At what point, Jenna, in, in your own lived experience and in all the people that you've worked with, at what point is survival no longer the only job? Like, at, at what point does survival change and you start recognizing that you have all of these emotions running sometimes at the same time on the same day, going on underneath all of that? When did you realize you had all of that going on?

I think for everyone it's gonna be different, but for me, I realized it just when I got to the place where I literally couldn't do it anymore.

And it wasn't so much that I realized it like a light bulb came on, but it was like, if I don't stop, I'm, I'm just hurting myself physically because I can't do it, and I'm continuing to push through like I can.

And I think we end up there because we, we tie our identity and our value in what we're able to do and what we're able to produce, and those things that we're able to hold up.

And when that is stripped away from us, when that part of our identity isn't there anymore, we are asked, "Who even am I? What even am I? How do I even exist if I'm not able to do X, Y, and Z?" And maybe that's being a mom and taking care of your kids.

Maybe that is taking care of your house, if you stay home and take care of that.

Maybe it's your job, because there's no way that I could work when I was going through these things, and all of the complications and all of those things.

Because you're a nurse, explain to us what graft versus host disease is.

So just talk about just that journey of figuring out what exactly was wrong.

Yes.

Well, definitely to your point, knowledge is not always power.

And sometimes it can definitely be more anxiety producing to have all of these what ifs and to know the knowledge behind it.

And yes, I did have a lot of abdominal symptoms.

I had been on some medications for a sinus thing.

So I had just attributed all of the symptoms that I had to a reaction to a medication.

So, okay, it's Monday and you get the diagnosis and then what happens?

So what happened then? You've got the diagnosis, and what were the next steps? What were you thinking, feeling, fearing?

Well, when I met with the oncologist, he had thought it was a B-cell lymphoma, and that was the direction that we were leaning.

But he said, "We are gonna have to do a lot of testing to figure out what this is." And so that first week, it was just test after test after test.

And I had a bone marrow biopsy, a PET scan, a scope, and then a long needle-guided biopsy.

And they were supposed to do that guided biopsy, and he had told me, kept looking at the images, looking at the scans, and the doctor said, "I cannot do this in, in good faith." And he said it, "Where I need to go with my needle is between your kidney and your spinal cord." And if I, if I am off and I hit either one of those things, it's going to be very, very serious.

So he said, "We're not gonna do that." And so they took me back to my room, which I'd been waiting all day to have this procedure.

They had had some emergencies come in, and so I had had nothing to eat, and it's 5:00 PM.

Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm.

So a lotta times when you're in fight or flight, it is a triggered response to your body feeling like it's in some sort of danger, and everyone has different fight or flight reactions to different things.

So to me, it could be I'm walking to the hospital because I'm about bleeding to death, which I have done, and to you it could just be I'm driving in a very heavily trafficked area, and I literally feel like I'm going to die because I am so panicked at this traffic right now.

And so either way, your body is sensing this danger, and so it, it wants to go into this mode to protect yourself.

And so what it's gonna do is it's gonna go into that fight or flight, where either we're fighting, we're going, or we're running for the hills.

And so a lot of times it is those feelings of increased heart rate, your breathing is increased, you kinda get tunnel vision.

It can just feel like you are dying.

Well, before we wrap up, we just wanna share with our listeners, one, how can they follow you, find you, get more information about the joy reflex, and how they can start incorporating that into their spiritual journey?

And so, yeah, what are some things you've done to help you experience God's peace?

I think one of the biggest things I learned throughout my time as a nurse, but then also through my time as a patient is that our first reactions are often what we have trained.

And when a crisis happens, when there is fear that is trying to take over.

you are going to go to what you have already trained your brain to do, what you've already trained your spirit to do.

And so when that pressure comes, and that doesn't just have to be a medical issue, it could be financial, it could be relationships, it could be issues with your children.

And what we automatically fall back on is the thought patterns we have practiced the most often.

So if we repeatedly rehearse fear, anxiety, what ifs, worst case scenarios, then panic is going to become that reflex because that is what we are telling it to do.

So what did you learn about helping your children feel emotionally safe during your health journey? And what encouragement would you give to other moms out here who are also experiencing hardships in life?

I, I, I have a huge respect for you guys.

Well, thank you so much.

And I think it's important to know that, yes, the doctor is usually there, and they're putting in the orders and they're ordering all of the things.

And they're there for, you know, a couple of hours maybe in the morning and in the afternoon, but the nurse is the one who is at the patient's bedside 24/7.

They're the ones who are fulfilling all the orders.

They're giving all the medications.

They're starting the IVs.

Now, at which point the decision was made to, you know, to let's, let's, let's discuss stem cell therapy or stem cell, uh, transplantation?

So I do have a huge respect for you guys.

Well, thank you so much.

And I think it's important to know that yes, the doctor is usually there and they're putting in the orders and they're ordering all of the things and they're there for, you know, a couple of hours, maybe in the morning and in the afternoon.

But the nurse is the one who is at the patient's bedside 24 seven.

They're the ones who are fulfilling all the orders.

They're giving all the medications.

They're starting the IVs.

Now, at which point the decision was made to, you know, to let's discuss stem cell therapy or stem cell transplantation?

So yeah, talking about training our brain, right? How do we how can one start training their brain because you know it's i don't want to say it's difficult right especially for someone who has always you know taught less about themselves right how can they now start training their brain to begin to think of like you said what god thinks about us so what are the steps to take in order to you know train your brain

Yes, that's a great question.

And that is something that I really talk about a lot in my monthly devotionals and in my book is the framework, because it sounds great, right? Choose joy, choose peace, faith over fear, all of those things sound wonderful, but how do you actually do that? How do you get your brain to start doing that? And some of the things that I talk about is the first thing is to just acknowledge that it's there.

Really do a deep dive into your own heart, into your own mind, into your own thought processes of, What is it that my mind is going to? And acknowledging that reality that you're in.

For me, it was a medical issue, but that's not going to be everyone's thing that they need to train their joy reflex for.

And I've said this too, that it doesn't have to be just a health issue.

Like you said, maybe it's comparison or maybe it is what success looks like for that person.

You know, after everything you've been through, how has your definition of a good life changed?