Catherine Ogie, Author of Unshakable | The Jeff Crilley Show

On this episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, host Jeff Crilley sits down with Catherine Ogie, author of the bestselling book Unshakable and recipient of the U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award. Catherine recounts her harrowing health crisis that began in October 2022, when she was diagnosed with blood clots in her heart and lungs, three blocked arteries, and an ejection fraction below 15%....

Show Notes

Doctors told Catherine Ogie she had a 15% chance of survival. Blood clots in her heart and lungs, three blocked arteries, stomach paralysis—her body was shutting down. She refused surgery and bet everything on faith, lifestyle changes, and becoming her own fiercest health advocate.

Catherine Ogie is the author of the bestselling book Unshakable and a U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. On this episode, she walks Jeff Crilley through the full timeline of her health crisis, starting from the October 2022 emergency room visit where she learned she'd already had a heart attack without knowing it.

What this episode covers:
– The cascade of diagnoses: heart failure, blood clots, esophageal thinning, and stomach paralysis
– How switching to UT Southwestern and Dr. Araj may have saved her life when he flagged her medications as harmful
– The role of forgiveness, grounding, Nigerian food cravings, and worship in her recovery
– Getting fired from her job of 16 years—and getting it back 30 minutes later
– Why she wrote Unshakable and what she wants readers to take from it

Connect with Catherine Ogie: https://www.facebook.com/people/Catherine-Ogie/100009199241811/

What is The Jeff Crilley Show?

Jeff Crilley is a former news reporter, who spent more than 25 years in newsrooms across the country. He’s an Emmy Award winning journalist, who decided to make the jump from news in 2008, when he founded his own PR Firm, Real News Public Relations.

Today, the firm has more than 100 clients, and Jeff continues to tell the stories of interesting people he meets along the way.

These are those stories.

Coming up next on the Jeff Crilley Show, you're gonna meet a remarkable young lady. She had a near death experience, but she found through faith, she's unshakable. Her journey just ahead. Watched a burglar in his home this morning by webcam. As a journalist of over twenty five years, stories are what make my world turn. Reporting live from The Dallas Newsroom tonight, Jeff Crilley, Fox four news. But in 2008, I took the jump from my familiar life and started a PR firm from my home. We're talking about anyone with a camcorder like the one I'm using becomes television network. We started slowly growing the company and we now have over a 100 clients and we've branched into the world of live digital broadcasting. I now own eight different TV studios and have a huge team and the stories that I now get to share are sometimes the most important of my life. Life has a funny way of coming around full circle. This is The Jeff Crilley Show. Well, I'm so excited about my next guest. She had a near death experience. Doctors gave her a fifteen percent chance to live. She did not get surgery. She leaned into her faith and that's why she wrote this bestselling book, Unshakable. I wanna talk to her right now. Catherine Ogie is the author. Why don't you tell a little bit about your health journey? Okay. So, yeah. So it was 10/15/2022 to be exact. I had planned to go on a vacation with my daughter. She was 19 at the time. But we went out to lunch. When I came back, I was struggling. I was delivering to breathe. I knew that I was not feeling well. And so first thought was, let me go ahead and call the, I called the teledoc. So I didn't want to go to the hospital. But my boss at the time was like, Miss Ogie, you're not looking well. Before you get on the plane, go see it. Go check yourself out. So I called the teledoc after about thirty, forty five minutes conversation with her. She said, Miss Ogie, you need to go to the emergency room tonight for Saturday the fifteenth or first thing tomorrow morning. And she said, the symptoms you're describing is that of an ejection fraction. No, that of, I'm sorry, PFJ. Okay, and your body was shutting down. It was shutting down. And so, I got off the phone from her, I knew then that if I were to close my eyes at night, I probably wouldn't open up in the morning. Wow. So, I called my daughter and I drove myself to the emergency room. Thank God, which is about eight minutes drive. Got to the emergency room, they checked me in, and after they did my EKG, then I said, You must have had a heart attack. And I was like, When? I mean, I know I've been feeling sick but I didn't know I was that sick. So they did all the tests and then they checked me in and they called the doctor to come in. So after taking more CAT scan tests, then they all said that I had blood clots in my heart and lungs. They said my blood sugar was 300 and sure. Yes, so they put me into the room and then they now call for an And they now took me to Presbyterian Hospital the next morning at six in the morning. When I got there, of course, to do their own test was the same thing. My ejection fraction was low, below 15%, they said. And they said I had a large liver, a large heart, I'm sorry, inflamed liver. And then they kept me for like seven days. So then I had an angiogram and they said three of my arteries were blocked. Wow. Yes, and then now fitted me with a heart defibrillator. Yes. Because my heart was not functioning well. And they sent me home. I got home, I was like, okay, I'm gonna be okay. But of course they gave me a bunch of medications. At that point I called my pastor and I said, Hey, this is what's going on. So while he was praying for me, I said out of my mouth, I said, My name shall be called Catherine Newheart because God will give me a new heart. I just said it. I was expecting it to happen the next day, but no it didn't happen like that. No, that didn't happen. You know, I kept going and then, but along the lines, felt like I was getting worse. So I found other solutions and now called UT Southwestern. They were able to see me even though it was in between, it was December 28 that I saw them between Christmas and New Year. I don't know how they were able to get me in. Got in there and I met Doctor. Araj. He still wrote him with a pad and pencils, so he took time to listen to my situation and he put a line on all the medication and he said, This will kill you. This medication is not too strong for you. Wow. And so, he recommended new ones. But I was, of course I was working hard, insurance. The nurse came in and said, you know what Miss Ogie, we're going to give you coupons to get all this, the right medications at zero cost. Then I knew that God was really working with me, setting everything in motion. Of course I got on, but it was a whole year. It felt like I was progressively getting worse. So after a while, I couldn't swallow. Even if I took my pill, it get stuck on my throat. So they said I had esophagus. Yeah. Esophageal thinning. Yeah. Then I got worse. Then I began to have an extended my stomach was like I was four months pregnant. Just in so much pain. Went to a specialist and they said I had stomach paralysis because my food would not digest. I could eat in the morning and it would just stay around my chest all day. On and on, so I began to seek the Lord, what do I do? I need to pray, so my house became my sanctuary. Scriptures on my mirror, everywhere I went, and I had my headphone on. Because when you go into the hospital and you hear all these facts that they tell you, they are facts, but it does something to your mind. So I had to counter all of that with the word of God. So I walked around with my headset and I kept my job by the way. Because I need my insurance. Yes. And I didn't feel like I was supposed to not work, but it was hard going to work every day, driving downtown Dallas. I live in Plano by the way, to to the south part of Dallas. 09/09/2023, my my job fired me because I told my boss that I had only a 50% chance to live. That was the doctor's prediction. That was on Father's Day, 06/18/2023 was when they told me that. I was like, well, thank you. Cause I told God I didn't want surgery. I'm not saying you should not have surgery, I said God, I want you to heal me but I don't want surgery. I went home and I got on my knees, God what do I do? And he told me very clear, I need you to forgive. That was my first set of instructions. But I thought I'd forgiven but I had like, okay, so I don't want to get too close, I don't want any more drama. But he said, no, I need you to forgive totally. With tears in my eyes, I made a phone call, but God was not just working with me, also working on them and they called me back, I'm so sorry for what I did. So I blessed them, they prayed for me, and I can tell you, a few weeks after that I went to the nutritionist and he had me to get on the scale and he said, Ogie, you gained one pound. One pound was like Hallelujah. Up until then I was losing weight progressively. But of course I began to seek the Lord for what my next steps were. I had a dream where I was given a set of keys. The keys were in my wallet. In my interpretation it meant that whatever I needed was close to me, was affordable because it was in my wallet. And God began to show me, of course I had to do a total lifestyle change. I was not, okay I didn't care for food, I don't like eating because I'm a workaholic. Yes. So, I'll choose work over food, but then God told me to start eating. Of course, I changed my diet. I couldn't swallow to begin with, so I have to blend whatever I had to eat. I thought I was gluten intolerant, I couldn't swallow, no wheat, nothing. So my food was really limited. You know, I began to just seek God and a friend of mine called me and said, Cathy, I know you're not feeling well. You know, there's something called grounding. She said, try it out. I researched it and I out to my backyard. The little twigs were so painful cause I was so, you know, I'd lost so much weight, I was all bony. I tried to just walk on the ground in my backyard. It was so painful. What I wanted to do, so my daughter went on Amazon and purchased, what do you call it, a grounding sheet so I could wrap it around me. I didn't think it was working. So I took my car and I drove to the elementary school, that's just about three minutes, drove there, and then got out of my car, took off my shoes and walked the soft ground. I did that for weeks after weeks after weeks, put tears in my eyes, asking God to please heal me. What will happen to my daughter? She lives at home with me. Boy, I can tell you that little by little, by little, by little. And I started feeling my weight come back. I started feeling better because up until then I had heart palpitations. So, for some reasons I began to crave food from Nigeria. Stood Your appetite back. Right, so I would go to the African store and I would just, my daughter would help me cook the food and I would blend it. I'll eat it. So one day I sat down and ate a whole bowl of food. Was like, Princess, come see, I ate everything. There was no pain, no heart palpitations, so I thought that was my solution then. Of course I was still taking my medications, taking medications, still seeing the doctors, seeing my cardiologist, still doing what I need to do, still going to church, reading the word of God, worshipping. So in the evenings God would just give me songs and I would just get my little recorder. I would record this song and sing it back to him, worshiped him. And I knew what he told me was, Kathy promised me that you would take better care of yourself. I was neglecting myself. I love what I do, still do so much that I would just work versus theater. So. Inspirational. And then you wrote this best selling book. Let's put the cover on the screen so everybody can see this. It's called Unshakable. Unshakable. And I love that name. Tell us some of the things that they will learn when they read Okay. Your So, what I really want people to come out of this is to be your own self advocate. Doctors are marvelous, are wonderful, but you know your body more than the doctor. And then what I did was I would write down my symptoms, whatever I was feeling. When I go back, I would say this is what I'm feeling today and they'll give me medications. I will go back and research the medications. Yes. For instance, my blood pressure was normal, but I kept getting medications for high blood pressure. And I'm like, no, I don't have high blood pressure. So, would decline them and I'm like, find me something else. This is gonna make me worse. Yes. I will take it. I mean, not to be rude to the doctors, they were doing their job but I felt, I felt, I felt this was my body. I know what I'm feeling, I know what's gonna happen. So, be your own self advocate, do your research, right? And don't be afraid to tell the doctors what's really going on. I love that. Right? And I also felt like, I also researched on non traditional medications. Yes. Yeah. I took a lot of over the counter medications because I felt, I mean with my research, and I felt that actually sped up my healing. Even though it was up to, it was like a whole year journey, but it was a progressive and I did what I had to do. So I feel like if you've got, if you have a diagnosis like mine or worse or whatever, you know, I want to challenge you to be yourself advocate like I said before, find out our resources. If a doctor is not working well, make a switch. I had to switch my doctor because I felt I wasn't getting what I needed where I was because my situation was getting worse, I couldn't work and all that. So, I was saying a while ago that my job fired me nine nine twenty three because I shared with them that I had I only had a 15% chance to live. Of course, they had to look out for themselves too. But when I was called to the meeting, I sought the Lord and the Holy Spirit said, no, they're not gonna fire you. I drove an hour from Plano to Dallas to the meeting and they said, We're sorry, we love you, but he's not able to work at the same pace. So, but the CEO did promise that if that once I got better, I could come back, she would make room for me. I went in my office gathering my stuff. I said, But God, you told me. He said, Yeah, they're working on it. It was not even thirty minutes. They called me back to the office. Mr. Ogie, we're sorry. We're sorry. Sorry for the emotional roller coaster. You have your job back. Wow, that's incredible. They did. Because I asked them, I said, why didn't you just give me a message, make concessions for me, you know I've been here for sixteen years, working diligently. Now I'm not feeling I'm not at my best, but I still need to pay my bills, have a mortgage to pay. I need my insurance. And I don't really want a claim disability, I'm not disabled. I'm just going through a rough path. So they gave me three options. Do you want to work part time? Do you want to work? But they gave me three options and I chose to just keep working but at a flexible schedule so that it was not too much. I walked there until the agency lost their grant. Okay. And then we got laid off and then a coworker of mine that was there six years prior called me and said, okay, I need you in my team. Going back doing the same thing I was doing, the same position and I'm still doing that. Said, God, you still need me in the schools with the kids. And I'm still doing it. Alright, Catherine, we've got about a minute left. Oh, that's it? Yeah, look look into the camera on the left and talk to the viewer, give them some words of encouragement no matter what they're going through. Okay, yeah. So, thank you for listening viewers out there. No matter what you're going through, just know that God is on your side. Yeah, I'm not, I'm never, I'm never gonna tell you to not go to the doctors, please do. But advocate for yourself, research on your medications, trust God because God is the ultimate healer. The doctors will do their best, but God is the one that will give you that 100% assurance that you'll be healed. Stay tuned and keep praying and God bless you. Amen. That's a great way to leave it. We're also gonna leave you with her Facebook page so you can get in touch with her and and get her book, The Great Catherine Ogie. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you so much. You bet. Appreciate it. That's it for now. We'll see you next time. Yes, sir.