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Taking a Breath: A Stop the Clot Podcast is a show committed to shining a light on the dangers of blood clots and breathing life into The National Blood Clot Alliance’s mission of pushing these preventable killers to the forefront of public discourse. We will hear the stories of notable blood clot survivors like Olympic medalists Katie Hoff Anderson & Tatyana McFadden, among others, as well as the expertise of medical professionals to provide connection, empathy and resources to listeners like you. At Stop the Clot we know the patient because we are the patient. Journey through this miraculous series with hosts and blood clot survivors Leslie Lake and Todd Robertson as they, with the help of listeners like you, change the way we think about blood clots. Join us as we collectively stop the clot.
The National Blood Clot Alliance (NBCA) is a 501(c)(3), non-profit, voluntary health organization dedicated to advancing the prevention, early diagnosis and successful treatment of life-threatening blood clots such as deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.
VO: [00:00:00] It can be a single moment, the pinpoint in time where your life splits between what was and what is.
Loren Ridinger: And he stood up beside me and he walked beside me and I heard him say, I said, what is that?
VO: What is going on? How do you process the unfathomable experience of a partner's life cut short? How do you find peace in the reality of such a profound loss?
Loren Ridinger: He said, J.R.'s downstairs, he's doing yoga on the floor stretching. And I knew I'd lost him. At that very moment, I knew that that breath I heard, something was very wrong.
Leslie Lake: Every six minutes, somebody in America dies of a blood clot.
VO: We're here to change that statistic. Welcome to Taking a Breath, a [00:01:00] Stop the Clot podcast.
Leslie Lake: An award winning podcast dedicated to bringing awareness of the dangers of blood clots from the clotting disorders community to the world.
VO: With the help of many notable blood clot survivors, we are here to give you the knowledge and the skills you need to prevent this silent killer.
Leslie Lake: My name is Leslie Lake. I am the President of the National Blood Clot Alliance, and I am a blood clot survivor.
VO: And my name is Todd Robertson. I am the Patient Engagement Liaison for the National Blood Clot Alliance, and I am a seven time blood clot survivor. And we're here to stop the clot.
Leslie Lake: Where do you begin when the life you've always known is swept out from under you in an instant? How do you move forward from such a catastrophic loss? Author of the new book, Scrambled or Sunny Side Up? Living Your Best Life After Losing Your [00:02:00] Greatest Love, our guest is no stranger to the realities of life after loss.
Here to discuss the legacy of her late husband, J. R. Ridinger, please join me in welcoming the world renowned and incomparable Loren Ridinger.
Loren Ridinger: And I'm here to talk about something that's very important for people to understand, and I don't think it's talked about enough. A gentle giant, you know, the love of my life, my partner, my best friend, my mentor, my coach.
J.R. Was somebody I met when I was 18. He was 18 years older than me. When I met him, we didn't have any money. We weren't successful. We both came from nothing. And, you know, we had this great vision that one day we would build this incredible internet company, and we did. And it's been a beautiful journey of certainly love and, you know, marriage, like anything, is always, you go through ups and downs, but when you're really committed to something, you really make it work.
And J. R. and I just had a beautiful relationship. And I think part of it is that [00:03:00] we both believed in the same mission. We believed in the same things, that helping people would really make the difference in our life. And if we didn't help people, Life wouldn't be worth living. And so that was always our mission.
That was our goal. And we did it with our families, with our friends. Along the way, we became a very successful company. And I'm really grateful for the love that J.R. And I had and have. And even after his death, I still, you know, you go through grief every day. I lost him in August of 2022. Totally not expecting to lose him.
In fact, he had just had a physical in May. He was perfectly healthy. When I think today about how it hid behind, he had an injured knee from a sports injury and it was there for some time. It was, I would say it had progressively gotten worse over the last, you know, couple of years. And he was going to have it fixed.
The Real Madrid soccer medical doctor had agreed to take a look at [00:04:00] him. We were two days away from seeing him when we were overseas. And, you know, it's funny, even though he said, do not worry about me. It does not hurt. I could tell it was slowing him down. J. R. was very active. His parents lived till a hundred.
His, his grandmother lived till a hundred and four. He was young and he had a lot more years left and certainly we all thought he had more years left than me. We really did. It was kind of a joke in our office that, you know, J. R. was the youngest of all of us. He was, you know, very healthy and he did his blood test quarterly, you know, he was just on top of his stuff, but never thought for one second that a clot would be hiding behind that injury.
For the first time in our lives, you know, he had asked me in October of 21, if I would take a trip with him, let's go take a trip, let's go take some time off ourselves. We had spent 30 years building our company and helping so many people and it was time for us to take some time for ourselves. And we had just lost one of our vice presidents who was young and he [00:05:00] was heartbroken over that.
And I wrote him back. I said, we can't, but let's wait till August of 22. Let's get through our 30th convention. I want to pull out all the stops, I want to make it the biggest, best thing ever, I don't know that we'll ever see another 30th together. And that's exactly what we did. Our convention was over, we went to actually Ben Affleck and Jennifer's wedding, went to their wedding, and after that wedding, we got on a plane to Croatia.
And I remember he was so excited, so happy. to get on that plane. And then when we got there, he was quiet. He was a little quiet, in a strange way. I thought maybe he was just exhausted. We had just finished performing for four days straight at our conference. We were exhausted. He speaks for, you know, four or five hours straight.
It's normal, but, you know, J.R. Doesn't really get tired from performing and pouring out his heart. He actually gets more adrenaline, more energy, you know? So He was grateful. I remember unusually, [00:06:00] he kept saying, thank you so much for getting this boat. I can't believe you made this happen. He was. He was full of love.
He was not eating, and I didn't understand that. I kept asking, why aren't you eating? He's like, I don't know, I'm not that hungry. You know, and I think what was happening was, is that he was struggling with his breath, but he wasn't confiding in me. You know, I think he didn't want me to worry, is what I think what was happening, because when I would go for a walk, he wasn't able to do the walks with me because his knee was stiff.
It had stiffened almost completely. And he was not eating a lot and he was pondering over the water and he was tired, very tired. And he asked me if I minded if he took a nap during the day when I would go for a walk. You know, completely opposite of J. R. For people who know him, and J. R. 's known by thousands of people.
He's a very well known speaker. Very respected businessman. My husband is, you know, we built a company from nothing to nearly a billion dollars. And he's just well known. You know, [00:07:00] and well known for being the energizer bunny. Always the last man standing. And so, those couple days, we didn't really tell anybody.
I think we were going to kind of Go off into the sunset for some time and maybe not do the day to day business anymore and just go into the big events in the future. Really take some time for Loren and J.R. We'd been together for 36 years, but, and even though we love what we did, it was time for us to go see the world, do the things that we put off.
We traveled the world, but never got to see it. Cause we were always worried about building and being, helping other people. And it was the first trip we went on without our children, without our daughter and without our grandchildren. Usually they come everywhere. They love to go. He was sad at first she couldn't come.
Then he was quiet on the trip. As I told you, I got him a bike. And he was thrilled. He was thrilled. He rode his bike all over little towns in Croatia. He was so happy because the bike made it manageable for him. And I have this little laser thing for your skin and he was asking me for pain management [00:08:00] and he was asking me to put that on his knee and he's like, don't worry about it.
It doesn't hurt. It's just unusually stiff. I don't know why. And it had been stiff for a year, but nothing like it had developed over a couple of years, a couple of weeks even. I remember the night before we had pulled up to a new little town and I said, do you want to get off and try to walk? And we did.
And we didn't get too far and he said, you wouldn't mind sitting on this bench, would you? And I said, no. And I could tell that his breath was off. I asked him, do you feel OK? He said, yep. He was a man, you know, so he didn't really complain about things in our house. You know, if I was the sick one, he would worry about me, but not, he never wanted me to worry about him.
And so that next morning, about three days in, I remember that we woke up and he was very, you know, my husband was always very affectionate. Always telling me how much he loved me and vice versa. So there was never a question about love. We came from nothing. We both knew why we were with each other. We were the dynamic [00:09:00] duo.
That's who we were. And when we woke up the next morning, he said, I want to let you know you've made me the happiest person in my life. And I knew something was wrong in that moment, but I didn't know what. He said, I love you a hundred times, but it's. the way he said that cause when you're ultra successful, you never know when the happiness is for somebody, because the appetite is always hungry. You're always hungry, you're always And for J. R., it was never about more money. J. R. 's scoreboard was helping people. I mean, he used to say, there's no amount of money that would change our life at this point. We need to help more people.
But he always had time on his brain. He used to have a very famous saying. In fact, we registered, it's called, uh, what are you going to do with the dash? He understood very well that people who had a birth date and a death date and the only thing that mattered was the line in between. That little dash.
And he used to tell me, Loren, if we're not doing something with the dash, nothing in our life matters. And so that's why this time was so important to him. I'd made him [00:10:00] wait almost a year to finally take this journey. I'd asked him to wait. And, uh, he said, I'm, you've made me the happiest person in the world.
And I remember being really, like, torturing him at that point. Like, why are you saying that? Why would you say that to me? Of course, you've made me the happiest person. Why would you bring that up at this point? You never bring this up. Why are you saying that? Of course I know you, I make you happy. I just, why are you saying it now?
I didn't, I was confused. Do you feel okay? He said, I don't feel my best. I'm going to go upstairs and eat. He's like, I want you to stay in bed. I said, no, no, I'm going to go up with you. Like, no, I don't want you to. I was like, I'm going up with you. And we went upstairs. He didn't eat. And I noticed he had not eaten for pretty much that three days.
Here and there, small bites of eggs, not a lot. J. R. was never a big eater, but he would eat a great dinner. He wasn't doing that. It wasn't happening. And you know, J. R. and I weren't married and apart from 9 to 5. Remember, we built an empire together, so from 9 to 5, we're together. 365 days [00:11:00] a year for 36 years.
You know your husband really well. It never registered because we did this MRI in May. Everything was fine. His blood work was fine. We knew his knee needed to be looked at. We knew we were two days away from seeing the doctor. I didn't know if it was the knee. I didn't know. He didn't want to say like, I have chest pains.
He didn't ever say I'm having a hard time breathing. I was paying attention and anything I asked him, he said, I'm fine. I'm fine. He would just write me. I'm tired. I'm gonna take a nap while you go for a walk. And my brother was on the trip with us with his wife and he said to me, I don't like how Jared's being unusually quiet.
I said, I don't like it either. We got up. We had breakfast. Like I said, he barely ate. We were going to see the falls in Croatia. He told us to go without him because he wouldn't be able to walk it. I said, are you crazy? We're not going to walk the falls. I got us a little boat. This little dinghy is going to drive us right up to it.
We don't have to get out. He's like, no, I don't want to put you guys through that. I was like, you're not putting me through it. I don't want to walk it. I knew he would feel uncomfortable, and I didn't want [00:12:00] him to. Came back from the Falls. Lovely time. He was so happy. Wrote me a beautiful message, even though I was right beside him, which is just like J.R., and wrote me, thank you for making that happen. So happy we got to do that. And he said to me, would you go to this little store on the corner in front of the boat and go get the boys, our two grandsons, some shark teeth he saw. He wanted them to have a shark teeth necklace, and I said yes. And I said, I'll go right now.
And then I went, and within one minute he wrote me, he said, how long will you be? And I said, 15 minutes. He said, okay, 1 15. That was the last text I ever got, and I got back to the boat. He was sitting there, and I had a conference call. And it was about our boat that was in Florida and it was in the shop and he was listening to the call.
And he tried to get himself upset with the people on the phone. He was upset because they were delayed in delivering the boat as they were supposed to. And he's like, you know, I don't know why you're giving my wife such a hard time. Just explain what's going on. And I said, babe, don't get upset. And at that moment I was thinking, we don't need to do [00:13:00] this on the boat.
We're on vacation. And he stood up beside me and he walked back. 12 inches besides me, and I heard him say, Heh. I said, What is that? What is going on? Why do you sound like that? What is happening? And I, you know, have this conference call 10 people. I just dropped the phone. I'm like, what is going on. I go, stay here, stay here.
Put his hand down. Now, he's the boss of my house. But, when J. R. would say like, stay here. Or he would say things in a certain way, you knew to respect that. So he walked away, this far from me, and when he did, there was a door and he walked down those stairs, and that was his last breath. He must have went 25 feet and fell down before he even got to the bedroom, you know, on the floor, right at the footboard of the bed.
And uh, I didn't go looking for him for about three or four minutes. After he told me to stay there, and I had told my brother who was in the room with us on the conference call trying to help me, because he was like, why can Mark get upset, but I can't get upset? I was like, I don't want us [00:14:00] to be upset.
We're on vacation. I shouldn't have even taken this call. And I said, Mark, can you go check on J. R.? It's not like J. R. not to come back up. And as he stood up to walk out, his wife had walked in. He said, J. R. 's downstairs. He's doing yoga on the floor, stretching. And I knew I'd lost him. At that very moment, I knew.
I listened to him because, you know, J. R. had acid reflux, he had indigestion often sometimes. And I thought, you know, sometimes if you don't eat for long periods of time but you eat eggs, you can get indigestion from that or acid reflux that comes up. So I thought for sure he would often get up at nighttime sometimes and get acid reflux in his throat from eating at night and, you know, like bubble up.
And so I knew sometimes he would hold his breath when he would have that. Go to the bathroom, try to get it out. But it was a different sound this time. And when she came up, I knew at that moment I lost him. And of course, I dropped the phone and ran down there. He had stopped breathing, but that was his last breath.
You know, I didn't do very well. I panicked. I [00:15:00] freaked out. I couldn't get to him fast enough. They were trying to perform CPR. Everybody was thinking that, you know, he had his heart had failed, that he had a heart attack. We were out at sea, okay? We couldn't do anything. The boat was now moving. We were in the middle of the sea.
The worst place you could be if something can go wrong in a foreign country. And so when we, um, got back to the doc and I don't remember if the param how it all came together but, you know, the paramedics had had to sedate me for a little bit. I was very upset and not well. And then the coroner had come in.
And that was the first time she, I said I don't understand. She said, I want you to understand this was not your husband's heart. And this was a blood clot in his lungs. He had a pulmonary embolism. I said, how do you know that? And she said, we can tell by the way their eyes are positioned. And it's not questionable at all.
It's 100%. And that's why CPR [00:16:00] wouldn't have done anything. I was destroyed. You know, I was destroyed. You know, I was visiting with him every day in the funeral home. You know, just like a nightmare. It's like your whole life goes crumbling down. The person you love more than life is dead. It's not there and you don't know how you're gonna get on.
And so I had gotten a call from the ambassador of the country and said, you're gonna be able to go home with J.R.. You know, it was like six days in and uh, we have to have a special plane for you to transport him. No problem. Whatever the cost. I didn't care. I just wanted to go home with him. We got him home.
Long story short, the funeral home in Greenwich, Connecticut where we were landing to go to our home had met us at the airport to pick up J.R.. And uh. Before I left Croatia, they had told us you have to embalm him because you're not allowed to transport somebody who's not embalmed Leaving a country and I understood that that made perfect sense and I was taking him home to see his children I wanted him to be okay So we did all that and so when we got there the next morning I woke [00:17:00] up and I didn't sleep very much It was like an hour and a half I'd finally fallen asleep the day I arrived home at like 4 or 5 in the morning.
It may have been 6 a. m. by the time I got up. Maybe an hour and a half had passed. And I heard people talking in the kitchen in my house and I knew something was wrong. They were whispering. And I said, what's going on? And they said, the funeral home would like to speak to you. There's a problem. I said, what kind of problem is there?
And he said, your husband is deteriorating. I said, well, that's impossible. I embalmed him. And they said, well, there is entry points. And I said, well, people don't take your money and say they're embalming someone and try to help you get home if they didn't try. Something's wrong. Okay. You know, he acknowledged that was likely true.
And I called immediately Croatia and they said, listen, Loren, we did the best we could because the blood clot was so big and so stringy and so thick and long that the fluid, I guess the embalming fluid would not enter the body properly. And I knew that was the first. The first [00:18:00] time I knew there was something going on here, bigger than I even understood.
And I was shocked. And then I realized that this clot was hiding behind his knee, the same injury he had. That's why it had gotten progressively worse since June, because in May he didn't have a clot, because we did all the tests to see what was wrong with his knee. And I was devastated. I was devastated.
Everything I had ever Our whole, all of our dreams seemed to disappear overnight. The dreams of being able to spend our time together. I'd lost him, and I felt like he had been robbed from me and stolen from me. Something I could have prevented. And I didn't even know what to look for. I didn't even know at what point, how would I even know a blood clot.
And naturally, you know, Serena Williams, who's one of my best friends, was there when I got home. And after this all started to come to light, about the blood clot. You know, Serena has had a blood clot. That nearly killed her. [00:19:00] And she described exactly like I described J.R.'s, final days, sense of quiet, not hungry, very much at peace though, but quiet.
And she had cancelled a trip. She had to London and she was in working out and her physical trainer was training her and he heard her breath and he was so used to her breath 'cause she's an athlete. And he said, do you have a blood clot? You need to go to an emergency room now. And they told him at the hospital, you know, she doesn't, she's fine, she's this, she should go home.
And he's like, no, she's not going home. And she looked at me and she said, Loren, there's nothing you could have done. You had no idea. J. R. didn't know. You weren't in a place where anybody would have known or could have been able to even help you. It's like, you didn't even know what to look for. You were at sea.
Nobody ever told you and J. R., look for redness, look for this, look for that. We would have never thought for a million years, and I don't know why, and I got, you know, I was really mad at myself. And, you know, I never [00:20:00] really talked about it to anybody, and that's why I decided to do this interview, because I thought it was so important that people know, because we don't talk about it, and it's almost like the silent killer.
We don't even know where to begin. I don't want people to have to go through what I've been through, which is to lose the person they love more than life. It's only been two years and I'm still trying to sort out my grief, the pain, realizing that my life has changed forever in that part of my life that I miss so much and love.
It's gone. And even though love still grows through grief because it's a reflection of love, you don't want to live your life like I'm having to live it. You should be able to know these things, right? And yet we don't talk about them. You know, nobody says, well, go have, you know, your, your body checked and make sure you know how many clots.
You've been flying a lot. Whatever it may be, right? Nobody has that conversation with you. I've been to so many doctors in my life, spent all types of money going to doctors, being healthy. Nobody's once said, let me check for clots. You know, right after it happened, you know, my sister in law who was on [00:21:00] the boat had a meltdown and she started having pain in her leg and then you start to look, right?
You start to pay attention. My daughter, her calf hurt and I said, you know what, just check and nobody tells us to check. They don't even tell us how to check. You know, you have to go and find out, you have to do a special, right? A special ultrasound, but nobody has that discussion with you. And it's funny because, you know, I had a brain aneurysm, I said, you know, which is in some ways a very similar situation.
And I went and had actually an MRI, and they told me, Oh, you have nothing wrong, go home. And then I called my doctor and said, well, they're wrong. There's something very wrong with me and I'm not going to stop and I'm not going to go home. So you tell me what other tests I can take. He said, ask for an MRI.
I said, okay. And I did an MRI and they saw a massive aneurysm. But you know, nobody tells you these things. And that's why you have to be the person who says, no, I'm not going to take your answer. I'm going to tell you this is how I feel. This doesn't feel right. This is uncomfortable. And you have to be [00:22:00] an advocate for your own body.
You have to be because otherwise we're the ones who are going to pay the price or the people we love and you know My life will never be the same without my husband every night. I go to bed alone Every night I miss him every day. I wake up trying to you know, tackle what we did together for 36 years It's not right We were just on the journey to be able to do this on our own together take a little time off For Loren and JR who did this.
All 30 years for helping other people. We wanted some time for us. And two days in, I lose him three days in, I lose him. It shouldn't have happened. It was just the beginning of our next chapter. And that's why I think it's so important. That's why I did this podcast with you guys. I think it's so important what you're doing.
And I think not everybody's as lucky as Leslie. And you, and I'm grateful that you were lucky, but I'm, you know, damn mad that I wasn't, and I'm damn mad that JR wasn't. And so that's why I think [00:23:00] it's so important to spread the word so people know what to look for.
Leslie Lake: And most people don't and most clinicians don't that's also the problem, you know, and they don't talk to you about What what is it? But when I think about like how many doctors I've seen over my lifetime being on hormonal birth control Nobody ever said anything to me about about blood clots. That could be a catalyst, you know Traveling I travel a lot for work.
I travel overseas. I travel to the West Coast all the time I'm like always on an airplane. Nobody ever said that flying was a risk factor Ever. Or, or not drinking enough water, or I work really long hours in my, I own my own business in my office. Nobody ever said that working long hours and sitting at your desk working is a, is a risk factor or having a baby.
Nobody
Loren Ridinger: ever gave you a pair of compression socks when you entered the airlines. It's like, help us help ourselves. Help us help ourselves.
Leslie Lake: Yeah. And the, and the most maddening [00:24:00] part is that it is preventable.
Loren Ridinger: It's preventable and it's treatable. And that's the part that frustrates me. And, you know, Serena and I went back and forth so many times over this, cause I was mad.
And she's like, Loren, you could not have done this overseas. It would not. They weren't even known to look for it. And it wasn't until that guy, at that funeral home, in Croatia, and I'll never forget him, he was a godsend in many ways. They did me a favor, you know, by signing that paper and sending me home, right?
Because what if they had said, well, we can't embalm him the proper way because we can't get the fluid in, then I wouldn't have been able to bring him home. So they signed off that they did, but when I called him, he said, we weren't able to embalm him as properly as we wanted to because the blood clot was so massive.
I didn't know that those things can hide behind an injury. They say that's the most imperative place they would go. Now that I did my own research. Yeah,
Leslie Lake: behind
Loren Ridinger: the knee. [00:25:00] Yeah, behind the knee. I didn't, and where an injury already is, you know what I mean? He was gonna have a surgery in two days. He'd already had trauma to his leg, and that's what caused it.
His cartilage, most of the cartilage was missing between his kneecap and the bone because of a football injury. So, we knew what needed to be done. The padding was gone, right? So, kept stiffening in that last July and August. Why then? What all lines up with the timeline? Now I looked at the blood test, I looked at the MRI.
Before, nothing was a problem in May until we did the test again. And by the way, we did do a test again in July. And it said his platelet count was high. There was all these things that were high in the blood test and I called the doctors. And I said, um, why would it say this on J.R.'s blood test? We're getting ready to go away for the convention.
We're going away to Ben and Jennifer's wedding and we're going to Croatia. Why would it say this? Should we take it again? And he's like, I would go and do what you gotta do. J.R.'s are perfect. And this is, you know, these are guys who've been treating [00:26:00] J.R. For a long time. They're like, J.R.'s been the healthiest guy on the planet.
Do it, probably drank coffee, you know, had a breakfast beforehand, didn't tell anyone and it skewed the test, you know, and that can happen. That's true. Go away, go enjoy your life. You guys haven't had a break since COVID. You know, in essence, I wish I never went, of course, because, you know, had I looked at those blood tests, maybe there were telltale signs that something was wrong, right?
Maybe if I had the knowledge to know that a blood clot could hide behind a knee. And so then, you know, you guys wrote me and I thought, it's a good time we need to start spreading the word, you know, because my life has been changed drastically because of this. I will never have that moment with Jared that I should have had.
I'll never have our next chapter together, but I can do this for him and make a difference.
Leslie Lake: And you
Loren Ridinger: are,
Leslie Lake: you are making a difference.
Loren Ridinger: And that's why I wrote the book. And a lot of this is in the book, a lot of the anger about it. You know that I was mad as hell that I [00:27:00] didn't know about the blood clot, a lot of our journey and how we met and you know how I'm turning things backside up.
But you never get through it all. Everybody's like, oh it's a grief book. You know it's not a grief book. I can't tell you how to overcome that. I can't. You'll never overcome that. Not me. I'll never be the same person again. I miss the old version of me. That's the girl I really love. This new person of me has come with, I was angry, I was mad, I was sad, my life was stolen from me, my husband's life was stolen from him, and I'll do the best I can, and I keep doing the best I can, and I want to make him proud every day, and I work like an animal, but I want to show up, and I want to tell people that they gotta pay attention.
Leslie Lake: They gotta
Loren Ridinger: know
Leslie Lake: what
Loren Ridinger: to
Leslie Lake: look for, because nobody told us. Well, thank you for coming on this journey with us because this will save the lives. There's a hundred thousand people in the United States that die from this every single year. One of the leading causes of maternal mortality in this country, preventable.
Loren Ridinger: Preventable and we don't even talk about it. We think if our arm hurts or our jaw hurts as women, it's a heart [00:28:00] attack. If you know, our sugar's high, we go check for diabetes, but nobody, nobody
Leslie Lake: checks. I mean, in my case, I was perimenopausal, and they told me I had fibroids, and that's why I was having a hard time breathing.
And I'm at a major New York City hospital in 2018, and that's, you're telling me that's what's causing my inability to breathe, and they're going to send me home.
Loren Ridinger: I'm telling you, when Serena went, if it wasn't for her trainer saying, no, she's not leaving till they investigate, she has a blood clot. Now, he was trained.
As a trainer working with athletes, what to listen for. She didn't even know. She thought he was crazy for a moment. You know, she was like, what, what is he talking about? And sure enough, he was right. You know, one of the things that JR and I wanted to do together was to write a book, but that book was supposed to be about our relationship and community and helping people and why it worked for us and why we worked for so long, [00:29:00] because I think so many people I always thought that there was some magic formula to our marriage and it really just was not quitting on each other.
You know, that we really believed in each other because so many people just throw in the towel and divorce is so easy and not that that's, it's always an option, but it shouldn't be a first option. You at least should explore trying. And J. R. and I were just really committed to each other in our life and we liked to being together.
And that didn't mean that marriage was easy every day. Marriage is never easy. I always said, mom, there's no manual on marriage. You know, she would say it's a hard thing to do. I was familiar with grief. I lost my mom. She was 42. I was 21 years old. I lost my father when he was 63. He had diabetes. When he was born, he had a, um, stroke from it, and, and so I was familiar.
It was supposed to be me that went first. I had the brain aneurysm. My history of health was awful. When [00:30:00] JR used to say, I can't live without you, it was almost like we thought at some point we would just go together. He would never want to talk about it. He was like, let's not talk about death, let's just live.
And, you know, our journey was the most beautiful thing I ever endured and he believed in me. He was a big believer in people. When I think about who I am today, I wrote the book Scrambled or Sunnyside Up because every day J. R. would ask me, do you want your, should I have my eggs scrambled or sunnyside up?
And I used to say, I don't know, scrambled today, it would be sunnyside up. And you know, the first 10 years of marriage. I would be thrilled that he would ask me that. I love that he asked my input. I love that he cared about my input, but you know, you're 20 and you're 30, you start to be like, okay, you're a pain in the ass.
What do you want? You know, scrambled eggs or sunny side up. That's up to you. What are you in the mood for? What do you want today? You know, and he would say, Oh, don't get so bent out of shape, baby. Just, I'll wait for you to tell me. And he would wait. And then I realized, after he was gone, [00:31:00] why did I get so worked up?
And that was his love language. That was his way of communicating with me. His way of, of Show Me Love was that he cared about what I thought, my opinion. You know, picking at his clothes, telling him what eggs to eat, telling him what to wear to dinner, telling him where we were going to go to dinner. That was his way.
That was his love language. He relied on me. And I loved him for it the first 10 years, so why would I get mad the last 20 being a pain in the ass? I was the pain in the ass, not him. And I would do anything for him to ask me, scrambled or sunny side up again, but I never will get that. And so I named the book that and the book is very much about how to pick up the pieces after you've had them all pulled out from underneath you and how you end up having to start over again.
You know, when I was 18, I tell the famous story about how when J. R. and I used to travel to different states everywhere and. We were starting this, what we called [00:32:00] the internet company, you know, Market America, the World Wide Web back then in 92, it was called the World Wide Web. And he used to say, we're going to start a company with a mall without walls.
Walls, you don't need walls for this mall. It's online. And back then it sounded crazy because nobody even had a computer, you know, but he believed in it. And I was 18, he was 36. And he would say, get in the car. We're going to go to Houston. We're going to go to Dallas. We travel all over the United States and we go.
And when he would tell these five or six people, we'd stop in different places and talk to people about what we were going to do, they'd look at him like he was bizarre, crazy, lunatic. And after the meeting he would say like, Wow, we were awesome, right? We're great. We were great. And I was like, I don't know, people don't look at it like that when we're done.
They look at us like we're crazy. He's like, it doesn't matter what they think, Loren. What matters is what you think. What do you think? Do you believe we're going to make it? Do you believe we can change the world and help people? I said, well, yeah. I said, well, okay, you do the meeting tomorrow. I said, well, hell, I can't do the meeting.
I'm 18. I don't know how to speak. And he said, well, you got to. And I'd try to figure out a way to break up with [00:33:00] him on the way to the next location. And I'd end up speaking and I passed out and I fainted when I first tried to do it in front of like these 10 people. And all these people were fanning me when I woke up, when I came from fainting.
And he said, get up, get up. You're fine. You were awesome. It was hot in here. They turned the AC off. Anyone would have fainted. It's not your fault. You're going to be fantastic in San Antonio tomorrow. I thought this guy's unbelievable. Who believes in somebody? He didn't get in the car and tell me, Leslie, don't speak tomorrow.
Stick to driving. He said, I believe in you. You're gonna be better tomorrow. And that's where my belief came from. That's where I got it from. So, when the rug was pulled out and I lost him, and I lost us and our life, well, everything came tumbling down. In a way that was, I never thought could be fixed. I couldn't for the first time.
The girl who was dear Abby, the girl who was the fixer for everything, the girl who was everybody's go-to, could not be gone to for anything, could not be consoled, [00:34:00] could not be fixed. I could not fix anybody, and I did not want to be fixed. I wanted to be alone. I couldn't see my own daughter's pain. I couldn't feel what my grandkids were going through, and they were suffering.
They didn't understand. All they could visualize is their father being alone. How did dad have a blood clot? It's impossible. He's the healthiest of all of us. He would climb ten foot trees, twelve foot trees. He was a wild man. Nobody could believe anything. JR was the most athletic of everybody. So it didn't make sense to Amber and she couldn't process it.
Because she was suffering thinking about her own father not being there.
Leslie Lake: How could he be gone? And this is why it's so dangerous. Because it's silent and it's sneaky and it's deceptive and it rears its head and shows its way differently depending upon who it is. And that's why we need your voice out there helping us to raise awareness.
No, I'm here. I'm here for it, for sure. You know, you mentioned Serena, I have to tell you, [00:35:00] after she, well, after I had my blood clot, I had read things that she had written because I was angry that this had happened to me. I was pissed that nobody had ever told me what a blood clot was, what to look out for.
I mean, it changes your life, obviously. I thought I was going to lose my, you know, selfishly, I thought I was going to lose my business because I wasn't sure physically I could actually do it anymore. And I had spent my entire life Developing my business. And I thought it was going to be taken away from me and her words at the time when she talked about her experience and how she had a hard time walking to the end of the driveway.
And I was like, here's somebody who is the greatest athlete probably of all time. And she's impacted like this. And if you can impact her and her words were so powerful because it was like a beacon for me that I'm going to come back, I'm going to come back from this. And I think if I hadn't read that. I don't know if I would have come back the way that I did.
Loren Ridinger: She's a beast. She's amazing. She has been such a [00:36:00] true support, such a true friend to me, a sister, somebody who's really helped me get through this. In the book, of course, I talk about other painful things, like two days before he passed away, I was like, you know, my brother was on the boat, and he I had a massage and I told JR, you should have a massage and relax and he's like, I don't want a massage.
I was like, no baby, you should have a massage and relax. You're not able to really go at a walk or knee step. You know, I punished myself for that thinking maybe that caused it. Serena's like, you got to stop. You got to stop right now. Stop doing that to yourself. This is not your fault. You've got to stop blaming yourself.
You would have no way of knowing. Nobody gave you a hint. Nobody gave you a clue.
Leslie Lake: She's right. She's 100 percent right. There's just no way.
Loren Ridinger: And that's why we have to do more of this and spread the word.
Leslie Lake: Yes. So, I pre ordered the book. My mother is all excited to get the book also, she's pre ordered it. Uh, I'm going to go see you in New York, uh, at your book signing.
Loren Ridinger: Oh, I'm so excited, I'm so [00:37:00] excited.
Leslie Lake: And I have a bunch of people who want to come also, so I think you're going to have like this giant fan club show up at the book signing.
Loren Ridinger: I love that. That means so, that means so much to me, Leslie, and I will be here for you guys too, so if you guys show up for me, I'll show up for you, because I really want to spread the word, I really want to, make a difference.
This book is the beginning of this. You know, there's certainly a very different Loren from chapter one to the end, you'll see. You know, the anger that comes with the blood clot, you know, the anger that it could have been prevented, the anger that I should have known, the anger that he should have known and been given a sign.
And then, you know, life gets stolen from you and not everybody. And most people are not as lucky as you. And I'm grateful that you came out of it, but we don't often get to see that survivor.
Leslie Lake: Loren, thank you for joining us here today. We're heartbroken for you over your loss of J. R. And we are. Forever indebted to you for joining our show and sharing his story and your story and helping us raise [00:38:00] awareness.
We are super excited to have the book out. We have a lot of people who are pre ordering and we're excited to read the book and I'm going to see you in New York at the book signing. I can't wait.
Loren Ridinger: Thank you guys for having me. I think there's nothing more important of all the. Podcasts I've done, this is one of the most important because we really do need to spread the word and, and share this information so we can help save people's lives.
I don't want people to have to go through what I've been through. Thank you guys for your time. Thank you.
Leslie Lake: Thank you for joining us on another episode of taking a breath. We want to thank Loren one more time for sharing her story and taking the time to be with us here today. For more information on Scrambled or Sunny Side Up, please visit ScrambledOrSunnySideUp. com. For more information on risk prevention and community, please visit stoptheclot. org.
VO: We know the patient because we are the patient. [00:39:00] Together with listeners like you. We can collectively stop the clot.
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