74 – Crew Dog

Crew Dog from One Sick Vet talks connective tissue, mast cell activation syndrome and veteran disability services.

Transcript

Brianne: I’m Brianne Benness and this is No End In Sight, a podcast about life with chronic illness.

[guitar riff]

Drew: Hey this is associate producer Drew Maar. Before we get started, we wanted to remind you that No End In Sight has a newsletter. It’s full of updates about twitter conversations happening in our hashtag #NEISVoid, book and article recommendations about chronic illness and disability, and links to new podcast episodes and miscellaneous other media. If you are comfortably able to support our work, there are paid options available, but all core content will be free. You can take a look at previous newsletters and subscribe over at NoEndInSight.substack.com. Today we’ll be talking with Crew Dog from One Sick Vet about connective tissue, mast cell activation syndrome and veteran disability services. A few content notes for this episode: There is talk of the military throughout this episode, including a mention of the Gulf War, Desert Storm, as well as 9/11 and the ensuing wars around thirty minutes in. And Crew Dog and Brianne refer to the pandemic a few times throughout the episode, but they do not talk about COVID or lockdown very extensively in this episode. Before we start, here’s our disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Make sure you talk to your practitioner about any questions or symptoms.

[guitar riff]

Brianne: So I like to start just by asking people, how was your health as a kid?

Crew Dog: Which is an interesting question because like you, it’s a lot of retrospective work for me, and I would have always said that my health was excellent.

Brianne: Yeah.

Crew Dog: And I think that’s still a fairly accurate but what I’ve come to recognize is that primary parent is sort of in denial about health issues. And so they always told us that everyone in our family had excellent health.

Brianne: And that’s how you knew, Right.

Crew Dog: So I really don’t have the same history of… that some chronically ill and disabled people do of not being able to do sports or having pain that prohibited me from doing things. I was a very active child, but I now believe that I have a connective tissue issue. And that… I can look back now on incidences where I got hurt and I was in pain and adults told me, “You don’t have any broken bones. So you’re fine.”

Brianne: Right, right. So there’s no pain cause. That’s the only way pain happens.

Crew Dog: Exactly, “If it’s not a broken bone, you have no pain. Go away. Shake it off.” But I can look at a significant incident when I was in about eighth grade. And at the time, at school in PE playing basketball, I received a very severe sprain to an ankle. And, of course, we also didn’t have health care when I was a child. So there was a lot of things that we didn’t pursue care for. But it wasn’t until three, four years ago when I was working for… with a physical therapist for a different injury that I… you know, she sort of explained to me that there’s three ligaments that go across your ankle, and I’m now convinced that I ruptured one of them.

Brianne: Eugh!

Crew Dog: It was a sprain, but I think that I completely ruptured one of those ligaments. But we didn’t have healthcare. So I got an ACE bandage and crutches for a couple of weeks.

Brianne: Maybe some ice.

Crew Dog: And I spent a whole summer running and sort of trying to train my foot to go back into the correct position. Because i