EP04 Metal Gallbladder Clip Allergy - Routine Surgery Leads to Life-Threatening Complications

[00:01:16] SHARI: Hello Metalheads and welcome back to this next episode of the Heavily Metalled Podcast. Today I'm gonna be joined by my Facebook friend Lacee from deep in the State of Utah, and I met Lacee on a Facebook group for surgical clip problems. And I met her just before I had gone to have my gallbladder clips removed down in Austin, Texas, with Dr. Lainez and she kind of talked me through what that looked like for her. And I had searched her up in the Facebook group. She had a wonderful, really inspiring story and really does a lot to give back to the metal-allergic community. So thanks for joining us today, Lacee. And I can’t wait for everybody to hear your story!

[00:02:07] LACEE: Aw, thank you so much, Shari. I really appreciate that. I'm so glad that we have crossed paths too and, I am so, so grateful that you're doing this because it is really gonna be able to get all of our stories out there and it's gonna help people. And I feel like doing it one at a time is challenging. Um, it takes a lot of time, and energy for sure. So doing something like this, I think is really gonna reach more people. And so I just wanna say thank you for doing this, first of all, cuz I really appreciate that. 

[00:02:33] SHARI: Has to be done, doesn't it? 

[00:02:35] LACEE: Right. 

[00:02:36] SHARI: When you know, you know…

[00:02:38] LACEE: Yeah. Yeah. So just a little bit about me before I get into my story. My name's Lacee Johnson and I live in St. George, Utah. I've pretty much lived in Utah my whole life. I've got two kids. My daughter just turned 23 and my son just turned 18. So I'm kind of to the point of getting to live life now without having to deal with the kiddos, but now I'm gonna be a grandma soon too, so I'm excited about that.

[00:03:00] So yeah, so I just, I feel like I just had a normal, you know, upbringing. Just, you know, big family, always having fun, fighting with the siblings, you know, just how we all have normal life, you know? And really, I didn't have a whole lot of health issues through my life. Just little ones. You know, when I turned 20, I was pregnant with my daughter and I started having a little bit of heart palpitations, but it wasn't anything major.

[00:03:22] I just got on a little medicine for that little bit of low…low blood pressure…low blood sugar, but I was always told by doctors, it was because I was low weight and they always told me to gain weight and I would do better with that. And so those were really only the health issues I had through my life up until 2018. And then things really shifted for me. So…

[00:03:42] SHARI: Tell me a little bit more about like, what you like to do in real life. Like what are your hobbies and interests and…and what do you do for work and what's your education? Give us a little more background there. 

[00:03:52] LACEE: Yeah. My hobbies actually have changed since the last couple of years, for sure. It was really all about being…I was a single mom, and so it was really about just working, paying the bills, taking care of the kids, trying to keep up, right? And, that really took over most of my life. I didn't have a lot of hobbies. I've always been kind of in the career of admin…bookkeeping…invoicing…just sitting at a desk all day Monday to Friday, nine to five type thing, you know, and…but it really…my focus was on my kids.

[00:04:20] And so when I look at now what's changed in the last couple years, it's great because I now, with my health being better after what I've been through, um, after I share my story you'll understand it. It's a little bit emotional to think about that I wish I had my health back when I was younger, when I had my kids.

[00:04:38] But everything happens for a purpose and you know, I'm moving forward with it. But I really, it really was just living for my kids in the moment, um, at that time, but yeah, besides that, I really like, hadn't had any hobbies, but now that I'm doing better and I've got my health, I love hiking. Um, I love community. I love…like I…we do all sorts of things like doing vision boards and, you know, creating like medicine bags and doing breath classes and meditation, things that really I'd never done until about three years ago. So…

[00:05:06] SHARI: I'm always seeing these great pictures of you out in the mountains, out in southern Utah, in the Red Rocks that I'm so jealous. It would be so nice. You know, Texas is a little bit flat and we do have places, but it would be so nice to get out there and do what you're doing. I get to do it in summer.

[00:05:22] LACEE: Come out sometime. It's great..

[00:05:25] SHARI: We'll do it! OK. So the thing I love about your story—and I can't wait to get into this—is like you mentioned you didn't have a lot of pre-existing health issues and the only metal you have in your body were just these few little clips that you're gonna tell us about. So tell us how it all started with, I guess, going back to the gallbladder surgery. 

[00:05:45] LACEE: Yeah, so kind of where it started, like I said, like you said, and I've said is I didn't have a whole lot of health issues going on. And it really just came like that. Like I was just sitting at work one day and all of a sudden I just started not feeling well and it was something different.

[00:05:58] I knew it was just something was off. And by the end of the day my boss was like, “You need to go to the ER”, you know, and he goes, “I think it's your gallbladder”. So I went into the ER and they basically said, you know, it probably is your gallbladder. Go see a doctor, you know, and see what they decide.

[00:06:12] So I had gone over to a, just a general surgeon here in our town and he really said, ‘oh, we take out gallbladders all the time, but just kind of, you make the decision. Kind of left it up to me. And he said that most insurances like you to do a scope and a colonoscopy before you get your gallbladder out, just to make sure there's nothing going on there.

[00:06:30] So we scheduled that and we did that, and he said that it was a little bit rough getting around in there, doing the colonoscopy, but he said everything was good. They didn't find anything. But I was pretty even sick after he did that. Um, and then a month later I went in and he just kind of said, “Do you wanna get 'em out”?

[00:06:46] Like what…you know, like what's your decision? And it was kind of interesting to me because I was like, 'you should be the one kind of giving me the advice and what I should be doing’. I didn't feel like it was just my decision to do it. And my mom was with me at every single appointment because she just, she knew, you know, how doctors were, and she'd been through this before with breast implants.

[00:07:02] So she knew she needed kind of to be my advocate and my, you know, my backup. He talked through how they take them out—Thousands a day pretty much over the U.S.. I mean, gallbladder's the most…I think the most removed organ every day. Like it's just something…

[00:07:16] SHARI: And nobody needs their organs. I mean, come on!

[00:07:19] LACEE: Right. 

[00:07:20] SHARI: Nobody needs an organ. 

[00:07:22] LACEE: I know, right? But I look back at it now and I wish I would've researched more of ways I maybe could've gotten my gallbladder healthy and maybe I wouldn't have needed it out cause it wasn't like an emergency thing, but when it came down to it, I had been sick for two months and I kind of just got the point where I was like, ‘I'm done being sick’.

[00:07:36] Like, okay, let's take it out, you know? Cuz that was the only option he was kind of giving me is kinda like, well, you either deal with it or you get it out type thing. And my mom said not one time did clips get brought up. Not one time did they talk about anything being left back in there or how they clip off the bile duct, any of that stuff.

[00:07:52] So at this point we knew nothing about the clips. And, um, looking back now, my mom would've said something about it and I'll tell you why, as we move forward. So I end up scheduling and I get my gallbladder out. And again, him, he coming in after the, you know, the gallbladder surgery, talking to my mom, tells us everything.

[00:08:08] And not one time was clips, mentioned in that at all. And so, you know, afterwards he says, you know, it takes three to six weeks to really feel better and get through kind of the surgery, you know? And so I took it easy and took off work.

[00:08:23] SHARI: And, and it's not a hard surgery particularly. 

[00:08:26] No, no. It's, it's just kind of getting through the stomach stuff, you know, and like just being able to get, because they kind of do go through a little bit of muscle and stuff when they do the laparoscopic and so yeah, it wasn't too bad for sure.

[00:08:37] But my thought was that after six months, like I would start feeling better, you know, and I didn’t. Like, I almost felt like I just kept getting more and more symptoms as weeks would go by and, you know, months started going by and it was just like, ‘what is going on’? Cause I started having like, really bad back pain and a lot of stomach issues.

[00:08:59] Like I just really couldn't eat without getting nauseous. I…you know, started getting like constipated-stuff like that…would get, just kind of just weird feelings I'd never had before where I was like, something is wrong, you know? And so it actually…I waited till about seven months after, before I finally went back to my regular doctor.

[00:09:17] Was just like, what is going on? Like, can you help me figure this out? You…you just don't know. Right? Like, I wasn't educated at that time. I didn't know what to think and…

[00:09:26] SHARI: And you know, you don't feel like yourself…

[00:09:28] Right, right. With that many more symptoms after, I knew something was going on. And so I went to, my regular doctor, my family doctor, and all he really could do was just refer me out to four or five new specialists of what's going on.

[00:09:44] Because first of all, one thing was going on is I was starting to get these white pigments on the top of my forehead and the side of my face…and so something was going on with my skin. And then I was having the back pain, and then I…you know…I was having the stomach issues. And so he started sending me to a dermatologist, and then he was sending me to a GI doctor, and then he was sending me all these different people.

[00:10:06] Oh. And then I started doing physical therapy for my back. And so I started doing all these things and you just start going down, you know, the rabbit hole because your doctor refers you out. You're like, okay. You know, and well, each specialist wants to kind of do their own thing because they only know what they know. Right? And they only know how to kind of fix what they know.

[00:10:25] SHARI: And, and they don't coordinate their care really most of the time. 

[00:10:27] LACEE: Right, right. And eventually, he just said, let's just send you back to the surgeon that did the surgery and let's just see what he thinks.

[00:10:33] And it was more because of the gut stuff. Cause I'd gone to a GI and a GI doctor just basically said you're gonna have to be on a, like gallbladder diet the rest of your life and you're gonna have to take Metamucil. And I'm like, ‘I'm not 70 years old’! Like I'm not…I don't wanna take Metamucil the rest of my life and I don't wanna like, just have to be on a diet.

[00:10:51] Right? I knew it. I knew it just wasn't that, you know how you can just like fill your intuition of your body, 

[00:10:56] SHARI: Right. I was just gonna say, your energy,…the energy around it knows it. One of my favorite practitioners says it either feels heavy or it feels light. And that's how she judges: Is it heavy? Is it light? 

[00:11:07] LACEE: So, exactly. 

[00:11:08] SHARI: Really heavy stuff to have this diagnosis that you can't get out from under forever.

[00:11:12] LACEE: Yeah. So at that point I had gone to the surgeon…the regular surgeon…and it's funny how sometimes they change. They're so, so, so nice in the beginning when you meet them. And then if you come back to them with an issue, they kind of get that little ego going and they get that little defensiveness, you know?

[00:11:29] And, I just went in there. My mom was with me again at every appointment and cause there was times I had to go back to her and ask her like, ‘did this really happen’? You know? ‘Did I create this in my brain or did this really happen’? And she's like, “No, this really happened”. You know? And so, yeah…

[00:11:42] SHARI: Yay Mom!

[00:11:44] LACEE: Uh, yeah, I know my mom is seriously Wonder Woman. I love her. But yeah, so I just went to him and just told him like, ‘here's all my new symptoms’. And by that time I had 35 new symptoms from when I got my gallbladder out. And I have all this… 

[00:11:55] SHARI: You like keep a journal?

[00:11:57] LACEE: Yes. I have every symptom. And it was anywhere from like a burning sensation inside to the gut issues, to the back pain, to the pain where the clips were at, to nausea, to insomnia.

[00:12:11] By that time, like you stop sleeping…you start getting anxiety more, and you know, headaches and the, the brain fog. I mean, I could just go on and on. Just, there were so many, like weight loss…just all these things were happening. And it's like, ‘Hey, you told me, you know, three to six weeks and I'm seven months into this.

[00:12:29] Now what? And he was like, “Oh, well…it…it’s probably gonna take about two years until you get feeling better. And I was like, ‘no, no, no, no, no. You can't backtrack now’. You know? And so I just kind of like just told him, I says, I just don't know. Did something go wrong during the colonoscopy? Did something go wrong during the gallbladder removal? And of course, just right away: “Nope, nope…nothing. Nothing went wrong. 

[00:12:48] SHARI: You’re anxious. You’re stress…you’re stressed”. 

[00:12:50] LACEE: Yeah, exactly. So it was interesting cuz right at the end of this appointment-I’m glad that I kind of kept pushing-because at the very end of the appointment he finally said, “Well, there's this old school study that's called the Sitz Marker Study…”

[00:13:03] “Let's go have you do that and we'll just see if you’re…” because you don’t have a lot of abdominal issues going on-and pain and all that. And so he says, “Let's just go ahead and we'll send you off and do that and just see if there's anything…” And I think it was kind of one of those, I'm just gonna send you off to get you off my plate, you know?

[00:13:17] SHARI: Right. 

[00:13:18] LACEE: But I'm glad he did it because that's when I went. And what they do is they actually, you go to the x-ray place-ours is at the hospital, and they actually have you swallow this little capsule and it's got these little white rings in it. What you do is you swallow it and then they take a, an x-ray of it going down like in the esophagus and stuff. And then you wait like three or four…five days, or however many days-I think it was four days. And then you come back and they take an x-ray of your abdominal area and then they see if the rings got stuck anywhere, then they'll know maybe there's an issue in that area. But if they all have passed through or they're all very at the very end, then they don't worry about it. Right?

[00:13:54] So I go in there and I'm in my gown and I'm, you know, getting the x-ray done. And the x-ray tech says some comment about, “Oh, I thought that the rings were already going past your gallbladder, but those are your gallbladder clips”. And I was like, ‘what? Like clip’? I'd never heard the word clips. And so kind of, I was like, wait, what do you mean clips?

[00:14:13] And he says, “Oh, you didn't know that they used titanium clips to clip off your bile duct when you get your gallbladder out? Because if they don't, you'll have a bile leak”. And I just sat there in amazement and I was just like, ‘wait, what?  Like I asked him like three times and he is like, “Yeah, get up and come over here”.

[00:14:28] So I get up in my little gown and go around the corner and I look at the screen and he points to, and shows me, it just looks like little staples, you know? Just a little. 

[00:14:34] SHARI: And this is the doctor? Or this is like a….

[00:14:38] LACEE: This is the X-ray tech? The tech, okay. Yeah, the x-ray. 

[00:14:40] SHARI: Usually they don't show or tell you anything.

[00:14:42] LACEE: I know, I know. That's why I'm like…I’m glad he said something, you know? And so… So I went over and looked at him and I just was like, ‘what’? And then for me it was a light bulb. A light bulb went off just in that moment. And I…this is what it is. Because the reason why I know is, first of all, I've always been sensitive to metals, but not only that, my sister got…she’s sensitive to metals too.

[00:15:05] And she had gotten a C-section done and they had actually stapled her stomach and she had told them, ‘I'm highly allergic to metals. Please do not use any metals’. They didn't listen to her and they stapled her, but then they put like a padding over it. And for three days she didn't know that she was getting infected and getting, you know, sick from this metal.

[00:15:22] And she went into the ER and had almost died from it. So just knowing these metals are in me, like I was just…it was just this light bulb, you know, it was just like, holy cow. Like no way. There's no way there's metal inside my body when I can't even handle earrings, you know? 

[00:15:26] SHARI: Did it show up besides earrings? Did it show up in other places? Did you know what kind of metals you were allergic to at that point? 

[00:15:44] I just knew, like, I never liked gold, so I was never one to, you know…if, if you can't handle the silver, then you go to the gold, right? The real gold. Well, I never wore, wore gold. And so to me it was just like, I just really didn't wear jewelry.

[00:15:57] And my…my sister, you know, it was like the buttons on her pants really affected her. She'd have to put like nail polish on the back of it and stuff. But like mine wasn't that bad. It, it wouldn't affect me like that at when I was younger. It didn't like…it didn’t…it was just more the sensitivity of the ears, you know, and stuff and…

[00:16:12] So yeah, so the minute I left there, I went out into the parking lot and I called the surgeon's office and I talked to his assistant and I just said, ‘oh my gosh, you know, I just found out that I have these clips. I didn't even know I have these clips’. And I just was said, ‘can you ask the doctor…’? And you know, I won't put any names out just for…just to be nice cuz I used to say the names everywhere when I was mad about it all.

[00:16:34] But I'm trying to come to terms with everything, you know. So I says, ‘well, could you just asked the doctor, oh my gosh, is there any way I could be allergic to these clips’? And she went and asked him and comes back and he says…she says “No. He says that you can't react to 'em because they're titanium.” And I said, ‘okay, but I do have metal sensitivities and my family does, most of the girls in my family do’. Can you go back and ask him if that still would be something that would…you know…if he could look into that? 

[00:17:00] SHARI: Right? 

[00:17:01] LACEE: And she comes back and she's just like, “Lacee, nope. He says…he says…you’re not supposed to be reacting to titanium clips. That everybody's supposed to be able to have them and that da da, you know, the whole spiel.

[00:17:10] And so I said, ‘okay, will you go back and ask him if he'll help me figure out if I'm reacting to these instead of asking if his opinion, will you help me figure it out’? The poor girl, she went and asked him and she came back and she's like, “Lacee.…” And I felt so bad she probably got yelled at.

[00:17:24] It felt like, you know, that energy…you know, that sibling coming back going, ‘mom just yelled at me,’ you know? And she says, “Lacee, he says that if you want to talk more about this, you need to come into the office”. And right then…I, it didn't even take a second for me to think about and I said, ‘Nope’.

[00:17:41] I said, I'm not gonna have him…I’m not gonna go in there and have him treat me like that I'm crazy. So I will continue to…

[00:17:46] SHARI: Prescribe you Prozac… 

[00:17:47] LACEE: Right, exactly. Because I could already tell by the way he treated me the time before when I went in…I just could tell he was kind of that ego and just nothing's wrong, you know?

[00:17:58] And you know what she told me? She says, “Lacee, I think you need to keep looking into this”. And I appreciated that so much… 

 [00:18:05] SHARI: Just that one statement…

[00:18:06] LACEE: Yup. Not just go with what the doctor says. She's gonna say, “I think you need to keep looking into this”. You know, and maybe she had an experience where she had heard something about this or something to where she was like, okay, I know this could happen.

[00:18:19] So keep looking into it, you know? So as soon as I got phone with them, I called, uh, just a, I, I had a friend that's in the medical field and she always would refer me to different doctors. And she says, “Go to this allergy doctor. Call this allergy doctor”. So I called the allergy doctor and I just told him what was going on.

[00:18:33] I said, ‘I gotta find out if I'm really allergic to metal’. And they took me in the next day. So the next morning I went in there and he says, “Okay, what we're gonna do…and I told him my whole story. I, I gave him the whole story, what was going on, and the symptoms and everything. And it's just a regular allergy doctor.

[00:18:49] And he just said “Let's do two things”. He goes, “Let's do a back patch test, which would be external…of a metal testing to see if you're allergic that way, and then let's do the blood test”. And I was like, ‘okay’. So he puts on the…you know…on the patches on the back. But by…by this time I was starting to get really sensitive to a lot of stuff: tapes…adhesives…

[00:19:09] The couple of times I had already gone into the ER or gone and gotten like fluid or anything…like IVs and stuff…the needles would even burn my skin. Or even when they put the needles in…then leave the little…you know, the little is it…I think it's plastic…that would burn. So I was getting really sensitive already to stuff.

[00:19:24] SHARI: How long was it past your surgery at this point? How long after your surgery? 

[00:19:29] LACEE: This was still around that seven months when I had talked to the…the doctor. Yep. Yeah. And, and still at this point I started going to physical therapy for my back and had gone to a dermatologist about my skin, which just told me that I'm starting to get the, is it vi-viga light?

[00:19:44] I can't remember the name of it-where you just start getting the light spots… and they basically told me, yeah, was I'm gonna start getting it and I’m…it’s just…I’m gonna have to live with it. Like, they just told me it would never go away. I was going to a GI doctor, which, you know, just told me the diet, so in between I'm doing all these other doctors, but I finally moved on to, okay, now I need to do allergy.

[00:20:02] And once I knew I had the clips, it was a whole ‘nother adventure from there. I turned into like a detective. I turned into my own advocate. It was just like, ‘I gotta get these outta me!’ So yes, when I went to allergy doctor, he went ahead and did the back patch test. So like I said, you leave that on for two days, but more, if anything, the tape was burning those two days than anything.

[00:20:23] And so I really was…probably just show up normal like all of my other tests, you know…that nothing's coming up, it's just gonna be the tape that's burning me, you know? And that same day I went and did the blood test, but the blood test takes I think like two weeks to get back.

[00:20:36] SHARI: Which blood test did he have you do? Because a lot of allergists don't even know there's a blood test for metal, so I'm curious…

[00:20:41] LACEE: I know, and I didn't even have to like, he just did it. I think it's called the LTT…is that the…?

[00:20:48] SHARI: So did you do, so… MELISA or Orthopedic Analysis both do LTT…

[00:20:54] LACEE: I'm not sure. Orthopedic. Yep. Okay. It's the orthopedic. Yep. Yeah. And so, yeah, and that's what was great is that I have had people reach out about that and be like, “How do you get that test”? I'm like, ‘I don't know. I just went to my allergy doctor and he did it!’ You know, it wasn't a struggle for me. So it's funny that different states and even different countries have an issue getting a blood test done for metals…

[00:21:12] SHARI: And we have those links on our website. So, Anybody that sees this episode, you can just point 'em to your episode . That's where it is. 

[00:21:20] LACEE: Right. Absolutely. We’ll put all the links in there for sure. So yeah, so I went two days with having the back patch test on, and when I went back he took it off and he was in surprise himself of actually, you know, I don't know if people know, but they're just little squares and they just put the metal, you know, the metal sample right on the square.

[00:21:38] LACEE: So when he takes it off, you know, he can see and he can know exactly what is what, and he pulled it off. And the nickel and the gold were like a blister where the squares were at. Nothing else showed up, but those two showed up for blisters. And he even kind of was like, “Whoa!”, you know, like, ugh! And I'm like, ‘what's going on’? And so he told me there…

[00:21:58] SHARI: No brainer!

[00:22:00] LACEE: Yeah. And so he says, you know, nickel and gold..he knew my story already. So he did kind of share, “You know what, with the nickel that makes sense. The nickel…I would assume that if you have those clips in, it would probably re…you would probably react to them with this much of a reaction”.

[00:22:13] SHARI: So he actually knew that the titanium had nickel in it. This doctor did. 

[00:22:21] LACEE: Yeah. He didn't necessarily say it, but said, “Yeah, that would make sense”. You know, so he didn't specifically say, ‘oh, nickel in titanium clips’, but he said that would make sense if you would react to it.

[00:22:29] So he probably knows, you know. Um, so then during that two weeks of waiting for that blood test to come back, my mom started talking to her brothers, because they're all machinists that have worked with metals for 50 years and started telling them my story and what was going on. And they were like very adamant to say that every titanium that they use for medical devices or for any kind of a device has to have some type of an alloy because it's not strong enough. And they said nickel…cobalt…aluminum…those are your top three that they're gonna put in because titanium is too soft by itself. 

[00:23:03] SHARI: I thought it was nickel and vanadium. I…you probably don't know, but I…I was told always it was either nickel or vanadium that it was alloyed with I…what do I know?

[00:23:11] LACEE: I haven't heard that metal before, but that's the…they were just very adamant about those three that they were telling us about.

[00:23:18] So as I start learning that, I'm just going, okay, like, so I wanna figure out what's, what are these clips? Really what are these clips? You know? So anyways, I get the blood test back and the blood test shows high to nickel and moderate to aluminum. So now…and gold wasn't on that panel.

[00:23:36] He didn't, he didn't. The one panel he did didn't have gold on it, but so this is internal, so this is blood work and then the patch, the back patch test was external. So they're two different tests. And so to me I was like, ‘okay, that's showing there's a reaction going on, you know, somehow’. And so anyways, at that point I started…this is where I started really becoming like a detective and an advocate, because I had gone to my hospital and I had just said, I want samples.

[00:24:00] Oh, you know why I did this is cuz I had seen a guy had put some samples of his clips on his back and had taped them on his back and his whole back had just like, flared up all red and sensitive to it. So I was like, ‘I wanna do that!’ 

[00:24:13] SHARI: Where, where was this guy? 

[00:24:15] LACEE: Um, it, it actually was when we, I very first got on the clip group that we met on. I had seen his story and so…

[00:24:22] SHARI: I'd love to get that. I'm interested. 

[00:24:24] LACEE: Yeah. I, and I could probably go back and find it. I may have even taken a screenshot. I'm just one of those people. I like to experiment and I thought either way, yeah, if it shows up or, or if it doesn't, it's just a, an experiment, you know?

[00:24:33] And so I called the hospital and I said, ‘I wanna get the exact clips that my surgeon uses’. And of course, the first lady that answered the phone said, “Yeah, of course. Like, I'll get ‘em", da, da da, you know, and then she calls me back probably a day later, I think it was a day later. And it's funny how their personalities kind of change or how they react and it changes after they talk to somebody else.

[00:24:52] And so she came back and just kind of was a little snooty about it and says, “Well, you know, we, we can't just give out the clips. That's a liability. You can't just get 'em as a patient”. And I was like, ‘okay, well how do I get 'em then? Well, you have to have a doctor request them. And I think she didn't think a doctor would request them, Right? 

[00:25:08] Luckily I had a doctor that I had found a little bit down the line that was more of a holistic family doctor, and he had my back through this whole thing and I'll talk about him a little bit more. And, um, so he basically sent the letter and, or called him, I can't remember if he called him or faxed it to him and said, “I would like to get samples of these clips”.

[00:25:25] And so finally after a week, we hadn't heard from him. So I called and said, Hey, You know, and “Well, you can't come and get 'em. We have to deliver them to the doctor's office”. And I'm like, ‘okay’. So they deliver 'em to his office and I go walking in there and he just takes a couple out of the pack thing and then hands 'em to me and is like, “Do whatever you wanna do with them.”

[00:25:52] You know, like, he's like, “I don't care if you have ‘em". You know? So we did a little experiment and we put 'em on my back and, you know, taped 'em on my back for a night or two. And, um, when I came back, it, it, the tape did more effect than the clips. The clips didn't do much, but they're so, so tiny. They're really, really tiny.

[00:25:59] And so it, it didn't bother me. I thought, either way it comes out, it's not, it's not telling me anything except for that I, it didn't affect me externally, right? So as I'm walking out of his office, I'm like, you know what? And so I'm literally in his like, hallway thing and I put the little clips in my ears and I just stand there for a minute.

[00:26:27] And within I would say 10 seconds, all of a sudden my ear starts getting warm. and it starts getting red and it starts getting… it starts swelling up. So after 30-40 seconds, I go walking back in the office and I'm like, ‘doctor’, I'm like, ‘look at my ears’! And he's like, “What the heck?” I’m all ‘can you imagine what's going on on the inside of my body if this is what's going on in the outside of my body’?

[00:26:42] SHARI: I mean, my ears are sensitive, but it usually takes like all day. Right. So for you to react while you were standing there is like, wow!

[00:26:48] LACEE: Yeah. My mom was standing right there with me and my mom was like, “Go back in and show the doctor”. You know? And so I walk in, I'm like, ‘look at this’!

[00:26:56] SHARI: What made you think to put 'em in your ear?!

[00:26:57] LACEE: I, I don't know, just, I think as we were walking out, I saw them…the mirror, and it just kind of was like, put those in my ears, you know? 

[00:27:03] SHARI: Desperation!

[00:27:05] LACEE: Yeah exactly! So backing up a little bit. So, so that was, you know, I did, I did have reactions on both of those tests. So for, for me, it already started that.

[00:27:23] Okay. I know. What my feeling inside is, right? I know that I'm reacting through these clips. I've gotta figure out how to get these out. So the next step was really trying to find a surgeon besides this other surgeon that didn't, doesn't think he does anything wrong. I called and we only have one general surgeon office here, so they're all in the same office.

[00:27:32] And so I was a little timid about it cause I'm like, well, if they're colleagues, what's gonna happen? You know? And so I called and I talked to him and he said, “Come in. Yeah, come in and, and talk to me”. I said, ‘I just want a second opinion’. So I go in there with my mom and I tell him my whole story. I'm even emotional by this point cause I don't feel good.

[00:27:47] I don't know what's going on. I'm frustrated. And, and he sat and listened and he, he even said, “I know that these clips can be taken out because I've had a colleague that's done it before”. And he goes, “The only thing that wasn't good was he did have it end up having a bile leak. And it wasn't good. It was really bad for his health to have that bile leak, but he got it fixed and, you know, he's fine now”.

[00:28:08] SHARI: How did they fix it? I haven't heard that story yet. You know, I, I think all the stories I've heard have pretty happy endings, but. That's interesting.

[00:28:15]. I don't think he ever really got into detail of how they ended up fixing the bile leak. They, hopefully they caught it pretty quick, but he said it made him really sick. He, he just said, my concern would be if you had a bile leak. So he even said he's a, he's a doctor that's been a military doctor. And so I'm like, okay, this guy, he'll figure it out, he'll figure out what he needs to do. He can do it with the paperclip and the, you know, piece of string if he has to, you know.

[00:28:46] So he was all on board and he said, “Let me research some more. However, I want to send you to another GI doctor cuz this is a doctor that I deal with a lot”, because I told him I'd gone to a GI doctor and he goes, “I want you to go to a different one”. And I was like, ‘okay, if he's referring me, hopefully it'll get in real…I’ll get in real quick. 

Right? Well I call the GI doctor in two months. It's two months out. And I even said, ‘Dr. So-and-So Yeah has referred me. We really need to get this figured out’. And they just says “Nope”. Like “We, we, we can't get you in any quicker. We'll let you know if there's cancellation”. So then that starts the waiting period.

[00:29:11] And so then it got to the point where I was starting to get a lot more sick. Like it was starting to get more intense. And so I'd called to the doctor's office and say, ‘Hey, is there any way that we can see each other? Can you call and get me in earlier’? And I felt like I was already starting to get that being ignored and not getting the callbacks and just saying, “Nope, you have to wait.

[00:29:28] Nope, you have to wait”. And it just was like, okay. You know? And so it's like, what can you do at that point, you know? But I still wasn't gonna give up. So in the meantime, so I'm gonna correct you on, I didn't have any metal besides the clips because I did have a root canal done that I had a gold crown in.

[00:29:44] SHARI: Okay. 

[00:29:47] LACEE: And then I did have some mercury, so… As I'm waiting for everything else, I start going down other rabbit holes, like, okay. I realize that when I got my root canal done at 19/20 years old, was when my heart stuff started, like when the heart palpitation started. So I start kind of connecting the dots there and I start researching root canals, and it does talk about heavy metals in the…the stuff that they use in the root canal.

[00:30:10] I've got a gold crown now in my mouth and I'm highly allergic to gold. And then I've got this mercury. So I start going down that road of I need this outta my mouth. I need everything outta my mouth and changed over. So, you know, you gotta go to the dentist to take out the mercury and to get the porcelain put in.

[00:30:26] And I, and I would just plead it and beg, please don't let anything go down in my mouth or let me inhale anything. And they took, extra precautions. Cause I was like, I'm already…basically my body's shutting down. I can't have anything else in me, you know, and then I go to the ortho surgeon and you know, it's a couple process where they take the gold crown out and then they go in and take out the, the…the root canal and then they try and talk you into putting something else back in there. And they wanted…

[00:31:51] SHARI: I didn’t know you could have a root canal taken out?

[00:30:52] LACEE: Yeah. 

[00:30:55] SHARI: I never had a root canal. My dad was always like…he was a holistic doctor before he died, and he was always terribly against them. But I didn't know, like I thought once you had a root canal you could never go back. Like it was a done deal. What do they take out?

[00:31:07] LACEE: Well, they just took everything out down. That was all…all the way to the bone. They just took out all the, um, I'm trying to think of the word of what the actual material it is… 

[00:31:14] SHARI: The pulp? 

[00:31:15] LACEE: That goes down into like…basically down into the, the bone.

[00:31:19] SHARI: Where the root was?

[00:31:20] LACEE: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

[00:31:21] SHARI: Okay. 

[00:31:22] LACEE: So they just take all of that out and I just told 'em, I says, you gotta make sure you take it all out. I can't have anything left in there, you know? And then after I got it taken out though, they were like, all right, now let's put an implant in. And I was like, ‘No! That's the whole purpose of getting this out!’

[00:31:35] Like I'm not putting back in. “Well then let's do a bridge”, you know? And it was like, ‘No, I'm not gonna pay $7,000 when it’s…’ so, I literally have a hole in the back of my mouth now because I am too scared to put anything back in.

[00:31:47] It's interesting though, how you start kind of putting the pieces together when you really start digging into your health and what you'd been through and you start kind of, cuz people talk a lot about that our mouth has a lot to do with our health. Right? Especially our heart, you know, so I start putting these things, you know, together and it just is amazing what end up coming out of it. Right? 

[00:32:07]  So, um, so anyways, so at that point it was still the waiting game. I started calling my, my insurance company and just saying, ‘Hey, is there anybody else in Utah’? You know, cuz they say you have to stay in Utah and stay in network. And I said, ’Is there anybody else that like, we can figure this out?’

[00:32:24] And I had an advocate at, with the insurance that she was going around calling other doctors and sh-she had a lot of people say like, “Nope, it's too invasive to take the clips out. Nope. It, you know, she can't react to the clips”. Like, she came back and had probably talked to five different doctors by the time she had come back to me and said those same things.

[00:32:42] You know, when you start hearing that, you start getting a little discouraged, you know? 

[00:32:45] SHARI: mm-hmm. 

[00:32:46] LACEE: So I forgot to bring up one thing about the allergy doctor, which was interesting cuz he seemed like a pretty like supportive doctor at that point. But when I went back and I told him that I was starting to do the oral surgery and getting my root canal and stuff out, his personality kind of changed.

[00:33:02] My mom said, “I noticed when he realized you had done another procedure…” By the time I went back and got my results, she says, “I noticed his personality changed a little bit and he got a little weird about things”. And at one point he even asked me because I had started losing weight if I was an anorexic, and I said, ‘No, I'm not’.

[00:33:18] And he kind of questioned it again and my mom looks at me and looks at him and she's like, "She is not anorexic. She has always been a small person, but she literally is getting to the point that she can't eat anymore. And it's not on purpose, it's because she's getting nauseous.”, and you know… But, so then it just starts making me feel insecure and like, you know, it just starts putting these weird stories in your head, you know, like…

[00:33:38] SHARI: Yeah.

[00:33:39] LACEE: Am I creating this? Am I crazy? You know?

[00:33:41] SHARI: Do I have Munchausen Syndrome? 

[00:33:44] LACEE: Right, right. Yeah. And or is it just that anxiety of knowing something's going on? And so the anxiety makes you not, you know, eat and not sleep, and it's just a whole snowball, you know? And so, so I, at that point I'd asked him, can you, each doctor I'd talked to, I was like, ‘can you gimme a letter to back me to show, you know, that I need to get these clips out’?

[00:34:06] And he writes this letter and he emails it to me. And I remember I was sitting at my sister's house and I pull up the letter and I start reading it. And he talks all about the, the allergies with the back patch test and the blood work and all that. And the very last sentence…and I can't remember word for word…but he basically said that he thought that I was a hypochondriac. He used the word hypochondriac and that I was just ch-chasing surgeries and procedures. Can you believe that?  

[00:34:32] SHARI: And he sent that letter to you? No, I can't believe that at all. 

[00:34:34] LACEE: Yeah. To be a support letter.

[00:34:35] SHARI: Did you, ever go back to him later in the journey? If you did, I wanna hear about that. So make sure you tell me.

[00:34:40] LACEE: No, I did. I did very quickly. I went home very upset. I was bawling, because again, it puts it in my head, ‘am I hypochondriac?’ Am I creating this? Am I? you know? Even though deep down, you know, you're not, it's still, you know?

[00:34:53] SHARI: Sure. 

[00:35:54] LACEE: Your mind's not connecting all the time, so you do question it. Right? So I called his office and I told his assistant that I wanted to talk to him cuz I was very upset.

[00:35:04] And the next couple of days I was really, really sick and he tried calling me three or four times and I knew it wasn't good for me to talk to him at that point. And finally about the third or fourth day he called and I finally answered it. And I remember laying in bed talking to him and I just told him how disappointed I was and that I told him, ‘you are not a psychologist or a psychiatrist….’

[00:35:23] ‘All I needed to know from you is if I was allergic to metals. I don't know why you felt that that was important to put that in there when you know, I needed that as a document to try and get these clips out’.

[00:35:32] SHARI: Go Lacee! Go Girl!

[00:35:34] LACEE: That’s where I was like, I'm fighting for this and I'm gonna be an advocate, you know?

[00:35:38] And. And he, you know, tried to get defensive at first and talk his talk and you know, the things. But by the end he finally kind of loosened up a little bit and he said, “You know what, Lacee”, he’s like, “You’re right”. He, and I said, ‘we come to you for a certain thing, and we come to you trusting you’. And I told him, ‘when you ask me, I said, I know you still need to ask people questions about maybe their weight and stuff like that, but it's the way you delivered the question that really made me feel uncomfortable’.

[00:36:01] ‘And then you writing this when you knew I needed that’, and I said, ‘I'm not a hypochondriac, I'm not looking for that. And you don't know that. You don't know that. You're not in the profession to know if I am or not’. So I… you know…and I just really told him strongly that I didn't like that. So he says, “What would you like me to do, Lacee”?

[00:36:15] I said, ‘I would like you to, to redact it. I would like you to fix it’. And he made sure it showed that he had redacted it and that there was something before in there-which kind of sucks in a way. Because if I ever had to take it, you know, to court or do anything with it, they would've pulled the original, right?

[00:36:32] SHARI: It's like a slap in the face!

[00:36:34] LACEE: Yeah, it was. It was very discouraging for sure. So, you know, each doctor…each appointment…each, you know, each, everything just kind of just starts making you real-you feel like you're crazy and I did. Really, there was multiple, multiple times I kept feeling like, ‘am I just, am I just snowballing this and making it worse?

[00:36:53] Because I don't know how to take care of my lifestyle when I don't feel good. I don't know how to stay in a positive mind frame when I don't feel good. I don't know how to not be nauseous when I'm eating. Like I…I didn't know how to use tools enough to think that I wasn't crazy at that point. Right?

[00:37:09]. So it was, it was hard. It, in the end, it was really hard. I, I was getting to that point where I was like, ‘well, if I am creating it, I guess I'm gonna go all the way to the end with it’, you know? Cuz I was getting the point where I could actually start feeling my body shutting down, you know? And so anyways, in between some of this too, I…I had gotten on to Facebook.

[00:37:27] My mom had found that Facebook group that we met in, and I think at the time when I got in there, there was maybe a hundred, maybe 120 people in there. And I don't even know how many is in there now? It’s… 

[00:37:37] SHARI: There's thousands in there.

[00:37:38] LACEE: Thousands? 

[00:37:39] SHARI: Yeah. 

[00:37:39] LACEE: So, I mean, it was the very, very beginning. Yeah. 

[00:37:40] SHARI: Wow. Okay. 

[00:37:41] LACEE: So I just kind of, I kind of watch stories, but you know, when you're sick it's like…it’s hard to really be in it. And, you know, you’re…you’re up in the middle of the night at three o'clock and you're stressed that you're not gonna, you know, wake up in the morning. So you start writing your story or asking questions and…and you know? We still see that on there.

[00:37:57] People are stressed and worried and they're just asking questions and just stressed about it. Well, at that time there was only a couple people that was really going through the…the end part of it, really getting help. Everybody else was in the same position I was in where we were just stressed and sick and trying to figure out what's going on.

[00:38:12] SHARI: What year was this? 

[00:38:14] LACEE: This would've been 2018? No, two…no, 2019. October, 2019. 

[00:38:20] SHARI: Okay. Okay. 

[00:38:22] LACEE: And so at that time, I was basically just talking with with two people right now who had gone out to Austin to Dr. Lainez and had gotten their clips out. He did it as just an experimental, kind of exploratory for them.

[00:38:35] He just said, “I can't promise anything. This is what's going on”. You know? Like, so I watched their story and both of them right away got relief. Everyone's journey after they've gotten the clips out have all been different. Everybody, every single person's been different, cuz we're all different, right?

[00:38:51] We all have different bodies, we have different genetics, we have all different stuff and lifestyle. So nobody's the same. But I had seen how much the life came back into them. That grey look…and then the life came back into them. And so I knew. I just, I just knew in every cell of my body that I needed these clips out.

[00:39:08] So I started reaching out to Dr. Lainez's office in Austin. And all I was asking him was, well actually…I love it…I called there-the very first time I called there, his assistant put me on hold, and he got right on the phone and talked to me. 

[00:39:20] SHARI: Wow!

[00:39:21] LACEE: He just gets on the phone and goes, “Oh, oh wait, what's your story? What's going on?”, And he let me tell my whole story to him on the phone. 

[00:39:27] SHARI: He's the nicest guy!

[00:39:29] LACEE: Yeah! I’m like, what doctor does that? You know? And…And I don't know…

[00:39:33] SHARI: That’s a sign! 

[00:39:31] LACEE: And I don't know if it was just cuz it was new because he had just taken out the other two. And so he's like, “What's going on here?”, you know…”Here’s another one”… you know? So I told him my story and I said, ‘all I'm asking is if maybe you would call the surgeon…surgeon’s office here that I'd gone to. And just tell them what you did? Tell them what you did. Tell them the experience you had with these two. Tell 'em how you did it so that there was no, you know, bile leak and all that.’

[00:39:56] So then they would know that this is legit and it's possible to take 'em out because every doctor says it's too invasive. You’re…we’re not taking it out. It's another procedure. 

[00:40:05] SHARI: Mm-hmm. . Right. 

[00:40:06] LACEE: And so he started calling my surgeon's office and not getting a reply back, not getting a reply back. Or they would say, “Nope, she has to go the the GI doctor first” or no reply back.

[00:40:16] Like they just would not answer back to him. And so at that point I was like, ‘you know what, they're not gonna do this’. And at this point I was like, ‘I don't want them to do it anymore. Why would I want somebody who is so against doing it, going and trying and help me’? You know?’

[00:40:29] SHARI: Right. 

[00:40:30] LACEE: So at that point it turned into, ‘okay, how…where do I go from here now’?

[00:40:34] And so that's when I really reached out to the insurance company. I started calling up to different places up in Northern Utah, cuz we have a, um, you know, U of U up there. And we've got a lot of different…

[00:40:43] SHARI: Right.  

[00:40:44] LACEE: Better hospitals than what we do down here for sure. And um, so at one point I called U of U and I told them my situation. I said, ‘I need to find out if you guys have any surgeons that believe that I could react to these clips, or if they're open to taking 'em out’. And she goes, “We have an “A-Team" up here who takes on all these weird procedures and surgeries and all this weird stuff". And she goes, “Let me…”, she goes, “Hold on…”

[00:41:08] SHARI: Now you’re a “weird procedure”…

[00:41:09] LACEE: I know. And I am…I’ve always, I've been called weird and interesting and everything, basically my whole life with health stuff. So I was just like, ‘whatever’, you know? So she goes, “Hold on, let me go ask ‘em". And she puts me on hold and I'm like, ‘she's gonna put me on hold and go ask these surgeons’, you know?

[00:41:24] And she put me on hold for about 10 minutes and I waited and she came back and she…you know…”Thank you for waiting”. And she says, “Yeah, I talked to the “A-Team” and they said they would take this on”. And I was like, ‘oh, this is great!’ You know? And she goes, “So we're gonna have to set up a consultation…so you'll have to come up for that, and then we'll set up a time to see this doctor, and then we'll set up a time for you to see this doctor…”

[00:41:43] And so she starts talking about me going to Northern Utah, which is a four to five hour drive, multiple times…

[00:41:49] SHARI: Without traffic…

[00:41:52] LACEE: Right. But at this time, I know my body is starting to shut down and I'm like, ‘I don't have it in me. I can't travel back and forth and still wait and wait and wait’. Like I was to the point where I knew I was running out of time. And so I just…I just told her…I says, ‘I can’t. I gotta… I gotta figure out something else’. So, at this point…

[00:42:08] SHARI: By running outta time, you mean you felt like you were dying?

[00:42:13] LACEE: Absolutely. There was many, many nights that I sat with my mom and I just said, ‘Mom, I'm scared that if I go to sleep tonight, I'm not gonna wake up’.

[00:42:24] Because luckily, I was living with my mom at that point. I was in between moving. And when I started getting worse, my mom just says, “You're not going nowhere. You're staying here till we get this figured out”. And I'm just so grateful, you know, because I had a teenage son at the time and so my mom was able to help me and, but I very strongly remembered sitting on the couch with her multiple nights.

[00:42:40] And even one night it got so bad that I, she picked me up like a baby and held me and I just cried. And she had just lost her parents that same year. And so it was so hard for me because I didn't wanna be a burden. I'm a very strong, independent woman. And to end up in the arms of my mom at 40 years, You know, that was really hard.

[00:43:01] And I didn't want her to have to see her daughter die in the same year that her parents just died. You know? And so it was, it was very hard. It was very hard. But when you get to that point where you're so sick and you're so tired….

[00:43:13] SHARI: Right.

[00:43:16] LACEE: …It’s not giving up. It really is just surrendering-that you're just like, you get scared to go to sleep. But it's almost like before I would go to sleep, I'd just say, ‘you know, I guess if this is it, like I love my family…and you know…I was making sure I knew what…who was gonna be taking care of my kids…what was gonna be going on. I made sure I had my ducks in a row in case, right? 

[00:43:32] SHARI: Mm-hmm. Yep. I remember writing my will and telling my husband how to pay the bills.

[00:43:37] Yeah. And that's a hard pill to swallow, you know? It's like, 

[00:43:41] SHARI: Yep. 

[00:43:43] LACEE: But I don't wanna be a burden. Even when I'm gone.

[00:43:45] SHARI: Right. 

[00:43:46] LACEE: And so this is where it started getting really interesting, was because I remember sitting in Costco and I got a call from my insurance and I was with my son, and the lady called me and she says,”Lacee, I just need to call and let you know that no matter where you go or who you go to…”, (because I had asked them, can I go outta state?

[00:44:04] Can I go to Texas? Can I go somewhere else? And they had said no, because it was outta network). And so she called me, she says, “No matter who you go to, even if it's in-state, in-network, anything, we're not gonna cover the surgery”. And I was like, ‘why’? And she says, “Because it says that they cannot prove that the clips is what's causing the issue”. And I just sat there in disbelief.

[00:44:23] SHARI: I don't know if you know this, and, and I discussed this on my first episode, but the hardware companies actually say that when you no longer need the hardware, you're supposed to have it removed. And my understanding from the few surgeons I've talked to is a foreign body reaction doesn't even have to get an approval through surgery. They have carte blanche to just take it out. So that surprises me that your insurance said that. 

[00:44:48] LACEE: Interesting. See, and I didn't know that, that's interesting. So it's like, is it based on insurances? Whether they decide…how our life, you know? How crazy. 

[00:44:45] SHARI: I don't think so. So, but something to…something to…ongoing research.

[00:45:00] For sure. Yeah. And it was very devastating because when she told me that, I just felt like it was over. I felt like, okay, now, like I can't go and spend…whatever…20 grand or however much it was gonna be to have a surgery to do this. Like, I was down to…you know…I was still working full-time and taking care of myself and my kids, but I was doing the bare minimum.

[00:45:20] I didn't have extra money to just throw, you know, throw at another surgery. And what was frustrating was that during that time, so I'd had the scope and colonoscopy. I'd had my gallbladder removal. This is all in 14 months.

[00:45:32] This is crazy. I'd already had a hysterectomy-a half hysterectomy years before, but I still had one ovary. Well, I started getting cyst on my ovary during this. And so I went in and got my other cyst out. I did the oral surgery with all my mouth. Once I did physical therapy-20 sessions of physical therapy on my bath back, it did not help a thing.

[00:45:50] I ended up going to a pain doctor and he ended up doing a back ablation on my back. And then I did end up having a heart surgery through all that, which I don't know if the clips caused more heart issues for me? Probably did cuz of the stress and everything that was going on. I did have an SVT ablation done also on my heart, so I'd had six procedures done within 14 months.

[00:46:15] SHARI: And nothing pertaining to the gallbladder!

[00:46:17] LACEE: Right. Yeah. 

[00:46:18] SHARI: There's a pattern.

[00:46:19] LACEE: Well, yeah. And then you think about it, the, the insurance covered all of that. All of those things, the insurance covered. But then.

[00:46:26] SHARI: Except the thing that’s killing you!

[00:46:29] LACEE: Exactly, and that's what I told them. I says, ‘now that I know exactly what it is?’, but they said there's no proof.

[00:46:34] So I just had somebody say, you know what, just figure out how to do it. Pay the cash and then just come back and try and fight it because you, you, you're running out of time. Because I got to the point where I was just defeated. I was defeated. And so I went home and told my mom what they said, and I was just bawling.

[00:46:49] And she just says, “Well, Lacee, we got our answer”. And I said, ‘what do you mean’? And she goes, “If we gotta pay cash for this…” she goes, “We're gonna go to somebody who knows what to do and who is already supporting you on that”. And so… Like, honestly, Dr. Lainez is an angel, you know? So we called him. We called him in Austin, Texas, and we just told him what was going on.

[00:47:10] And I just says, ‘I don't know what to do’. And I told him, ‘Dr. Lainez, I'm dying and I don't have time to keep running in these circles’. And he says, “When can you get out here”? And my mom just, you know, whispers, “Tell him as soon as possible”, you know? 

[00:47:24] SHARI: Tomorrow!

[00:47:25] LACEE: He did. He seriously was like…it..I think we called him like on a Monday or Tuesday, and he is like, “Can you be here on Friday or something”?

[00:47:30] It was really quick. And we were like, ‘wait a minute, let us think about this for a minute. We gotta get flights, we gotta get hotels. We got, I gotta get work off. You know? So it kind of, we kind of were like, hold on for a minute. We're like, ‘let’s…let’s do next week’. And so,

[00:47:41] We set up that we were gonna see Dr. Lainez on Tuesday, and then he goes, “I'm just gonna set up the surgery on Wednesday, but I'm not gonna promise anything. I'm not gonna promise anything. I'm just gonna see you on that Tuesday, but let's just…if everything goes good…”. But he had seen stuff. I’d already, I had already sent him all my ER visits, you know, with CT scans and MRIs and X-rays.

[00:48:03] I told him all my symptoms. I told him about my metal testing…sent him all that. So he had seen a lot of what I had already. So I think he was like, “We'll set it up.”, and just knew he was probably gonna go into it, you know, 

[00:48:13] SHARI: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:14] LACEE: But he's good about not promising anything unless he knows for sure, which I, I appreciate. Right? This is when it got really hard because I had to become very humble and very dependent on other people. My mom had all of her money into buying a house and didn't have any money at the time. I didn't have any money at the time, but we knew we had to have some money to go out there.

[00:48:33] Right? And so I never thought I was gonna have to do a GoFundMe. And my mom set up a GoFundMe and I remember just bawling while she was setting it up. Cause I just never thought I would have to be the one on that end, you know? Like I'm the one that loves to support people and help people. And it was very…it was very hard for sure. But amazing because within just a couple of days of my mom sharing, because people had watched my journey for the year, and they knew what was going on, you know?

[00:48:00] SHARI: And they knew you….

[00:48:01] LACEE: Um, right, right. And, and even people that didn't know me, my mom has all these groups, you know, these paint rock groups, these all…I mean, like, she has all these groups that she shared it out to and people that didn't even know me, heard my story and they donated. And that's where I just love community has become such a big part of my…of my life now.

[00:49:21] Because by that point I had made my circle really small. When you don't feel good you don't reach out to friends. You don't go out and, and build new friendships. You even cut off, you know, friendships that you feel like are just,’Hey, I'm a burden to them now’. Or maybe they don't care. 

[00:49:32] SHARI: Spoons…

[00:49:33] LACEE: Yeah. So I, I had my, my little small group of friends and then I had my family and that was about it at that point. And so to see the abundance come in, um, within those couple of days was just very overwhelming. I just kept telling my mom, ‘how am in to tell everybody thank you? How am I gonna pay everybody back?’ And my mom's like, “When you donate, do you expect a thank you or for money to come back”? You know?

[00:49:52] And I was like, ‘no’. But it was just, it just, it was, it was really hard for my personality cause I'm just a, such a strong, independent person. But I, it's taught me a lot for sure. The last few years and um.… So anyway, so we get the money together. And what was, okay, so here's the interesting part. I had talked to the two people that, that had gotten their surgeries done and when I started telling them how much I was told it was gonna be to go out and get the surgery done, they just kept coming back going, “That doesn't make sense.

[00:50:18] That doesn't make sense. Cuz even on our bill for our insurance…it’s just not matching up. It shouldn't be that much”. And when I told 'em what hospital I was going to, they said “That's a different hospital than what we went to…” So that Friday before I flew out to Austin, I left a message for his assistant  I just said, ‘Hey, can we just double look this? Cuz if I'm gonna pay cash, I wanna pay the bare minimum I have to’. 

[00:50:37] SHARI: Yeah. 

[00:50:38] LACEE: And so if there's something else going on that I need to do, you know… So over the weekend, me and my mom fly out to Austin and, and I'm barely hanging in by this time. By this time I'm eating mangoes and olives- were basically the only things I could eat.

[00:50:52] I would try and get a couple bites of chicken in once in awhile because I knew I needed some protein, but I just remember, like, I would just try and eat those first couple bites as quick as I could because I would just get nauseous and I'm already low weight anyways. Like I’m…I’m a smaller person. And so my normal weight's around like 108.

[00:51:09] By the time we left to go to Austin, I was at 92 pounds. And I know that like, that's, that's a big percentage right off of what? And so I didn't have a lot to lose anyways. And so that was one of the turning points for my mom, was a couple days before we went to Austin. When I went on the scale, she was like, “All right, this is it”.

[00:51:28] “Like you, you can't lose any more weight. This isn't gonna…” You know, you're just…I wasn't gonna make it. I…I could feel my body like shutting down. Literally. And I just had that grey look-and I have a before and after picture I think we're gonna put up to the…

[00:51:41] SHARI: We are. 

 [00:51:42] LACEE: It’s just, yeah…it was just that grey look where you see people and you're just like, ‘ooh!’ You know? And, and it's sad because…

[00:51:47] SHARI: Hollow eyes and hollow skin and sunken features and Yeah, it…

[00:51:53] LACEE: Yeah, I did not feel like myself in any way…any shape or way. I didn't feel like myself anymore. I felt like I was in a dream at that point, you know? And um, so we flew out to Austin and my mom…my mom and I are pretty high anxiety when we travel, when we drive or when we fly and stuff.

[00:52:09] But because I was sick and because my mom was having to take care of me, it was a different feeling going out there. And, and, and once we got out there, it was actually interesting cuz we had two days to kind of prepare. We got out there on a Sunday and we didn't see Lainez until Tuesday. And I remember just having this overwhelming calmness.

[00:52:26] To me. And my mom also had that calmness. I was actually able to eat a little bit more. And so again, you know, the…the stories we tell ourself in our brain, I was like, crap, have I been like creating this? And now that I'm here getting this done, like am I better? Like, I mean, cuz I…

[00:52:43] SHARI: I had those thoughts…yeah…

[00:52:45] LACEE: Mt symptoms kind of calmed.

[00:52:46] SHARI: Yeah… 

[00:52:47] LACEE: It's like they had calmed down a little bit, but they were still there. Right?  And looking back at it now, I sometimes kind of wonder like, actually I know in my heart that I probably was not gonna make it through that surgery. I knew that I had a 50-50 chance. I knew that I'd been through too much.

[00:55:02] I knew my body had gone through too much trauma… Had too much anesthesia in me…too much medicines and…you know…supplements. And like, I didn't even know what I was taking anymore. Like, I just…my body was just not functioning and I was so deprived and I just…I just knew that I..I..I told my mom, I says,

[00:53:22] At least if I go right now, grandma and grandpa are up there wherever we go and I’ll…I’ll be…I’m comforted with that thought, you know? And so it wasn't like I was scared anymore—which is weird for me cuz I used to be really scared of dying. So we got to Austin….

[00:53:34] SHARI: You can give me some pointers. Ugh. 

[00:53:37] LACEE: I think when you get that close, it kind of changes the way you think about it, you know?

[00:53:42] But so we get out there and, uh…let me back up a little bit cause I think this is really important. What had happened..and I don’t…I don't wanna bring religion into this, because I'm not really religious yet this was a big turning point for me of my mindset about things. Was right before I left to go to Austin, I remember I was talking to my daughter and she was out on a church mission and she says, “Mom, have you gotten a blessing”?

[00:54:04] SHARI: For people who don't live in Utah, you might, that might sound a little weird, so you might just say what that is. 

[00:54:11] LACEE: It's just basically a prayer of like either healing or comfort or, you know, and, and in any, any, I think in any religion they have that type of just a prayer or like a, a healing type of whatever they wanna call it, you know? But we call it a blessing. 

[00:54:25] And so my brother has the right to give that type of a blessing. And so my…I called my brother-he is on his way home from work, and I says, ‘can you come over and give me a blessing’? Cuz at this point was the point where I was basically dying. Like, I…I had told my daughter, I says, ‘babe, I… don't know…’

[00:54:38] I, I was literally telling my daughter, I don't know if I'm gonna see you again. And that's hard to tell your kid, you know? And so my brother comes over and he sits down and I remember a couple blessings I had over the year, he had sat down and would just do the blessing and just do the blessing of healing and…and getting answers.

[00:54:54] SHARI: Mm-hmm. 

[00:54:55] LACEE: …And doing all the things. 

[00:54:56] SHARI: Sure. 

[00:54:57] LACEE: This…this one was a little bit different. He…he sat down and he just said, well, what, what, what do you want this blessing to be? And to me that was a little like, ‘what do you mean? What do I want it to be like’? I wanna get… 

[00:55:07] SHARI: I wanna rise up and walk!

[00:55:09] LACEE: Yeah! Like, take this all away. Miracles. You know? And so it flustered me a little bit and, you know, when I'm sick, I have a sh…short fuse and I get a little snappy, you know? And I just said, ‘well, if he's done with me, then he's done with me and have him take me. But if he's not done with me, I need answers!’, And I was very stern and I was…I was very snappy.

[00:55:30] And know that I probably rubbed people the wrong way when I didn't feel good. But at that point I didn't care. So he gave me a blessing of comfort and…and knowing now what that was…is most people, when they are passing, you get that blessing of comfort instead of healing. And later down the line I talked to him about it and he did say that he felt like he was giving me a blessing of that if I was to pass that I just had comfort, you know?

[00:55:55] And that…it’s hard to swallow that knowing that now, because I, I knew I was dying, but I didn't think anybody else did. I didn't think anybody else did. I still thought, everybody thought that it was just me being sick and me being annoying and me being whatever they thought about it.

[00:56:09] But knowing now how many people really thought, “Lacee, I didn't even think I was gonna see you”, you know? “Like we really didn't think that you were gonna come back”, and it just, so…it’s hard to swallow a little bit. But I'm glad nobody said it to me in the moment. Cause I probably would've bit off their heads, right? Because I was very short fuse, you know?

[00:56:23] So anyway…so we get out to Austin-so it's that very calming feeling. And I had en…I had, I have energy worker friends that had been working on me energy-wise. I had people with our church putting my name into the temple. I had people praying. I…I had so many people working on me at that time in different ways and…

[00:56:41] I feel like that's where the calmness came in, was to let me and my mom kind of just get through that, you know, what we needed to get through. And so we ended up going to seeing Dr. Lainez on that Tuesday, and he was amazing. I mean I brought my four pages, you know, of every little thing. You know, I'm very organized and structured, and I brought this to him and just handed it to him, and I just said, this is everything I've done in 14 months.

[00:57:04] And he looked through all of it, and he just looks up at me and he just goes, “Lacee, there's nothing else I can ask you to do. You have checked off all the boxes.”, which in it, it's annoying that you're checking off the boxes, but for him to just move right forward and to go into the surgery, I was like, ‘yes!’.

[00:57:20] Like, I did everything I needed to do. You know…I…even though it was all annoying and, I did a lot, it paid off at that moment. I just felt that relief of, ‘okay, that's what all that was for, was that…so this moment would just be able to move forward’, Right? So, and he saw me and saw that I was that grey color and the 92 pounds, and he just was like, “We're gonna do this!”.

[00:57:39] He goes, “I’m”,…and he told me the same thing…”I’m not gonna promise anything. We're just gonna consider it like an exploratory surgery.”. So at this point, going back to kind of the…the money and the insurance thing, or the…the money and the hospital thing, we found out that he does surgeries at two different hospitals and depending, everybody knows that hospital codes…surgery codes…if you put in a different code, it can be a whole different thing.

[00:58:03] So when I left that message with his assistant, she called me back right before we saw Dr. Lainez, and she said, “We're gonna move you to a different hospital.”. And it was, um, St. David's South Hospital. “And we're gonna change one code on it, but we're gonna make sure that we have the right machines to do….”, and I'll explain when we go into the surgery part of it, what they need to do to make sure I don't have the bile leak…

[00:58:29] SHARI: Mm-hmm. 

[00:58:30] LACEE: So, so she goes, “So call the hospital…”, she goes, “The…the doctor bill will still be the same. The surgeon bill will be still be the same and the anesthesia will still be the same, but call the hospital cuz that'll be different.”. So what I was told in the beginning is I had to come out there with 7 to $8,000, but when I came home I was gonna have over 20 grand of debt.

[00:58:47] And so we got all that 7 to $8,000 together just to get me out there. And my mom just said, “If you gotta pay $50 a month for the rest of your life, it's worth living, so we gotta do it, right?”. So we get out there. So then anyway, she tells me call the hospital. So I call the hospital and the lady says…

[00:59:02] “Well, yeah, so when you come in, bring in $7,495…whatever it was, and I said, ‘okay, and then how much do I leave with…like owing?’ And she goes, “No, Lacee, that's the total amount for the hospital bill”. And I look over at my mom and me and my mom just start bawling. And we're like, ‘what’? And she's like, “Yeah, we're a nonprofit and if you pay with cash, you get this huge discount”. I think it was like 90% discount or something like that. 

[00:59:27] SHARI: Wow. 

[00:59:28] LACEE: And that just changed….

[00:59:29] SHARI: How much? How much was it at the other pla…at the other? You didn't say I don't think?

[00:59:32] LACEE: Well, they just said I was gonna end up coming back with like 20 plus thousand dollars in debt. 

[00:59:38] SHARI: After the 7,000?

[00:59:39] LACEE: Yeah. 

[00:59:40] SHARI: So almost 30…okay. 

[00:59:41] LACEE: Yeah. That's what I'm assuming. You know, they didn't really give me a…because they says, “Well, sometimes with surgeries you don't know what's gonna happen. So it, you know, it'll be around 20 grand…probably more.”, you know? So that was a relief. And I only wanted to bring that part up because I know a lot of people go out to there and a lot of people ask us about travel and about hospital and about all the things and insurance.

[00:59:58] SHARI: Mm-hmm. 

[00:59:59] LACEE: and paying cash and… 

[01:00:00] SHARI: Yeah. 

[01:00:01] LACEE: So it's a relief to know that there's a hospital that he works in that is willing to do that for people that will pay cash, because a lot of people are going out paying cash right now, so… So anyway, so yeah. So that was a great relief, because you know you go into a surgery and you're worrying about bills and when you go home, you're, you don't heal as good.

[01:00:19] I don't feel like, cuz it's that big weight and that big burden on your shoulder of money, which sucks, you know? That doesn't help us heal, you know?

[01:01:15] LACEE: So at this point we get out there, we see Dr. Lainez, he's like, “We're gonna do this!”. So the next day, I actually slept very well that evening. I was very, very calm and I still keep thinking at that moment.

[01:01:26] I wasn't supposed to make it that next day. I…I feel it in my whole soul that I wasn't supposed to make it that next day.

[01:01:32] LACEE: So yeah…so then we get there on that Tuesday morning. We get into the hospital and I kind of tease when I talk about this part, and I laugh about it, but it actually was very profound to me that when I got there, I really feel like that it was like this hospital in heaven. Like it was just…you walked in there and just the energy and the feeling of it and everybody from the front desk lady to, you know, the lady that comes and takes you to the back, to the ones that come and start undressing you and doing…I mean…everybody was just so sweet and had the best energy and like we were very calm.

[01:02:07] and I don't know, I've had a couple of people tell me the same experience and so I don't know what it is about that place, but I'm like if I went back there and it wasn't there, I wouldn't be surprised cuz it was a hospital that was in heaven. 

[01:02:17] SHARI: Mine was at Christus Santa Rosa. But yours was at a different place?

[01:02:22] LACEE: Yeah, mine was St. David's South. 

[01:02:23] SHARI: Okay. I didn't get to go to the Heaven Hospital. 

[01:02:26] LACEE: Oh, dang it! It’s interesting the certain parts of your experience that's more profound for other people, and that one was just really, it just sticks out to me. 

[01:02:34] SHARI: Sure. 

[01:02:35] LACEE: Just to…because of how much we go through to be able to end it at that point of being a very calm and very…just accepting and good energy.

[01:02:43] It just, it just was amazing, you know. So we get there and they get me all all ready. And one of the ladies who end up getting her clips out that lived in close to Austin, she actually came up to the hospital, sat with my mom, and talked with us and talked with Dr. Lainez… and it was so sweet because I just, it was just that support of the community again, right?

[01:03:01] So she'd never met…I mean, we'd talked about, we'd never like met or anything. And so I just loved that she came up there like that was so sweet. And so Dr. Lainez comes in and explains what they do in the surgery. He comes in and explains that he is gonna do laparoscopic again, but what they do is they actually put an IV in you, like a, yeah, an iv.

[01:03:18] And then they put this green dye that goes through your system. And then when he is in there, after he goes in and takes out the clips, he lights it up, and then the green dye, if it starts coming through the bile duct area, that means that it didn't heal and that he would just go in and put one little stitch in there if it didn't.

[01:03:37] But he says if he watches it for awhile and there's no leak, then that means it's healed and I wouldn't need a stitch. So he said, “Either way, you're …either… just one little stitch”. He's like, “I won't put any metal. I won't do anything else, but it'd be one little stitch and just let it heal”. So I, I felt very good about that.

[01:03:52] SHARI: So now were you freaked out about the green dye? Because I didn't know about the green dye till I got there and I was totally freaked out about it! I don't know if I even texted you, but I was totally freaked out because by this time…you know…you’ve had other stuff in your body that hasn't worked out so well. I didn't know anything about the green dye. 

[01:04:08] LACEE: Yeah, I, I think at that point, I think I was a little bit freaked out about it, but I think I was just to the point where I was like, okay, in the next hour, either I'm survivor-in’ or I'm moving on, and I kind of just did the, just…I was surrendering at that point where I was just like, ‘let's see what happens here’.

[01:04:23] You know? Anyway, so I loved everybody who worked on us. So Dr. Lainez came in-I just can't praise him enough…of his just personality and his energy and just how much he was just a support. And so anyway, so I ended up getting…I think he ended up giving me just a little bit of like an… like to calm the system before they took me back.

[01:04:39] Um, they didn't gimme the full anesthesia yet, and I remember…Is it like the movies where I have to be like, ‘Mom, I'm gonna miss you and love you!’… I didn't know if it was gonna be like that, because I…I honestly still felt at this moment that I probably wasn't gonna make it. But just having that calming from the hospital and from Dr.

[01:04:56] Lainez…and just how calm my mom was. I just was like, ‘you know what’…like, ‘I'll see you soon’, you know? And even though I still felt like I may not make it, I didn't feel like I had to do the whole goodbye because it was just like every…everything’s gonna be okay. Whether it happens or not, it was just that calming feeling, you know?

[01:05:12] SHARI: Yeah. 

[01:05:13] LACEE: So they start taking me back and…and I tease about this part, but it's very emotional for me too, is I…I remember, you know, when you were younger and you'd like plead to God, like, ‘please God, if you just let Michael like me, I'll do anything in the world’. You know? Like you do that and just funny pleading of like, ‘I'll do anything’.‘I'll do anything if you just gimme what I want right now’, you know? 

[01:05:30] SHARI: Mm-hmm. 

[01:05:31] LACEE: And that's kind of where I went to. I kind of went to just like ‘Please God, if you'll get me through this, like I will help as many people as I can to not have to experience what I just went through’. I mean, I just kept just saying this in my brain and just in my heart and just, God, please let me get through this.

[01:05:47] Because at that moment I was getting wheeled away. I was like, ‘this is it for me. This is probably it for me’. And I just didn't feel like it was my time yet. And so I really started pleading and I honestly think that I changed my path, at that moment. I honestly do. 

[01:06:02] SHARI: We’re powerful. Yeah.  I believe it. I believe it. 

[01:06:05] LACEE: And it's really profound to me that I feel like I changed it. In the moment I didn't realize how important that prayer was and how much that was gonna change my life. And…but…it did. It did. 

[01:06:19] SHARI: And look at you here paying it back!  

[01:06:20] LACEE: Yes. 

[01:06:21] SHARI: She's making good on it y’all!

[01:06:25] LACEE: Doing it! Just especially this right now. Sharing our story's the most important part of it. Right? So anyway, so he goes in…he does the surgery. My bile duct is already healed. He doesn't have to put a stitch in. He watches it. I think he said he watched it for 30 minutes. Everything was good and he ended up taking out six clips. And I remember I told him at one point…

[01:06:43] SHARI: That’s a lot! 

[01:06:45] LACEE: I know. Well…and you hear, when you actually look it up, it shows that they usually say two to three or two to five or something like that. And everybody so far, who has gotten them taken out? I think I've had five or more. So it’s interesting. 

[01:06:56] SHARI: I had three.

[00:06:58] LACEE: Okay. Okay. Yeah. You're, you're the least amount that I've heard then, is the three. Okay. 

[01:07:00] SHARI: Thank God for that!

[01:07:02] LACEE: Yes.  And I don't know… I don't know if more or less is worse on our body, right? Or if it just reacts the same. Yeah. 

[01:07:08] SHARI: Oh I don't know. I think more is worse. I think more is worse. 

[01:07:10] LACEE: Probably. But yeah, so he, but I remember telling him that there was…there was a couple times where I felt like there was a little electrical shock, like right where the clips were at. And he kind of told me a little story about when he went in there. He says there wasn't a ton of scar tissue around it as much-he thought there would've been a lot more. And then he said that there was two that were close enough that he thinks what had happened is maybe when I move a certain way, they'd kind of hit each other and then maybe kind of do that, like electrical shock, you know? 

[01:07:35] SHARI: Okay. 

[01:07:36] LACEE: Yeah. 

[01:07:37] SHARI: Like reaction.

[01:07:38] LACEE: Yeah. And so hearing that, you know, what it went to is making me start thinking is I think having the metal in my mouth, affected some of my health. Right? Maybe my heart and stuff. But I think when they put those clips in, I think just having, I keep thinking…I’m like…just having two things just did like a…just a…you know…just a reaction that just…turned everything on. 

[01:07:58] SHARI: Well, we now know that there's a..yeah…there’s a galvanic reaction between 'em. Did you…did you know that you can actually measure the current, correct? Did you know that? 

[01:08:05] LACEE: No, I did not know that.  

[01:08:07] SHARI: Oh yeah. So, Dr. Scott Schroeder, who's gonna be a guest on the podcast in future episodes, actually conducted an experiment during surgery where he uses a…I don’t know what you call it…I’m not a guy…a volt meter of some sort and actually put it on inside when the metal was there…and outside, and it like completely decreased. Like the voltage was super high and then it went down to like super low after the metal was removed. So it can actually…I always felt like I had electricity running through my body and like I couldn't wear an apple watch cuz I felt like I was plugged into a light socket- because I have significantly more metal than you.

[01:08:43] But yes, it's called a galvanic reaction. And you can actually measure the current. Some metals have a positive charge and some have a negative charge and they can create measurable electric current between them. So there you go!

[01:08:55] LACEE: Wow. Yeah, I mean, I guess my intuition was right cuz that's all I kept picturing was that…

[01:08:58] SHARI: Right.

[01:08:59] LACEE: And, and then too, it's like we have foreign objects in our bodies and that can just turn, you know, our genes on that are gonna express eventually.

[01:09:05] SHARI: Right. 

[01:09:06] LACEE: You know, you have trauma. 

[01:09:07] SHARI: Yes. 

[01:09:08] LACEE: So I just felt like it just lit everything up in my body and I, and I think everybody else has kind of had that same experience where it just turned everything on and that's where we start getting symptoms, you know? And so yeah. So going back, so everything went good with the surgery.

[01:09:17] He came out and just told my mom like, “Six clips, everything went good. I can see why she probably was having a little bit of that electrical shock, cuz I…two of them were really close to each other.”. And then he just says, “Yeah”, he's like…and we end up doing it more in the afternoon. So I…a lot of people ask, do we go home that day or do we go home the next day or stay five days?

[01:09:35] And my advice is…I always tell people like, if you can't go that first or second day, then wait till like the five or sixth, fifth or sixth day because that, like third or fourth day of any surgery is about…is the hardest part of it, Right? And so if you're gonna travel, I'm always like, either go when you got the anesthesia in you, or wait till you…you’ve gone a couple days through, right?

[01:09:52] SHARI: Sure.  

[01:09:53] LACEE: So yeah, me and my mom just stayed the night and that next morning we end up, we heading to the airport and flying out. And I mean, now I've just gotten outta surgery, so of course like I'm tired and I'm sore and all those things, but I already started seeing a change and that's the key part of it, is how quickly things started fading away.

[01:10:12] SHARI: And you are how many hours out of surgery? 

[01:10:14] LACEE: Not even 24 hours yet. Like we went to the airport and my mom said “Do you feel like eating anything?”. We had like a layover for an hour somewhere. And I was like, ‘yeah, get me…’, I think she got me a sandwich or something and I ended up eating the whole thing. And that was the first time I had really kind of had a whole meal.

[01:10:31] Well, I think she maybe gave me a half a sandwich cuz she was probably like, she's not gonna eat it. So I think we shared a sandwich, but I ate a whole half of the sandwich, which was a lot for me at that time. And so we flew home and I got home and. I remember like, I think it was either that…that first night home or the second night at home, my stepdad had made his spaghetti dinner that he always makes us.

[01:10:51] And I remember sitting down and I just started eating it and eating it and, and it tasted…it tasted so good and I'm eating it so fast cause I kept thinking I was gonna get nauseous again, because we're now, we're trained of how we had been for so long, right? 

[01:11:04] SHARI: Sure!

[01:11:06] LACEE: And so I'm like eating fast and I remember I was like, ‘oh my gosh, that tastes so good’. And I look up to my stepdad and my mom, I'm like, ‘can I get some more’? And they're just…you know…cause they had just, they had seen me only be able to take two bites and get sick and now I'm asking for seconds, you know? So this is within days, you know? So I remember though very profoundly, again…I can't remember if it was the second or third day I was home.

[01:11:24] I remember laying in bed. You know, you mentally and emotionally still have to work on things when you get home. Just cuz you get the clips out and you start feeling better…you’re…you still have a lot to work on.

[01:11:35] SHARI: There’s a lot of trauma! 

[01:11:36] LACEE: There is. And fear of stuff, you know? 

[01:11:40] SHARI: Yes!

[01:11:41] LACEE: Even though I'm starting to feel better, is it gonna come back or is it gonna…you know? And I remember laying there thinking, ‘okay, there were so many times I thought, did I create this? Because, am I crazy? Did I create this’? And then to come home and start having symptoms go away that quick…the same feeling was there: ‘Am I crazy? Did I create this? And now it's going away because I created this, like I was still questioning myself in the mental part of it.  

[01:12:04] SHARI: Well, our brains are so powerful. The brain can perpetuate symptoms and you don't know if that's really…I had moments when I was like super sick that like I had a…my favorite songwriter came and played a concert at my home and I got to sing with him and I was like able to be up all day. 

[01:12:19] LACEE: Yes. 

[01:12:20] SHARI: So I think our brains are powerful, but I…looking back at my journey-and I don't know if you feel the same way-it wouldn't have been powerful enough to overcome the allergy to the metal without medical intervention.

[01:12:31] LACEE: I agree. I agree. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So once I could kind of get past that mental part of it for the first couple of days, and I started seeing more and more symptoms slow down or…or calm down, and some were going away. I mean, some of the ones that went away pretty quick was the nausea and then the pain right where the gallbladder was at.

[01:12:48] The brain fog! Like all of a sudden…like I just…it felt clear, like it was the weirdest thing. Like I was just, like I didn't have that confusion. And I'm a talker. And by the time I got to the point of going to get my…my clips, I couldn't even make sentences. I was forgetting words. There was so many, like, I couldn't hardly talk at that point. 

[01:13:08] And within days of coming home I was…had a clear brain. I could talk normal. I was…you know…I was back to my fast talking again and all that. And so it was just crazy how quickly, you know, that those things started fading away. And so I went to, I think it was like three or four days into it, I just all of a sudden just had all this like energy and I was just, ‘Oh my gosh.

[01:13:30] Like I'm, I'm healed!’ You know? It was kind of that like, oh my gosh, I could just get back to life. And I got up and I was like, ‘I wanna go for a walk!’ And my mom was just…”Hold on. Like, you just about died. Like, let's just go around the first block and we'll walk slow and…” you know? And so I calmed myself and I, you know, I knew I needed to really work on my body now.

[01:13:48] I knew that there had been a lot of…I had been deprived from a lot of stuff. So I calmed down and I just was like, ‘okay, I'm gonna take this slow and listen to my body. Give my body a voice and let it just tell me what it needs to do’, you know?

[01:14:00] SHARI: but girl, you got it all out. Like all of it. 

[01:14:05] LACEE: Yeah. 

[01:14:06] SHARI: I can't even imagine being able to go back to that place. You got to rewind the whole thing!

[01:14:07] LACEE: Yes. 

[01:14:08] SHARI: Well, how would that be? 

[01:14:11] LACEE: Yeah. Well, and knowing too that like as soon as I started going through my health journey at this point, I started passing the point of even before when I got my gallbladder out, I started doing better. And this is where the key is, is I think a lot of people get the clips out and then they go back home and they go back to their same lifestyle.

[01:14:29] And that's the key for me is, you know, I do have people reach out all the time and say, how come you're doing so good? How come you're doing so much better than everybody? Because I changed my lifestyle. I realized that I had gotten a second chance. And so when I got home, I started doing a lot of different things that changed my lifestyle with my nutrition and with my mental and emotional and the physical.

[01:14:50] I just started changing all the elements because I didn't wanna go back to even where I was in the beginning, I wanted to do better. I had a second chance at life. I wanted to make a difference!

[01:15:00] SHARI: Right? 

[01:15:02] LACEE: I needed the energy to be able to help other people. And at that point, I had tons of people reaching out to me because of what I'd been through.And it really got overwhelming. And I'll be honest, and most people realized that I had to step back for a second because I was still trying to heal and it mentally and emotionally overtook me for a little bit—of so many people reaching out that I had to go ‘hold on! I need to take care of me for a second and then I'll come back’, Right? 

[01:15:25] SHARI: Yeah. All the emotions. 

[01:15:27] LACEE: Yeah. It was overwhelming because I went from being so, so sick that within a week of getting those clips out, I was already moving to like my health journey. And so it was almost like I didn't wanna look back, I didn't wanna look back. I didn't wanna admit that it's there anymore because I don't want it to come back.

[01:15:47] Right? And I just kept moving forward every day. And so for…there was a point where I kinda had to just stop for a minute. and just make sure I take care of Lacee, so that then I could get better and take care…help other people. And so I just started doing all different kinds of stuff. Anywhere from changing my eating for sure.

[01:16:02] Because we know that with nickel allergies, we gotta change what we're eating. I started doing more physical. I always thought because I was a small person, that I didn't have to worry about physical…The physical element. I just thought, ‘well, I don't have to worry about weight'. But now knowing that the physical element is not just about weight, the physical is getting a strong core and it's keeping our body moving, and we need to do that every day.

[01:16:24] Right? It’s drinking more water and healthy water, you know? And I just started learning, cuz I'd gotten in this community where we were learning how to do these elements and I was like, ‘okay, even just my relational’, right? Cause I'd made my circle so small that it's like, ‘okay, now I get to grow relationships and get that abundance of having relationships and stuff’.

[01:16:41] And so I opened my heart up and I opened up to just whoever wanted to talk to me…whoever wanted to get to know me. And I loved hearing other people's stories. I was just really connecting with people and I ended up doing a genetics test where I found out about my detox issues, which plays another part when you have a foreign object in your body.

[01:16:58] My mom passed that down for me because she, she actually went through the breast implant issue, where her body rejected the breast implants. So mine was a kind of a double whammy. I'm allergic to metals and, you know, my body doesn't like foreign objects. I've actually got two of the gene variants on that. I've got the MTHFR which a lot of people talk about. And then I have another one that’s EPHX1, and that's another detox one. And I've never…

[01:17:21] SHARI: I've never heard of that…Go ahead. 

[01:17:23] LACEE: The EPHX1? No, it's, it's actually interesting, cuz it actually…it makes me think of the pictures of where I see my clips, cuz I have those pictures and I'll put those in my story too. But it's where our body actually takes any kind of a foreign object or a carcinogen or any kind of toxin and it encapsulates it in fat so that it protects it from our body or protects our body from it. And mine just has a little glitch doing that. And so when you look at where the clips were at,

[01:17:49] You can tell there's some fat and some tissue around it to protect it, but you can see where some of them are almost kind of poking out. And so my body just doesn't encapsulate it as much as it should. And so I think that's where I'd feel the kind of shocks and the little and that, you know, and then I think my body was just trying to fight off whatever that was that was causing issues.

[01:18:08] And then that's where I started kind of shutting down the rest of my body is what I feel like. So just, just getting that information. That's where I felt like I wasn't crazy anymore. Getting the information of knowing I'm allergic to metals and I have detox issues that changed that craziness, and that's where the mental and emotional…emotional could start moving forward.

[01:18:25] I got on a custom supplement that's based on my genetics, and then I actually ended up partnering up with that company because I feel like that it…it changed my life enough and that I wanted to share with other people. So that, that has been a huge part of my story, is just getting in my body what I needed, because at the time I was taking prescriptions…I was taking supplements…vitamins that I had no idea if I should be taking anymore. I didn't know if my body needed it. I didn't know how much. And really when you take blood work it. 

[01:18:53] SHARI: Shari: So these are custom made for you? 

[01:18:55] LACEE: Yes. Specifically. 

[01:18:56] SHARI: Wow. 

[01:18:57] LACEE: Yes. And down…down to the microgram It is, and it's all plant-based…vegan…non GMO, which I'm like…that’s what I was already shifting over to, was more plant-based organic-because I know my body can't handle, you know, toxins well, and I didn't want to put anything in my body after this point. I was like, I want all good stuff, you know?

[01:19:15] SHARI: No more things. 

[01:19:17] LACEE: Yeah, exactly. And. so, yeah, I’ve been on that for three years and that has shifted. You know, cuz blood work is just a snapshot of our body at 24…48 hours. But genetics…what we're born with is what we die with, right? And it just depends if they're expressing right?

[01:19:32] Because we all have gene variants that we’re predisposed to from our parents. And so that's what the report told me. That's what helped me with my mental part. And then really getting on the supplements and just balancing out and filling in the gaps. 

[01:19:45] SHARI: Right 

[01:19:46] LACEE: Was just huge for, for my health. It really was. 

[01:19:47] SHARI: And that's awesome.

[01:19:38] I love it because then I took all my supplements, all my vitamins, I got off all my prescriptions, and I just was like, okay, now I know what I need. I'm taking the guess work out. This is what my body needs, and I can…

[01:20:00] SHARI: and you're probably spending a ton…a ton less money too. 

[01:20:02] LACEE: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Because yeah, by the time you add up everything you're taking, it's like, yeah. 

[01:20:07] SHARI: Yes. 

[01:20:09] LACEE: And now I know exactly what I want, what my body needs based on my genes. And that's what has been a big shift for the nutritional element, right? That’s really where it started for me. And then I started realizing when I drink more water, and better water, I feel better when I, you know, eat a more healthy diet, like,

[01:20:23] I have more of heart iss… like my family's all got heart issues and detox issues. So I go towards more like a Mediterranean diet and then I feel better, my stomach feels better. I don't eat as much red meat anymore. So I'm just listening to my body and that's where it really is like giving our body a voice and then listening to it when… 

[01:20:40] SHARI: Well, and our bodies are different. I actually eat a ton of red meat because that's what my body wants. It wants meat. 

[01:20:45] LACEE: Yep. 

[01:20:46] SHARI: It wants red meat. It wants white meat. It wants all the meat.

[01:20:50] LACEE: And that's the important part is we all are different. Like we really are different when it comes to our blood type and when it comes to our genetics….we all are different, you know? Because your blood type can determine if we really should you know, be vegetarian, or if we should be eating a bunch of red meat and…

[01:21:06] SHARI: So we'll definitely be getting the link and put putting the link for these supplements in your…in our show notes here. For sure. And on our research page. 

[01:21:13] LACEE:. Yes, absolutely. And really the important part of it is…is just, knowing what your body needs, because we're guessing all of the time.

[01:21:22] SHARI: Mm-hmm. 

[01:21:23] LACEE: And if, if we're taking too much vitamin D, or if we're not getting certain…you know…plant-based ingredients, our body's not functioning the way it should because we can't, with our food and with our soil and just everything that's in what we eat. It’s just, our bodies just can't get the nutrition it needs, you know?

[01:21:38] SHARI: So we're hacking the genetic code is what we're doing. 

[01:21:39] LACEE: Exactly. And all it is, is it's actually just supporting it, because we can't, we can't change our genes. We can't, we can't even really stop 'em if they express on and off, but we can support 'em to where it helps with symptoms or it helps with…you know, maybe prolonging things, you know?

[01:21:53] SHARI: Mm-hmm. 

[01:21:54] LACEE: Stuff like that. So… but yeah. And then just…you know, just doing more modalities like breath work. Like I hadn’t br… I didn't realize I didn't breathe, you know, until I started learning to breathe through my stomach. And a lot of people don't. And that causes a lot of anxiety for people.

[01:22:07] And, um, you know, doing just meditation and, and learning to just be with myself and be okay with that, you know? And so now it's been just over three years since I got the clips out and I just continue my journey. I continue that health journey. I continue education. I continue learning, I continue sharing.

01:22:25] And I'm right there with you. Like I know that we all have the same goal of like getting this out to people and getting our stories out. All of us are different, yet we came together with the same thing that was going on. And so that's what I love cuz every story is impactful of different things that's going on and everybody has different ways that they're learning to get through it and, and, and get 'em out or that are still going through it.

[01:22:46] And maybe they're finding ways to get through it until you can get ‘em out, cause some people have a… have a struggle getting 'em out-you know, the clips out, so… 

[01:22:53] SHARI: Sure. 

[01:22:54] LACEE: So I'm going on three years now and I'm doing amazing. I…I’m up, like you said, hiking mountains and I run all day long. I don't really take naps. I just really…my health has changed dramatically, so I wouldn't change a thing. 

[01:23:09] SHARI: And no symptoms left? No symptoms? 

[01:23:13] LACEE: Every once in a while, like if I eat something, you know…it’s the gallbladder, you know…issues. If you eat something too spicy or too greasy every once in a while, that'll flare up. Sometimes I get the brain fog, but it's like, okay…well…did I sleep good that night? Did I eat sugar that day? I… I'm very aware now of my body.

[01:23:30] SHARI: Sure. 

[01:23:31] LACEE: Of everything that I've gone through. 

[01:23:32] SHARI: Mm-hmm. , 

[01:23:33] LACEE: So I don't really connect too much of anything left with either the clips or the gallbladder surgery, except for those couple of things that I eat that I noticed that cuz it physically makes my gallbladder…kind of like where my gallbladder was at…It makes it kind of like flare up a tiny bit or I feel it. So my body's telling me it just doesn't like it, you know? And so I just don't eat it again if I see it's flaring up, you know. 

[01:23:52] SHARI: So a couple of question: Did you….So doctors will tell you that this…if you bring it up even now, they'll tell you, “Well, you know, yes, you might have a metal allergy”, if they acknowledge that, but it's not very common. Do you think it's common? How common do you think it is? 

[01:24:06] LACEE: Talking to more and more people, I think it's more common than we even know, and I think we're barely scraping the tip of this. I think we really are the pioneers of this, and I think that's why we, all of us strong A- personalities are coming together to do this, because we needed some strong people to pull this together so that we can get this out there.

[01:24:24] I think it is way more common. I think a lot of people are getting diagnosed with autoimmune disorders, when I think that it could be just a foreign object in their body.

[01:24:33] SHARI: Well, it's interesting that when I…when I did the podcast intro episode and had to explain what a type IV, delayed hypersensitivity reaction is, you know, it’s the immediate Type 1 reactions that are related generally to food don't usually produce autoimmunity. It's the Type IV delayed sensitivity reactions that, that actually have autoimmunity as a root cause in, in the description. And I…I think that’s…that’s…that’s kind of interesting. Did you go back to the doctor who thought you were a hypochondriac when they were out at the end?

[01:25:28] LACEE: So the one that called me a hypochondriac was the allergy doctor, which I love that you brought this up, because six months after I got my clips out, I am one where I'm like, I wanna know. So I went back and I did the allergy testing again. So I did the back patch test again and I did the blood test again.

[01:25:27] And long story short, the back patch test came back the same. So externally, I still am re…you know, react to nickel and gold, which, I’m moving towards what’s called NAET, which is an energy clearing of allergies. So I'm starting to clear that. So then that way eventually maybe I can wear jewelry again, you know? 

[01:25:46] It's already helping actually, cuz I lean up against like metal and I used to just get this burning sensation and now when I lean up…lean up against it, I don't get it. So I already know it’s…

[01:25:53] SHARI: So, it's working then. 

[01:25:56] LACEE: Yeah. I love it! So we're continuing to work on that. Like I said, different modalities.

[01:25:58] SHARI:: Note to self: Episode for an NAET episode. On the podcast because that could be a valuable resource for people who can't, explant, or people that just want a better quality of life with metal allergies.  

[01:26:09] LACEE: Right, right. Yes. Exactly. And then, and so the back patch test was still the same, but then I did the blood test, and remember when I did it with the clips in, I was high to nickel and moderate to aluminum. When I took it after six months of having the clips out, not one reaction came up. So to me, that was another proof….

[01:26:30] SHARI: Proof of that and also proof that probably testing ahead of having metals implanted, unless you already have metals and have that exposure, they say it doesn't work very well. So….

[01:26:42] LACEE: Yeah. So I went back in to go see the allergy doctor to retest. I wasn't too fond about going back to the same one, but I wanted to have the exact same testing. I wanted to have the exact same…you know…so I went back.

[01:26:52] SHARI: Sure. 

[01:26:53] LACEE: And the comment he made to me basically was, “Lacee, I'm glad that you fought for yourself and I'm glad that you're here”. And he says, “I just want you to know that when interesting or strange things come up like this, doctors only know how to revert back to what they know”. So he didn't apologize, but I kind of took that as his apology of I’m glad you fought for yourself, but I just had to go with what I knew type thing and I was okay….you know, and then he was great after that. 

[01:27:19] SHARI: So he did he believe you in the end? 

[01:27:21] LACEE: Yeah, he did, but I…here’s where I chickened out and it will come one day…but I have not gone back to my surgeon, my original surgeon. I have not gone back to him. However, I did send an email to their office. I wanna say it was about four weeks out after I got outta surgery, because of how much had changed in that four weeks. And I send an email to both. I said, please send it to both the, the doctors, because my thing is letting them know that it is possible, and that it happens and what happened with me so that they can know moving forward with other patients.

[01:27:49] And I just shared my experience with them and I just asked them to please don’t exclude this of being an issue and please, you know, listen to your patients and please do this metal. Like I just kind of told them at that point what I knew and just told them where I was at at four weeks, how great I was feeling all, you know, how the symptoms had started going away or were already away.

[01:28:11] Didn't get a reply back, but That's okay. Mentally and emotionally, I just kind of moved forward from it, but I know one day it's gonna come and whether that's when a bunch of us go around to doctors and talk to 'em or, you know, I, I feel like I kind of need support behind me because the emotion would come out too much with myself. I would love to have somebody that's been through it. Yeah. Like come and sit down and go ‘look, you know, here's our story…’

[01:28:38] SHARI: Yeah. That's when you give him a flash drive with the podcast episode. Say, here's my podcast episode. You might like this podcast. 

[01:28:43] LACEE: Exactly. And that's what I love now is, is knowing like, so Dr. Lainez, he actually just did another girl here, here in St. George, probably, five or six months ago, and I think she was number like 13. And then I think he's done a couple more since her, so I mean, in three years he's, you know, taken 16…15-16 people's clips out. And every…like I said, everyone's had their own experience, but most people feel relief pretty quick afterwards.

[01:29:06] And he actually had mentioned to the girl here in St. George that he does try and test for metal testing now, before, if he can, you know, if it's not an emergency situation, he'll try and do the metal testing to see if people have reactions and that’s one step forward!

[01:29:23] SHARI: Yes, for sure. And I remember I was one of those people, I don't know if you remember, but I called you not very long after my surgery and I didn't have a miraculous recovery. I didn't even notice, and I don't know if you even knew how it turned out-but I didn't notice any benefit for six months and at six months my hair came back soft and curly, and it would hold a perm again. I didn’t have…I could go outside and on a high pollen day, if it was super, super pollen-y outside and it would be 10% more chronic pain instead of 85% more chronic pain.

[01:29:55] And it was, it was huge. Even in spite of the fact that I have all this other metal still in my body, taking those very small three clips out, made a HUGE difference for me. 

[01:30:04] LACEE: Yeah. 

[01:30:05] SHARI: As did the low, low nickel diet and you know, haven't been able to get to the supplements yet, cuz my stomach's a bit wonky, but that's on the list.

[01:30:13] LACEE: Yeah. I wonder if that with yours, if that…that’s my thought, is just cuz you have other medals in you? Because a lot of people …But even there's one…just the other couple weeks ago that got hers out, that she has other metals and right away she was…so again, we're all different.

[00:31:38] And that's, that's the beautiful part of it is we all are different and, and there's some people that have had clips in for 10-12 years, and then there's some of us that I barely had 'em in for a year. So it depends on how much trauma has already happened to your body and it's gonna take time to recover. And I think that’s a lot of people’s question, a lot of people ask that question too, like ‘how am I gonna feel after?’ and and I really just tell 'em, it just depends.

[01:30:47] Everybody's different. So you just have to be positive and you just have to give yourself grace and give yourself your body grace. The…it does need that time to heal, right? Because it's been through a lot of trauma. And, and then I just encourage everybody to really change their lifestyle. Like they've gotten their life back.

[01:31:03] They’re… they're, you know, either somewhat feeling better or feeling better. Like, look at your lifestyle and really decide if it's worth it to you to stop, you know, eating cereal at 10 o'clock at night before you go to bed. You know, your body needs to stop digesting at night. It needs to, you know, it needs to repair at night, so stop eating right before you go to bed.

[01:31:21] Go on a walk…you know, like, drink better water. It's just, it really is all those elements. Like our community now has created a…a group called the Seven Elements of Wellness, because we realize how important the epi-genetics, which is our lifestyle, is more important than even a genetic weakness, you know? So we really are just teaching people how to do just little steps every day to, to just help your lifestyle, and then you just keep growing and you keep learning and you just keep taking the steps because…

[01:31:47] SHARI: Right. 

[01:31:48] LACEE: And everyone's gonna choose their own way of, of how they wanna continue living, you know? But I'm here to support people however I can.

[01:31:54] SHARI: So we're so different. You're so different now compared to how you were prior to this experience, if you could go back…if you had to go back and live it again, would you, because of who you've become, or would you…Do you wish none of it had happened?

[01:32:11] LACEE: No, I would, I would do every bit of it again. I would do it all again for sure, because I, I feel like I was kind of in just that robot mode of just being a mom and working and doing the things I, I wasn't living. And this really made me shift my brain and shift my energy to. You know, and maybe it is just because I feel like I got a second chance.

[01:32:32] I don't know, but I just am like, I'm not gonna waste this now, you know, I…I’m 43 now and I'm like, I, I've got a lot of life to live. So, and I feel great and I've, I haven't felt this great ever since in, since I was 17 years old. So I'm like, it's time to just live in. But my thing is that I feel like that the answer was prayer, that answer, that the prayer was answered to be able to help other people.

[01:32:55] I needed to have enough energy and enough spirit and enough everything to be able to move forward and do this with you guys. So I feel like that I just got the answers of just, you know, changing my lifestyle, getting healthier, doing all the things so I can move forward and help more people, you know? You know what, there's one part I just thought about I didn't touch on was the holistic doctor that I ended up finding. I think that's really important, because we do get a different reaction from these more holistic doctors. 

[01:33:20] SHARI: Mm-hmm.

[01:33:21] LACEE: And I know some people think it's woo-woo. I know some people think it's weird, these holistic things. But we just look at it as it's more just a different way of looking at our health and, and our bodies. And, and you know, he's still very much, if you need prescription or you need a surgery, it's still in the books. But he would rather try and do the holistic way first. And I remember he made me feel like I wasn't crazy because he sat down and listened to my whole story.

[01:33:42] He didn't just…I wasn't just the number right? I wasn't in there 10 minutes and out and you know? They look at you like you're crazy and don't let… if you get emotional, they freeze up. You know, he sat and just listened and looked at me and got emotional with me and let me just cry. And I didn't feel judged in any way.

[01:33:56] I didn't feel like he was gonna try and turn me away at anything. And, and then I remember him putting up on the board, and this is before I knew anything about genetics or anything about lifestyle stuff. And he just started listing stuff and he just, anywhere from reading a book to help me sleep better to doing a genetics test. When he wrote that, I was like, what's a genetics test? I didn't know anything about genetics test, you know? And so he just kind of listed all because he knew that lifestyle's a big part of it, right? He wanted to help me even when I was sick. So he was doing that and the very last thing he put on the bottom was get clips removed, and he was the first professional that, you know, said he believed that… He validated that they be removed. 

[01:34:33] LACEE: Yep. And that was so good for me. 

[01:34:34] SHARI: That's huge. 

[01:34:35] LACEE: And so he was just my advocate through the end. And then I've continued, you know, seeing him. And now he's my doctor. And he has people, he…he has one girl that he had, you know, that Lainez took the clips out. He had actually introduced me to her cuz he's like, “Her story sounds just like yours, like, you've gotta talk to her”. And so he…you know…I have a doctor passing patients onto me. You know what I mean? 

[01:34:57] SHARI: That's wonderful. 

[01:34:58] LACEE: So, but I just really respect the way that they open their mind and, and know that it's not just about putting someone on…someone on a prescription or just sending 'em right to a procedure, you know?

[01:35:08] SHARI: Awesome. Well, Lacee, thank you so much. We're, gonna need to wrap up, but thank you so much for coming on today. I see you and the listeners will see you and your heart is just so evident for this work and your passion in helping and loving people, even through something as difficult as this.

[01:35:33] Guys, we’re gonna put a lot of images and links in the show notes for today's episode, so tune in there. We'll have a list of resources as always at HeavilyMetalled.com. And thank you all for being here and helping us be part of the movement that tells the medical industry: “We’re not gonna take it anymore”. 

[01:35:42] LACEE: We're here. Thanks Shari!

[01:35:44] SHARI: Thanks, Lacee!