finding joy and purpose: cheryl's rheumatoid arthritis story
Patient Stories, Podcast

Finding Joy and Purpose: Cheryl’s Rheumatoid Arthritis Story

2 months ago
48 min read
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Summary:

On episode 185, “Chronic Pain Reset” podcast host Dr. Afton Hassett sits down with Cheryl Crow, an occupational therapist, patient advocate, founder of Arthritis Life and host of the Arthritis Life Podcast. Cheryl shares her powerful journey of being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) at just 21 years old. Cheryl reflects on what it was like to go from being a healthy, athletic college student to suddenly navigating pain, fatigue, and disbelief from doctors. She opens up about the emotional toll of feeling dismissed, the relief of finally getting a diagnosis, and the lessons she’s learned about acceptance, self-compassion, and living fully despite chronic illness. She also shares how her experiences led her to create the Rheum to THRIVE educational program and support group, so that no one has to navigate life with RA alone. 

Cheryl and Dr. Hassett explore the realities of RA that often go misunderstood, from unpredictable flare-ups, invisible symptoms, and the mental health challenges of chronic illness. Cheryl also shares the strategies that help her thrive today: pacing her energy, building community, protecting sleep, and seeking out moments of joy.  If you’re feeling lost or overwhelmed after your own diagnosis, this conversation will remind you that you’re not alone, and that it is possible to find purpose, hope, and connection while living with RA.

This conversation originally occurred in 2024 and first appeared on the “Chronic Pain Reset” podcast, hosted by pain psychologist Dr. Afton Hassett. 

Episode at a glance:

  • 00:00 Introduction to Chronic Pain Reset
  • 01:48 Sheryl Crow’s Journey with Rheumatoid Arthritis
  • 05:17 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
  • 19:16 Humor and Connection in Chronic Illness
  • 25:47 The Struggle for Diagnosis
  • 27:17 The Failure of the Healthcare System
  • 27:54 Opening Up to Anxiety and Stress
  • 30:19 The Journey to Diagnosis
  • 33:30 Building a Coping Toolbox
  • 35:25 The Importance of Sleep and Rest
  • 37:14 Exercise and Physical Activity
  • 38:24 Handling Bad Days with Self-Compassion
  • 41:33 Advice for Healthcare Providers
  • 42:32 Finding Joy in Life
  • 43:40 Conclusion and Gratitude

Medical disclaimer: 

All content found on Arthritis Life public channels was created for generalized informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Episode Sponsors

Rheum to THRIVE, an online course and support program Cheryl created to help people with rheumatic disease go from overwhelmed, confused and alone to confident, supported and connected. See all the details and join the program or waitlist now! 

Speaker Bios:

Dr Afton Hassett

Dr. Hassett is a licensed clinical psychologist who is an Associate Professor and Director of Pain and Opioid Research in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan. She studies behavioral interventions for people with chronic pain including those that promote resilience. She has published over 100 articles in scientific journals and has over $10M in NIH research funding. She is also a Past President of the Association for Rheumatology Professionals, a division of the ACR. 

Cheryl Crow

Cheryl is an occupational therapist who has lived with rheumatoid arthritis for over twenty years. Her life passion is helping others with rheumatoid arthritis figure out how to live a full life despite arthritis, by developing tools to navigate physical, emotional and social challenges. She formed the educational company Arthritis Life in 2019 after seeing a huge need for more engaging, accessible, and (dare I say) FUN patient education and self-management resources.

Full Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Dr. Afton Hassett: This is Chronic Pain Reset, and I’m your host, Dr. Afton Hassett. At a time when access to healthcare is being hotly debated, I’ve been reflecting on the randomness of good health. Our guest today looks back on her adolescence, a time when being healthy is often taken for granted, at least in the minds of most young people.
Yet in an instant, she went from being an athletic, social teen to living with a devastating autoimmune disease that consumed every moment of her young life and would carry serious implications for her future. This could happen to any of us at any time. An estimated 30 million people are affected by autoimmune disease in the U.S. alone.
For many, they were healthy until suddenly they were profoundly ill. The impact on quality of life is immense. Disease and illness are rude, uninvited guests, metaphorically overturning tables and chairs, completely disrupting plans, relationships, finances, and our sense of control, freedom, self-worth. Join us as we revisit our interview with Cheryl Crow—not the singer-songwriter, but the activist, survivor, and inspiration to many young adults living with rheumatoid arthritis.

[00:01:27] Cheryl Crow: But we also understand that this is psychologically difficult for you because you’re, you know, quote unquote, you’re a young person, and this isn’t what you thought. You didn’t think that at age 30 you were gonna have to ask your husband to help you brush your hair. And that’s something we have to do coping skills for, and not just look at you in terms of what’s going on in your muscles and joints, but looking at your—the big picture.

[00:01:48] Dr. Afton Hassett: After living with rheumatoid arthritis for over a decade and becoming an occupational therapist, our guest today, Cheryl Crow, founded Arthritis Life with the mission of educating, empowering, and supporting people with arthritis. She created Rheum to Thrive support program and Arthritis Life Podcast to help people with rheumatic disease live full, vibrant, and more meaningful lives. Cheryl, welcome. I am so happy to have you here on Chronic Pain Reset. This is great.

[00:02:23] Cheryl Crow: Thank you so much for having me, and I have your book right here on my desk,

[00:02:27] Dr. Afton Hassett: so—

[00:02:30] Cheryl Crow: so thank you for writing it.

[00:02:32] Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh my gosh, it’s been such a pleasure, and it’s so fun to have you. We were just saying a year ago, we were talking about—oh, we really had just met and were talking about your podcast and the work that you’ve been doing, and I’m just so pleased now to have you here.

[00:02:46] Cheryl Crow: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:48] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, you’ve been really involved in the chronic pain advocacy world and arthritis. I think it would be really useful, though, for our listeners to get a sense of what your journey has been like. Can you just spend a few minutes to tell us about what your—you know, what your process has been like? What brings you to this point?

[00:03:09] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, yeah. I actually just celebrated my 20-year diagnosis anniversary. I was diagnosed in 2003 at age 21. I just turned 42 this year.

Wow. But I was diagnosed right before my birthday in 20—or right—anyway, long story short, it’s been 20 years. Yes, we figured this out. And so, yeah, it’s really interesting to be at the midlife point where half of my life I lived without a chronic illness diagnosis and now half of it I have—so spoiler alert.
But yeah, I was a really healthy, active kid, played soccer, running every day. I just loved being active, and I just—like most young people—took my body totally for granted and just assumed, you know, I exercise, I eat fairly well, like I’m gonna be one of those people who’s running marathons into their forties and fifties and sixties, you know?
And then my body started breaking down when I was around 19 and 20. It was a very long, very painful process of, you know, not being believed by certain doctors and such. But eventually I got my rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis and I got on treatment for that. And I’ve been really fortunate. I was diagnosed with like moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis at the time, given how fast things had gone downhill.
But I have responded well to the modern medications—lifestyle factors—so that I’ve experienced medicated remission at times over the last 21 years. I’ve also experienced flare-ups. So it’s been up and down—not a linear journey whatsoever. But yeah, and I—you know, my goal in life has always been to help people. You know, when I was younger, I wanted to be a teacher. I knew I wanted to be in the helping profession somehow. So now it’s been really rewarding to, you know, do the work I do leading support groups and educational programs for people with inflammatory autoimmune forms of arthritis.

[00:05:03] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah, that’s a powerful story, Cheryl. And I think what’s really moving is that you were such a young, healthy person, and it did strike you quite young.

[00:05:11] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think that was what was so confusing to me, and I think it’s—part of my, you know, psychological healing and psychological, you know, well-being—something that’s been an important ingredient to my psychological well-being has been understanding and accepting that there’s going to be a degree of randomness to health.
And, you know, it’s not the case that if you just do X, Y, Z you can avoid all pain and suffering and, you know, disease in life. It’s just—you know, and we kind of know this. We know growing up that, you know, sometimes babies get cancer or other things, but somehow it’s like—you want to feel this sense of control, right?
That if I just, quote unquote, do things right—like another dimension was, I was really—I engaged in a lot of like healthy behaviors, like to the point where it actually makes sense that I eventually got diagnosed with an anxiety disorder ‘cause I was so—

[00:06:05] Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh my gosh.

[00:06:06] Cheryl Crow: After the drugs and alcohol education in the public school system, they’d scared me so much by saying that if you are gonna ever drink or do drugs, you’re gonna die. You’re gonna choke on your own vomit. I mean, I listened to that and I took it really literally. So on the one hand I’m like, wow, I’m looking at my college soccer team, there’s people who are, you know, doing drugs and like partying really hard after the games. I’m out there at the parties, but I’m just drinking water, you know, and Sprite or whatever.
And I’m like, how am I the one that got sick? But that’s the thing—it doesn’t have to make sense, right? And I used to be a lot more of a control freak, and now, through acceptance and commitment therapy and, you know, learning a lot from wonderful people like you and other pain researchers, realize that control is, in many ways—grasping onto an idea that I can 100% control anything in my life is ultimately an illusion. And so there’s like a beauty in accepting that.
As hard as it was for me to initially believe that—every time—my therapist, I’m like, “Isn’t that settling?” And she’s—“It’s not settling if it’s true.”

[00:07:15] Dr. Afton Hassett: I love, I love your evolution. I mean, we talk about acceptance and commitment therapy a lot in the book—or at least a lot of the principles. I, you know, I’m such a firm believer, but it’s really hard to come to that, and I’ve almost never spoken to anybody with chronic pain who said, “Yeah, acceptance was great right away.” No, most people come kicking and screaming. Talk a little bit about that.

[00:07:36] Cheryl Crow: I literally used that exact—you literally were in my head because I used that exact same phrase. Like, I was dragged kicking and screaming to the point where—so I’ve had two different therapists. One was a psychologist and one’s a psychiatrist who does full hour-long therapy sessions.
I only said that ‘cause I didn’t know that that actually was possible. I thought psychiatrists only saw you for, like, medications. So anyway, the psychologist is a female—psych—call her she, and then the psychiatrist is he. But I remember telling the psychiatrist, even though my first therapist had been really nice and tried to explain it to me, I still wasn’t getting it. And so he—I told him, “Aren’t—you’re kind of like a sadist. Like, how do you do this job? Like, how do you—aren’t you sad to tell people?” And it’s—
And so I just, like, at this point think of it as a real, true paradox because the more that you—the acceptance sounds like giving up at first, right? And then when you learn the true meaning of acceptance, at least according to how I understand it with, you know, The Happiness Trap—in your book is—Dr. Russ Harris in The Happiness Trap, I think, explains it in a way that stuck to my brain where he said, you know, it does—it means “taking what’s offered.” Doesn’t mean liking it.
Yeah. It doesn’t mean thinking, “This is the best thing I’ve ever heard of.” It just means this is literally what life’s offering you—is rheumatoid arthritis. You know, can you make space for that? Can you—can you open up to this reality that you’re living in rather than saying, “Oh no, I’m gonna go, you know, do all these”—what my therapist will call control strategies to make it all go away.
Now, there are—it is helpful—that’s another paradox. It’s helpful to do healthy behaviors, like—or healthy, you know, lifestyle things. Like, I’ve been doing a lot of weightlifting and—or weight resistance—I shouldn’t call it weight, I mean it’s not that big—it’s resistance exercise training, trying to build some muscle around my joints. Those are all great things. It’s not to throw up your hands and say nothing I do will ever matter, but to give up the idea of complete control is necessary for my psychological well-being.
Although, at first—it’s, at first—to summarize: at first, it sounds like giving up, but it’s actually giving in to the real possibilities that exist in your life despite your chronic illness.

[00:09:50] Dr. Afton Hassett: And it’s so well said, Cheryl. I think what happens is that we want to make it go away, and the more we fight and the more we hate it, and the more we resist, the more prevalent it is in our brains—that we really—it just comes to the forefront and it starts to dominate our lives the more we fight it. But when we’ve accepted, “Okay, this is where I’m at in my life,” it tends to move back and it creates more space for you to do other things.

[00:10:18] Cheryl Crow: It reminds me of something that—in a totally different context—this author Tom Robbins, who wrote a book called Even Cowgirls Get the Blues—

[00:10:23] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:10:24] Cheryl Crow: —which is total nonfiction—just fun book. But he says, “That which you hold, holds you.” You know, something—when we are attached to the idea that our life has to be pain-free, that we have to avoid all suffering in order to have a meaningful life—that is like a box we’re putting ourselves in, or almost like a jail cell. It blinds you to the real possibilities in your life that exist despite the pain and just alongside the pain.

[00:10:50] Dr. Afton Hassett: That’s so beautifully said. Thank you so much for really articulating something that’s so incredibly important, I think, for people with chronic pain—just to be open to and think that “I can make space in my life for many other things.” And I find that one of the things that many people with chronic pain have a hard time making space for are the things that bring them joy.

[00:11:11] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts of your book, is talking about—you know, that is—I think the reason I think this is hard is that it seems like a very serious endeavor to manage a chronic illness, right?

[00:11:21] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes.

[00:11:22] Cheryl Crow: And it’s, “Oh my gosh, I have to do this, and I have to be the perfect patient, and I have to manage everything perfectly.” And I think you almost feel like joy is too frivolous.

[00:11:31] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:11:32] Cheryl Crow: You know, I need to do things that are more—you know, I don’t know what the word is, like—

[00:11:36] Dr. Afton Hassett: Serious.

[00:11:37] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. Well, I know you work in academia, which I’m sure is definitely not—as far as my understanding of academia is—it’s not really the most joy—you know, joy is not really potentially—unless you’re working maybe at a happiness research center or something. But yeah, I think for me it’s—I mean, it kind of—it becomes very philosophical at a certain point, right? But it’s, “This is the only life I have, and, you know, I want to experience all of the human—you know, the human experience,” and that includes joy. I don’t want my whole life to be only about, you know, controlling my health.
Yeah. I’ve actually kind of—the pendulum swung pretty far away from control a little bit, like to where I used to try to control everything, and now I’m like, “It’s fine,” you know? And be like, “Yeah, I can—I still want to have, you know, who knows what’s gonna happen tomorrow.” You know, I know it sounds kind of trite, but I think that is an important perspective ‘cause, you know, as much pain as I might be in now, or someone else might be in—it actually could always get worse also. Yeah. So that’s another reason that’s important to seek those micro—even the micro, micro—moments of joy.

[00:12:42] Dr. Afton Hassett: Right, right. Because, I mean, they really can sustain you, especially on the days that are rougher. Yeah. So, you know, autoimmune disease is complex and it’s challenging. What do you think regular people who don’t have an autoimmune disease get wrong about it?

[00:12:59] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. I think that when it comes to a disease that has the word “arthritis” in it—

[00:13:03] Dr. Afton Hassett: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:04] Cheryl Crow: —I think that category of disease just immediately gets misunderstood as joint pain only—

[00:13:08] Dr. Afton Hassett: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:09] Cheryl Crow: —you know, when it’s actually a systemic condition. So when I introduce rheumatoid arthritis, I’ll say it’s more similar to lupus or multiple sclerosis than it is to osteoarthritis. It kind of gets people’s minds understanding, “Oh, this has to do with fatigue, and this has to do with the whole body, not just the joints.” But I think, autoimmune in general—what I’ve seen a lot in the support groups I facilitate, and not as much in my own life, to be honest—I’ve been very lucky to have supportive friends and family—but I think a lot of people have this misunderstanding that you just need to do A, B, C, and then you’d be able to cure it or heal it.
That’s part one. Part two of the misunderstanding—or what I wish people knew about autoimmune disease—is that it’s the norm for things to fluctuate and there to be uncertainties. And that doesn’t mean that, “Oh, if you could do it yesterday, why can’t you do it today?” And this gets said to you—

[00:14:00] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes.

[00:14:01] Cheryl Crow: You know, this gets said to children.

[00:14:03] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:14:04] Cheryl Crow: You know, I’ve heard of children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, which is autoimmune—the teachers will say, “Well, you were able to do gym last week, so don’t make an excuse.” People assume people are making an excuse, when really it’s, “Hey, you know that body that I had last week? That’s not the same body I have this week. I might look the same, but my body’s acting differently because my immune system’s doing its own thing,” you know?

[00:14:26] Dr. Afton Hassett: I love that you said that because the variability and the unpredictability, I think, is one of the most challenging things I hear from people who have these illnesses. And that also—that “you look great,” you know—that, you know, that there’s nothing about most people with autoimmune disease that says, “I’m sick.” And yet, you know, for many people, that is where they’re at.

[00:14:51] Cheryl Crow: Absolutely. And I do think that we can—if we wanted to—unpack that sentence “But you don’t look sick.”

[00:14:58] Dr. Afton Hassett: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:59] Cheryl Crow: I do want to acknowledge that for some people it’s purely just a matter of cognitive dissonance—that they’ve literally never been introduced before to this idea that you could be sick and not look sick. It isn’t necessarily said with an invalidating intent, but it is completely understandable that people with autoimmune illnesses and invisible conditions feel so invalidated when people say that.


But I do think it helps—it helps to realize, “Oh yeah.” I’ll tell you—even myself, after having rheumatoid arthritis for 10 years and doing some speaking and volunteering in the, you know, arthritis space, I met someone who I found out after a year of knowing them, they had MS. And I’m not kidding you—my very first thought was, “You don’t look like you have MS.” It was just like the first thought in my head because—even though I don’t like people saying, “You don’t look like you have RA,” it was—that was actually instructive to me to remind me that, yeah, it’s partly just our brains are operating on assumptions sometimes, you know? So—

[00:15:57] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah. We do—to our detriment.

[00:15:59] Cheryl Crow: Yeah.

[00:16:00] Dr. Afton Hassett: I’m also fascinated about another piece of you—the part of you who’s an occupational therapist.

[00:16:05] Cheryl Crow: Oh yeah.

[00:16:06] Dr. Afton Hassett: Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:16:08] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. Well, this is my new way of explaining it, ‘cause occupational therapy is a long word—you know, it’s a mini multi-syllabic concept here. But as an occupational therapist—it’s if a psychologist and a physical therapist had a baby, because we are trained—our roots are in mental health as well as physical disabilities. So another way to describe us—if I had to really rename the field, I would call us “life skills specialists,” ‘cause we really focus on—the first question I would ask someone as I’m trying to help them, whether it’s a child with autism, whether it’s an adult with a stroke, whether it’s a 45-year-old, you know, with two kids who has rheumatoid arthritis, is—well, not the very first question—one of the first questions would be, “Walk me through a day in your life. What’s going well and what’s challenging?” And nothing is too small. So it literally could be, “I’m having trouble turning the pages in a book when I’m reading a book to my kid. I’m having trouble scrubbing my hair ‘cause of my hand pain. I’m having trouble making myself food. I’m having trouble walking the dog.”
All those little daily activities—that is our domain as occupational therapists: helping people function better in their daily lives. And that usually entails a combination of remedial strategies, which are like “improve the underlying problem,” or compensatory strategies, which would be something like using a life-hack gadget—in the case of arthritis, instead of having to maybe strengthen your hand, can we use a different object to make it easier for you to do the action that you need to do?

[00:17:36] Dr. Afton Hassett: I’d love that.

[00:17:37] Cheryl Crow: Yeah.

[00:17:38] Dr. Afton Hassett: No, the work is so important because it’s all about—it’s all about setting people free.

[00:17:43] Cheryl Crow: Yeah.

[00:17:44] Dr. Afton Hassett: Giving them tools and devices and strategies to—just to lead a life, you know, outside of the illness.

[00:17:52] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. Yeah. AB absolutely. I—I think that it—another thing that we’re kind of underutilized for is bridging that gap between the purely physical, you know—physical therapy domain—and the mental health domain. I mean, on the one hand, it’s like a “jack of all trades, master of none.” But on the other hand, we can say, “Okay, you know, we understand that what’s happening right now on the minute level is it’s harder for you to hold your hairbrush, but we also understand that this is psychologically difficult for you because you’re, you know, quote unquote, you’re a young person and this isn’t what you thought. You didn’t think that at age 30 you were gonna have to ask your husband to help you brush your hair.” And that’s something we have to do coping skills for, and not just look at you in terms of what’s going on in your muscles and joints, but looking at your—the big picture—

[00:18:37] Dr Afton Hassett: More after the break. The Bohemian Roosters—available for festivals, private parties, special events, and custom music for commercials, TV, and podcasts. The Bohemian Roosters can be reached at bohemianroosters@gmail.com. That’s “Bohemian, R-U-S-T-E-R-S.”

[00:19:11] Dr. Afton Hassett: And now back to our discussion with Cheryl Crow. And it just makes me think about what—what are some of the things that have happened to you, or what’s kind of the most crazy or funniest thing that’s happened to you as you’ve dealt with your illness as a young person?

[00:19:26] Cheryl Crow: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I love this. I love this question. I mean, I think that—I’m just thinking of a couple of times being—not really understanding how the healthcare system worked and getting into weird sit predicaments. Like, one time I literally just sat in the waiting room for an hour and a half ‘cause they had forgotten about me, and I didn’t really know ‘cause I was like 22, and I’m just like—I’m a little rule follower, so I’m like, “Do, do, do, I guess they’re running late today.” And I kind of wandered out of the room and was like, “Hi, is anyone coming?” They’re like, “Whoa, we didn’t know you were still here.” 

There was just a mis—miscommunication, you know? So that’s one of the things. And I think—I think the funniest things that happen to me, like right now, on a daily basis, honestly, are on social media.

[00:20:07] Dr. Afton Hassett: Uh-huh.

[00:20:08] Cheryl Crow: Like, I think humor has—in the chronic illness online, like social media communities—humor has become such a fun and meaningful way to connect to people, and just seeing that we can share, you know, like a laugh over, you know, “Oh my gosh, how many things did you drop today?” You know, or forgetting to take your medication. Someone the other day just put out a song, “Did I take my pills? Did I forget to take my pills?” It’s like taking a famous song and, like, putting your own spin on it and making it about chronic illness and iterating. That kind of thing has been really fun for me. 

Again, it helps me experience some joy in the midst of the challenge. And I know it’s—it’s an acquired—you know, humor is subjective. I’ve sometimes gotten comments from people saying, you know, “Hey, I don’t want to laugh about this. This sucks.”

[00:21:00] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:21:01] Cheryl Crow: And I don’t want you to make light of it. Like, to me, it’s more just—if you can’t cry, you laugh sometimes. But I totally understand that to some people it can appear like you’re being, like, flippant about it. But I really enjoy that part of—yeah.

[00:21:13] Dr. Afton Hassett: And I think it—it’s the connection, too. There’s something about, in the humor, recognizing that somebody has the exact same experience as you, and it feels so—like a relief that somebody else is experiencing the same challenges.

[00:21:28] Cheryl Crow: That’s such a good point. That’s ex—yeah, that’s—that’s a comment that I get sometimes, or that I comment on other people’s: “Oh, I thought it was just me. I thought I was doing it wrong.” “Oh no, it’s just—it just is hard,” you know?

[00:21:41] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah. But some of the humor I get from—from patients, I talk about often, is around some of the cognitive frustrations of having some of these illnesses, and how frustrating it can be to forget names or forget things and—and walk to the refrigerator and stare in there for 20 minutes.

[00:21:58] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, I totally have—have done that. I didn’t even really know—again, I didn’t really understand the systemic nature of rheumatoid arthritis initially, so I just thought those were just random things. I was like, “Oh, I must’ve gotten hit in the head too many times as a soccer player,” you know—which, yeah, true—is true that there’s now data on that. But at the same time, like, I didn’t really understand about the brain fog. But yeah.
Yeah. I think—what was I gonna say? Oh, I already forgot. See, that’s brain fog right there—forgetting what—

[00:22:26] Dr. Afton Hassett: You’re a great example.

[00:22:27] Cheryl Crow: Oh yeah. Showing up for an appointment—like, I showed up once for a birthday party actually in June that was for the same day in July. I just—the wrong month because my brain was—

[00:22:36] Dr. Afton Hassett:  Same thing, right?

[00:22:40] “Cheryl Crow:Okay, here I am.”Things like that—you know, better a month early than a month late.

[00:22:45] Dr. Afton Hassett: But it’s—it’s part of these chronic illnesses where you have pain, fatigue, cognitive fogginess—

[00:22:50] Cheryl Crow: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:51] Dr. Afton Hassett: —sleep problems, mood problems. It’s—it’s incredible how these sickness elements all kind of hang together—go—you know, what we refer to as the—the space—

[00:23:01] Speaker 4: Space had something—

[00:23:02] Dr. Afton Hassett: There was my cognitive fogginess. No—yeah, the space symptoms that hang together.

[00:23:07] Cheryl Crow: Yes. Yeah. And understanding—that’s also, I think, a misnomer would be—going back to your earlier question about what people don’t understand about autoimmunity—autoimmune disease—is that they think, like, each symptom is its own separate thing. Like, pain is totally distinct from fatigue, totally distinct from brain fog, totally—you know—and really these are all complexly interacting, right? You know, on a minute level. So—and it makes it harder. It makes it harder to manage it, you know?

[00:23:33] Dr. Afton Hassett: I think so, too. Yeah, no, the space symptoms—it’s incredible how pain and—and mood and sleep and fatigue—that they’re all so tightly intertwined. And I know this is something that, you know, has been of interest of—of you from the book, that you—you’ve enjoyed this and—and have taken it on, too, and—and shared with other people in talks.

[00:23:52] Cheryl Crow: Yes. And that was—that really—I think acronyms really stick in my brain, and they help on the topic of brain fog. And so, yeah, understanding the space symptoms—like the sleep, pain, affect (like emotions), cognition, and energy or fatigue levels—that I’ve already, yeah, used that acronym to teach others as well. I think for me, the big one that I was resistant to accepting would be the affect, or the emotions.
Yeah, and I think it was because part of my length of my diagnosis—what took it so long—is that the doctors kept thinking I was not sick, “just anxious.” Like many young women presenting with autoimmune, you know, disease—or what eventually is known to be an autoimmune disease—I was told so many times, you know, “Just calm down, you’re too anxious, you’re too type A, you just need to relax.” And I’m like, “Okay, I was type A two years ago and nothing was—like, my body wasn’t doing this. That’s not what changed.” You know what I mean?
But, you know—so when I first heard the link between emotions and other factors like, you know, executive functioning or cognition and pain and fatigue, I was like, “No, that’s—it’s not for me. It’s not for me. It’s not—because nothing about my emotions has anything to do with my physical health,” ‘cause I just didn’t want to—I was so turned off by that concept—

[00:25:00] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:25:01] Cheryl Crow: —because of what I had been told before. But then I opened up to it, you know?

[00:25:05] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:25:06] Cheryl Crow: Over time.

[00:25:08] Dr. Afton Hassett: But I love that you say this, Cheryl, because I think this is the experience of a lot of people—that because initially the symptoms were treated as something psychiatric, and they were made these referrals to—to psychologists and psychiatrists that felt so insulting and invalidating—

[00:25:22] Speaker 4: Yeah.

[00:25:22] Dr. Afton Hassett: —that once they actually do get a diagnosis, the feeling that maybe depression, anxiety might be part of it—it’s really hard to accept. And when you don’t—again, when you don’t accept—you can just, you know, really fall down a pit.

[00:25:53] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. I think it has to do with the way those conversations happen early on. It would—it wasn’t in a—due to the level of anxiety I did eventually have, I started having panic attacks prior to my diagnosis, purely because I felt like no one was gonna help me. Like, the analogy I use is: my house is—my body’s a house; the house is on fire. I called the firemen, a.k.a. the doctors, and they’re all saying, “There’s no fire.”

[00:26:14] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:26:15] Cheryl Crow: Who do you call? Who’s gonna help? Am I just gonna die? Like, literally, I started getting really anxious. And if they had said to me, “Look, we understand—like, something’s happening in your body that’s really scary. We don’t know what it is at this point, but it would be helpful to—but we believe you, that you—we believe your sensation that something is really off in your body and that there is some sort of organic or, you know, disease process happening. It would be helpful to you to talk to a psychologist to help cope with all this stuff.”
That would’ve been so different than them just saying—

[00:26:54] Speaker 4: Yeah.

[00:26:54] Cheryl Crow: —“You are not sick,” because actually you can’t prove someone’s not sick. I was told so many times, “Your labs are normal.” Well, they didn’t run all the labs. When they decided to run the labs for rheumatoid arthritis—guess what? They were—they were not normal. So, you know, obviously I’m still a little—I’m not—I’m probably not ever gonna be over that, to be honest.

[00:27:16] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:27:16] Cheryl Crow: I accept that that’s part of my journey and what happened, but it still really frustrates me, you know?

[00:27:22] Dr. Afton Hassett: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:22] Cheryl Crow: And I think—I think it’s a failure of the system. You know, if you have—legal system, you’re innocent until proven guilty. In the healthcare system, they have an absence of data of a diagnosis, and then they conclude that you don’t have a diagnosis, right? Absence of proof is not proof of absence. You know, I’m not a lawyer, but it’s pretty—just basic logic. 

So anyway, so we understand that those are all the barriers to me even accepting that—or opening myself up to the idea that I might have what, you know, is conceptualized as, like, an anxiety disorder. And eventually, if you start having panic attacks, you’re like, “Okay, this is not normal.”

[00:28:03] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:28:03] Cheryl Crow: “I’m not in denial anymore.” But even—even opening myself up to the idea that maybe my stress could, you know, trigger a flare-up—I still was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

[00:28:22] Dr. Afton Hassett: “I’m fine.”

[00:28:23] Cheryl Crow: “I’m—”

[00:28:23] Dr. Afton Hassett: This is—this is so important, and I think what you’re reflecting is the experience of almost everybody, I think, who has had a chronic pain condition or autoimmune disease, because many people did not get the diagnosis. They followed the same type of—of path that you did, often with a lot of poo-poohing of the symptoms—

[00:28:41] Speaker 4: Yeah.

[00:28:41] Dr. Afton Hassett: —of suggesting that it’s all in your head. And that, you know, you do come to this place now where it’s, “Okay, now I might need to be open to stress might be playing a role,” and it is a little bit of a leap of faith to say that if I allow that stress might be playing a role, I’m not also saying that this is a psychiatric illness, right? Because we do know that heart disease is, you know, is—is negatively influenced by stress.

[00:28:50] Speaker 4: Yeah.

[00:28:50] Dr. Afton Hassett: You know, diabetes—every known condition that’s a chronic condition often is made worse by stress. And so it is true, too, for chronic pain conditions. And so, if we can crack open that door, I think we can do a lot of helping people start to get some tools.

[00:29:08] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, and I think—like, it—I think it’s probably called this in psychology, too, but in OT we were taught, like, “therapeutic use of self.” Like, just your affect and just explaining that—like, that therapeutic use of self and your—your emotional approach to it would’ve—to me—would’ve felt so different than the conversations that ended up happening.

[00:29:30] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:29:31] Cheryl Crow: You know? So I think there’s something maybe to be done with training of med students or—or doctors and such, you know. And it’s hard—they’re working in a broken system, too. It’s hard for everyone. I’m not—I always say, I don’t think anyone should have had a crystal ball to completely diagnose me necessarily. You know, it’s Monday-morning quarterback to say, “You should have diagnosed me.” I just think I should have been treated better in terms of being believed.

[00:29:57] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes.

[00:29:58] Cheryl Crow: Because that was a really—really terrifying, to be honest—feeling of, “Who’s gonna believe me?”

[00:30:08] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:30:08] Cheryl Crow: Like, they thought I had an eating disorder. Once they make up their mind that you’re not a reliable narrator of your life—who—who’s there for you? You know? So yeah.

[00:30:08] Dr. Afton Hassett: And—and as a young woman, I think it’s particularly—

[00:30:11] Cheryl Crow: Yeah.

[00:30:12] Dr. Afton Hassett: —a problem that they’re really looking for these early psychiatric illnesses—eating disorder, anxiety—

[00:30:16] Cheryl Crow: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:16] Dr. Afton Hassett: —and it’s gotta be so frustrating. So who—who finally diagnosed you? Did you find a great rheumatologist out there, or—

[00:30:23] Cheryl Crow: Well, yeah, the problem was getting to the rheumatologist. So my—and this is where privilege comes in—everything intersects, you know. So my parents luckily believed me. I mean, unfortunately—little data point in the favor of the eating disorder, you know, people—is that there happened to be a family history, in my extended family, of eating disorders. 

But I had never had any behavior like that before, you know. And again, it is a legitimate psychiatric illness—eating disorders are one of the most deadly psychiatric illnesses out there—so it’s not to say that they’re—it’s just, it just wasn’t my reality. And I felt so lost that no one would believe me, you know?
But my parents did believe me, so they hired—what was very early back then, this was not—this was not really widely available—but they hired a concierge doctor in 2003.

[00:31:10] Dr. Afton Hassett: Wow.

[00:31:11] Cheryl Crow: And she initially also didn’t believe me. She didn’t think I had an eating disorder, but she thought I was being hypervigilant. She thought I was being a hypochondriac, which, you know—

[00:31:20] Dr. Afton Hassett: Right.

[00:31:20] Cheryl Crow: — So that’s better—sorry, am I supposed to just be chilled out that, like, I lost a third of my body weight for no freaking reason? Like, I was an athlete—I mean, I was—I was 130 pounds and I was down to 105. I’m like, “I don’t want this. Like, I don’t—I want to go back to where I was.”
But anyway, and then one day she eventually referred me to rheumatology ‘cause I had more than one joint that was hurting. I had this sprained—so this is where it was an atypical presentation—I had a sprained finger that was, like, the least of my problems. Again, being an athlete, I’m like, I’m used to pushing through pain—like, “I just have a finger that hurts, whatever,” you know. But then I eventually mentioned it to her. She’s—“Okay, a little data point.” And I’m like, “Okay, now it’s like my other hand’s hurting, too.” And then it was my toes, and I—and then she was like—One morning everything wouldn’t move. My whole body wouldn’t move, and I was like, “This is different.” And she—and I got into rheumatology the next day.

[00:32:11] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:32:12] Cheryl Crow: Yeah.

[00:32:13] Dr. Afton Hassett: But you had to go a long way. It would’ve been great if they caught it earlier.

[00:32:16] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, right. Yeah. And there’s—not a really strong family history, but my great aunt did have juvenile arthritis.

[00:32:24] Dr. Afton Hassett: So it was there, but it was interesting ‘cause that was there—but so was eating disorder—and they landed on eating disorder.

[00:32:30] Cheryl Crow: Right. I know, I know. When I think that, yeah—I think it’s just—it’s just hard, you know. I—I don’t blame them for considering it, ‘cause I think you do—when someone has a mystery illness, you have to consider everything. It just—from my perspective—was really—it was just like, “Who’s gonna help me?” Again—so frustrating. I kept—“Who’s gonna help? I’m—I’m lost.” And I never had felt hopeless before, but I’m like, “I’d like to have hope, but I don’t have any reason to have hope, ‘cause the only people who are available to fix this are the ones who don’t believe me.” So—

[00:33:05] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah. But—so luckily you got a diagnosis.

[00:33:08] Cheryl Crow: Yes.

[00:33:09] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yes.

[00:33:10] Cheryl Crow: Yeah.

[00:33:11] Dr. Afton Hassett: And you’re able to turn a corner. And I think what’s so wonderful is how you have lived your life. And I—I would love for you to talk a little bit about—you could talk about the book—but really talk about your toolbox—how it is. What—what do you—what do you use? How do you help yourself lead the life that you do with such success?

[00:33:29] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. I mean, well, I think central in the coping toolbox is, you know, accepting and understanding that you can’t do it all on your own. So being—being humble enough and vulnerable enough—vulnerable enough to ask for help has ended up being really hard—

[00:33:45] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:33:45] Cheryl Crow: —What’s really important. So asking for support from my family, friends—and going to therapy. Again, ‘cause of that history of being told that it was just all in my head, I was really resistant to therapy at first, but I was an immediate convert within one month. I was like, “I’m never leaving you. I’m gonna see you the rest of my life. You’re so helpful.”
But, you know—and then in terms of specific—yeah, more specific things like lifestyle, you know, similar to what you described in the book—there’s so many little practical things you can do to tweak, you know, to turn the dials up or down in terms of how you plan your day and how you plan your life. And they’re simple to say but hard to implement. So just—I think I am, like, a “live life”—my default state is to fill my calendar, right?

[00:34:26] Dr. Afton Hassett: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:27] Cheryl Crow: I would—I would, on a—my default personality—it was like, “Oh, I want to do—I want to do everything. I want to say yes to everything and do everything.” You know that movie Everything Everywhere All at Once?

[00:34:37] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:34:37] Cheryl Crow: I was like, “That’s my brain.” So learning to say—and this is so simple, but it’s actually also something that one of the people in my (support) group described—she said, “You know, I just started saying I need to just plan 80% of what I could actually think I could do.” And sometimes maybe it’ll be 50%, depending on how bad your fatigue is and pain. But I have to learn to be like, “Don’t fill all your time up ‘cause you’re gonna get exhausted.”

[00:35:08] Dr. Afton Hassett: That is the big first lesson.

[00:35:10] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. I mean, you could call it pacing, energy conservation, but it’s like—the mental barrier was like, “Right, but I want to do everything.” And accepting that even if I was like a robot and never needed to sleep, there’s always more things you can do.

[00:35:24] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:35:24] Cheryl Crow: So, yeah, learning to plan—plan ahead. And I—and sleep is, like, my favorite lifestyle variable. That’s why I loved—in the book you were like, you know, if—in the SPACE symptoms—sleep is, like, the crucial—

[00:35:37] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:35:38] Cheryl Crow: —one. And I really protect my sleep. I even made a shirt—and then I messed up the Etsy store, so I—I’ll figure it out later; I can send you the link when I fix it—but it says “Sleep Diva,” ‘cause it’s like, I’m protecting my sleep—

[00:35:51] Dr. Afton Hassett: You do love sleep.

[00:35:52] Cheryl Crow: I do, and I’m like—people say, “Well, don’t you feel bad, like, telling your husband or your kids that you need to take a nap?” It’s—no. My son’s known his whole life that, like, Mom needs to lay down, or Mom needs to take a nap. That’s just—he just accepts that as part of his reality. And my husband’s—“I know. I know what it’s like when you’re sleep-deprived, and I don’t want that either.” 

So we both—because it affects my emotions a lot, and my focus and my energy, and so I really prioritize sleep. I’m kind of like a toddler. I’m either—like, it actually makes more sense for me to be like, “Go, go, go,” and then schedule in rest—

[00:36:30] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:36:30] Cheryl Crow: —and then “Go, go,” and then schedule in more rest, and then maximize, like, my nighttime sleep, you know?

[00:36:36] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:36:37] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, those are just a few things.

[00:36:30] Dr. Afton Hassett: No, that’s a great approach. You know, there’s—there’s whole cultures where the siesta is part of—my father is Hispanic, and he always took a siesta at four o’clock. It was just—you know, it’s just what you do, and then it’s reinvigorating. It helps you have another burst of energy. But, you know, again—short nap. Don’t take too long a nap.

[00:36:48] Cheryl Crow: Yes, I did learn that. That’s so true. I’ve gotten into that groggy state sometimes where it’s too long. The other thing that I was surprised is just physically laying down and closing my eyes and just putting on, like, a relaxing song—even if I don’t fall asleep—just for that—for 20 minutes or so. I have low blood pressure, so almost like—maybe that’s it, too—maybe that’s just like letting my blood get all the way up to my head, but it’s really restorative, you know? So—

[00:37:14] Dr. Afton Hassett: So do you—do you take walks, or what do you do for exercise?

[00:37:18] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. So this is perfect timing. Just in September, a month ago, I started seeing a personal trainer twice a week to start doing resistance weight training because it is so important—

[00:37:28] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:37:28] Cheryl Crow: —if you have arthritis, especially. And it was my 2023 goal, and I was like, “I haven’t made, like, any progress on this. I need—I need help,” again, as that hum—
I kept saying, “I could do it on my own. I know what to do”—like, I’m an occupational therapist—but I was like, “You know what to do, but are you doing it?” No. “So you gotta sign up for personal training.” But cardio-wise, I do—I love—walk the dog, walk my son to school every day. And I do have an exercise bike. I enjoy that just ‘cause it’s so convenient. I used to love running, but I actually—I got in a car accident in 2016. Ever since then, sometimes if I’m, like, running or having too much up and down, it can trigger my neck pain.

[00:38:08] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:38:08] Cheryl Crow: So, I do more, like, the exercise bike ‘cause it’s just easier. So I do really—I do find that cardio and the strength training has been really—it’s really good for my energy levels, actually. It’s, again, another paradox—you gotta expend energy to get energy.

[00:38:20] Dr. Afton Hassett: It’s amazing how that works. How about for when you have a really bad day? What—what do you do to get through when you have one of those bad days?

[00:38:28] Cheryl Crow: I mean, self-compassion—

[00:38:30] Dr. Afton Hassett: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:30] Cheryl Crow: —comes to mind. Recognizing—it feels so isolating when you’re going through it. And I think that part of self-compassion—when you recognize your shared humanity—actually really makes me feel more, you know, less alone by definition. And—and again, more rest—allowing myself—it’s almost like a permission slip from the universe. Like, permission slip to not get everything done on your to-do list today. You know, do I sound like a recovering perfectionist?

[00:39:03] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:39:03] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, it’s like—permission—you know, you give yourself permission to—

[00:39:10] Dr. Afton Hassett: I was gonna say, it just strikes me how many people with chronic pain and autoimmune disease are perfectionists.

[00:39:15] Cheryl Crow: Yeah.

[00:39:16] Dr. Afton Hassett: I don’t know what that is or how that might work with the autoimmune process, but—but it is giving yourself permission to have a bad day and to be able to—yeah—to just—to just set aside some time that you just take care of yourself and forgive yourself for that.

[00:39:26] Cheryl Crow: Yeah. Yeah. And I think mantras are helpful, too. Like, I have it on my—in my office, I have a big poster that says, you know, “We can do hard things,” or, “My now is not my forever,” you know, “This too shall pass.” All those little mantras—whatever resonates with you—that can be really, really helpful.

[00:39:45] Dr. Afton Hassett: And how about for thoughts? Do you ever find yourself in a place where you’re ruminating or feeling very negative? Do you ever find yourself kind of trapped in those sorts of thought pits?

[00:39:56] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, I think I’ve developed the ability to reframe pretty—pretty well. I think I’ll just remind myself—again, I actually do have a—I conceptualize it as, you know, the shoulder angel and the shoulder, you know, bad guy—the devil—

[00:40:10] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:40:11] Cheryl Crow: —the shoulder devil. Yeah. And so I’ll be like, the one’s, you know, “You forgot your medicine today. You’re stupid.” And then the shoulder angel just kind of does the reframe: “You’re human. Everyone forgets,” you know. So I think that’s a little skill to flex. 

And also, just, you know, if it’s really, really—if I’m—if it’s really, really bad, to also just acknowledge and validate to myself that, “Yeah, this is hard,” and, you know, “I can handle it,” you know, “I can do hard things,” again.

[00:40:40] Dr. Afton Hassett: Good for you. I mean, again, that’s just such a—a part of the chronic pain reset—is to catch ourselves when we’re having—

[00:40:47] Speaker 4: Yeah.

[00:40:47] Dr. Afton Hassett: —thoughts that are unhelpful, or we’re ruminating, and just be able to have a tool so that we can just kind of pry ourselves loose. And self-compassion—just recognizing that there are kind of two sides, and kind of siding with your angel for a difference—can be really helpful.

[00:41:01] Cheryl Crow: Yeah, completely. A hundred percent. I’ve used it with my son, too, ‘cause, you know, at a young age kids start doing that, too. They have a negative voice in their head sometimes, and it can be—yeah—great to just normalize that.

[00:41:12] Dr. Afton Hassett: Exactly that—we all kind of do that. Well, as we kind of wind down, it’s just been such a treat to hear from you, and I think you’ve shared so many things that I’ve heard from other people. You’re—you’re a wonderful representation of somebody who’s come through this—but come through this thriving—and you always impress me. But I just want to maybe end with a couple of questions. So the first one is: what do you think healthcare providers really need to know about people like you?

[00:41:40] Cheryl Crow: Oh gosh. That’s such a great question. I think healthcare providers need to confront their own lack of—the fact that they also don’t have all the answers.

[00:41:50] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:41:50] Cheryl Crow: And that—that needs to not be threatening for them. So I think acceptance and commitment therapy—if we could get healthcare providers trained in that—to become comfortable, right? Comfortable with the unknowns, comfortable with the uncertainties—that would help the patients. To be able to even say, “You know what? I don’t know.” You know, instead of having to feel like they need to be the experts all the time.

[00:42:10] Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, I love that, too, ‘cause that—that would’ve made such a difference to you—for the healthcare profession to say, “You know, Cheryl, we don’t know what’s going on here, but we know something is going on. This is something you’re experiencing, so we’re gonna figure it out together,” would be very, very different than what you got.

[00:42:25] Cheryl Crow: Completely.

[00:42:26] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah. And then my last question of you: what brings you the greatest joy?

[00:42:32] Cheryl Crow: I—I love that question. That’s one of my favorite questions on my podcast, too. For me, it’s always people—you know, connecting to the people in my life that I love. But the other answer that came to mind is, you know, music and dancing. That’s also something I really enjoy, which—it can be hard if your body has changed, you know, because of your pain and such, and you can’t maybe dance the way you used to be able to. But I still really love—I used to be a big swing dancer.

[00:43:00] Dr. Afton Hassett: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:01] Cheryl Crow: So I listen to songs of the 1940s—yeah, no—1930s jazz, big band songs, and I just sometimes put those on and just—even just swaying to it—

[00:43:13] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah.

[00:43:13] Cheryl Crow: —if you can’t, you know, fully dance, is really, really fun. So I love that.

[00:43:13] Dr. Afton Hassett: I love that. That’s wonderful. And—and you know what—dancing is so important to us as humans. We’ve been dancing since we, you know, when we were barely upright.

[00:43:26] Cheryl Crow: Yes.

[00:43:26] Dr. Afton Hassett: So many people lose the ability to dance with chronic pain, but it’s like you said—you can just enjoy the music; you can sway. You find a way to adapt so that you don’t lose the activities that you love the most and bring you the most joy.

[00:43:38] Cheryl Crow: A hundred percent.

[00:43:39] Dr. Afton Hassett: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time today. It’s been such a pleasure to speak with you and to hear about your experience and—and how much hope you bring to us. And it’s just been great.

[00:43:52] Cheryl Crow: Thank you. And thank you for doing what you’re doing. It’s amazing that, you know, you’ve dedicated your life to helping other people thrive with chronic pain. It’s really a beautiful thing. So thank you for having me.

[00:44:03] Dr. Afton Hassett: Oh, well, take care, and I’m sure we’ll see each other soon.

[00:44:05] Cheryl Crow: Bye-bye.

[00:44:06] Dr. Afton Hassett: Okay.

[00:44:06] Cheryl Crow: Bye-bye for now.

[00:44:10] Speaker 5: Today’s episode was produced and edited by William Hassett, with support from Son of A Books and the team at Venue by 4M. Our theme music “Just Being” is by Bohemian Roosters. That’s it for today. Join us in two weeks for another episode of Chronic Pain Reset.

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