Wesley Knight  0:00  
This is a KU NV studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Tanya Flanagan  0:19  
Good morning, and thank you for joining me for the scoop with Tanya Flanagan, I'm so happy you decided to wake up and start your day with me here on the scoop, where we talk about life, joy, funny moments, trending topics and so much more. We promise to keep you in the know and find out what you know. So let's get started. You Good

Tanya Flanagan  0:47  
morning Las Vegas. Good morning Nevada. Good morning world. Because, as I said before on another one of my shows, we have started to tap into international markets, and people are listening overseas. So that's pretty exciting. So thank you for joining me near and far. We are in the season of giving. It is the month of December when we stop and pause to think of others. And so I'm really delighted to welcome to my show today a very dear friend who I had the pleasure of meeting during a transformative time in my life. I think is a great way to describe that I was going through my cancer journey. And I shared openly about my cancer journey on many occasions on the show, because I feel it's important that we provide each other with information that can help us grow and help us learn and navigate life. So I had the pleasure of meeting my friend Heather, who I'm welcoming to the show, Heather Bruton. Bruton, today, thank you for being here. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. I described you as my friend, but you were many things, and you wear many hats, and it continues to get increasingly more dynamic as we get older folks, you know, we discover our passions, and in discovering our passions, we fine tune our energy to the things that make us happy and allow us to feel purposeful as we help other people. So tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do.

Heather Bruton  2:12  
So I guess first and foremost, I would say that I am an activist. I am a former college professor. I am a yoga teacher, yoga therapist. I'm a mother to three amazing children. I'm a wife. I am a friend. I am a dancer for the past few years, in my Chris in my church dance troupe, I'm a, I would say I'm a community organizer of sorts. I really love getting people together to gather items to help distribute to people in need. And I am also a stage four cancer survivor. That's actually how we met. And Tanya really just did an incredible thing that day, and really saw me in a moment when two people were not hearing or seeing me for what I was experiencing in that moment and and that just kind of cemented our friendship, which continued to grow from there. And that was actually 16 years ago, and I was driving in here today, and I actually went to unlv for my master's in social work. And so I guess I'm also a social worker too. And I just am amazed at how different the campus looks, and you know, how it's grown. And it's just, it's great, you know? And it's just I was flooded with so many memories driving here, and I just thank you for just even giving me the opportunity to be here. And obviously it's always such a blessing to spend time with you. So I just love you so much.

Tanya Flanagan  3:52  
I love you too. Thank you for being here. I remember when I met you on that day 16 years ago. It was something about Heather. I was minding my own business. We used to have the Cancer Institute up in the Summerlin area, which now I believe, is the Rossman University. Yeah, it closed and became a university. Became the Rossman Medical University, but there was a sort of sundry store, for lack of a better description, inside the Cancer Institute space. And there was a young lady who I'm still friends with to this day, Lori goodwine, who was the chief experience officer there at the time. Okay? And I'm minding my business, but out the corner of my eye. So Heather is a gorgeous blonde, right? Her hair is like blonde with like these natural sun kissed highlights, blonde, mind you. So I'm in the institute, and I look over my shoulder and I see this lady with super, super funky short hair, like military. Short, but it's fire red, fire red. And I'm like, dang, her hair is beautiful. Like, it was just so pretty. It was gorgeous. Your hair was, like, sexy. And I was like, Dang that, since that hair is sexy, like, wow, this story, and at the time, she's trying on these hats. And so if you've ever been through cancer or know someone, they make hats, or even a person who may have alopecia or hair loss. So there are hats where there's hair coming out of the hat back, you know, bottom, like a ponytail or two braids or just hair. So you can throw the hat on if you got to run to the grocery store or whatever, and you want to disguise the fact that you're bald or balding, or whatever, going through cancer, you don't want to wear a wig. You don't want to wear a scarf, whatever. So I see her trying on these hats, and I'm thinking, why she covering up this extremely gorgeous, amazing red hair that's like, got this natural curl to it too. It was, like, it was just funky. And so I decided to butt in, like something washed over me that said, your responsibility today and paying it forward is to tell her that she's gorgeous as she is, whatever the journey is that she's on, she's gorgeous as she is, and she needs to let the world see the beauty. And so I went in and said, Excuse me, I know you don't know me, but I see you trying on these hats, trying to figure this out, but your hair is amazing, and you need to rock this. Yeah, that was amazing. She decided to rock the hair.

Heather Bruton  6:33  
You know, it's so interesting. So first of all, the funny part is that that hair, how did it come to me? I have had this really long, curly blonde hair for a long time, and it took me a long time to love my hair. And right about the time, I was really saying, Okay, thank you God for this hair that you gave me the blessing of also not having to style it or whatever, just water and go and losing my hair during chemo was actually one of the more traumatic moments that I really didn't expect it to be as hard as it was, and it's such an accessory for women, you know, we just don't understand how much it is for us and how important it is for us until we don't have it anymore. But there was a day where I was in the hospital, and I said, I can't I can't have it anymore. It was hurting my head so much, even just to move my head on the pillow, felt like I was being kind of stabbed in my head a little bit. It was so painful. I just said, and I have to figure out who helped me cut it off. I don't know if it was my husband or my mother, but I remember my son asking if he'd give me a mohawk, and I do regret that I didn't allow him to do that for the for the day, at least. But and then he went and cut his hair really, really short too, but mine was basically bald. And then, so what you saw was a couple months later, maybe two months later, my hair grown in, but it had come in, and it was this sort of gunmetal gray, and I was 38 years old, and I said, I can't I'm not ready for that. So I decided I was going to color it myself. And I always liked red hair, and I did have red hair one time, and I went to pick my son up, and he didn't recognize me and and it was also blown out straight, so I looked very different. But so I said, let me try red again. So I tried. I was going to try henna, because I was thinking, Oh, I'll do something really natural, right? And the henna DaveD my hair kind of this Crayola orange color that just wasn't cute at all. So my husband came up and I'm on the floor crying, and he said, Oh my God, what happened? And I said, Well, I tried to color my hair with henna. And he said, What should I do? And I said, I think you need to get coffee grinds and we're gonna paint it on my hair. And he said, we don't even drink coffee. And I said, I know you have to go this door, but you have to hurry up, because if the kids come home and see me like this, so he went and got coffee, coffee, like ground up coffee, and we painted it on my hair. And that's how I got that color in my hair, really. And so the day I met you must have been after one of the treatments that I was going through. So I ended up being in the hospital for three and a half weeks when I was first diagnosed, and I did 96 hours of chemo the first three days. And that was that was really, really brutal. And that time, it really just took me to so many different places, you know, that just I didn't expect to go, in a way, because I didn't even really feel that bad, you know. So I was kind of in disbelief for a lot of it. And so when I when I met you that day, things were really just hitting me more and more and more about what I experienced and what I was continuing to experience. And my mother and my sister were there, and they were like, just buy this hat, and you'll be fine. You can. Just put this hat on, and I kept trying to explain to them that my hair doesn't even look like this. I do not have long, brownish blonde hair that's to my waist. My hair is curly, and this doesn't look like me, and I don't want this hat. And I put the hat back after you came and talked to me, and when I got home, the hat was on my bed, you know, so it was already bought and everything. I never wore the hat, but my daughter played with it and had fun with it. But that day was so important to me, because so many times when people are going through cancer, there's so many people talking at you and trying to talk for you and talking to you, but very rarely are they talking with you and you talked with me. And you know, you changed something for me that day, and you kind of empowered me to say, I'm not okay with this. Even though my voice was shaking, it was the moment where I was like, You know what? I need to remember who I am. And sometimes when you're going through treatment and you're going through all these things and all that stuff is happening, you forget you know who you are and what your voice is. And so I thank you so much because you reminded me of who I was and and you saw me, you know, and you heard me,

Tanya Flanagan  11:18  
Well, you're welcome, and I'm glad I have the courage, because sometimes you can see someone and it's about your life, right? Like I didn't know you at all, and we will mind our own business, right? And you'll look and you don't take that step. But for whatever reason, that day, in my spirit, I was like, I'm just gonna tell her that, that I don't know what that hat is about, but she she better wear that hair that is amazing, like people would kill for this color to work the way it was working for you. And then, because you're so fit too, right? You you're healthy. You know, you look healthy, you look fit, you exercise. We all try to be the best body that we can be, whatever that is, right? I used to have a trainer who was saying, Beyonce is Beyonce, and everybody's not gonna look like Beyonce. You just have to work with what you get, right? The reality really, Dominic, is that what we're doing today, fine, but I get what he's saying, appreciate you. Work to be the best you that you can be at whatever size or whatever, right? But I just saw you, and I'm glad I had the courage, me too, to into your life. And then the blessing for me is that we had a conversation, we exchanged numbers, and 16 years ago, we became friends. And I don't get to see you all the time, but I think of you all the time, and through so many different aspects of my life, you're there for me. I'm there for you. And we get to, you know, get food and talk and catch up and watch the kids and encourage one another, and just it was a blessing. And if I had never said anything, I would not have this friendship, right? So I'm glad I have the courage to because we're very different people. Yes, you know, and it's one of those moments where you recognize that we're both women, different cultural backgrounds, different upbringings, but the challenges and the fears that people face, or what bind them and bring them is the connective tissue,

Heather Bruton  13:24  
the hope too, right? Like you see a person who's trying to do things to make the world a better place. For me, I'm very drawn to those kind of people, and I've been that kind of person for a really long time, and maybe that's me not accepting that, you know, Beyonce is just Beyonce, but that mean me saying, like, maybe there is space for people to rise up and be a better version of themselves. Absolutely, you know, I feel like when we step past our own discomfort, which is not an easy thing to do, but when we do it and and we we reach out to somebody else, and we bring some light into their space that they might have needed without us knowing it. You know you can change somebody's life, and you change mine that day so well.

Tanya Flanagan  14:11  
Thank you for letting me be the person, and thank you for becoming my friend in that space. You wear a number of hats. I don't know if we share what type of cancer you had with stage four. Just want to put that in perspective. Yeah, so, because people are often surprised to hear that a stage four cancer person is a survivor. Because when people hear stage four cancer, they hear a Deaf sentence, they hear a really hard journey, and it was hard, but you don't meet a lot of people who survive it. But I want to also put in context what kind of cancer you have.

Heather Bruton  14:43  
So I was originally diagnosed as having stage four Burkitt lymphoma, which is something that, at the time, they said affects Sub Saharan African boys and one in 1 million people in the United States. And I thought, I mean, I'm special. But maybe not that special, but so one of the things that we did was another person had said to us, you know, make sure you get a second diagnosis. Make sure they send the tissue. So we send it to MD Anderson in Texas, and they came back after I did this, accelerated 96 hours of chemo with another diagnosis, which was, it's really long, but it's called diffuse, non range diffuse. It's a non Hodgkin's lymphoma, and it's a diffuse large B cell non Hodgkin's lymphoma. That's the whole name. And when I went in the hospital, they said, you to my husband, they said, your wife is going to die in two weeks, and I said, I'm here, and you need to talk to me, and I'm the patient, and I can tell you from the inside out of my body, I'm not dying in two weeks. And I just had a baby. I had just had my daughter, Ivy, and I was also a single mom for five years, so I was like, and I asked the room, I said, Has anyone in here had a baby with no epidural? And they looked at me, and they were all men, so they said no. And I said, Oh, well, then guess what? You have no idea what I'm capable of. And I said, I will make it out of here. And they looked at my husband, and they said, is she always like this? And he said, Yes, yes. And they said, well, then maybe she'll survive. But I was offended about the fact that they were trying to regulate my hope. I'm never one to give my hope up to anybody. So I said, you know, I am a college professor, and I give all my students an A when they walk in the door and you just gave me an F. And whether my students want to run that a over, that's up to them, but I'm going to keep my a and they say we feel like you're not listening to us. I said I'm listening to you, and I heard you. I don't accept what you said, and that's not going to be my story. So pay attention, because this is going to be different than what you're expecting. I like it,

Tanya Flanagan  16:55  
and I think that it speaks to self empowerment, which people, if you've ever been through a traumatic life challenge like cancer, chemo, immersion, intravenous treatment, all of that is very, very daunting, how you respond to it? First step of the challenge response is your attitude, right mindset. So if your mindset is defeatist, when you start, you can have a really hard road. I don't care if it's chemo or you just need a wound to heal. Like I've been at different phases of my cancer journey at different times, and I've even had to check myself had a wound from a reconstructive component, and they took a skin graft from my leg, inside of my leg, and it got infected or whatever, because I did too much one day when I thought I was okay, yeah, you know, I pushed. I pushed one day, Heather and every day, yes, but on this particular day, I thought I was feeling better and could go do something for myself, run an errand. And then I got home, and I said, Oh, my leg hurts, right? So I sat down, but it continued to hurt four days weeks after so I went back to my doctor, and I'm like, what's going on? And this is a site. It's slightly irritated and infected. It's gonna take another, you know, seven weeks. Oh, well, I was like, I've already been off like, six, seven weeks. We can't do another, right? Seven weeks hard to hold us down, like, I gotta go to work or something, right? And so I began to realize that I was in this woe is me phase of response, right? And but that you have to do something.

Heather Bruton  18:31  
Can I add something that's super normal in that situation too, right? Especially when things are getting piled on, to say, why is this even happening? Like, what is going on here? And figuring out that it's, it is, it is mindset, but it's also sometimes, and this is really hard, because you and I are very similar in this way, where we're super high functioning, no matter what, we could be, dragging a bed, a hospital bed behind us, and we're still trying to go forward that, you know, I'm learning. It's a very hard lesson for me, but rest and relaxation and really that self care is also part of the mindset, you know, that we don't really we just think mindset is, how do I think about this?

Tanya Flanagan  19:16  
But how do I win? Like, how do I get back to what I think is normalcy, without realizing that part of that healing process is pause

Heather Bruton  19:25  
and get you're going to be a new, whole, different person on the other side. I had

Tanya Flanagan  19:30  
this conversation with someone earlier this week, couple days ago. We'll share that in a moment, but as I'm in that space with this open wound, and I said, I can't take another seven weeks, you need to do something to the doctor, so he scheduled me for a follow up surgery to correct the problem in seven days. And it was around Thanksgiving that year, and I remember not wanting to do another surgery because I'm allergic to certain local anesthesia. It's a lot. And I can just so I can't have the shot that comes before they give you the anesthesia, so you don't feel the tingling burning sensation in your body. So I feel all the tingling, burning sensation when I go under and I taste the anesthesia. So I hate surgery, but I've had like 30 and I do not I can now i It's like burned into my head. What it tastes like? You know exactly. So I'm thinking, Oh God, I don't want to do that again. And I remember walking outside into my backyard and just looking up at the sky and the clouds and the trees and the mountains and just looking at creation and going, well, he made the world in seven days. Surely he can fix my leg in seven days with this overwhelming like confidence. And I was like, it's gonna happen. And seven days later, I can't I did not have the surgery. I canceled the whole thing. Okay, my leg healed up, but I realized in that that my attitude had been very much, Woe is me. And I said all that to say what you said, it's the mindset. Mindset is probably at least 40 to 60% or 75 I was gonna say that, but I didn't want to, like, overdo it with the fact that you need your doctors and, you know, take your meds. You do, you do. But at the end of the day, you really have to have a mindset that is built on victoriousness

Heather Bruton  21:16  
And and I think faith and hope, right? That you have to believe, but you also you have to have hope, because it is the catapult to the next moment

Tanya Flanagan  21:26  
of faith. And that victoriousness is built in your faith. Yeah, it's built in your hope, and it's and it's really believing hope for and things not seen. And it's believing that that you can do, can manifest

Heather Bruton  21:38  
whatever you know you just you need to, and that we can do hard things. And these are really we. These are exceptionally hard things to go through, things like cancer or any kind of traumas that people go through, you know. But it does mean that we got to remember who we are and where we come from and who is, you know, guiding and protecting us too.

Tanya Flanagan  21:57  
And different things are going to be hard for different like when you mentioned the loss of your hair, I can completely relate. Like that was a really hard day for me. That was day that I bought up in a fetal position. Well, I came home and I was like, I don't look like a cancer patient. That my had to cut it all off. It was just that was weird.

Heather Bruton  22:15  
It was and then the day that I looked in the mirror and I said, I look like a little boy,

Heather Bruton  22:20  
I didn't cry.

Heather Bruton  22:23  
I didn't cry a lot. I probably needed to cry more during the process of this experience, but I my husband said, You cried a lot that day, and you were so mad. He said, some people would love to have lost that weight, and I'd lost, I think it was like 21 pounds in the hospital. So I looked like a 12 year old boy, and I was super frustrated. I had just had a baby too, right? So I was still a hormonal and stuff, and it was, again, not what I expected at all. You know,

Tanya Flanagan  22:56  
were you always you're always doing yoga. So you did yoga before I started the yoga start after I

Heather Bruton  23:02  
started doing yoga when I was pregnant with my son. Okay, so I started it prenatally, which is really funny, because in New York, until you look pregnant, you don't want to get in front of pregnant women trying to get into their yoga class, like, because they will take you out. And so I had to, like, stand and push my butt out and be like, no, no, I'm signing up for this class. Let me hold on. And they're like, Yeah, you're not even pregnant. I said, Yes, I am. And they said, Well, you don't even look pregnant. I said, Well, I mean, I don't have to prove it to you. I am. So I'm going to be in this class, you know? But it was very funny. I would laugh every time, because when I first went there, I was like, I actually told the teacher, Holly, who is this? An amazing woman became one of my mentors. I said, I'm only here for this one class because I have to be. She said, okay, just pay attention to everything I say. And I said, What? And she said, Well, you're going to do this someday. I said, No, no, I will not. Right to her face, I was so rude, and I apologize later to her, I said, I'm sorry. I was so kind of out of my mind, you know, with a I was knowing I was going to be a single mom and pregnant and going through pregnancy alone was, you know, that was, that was hard. But finding yoga in that time, really, it centered, it centered me, and helped keep me positive and hopeful that something, you know that we were going to be okay somehow, and it was a great way to connect with him, too.

Tanya Flanagan  24:26  
I want people to be able to learn more about you, and I like to make sure I give people that invitation when there was a good time in the show and you're not rushing through it. So you please, if you'd like to share any way to learn more about you. Heather, so let me look being here, because I don't remember the exact please. I have sure, because I need to come and spend some time with you. But I work every day, and you do yoga at times that I can't. So she promised me that I could maybe have special yoga session you can with just my friend Heather. You I don't really like to share any so.

Heather Bruton  25:00  
So I actually do teach yoga classes. And for people who are cancer patients and survivors, they're always free, just so you know,

Tanya Flanagan  25:09  
you can earn your income. I am capable.

Heather Bruton  25:12  
You can find me. Hold on. You can find me at, here's the name of my

Tanya Flanagan  25:18  
is it? So, ohm, Sweet Home yoga. So my

Heather Bruton  25:21  
website is om sweet, ome yoga, lv.com, and it's spelled O M, and then the word sweet, and then O M, and then y, O, G, A, l, v.com, but you can also follow me on Instagram at B, B, which is my last two names of vegan yoga, Mama,

Tanya Flanagan  25:38  
we didn't even talk about the fact that you're vegan because you introduced me, Heather. You introduced me to so many Well, I like going to have Indian food with you, because I you know what to do, and so great that, because you know what to order, because sometimes it's spicy, and I don't love spicy, but you already have tried everything, so you already know. Well, I would, I wouldn't say I've tried everything, a lot a lot of things. Yeah, so you helped me to enjoy and I'm

Heather Bruton  26:03  
also vegan too. It's funny, I have another Instagram called reluctant vegan chef, because during covid, I had to learn how to cook. And then I actually was inspired by Tabitha Brown. I love her, and I got to meet her in California. And it was just just that, what a blessing of a human. She is so great, but she inspired me to cook. So I was telling her the story about it, and it was really funny. Um, so it's interesting because Indian food in the United States is even more mild than Indian food in India. So I did part of my yoga training in India, and then went back with my husband and our three kids. He was going for work, and I was like, now we're coming with you. And we went, and all the kids love Indian food. I mean, they've been eating it since they were it is really delicious. So good. I love Mediterranean.

Tanya Flanagan  26:55  
Mediterranean is also really another place that I can spend a lot of foodie time with you, because I love Mediterranean food. It's really easy to do

Heather Bruton  27:04  
it well, you, you and I love food. We do. Let's just be real. French fries are really good too.

Tanya Flanagan  27:09  
But, you know, we're down to our last like, minute, are we? Yeah, it's so nice to have you here. I like to do a quick rapid fire, okay, and then I'm gonna close this out favorite movie

Heather Bruton  27:22  
that's tough one, probably Bridget Jones diary, that's so

Tanya Flanagan  27:25  
funny. Favorite place that you visited.

Heather Bruton  27:29  
It's tough one. I would say it's a tough draw, between Paris and India, beautiful, beautiful places. But I do really like London, and we were just there too, I know,

Tanya Flanagan  27:38  
but they don't have really good food. Do have really good they do not. I was so hungry in London, I lost like 10 pounds. You gotta go place. You gotta go to the obviously, I gotta go vegan. Favorite sports team

Heather Bruton  27:51  
that would be, well, basketball would be the Jordan era bulls. Football. I don't actually watch that much, but since I'm in the Vegas now I'm a Raiders fan. Look at

Tanya Flanagan  28:02  
your diehard Raider. It okay.

Heather Bruton  28:04  
Just went to my first game a few weeks ago.

Tanya Flanagan  28:07  
It's been fun. I love you. Thank you for being here, folks. Stay healthy. Have a great week. I'll see you next time on 91.5 I want to thank you for tuning into the scoop with me. Tanya Flanagan, and I want to invite you to get social with me. I'm on Facebook and Twitter. My name is my handle, T, a n, y, A F, l, a n, a G, A N. You can also find me on Instagram at Tonya almond eyes Flanagan, and if you have a thought, an opinion or a suggestion, don't hesitate to shoot me an email to tonya.flanagan@unlv.edu Thanks again for joining in stay safe and have a great week. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai