Embracing What Is and Redefining What Lies Ahead with Ali Ingersoll

SPEAKER_00: But before I get into what today's episode is all about, I've got to turn the tables around and ask you a question.

We're going to get real for a moment.

When you hear that somebody is disabled, and we're talking any sort of disability, maybe they are blind like myself.

Or perhaps they are paralyzed.

They're in a wheelchair.

Do you find yourself immediately feeling sorry for that person?

Not sorry in like a bad way, but just in the compassionate, emotional side that we as humans feel about somebody who has suffered a disability of some kind.

Well, if so, you're definitely not alone.

Because I will tell you that I find myself doing the same thing.

Like, for example, say a 27-year-old girl who is living her best life, she all of a sudden has an injury.

And in the blink of an eye, her world completely changes because she becomes a static quadruple leader.

Me, my initial thought is, oh my gosh, I can't even imagine.

I feel absolutely horrible for her.

But then you meet Ali Ingersoll, and your mind is pretty much blown because I consider myself to be a pretty positive, upbeat, optimistic person, viewing the glass as half full versus half empty.

But Allie, forget the glass being half full.

Her glass is straight up full to the brim.

It was going to take a whole lot more than a life-changing injury by becoming paralyzed from the neck down to stop Allie from living and enjoying her life to the absolute fullest.

I didn't get into all those nitty-goody details with Allie, but if I had to sum her up, I would say her dating profile would probably read something along the lines of a sexy blonde who loves drinking pina coladas and getting caught in the rain.

That's just how I view Allie in her personality.

And well, I'm about to introduce her to you.

But before I do, I want to ask you if you're a fan of the podcast, if you're enjoying what I'm doing here on the podcast, I would love for you to consider upping your game as an audience member and become a supporter here on the podcast by using my link down in the show notes that I have set up with buy me a coffee.

Producing these episodes, it takes a little bit of money, a little bit of time.

And well, I just want to keep on doing it.

And so it's not easy to ask somebody for a donation, but well, that's what I'm doing.

Just in a little bit cooler way by saying, hey, support me by uh giving me a little bit of money to support my caffeine addiction that helps me have the energy to get in here to the recording studio and do what I gotta do.

Okay, enough of that.

If you want to support, like I said, the link is in the show notes.

If not, no big deal.

And we'll just keep on rolling just like we are.

Okay, here is the story of Allie Ingersoll, today's featured guest.

SPEAKER_01: Well, my mom is German and my dad is English American, so I spent much of my life in the East Coast in London, France, Germany.

And then when I was a little older by myself as a teenager, I moved over and spent many years in China, actually.

SPEAKER_00: Well, so you moved to China as a teenager by yourself?

SPEAKER_01: I did.

I graduated high school when I was very young.

And to be totally honest, I didn't want to go to university and not be able to drink like a normal kid in the United States.

So I decided I would defer for a year and a half, two years.

And I chose China.

I closed my eyes on one of those little spinny globes one day, and my finger landed on China.

Beijing in particular.

And I said, Well, that sounds like a great idea.

My parents said, No problem.

You can pay for yourself.

You can defer from university.

And I said, Wonderful.

Purchased an$800 ticket to Beijing, landed in the airport, and said to myself, Oh dear gosh, what have I gotten myself into?

SPEAKER_00: I can't even begin to imagine.

SPEAKER_01: I didn't speak the language.

So it was challenging.

And I had a nice um taxi driver who didn't speak English and could tell I was crying on the curbside alone.

And he took me to a university area where I met a Frenchman who spoke a little bit of English and he got me set up with a Chinese family and Chinese classes, and I started to learn the language and started kickboxing and met an Italian kickboxing instructor who didn't speak English and I did not speak Italian, and he was very attractive, and so I had incentive to learn the language at that young age.

SPEAKER_00: That is so funny.

So now, how long did you live in China for?

SPEAKER_01: I lived in China for several years, and then during college, I went back, continued my Chinese studies, and I would go back every summer and work for manufacturing companies, writing business plans for pharmaceutical companies.

So, you know, that's kind of where my career started.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

No, that's pretty awesome.

Pretty awesome.

Now, now there's there's one other crazy adventurous sounding thing that that I saw in your bio, and that is something about doing wilderness survival trips in Australia.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

So I grew up all over the world, but home base is the Bahamas, a very out island.

And so we would go on these Robinson Caruso family camping trips with my brother, sister, and parents.

And so they instilled upon us a very adventurous spirit.

And so I would go in my summertime when I was younger and through teenage years all the way up until I was 22 to wilderness survival programs around the world, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand.

And we'd get together with a group of about six to eight individuals.

And we would go hiking, for example, in the Outback, and we would have some basic provisions, but we'd hike to water sources and 108 degrees every day and hike across the Australian Outback and beautiful waterfalls.

And so I'd always love doing those.

Whenever I felt like I was getting out of control and partying too much and being a crazy kid, I would get back to nature.

SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's so amazing.

Was there any any particular destination that you traveled to growing up that like really stands out in your mind as a favorite?

SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh.

We traveled everywhere around the world, but I particularly loved the Galapagos quite a lot.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

SPEAKER_01: We had a little boat.

Yep, we we rented, we uh swam with sea lions and saw the tortoises, learned about marine biology because up until midway through college, I was um attempting to be a marine biologist, and then I thought critically about how much money a marine biologist makes.

And then how I would spend 90% of my time in a lab, which is definitely not my forte.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Wow.

Well, that that's pretty awesome.

I mean, I must say that um you you definitely sound like you were really blessed with with having this amazing childhood.

SPEAKER_01: I was, and I, you know, I have the most incredible and supportive family who have always tried to bring me up and never put me down.

So I feel luckiest compared to so many people in the world that don't have that support system.

And so in that regard, I never, even after the accident, I've never felt, oh, woe is me.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely, definitely.

So now, no, I guess I would love to now us kind of switching gears and and fast-forwarding a bit, I guess back up to uh 2010, if you could go ahead and kind of paint the picture what life was like at that time and and then you know going into your accident.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.

Well, after college, I worked in politics for an organization called Generation Engage, where we got young kids active in the political process and we had elected officials with big events talking about social change and getting people active and changing the world.

But I saw a lot of the behind the scenes of what a lot of these politicians were like, which was very distressing, and I became slightly jaded.

And so I asked my dad one day, I said, I want to work independently, how do I do that?

He said become a day trader.

I said, excellent, that sounds wonderful.

How do I do that?

Well, there's a lot of ways one could go about doing that.

Technical analysis and studying charts and patterns, and it's like a 12,000-page course of what I decided to do, and it's kind of a self-study.

I said, excellent.

Quit my job in two weeks, sold everything I own, put it into a training account.

And I actually moved back home to the Bahamas in 2009.

And I studied 12, I was on an island and I studied 12 hours a day.

And I went out spear fishing and swimming, and but I kept my studies.

I'm very studious.

I have the opposite problem of procrastination.

I can sit there for hours on end and not move and just focus, which I feel very blessed for.

SPEAKER_00: That is.

SPEAKER_01: And about 10 months, uh 11 months into my studies, I finished a little bit early.

I started to trade my own money live and I was celebrating.

I went out to a tiny little tiki bar off the water, and I was not drinking yet, ironically.

And I was with a bunch of friends, and it was about three feet of water, very clear blue water in the Bahamas.

And I thought it was about five or six feet, probably slightly cocky.

And I took a dive and I just hit my head on sand, and that's all it takes is the impact.

And yeah.

And I fortunately, with my wilderness survival programs, I did not drown.

I held my breath until somebody came to pick me up.

And on an out island, there were no doctors on the island at the time, just some maybe some nurses.

So we really had to direct my own medical care.

And uh, we had to wait.

Gosh, it took us 22 hours to get from the Bahamas all the way to Miami from trying to get private jets, emergency jets to get over to the island involved with thunderstorms.

And so, you know, I have to say I knew not to eat or drink, but I did get stoned because with the pain.

So, you know, I I was like, Oh well, I broke my neck.

It'll it it, you know, I I I pretty much knew I was a C6 spot at that point because I was familiar with anatomy.

But I had a whole island, everyone, all the everyone on the island, hundreds of people were around the truck.

I was on a board, we made a makeshift neck race.

And by the time I got to Miami and I went in for surgery, and I woke up and they said, I'm sorry to tell you, uh, you are paralyzed from the chest down.

And I said, I distinctly remember saying, No shit.

You think?

I it wasn't a giant surprise at that point.

SPEAKER_00: Well, so okay.

So so first off, you were just absolutely hysterical.

So tell me though, back like when you made that dive into the water initially, because I think that's one of the the scenarios that you hear of a lot.

SPEAKER_01: Very common.

Spino quadriplegia and shallow water diving is all too common, yeah.

And you know what?

Actually, I think 60 to 7 no, 70, 80 percent of quadriplegics are actually men, I believe.

Because they do more daredevilish things.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

That makes sense.

So now, so what was it like though?

I mean, do you remember?

SPEAKER_01: Did you black out like when you hit I remember every single minute of every moment, like it was yesterday, and actually someone caught it on camera, it's actually on my social media, and I didn't see the images till six years later.

Which was, I mean, I didn't have any emotional reaction, but it was fascinating.

So every year of my anniversary, which is actually next week of 11 years, I put, please, people, feet first, feet first, not head first.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

So the anniversary of your accident is is next week.

What is that date?

SPEAKER_01: August 21st.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

SPEAKER_01: The 20th or 21st.

I I forget, I always get it off by a day.

I know people remember that day, but it's just a day.

And every year I do something very fun and exciting, and I don't sit there and dwell.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, well, I have to tell you, a very kind of ironic coincidence to that date is the fact that that, you know, for for those listening to to this episode, you know, they know that you may know that, you know, I record my episodes, you know, far out.

So by the time you are listening to this, you know, this anniversary date has passed.

But uh what's pretty cool is that uh this week, so tomorrow from when we are recording, will be my 50th episode will be released.

And it is with a guy who he is a quadruple as well.

And uh the uh anniversary of his accident is uh is next week the 18th.

Oh wow.

And so that's kind of wild to me that I'm interviewing you now and his episode comes out tomorrow, and the fact that both of your anniversaries are in the same week is is pretty wild.

SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a summer month, right?

So we do more we would go on to crazy things in the summer.

SPEAKER_00: That's true, that's true.

So so wow, okay, so take me back now.

So so you went to Miami, you you wake up for surgery, they they have the devastating news, you smack them back into reality, like, yeah, uh duh.

So what happens with life then?

SPEAKER_01: Well, my dad said to me, which sticks with me every day, and even when I go on job interviews, I say this.

He said, Listen, kid, you broke your body and not your mind, so get to work.

And so he brought my laptop from the Bahamas, and he said, You can't move your arms right now because you're too weak, but your mind is fine.

So tell me where their buyer fell.

And he put the trading charts up in front of me.

And he actually created like a rigid schedule for me in the ICU where I could have visitors on this hour, I'm working on this hour, I'm studying and reading on this hour while the doctors and nurses are trying to tend to me.

So I didn't even have time to process what had really happened.

I was just so ambitious to get to rehab.

Unfortunately, I was, you know, when you deal with quadriplegia, there's kind of two camps.

There's people that kind of get out of rehab and start their lives, or people that deal with immense medical complications.

And we can get into it, but I spent the next probably five or six years in and out of hospitals, moving to back to China for final surgeries, just in rehab.

I had a giant stage three pressure sore, meaning on my bum, on my backside, meaning that the they didn't turn me on the hardboard for 22 hours.

So I had a wound nearly down to my bone, which is not fun because it takes nearly a year to heal.

I had massive pulmonary embolisms, which were blood clots in the lungs that had broken off of my legs.

So they were pretty much just trying to keep me alive.

And they managed to kill me a few times, actually, because the I was on dopamine.

Dopamine helps you regulate your blood pressure, which you can't do very well when you have a spinal cord injury because your autonomic nervous system thinks automatic.

It controls your sweating, your blood pressure, your heart rate.

That nervous system is damaged permanently as a quadruple.

And so they regulate you with this drug.

And a nurse forgot to reset the monitors, and she had a smaller bag of dopamine.

And I was with my sister and mom, and they were painting my fingers' nails, and I just poated in front of my mom and my sister.

I feel terribly about that, by the way.

I can't imagine how traumatic that must have been for them.

I was fine, you know.

SPEAKER_00: Totally.

Wow.

But so that's crazy.

So now, how long were you in the hospital?

SPEAKER_01: I was in the ICU for about a month, and then we had to really fight insurance because, well, if we won't even get to that topic, because anyone with a disability understands the headaches with insurance.

I was in rehab for about two months, and then I'd lived in Miami prior.

I went to college there, so we decided to stay in Miami.

All my friends were there.

So we set up an accessible apartment, and I just went all out every day, all day with work, trading, rehab, swimming, exercise.

I got up at 4:30 in the morning every single day.

I was exhausted, but I was just go, go, go.

Because if you are gonna get any functional recovery back, it's going to happen within the first one to two years, mostly.

Unfortunately, I was pretty aware.

I think my family was on a hope three.

I was not.

Because once, you know, when you break your neck, what makes you paralyzed?

It's not breaking the bones, it's the bruise in your spinal cord.

It's literally just a bruise.

And if you get there fast enough to the hospital, they have different methods from hypothermic treatment and so forth to reduce that swelling.

Mine had already set in.

So I had already come to this acceptance level that this was going to be my life.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

So you didn't really get you were saying so I I I I I you you leave me speechless because you are so you are so matter-of-fact, and it's it's I am that that that is dark humor, matter-of-fact, with you know, uh a little bit of humor.

But what I what I wanted to say, you know, at the first of it, you know, when you're talking about your dad coming into the hospital and and get getting you busy, and then even when you're talking about getting out of the hospital and and staying so active, I I feel like it's a case of your parents knew who you were and they knew how how you would handle it and that you needed the action.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.

We joke around of any of the four kids to break their neck.

I was definitely the best candidate, so that's excellent.

And even in rehab, I have such a strong network of family that when they killed me the first time, my brothers, sister-in-law's, sister, mom and dad, they took shifts with me in the hospital for two straight months and nobody left me alone because unfortunately, um you know, the understaffed nurses and CNA, certified nursing assistants, they just have too many patients.

So they were very careful to make sure nobody else killed me.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

No, and I mean, and and that goes back.

I can relate that to my own life, my own story when when I had the my brain tumor surgery to have a brain tumor removed, is is I can tell you, is is family is is really amazing.

And I know my it is, and I have I know.

Yeah, and so that that just that's really pretty amazing and pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_01: That's why I mentor a lot of new quadruple leaders who don't have a support system because to be totally honest with you, I cannot imagine I would not be here today doing everything I'm doing without them.

I give them 100% credit.

People always give people with disabilities a credit.

You're amazing, you're an inspiration.

But it's the people behind the scenes, the caregivers, the moms, the brothers, the sisters that make it possible, right?

SPEAKER_00: Yep.

Yeah, it is.

It's 100% the case.

And and I I literally cannot agree anymore.

So now I'm curious.

So at some point, I would imagine though, did you go through depression?

SPEAKER_01: So interesting question.

So after was in Miami for about two years or so, and I went through after rehab, I finally, I finally developed cervical cancer from an abnormal tap smear, and I had to go in, and it was a completely botched surgery, which left me with pulmonary embolisms again that nearly killed me.

I was bleeding internally.

They made my neuropathic pain, which was like burning pins and needles, 24-7 in my body worth by drugging me on morphine.

And that still didn't get me down, ironically.

This was now around 2012.

And then about November of 2012, there was something wrong with my respiratory system, and I couldn't breathe properly.

And we did a bunch of MRI, saw a bunch of surgeons, and it turned out I had something called an arachnoid fist.

It's basically a fifth in your spinal cord.

And they happened and they do develop and it was ascending upwards.

And the surgeons said they didn't want to operate on me until I started to lose more function and have more respiratory issues because they didn't want to go to the spinal cord.

And my father is brilliant for many reasons, and he traveled the world for me and met up with a group of Swedish scientists who landed in China and watched a third.

Watch a surgeon perform these surgeries for spinal decompressions and arachnoid cysts because more people just break their neck in China just because of the per capita of people over there.

And he said, Hey kid, how would you like to move to China and have some spinal surgery and then participate in this innovative rehab program?

I said, Sure, yep, sounds great.

Let's do it.

So it took three months of intense planning.

Sister, brothers, everyone went over to China, got everything set up.

Like it was a great, like it takes a village to raise a kid.

Same thing for a quad.

And I made the journey, the 30-hour journey over to China with my family, with my brother and my mom, which was a wild experience.

And fortunately, I spoke the language.

I had to brush up on my Chinese, of course, caregiving Chinese and neurosurgery Chinese because my caregivers did not speak English.

And I had surgery and they were meticulous.

The big challenge we went through was that in China the concept of pain management is much different than in the West.

And it's more of a suck it up buttercup kind of philosophy, not to be cruel, just I mean, that's just a cult societal, like a cultural difference.

And so we're we completely forgot to ask about pain management after the surgery.

Oh no.

Seriously.

And I woke up from spinal surgery.

Uh spinal surgery that's supposed to take 12 hours.

They did it in four.

They did a beautiful job.

The videos are actually up on YouTube.

The acts, I know.

And I woke up intubated and I was screaming on ibuprofen and not morphine.

And they tied me down to a bed with purple string.

Specifically, I remember purple string.

And I woke up and I saw that the world was ending.

And they overdosed me on morphine because they didn't know how to administer it properly.

And so the walls were now melting with spiders coming down it and my brother holding me, holding me, being like, it's okay.

The spiders are not.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: But within, and while I was healing from that, I had a neck brace on.

Within a month, they had a rehab program where it was called the six.

I know this sounds weird.

It's called the 666 program.

And six hours, I know it because it's not, it's not an unlucky number in China.

Six hour days, six hour days, walking six days a week, I mean repetitions of six.

And and what we did not know at the time was that I had severe osteoporosis, which again is not uncommon with people's spinal cord injury, but with everything going on, it didn't occur to us in the first few years to get a bone density scan.

And they didn't know that either.

So they got me up in this walking frame with multiple therapists trying to hold me up and push my legs forward because I'm paralyzed from the chest down.

And I heard this giant crack.

And they cracked my femur in half and my tibia, like my shin.

And they are very proud people over there, of course.

And they took an MRI and they said, Oh no, it's an old break, an old fracture.

We did not do this to our star foreign prize blonde-haired patient.

This was not us.

And so I ended up having to be after fresh spinal surgery, intensive pain, and I show intensive pain with raised blood pressure and sweating profusely above my level of injury and a broken leg, which was not cast, I might add.

So now my right leg, her name is Gumby because she hyperextends the wrong direction.

Yes.

And but in all seriousness, that was the point you asked me about depression.

And that is the point I realized where I was all alone in China.

And I had my mom and dad there at the time, but I could barely speak.

I couldn't think.

I wasn't me.

I just I wasn't Allie.

I wasn't bubbly and full of life.

And this went on for months and months, and I finally became suicidal.

And but how do I say this uh eloquently, practically suicidal?

So I explained to my entire family if this keeps going on for yet another six months, I want to die, and I want you to be prepared.

I don't want to do this unexpectedly.

I found a way with the right combination of drugs here in China to do it painlessly.

And I kept talking about it, and I cried every single night.

And you know, you're living in social isolation over there as well, even with your parents, you don't have a network.

It wasn't we didn't really have a network.

And, you know, you're stuck in bed in a very tiny room in China, and it was no air conditioning neither, I might add.

And months went by and half my family was on board, and half of them were not.

And I have a I wrote about I journaled about my uh website called the ChinaClaw Diaries.org about my experiences for over two and a half, three years in China.

And that was a point, was my darkest, lowest point, but I was always very open about it.

I wasn't secretive.

And things, I wouldn't say got better, but they weren't as bad.

And so I really use that experience to drive the concept of normalizing the challenges with disability.

It's kind of where a lot of the seeds started to talk about things that are uncomfortable.

You know, if it's we can choose how we want to live, but we can't choose how we want to die.

I I think that's absurd, but that's my personal opinion.

SPEAKER_00: I agree.

I agree with you.

SPEAKER_01: So that was my dark period.

And I I go through I go through ups and downs for sure.

Not usually because of my disability, but with caregiving challenges and finding good human beings.

I've gone through very bad periods where people have pushed me out of bed and done drugs and stole from me.

And I mean, God, you name it, but I'm not alone.

I I hear the story.

It's like a story on repeat with people who for quadriplegics that it's heartbreaking.

And, you know, marital challenges and challenges with trying to be independent.

So I go through ups and downs, but generally, I would say I I maintain a more positive outlook because I stay super busy and I engage in so many activities, both professionally and in the nonprofit world and donating my time.

And I have so many, like my hands in so many different paths.

And I find that really helps to have purpose.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.

One hundred one hundred and ten percent.

So now, all of that that you had done in China, did you regain any function from none whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01: And I ended up with a very serious complication.

Anytime you open the spinal cord, you run the risk of like pinching or nicking a nerve.

It's just it happens, right?

It's nobody's fault, really.

And so I now, I'll have a lot of other pains I have.

I have severe debilitating neck pain where they sliced me opium and did a triple am anecdomin and put me back together with a ton of titanium.

And so I mitigate that by working with my caregivers in the afternoon, and I get in bed around three or four or five.

And then I just work from bed the rest of the night with a little computer table, and you know, that's the best you can do.

SPEAKER_00: Yep.

No, definitely.

And and I have to say, you know, the whole thing with with going to China for the for the you know basically experimental type for teacher and stuff.

I relate it even back to my own life because I know after I went.

I remember of course.

So I know for a while, and I didn't go over there and doing that and ultimately decided against it.

So I can I can definitely relate to even just the desire to go there because you know, if if there is a promise of fixing something, you know, you you want to go for it.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and they only promise, and they've done this one surgeon had done this surgery 3,000 times.

So I was doing in the experimental, and he promised that he could save my life and get the cyst.

He did not promise anything else.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, well, there you go.

SPEAKER_01: So I went in, I went in with realistic expectations.

SPEAKER_00: Well, that's good.

That's good.

So now we get through with that and then life goes on.

And so I'm kind of curious about you kind of, you know, we're we're getting into it, you know, as we were talking.

Is is I is I kind of feel like the whole thing of of you taking up this very big like advocacy, you know, mindset for for people with disabilities was kind of a uh a gradual thing that brought on just from your own experience.

SPEAKER_01: It was, yeah.

I was very alone and didn't have a network except for one person who was a quadriplegic when I was injured.

And obviously there weren't as many social media groups back in 2010.

And it was a very slow transition.

So I moved um back from China 2015, 16, 15 to Raleigh, North Carolina, because my sister's here and my brother's in Atlanta.

There's a support system.

And life was pretty, really challenging.

But I decided, I woke up one day and I said, you know what, I'm gonna start dating because I spent five years with no relationships, no sex, no nothing.

Because one, I didn't feel sexual, two, I was constantly having something wrong with me.

And I started dating a lovely gentleman who is a really nice guy.

I call him my starter boyfriend.

Because I've been seeing women with disabilities, I thought it was just a kindness in that mentality I had that somebody would even date somebody with a disability.

But unfortunately, a couple months in, I developed another major pressure sore because I was born with an extra vertebrae in my spinal cord by my tailbone.

And the pressure sore got worse and worse, and I had multiple surgeries, and it was so bad, we broke up because it didn't work.

It was so bad that I spent an entire year from 2015 to 2016 in bed, looking at four walls with multiple surgeries, and that's enough to drive any human being to complete insanity.

Yep.

And so I had a two-pronged approach.

I would get up still at 5:30 in the morning, I would day trade, I would read, and I finally started getting very active on spinal cord injury Facebook groups.

And I found that I wasn't alone, which was really interesting.

And to compliment that, they told me I was going for my like, I don't know, seventh or eighth surgery or something.

And they said, okay, you know, all efforts have failed.

We are going to do something called a flap surgery, basically slicing and dicing your bum, rearranging some, rearranging some fat behind there.

I'm, you know, I'm I'm I'm simplifying this a little bit.

SPEAKER_00: Of course.

SPEAKER_01: But you're gonna have to meet a specialized bed with that 400 staples and 600 stitches, and hopefully it works.

But if it doesn't, that you have worst case two years, another two years in bed.

So I thought to myself critically, well, shit, that's not great.

So I'm gonna go out.

If I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna go out with a bang.

All right.

So I think to myself, Allie, how are you gonna go out with a bang?

And I will leave the gory details out, but I decided to do a massive, giant online dating experiment to really not publicize, but to show women disabilities, sexuality.

And I have always been very sexually open growing up in England.

So I never really in Europe, I never really understood this.

You can't talk about love, sex, money, or politics here in the United States without somebody making a big mistake, especially in a red state.

So, in any event, I was in a time swap.

So I went on all these dating sites and I created an Excel spreadsheet and they did like a almost like a cost-benefit uh analysis of this website was good, this many guys reached out to me.

I went on this many dates, and I would meet the guys twice, and then I would have quote underwear dates because the whole point was to have sex and you know, with different men.

And so I called them my gentleman callers, and they were underwear dates to make it sound a little more classy.

Yes.

And yes.

And during this process, I was I was um nearing my surgery date, and one of my gentleman callers is my now husband.

And I broke up with all the guys because every four weeks I would cycle out to new guys, and it was like a firm, hard, hard fast rule.

I know, I know, it's crazy.

My my sister's like, I don't know what the hell you're doing, but it's your life.

I go, yes, it is.

Thank you very much.

And so I broke up with my now husband, but he wouldn't he wouldn't break up with me.

And I finally stepped up to what was going on because I would hide the pressure store.

I'd stick some gauze in it and a band-aid, I'd sit up for a few hours, go on my dates, and and you know, my husband was always wondering, I wonder why you had a band-aid on your butt.

I was like, Yep, yep, that was why.

And so he said, I'll get to know you the old-fashioned way.

I'll come visit you in the ICU in the hospital.

And I said, Is this guy crazy?

I mean, he's I'm quadriplegic.

He's known for 30 days, who's now going to be in bed for another four straight months.

He's insane.

And I forgot to tell my family, and he came to the ICU and he uh brought flowers and teddy bears.

And I'm like, this guy is insane, but he's keeping me amused, so this is great.

And he was actually looking for something long term.

I mean, you know, anybody has to wonder, you know, from a parental perspective, you know, you're worried about your son or your daughter.

Are you sure you're ready to handle somebody with this major life-altering disability?

Because that's a lot.

Of course.

Of course.

And not everyone is equipped to date or marry someone with a disability.

And that's okay, right?

That's not discrimination.

Some people don't like big butts, blonde hair, big boobs, whatever it might be.

And so, getting back to the advocacy, I started writing about my dating experiments on Facebook.

And then about six months later, somebody recommended to me that I start a blog or website.

And I decided to label it the Quirky Quad.

It's called the Quirky Quad Diaries.

And it started out as a blog of sex, class, and spinal cord in your adventure.

Yes.

And I would write about real life topics and normalizing really tough topics.

And it's blossomed into so much more than that that I actually have to do a whole rebranding because when I hand out my business cards to like a corporate executive that says a blog on sex, I'm like, okay, I need somebody next in the next month helping me rebrand.

Because I'm like, okay, we need to just tweak this slightly out.

That's yeah, that's how advocacy got started and getting involved in these groups.

And then my hardcore advocacy career got started probably in the fall of 2016 when I was constantly denied medically necessary equipment from insurance companies, and I was just really pissed off.

And so I decided to make it my mission to learn how to I write like I breathe.

It's just in my nature, and I'm a researcher, and my, you know, my dad, you know, with my professional experience and just growing up with a dad who was a publisher for a long time, you know, he he taught me how to think critically and be insatiably curious.

And so I learned to write these letters with peer-reviewed papers to back them up.

And I would never let my doctors write the letters.

I would write everything and I would get them to sign it.

And same for all my physical therapists.

And I learned to navigate the appeal system within that the private health insurance appeal system.

And I started to take this nationally and partner with national organizations on strategies and getting a bed frame, a shower chair, a bed, a seat elevator for my wheelchair, amongst the$30,000 electrical stimulation bike, amongst other things.

And so I really wanted to push this mission forward.

That's how it got started, like everything.

And from there, it blossomed into being a regular columnist and writer for magazines and partnering their different nonprofits while maintaining my day job, et cetera, et cetera.

And so now I sit on a lot of boards and work for the governor's council, et cetera.

And it's amazing.

It keeps me insatiably like busy all the time.

But on the bright side, I love to help people.

So my driving passion in life is paying it forward and human kindness, is what I would say.

There are not enough kind people in the world, and I don't care how terrible you are or what you've done to me, I still maintain my kindness.

It's hard on days, it definitely is.

But I hear so many stories, so many individuals going through so much.

And if I can even put a smile on their face or help them with an insurance letter, or talk to them about a sexual position they'd like to try.

I mean, whatever it is, that is like my way of trying to give back.

SPEAKER_00: No, I absolutely love that so much.

And you know, I think I think so much of that too is is a testament to the power of support groups.

And because you know there's one thing to be able to do that.

All over the world.

And so I think it does something amazing for for our mindset, for our mental health to then come to a point where instead of being in those groups looking for help, you're looking to help other people.

SPEAKER_01: Right.

And there's something.

So I had a conversation with my therapist, and by the way, side note, everyone in life should have a therapist.

I just think.

Um, and I said, you know, there's such a thing as altruism, right?

Is there do do we do anything selflessly?

Because when you do something selflessly and help someone else, it makes you feel good.

So is that selfish, right?

It's the circular argument that the psychology community has every day.

But it really does.

It makes me feel better.

And when I'm going through pain or repressure sore, urinary tract infection, and I'm having a rough day, I still manage to get my ass up at 5:30 in the morning and work all day and I still enjoy life.

And now I've I've propelled in June, yes, in May or June of this year, 2021, I decided I want to, at 38 years old, I want to switch careers.

I know that's insane.

But this whole new field, especially since the light of the pandemic, with this work from home that people can be as productive.

And this major corporations are focusing now on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

And they're talking the game and they're starting to do like mini walking, like they're not walking the walk quite yet.

And so it's this new emerging field.

So I have decided I want to take all of my skill sets and my talents, and I want to work full-time for a corporation and affect change from the inside out in their diversity and inclusion departments.

And so I have been spending months and months LinkedIning 100 people a day, reaching out to all my contacts.

And then it may take five contacts to get an interview or a call with someone from Royal Caribbean where I don't ask them for anything.

I'm just asking them how to get into this world.

And it's going smashingly.

I'm meeting a lot of incredible people.

It's it's breaking my spinal cord back, so to speak, proverbially, because I'm exhausted.

But you know, if you want to get ahead and you want to push forward in life, you have to put forth that extra effort.

But I'm trying to create a roadmap for people with physical disabilities in any event.

How do you network and how do you do this where you can get a salary that pays for your life?

So you can get off Medicare and Medicaid, which only lets you make a certain amount.

So you're either constantly trapped in this box.

So that's my global hope is to, you know, further the disability employment in corporations and getting people from middle management and training them so they have these opportunities down the road.

Because it's proven time and time again, many articles have been out on that, that companies that are inclusive with hiring individuals with disabilities, we stay at jobs longer.

We're more creative problem solvers.

We actually increase the bottom line and revenue and profits.

So there's so much to be gained.

I I I last summer I thought, okay, I'm gonna try to be as more of a social media star and I'm gonna make my money that way.

And then I thought critically about the YouTubes and the Facebooks and the corporations, about the behind the scenes work that the people in these offices are doing to allow many of us with disabilities to have these opportunities.

So I decided I want to be on the back side of this.

SPEAKER_00: No, I love it.

And because I can tell you, you know, there is such a need for that.

And and I think I think a lot of the problem comes into play with with big companies, corporations and stuff when we start talking about the realm of making things accessible.

Making things incompatible.

SPEAKER_01: Right, from HR, from web accessibility, it encompasses so much of the HR technology.

SPEAKER_00: And I feel like where the problem comes in so many times is the fact that you have people making a lot of these decisions.

Don't live the life of the person that they're trying to make it accessible for.

SPEAKER_01: No, you we have to have people with all of these disabilities, low vision, deaf or hard of hearing, physical mobility impairments.

We need to have these people inside, not just at like bottom-level employee status, right?

We and if they start at the bottom, which is fine, attract for them to move up quickly so they can affect change from the top down.

SPEAKER_00: Exactly.

Absolutely, 100%.

It's just like myself coming from somebody who is blind in terms of you know accessibility is the fact that you know.

You know, it's they feel like it's it's made accessible because they've now put Braille on the elevator buttons or you know, Braille menus.

SPEAKER_01: The minimum standards, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: And the fact that the fact that most blind people don't know Braille.

And especially in this day and age of technology where everything taught, even fewer, you even you don't even have the need to learn Braille.

You know?

SPEAKER_01: Oh, right.

Precisely.

With like the the basic concept of an accessible restroom, for most people that that means nothing.

I mean, it's the you know, the ADA is the bottom minimum standards, and we have to do better, but that's only going to come from people speaking up and from public opinion and from the news and from these corporations, right?

And so I was reading.

A really interesting article that a lot of this generation Y, like these young 20-somethings that are coming into the world in the corporate world after college, they are looking not just at their salary and their benefits and the type of job to advance through their career, but they're looking at the corporate culture.

How are they treating people inclusively and with diversity and equity?

And they're making decisions to work for these companies based on that, which I think is really hardening.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I agree 100%.

So I'm curious at this point in your life and what you're doing, do you have goals for yourself?

Where do you see yourself in say five years, 10 years?

SPEAKER_01: Ooh, great question.

I just I hired a career coach and I was just talking to her about this.

I want to be so with my LinkedIn and my crazy research, because I'm a big researcher, I have been researching the bios of all of the top chief accessibility officers and diversity inclusion officers at the Microsoft, the Googles, and so forth.

And I was looking at their backgrounds and they all have these HR backgrounds and so forth, and they built their way up on the corporate ladder, and I'm kind of coming in midway.

So I'm trying to figure out how to, I'm doing well, but how to navigate in that.

I'm in a lot of the I'm in an interview process now, as we speak.

And in five to ten years, I want to be one of the maybe maybe 10 probably is that high up of a level, but I want to be one of the chief accessibility officers, and I want to have a global team who is on the forefront of making change at the corporate level and setting an example for you know other organizations.

And so that's where I see myself.

But I need to strategically place myself.

Like I'm I have a lot of really cool high-up interviews that are going on right now, but I have to ask myself, which position can I one affect the greatest change?

But most importantly, I need a great mentor and a great boss who will teach me everything they know.

And I would say third, which may even trump number two, is that I have a physical disability.

So I have my hands are paralyzed, I have a whole accessible setup.

Obviously, I have to work remotely most of the time.

But my energy levels, my mind gives me 16 hours a day.

My body doesn't always do that.

But I can, I do have the ability to get done in six hours, but most people can get done in 12, mentally, I mean.

But, you know, I get a UTI or I have to go to the doctor, or how am I going to balance my physical disability and the draining, you know, the life draining it takes out of my body with this high, like functioning corporate job.

And that I think that's one of my greatest fears because I it's the unknown, right?

So a lot of these companies are hiring people from diverse and underserved communities, but not necessarily with severe physical disabilities.

It's still such an underserved market.

So that will be one of my greatest challenges, experiments.

And I will, I think I'm just gonna have to figure it out as I go along, as I do everything in life.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, definitely.

And and I must say, I mean, I feel like that that on the path that you are taking, I mean, that that opens up even more doors of widening the spectrum of accessibility of the fact that with certain certain disabilities people have, more exceptions and and and different things are going to be, you know, made available to them.

And so therefore Right.

SPEAKER_01: Like you have time, right, like you have timelines.

Of course you have to adhere to timelines as a job.

Now I may I can adhere to a timeline.

It may not be in the linear fashion a company's accustomed to, but do they care if I get my work on how I get it done?

Right.

So I get in bed at three or four in the afternoon and I work from my bed, I can be just as efficient, but I'm in my bed.

SPEAKER_00: Exactly.

Absolutely.

Well, listen, I I was sitting here trying to think to myself, what's more inspiring and motivating about you?

Is it your story?

Or I thought, no, her stories are pretty amazing.

Her childhood is just absolutely insane.

The the fact that then you had this life-changing, you know, injury that occurred.

But I was like, it's not her story.

It's just your personality that literally listening to just your voice talk, you can you can tell me about the weather that I would be inspired to get out and live my life a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01: You're so funny, yes.

I I I am a little upbeat.

SPEAKER_00: Just a little, just a little upbeat.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, everyone listening is is already their their legs are hopping, they're ready to get out and take on the world, you know.

SPEAKER_01: You're so funny.

I know.

I'm even like that on my people said, Are you really like that in your personal life?

I said, Yes, I am.

When I do have my moments, I just give me a minute.

Like I'm not one somebody that stays depressed or upset, fortunately, for days on end.

Sometimes I'll have an hour or two, but I'm like, just let me go in the sun, let me meditate, give me an hour, and then I'm like back to my force of self.

SPEAKER_00: Awesome.

I love it.

Well, well, Allie, I want to thank you so much for being a guest on my podcast.

And it truly means the world to me to get to share your story and just to get to share, like I said, your amazing personality with my listeners.

SPEAKER_01: Oh, I have had the best time, Kevin.

And your story is tremendously inspirational as well.

I won't go, I I know there's that weird topic of inspiration porn, but you actually, you know, when you walk the walk, I wrote a whole article on that.

But you, um, what you're doing in this podcast.

I mean, uh to be fair, I, you know, when I when I spoke with you, and I was like, okay, you know, Kevin's line, the just I'm looking at my screen right now and I'm looking at the software that we're recording on, and I'm thinking to myself, okay, how does Kevin access?

And I I know there's screen readers and I know a lot of the technology, but physically accessing that, finding someone to like produce your episode and getting an out there, that's a lot, and that is incredible.

And a lot of people don't understand those back scenes of what goes on to make the little, you know, the little little acts to make, you know, one podcast, what that takes.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

I I feel like I feel like, you know, for for me, I I definitely developed like the mindset of like an engineer or something.

You know, to just engineer my way, you know, to figure out different ways to do what I want to do.

And, you know, and you just kind of figure out ways and and you know, gotta get creative.

SPEAKER_01: You know what it is?

You're the scientist I call it being the scientist in your own life.

You're successfully experiment with hypotheses.

And sometimes the experiments fail and they don't, but as most of the social says, the definition of success is moving from failure to failure without lack of the stuff.

SPEAKER_00: Stop stop right there, baby.

All right, what thank you?