Welcome to the Butcher Shop

The host of the podcast, Carrie O'Neil-Yen, welcomes listeners to the first episode, expressing her hopes to provide encouragement, fun, and wisdom. She shares her own experiences and offers insight into healing for those who may have gone through various challenges such as loss, fertility treatments, autoimmune disorders, hearing loss, addiction, and more. Carrie talks about how she prayed for a testimony at 17 and later developed unexplained hearing loss, leading to medical tests and eventually a diagnosis of Chiari Malformation Type 1. She invites listeners to join her for the next episode to learn more about her journey with this condition and offers to connect with anyone seeking information or support. Hi podcast listeners, this is Carrie O'Neil-Yen, let's let her minister, and I want to formally welcome you to the very first episode of what I hope is a lot of encouragement, a lot of fun, and a lot of wisdom. I don't know, I feel like that word is pretty strong and maybe I mean something that's a little bit more down to earth. Maybe this podcast is humbling for you, like it's humbling for me right now, it's completely completely out of my comfort zone. So I appreciate the fact that if you're listening, if you make it through this very first episode of what I feel like is just going to be a butcher shop, just thank you for listening and know that you are appreciated from the bottom of my heart. This podcast has been something I've prayed about for a while, I didn't know where to get started, I didn't know what to say, and I still don't, so things may not make sense sometimes. It is what it is, as human, I don't know what else to say, but I am really looking forward to sharing my year's worth of testimony with you guys, whoever may be listening, and offer some insight into healing. Maybe you've lost a baby, maybe you've had to go through fertility treatments, maybe you have an autoimmune disorder, disease, maybe you have hearing loss, maybe you, I don't know, maybe you moved to a new state and you had no friends and no family there and you just felt so alone, maybe you've helped somebody with addiction, there are so many things that I am prepared to talk about in each episode, and I can't wait to just dive in and share what I've gone through so that you may feel a little less, just a little less of anything, really, and I could start off by telling you that I intentionally prayed for a testimony at the age of 17, late age of 17. I was saved when I was 8 years old at Vacation Bible School, Delwood Park Baptist Church, and I remember thinking, I just want to be different, I just want to be different, I want there to be something different about me, I want more people to look at me to say, she has less than I don't, how do I get that? So at the age of 17, almost 18, I was just lying in bed at night, I had school the next morning, and when I say school, I mean I had school, I had cheer, I had volleyball, I had track, you know, I loved just being involved, so it was hard to get my mind to stop racing most nights, but just preparing for the next day's schedule, and you know, wondering what it was going to be like, what I was going to wear, how I was going to wear my hair, you know, what boy was going to talk to me, typical 17 year old stuff, but I remember this one night very specifically, I cried out, God, just give me a testimony, set me apart, I am willing to be a vessel, I am willing to advocate, I am willing to do whatever you have called me to do, use me, and I fell asleep peacefully that night, and several nights after that, but whenever I turned 18 and graduated high school, and I graduated in May, I started to have symptoms that just did not make sense, one morning I didn't wake up to my alarm, which is very unusual, I am not a morning person by any means, coffee is the answer to everything, but generally I can get up after one or two alarms, and I just did not do that that morning, my mom called me from downstairs, she said, why did you not get up, you are late, and I just simply did not hear my alarm, this happened a couple more times, and it started to be a concern, so I went to my primary care doctor, who thought maybe it was just a sinus infection, there was drainage in my ears, whatever, we just chalked it up as a sickness, when that sickness did not go away, when I continued to miss alarms, when I continued to squint at people because I could not understand what they were saying, I was asking them to repeat things several times, I had started college, and I knew that I was missing huge chunks of information that my professors were discussing at the front of the class, and I could not piece this stuff together, called my primary care doctor, he got me on with an ENT, and this ENT realized that I had lost hearing in both ears, completely unexplained, completely unexpected, and completely unpredictable, so from that point, I was referred out to doctors in Dallas, Texas, several doctors, not just one, several doctors, to see about cancer, to see about autoimmune disorders, to see about vertigo, I mean, just like the most bizarre things, but some of the most simple things as well, I mean, if you can think of any test that is out there that could be done to somebody, it was done, I remember doing some type of gravity test, and I freaked out over a gravity test, more than I did anything else, but I was on this board, on my back, had my arms out like I was on a stretcher, completely tied down, and they were testing to see what made me flinch, who does that, it just did not make sense to me, long story short, in the midst of this chaos, in the midst of the unknown, I felt at peace, I mean there was literally a circus going on around me, and I just remember thinking, this is what I prayed for, this is exactly what I prayed for, okay God, I see you, I see what you're doing, but what, what's next, I don't, I was trying to piece this puzzle together when I'm literally looking at minute pieces, not the big picture, I have no more details than what is sitting right in front of me, and I just remember the back and forth trips, and it just looked like worry on my parents' faces, and I could not understand why in the heck they were worried, like, so what, it's hearing loss, and I remember her distinctly telling my father, he came upstairs to my bathroom one day, I remember I was getting ready, and he had tears in his eyes, and he said, Carrie, I feel like this is my fault, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry I did this to you, and I looked him directly in the eyes and said, Dad, this is just like the poor eyesight you gave me, thanks for that, why haven't you ever apologized for, you know, giving me crappy vision, glasses fix my eyes, contacts fix my eyes, hearing loss can be fixed too, and I believe that, I firmly, firmly believe that. I went on to have an MRI that on October 31st, the results were released to me, I was at the college, we were doing a spook night, and my mom called me, she said, Carrie, I need you to sit down, so I found this curb, don't even know where it came from, pretty sure I probably tripped over it, sat down on the phone, and I said, okay, just hand it to me, just give it to me like it is, what's going on, my mom said, Carrie, you have a brain malformation called Chiari Malformation Type 1, I said, what, Chiari Malformation Type 1, what in the world, okay, I thought I just had hearing loss, but now you're telling me that I have a brain malformation, what the heck is going on here, what is this, where are we going, okay, God, I need you to step in, I prayed for a testimony, not for a brain malformation, surely enough, I started to experience the symptoms that came along with Chiari Brain Malformation Type 1, and I will discuss that on Episode 2, I hope you join me, I hope you come back, I hope you tell your friends, and I really hope that if you know somebody with Chiari Malformation Type 1, you tell them to get on here and listen to Let Her Minister, I did not, spoiler alert, go through the decompression surgery, but I do have a dear friend that did, and I would be more than happy to connect anybody that needs information about this malformation, what to do, how to go about getting help, please find me on Facebook, Cari O'Neillian, C-A-R-I-O-N-E-L-L-I-O-N, let's get connected, and remember, Jesus loves you, Let Her Minister.