to lose,
but well, okay, never I'm back to back to back.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
So they they bring you to that you get, you
get these options laid out for you. I know we
talked a little bit about the holistic side of things
and all that, because I know you and.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Me are a little bit more woo woo on that
kind of side.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
But to your point, it's like we got and and
I've done this with my bod too. Is where there's
all these alternative things that I've done for my body
because I've got I got nowhere with like quote unquote medicine,
and then I haven't really gotten all that far with
holistic alternative medicine either for my body. So now I've
been working more on kind of like a hybrid approach

(09:45):
between those two places, because I needed to fill my
soul with things that I felt were going to be
good for my body that weren't going to deplete me immediately.
And you and I have similar issues where medications that
are given to us opposite to act the opposite in
some in some area, and that is something that I
would have been concerned with when it comes to chemotherapy
and radiation.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
So can you touch a little bit on that.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Well, absolutely. I mean, why do they call it like
the mind, body, and soul because they're two. There are
all three separate entities that work together. So I think
the hybrid approach is a very good approach because maybe
you need something medical for your mind, but then your
body needs something holistic and that's what works for you
and that's how you tweak it. Or maybe it's the opposite.

(10:26):
You know, maybe your body needs something medically and your
mind needs something you know, woooh, maybe you need the
yoga or go see healer, you know, whatever you need.
And it's all different for everybody. But you know, personally,
I would have rather have taken an alternative choice. However,
you know, I have kids I have, and they were

(10:48):
you know, they're at those ages where they're just starting
out their lives. And my son just got married last
October and you know he's gonna have kids and all that,
and you know, just other people in my life, my
boyfriend in particular, who was really nervous and really scared
for me, dealing with me on a daily basis. And
so I made the choice to go medical and also
too you know, at the time when I got cancer,

(11:11):
I wasn't expecting it. So now twenty twenty hind sights.
Even though I already went through chemo radiation and did
all that, now I know because I had two years
of being unemployed and going through it that all I did,
I'll do long was research, you know how so now

(11:31):
now I'm a wealth of information. Then I decided to
go through chemo radiation.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
So chemo is different than radiation, right, I mean, we've
got chemo is that shrinks the cancer cells and it
goes over like the you know the systematic treatment right
where radiation is more localized.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Right, Well, radiation goes in there, and radiation is actually
what shrinks the actual tumor. Chemo is like it goes
in there and it just kills cells.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Just willy nilly, We're just gonna kill yea.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
Well, it kills the good ones, and it kills the
ld ones. It just kills everybody. Everybody, you know, everyone
that came in the party. You're all going shutting it down, parties,
over cops, parties, over fuck you you know. Yeah, chemo
for me, so you know, I had an intervenience in
my arm. I didn't have a port. I did chemo

(12:28):
for six weeks. It seemed like longer and it's every
week or if you don't know, it's a five hour appointment.
You sit there in a lounge chair. It's cool, it's
a lazy boy. You know, you got snacks, you got
you know, it's all good. But you know it's a
long day. You sit there for five hours. It doesn't

(12:50):
hurt because they put things in the ivy that make
it so it doesn't like burn your veins. Otherwise it
would probably burn. Yeah, but they do like a cocktail mix.
They put steroids in there too, if you didn't know,
so that you can go home and be normal person
for at least minute until you go to bed. I

(13:13):
guess for me, I was like, h like, I'll just
be full disclosure like chemo days. It was Wednesday, by
the way, and it was my favorite day, pump Day. Yeah,
and I felt like I was on top of the
world because the steroids. Right.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
Oh interesting, I go have a.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Couple of cocktails, gob some dinner, I go have a
couple of cocktails. What else are you gonna do? You're
already dying. Who cares?

Speaker 2 (13:39):
I mean, that's the spirit.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Here's the thing. Here's the thing, here's the thing with everything. Okay,
this is like, this is my personal opinion. Okay, don't
come at me for having my own personal opinion. I
think everything in life is a balance. When you go
too far over to being too healthy and doing everything
to like the extreme, to where it gives you anxiety

(14:01):
and you're on a regimen and you can't live a
normal life, to going too far down, you know, the
deep dark hole and ruining your life, that's also a
bad thing. But when you can have a balance, like
you know, and just also enjoy your life. If two
cocktails on a Wednesday is gonna make your whole week

(14:24):
turn around, then that's what you gotta do. I don't
want to go for a fucking run.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
I don't like runners. I mean, just generally speaking, I
don't know what you're doing. What are you doing, what
are you running from? And what are you running towards?

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Like Forest Gump should have moven to you guys all
along to just stop.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Look when I was in when I was in my
late twenties. When I was probably like twenty nine to
thirty six, I was one of those chicks, like what
we would call an influencer. Now, I was in the gym,
I was running five miles a day, you know, six
days a week. I could have one beer on a Friday.

(15:08):
Oh yeah, I was.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
I had a train beer, I had the fucking point, I.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Had a trainer, I did everything. I did all things.
But now I'm forty nine, so fuck all that.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Well, I mean the bottom line is you're in the
middle of this. You're in the middle of this really
shitty diagnosis. You've got You've got kids that you're worried about.
You've got your sweetie that you're worried about, You've got
your your family that you're worried about, your friends that
are worried about your career.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
All of these last my career. I know you did.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
I know twenty seven years. Yeah, the career that never
let me down, the career that I loved, the career
that brought me so much family and friends lifelong. You
were one of my lives.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
This is true.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
I met me, We've known each other for like twenty years.
I know the career that brought me so much joy,
and the career that let me raise my kids as
a single mom and raised kids with a good life,
not some you know, with a really good life.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah, near a bad asthmam.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
I lost it in a matter of a week. I
had I got the diagnosis. It was like, you can't
work with the chemicals anymore. I couldn't even stand up
at this point, like I had so much cramping and
I was bleeding out. I was bleeding out. I had
to have during this whole process, I had to have
two full blood transfusions because I was bleeding out. They

(16:28):
couldn't whoa until until the chemo and the radiation got
the tumor down to a certain size. I was bleeding out.
It was just it was an enormous amount of blood
and I almost died. I almost went into cardiac arrest
because I didn't know the signs of heart palpitation. This
is really important because you know a lot of women

(16:51):
even that have like really bad periods. We'll get this
where you bleed so much that you're gonna get You're
gonna feel heart palpitations, You're gonna feel really tired, you're
gonna bruise easy. You need to pay attention to those
science because I almost freaking died. Where to god, I
had to go in and that was another four hour appointment.
And you're just sitting there getting someone else's blood and

(17:13):
it's weird, weird, it's weirdd And you're like, is my
personality going to change? Was this person a vampire? Like what?
You don't know who they are?

Speaker 1 (17:24):
One hundred percent you have vampire blood? I thank god,
Well I have barlick in here. That's why it's stink.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
No, you know, but it just it's just weird. It's
like when someone else's blood goes into your body, is
like they're DNA going into my body. I don't know,
it's a weird.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
I didn't even think about it.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
I mean, I know, we all know what blood transfusions
are a lot of people have had them after car accidences,
in surgeries and.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Such, But I never even thought about it that way.
So thank you. Of course it saves you're here to
ruin you guys. Okay, it saves your life.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
But I want to hear from a nurse or a
doctor or scientist changes your dNaM a little bit.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Well, I can tell you one thing. There's nothing changed
about you.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
Curio curious mind's one of the.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Oh my gosh, all right, so now we've got we've
got your diagnosis, and you're going through all this chemo stuff.
But you had to have this emergency surgery though, And
that part of it is insane because you have this
in surgery where you get completely sliced opened.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
She got gutted like a fucking fish at the harbor,
you know, in China or something.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Her body parts left on the dock, Like, what's going on?

Speaker 2 (18:36):
Talk about what happened here with this? In a way,
I mean this is insane.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
Uh Well, at this point, we the cancer hasn't spread,
so we think, okay, cool, We're gonna do a routine
direct me, no big deal. You know, it hasn't spread,
so I can keep my ovaries like no menopauns or
anything like that. Like routine has directed me, like do
it all the time, right, many women have no big deal.

(19:01):
So I get in there and I go to surgery,
and uh, they find they find two things. Number One,
I have a micro spread of cancer to my left
lymph node, which automatically is a no go for for
a noncologist or a surgeon because once cancer you cut it,

(19:22):
hits oxygen, it will spread everywhere. They'll spread everywhere in
your body like a wildfire. So that was number one,
and then number two. So I found out that I
have a I am five foot, one hundred and ten
pounds in a little peanut. Yeah, I'm a little girl.
But I found out that happened a normally large bladder
for some of my signs also too, like a couple

(19:43):
of my body parts were too close together. So the
cervix is here. The bladder was like a little bit
larger than the serve eggs. So if they did surgery,
it would damage my colon. Then we would have you know,
e coal ie spreading everywhere. They could, they could fix it,
but you know, don't want to risk the infection. Yeah,
so they decided not to do the surgery and they

(20:04):
just so be back up. So it's like, you know,
it's kind of like a sea section where they take
your intestines out. You know, you know they have to do.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
That, right, Yeah, I do. I don't know if. Yeah,
they have to.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Take your intestines out. Yeah, they sit on the side.
Maybe they put it in like one of those buckets,
like one of.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Those things wash bucket.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Or just one of those things that like some people
put their like sink and they you know, they do
the old school dishwashing. They put the water and anyways
there's intestine. Ye hey, hey, looking good. You know. I
personally shout out to all the women that have sea sections.
I had my boys. Uh not imaginally, but that's that's

(20:44):
a real motherfucker. Uh to cut through seven layers of
skin and muscle, have all your your parts down there
and jumbled around, then shove back in and then you know,
sewing back up, and then they're just like coolre you
go here, some five milligram percosets five milligrams, Yeah, don't
overtake him because you only have two weeks worth. And

(21:07):
then you got to call again for Rephil And.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Then a reference the beginning of this episode where I
talked about Corey and lindsay have lived a long and
a hard party life.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
Five milligrams of percoset ain't goodna.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
New crap, you know. Yeah, so why do you think
you have to have a percent and like two cocktails?
What what the fuck are you supposed to do? It
hurts like a bitch, Yeah, you know, a vil No anyways,
and so that's that's what it was. And so I
was at home during cover. Uh they did my stitch

(21:38):
uh vertically, you know, horizontally, so it gave me a
little bit of it's seven inches long from the belly
button to the puss.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Be the puss be medical medical advice Withdana.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah, so it was. It took it took a while
to recover, uh un till I was up and walking
like normal, probably like three and a half, four weeks,
four weeks, I was still kind of I don't know
I explain it. It's just everything's tight, your stomach, muscles tight.
It feels like it feels like you're okay. You know

(22:14):
you're okay, but it feels like it's gonna writ Yeah.
So it's weird, you know, and you just you have
no other choice but to just like sit around like
and it's frustrating for us proactive girls. No doing laundry,
no lifting. I could barely stand and do dishes. Standing
was really hard.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Well, and this is why career ending kind of thing too.
From cosmetology.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
You can't stand all day doing hair and doing makeup
and doing all.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Of those things. That's gone because as soon as as
soon as I was, so they give me eleven weeks
to fully recover for this surgery. From the surgery, so
I got in that eleven weeks. I got like two
weeks where I felt normal and I got to like
actually live my life. And then after those two weeks,
I went straight in and chemot radiation and that was

(23:03):
it was I can't remember. I think it was nine weeks.
There was chemo every Wednesday, and that's also a four
or five hour appointment if you don't know. You sit
there in a lounge chair and you have your ivs
and you have snacks and you just watch Netflix or
whatever's on the front. You also have a little TV
there so you can watch TV if you want. And

(23:27):
chemo was a great experience for me, even though like
you're stuck there and it kind of stinks, but it
was great. I had an ocean view. The nurses were
just so like nice. I don't know, I've never seen
that level of nurturing and just compassion, so that was great.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
This is part of why this is a fun episode too,
because a lot of one of the reasons why I
love Corey is because no matter what conversation I've ever had,
with you ever, you always have a way to spin
it positively no matter what it might be fucked up,
but it is still positive the way that you approach
things because you're always.

Speaker 3 (24:06):
Like sometimes it's definitely fucked up. But the thing is
is it's all about your mindset, like I just like
I said earlier, your mind, body, soul, your mind. Your
mind is what's gonna heal your body. Right, So if
you're right in your mind and you can be happy
and positive and not think about the bad shit, not

(24:28):
go dark, and not let it take over you, then
your body's gonna follow. Right.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
So whatever the fuck I had to do to make
myself happy, I knew that my body would follow that.
And I know it's unconventional, and this is my own circumstance.
This isn't for everybody. If you want to do this
every day or fast and do no sugar diet and
do whatever you need to do, like there's nothing wrong

(24:57):
do you. This is and I did that us by
the way. I did that most of the time, okay,
but sometimes you got to blow off a little steam.
And no matter what it is that you like to
blow off, steam is what's going to bring you happiness.
For me, it's having a couple of cocktails, spending some

(25:17):
time with my man, going listening to love music, you know,
going dancing, socializing with my friends, laughing, spending time with
my kids. Those are the things that make me the
most happy. So when you get diagnosed with something like this,
let's amp up the happy. Let's do what we need
to do for the body. And then the soul is

(25:42):
something you know you've heard about, like soul tie, Well
think think about it like a bow tie. Mind body
and your soul. Rahaps it up.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
I love that visual.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
You're not looking at her, but it's a really good
visual of her putting on a tie like a men's tie.
It's it's really good. In fact, it's one of the
best visuals that I've seen here. Because we talk about
a lot of this on the show. As you guys know,
we talk about hope, we talk about positive thinking, talk
about my body, soul, we talk about mindset, we talk
about being mindful, we talk about all of these things.
It's really hard sometimes when you're in the thick of it,

(26:17):
when you've got your arms full of id ivs and
you're in all of these machines and you're going back
and forth between doctors and all of us that have
lived in chronic pain have gone through some form of
this in some way, right Like for me, I know
I've got all of my things.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Have I been through chemium radiation?

Speaker 3 (26:32):
No?

Speaker 2 (26:32):
I have, No, I have not.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
Have I gone through something that I would consider similar
in that because I call what I have my version
of cancer because for me it is mine.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
It is something that I will be dying of. Well,
that's okay.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
Can I interrupt you for a second. No, I think
what you have is worse because the radiation is just
a season in your life and then you're done with it.
What you have is forever, forever, season of your life.
So what you're going through takes a very strong individual.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Let me cry, bit, sorry, sorry, shit, don't do it.
I cry on the show every episode, so everybody knows.
I'm a tissue box. Here it's what I do. Don't
do it.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
I said I was not going to cry in this
episode with you today. It's okay, But here I want
to move into though. I'm a little bit about the aftermath.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Because you've gone through all the chemo, you're you're you're
starting to get your your cells.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Getting her groove back, and then you're like, what the
hell just happened?

Speaker 2 (27:27):
I had a blip of like I'm doing good and
then what the hell?

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Sorry? Would have been okay with just chemo radiation, but
I had to go. Most women that have some sort
of vaginal cancer or cervix, uterine, whatever, what have you,
you have to have this thing called breaky therapy. Breaky breaky,
like achy breaky yep, exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Wow. I believe a man coined this phrase.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
This, this is this is utter brutalization of women. It's
something from the dark ages. I don't if this was
a man's penis hole, this would not exist. Basically, you
go in for an out patient surgery. They sew what

(28:19):
looks like the end of a push up pop with
a hollow straw to the end of your cervix and
they sew it on there with features, and it's plastic
and it stays on there. It's an outpatient surgery. Three
days later you go in and this is a once
a week for four week procedure. Nine robot metal parts

(28:46):
that go inside. They slide inside and then they bracket
it on the outside, connects to them, and they assemble
them like a bracket, and they latch them all together,
and then four or five wires go up your vagina
in through that hollow push pop straw and into your cervix,

(29:11):
and then they connect to an external radiation machine and
you sit there for an hour while they radiate the
whole inside of your vagina. It's brutal, it's masochistic, it's horrible,
it's absolutely it's not normal. They must have something better

(29:34):
than that. We're in twenty twenty five and we're still,
you know, building the Apollo space station in your fucking vagina.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
I'm not. I'm only laughing because I knew you were
gonna end up.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Saying something funny at that, but only fucking flintstone pop,
Like what the I've never even heard of.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
This, I don't. Oh. By the way, the plates that
go in, when they go in, you can feel them
in the bottom of your ribs. They go up all
the way because they have to protect your kidneys, and
they have to protect all the other organs around that
so they don't get radiation. So these things go all
the way up to the side of your uterus, almost

(30:19):
to your stomach.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
It's hard to silence me, No, it's brutal.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Who when I say it's brutal, like honestly, and like
what a valuume and not even a xanax. You could
have spent a little bit more money and gave me
a xanax not a value or.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Hey, knock me out, like Twilight, like not let me
remember any of that.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
But they'll put you in Twilight to put the little
plastic thing on your the bottle push pop and pop
in three sutures. They'll put you on Twilight. But not
for going through this four weeks every week. It's just
the medical systems weird.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
I mean, that's one word that we could use for
our medical system here in the United the States of America.
So okay, so my god, honeybuons.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
Okay, but it's the so when we go into the
aftermath of everything, chemo radiation is one thing, right, you're
gonna you're gonna have after effect. You're gonna you're gonna
have neuropathy, You're gonna have a lot of nerve damage.
You know, radiation. I have a lot. I had it

(31:26):
in my abdomen, so I have a lot of lower
back vertebrate disintegration during radiation. The only thing I ever
had towards the end was like massive diarrhea. I told
you I pulled up.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Now you get talking about I told you.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
I pulled up an office in my bathroom. It was aggressive.
I had have my boyfriend put on a padded toilet seat.
I had things in there, like, you know, footstool and
make me more company. It's like my launchyt, you know,
like for guys. You know it's called it's it's it's
called a squatty potty.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Okay, so let's be able, okay, but I went bloody potty.
We would like you to advertise on the show, but
you lose a.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Little bit of control of that area. So like I
told you, I thought I could go to the movies.
Let me see if I can remember the movie.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Uh, Barbie, no, But that's the perfect place for you
to ship yourself, by the way.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Perfect thing in thing that sucks is I'm with my
boyfriend and his best friend, who's a guy. I sat
in the middle and I shit my pants before the trailer,
before the true before the trailer. And it wasn't just
a little shirk. It was like a quarter. It was
like a quarter shit. But you have diarrhea, right, so

(32:41):
it's not a log. It's never gonna be a log.
And I and I still don't have hard poops in
really no.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Well that's my whole life. My whole entire life is
loose poop. Yeah, and thank you for not, you know,
taking a douchie in my studio today.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
So far, so so far, so good. Everybody crossed their fingers.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
If I leave, I leave the house after like noon,
I'm usually good, like from the one way I wake
up till noon. That's why I don't eat.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Very much during today.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
You know, the math. But going back to like what
we're talking about about the breaking therapy. So here's the aftermath.
So Breaki therapy and radiation do something that vaguely, vaguely
when you get your little packet from your doctor, you know,
there's like one little tiny paragraph that's like you may

(33:29):
or may not go into menopause after this these procedures. Whoop,
Well fuck you. You are going to maybe if you're
like younger, like in your late twenties or thirties, maybe

(33:50):
you may have enough hormones to build up to compensate
and fight off the menopause, but you're gonna go through
it early. You're gonna go through it like forty. Anyways,
it's better to because I went through it. One day,
I came home, I was normal. The next day I
woke up. I have scar tissue in my vagina from

(34:11):
the breaking therapy. It's so aggressive that I got vaginal atrophy,
which means it's starting to grow together. So from the back,
not like where you go in, but from the back
the scar tissue starts to grow together. Once it closes,
they have no surgery to fix it. Whoa, unless you

(34:34):
like vagina clothes. Yeah, vagina hole close. You can still
pee obviously, but well but vagina hull close for business.
No surgery to repair that. Wow. Period. I don't know
if it's because there's too many blood vessels and it's
just too dangerous.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
Well, there is, but it's not going to be here
in the United States of America, or.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
You could just be you just go brutal and like
just stick a pipe up.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
There, raw dog it Now you can caunterize it.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
Just stick. I just go to Thailand, you know, like
I just go to a welder and they stick that
shit in the fire and be like we had this
and it's not a welder. Yeah, you know, we know
what a weld.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
It's a gatherer of trying to go out.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
What do you call the blacksmith? Sorry, the blacksmith. I
want to go the blacksmith and be like, can you
heat up a pipe and just crown just fix it? Yeah,
that's that's the opportunities that they give us as women
like it sucks.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
So to get my vagina working again, I had to
go through a lot of things. I had to go
to peblic floor therapy. I had to get dilators, I
had to do estrogen cream. But I went on HRT.
But before I went on HRT, I was going nuts. Okay,
I was. I was psycho, I was crying. I was

(35:48):
pissed off at everybody. Any childhood trauma that ever sat
with me that I thought I healed and did all
the right things into counseling, did all this stuff was
elevated to like thousand millions percent. I had no physical
or mental control of my actions. And later when I

(36:11):
get leader in the story, my doctor told my boyfriend
she literally has no control. Your hormones as a woman,
control every single thing in your body. And so I
looked like that with no homework, hormones were about I
don't know. Eight weeks, maybe twelve of the mouse, I can't.

(36:34):
I can't remember. Until I came to a head where
I knew that I needed help. I was drinking about it.
I was doing some other stuff about it just to
feel normal, you know what's that. It's kind of like
I had to slow my brain down with substances to
catch up to feel like a normal, functioning human. And

(36:58):
I was going a little too far with it. But
you know, that's where I was in life. I just
wasn't okay.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Had can you after everything we just heard about that
would not make anybody okay?

Speaker 2 (37:11):
I'm not okay. Just listening to it like put me
in a psych ward.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
Yeah, I just was okay, which led me to my
breaking point of where and there's there was no like situation.
There was nothing like dramatic that happened. I didn't try
to like fight somebody or anything like that. There was
no dramatic situation that leaded up to that. I just
made a decision. But I will tell you that the

(37:36):
relationships around me were stream you know, my boyfriend, my friends,
my family, my kids. One of the biggest lectures I
got was from my son, which broke my heart A
caring lecture but firm, just like I used to mother him,
which sucked for me. Yeah, but uh. And so I
woke up a morning I knew it was the day

(37:57):
that I was going to go. So there was one
day I woke up, you know, almost like seven. I
woke up. I was feeling very off. I was home alone.
There was my boyfriend went to work. I was home alone.
It was kind of cool because I got to sit
with myself and like, you know, just be like, all right,
where reevaluate? Where are we really at right? And I

(38:21):
was just like, I don't see it getting any better.
I don't see it. And I think I'm a strong
ass bitch, but I knew that. I knew that this
time it was not in my control. There was no
like herbs or freaking tea or anything that I could
do about it. So I made the choice that I
was going to go to the emergency room. So I like,

(38:43):
I bored a couple of cocktails because that's what I
had to do. And I took a shower and I
made sure I smell a pretty I did my hair,
I put on my comfy sweats, my fuzzy socks, and
I called my boyfriend and I'm like, we got it's
time to go. I think I was like one thirty
in the afternoon and he's like and he's working, and

(39:04):
he's like, yep, I'll be there in like fifteen minutes.
That's how he's like.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, bitch, she need to go.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
Finally, finally, nice as long as very sure I got this.
I remember it very vaguely, because you know, they gave
me a lot of sedatives. But I remember talking this
one nurse. She was like a rockabilly chick and she
had red hair and tattoos, and she like hold my

(39:33):
hand in the gurney and I'm crying and I'm sobbing,
and she's like it's okay. It's okay that you're but
alcohol level is really high, and it's okay that you
feel bad because what else were you supposed to do?
No one knows what women go through. You could tell
this badass bitch right, she's there. She's there for the girl,

(39:54):
and she's like you're gonna be okay, and I'm like okay.
The next thing I know, there's like a and I
was out and I woke up in a paper suit
in this syche.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Woard paper suit in a psych ward.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
What you don't know is they cut they take all
your clothes off you and they put you in like
what looks like the equivalent of scrubs for doctors. But
they're made out of papers, so you don't try to
hang yourself. If you try to tie them in a knot,
they break there, they will break. And so this is
the best story. And I saved this for you.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
We're saving we're saving the best for the last here.
So we're so we are now in Laguna Beach, California,
by the way.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
So I end up there, Uh, they've douse you full
of you know, drugs that just calm me down. You know,
they're not overdosing you. They're you know, just give you
a break from life. Right. I slept really good. I
woke up in a regular bed. It's not a hospital bed.
Weirdly enough, it's a twin bed. They helped me for

(41:01):
seventy two hours, by the way, which is standard. Okay.
I wasn't treated any words or anything. Yeah, yes, of course,
and I needed it. I'll never do that again, though
I started. I'll lock myself in my bathroom from the
outside before I'll go ever, do that again. Yeah, I'll
learn my lesson. Though you know I'm in the aries.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
I always go to learn the hard way, Damma gem
and I have to learn two times the hard way.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
That's why, that's why we're such great. But anyways, it
was an experience. It was well deserved. It was my
own decision, so I couldn't make anyone else feel bad
except for myself. But I realized that I didn't need
to be there with people that really need help. At

(41:45):
the at the end of seventy two hours, I felt
really bad because there's people in there that really I
was taking up a bed for somebody that really means
the mental health.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
No, but for somebody that has dealt with mental health
and dealt with depression and anxiety. And I have been
into the Laguna Beach Hospital where you were for a
different reason when I was younger.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
We all need to do what we need to do
at that time that's best for us.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
So if you felt like you needed that break, and
I can tell you one thing right now, I'm about
ready to check myself into Laguna Beach Hospital for three
days just so I know, fricking sleep, Lindsay.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
I didn't need the break what happened was is my
doctor was going to take six weeks to get back
to me for the HT.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Right, So you were like, I'm going to lose my
mind if I don't.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Get called the nurse on the floor of his office
and she's like, go to the emergency room.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
It will speed up the process. And then here we are.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
And then when they see fifty one fifty on your darrets,
they're like, oh, next day after you get out, Oh cool, Yeah,
you need HRT come on in.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
Yeah, unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
So you kind of worked the system a little bit
and also got a little nappy nap.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
Yeah, the drugs are getting there and don't know exactly,
but they're good.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
They have good You and your snacks. You're so funny.
You've used the word snacks on this show.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
I might have to pull up the number, but maybe
upwards of twenty times, so you like your snacks.

Speaker 3 (43:09):
Look, I don't like all mels.

Speaker 2 (43:11):
I don't neither. I can't do it.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
One of the things that I find to be so
challenging about any health issues that we have as we
round out this episode here, because I know it's a
little bit longer than usual, but a it's really hard
to see somebody that you love and that you care
for go through anything like this. And I say that
to you because I love you, but also because I
see a lot of people that I love that have
been through a lot of stuff. But I also deal

(43:34):
with the other side as well, with Bill, my sweetie,
just like you and you're sweetie, where it's really really
hard on our loved ones because they don't know what
to do, they don't know.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
How to cope.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
They've got their own shit that they have to deal with.
But at the end of the day, what ends up
happening with people like Corey and myself and many other
of us women, we end up putting ourselves last, and
we always take care of everybody before we do ourselves.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
And I know Corey has done that. Certainly I do it.
I'm the first person to do that. I'm a people
please that I do all the things.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
We have to flip that, because if we start taking
care of ourselves first, we're going to get less sick,
or we're not going to get sick, or we're not
going to let stress get involved as much as we do.
And it's something that has to be a cognitive decision
that we make for ourselves every single morning when we
wake up. In fact, I use insight Timer, which is
an app for meditation and so on and so forth.

(44:26):
I use it in my suna and they launched a
new feature within their app where you can add the
widget onto your homescreen of your phone and you are
forced to make an intention every single morning and so
throughout your day because we look at our phone seven
hundred and fifty thousand fucking times a day. First thing
I see when I unlock my phone is this intention.
And it's actually been really really good for me, especially

(44:49):
when it comes to stress management and loving myself and
putting myself first and making decisions for me to start
my day and not worry about anybody else down on
the pike, which as we know, I take care of
my sweetie, take care of the dogs. Is here of
this and we all do, especially women, And it's a fault.
It's a beautiful fault that it is a fault. And

(45:11):
what ends up happening from a lot of this is
we get sick, we get chronically ill because we're not
taking care of ourselves, and we end up black sewage vaginas.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Of the.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Black sewage vagina, you know, like like the supplime black
Hole son exactly. That's actually not a bad song. Theme
song for the Pain Game podcast thus far moving forward
is black Hole's son.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Oh my god, Chris Cruel all right?

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, I know, rip Chris, come out all right?

Speaker 1 (45:47):
So before we hit the dusty trail here, I appreciate
you coming on and talking about this, and I know
that we raw dog with you, which is something that
we plan on doing.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
I know you do.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
That's why I love you for this kind of So
before we jam out of here, my love, what do
you got for our listeners? People that you know have
been struggling with cancer, who have gone through and have
gone through similar situations of you, or are just newly diagnosed.
What do you have to say to these ladies out there?

Speaker 3 (46:13):
Don't be scared. You have time, do your research, reach
out to people. TikTok has a wealth of information of
women that I have gone through it and it's been
kind of my soul lists and good information. Do what's

(46:34):
right for you, I know, you know, women, we're so selfless.
You think about our family, our kids, our lives, our
livelihood and our home. Who's going to wash the editions?
The you know to that little miniscule mi new detail.
Stop thinking about it, sit with yourself, make a plan,

(46:56):
do what's best for you. In my opinion, there's we
more things you can do in the meantime before making
that human decision. I would advise to try it out
see if there's any improvement. Everybody's got a month or
two unless you don't unless they tell you you don't. Okay,
I'm not a doctor, not giving out medical advice. But

(47:18):
do that. And then we're women and we're stronger than
you think. We are the givers of life. We are
the people that populate the world, and we were here,
we've been we were put here for a purpose, and
we don't need to die for some stupid reason. So

(47:41):
remember that if you think you're going to die, you're
going to die. If you think you're not going to die,
then you're not going to die.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
You're going to live. You're going to live.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Yeah, work on your mind, work on the power of
your mind, and empower those ovaries. Empower or over be
a woman. It's for real. We're strong. You know, in
every other culture the women do all the work. And
even in the animal culture, you know you're lioness. You
know the lions do. The Lionesses do all the hunting amendously.

(48:13):
They're all day and impregnant women. Well I mean it
sounds like America. Okay, well that's what they do.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Thank you again for being here. I really appreciate your
time and I love you being alive. You're pretty awesome,
all right, So before.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
We jam out of here, thank you again for being here.
I have a new bite sized extension of the Pain
Game podcast. It's called Pain Bites b y t E S.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
I am going to be serving up a small but
mighty dose of real talk on Fridays every other Friday
as of right now, because I want to see how
this all shakes out.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
But I can't do it without you.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
So I am calling upon you are VIPs to submit
your wins, your losses, your struggles, your celebrations, everything in
between from your week, and I'm going to highlight you
anonymously if you would like so, send me your voice notes.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Do it.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Get engaged.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
You can go to Instagram and there's a link in
my bio that talks about you can click on it
and if there's a little form, it's super easy to do,
and you can submit your voice memo too, So go
do it because pain bites, and it bites in so
many places, but it also can bite you back in
a good way too, because this is what the show
is for, is giving pain purpose.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Thanks again, Corey for being here. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
You are exclusively invited to share this raw dogging, overy, empowering,
love yourself VIP pain journey together.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
Let's get to the heart of how to heal with
you by my side.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
Please follow the Pain Game Podcast wherever you digest your
podcast content, we will be there. Visit us at the
Pain gamepodcast dot com and follow us on all the socials.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Thanks for listening, my little VIPs. Catch you on the
other side.