Mission: Improbable: The Moth Radio Hour

In this hour, storytellers face down the near-impossible...with mixed results. Skydiving, the first night shift, and training a kitten. This episode is hosted by Jay Allison, producer of this show. Storytellers: Gabi Rome attempts to train a kitten. In desperate need of an easy class to graduate college, Elliot Higgins takes Skydiving 101. Danielle Ofri has a crisis of confidence while working the night-shift at Bellevue. Wendy Irwin believes she can't do hard things. Bryan Kett attempts to move a refrigerator. Podcast # 981

• 0:13Speaker 00

  This is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Jay Allison.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  Life is littered with obstacles, pretty much every day, if you're like me. Some days, I glide over them, other days, I bang my shins pretty hard. Today, I'm gliding, but not expecting that to last. Every once in a while, we're faced with a challenge that feels impossible, or at least highly improbable. Maybe not as extreme as scaling the world's tallest building, or jumping in between airplanes, looking at you, Tom Cruise, but ones that feel like our own personal mission improbable.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Our first storyteller is Gabby Rome. She takes on the notoriously futile task of cat training. Here's Gabby to tell you all about it live at The Moth.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  It's 2011, and I'm walking down the hallway of my apartment building. I'm headed to the management office, because I've decided I need to get a dog. I just moved into this apartment building, and it is not pet-friendly. But I've done my research. I know all the laws in Michigan about emotional support animals. I've saved a month of my rent as collateral against damages. And if that doesn't work... I didn't put concealer over the deep, purple bags under my eyes. It's about 88 days into me getting maybe three hours a night of sleep, and I'm just hoping my sob story tugs at my landlord's heartstrings. You see,

• 1:54Speaker 01

  about three months prior, I was robbed while I was home. It started with a knock on my door, which in the grand scheme of things, is a very courteous way to start a crime.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  A man told me to get on my knees and face the wall. I was robbed. I called the police. I filed a report. I moved apartments. I spent my nights vigilantly lying awake, listening. And I spent my days having panic attacks every time a friendly neighbor knocked on my door to introduce themselves. With a dog, I could train it to listen for me, and I could get some rest.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  My landlord was like, "Oh, my God, no, absolutely not. I hate dogs. You can't get a dog. I don't care what letter you get from the state. If you get a dog, I'll poison it."

• 2:56Speaker 01

  But I'm not heartless. You can have a cat.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Conveniently, his niece had just found some kittens behind the carport, and if I go to the sixth floor, I can have my pick of the litter.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  A baby kitten is probably the animal least capable of protecting me.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  And conventional wisdom tells you, "You cannot train a cat." But between my sleep deprivation and my desperation, I figure, maybe I can defy the odds.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Maybe I can train this cat to hear a knock and then hit a button that makes the sound of a dog bark, or... Train it to launch itself at the heads of intruders.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  The orphaned neonatal 14-ounce cat I take home that day

• 3:59Speaker 01

  needs to be fed via syringe every two to four hours.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Which is fine, cuz I'm not sleeping anyways.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  This kitten and I, I decide we're gonna go to work. I knock, and then I feed her. And as she gets older, I knock and then I throw a treat at the door. Weirdly, it's working, like she's responding to the knocks. And one day, after, you know, a few hours of training, I'm standing in my kitchen, making some waffles in the toaster, and just watching the freezer burn melt off under the hot orange coils. Daydreaming about when I used to feel safe enough to have pizza delivered. And how at my old apartment, there was this great pizza place, this like mom-and-pop wood-fired place, that would get the cheese to crust. Pop! The toaster startles me, and I go into full fight or flight.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  I'm, I can't breathe, I'm shaking, I'm hyperventilating, I fall to my knees, my cheek pressed against the cold tile of the kitchen floor, and I'm thinking, "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." And I wonder, can I die from a panic attack when I feel a tap on my forehead? And through the tears, I see this little four-pound cat looking at me. And I think, "Oh, my God. Did all those nights of bottle feeding actually create like a close emotional bond? Where she's like checking on me?" And then she taps me again. No. This cat does not care about me, or my emotional breakdown.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  She heard a knock, and she would like her treat.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Please.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Silently, she's urging me, "Can you just get over it already?"

• 5:53Speaker 01

  I feel my heart beat slow, and I have this moment where it dawns on me, "I have a pet kitten?" She's not a guard dog, she's not a security system, she's a cat named Ruby, and she is not going to fix me.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  I reach for the container of Frisky's Party Mix Yums.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  And I realize I've been working on this internal issue with external solutions. It's taken this beautiful, perfect selflessness of this cat to show me I need to get some help. I need to see a doctor. And I do. It takes me years of therapy and hard work to get over it, but now I sleep great. In fact, sometimes I'm amazed that I sleep so well and it's even possible. But then I remember, anything is possible. I trained a cat.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  That was Gabby Roan. Gabby told this story at a Moth Grand Slam event in Detroit where we partnered with public radio station WDET. Gabby lives in Detroit and has simple loves: gardening, riding her bike, and drinking coffee. She told us that Ruby the Cat has passed on, but there were zero robberies under her watch.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  Next up is Elliot Higgins. Elliot told this story at an open mic Story Slam in Denver where we partner with public radio station KUNC. Here's Elliot.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Hi, everybody. My name's Elliot and this story is a celebration of my 25, no, my 45th year of anniversary of jumping out of an airplane in order to get into dental school. Now, let's go back to 1975 and I am a pre-med hippie at University of Oregon and I'm a junior spring term. And I desperately need another hour of A to pad my GPA. Now, a spring, or a pre-med hippie has, I had huge hair, I had a bitchin' hippie bead necklace and super cool bell-bottom corduroys and a let's-party attitude.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  So, I, uh, I was desperate for this A and, and all of the easy courses like Bowling 101 were taken. So, uh, you know, what am I supposed to do? And so, out of the blue, a miracle manifested itself by U of O's first ever offered, Skydiving 101 for college students. And, so, I mean, what's to think about? I sign up immediately, what's the big deal, man? You get a parachute. So, I... So, our jump master was, he looked like Gimbley from Lord of the Rings. He, he was a, he was a burly fella, about five foot one,

• 9:18Speaker 02

  bushy hair, bushy beard, uh, beady eyes, and he did not like... He was a serious man, and he did not like hippies, and we called him the Leaping Leprechaun.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  So, uh, class, our class met every, uh, Tuesday and Thursday night, and we'd meet at the wrestling gym and jump off of bleachers and practice our landing on the mats. So, I'd go pretty high and just have a frickin' blast and, you know, I'd, I'd pull off some really nice landings, tuck and roll, and come up pumping my hand and go, "Airborne all the way, sir!" And I would, I would, I would salute the leprechaun and then go, head back in the back of line, and I thought I was hilarious.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  So, uh, Wednesday afternoons, we met in the same gym and we practiced folding our, uh, parachutes. And these are the parachutes you're gonna fold, it's gonna be on your back, and you're gonna jump with it. So, those were, uh, No Weed Wednesdays.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  So now, so now after, after six weeks of our intense training, it's time to jump out of an airplane. And, uh, so as a, as a new jump cadet, you, you have to go up for an observation ride to make sure it's a good idea for said cadet. And so, they pile me in the back of a, a small plane. We get up to jump height, about 3,000 feet. Three people pile out of the, out of the, uh, airplane. That's when reality hit this hippie in the face like a pie. I'm going, "Holy shit, man." "I, I wanna go back to the gym and just jump off of, uh, the booters again."

• 11:13Speaker 02

  And so we land, and I just sprint to the jump shack, and I call my father on the payphone, and I go, "Dad, I mean, I'm in a pickle here." And, and so I listen, or he listens, and there's a, there's a fatherly pause, and he, uh, my father says very clearly, "Son, you get your ass on that plane and out of that plane, no excuses." And I mean, that was like, "Well, no help here." And just, just then, the leprechaun comes up to me and goes, "Well, are you, well, Mr. Airborne, are you gonna jump, or you chicken?" And I go, "I, I, I, I, I, I wanna be first out, I don't watch, it freaks me out." He goes, "All right, get your chute, let's go, you're holding up the show."

• 11:56Speaker 02

  And so I struggle into my chute, and I waddle after the leprechaun, and I I pile into the, pile into the, uh, plane last, 'cause I'm gonna be first out, and we are at 3,000 feet, way sooner than I wanna be. There's a bunch of yelling, they cut the engine, and the leprechaun turns to me and just goes, "But your feet out, get out and go." Well, I've never done this before, and it's windy out there, you know, and... So I turned to the leprechaun and I say, "Sir, I'm having a..." Boom! He stiff-arms me out of the plane. And you know, my first thought was, "Wow, I've just been thrown out of a plane." My second thought was, "I wasn't ready," and my third, there was no third thought, and whoa!

• 12:41Speaker 02

  My personally-packed parachute, deployed, beautiful, oh no! I had it wrapped wrongly around my, around my testicles, and it's like I'm floating to Earth on my testicles.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  And so, what's a hippie to do? I pull up on those risers and I'm doing a pull-up and I'm flying that chute everywhere. And I am zooming. And so, just then, the leprechaun comes flying by in one of those really cool parafill chutes, modern one, and all I heard was, "What the hell are you doing?"

• 13:20Speaker 02

  And all he heard was, "My ball!"

• 13:25Speaker 02

  And so, things are happening pretty fast, and, uh, and so now Mother Earth is rushing up to caress me in her womanly bosom.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  And I have, I mean, my balls are killing me, and I am, I am not going, I've abandoned all training, I'm flying the chute, and I just plant this baby, and so instead of a five-point landing tuck-and-roll, I did feet, knees, helmet, and, I mean, I had my bell rung so badly, I was seeing stars, and I'm struggling to get up, and I'm trying to manage my chute and, uh, get out of my, and, I deployed my federally-packed reserve chute. That is such a no-no. And the leprechaun comes roaring up and goes, "Well, Captain Airborne, it looks like you don't get an A.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to jump two more times to get that A." So I did, and I barely got into dental school.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  That was Elliot Higgins. Elliot says that he got into dental school by the skin of his teeth. And upon graduation, he was recruited to go to Southeast Asia and serve the expatriate community, which was a whole new world of friends and opportunities. He says 1982 to 1995 was a blast, and things continue to be a blast.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  In a moment, a medical intern finds herself in over her head when the Moth Radio Hour continues.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

• 15:39Speaker 03

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• 16:40Speaker 00

  This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison. In this episode, we're hearing stories of people facing down challenges that seem insurmountable. My current insurmountable challenge, maybe shared with some of you, is finding ways to bridge divides. This didn't used to be that difficult. Being friends, or family, or neighbors took precedence over our differences. But we have been transformed, mostly intentionally by outside forces, into focusing on our differences. The challenge is remembering that humanity should come first. And even though that seems obvious, it's a struggle to find our way back to it.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  That's the improbable mission I'm on every single day. If you're on it too, good luck to us. I'll say one thing, listening to other people's stories is a big help.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  So with that, our next story of obstacles comes from Dr. Danielle Ophry. Here she is, live at a show we produced in partnership with the World Science Festival in New York City.

• 17:51Speaker 04

  The most ominous day of the year, if you're becoming a doctor, is July 1st.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  On July 1st, everything turns over in the medical world. So medical students become doctors. They're now interns. Interns become residents. Residents are now fellows. Fellows become attendings. You're not supposed to remark on the bizarreness of being ratcheted up a notch at the stroke of midnight. No. On July 1st, you walk into your untested role, cool as a cucumber. And you act as though the world of June 30th and before never existed. Or as the interns say, "When in doubt, pretend." And so on June 30th, I was a measly medical student. And on July 1st, I was now one of those interns.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  I had been scheduled to start internship on night float, four weeks straight of night shift only. At 10 o'clock at night, I walked down First Avenue in the pitch darkness for my first day of internship.

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Now night float is supposed to be the direct continuation of medical care from the day teams. But as a night float intern, I had the patient load of four other interns, so this wasn't possible. My beeper never stopped. Mr. Rivera in 19th South needs a new IV. Mr. Soto in 16th East is having chest pain. Mrs. Ahmed in 17th North has a fever. Mr. Halal's daughter is here and wants to talk to a doctor. Mrs. Rashid fell out of bed. Mrs. Kwan's refusing her meds. Mr. Nolan's having a blood transfusion reaction. Mr. Rivera's IV is out again. And so, night float turned out to be 10 hours of damage control. I raced from one ward to the next, patching things up, putting out fires, just hoping

• 19:34Speaker 04

  to keep everyone alive until the sun came up over the East River and the day teams came back. So one night, in like my second week of night float, I get paged by my resident around 3, 4 o'clock in the morning. Alba Rodriguez's blood count just dropped 13 points. Get over to 16th North, do a rectal, see if she's bleeding from her gut. Now, you should know that in the human body, there are only a few places where you can bleed briskly enough to drop your maticre at 13 points, and the GI tract is the prime suspect. And if you bleed anywhere along that line, from the mouth to the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and rectum, there'll be traces of blood in the stool. So the way you check for a GI bleed is you get a stool sample, you put it on the card,

• 20:19Speaker 04

  and you put a few drops of the special developer fluid on it, and if it turns blue, that's blood. And the way you get a stool sample is you send an intern over to do a rectal exam. And so at this point in my career, I was very adept at taking orders. I didn't ask questions, I did what I was told. Mrs. Rodriguez was this tiny, wrinkled Dominican woman with layers and layers of family at the bedside. So I walk and say, "Hi, I'm one of the night docs. I'm not her regular doctor, but I'm just here to do the rectal."

• 20:55Speaker 04

  And I'm thinking, "Dr. Ophry, rectal specialist."

• 21:01Speaker 04

  And so the grandson steps forward, he says, "Well, we understand what you have to do, doctor. I'm actually a nurse, and if you don't mind, I want to stay with abuelita while you do the exam." "Stay while I do this?" And I'm thinking, "What is the protocol for this situation? I've been a doctor now for two whole weeks and I have no idea what to do when the family wants to stay." But I say, "Okay, you know, whatever." So the rest of the family goes out to the hallway. We pull the curtain for some privacy from the other three patients. The grandson and I roll Mrs. Rodriguez onto her left side, and I start disgorging my pockets: the gloves, the lubrication fluid, the test cards. And then I realize I'm missing the bottle of developer fluid.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  So I say to the grandson, "Can you just hold on for one second? I need to get one more thing." So I dashed out of the room, and I avoid the gaze of the family members there, and I run to the supply closet and start rifling through the shelves and the bins. No developer fluid. So I raced down the hall to 16 West to their supply closet, and of course, none there. All the other interns have pocketed them.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  The CCU. The cardiac care unit was always well-stocked, but I knew the nurses guarded their supplies like hawks, so I crept in from the back door of the CCU, where they keep the dirty laundry and the used bedpans, and I tiptoed over to the supply shelf. I start going through the shelves, and there's gauze pads, and IVs, and blood tubes, and culture bottles, and glycerin swabs, and Betadine swabs, and, ah! Right behind the chest tubes is a single, yellow bottle of developer fluid. And I snatch it, just as the nurse yells, "Hey, those are CCU supplies!" I cram it in my pocket, and I run out with my head down, because from the back, all interns look alike. Or so I hoped.

• 22:49Speaker 04

  So I get back to 16 North and I'm out of breath and I'm flustered and sweaty. And the grandson is still calmly balancing Mrs. Rodriguez on her left side. And so I undo the floral housecoat, the cardigan sweater, and the patient gown. I get down to her skin. And while I'm doing the exam, like a good nightfall intern, I'm running my scut list into my head. Alright, I've gotta do those blood cultures on 15 North, I've got to do the chest X-ray to follow up on 17 West, and, oh, that guy in 19 South keeps pulling out his IV. And so I'm doing the exam, running the scut list, and the grandson says, "I think that Abuelita is no longer with us." No longer with us?

• 23:31Speaker 04

  What was he talking about? With his free hand, the grandson crossed himself and murmured something in Spanish. And I'm still frozen in the middle of the exam. No longer with us? Mrs. Rodriguez is dead? The grandson sighed. Abuelita lived a long and wonderful life. She didn't want any heroic measures or machines, she just wanted to drift off in peace. "We just need you to pronounce her dead, doctor, and then we can take her home." And I'm staring at the grandson. Suddenly, my mind begins to race. I tear the glove off, and I'm thinking, "Okay, okay, how do I declare a patient dead?"

• 24:12Speaker 04

  And I'm running through the file cabinet in my head, thinking, "Okay, okay, ah, ah, pupillary reflexes, that's it." So I whip out my handy penlight and I shine to Mrs. Rodriguez's eyes. To my dismay, she has huge cataracts and probably wouldn't have had reflexes anyway. Okay, okay. Respirations, dead people do not breathe. And so I whip out my stethoscope. By now, the family is filtered in from the hallway, and they gather around and watch that I put in one earpiece and the other, and I plant the bell on her chest. And suddenly, a twitch vibrates through her body, and I jump it back. Was this rigor mortis? Or might she still be alive?

• 24:57Speaker 04

  Suddenly dawns on me that we never had a lecture in medical school on how to declare a patient dead. I guess it was assumed to be pretty obvious, dead is dead, and if you're not dead, then you're alive, right? Um, um, pulse, pulse, that is it. Dead people for sure do not have a pulse. And so I run my fingers along her left carotid and then along her right. Of course, the only way you know you found the pulse is when you've found the pulse. How do you document the absence of something when its presence is defined by hunting until you've found it?

• 25:42Speaker 04

  Maybe I was in the wrong spot, maybe I'm pressing too hard and not hard enough. So I'm supposed to go over her entire body to document the absence of a pulse? Another twitch runs through Mrs. Rodriguez's body, and the family's staring at me, waiting for an answer. But how can I say anything? What if I got it wrong? Okay, okay. An EKG, that's it. If I get a flat line on EKG, nobody could argue with that. So I run out and get the EKG machine and wheel it back in. These old decrepit EKG machines that Bellevue had, you know, all the leads are tangled up, and these old machines have these red rubber suction cups to put on the chest, and when

• 26:23Speaker 04

  you squeeze them, electro jelly from EKG has gone by, slithers out in crusted blue clubs. And Mrs. Rodriguez, the skinny little woman, doesn't have much bulk on her chest for the suction cups to stay onto, so I'd squeeze one on, and another one would pop off. And so I'd apply more jelly and put it on, another one would pop off, back and forth, and the family is like watching like a tennis match, back and forth as I'm chasing down the obstreper's suction cups. Finally, finally, I get the EKG set up, all the chest leads, all the limb leads, and I press the start button. And we all stare at this skinny strip of graph paper that's staking out of the EKG

• 27:07Speaker 04

  machine, and I'm praying for something definitive. It emerges with completely unreadable squiggles. Between the rattling air vents and three IV pumps, the next bed over, I can't get a stable baseline, and I readjust the leads and two more suction cups pop off.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  The grandson curls his hand around his grandmother's wrists and he says, "She's dead, doctor. You don't have to do any more tests." The family joins hands and begins to pray in Spanish. And I'm standing there with EKG jelly crusted under my fingernails, burning with embarrassment. How could I not figure out whether or not Mrs. Rodriguez was dead? Isn't that what doctors do? Pronounce the time of death? How could I ever be a doctor if I couldn't tell a dead person from a live one?

• 28:02Speaker 04

  How, how could there exist so much to be ignorant of?

• 28:09Speaker 04

  When were these magical medical skills going to materialize? And what was I going to write on the death certificate as the immediate cause of death?

• 28:20Speaker 04

  The sun came up over the East River as it always does, even after the longest, hardest night of night float. And as I'm signing out to the day teams, I'm thinking about Mrs. Rodriguez. And I imagine her as a young woman, a fresh immigrant right off the boat to New York. And maybe she came to Bellevue every year for her annual checkup. Maybe she had her children at Bellevue. Maybe she thought she would die at Bellevue. Wherever she was, I hoped she forgave me for the indignity she suffered at the hands of an inexperienced intern. Now, most of us, when we go home at the end of the day, it's the end of the day. The light is falling, twilight's coming, dusk.

• 29:02Speaker 04

  But when you work at night, the end of the day, it's a brilliant morning sun. And I did night float the month of July. And so, it was so bright. I remember I would go home every morning like this with my eyes covered.

• 29:16Speaker 04

  And when I look back at that time now, I realize that I spent so much of my medical training with my eyes closed. Medicine, learning medicine is so internally focused, cramming in all those facts, all those diseases. I always had my head in a book.

• 29:33Speaker 04

  But one of the things about becoming a doctor is that you need to open your eyes. You need to open your eyes to the world around us, to the experiences that teach us medicine. But our truest teachers are our patients and their families, whose lives and experiences we are so, so privileged to be a part of. Thank you.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  That was Danielle Ophir. Danielle is still a doctor at Bellevue Hospital. She's co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bellevue Literary Review, which is celebrating its 25th year of publishing creative writing about health, illness, and healing. Her latest book is "When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error." When we asked Danielle what near impossible task she's facing these days, she said, "I recently joined an orchestra. It's like jumping in the deep end of the pool with your cello and hoping you can keep your head above those thousands of notes swirling around."

• 30:41Speaker 00

  She wrote an article about it, which you can find at themoth.org, along with photos of Danielle in her roles as a cellist, a doctor, and an editor-in-chief. In a moment, a woman contemplates the difficulty of eating mangoes, and a man faces off with a refrigerator when The Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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• 32:25Speaker 00

  This is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison. In this show, stories of struggling with obstacles with mixed results. Our next story is from Wendy Irwin. She told this at a grand slam at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. Here's Wendy.

• 32:51Speaker 05

  Good evening.

• 32:55Speaker 05

  Give me a second.

• 32:59Speaker 05

  I'm with you. Growing up in the seventies, an interesting time when you are the middle child of 11.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  I lived with an excitable Caribbean family. And the thing that brought them joy, the thing that brought them to paroxysms of happiness, was mangoes.

• 33:29Speaker 05

  I had an aunt, my aunt Maudie, and she became our resource investigator. She was the person that scoured markets up and down London, every inch, every store, every space was upturned and investigated because she brought back the mangoes. And it was generally on a Saturday during World of Sport, she would announce the mangoes from the front gate and we'd all crowd round. Except Aunt Maudie wasn't that good at the kind of mango getting. Like, she had one job and she messed it up. It was like the mangoes that she'd got couldn't survive the middle passage between where they actually grew

• 34:13Speaker 05

  and where they were supposed to be eaten. They tasted of despair, desperation, not one thing good. And so, when the rest of the family was crowding around Aunt Maudie, I realised I just didn't like mangoes. And, yes, I hear this, just, "How dare you!" "I dare." "I'm a black woman that just did not like mangoes. Forgive me." So Aunt Maudie would be in the centre, you know, she'd be blocking out World of Sport when Giant Haystacks was gonna do his thing. And I would just hang back because I just preferred the crunch of an apple. And I think it irritated her.

• 34:56Speaker 05

  It was her moment in the sun. And one day she says to me, "You, Wendy, if you can't eat mangoes, what are you gonna do with your life? If you can't eat a mango, means that you can't do hard things."

• 35:21Speaker 05

  And you know what? In that moment, as she pointed at me, and it must have been something about the light, because it just glistened off her bracelets. And it must have been something about the length of her fingers that seemed pretty naturally long at age five, and the rings that glittered. But I somehow took on that identity. I don't do hard things. And that worked for a long, long time. It meant that I could avoid tough things, like disagreement, like a job that I just wasn't feeling, a relationship that just had outlived its purpose. I didn't do tough things. And it worked.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  So, roll forward a couple of decades later, and it is the coldest, it's the coldest day in November that I have ever experienced. And I'm sitting in a doctor's office, when in fact I'm in a hospital, and I'm sitting on a really uncomfortable chair. My bladder is full, and I am debating whether or not I can, I can go to the toilet and risk being traumatised by the mess people have left in there. And I realise I can't. But let me go back eight weeks from that day, when I met a person that I now call Miss Maudie. And Miss Maudie, let me be clear,

• 36:48Speaker 05

  is a thin fibrous lump of tissue that I find in my left breast. A hard thing, in every sense. And at that moment, I do what I've always done with hard things: I ignore. And so I ignored her for eight weeks. She just wasn't there. And then for a further seven weeks, I did the other thing that I do: I pleaded, I begged. Maybe if you don't get any bigger, or maybe if you wouldn't mind just disappearing because you weren't there last month. Miss Maudie has other ideas. One night, she says, "I'm just gonna do a little dance,

• 37:32Speaker 05

  make a little love to the healthy cells in your breast, and multiply with my malignancy tonight." That pain was so bad, it took me to A and E. And in that A and E trip, I ended up having an ultrasound. And that ultrasound then led to a biopsy. And that biopsy then led to an MRI. And that led to this moment in that office, where that oncologist tells me, "I am so sorry, Wendy, but it is breast cancer." And I recognise that I have lived long enough to see those odds shorten, from one in a hundred to one in ten, now one in two, now me.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  And the weirdest thing is, is that I find myself saying, as the oncologist says, "Have you thought about freezing your eggs?" I find myself saying out loud the stuff I'm thinking, like, "I have never had, to my knowledge, knowingly eaten a frozen egg. And what are they like with avocados? Is that something we could maybe talk about, you know?" And the oncologist laughs, and the nurse laughs, and I laugh. And I realise, actually, we've got to go to work on Maudie. So Maudie and I fight. And what really levels up the odds is this beautiful, wicked, brutal thing called chemotherapy. It enters the ring, takes both of us out.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  I am the only one left standing.

• 39:06Speaker 05

  What I have learnt is that chemotherapy gave me some brand-new taste buds. And yesterday, I tried a mango for the first time.

• 39:20Speaker 05

  It tasted like joy, and it smelt like the best part of summer. You know those days when it's 24 degrees, cloudless, and everyone looks good? I ate that mango. I gave thanks. And my name is Wendy Irwin. I can do hard things. Thank you.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Wendy Irwin lives in East London and has an ongoing love affair with homemade butter and feminist theory. Wendy spends far too much time, she says, making preparations for the impending zombie apocalypse. Story update: Wendy is happy to report that she has since discovered that there isn't a mango she doesn't like, and she remains cancer-free and grateful.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  Our final story comes from Brian Kett, who told this at a Chicago Story Slam, where we partner with public radio station WBEZ. Live from The Moth, here's Brian.

• 40:39Speaker 06

  Hi. Uh, last year, I was looking for work. I was out of work, and I kept thinking of that old joke: "What's the difference between a pizza and someone with a liberal arts degree?" The answer being that the pizza can actually feed a family of four.

• 41:03Speaker 06

  I'm single, but that's just a joke. I don't have a... No one... There are no mouths to feed at home. But, uh, every work opportunity I had would fall through, and I became so frustrated and defeated that I couldn't even bring myself to sit down and follow up on my next job lead. So I left my apartment, I went for a walk. I thought that would help. And I was out walking when I came upon all these cars honking and driving around this station wagon in the middle of the road, and its hatchback was up. And next to it were these two guys who kinda looked like the old man Muppets that sit in the balcony and make fun of everyone. And they were speaking in Russian, and they kept gesturing to this refrigerator, covered in magnets, that was sitting on the curb. And it's clear they were trying to move the fridge into the back of the station wagon, and it was a tight squeeze, because the fridge was huge, right?

• 41:48Speaker 06

  It's the size of a fridge.

• 41:53Speaker 06

  The two of them had these expressions that looked so sad. They looked like those animals that Sarah McLachlan sings about in those commercials.

• 42:03Speaker 06

  And I was gonna keep walking, but I got stuck waiting for the light to change. So, it was like McLachlan commercial was on, and I couldn't switch the channel. And I became so overwhelmed with just emotion and guilt and just empathy. I turned to them, I said, "You guys need a hand?" And they just looked at me. And so I mimed lifting the fridge, and they began nodding enthusiastically because it turns out I'm a great mime. And so, the three of us lifted up this fridge, and we tried to slide it into the back of the station wagon. It didn't fit, like, but barely, but didn't fit. We set it down, and I thought, "Okay, I'm done." And then one of the muppets, he pulled out this wrench. It's the biggest wrench I've ever seen, I don't know where it came from. And he began using it to try to take off the refrigerator door to get a little bit of extra clearance.

• 42:43Speaker 06

  And now I couldn't bail, because we were all in this together, and we were on to phase two. And so, for the next 20 minutes, I watched this guy try to take off this door, but the bolts on the door were so rusted, you need like a blowtorch to get them off. By now, the cars are honking more and more, and I came to my senses, I thought like, "What am I, what am I doing?" And so, I turned to the guys, I said, "Hey, listen, good luck, I'm gonna go." And I turned to walk away, and as I was walking away, I heard something in their voices. And I didn't know what they were saying, but there was a tone that I recognized, because it was a tone that I had been using a lot myself lately. Both of them were clearly very frustrated and defeated, too. And in that moment, I really saw myself in both those guys.

• 43:28Speaker 06

  And something inside me just kinda snapped. And in desperate need of a victory of my own, I, I, I whirled around, I said, "No."

• 43:38Speaker 06

  And they looked at me, a little alarmed, and I said, "We're gonna rotate it." And they stared at me, and I'm going, "We're gonna rotate." And I imitated turning the fridge on its side, because again, you're a great mime. And so... We all gathered around and I was at the base of it. And we picked this thing up, I was at the base of it by myself. And we tipped it on its side. The refrigerator door flopped open, hit the pavement. The shelves inside the fridge slid out into oncoming traffic. So now the cars are honking like crazy, there's a big backup. When the door hit the ground, all the magnets popped off. And they just scattered everywhere, like cockroaches. It was just, it was instant pandemonium. And if that wasn't enough, when the door opened, there was a sudden shift in weight. And to maintain my grip, I lurch forward. And when I did so, my back went out.

• 44:23Speaker 06

  And as these pains are shooting down my spine and into my leg, I think, "Yeah, okay, this is it. This is how I die."

• 44:31Speaker 06

  Middle of the street, I just, I just wanted to go for a walk.

• 44:35Speaker 06

  So we set the fridge down. My shirt is soaked through with sweat. And then out of nowhere, this woman appeared. I think it was her fridge, I don't know. And she starts yelling at the two guys, they start giving it right back to her. And all I can do is just hobble off to the side of the road and sit down on the curb. And I felt terrible. Not just because of my back, but because this. Like everything else I had been trying lately, was a total failure. And I must have seemed pretty upset, because the woman saw me. And then she gave the guys a look that said, "Why does this guy care so much about my fridge?"

• 45:10Speaker 06

  And so...

• 45:16Speaker 06

  The three of them are sitting there and they're talking with one another. And I just sat on the curb, just reflecting on the futility of life. And I was sitting there doing that until she came over. And she put her hand on my shoulder. And she said, "Thank you for trying. Means a lot." And while her words didn't fix my back, or the fridge that I probably broke, they really did make a difference, because she was right. Right? And trying is a victory in and of itself, regardless of outcome. Because some days, yeah, you might not get the fridge in the back of the station wagon. And some days, you might throw out your back in the middle of rush hour. But if you keep trying, there might just be a day where it all works out. And so I hobbled home.

• 46:00Speaker 06

  And when I got home, the first thing I did was Google what a herniated disc feels like.

• 46:07Speaker 06

  And then reflecting upon what that woman said, I pulled up that next job lead. And I tried again. Thanks.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  That was Brian Ket. Brian tells us that after this experience, whenever he's moved, he's hired professionals. Brian is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter who has pilot projects in development here and in Australia, which means he gets time zone conversions wrong a lot. Brian's pastimes include hunting for mid-century furniture, fly fishing, and getting stuck on a crossword puzzle. We asked Brian what improbable task he's currently attempting, and he said, "I'm trying to teach our dog Mochi how to sick. I went into the process with such naive optimism, but she's seemingly unable to grasp the concept.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  She remains unbothered, unseated, and an absolute delight." To see photos and find out more about any of our storytellers here, you can go to themoth.org. And while you're there, have you ever felt like you have a story you'd like to tell us about huge obstacles, or small ones, or whatever makes a great story? You can pitch it right on our site, that's themoth.org, or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-M-O-T-H.

• 47:33Speaker 07

  My name is Lisa Stumpf. I live in Andover, Massachusetts, and this is my story. On New Year's Eve in 2009, I went to my ring box to put on my engagement ring, and to my horror, I realized that I had lost the ring at some point during the previous seven days. The ring was expensive and had belonged to my husband's grandmother, and I was devastated. So I went on this quest to see if there was anything I could do to find this ring, and I did get a little obsessive. I filed a police report. I placed ads in the paper and on Craigslist. I bought a metal detector. I went to a hypnotist.

• 48:15Speaker 07

  I searched for this ring everywhere I could think of. I put up posters in all the places I had been. I talked to everybody. I just did everything I could. I was getting a little discouraged, but there had been a lot of snow that year. And I thought maybe when the snow piles melted at the edges of these parking lots where I had been, that maybe I could find it. So one day in March, there was so much rain that the schools were closed that day. And I had all the kids in the car and I went to the supermarket. And I went over to this big snow pile near where I had parked my car. And I looked down and I saw something shiny and I got out of the car and I went over to it. And it was a diamond ring and I was so excited and I leaned over and I picked it up and oh,

• 49:00Speaker 07

  I was so disappointed. I had found a diamond ring, but it wasn't mine. But then, you know, I got a little encouraged, so I thought maybe I'd find the owner. So then I realized this wasn't going to be easy to find the owner of this ring. And I went through this incredible quest and I ended up featured on the front cover of the local newspaper and then the radio stations called me and the TV stations called me. And I was on the news and it was all very embarrassing, but very exciting and exhilarating. And I eventually did find the owner. And I was humbled to find that she thought I was crazy. And she had replaced her ring a long time ago and she was sort of grateful to have it back, but thought I was a nutcase.

• 49:44Speaker 07

  And I, I think that gave me the closure I needed to replace my own ring and leave it behind me. Thank you.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Remember you can pitch us. Find out all about how to do it at themoth.org. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.

• 50:24Speaker 00

  This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced and hosted by me, Jay Allison. Co-producer is Vicky Merrick, associate producer Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Catherine Burns, with additional Grand Slam coaching by Sarah Austin Jenness and Larry Rosen. The Moth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Klucze, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinali, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Teller, Suzanne Rust, Sarah Jane Johnson, and Patricia Uraina. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour is from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  Podcast music, production support from Davy Sumner. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Special thanks to our friends at Odyssey, including executive producer Leah Reese Dennis. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story, and to learn all about The Moth, go to our website, themoth.org.