Hi everybody and welcome back to Airway First, the podcast from the Children's Airway First
Foundation.
I'm your host Rebecca Downing.
My guest today is Kaisa Bradley from Portland, Oregon.
Kaisa was diagnosed with sleep apnea in 2017.
She's also been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ADHD.
While she wasn't diagnosed with sleep apnea until 2017, her story actually started much
earlier.
She was misdiagnosed for quite a long time.
With a strong purpose on giving hope, Kaisa now documents her journey and shares information
on airway, sleep, and mental health issues on her blog, mentalhealthknaps.com.
I encourage you all to follow Kaisa on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube as well.
And now let's jump into my interview with Kaisa Bradley.
All right, thanks so much for joining us.
Kaisa, it's nice of you to be here and share your story with us.
Yeah, definitely.
I'm excited to be here and talk about all the things.
Yeah.
Let's go ahead and jump right in.
So your story, as I understand it, began in your early teens.
Yes, definitely.
Absolutely.
It's taken a long time to figure that out because hindsight's a beautiful thing.
Right.
After talking with my sleep doctor and talking with my nurse practitioner of mental health,
we all agree that it started in my early teens basically when puberty hit.
So yeah.
But you weren't diagnosed or nobody addressed your issue at that point.
You didn't start.
Just to kind of lay the timeline out, your mental health journey didn't really take on
the form of a mental health journey until later, correct?
Correct.
I would easily say until I was 19 or 20.
And something to just note is like when I was going through, I didn't go to middle school.
I went to a junior high.
And then through high school, like mental health was not, even though it wasn't that
long ago, like I graduated from high school only 10 years ago, it was not talked about.
It was not something that was believed.
And it's so interesting now because I kind of had to do this whole deconstructing of
my own thought process about mental health, what it is, what it looks like, what it actually
does to you.
Because like back then, you know, I just thought, well, life doesn't get better than this.
I don't know what I have.
It's just how I am.
Because, you know, I think for me personally, like I kind of went under the radar because
of that because no one in my close circle believed in mental health.
It was something we just didn't talk about.
You mean they thought it was, it just doesn't exist or it's...
To be frank, it's like take a pill and it will go away.
Gotcha.
It's like only if it's really bad and I felt terrible that that was the attitude.
But it was just, it wasn't something we talked about at school.
It wasn't talked about, you know, just it wasn't an opening.
Not in your friend groups, not in your family.
It just wasn't talked about.
No, no.
So it was just kind of like, I had to like stumble through all of the feelings of depression,
anxiety and later, you know, figuring out, oh, you actually have some ADHD going on there.
And I figured out my own ways of coping with it.
And now like looking back, I realized, oh man, I missed so much during those years because
I was so busy, you know, I get off from school, bam, coping mechanism, coping mechanism, you
know, like to make it so I could just live.
And then when I got to 19 or 20 and I moved away from home and I really had my first like
mental breakdown, if that's what we want to call it.
And I was put in contact with a mentor of sorts, a really close friend of mine who disclosed
to me that she had had depression her whole life.
And she just, she started talking to me about how it felt.
And for the first time in my life, I realized, oh, it's not me.
It's something I'm experiencing.
So and I don't, you know, I don't feel like my family, like I don't put them at fault
for not knowing.
We just didn't know.
They just didn't know.
Yeah.
So.
And, you know, I've heard, I've heard you say, I just want to get it right because it
was a quote that I've learned to cope with whatever was around me with the energy that
I had.
So, you know, as you're talking about in your, your late teens, just going through the
motions, going to school, coming home, doing your coping mechanisms.
I mean, what is that like when you, when you don't really understand what's going on?
That's a really good question.
I don't think I've ever been asked that question.
I like it.
Um, I like, I like it.
It makes me think.
I like thinking.
Um, when I think back to that particular time in my life, it's almost like a different
person.
It's like seeing the same image with just a completely different filter.
And you know, on my channel, on my Instagram, on my YouTube, TikTok, whatever, I play a
lot with black and white filters because I feel like a lot of the times that's how I
felt like life was, there wasn't any color.
It was very black and white.
I felt like I had a script I had to follow just to survive.
And if I didn't follow it, then everything would go crumbling because I didn't know how
else to keep it together.
Um, because it's like, you know, you feel sick in your, you know, you've, you're dealing
with depression and you feel sick and you don't know why you're feeling sick.
You just know that if you take a nap here or if you take some time alone here that helps
it take the edge off.
Like it's really disorienting.
And also you kind of feel a little bit alienated.
And I felt like a lot of people didn't understand why I acted the way that I did.
And because of that, like a lot of my outside relationships outside my family really suffered.
You know, it's like, I was never that party going freshman.
Right.
I just, I just, you didn't have the energy.
Yeah.
Not to mention the anxiety, right?
Yeah.
So that's like a whole other like monster.
Right.
And so it was just, okay, this is how we're going to balance the depression.
This is how we're going to balance the anxiety.
And this is how we're going to balance the ADHD.
And for the longest time with ADHD, I thought that was just in boys.
That's what I was taught.
And I was just like, well, this is just how my mind works.
And it doesn't, it doesn't get better than this.
And when we diagnosed with ADHD, was that in middle school, high school?
Was that in your 20s?
It's in my 20s.
Okay.
And I also understand you, you are a fellow dyslexic as well.
I am.
Yeah.
That's a fun way to go through your life.
It's challenging and I will say as a fellow dyslexic, you get creative because you have
to figure things out.
Yep.
So was that earlier in life?
So that you went through high school with, you knew about that earlier?
Yeah.
So the dyslexia, this is where it gets a little interesting.
Because we run into a parenting decision with my parents that I understand why they
did it that way.
And I don't know if I agree or disagree with it.
It's just what happened.
And it was when I was actually in the fourth grade.
And back then we didn't have computers.
We didn't type.
We hand wrote the thing.
And I turned in papers and it was like in the middle of the year, and my teacher, she
called my parents in for a conference.
And she said, Hey, I noticed that Kaisa, she transposes letters.
She is very interesting in how she tries to write.
I think she has dyslexia.
I think we should, I think we should get her tested.
And my, my dad, he has dyslexia.
But that for him, you know, he really didn't talk about it, right?
Right.
For generations.
Yep.
And he just accepted that it would take him three times as long to do his homework, that
you can work your way into a workable form of dyslexia to like be successful and write
and all of these things.
And my parents, they didn't have me officially tested.
They didn't go in to have me labeled as dyslexia as dyslexic.
They didn't want that label on me because that teacher wanted to put the label.
She wanted to put me in extra classes.
And I understand why they didn't want me to have the label because I was already like,
I wasn't showing signs of the other stuff yet, but I was already showing that I was
very creative and doing a little bit different things.
And then my younger sibling, he is not dyslexic at all and is very, very smart.
And he qualified for all the extra like smart programs.
And they, you know, when it came to him, like they wanted to label him as a tag kid or like
the, you know, awards.
Right.
Yeah.
And I did not want my sibling and I to use that against each other that I had the dyslexic
label and he had the tag label.
They wanted to keep us like this, to keep us working in a way that we could and to develop
our own working styles and our own labels.
So I get why that happened that way.
If people disagree with that, I see why.
If they agree with that, I see why.
But that's just, that's just what happened.
So when it came to going through school and everything and knowing, hey, I'm dyslexic,
it takes me longer to do things.
Reading is not my thing.
I have to listen to it.
Yeah.
I would just, I would just plan everything to take longer or to just do it differently.
Like for example, I remember, you know, you get the book reports and I would set like,
I would ask the teacher, hey, you know, when is this book report due?
I'm going to add a few extra weeks so I can listen to the book instead of reading it because
if I read it, I'm not going to get everything.
So I don't know.
I just kind of learned to just to cope to get you.
Yeah.
And that's what I think is the case with a lot of, well, diagnosed and diagnosed.
You just kind of, you figure your way through it.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And then I understand the audio part because I can't tell you how many times I read standing
up walking because I could hear it and so it worked.
So I think a lot of kids did that.
And just so our listeners will know we will get to this because the part of your hindsight,
what we're finding out is at the core of this does actually relate to children's airway.
And then that's why this is such an important message for parents to hear.
So you're going through high school in your early twenties, you know, about your dyslexia.
You have anxiety that has never really been diagnosed and depression and you're having
to figure out how to navigate the waters on your own and get through it.
At what point did you turn to your website, to your blogging, to become your platform?
Really to do.
I know it started as dialoguing your journey, but it really has become this platform that
is now this outreach to others that have a very similar journey.
Yeah.
So I want to say that it started sometime in 2016, 2017.
I don't remember the exact time, but I've always been drawn to writing.
I've always been drawn to storytelling.
Funny because I'm dyslexic.
I know it's like a whole conundrum.
But I just remember I was sitting in a therapy session with my nurse practitioner of mental
health and I wasn't doing very well.
We were trying all these different medications, trying to find the right mixture and levels.
I was sick a lot.
And I just remember telling him, I am so frustrated with my lack of progress.
I just felt so cooped up in my own head.
And he suggested, he's like, hey, have you thought about writing things, writing stuff
down?
And I'm like, well, I kind of do, yeah.
And for the longest time, I kept these notebooks.
They're just regular no lines, write however you want notebooks.
I called them my brain for the longest time because they were like an extension of my
brain.
Right.
Okay.
And he was like, I think you really should focus on making those legible, complete thoughts
and really focus on getting your thoughts on paper.
And I was like, you know, that makes a lot of sense.
I really should put more effort in doing that and not just like, I'm feeling sad today.
Yeah.
Right.
Put thought into it.
And because of all the medications that I was on, I wasn't safe to drive.
So oftentimes my mom, she would drive me to my appointments.
And I was sitting in the car and I was telling her what we talked about in the therapy session.
And she said, I'm going to take it a step further.
I think you should start a block.
And I was like, a blog.
Who would want to read that?
And like, that was my honest goodness reaction.
And I was like, well, I don't have anything to lose.
Like I'm already at ground zero right here.
So like, let's just, let's just, why not?
So I, I started writing complete thoughts and mental health maps.
It wasn't mental health maps right away.
It was actually called vitty, vitty, vitty, which is Latin for I came, I saw, I conquered.
And I just started writing these little pieces because I've always been attracted to words
and languages and understanding deeper meaning of words.
So, and I love weird words or like different language words.
So that explains some of your earlier blogs.
It started with one word, one capitalized word for anybody that wants to check it out.
We'll put the link to your blog in our show notes, but it's one word.
And then you just, the whole blog builds on this one word.
And I was like, okay, I like this.
I like it.
It feels good.
And the words directed my thoughts in a way that made the ADHD happy.
And I was like, okay.
And the first blog post is called sisu, which is like the beginning of me starting to process.
Okay.
This is what I went through when I was starting in my early teens.
This is me through high school.
This is, this is all of the things that I have gone through at this particular point.
Right.
And it just, it just started building on itself.
And I started writing more and things started to make more sense around me than just having
it all a mumble, jumble mess in my head.
Right.
Which, which absolutely makes sense.
Now at that time when you started your blog, you knew that you had anxiety.
You knew about depression at this point.
And your ADHD, correct?
So you knew about those, those three.
Yep.
What point did your diagnosis of sleep apnea and then the hindsight, everybody, let's look
back and realize, oh, wow, there was some kind of an airway issue way back here that we
met.
When did all of that transpire?
Oh, probably.
I was diagnosed with sleep apnea actually in the summer of 2017.
So it didn't happen much later.
Oh, I shouldn't say it like that.
The starting of the blog and the sleep apnea thing, they didn't, they, it was kind of in
a year timeline.
They were close proximity.
Yeah.
That's the better way of saying it.
Words.
And to be honest, finding the sleep apnea thing was a complete and total fluke.
Complete fluke.
Really?
How?
Yeah.
I was, I was talking with my nurse practitioner of mental health and I wasn't responding well
to medication.
I had tried for like a year.
It was awful for me.
And we found out I was very, very sensitive.
I got a sensitive liver apparently.
And I was improving with the blog, but like, you know, that just kind of keeps me rolling,
but not improving as far as you mean, like your anxiety or ADHD that.
Yeah.
Okay.
But something to note too is I was physically not functioning well.
I was not getting out of bed really.
I was having a hard time eating.
I was dealing with a lot of headaches.
Exhaustion.
I was exhaustion.
It was like all of these little physical symptoms like symptoms that I had been experiencing
since my early teens, just like amplified.
And I remember sitting in my therapy appointment.
And my therapist for short, he was like, well, I think we should get your sleep study.
We should check your sleep quality.
And I just looked at him like he was crazy.
I was like, sleep is not the issue.
I'm sleeping too much and I'm tired.
Like I understand like it's like, yeah, there's a problem with your sleep.
You're still tired after your sleep.
But like in my head, it was crazy talk.
I was like, no, no.
Which I think is very common for people.
I sleep, I'm fine.
That's not the problem.
Yeah.
I realize it's the quality and yep.
And cause like sleep is sleep.
And I actually didn't take him seriously the first time he said, like you should get a
sleep study.
I'm like, whatever, let's just try upping the dosage.
And if I don't feel better, maybe I'll consider it.
I'm a little bit stubborn too.
And so surprise, surprise, nothing improved.
I went back to my nurse practitioner and he's like, so that sleep study.
And I said, again, to myself, what do I have to lose?
I'm not, I'm not feeling well.
I'm, I'm missing out on what other kids in their early twenties are doing.
Like at this point, I had to withdraw from college because I couldn't, I couldn't keep
up and I was at home barely able to get out of the bed and feeling sick all the time.
And so he, my nurse practitioner of mental health, he got me in contact with a sleep
doctor, like a whole on sleep specialist in my area.
And I set up a consultation and I went in and we hit it off right away.
Like it was a really good doctor patient relationship.
And he told me honestly, he's like, I have no idea what we're going to find.
We might find restless leg switch syndrome.
That's was kind of the hypothesis.
And but you know, we'll just, we'll just test for everything.
And at this point, I should mention, like I had already gone to like a regular doctor,
done a ton of tests, passed them with flying colors.
Like looking at me, I looked healthy.
Just the traditional physical kind of test at it.
Yeah.
And I think I had a blood work done too.
They, they look for everything and didn't find anything.
And I had that first sleep study and I remember in the morning, the sleep doctor, he came
in and he's like, well, we found the problem.
And I was like, Oh, what is it?
And he's like, you have severe sleep apnea, severe sleep apnea.
And I'm like, girl's my age, don't get sleep.
I was going to say, right, you're in my twenties.
That doesn't happen.
Yeah.
And he said, you know, it's fairly uncommon for relatively healthy young women to have
sleep apnea like this.
And in my head, sleep apnea was for middle aged men who are overweight.
Yep.
Well, sure.
That's what you see on the sitcoms, right?
That makes sense.
Yeah.
And I was like, my dad had sleep apnea and I had it worse than him.
Like my pressure was higher.
I started out on a pressure of 13, which increased to 14.
And I had an AHI, so breathing instance an hour.
It was somewhere in the fifties or the sixties.
I can't remember.
Wow.
And it was, it was just earth shattering knowledge that this, that this was the problem.
And like right off the bat, like my sleep doctor was all of a sudden talking to me about
CPAP machine, CPAP care, masks, like getting me into this whole culture that I had no idea
that I would be a part of.
And I just remember thinking, I'm alone.
I don't know anyone my age or my gender, like being a girl, having sleep apnea.
And I felt so embarrassed and ashamed and just like, I couldn't talk about it for a
really long time to people.
And it was just this, a whole other journey to call it.
I'm just accepting that this was, but that this was the problem.
Listening to Airway First with today's guest, Kaisa Bradley.
You can find out more about the Children's Airway First Foundation and our mission to
ensure that every child has access to screening, evaluation and treatment of all children's
airway disorders before the age of six on our website at childrensairwayfirst.org.
You can also find a ton of great resources for parents on our website, including videos,
blogs, recommended books, comprehensive medical research, and more.
As a reminder, this podcast and the opinions expressed here are not a medical diagnosis.
If you suspect your child might have an airway issue, contact your pediatric airway dentist
or pediatrician.
And now, back to my interview with Kaisa Bradley.
You said something about, you know, that there was shame that came with it.
And that's the first, you were the first person I've ever heard, I've ever heard embarrassment,
but shame.
I mean, you were actually ashamed of it.
Yep.
Wow.
Yep.
I was absolutely 100%.
Like I remember like it was yesterday.
And I felt ashamed that I had this, this problem that I stopped breathing in my sleep.
And I worried big time about going back to school in a roommate situation.
What other girls would say?
What would dates say?
I was about to say dating.
And I just, I kind of shut down about it.
I just, I just pretended I just, it wasn't a thing.
And like, you know, you can, you can say, well, you can buy a private room, but those
are expensive.
Sure.
And so, and money was tight and I had to have a shared room.
And you know, you don't know how your roommates going to sleep.
Are they a light sleeper?
You know, those things aren't quiet.
Yeah, they're not.
And you know, what are they going to say?
You know, all you're just opening yourself for mockery.
You know what I mean?
And for someone in their early twenties who was very insecure about a lot of things, it
was just something that I just had a really, really hard time accepting.
Yeah.
Which absolutely makes sense.
So as you're going through this journey now with your sleep apnea and coming to terms
with it and working with your doctors, at some point, somebody acknowledges, hey, this
isn't new.
You've had these issues for a decade or more.
I mean, you've had them for quite a long time.
Yeah.
You know, when did that come about?
And at what point did you come into the understanding that sleep apnea and this lack of sleep, this
lack of oxygen that you're getting, actually impacts things like mental health and ADHD
and anxiety?
When did that connection happen?
How did that come about?
That connection happened pretty quick.
And after I was diagnosed, because once I got on the CPAP machine and I found a mask
that fit and I found the right settings and I had learned how to sleep, it was like, it
was quick, how fast my mental health improved.
And you know, I was talking about it with my nurse practitioner of mental health and
I said, it's insane.
I feel like a different person.
I feel like a new person.
I'm thinking of ways I've never thought before in my life.
I mean, granted adulthood, but like just this ability to live without guilt or worrying
about a coping mechanism.
And he said, you know, a lot of your mental brain healing happens in your sleep.
It happens in your REM sleep.
That is when the brain has a chance to repair itself.
I was only averaging three minutes of REM sleep and you need 45 if I remember the numbers
correctly.
He's like, imagine living with that for like 15 years, which is what you did.
No wonder you had it as bad as you did.
And I was like, oh, that makes sense compared to how I'm feeling now.
And not how quick the fix was, but just like how fast that I improved because it was like,
I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in like June of 2017.
I was ready to go back to college that following fall semester.
Wow.
That is fast.
Yeah.
And then I just, I went to like fall, winter, did summer, fall, winter, summer, graduate.
Like I, it went fast.
And you know, hindsight is a beautiful thing.
And there's also something he said that, you know, when you get older, you start to see
things more clear and start to make more sense.
But when I kind of figured out that it was the airways, I was always kind of satisfied
and suspicious because I have a really long skinny neck.
My nose is pretty small.
And I always had a hard time swallowing certain things like like pasta, bread.
I had to be careful like how big of bites I would take because if I did, it would have
a really hard time going down.
Medic medications had to be careful with the different pills I take because if they were
too big, it would be really hard for me to get them down.
And then also with exercising, it always felt like I was out of breath way too fast than
what I looked physically capable of.
Right.
And when I was a kid, like an elementary, like I had to use an inhaler for a minute
for like exercise induced asthma, they call it.
So I always, it was always kind of like in the back of my head, but there's something
goofy going on here.
And when it came to getting that confirmed with the narrow airways, it was actually because
I went to an ENT a couple of years after I was diagnosed with sleep apnea.
So like 2019.
Okay.
Um, because what happened is, is we needed to increase my pressure, which my doctor was
kind of worried about because when it comes to increasing your pressure on the CPAP, like
that should be years down the road.
And I was already needing it.
Like, yeah, exactly.
Like my dad has had sleep apnea for 10 years on the same setting.
And here I was like needing more.
And I started doing this thing where I take my mask off in the middle of the night.
So we were trying to figure out why, why, why am I doing that?
And you know, one treatment for sleep apnea is to have your tonsils removed.
Just to make more room and more room.
Open things up.
Sure.
Yep.
And then I went to ENT and he took one look at my tonsils and he said, Hey, listen, your
tonsils are not like big.
They're not like, they're just average tonsils.
I don't really see the reason to remove them.
Um, come back in a few years and then maybe we'll evaluate it.
Like keep trying to make the CPAP work.
And I was like, okay.
And so I told my sleep doctor this and he's like, I think we need to get a second opinion.
And I was like, yeah, I am in my gut.
I feel like that's a good thing to do.
Of course.
So I went to a second ENT and she didn't just check my throat and she checked my nose too.
And she said, the first ENT is right.
Your tonsils are not above average.
They're just regular good old tonsils, but your airways are too small.
So they're in the way.
I think we should remove them definitely.
And I think we should remove your adenoids as well because they're doing the same thing
just in your nose.
And I'm like, Oh, okay, let's do that then.
So it was even just last year in June, I believe that I got my tonsils and my adenoids removed.
And even during surgery, the ENT did have permission to do this, but she took out some
extra tissue in my throat and my nose to make even more room.
And the results from that have, did it cure my sleep apnea?
No, that's not what we were after, but just to open the airway.
Yeah, but it cut my breathing incidents per hour down like in half.
So I was no longer in the 60s or 50s.
I was now somewhere in the 30s, which is still considered severe sleep apnea.
And my air pressure for my CPAP went down from 14 to somewhere in between eight and
11.
Wow.
That's huge.
And then I started being able to keep my mask on in the middle of the night, like all night
long.
And it has improved anything as far as being able to take pills or eating?
Yeah.
Yep.
Definitely.
And also allergies, like had allergies and now that's not getting in the way either.
So yeah.
So it was like a pretty big, pretty big thing.
And then after that surgery and seeing the differences, like just like being man, that's
something I've had my whole life, like the narrow airway that you don't just develop
that.
No, no.
Now, and in strue, and did you have signs?
I mean, obviously, besides what you people didn't know, this is not your parents fault.
Let's just be very clear.
People did not know, people still don't know that's why we're here.
But you know, swallowing that's having trouble swallowing.
That's one of the signs.
Did you have any of the others as far as snoring or mouth breathing or any of the other?
Obviously ADHD is one of the signs, but did you have any of the others?
I'm not, I don't snore.
Nope.
I, nope.
I, that's, I think that's another reason why I kind of slipped under the radar too.
It's because I breathe very quiet and I just stop.
And one of the biggest things to see it all happen is that you hear the person stop breathing.
And I've always been able to breathe very, very quiet.
Makes sense.
Narrow airways.
And I was actually going to say this.
I remember my dad drive me home from my surgery after my tonsils, add noise, all that stuff
was removed.
I was getting light headed because of how much air, air I was able to take in.
I was like, getting a headache from it.
I was just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you guys breathe like this.
Like oxygen.
Yeah.
Who knew it was so necessary.
Um, but yeah, it's just, yeah, it was just all of these pieces were, were starting to,
were starting to come together and I was like, Oh, Oh,
And there it is.
And again, you know, people still don't know.
So there's no way they would have known, but knowing what you know now, you know, as you've
gone along your journey with your blog and, and everything else that you're doing and
the airway studying that you've done and mental health, how do you think that could have impacted
you?
Like, had anyone had known and addressed your airway in your early teens?
I don't think I would be the person I am sitting here to be honest.
Um, you know, I have played this, this thought game with myself, like, you know, the what
if, right?
And it's like, well, you know, if you didn't have all of these airway problems, if you
didn't feel the nothingness of depression, if you didn't feel the anxiety, if you didn't
have the ADHD, like how would I have created this resilience, this strength, this superpower
that I've had to learn just from coping with it all.
And I say it quite frequently on the blog that, you know, I don't see these things that
happen to me as necessarily a bad thing.
I see them as hard things, but I don't see them as something to, you know, have a chip
on my shoulder about.
I don't see them as, oh, my parents screwed me over, you know, or, you know, the world
is so cruel to people who are different or have problems that people don't understand.
It's more of a way for me that, you know, I've become more compassionate.
I had to make the 360.
I had to believe in depression first, you know, I had to be willing to forego my stubbornness
and get help.
I had to learn how to receive help through all of this.
And be your own advocate.
Yep.
And I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with, I think, they're just
too okay with just leaving things how they are.
And like, man, I think about the different people I've butted heads with over the years.
And they're like, well, it's just who you are.
I'm like, I refuse to let anything tell me who I am.
That is just how I see the depression and the anxiety and all this stuff with sleep apnea.
So yeah.
And now you're out helping others and spreading the message about mental health and airways.
Yep.
Which is amazing.
And I want to open it up to you to leave it, you know, the final thought is yours.
But another thing that you have said on your blog, I think it was your blog, it might have
been in another podcast, but you said it and it really struck me for somebody your age,
especially.
So I hope you take that for what it's worth.
But for me, it was just, however grim it might appear, I am a firm believer that life is full
of happy endings.
Yep.
And I will just say to me that spoke volumes.
Yeah.
So yeah, I love that you've been able to take this and turn this into something that is
so profound and helping others and into such a positive thing.
Yeah.
And just to kind of go off of that when I was in the very thick of it, when I was very
confused, when I was angry, when I felt ashamed, when I was embarrassed, when people would
make the off comments to me, when doctors made me feel crazy.
I just, I just kept in the back of my head.
I'm going to have a happy ending.
I, I'm going to get my life to a place where I'm happy.
I understand what society is saying.
I understand how society works.
I understand how it's not nice to me, but that doesn't mean that I have to be what it
tells me and be unhappy about it.
And with that particular quote, it was just something, you know, that's how I would help
myself when I felt really, really like lost and down.
Like why am I even doing all of this?
Why am I going through the ups and the downs and all of the diagnosis and all of the, yeah,
just all of this extra noise.
And it's like life is way too short.
And you know, I'm 28 now and I feel like my brain is so much older than me physically.
And you know, it's, it is what it is.
And I just, I just didn't want to let it all define me.
I wanted to, I wanted to write it myself.
And so that's what I'm doing.
Which is amazing.
And if you could just one final thought to anyone that is somewhere where you were on
the spectrum of this journey as far as, you know, they know something's wrong.
They know something's different.
They can't put their finger on it.
What would you say to them?
I would say keep trying.
Keep going.
They don't know you like you know you.
And you know, people, they don't take the time to understand you the way that you understand
you.
And you know, sometimes people when they pass their judgments has nothing to do with you.
It has everything to do with them.
And when you're going through something that's so hard and so complicated at the end of the
day, if you're not there for yourself, who's there for you?
Like even though I had a very amazing family and friends who have supported me through
this, it was me who went to all the doctor's appointments.
It was me who went to bed every night and wrote something in my notebook, my brain that
I called it.
It was me who had to, you know, think about, okay, how are things in the past?
How are things now?
Where do we want?
Where do I want to be in the future?
That's me, you know.
And give yourself credit.
Give yourself credit for knowing you because you're the one that's there for you every
day from the beginning to the end.
And so that's just something that I would tell anybody else or I would tell my younger
self like, do I, would I have removed everything from my younger self?
No, would I have helped myself catch it sooner?
Yeah, definitely.
But you know, it's up to you to be who you want to be.
And you know, I have these problems.
I have them.
I have these issues.
I have dyslexia.
I have depression.
I have anxiety.
I have sleep apnea.
I have narrow airways.
But they're not called Kaiser.
I'm called Kaiser.
I love that.
And I would just like to leave it there if I just, I love that.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I mean, just genuinely thank you for being on our show and for your bravery and your
honesty on your blog and social media sharing your story and an effort to help others.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
And thank you for inviting me.
Absolutely.
Thanks again to today's guest, Kaisa Bradley, for sharing her story and to each of you for
listening to today's episode.
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Take care, stay safe, and happy breeding, everyone.