Episode Details

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Scrambled Eggs & Ham Podcast
Host: Bill Clark
Guest: Trebs Thompson

Transcript

Bill Clark:
Good morning. Good morning to you, listeners. My name is Bill Clark, and I'm the host of the Scrambled Eggs & Ham podcast. Welcome back to the Scrambled Eggs & Ham podcast.

This is a very important episode. It's called After the Fall: Trebs Thompson on Cancer, Creativity, and the Will to Live.

Trebs has been on the Scrambled Eggs & Ham podcast before. Her story is important because it reminds us that serious illness can enter a life that is already full, crazy, and complicated.

Trebs is an artist. She's a farmer, a comedy writer, and an improv performer. She has already faced major challenges in her life, including vision loss. Then, after a fall, she learned that she had cancer.

What makes this story powerful is not only how the cancer was discovered. It is what happens when a person who has already had to adapt is asked to adapt again.

This episode is about paying attention to your body, about how one unpredictable event can reveal something much larger, and about refusing to let your diagnosis become your entire identity.

Trebs is still creating. She's still laughing, still thinking deeply about the world, and still moving forward.

That is why her story matters.

This morning, welcome back, Trebs.

Trebs Thompson:
Thank you, Bill. Good to talk to you again.

Bill:
The last time we spoke, you shared your journey with vision loss. I think the abbreviation was MacTel?

Trebs:
Macular telangiectasia type 2. It is a blinding disease, and that was a bitter pill to swallow. But there's been more since.

Bill:
Since then, life has taken another unexpected turn. Take us back to the fall. Can you share a little bit about what happened?

Trebs:
Last summer, I saw these little pantry moths—you know, the kind you get when you have a box of grain that's just been there too long.

I got up on this little footstool and I was digging around up in my baking cupboard. My boyfriend said to me, "Hey, I'm a little taller than you. Let me get up there and find it."

So I went to step off the stool, and it tipped over backward on me.

I'd have probably been okay, but I stepped into the dog's water bowl. It went one way, and I went the other way, and I ended up on the floor.

It was the most searing, god-awful pain in my hip.

I said, "Anthony, I think I've broken my hip."

He got me up and onto the sofa. We put ice on it. I took Tylenol. I waited a few hours. I took Motrin. I put hot water on it. I lay down. I just could not get comfortable.

Around three o'clock in the morning, I said, "I can't stand it. I want to go to the emergency room."

We're sitting at the end of my driveway. We have a couple of options out here, and I was like, "I want to go to the big hospital."

He's like, "We'll be there until tomorrow. It'll take forever."

And I was like, "I know, but I just hear this voice. I want to go to the main emergency room."

So he drove me over there, and they weren't terribly busy. It was amazing.

Immediately this really nice doctor came out and gave me a shot of Toradol. Interestingly enough, after that, the hip never hurt me again.

He said, "We'll get an X-ray."

They took me for the X-ray, and when they came back, he told Anthony, "Her hip is not broken, but I see a shadow I don't like, and we're going to get a scan."

So they sent me back for a scan.

When it came back, he said, "This is my first night in emergency. I'm a new doctor here, but I think you have some kind of tumor, and we're going to