Latest / DA CREW Podcast / DA CREW PODCAST SEASON 1_ EPISODE #74_HOST NATALIE HARVEY_(SHOW #3)

Transcript

DA CREW PODCAST SEASON 1_ EPISODE #74_HOST NATALIE HARVEY_(SHOW #3) · DA CREW Podcast

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  M oh, but will make coming where this seems to be no way.
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  He works in ways we cannot see it, will make away lovely mine.
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  This Global Magazine is available to digitally on Amazon, Kindle and in print on
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  blurb dot Com. We have ranked number one in three categories on Amazon.
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  This Far, This Global Magazine. You'll learn my story and it's true.
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  Don't lookin about the little bog you want. Don't matter what you're going through,
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  they're still some woman living inside of you. Good evening and welcome to
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  a new edition of a Let's Chat with Nat. I am your host,
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  a Natalie Harvey, and here here are we Yeah have a conversation about anything
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  and everything that is important to us. We're gonna talk about it. Um.
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  Tonight's topic is gonna be something that is near and dear to my heart.
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  Thing that everyone whether you're young, you're old, no matter what.
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  It's a conversation that every family should have, every adult should have, every
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  parent should have with their children, and it's about do you know your family
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  medical history? For me, this is a topic that I pretty much have
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  dealt with all of my life, and not just in my adult life,
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  but in my from childhood and it played a vital part coming into my adulthood
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  as well. You know, if some of you don't know that, you're
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  some of you, well, let me back up. For those that are
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  new, you may not know, but I am a nine year cancer survivor.
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  I was diagnosed in December of twenty thirteen with non Hodgkins lymphoma and pretty
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  much getting to this point. It's interesting and it has a lot also to
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  do with knowing your family medical history, because when everything aligned up and aligned
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  itself, it made sense as to why certain things played out the way that
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  they did. But for me, you know, and for many of us
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  that come from African American families, West Indian family, Spanish Latin family,
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  any Caucasian, it doesn't matter. It's because it affects every race, every
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  nationality. You know. We always hear, oh, this person had diabetes
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  or this person had high blood pressure. But we hear these things things,
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  but we don't really understand stand how it correlates into our everyday life and how
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  it psical dynamic and our mental dynamic. It plays a huge part. But
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  for me, how this play the part was as far as I can't remember,
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  you know, Oh, I've always known that diabetes was a major part
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  on not just my paternal side, but my maternal side as well. Both
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  families had that. I knew high blood pressure was something that also was there.
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  What I didn't know was cancer and leukemia and all these different kind of
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  things was there as well. And I can remember my grandmother's and I'm just
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  just a little side note. As long as you're on this platform with me,
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  in the let's Chat with n platform, you're always gonna hear me reference
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  my grandmother's because they were so instrumental in who I am as a woman.
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  My grandmother that's a she's no longer here. And my grandmother, Doll Eleanor
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  she's still here. She's still alive and kicking, and she's just a ball
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  of fire. But I always remembered, you know, my grandmother, she
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  Doll, she was asthmatic and she's diabetic. And then I would always remember
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  my grandmother, that's a she dealt with issues with her legs like vercles,
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  veins and all that, and she had a hybrid pressure sure and stuff like
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  that. So it was interesting because I would always hear as a kid,
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  oh, don't put too much salt, don't do this. It was interesting
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  to me because I'm like, what, why, what does this mean?
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  But it wasn't until I had to be I think had to be around maybe
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  in the age rings between five and seven, something like that. And I
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  remember my grandmother, don't She had not she had recently been diagnosed as a
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  diabetic, and she and I'm always used to be with her, and she
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  said to me, whenever you're with Grandma and you hear me say I don't
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  feel good and I need a piece of candy, go in my bag and
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  give me a piece of candy. Or if we're home and I say,
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  Nat, I need you to give me my insulin. This is so she
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  showed me how to give her her insulin, where to find it, all
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  that kind of stuff. And like I said, I had to be no
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  more than between the ages of five and seven. But at that time,
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  you're a little kid. You don't realize what these things mean. You just
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  say, okay, you're going on with it. You know, if something
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  I have the grandma, she said to do this, and that's what you're
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  gonna do. But I never knew how much it was going to play a
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  major part in my life as an adult. Um And then I remember too
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  with my grandmother Odessa. So it was just like I would see her.
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  She would have these crams and she would come thinking about these pains and her
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  leg and it was just interested in it. I would see, you know
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  sometimes my aunt my wife to see interesting. Sorry, we're having a little
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  technical difference. Gothie's Night, but that's because this topic. Is it your
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  word across, but we're gonna get it across tonight. Okay, cool,
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  But anyway, Um, I would never forget it was nineteen ninety four and
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  my grandmother Odessa. I would never forget this day as long as I live.
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  And I know if my mother and my aunts started listening and it's gonna
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  trick, it's gonna do something, but it's it's this is how important this
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  topic is. So she had these pains, she was in pain, and
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  she was dealing with something with her legs. And my grandmother worked seven days
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  seven you name it. She she went. She may have went to work
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  late, but she was at work every day of the week. And this
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  morning she went in the bathroom and she was in pain, and I remember
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  her hollering, and it was just the sound that I didn't experience before.
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  And I never wanted to experience again. But I remember, remember, and
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  they took her to the hospital, and you know, and my so um,
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  I remember the ambulance came and they took her to the hospital. And
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  that's a change. The events that change until years later that I realized how
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  and how that change the events correlated into my personal chain of events. You
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  know, they weren't sure. So after while, let me track back,
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  because I'm getting all over the place. But she went through They said it
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  may have been her kidneys. Then from her kidneys, they say, well,
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  it could be cancer. And she was a woman, She said,
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  I lived my life. She didn't want to be a guinea pig. And
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  that was that. And we eventually we lost her in April of nineteen ninety
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  five. But we never knew for sure what it was, what kind of
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  cancer it was. And again I was at an age where I wasn't sure.
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  You know, we didn't know. There were certain pieces that were missing
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  again quote family medical history that weren't there, so we weren't able to piece
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  it together. Okay, So then about ten years later, now my paternal
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  grandfather, which is my mother's father, he gets diagnosed with a blood cancer
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  called multi put my loma, and again you know that kind of spiral quickly.
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  It was something that again we didn't know the pieces of puzzled at that
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  and it was one to three and that was that. So I'm going on
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  a timeline with you guys. So you had ninety five my grandmother, then
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  you had two thousand and five my grandfather. Well here we come to twenty
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  and thirteen, twenty fourteen, and I get diagnosed with this non Hodge cancer
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  and format. So I'm like, well, first of all, I'm like,
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  how I get diagnosed with this? As far as I know, nobody
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  else in my family there's nothing of that sort. So I start to do
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  my research to find out multiple my nomes um lymphoma are one and the same.
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  They're all blood cancers. Now, if you I work in the medical
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  field, and if there's anybody that's familiar with the medical field with how certain
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  things work, you know that cancer skips a generation. So again we're gonna
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  piece this puzzle together. Yeah, my maternal grandmother, grandfather Daniel. It
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  skips my mother and then it comes to me. So now which trying to
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  figure out what's going on? How did this come in play? Where did
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  this come from it like a ball of commut all that one on the other
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  side of the maternal side going through this same exact thing. Then we come
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  to find out that my great grandfather, which is my maternal grandfather, my
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  grandmother's father, he had leukemia. So I say this to say, you
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  never know. You have to do your research because this thing it ties into
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  the dynamics of who you are. So you know, I go through who,
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  I get my diagnosis, I go through my treatments, come out remission,
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  and so now you know, if you know again about canicer treatment,
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  chemotherapy, the whole night yards, it's a process process that you deal with
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  after you come out of remission. I'm changed, I become pre dye about
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  it. So I'm like, come on and how now? And again,
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  like I said, I've always known diabetes runs in both sides of my family.
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  That no problem. I knew one percent, without a shadow of a
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  doubt, I knew that was there. I'm just like, come on,
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  now, I love sweets, but I don't eat sweets like that. But
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  again, as you start, now you have to go back in and dive
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  in and start doing your research and dissecting this and dissecting that and you come
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  to see that again certain things such as like you know, and chemotherapy.
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  It triggers off your body to do all these different things and then you're like
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  okay. So I remember I said to my I said to my mom,
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  I'm like, you know, we really need to sit down and figure out,
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  like what is it? What is all of this? Like who's who,
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  what's what? Because it's so much. And I remember I said to
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  my I have two boys and at the time they were young, and I
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  always said, you guys have to be able to know the stuff because there's
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  gonna come a point in time when you become an adult and you start going
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  to the doctor and you're they're gonna ask you. And if everybody know we
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  all go to the doctor and we all go for our yearly physicals, or
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  we go for whatever it is we go for. They act, as you
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  see, series of questions, who has this on this side? Who is
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  that? Because they all knowing your medical history, knowing your family medical history
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  has such an importance, down to even knowing what your blood type is.
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  There's so many people out here, and I'm in the forty to fifty age
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  category. There's a lot of us in my age group, and even older
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  or younger that don't know what their blood types are. You have to know
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  these are things that it's not like, oh, I could get this,
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  and I know you cannot push it aside. You can not just say oh,
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  I'll get to it when I get to it. Absolutely not. You
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  need to know it because it is important to how you are going to determine
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  how the rest of your life is going to be. So now here I
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  am. I go through again, like I said, I go through becoming
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  pre diabetic. Then I go through pre menopause because chemos sometimes it triggers off
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  in a woman, you know, triggers you into different things. So it
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  triggered me into pre metopause at an early age. So yes, every time
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  it's you, there's ways to ask them, and they can tell you.
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  It's their duty to tell you. Trust me, I know they're supposed to
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  tell you. But you know, I'm just, as I said, going
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  through life now and I'm like sometimes I sit down and I'm like, what
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  where did this stuff come from? How if I didn't really when when this
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  whole thing happened with me, And if I didn't really sit down and listen
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  and start figuring things out and putting one in two and three and four and
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  five together, I would be lost. And I'm saying this to say,
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  don't get lost in knowing your family. Don't get lost and knowing your genetics,
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  your genes. It is important. It is so important, like the
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  air that you breathe. Okay, And I'm and it's just it's something to
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  where. Now, like I said, I've been I work in the medical
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  field, and I've worked been working in the medical field. Now this no,
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  but this year made seven years. And that's one of the reasons that
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  it kind of pushed me to go into the medical field because I have a
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  background and import export, you know, custom brokerage and stuff like that.
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  But I decided to switch because I realized there's a need, especially in our
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  communities. This our African Americans American but standing an American until your internet excuse
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  me, our Caucasian communities. We're so oblivious sometimes to what goes on around
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  us that we'll just be like, Okay, you feel something, and it's
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  just if it bothers you today, it bothers you today, and if it
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  doesn't bother you tomorrow, you just push it to the side and you leave
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  it alone until it comes back again. That's not good. That's not healthy
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  because you don't know what the wheels inside your body, what can be turning,
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  and what can transpire and what can trigger things off. So that pushed
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  me to go into the medical field because now it's like, I feel like
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  I have a duty to myself and those around me to really get to know
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  and understand where this comes from. What we need to do as a group
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  of people and as humans to know how our body works and what it's going
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  to take to maintain it and live a healthy lifestyle, live a whole lifestyle,
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  and live a lifestyle that you know it's not just pleasing to us,
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  but pleasing too whoever you serve, whoever your creator is. So that that
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  was one point in one aspect of it. And then I said, okay,
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  let me, let me just dabble in some more. And then I
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  decided I was going to go back to school. And one of the things
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  at first I was like, should I go back to school and become a
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  nurse because I love to learn about genes and I love to learn about all
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  this kind of stuff. And I said, you know what, No,
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  I need to go into the community and help the community understand that they really
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  need to know how this works, how your body works, how important it
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  is to have a genie yelogy of well, Okay, Grandma Sue on my
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  mother's side ulcers or Grandpa Grandpa Bill on my father's side, he probably had
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  als. You know, it's we're so caught up and wrapped up that we
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  don't think about these things. So now I went back into school and I
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  said, Okay, I'm gonna do a public out because there's a need.
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  And working and working where I work, I see the need every day like
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  it's such a need, and it it makes you sit back and wonder was
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  I so oblivious to this before coming into my knowing of what I know now?
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  So I say that to say, do your research, sit down and
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  talk with your elders. Sitting down and talking with your elders is such you
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  get to do the kicks and the giggles and the key keys and our hides
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  with them. But there's so much wealth of knowledge that you get to learn
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  from your elders that it's a shame that more of us don't tap into it,
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  and we wait until they're passing on or passed on to then say I
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  should have learned this, or I should have learned that. No, I
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  tell you, I can pick up my phone today and I can call my
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  grandmother right now. She's in Barbados, but I can call her and I'll
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  say to her, well, I went to doctor and such and such said
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  this and this, that and third, and she'll start to give me a
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  whole rundown of well, I'm not sure, but I think you don't know
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  how important that is. Like, that is so important to just have these
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  random conversations that brings out these things. Thanks, because then you can sit
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  down and see on our phone. You can sit down and put in your
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  notes in your phone. Well, hm, grandma told me such and such
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  and such, So I went to the doctor and they told me such and
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  such. So now you can start comparing notes and then you can see,
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  well haha, it makes sense. It's I can't stress enough how important it
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  is, how refreshing it is. You know, it's funny because recently mean,
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  I mean going through some other uh challenges within my body, and it's
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  you know how they say it, You get all the tweaking doll kinds of
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  stuff. But I found out that I have you know, mild degenerative scoiosis
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  in my l four and my old five. And it was crazy because when
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  I was for years, I if anybody knows me and they see how I
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  walk a walk kind of on the side, or I have these pains,
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  and again I always chalked it up to I know how these pains and legs
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  and issues with the legs work with my family to poor circulations. So I
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  always chalked it up to maybe it's something like that. I'll go to doctor
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  and I'll see what they say. One day, it got so bad,
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  like it was, the pain was just unbearable, so they did the extra
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  and I remember when they did everything, and I was talking to my grandmother
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  and I said, well, this is what's going on, and this is
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  what they see. And she said to me, well, you know,
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  I've been dealing with something like that, and she telled me and it hurt
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  this way, and I'm like, a Grandma, that sounds like what I'm
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  dealing with. And she said, well, you know, I never thought
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  to go in and see about it, she said, but you went and
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  so about it, right, I say, yeah, And this is what
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  they told me. This is that. And the third that's what I have
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  to do. Say okay, okay, okay, makes sense now. So
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  anytime that we talk, she'll say to me, oh, this pay her
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  or this is that, and she'll ask me, well do you think and
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  I'll say to her, well, okay, it sounds similar. But you
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  don't. No, again, you don't know. If you don't have these
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  conversations, you do not know that it's going You're you're pretty much everybody.
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  We're just a revolving door of each other. Honestly, the universe, the
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  human race, we are all entitnment with our a field. We feel and
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  we may not know that we're feeling them at the same time, but we
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  are. So I say this again, I'm gonna start to wrap up.
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  Actually no, I'm not gonna wrap Yeah, pick a quick commercial break and
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  then we're gonna come right back, and then we're gonna wrap up. So
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  we'll be right back. Authors, here's your chance to get your work seen
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  across the world. Be a part about fifties United Authors of Aspiring Authors,
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• 25:37
  the broadcast through our working Yeah no dug for us. All right, So
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  we are back and again, just it's gonna quickly recap as we wrap up
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  what tonight's topics about, and it blew the top of by fast because this
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  is something that's really important to me, and I'm sure it's important to others
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  out here that's listening and now and that we'll get to listen as well.
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  But we're talking about knowing your family medical history. We're talking about the importance
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  of understanding that there's things in our genealogy that we may not know of and
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  it's probably playing a part in our everyday life and our bodies. And you
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  know, it's important that we get to know, and we get to sit
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  and talk to each other and talk to our family members, especially our elders,
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  just to find out what it is, because going to the doctor is
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  not just going to always help it. When you go to the doctor,
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  there are going to ask you questions and you have to be able to know.
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  You have to be able to give an answer and say I know this,
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  I know that, I know the third. If you don't know,
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  it's not going to help you. And I'm gonna, as I said,
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  from my own personal experience, I can only talk about me. I am
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  glad that It helped me because now I advocate for others and I encourage others
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  to get to know their family medical history. To me, it's just as
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  important as going to get your nails done. Actually it's more important than going
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  to get your nails or your eyelashes. It's it has to be a necessity.
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  It's something that we need to make a necessity because without it, we
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  don't know what can happen. We don't know how our lives can play out.
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  We don't know how it's going to affect our few sure generations, because
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  what we do now is going to affect our generations to come. Like I
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  said, I have kids. My kids are gonna be twenty one and eighteen
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  soon soon from now, in the next ten years or so, they're gonna
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  have children. So what they need to be able to know this information to
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  pass on to the next generation, and that generation needs to know so they
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  can pass on to the one after. So I am glad that. Honestly,
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  I can say, I am glad that I have a family that was
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  not afraid to say this is this or that is that. And then again,
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  I was the type of child that I needed to be up with the
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  mix. So I was going to know one way together. I'm that's just
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  me. I'm just saying. My family members will tell you I had to
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  know everything in any and everything. But I'm glad that I had that mentality,
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  and I'm glad that they did not push me away from knowing because in
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  the long run it helped. It put me in a position where when it
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  came time for me to go through my health crisis, is I was able
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  to talk up and say, yeah, I know this, and I know
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  that, and I know the third not quite sure about this, but I
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  could properly find out. So again, with closing, I want to thank
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  you guys for tuning in tonight. It's always a pleasure coming to you,
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  guys, screams and talking with you. And again I'm just gonna say,
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  get to know your family history, get to know your family medical history.
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  It is so needed, it's so important. I love you, guys.
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  I chat with you later. Bade my story and true, don't forget about
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  the little girl you want