Resurface Podcast

In this episode, we shift the tone and sit down for a lighter conversation built around questions we have never asked each other before. After sharing some heavy experiences in recent episodes, this one is intentionally different, offering space for curiosity, humor, and connection without revisiting crisis or trauma. We take turns answering a mix of thoughtful, playful, and unexpected questions a...

Surviving the seizure wasn’t the end. In this episode, we pick up inside the hospital after our four-year-old was rushed in following a prolonged, life-threatening seizure. This episode covers what came next, including the hours of waiting, the uncertainty inside the ER, and Stephen’s drive across state lines from Georgia to Alabama to reach our daughter after learning how serious the emergency ha...

At 4:45 AM my teenager shook me awake. Mila was seizing, her lips were blue, and the 911 call wouldn't go through. Part 1 of the night our four-year-old's first seizure became a fight for her life. Mila went into tonic-clonic status epilepticus while Stephen was out of town, and what followed was a failed 911 call, a 17-minute rural response time, oxygen levels in the 70s, and rescue medic...

A routine pain block left me with a spinal fluid leak. The ER waved it off as anxiety, fever and all, while I couldn't lift my own daughter. This is the third of four medical emergencies our family faced in under five years. Thirty days after Stephen's stroke and carotid surgery, Rachel developed a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak after a routine epidural pain block, then spent months workin...

He was 37 and in the best shape of his life. The first sign something was wrong: he couldn't find his wife's name in his phone. On a Tuesday night in October 2024, Stephen had a stroke playing basketball. He was 37 and in the best shape of his life. In this episode we walk through the warning signs his best friend Zach caught first, the missed stroke code that cost us the 4-hour treatment...

This episode is the story of our youngest daughter's birth, which began as a planned induction and quickly escalated into a stat C-section. From the moment of delivery, nothing unfolded as expected. Mila was born in critical condition and required immediate, prolonged resuscitation before being transferred to the NICU for intensive care. We talk about what Stephen experienced inside the operat...

In this first episode of Resurface, we introduce ourselves and explain why we created this podcast. We briefly outline the major events that reshaped our family, including a stroke, a seizure, and the medical trauma that followed, and how those experiences changed our perspective on marriage, work, and everyday life. Rather than going deep into each crisis, this episode focuses on who we were befo...