Kath Hope
Kath Hope: [00:00:00]
Emma Cooksey: So, Cath, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for asking me, Emma. Right. I feel, I was just saying before we came on air that I feel quite over familiar because I feel like I've known you for a long time, but this is the first time we're chatting.
Yeah, well,
Kath Hope: this is what this is how our condition is, you know, even on the other side of the pond and we're just all connected together because of the internet, which is a fabulous
Emma Cooksey: thing.So I first heard about you from Gary Knight, who I interviewed on the podcast a long time ago, probably like three years ago.
And he was like, well, you know, all about Hope2Sleep and Kath. And I said, No, so that's when I first discovered you, but since then I've heard really nice things about you from all sorts of patients So why don't we start out with your own journey with sleep apnea.
was there a particular time in [00:01:00] your life that you started noticing some symptoms? Did you know anything about sleep apnea? Like how did that all start out for you? Thank you.
Kath Hope: Right, all started out by my daughter, Katie.
well when she was... First first looking into nursing, of course she was on Google a lot like we all do, and and I remember one morning when she said to me, Mum, you, she shouted from her bedroom, Mum, you've got sleep apnea, I thought, what's she been reading now?
Mum, I'm telling you, you've got sleep apnea. Yeah. Okay. Oh, thanks Katie. Okay. Didn't even look at her, five years later I got diagnosed. Oh wow. And I was very, very lucky for me,
so what had happened was I was having trouble with my ears, they always seemed to be full.
my GP sent me for a referral. You know, obviously it's the NHS here in the uk. And so I went [00:02:00] for the appointment with Mr. Smith and, when he called me through, he examined, you know, down the back of my throat, my nose and everything, about my ears,And then he happened to say to me, do you snore?
So I said, yes. He said, does it bother you? I went, no, I'm asleep. So he said, Ah, right. Well let me ask you, do you feel very tired during the day? I said, yes, but I'm a very busy music teacher and you know, I work all hours. So he said, what about when you just sat somewhere? There's not much to do.
I said, waiting for my appointment with you. I did almost fall asleep in the waiting room. He said, I am suspecting that you've got sleep apnea. And he said that is far more important than your ears
I don't want to take this appointment any further because the fullness in your ears could all be linked with the sleep apnea. And it could [00:03:00] be that if, if I am right, once you go on treatment for sleep apnea, the ear issue could sort itself. If it doesn't come back to me.
Right. So, what a waste of time, because what I should have said before I started this journey is that, for years and years, my own GP was very, very good. He used to try and get to the bottom of my problems, and my main problem was, which we thought was because I was a workaholic, I worked all hours, you know, 85 pupils a week is quite a lot for a single person.
a music teacher. So, what used to happen about every 18 months, I would literally physically collapse with exhaustion. I remember one time it was dreadful you know, because it was from February to May, I couldn't leave the sofa. Every time I left the sofa, you know, I would just shake from head to foot.
I thought it was, I thought I was having a [00:04:00] breakdown. And, and that, that was the worst time. Oh, and I had glandular fever,
Emma Cooksey: Yeah. So in America, They call it mono, I think.
Kath Hope: So, you're
Emma Cooksey: very exhausted.
Kath Hope: Yeah, yeah. And what happens with glandular fever is it doesn't always show up in your blood at first. So, this was that particular time, I'm telling you, where I couldn't even move for three months off the sofa.
February, March, April. Yeah, three months. But it was a good year before I was properly better. And it was the third blood test. when I'm getting better that finally showed it was glandular fever but that happened even with it without it being glandular fever and I developed panic attacks. Oh goodness.
Yeah, I wouldn't say Depression, apart from when it lingered. Anyone gets depressed when you know you are grounded. Yes. And you're not that type of person.[00:05:00] But it was mainly with me. It was panic attacks anxiety. Mm-Hmm. . And you know, it did get really bad. It, you know, I had to have counseling and I had counseling.
For more than a year, every week. And I will always be grateful for that. And I would always suggest
Emma Cooksey: everybody... And make a huge difference. Absolutely.
Kath Hope: Never be afraid. I thought, you know, a bit of a stigma, but I'll talk about it. Especially
Emma Cooksey: in the UK. Yeah, yeah,
Kath Hope: yeah, it's yeah, but, you know, thankfully there's you know, a lot of good things are happening now in, well,
Emma Cooksey: Roman Kemp. I don't know if you know him in the USA.
Kath Hope: He's very famous over here.he's been diagnosed, it was all over the media, with sleep apnea. I think it was about a couple of years ago and I noticed he's doing a real lot about mental health with men. What I don't know is whether, [00:06:00] because it's hard to get to these people.
Right. You know, the, when they're obviously in the limelight, I don't know what that feels like.
You know, he's obviously had some mental health problems himself, and I would guess that a lot of this was when he was undiagnosed for sleep apnea.
as I was saying, I will always be grateful to my counsellor. It was provided by the NHS because he helped give me the tools, really, the coping, coping skills.
Yeah. Because I still didn't know I had sleep apnea then and you know, I mean, it's looking back in hindsight, it explains why both times with my children, I got really bad postnatal depression, we call it here, and because I was obviously, your sleep apnea is worse when you're You know, pregnant and hormonal.
Yeah. And then you've got to go with all the lack of sleep, on top of what we're already living with, [00:07:00] unbeknown to us. So all of that makes sense as well now.
Emma Cooksey: I'm just nodding a lot because I had one pregnancy undiagnosed and untreated and I had another pregnancy after diagnosis and treated with CPAP.
I mean, like, you're still dealing with a newborn and disruptive sleep, but you're getting oxygen to your brain, which I think just,I felt really different between the two different
Kath Hope: pregnancies. That is ever so interesting, Emma. That is very, because you have the two comparisons. I don't. Yeah. You know, so for me pregnancy and delivery was not a nice experience because it was spoiled by, the lack of sleep and, and how it affected me, you know, mentally, so yeah, definitely.
I love my children, but I didn't enjoy the pregnancy.
so, I, like I say, my doctor [00:08:00] tried, this is what I'm saying, isn't it?
My doctor tried to find out what was wrong with me, because there wasn't anything specific in my life to cause all this. Yes. And it wasn't in my nature to be like that either, you
Emma Cooksey: know. I can relate so much to that because I remember explaining to the doctor, I'm waking up with my chest pounding, feeling anxious before anything's even happened, before I've had a thought, you know, which is not
Kath Hope: normal.
Now that is ever so interesting and it, and that is important to point out, Emma, because I didn't have that. Right, interesting. No, you did. And some people, and this is why some people, they all, it can't be me. Right, so
Emma Cooksey: what, tell us about your experience then. Yeah,
Kath Hope: because I didn't have any experience of, regarding my sleep.
Oh. And every time I went to my GP He would say, how's your sleep? And I would say, I can sleep for England. I could sleep [00:09:00] forever. I could sleep for 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours. But I didn't feel any better for it. But I didn't wake up, like you're saying, with a pounding heart.
Right. So that's another thing that puts people off getting a diagnosis. Doesn't have to be like that. Absolutely. And it doesn't. I can count on... On one hand, the amount of times my sleep was disrupted by sleep apnea yeah, yeah, twice I remember jumping out of bed because I had cramp.
I can't, I didn't wake up choking.
Emma Cooksey: So you just didn't think,it's anything to do with your sleep?
Kath Hope: And I used to say to my doctor, no, there's nothing wrong with my sleep at all. And so he, he, you know, wasn't on the scent. So, it's my GP was fabulous, absolutely fabulous.
And he would send me off for you know, one test after another, test my [00:10:00] thyroid. He tested me for diabetes. He, you know, went through all the things and I even at one point would have been tested for leukemia and this, you know, and every test came up.
Negative. Every test. And so in my head, I'm thinking, well, I've just got a mental problem, you know, some, some sort of anxiety. that makes you worse because you haven't got a reason for it. Right. I bounced back because the GP would put me on antidepressants.
Yeah. Because his words were, we can either call this mental exhaustion or ME. This is going back a long time. They know a lot more about ME, but they didn't back them. So he said, there isn't anything I can do to help with ME, but if we call it mental exhaustion, we'll put you on some antidepressants.
And, and those antidepressants did work. Now, [00:11:00] eventually, so I was on and off, on and off, you know, this is how I went on. Same.
Emma Cooksey: fair play to my doctors over the years, but I'm one of those patients where, I went on antidepressants, felt better, came off antidepressants, felt worse, went on antidepressants, all of that.
So, and I think it's one of those things that's super personal, like for me, I have felt so much better being on antidepressants and doing the counselling therapy, one on one with somebody. And that's what's worked for me. So, I mean, I kind of like to talk about it
Kath Hope: It's important to talk about it. But I've got another theory, Emma. So example, the very first antidepressant I was put on was called amitriptyline. Now they use amitriptyline for pain as well. Now if you look up amitriptyline, do you know what it does?
Emma Cooksey: I've never heard of that drug.
Kath Hope: [00:12:00] Yeah, I mean it is quite a popular one, I think you will know it there, but it's an old, don't forget I'm going back years.
It's an old fashioned antidepressants they used,because it helps with pain as well. So look up those type of antidepressants, what they do, they limit REM sleep.
So they're reducing your REM sleep. What does a reduction in REM sleep do? gives you less apneas because you're not going into REM. So that is another theory why it's not brilliant sleep because we all need REM sleep as we know but it will have lessened the apneas. Of
Emma Cooksey: course you knew nothing about Oh
Kath Hope: no, this is all in hindsight.
But you still
Emma Cooksey: have to feel a bit better. yeah,
Kath Hope: yeah. And then I'd go back and then I'd go, you see, I am a workaholic, so I'd go full pelt into it, never learned my lesson, and then it would happen again. And it was usually about [00:13:00] every 18 months. Yeah,
Emma Cooksey: that was basically my 20s too. I mean, like, really, we're kind of twins.
Yeah,
Kath Hope: yeah, definitely. And anyway, I wanted me ears sorted, but I'd better humour Mr. Smith. Yeah. So
Emma Cooksey: he sent you for a sleep study.
Kath Hope: He referred me to a chest physician in, you know, our city who deals with sleep apnea.
So, I went off to him, and he had a word with me, and he said yeah, listening to what Mr. Smith said, I do think we need to test you. So, off I went to the sleep clinic In lab
Emma Cooksey: overnight?
Kath Hope: No, no, no, no, not here. That is not common over here. Okay, interesting. We have very few sleep labs, you know. Okay. Some of the bigger hospitals, it was you know, a full kit, you know nerves and wired up and... I had to put it on [00:14:00] at home.
Emma Cooksey: The home sleep test, but it had the cannula and all the
Kath Hope: whole works. Yeah, the whole works, it's chest belt, everything. Yeah. So anyway. I did that. And I'll tell you what I don't like. They go, what time do you go to bed? Well, I've always been a night owl.
So I thought, well, you know, I'll be good. And I'll say 12, which was usually about
Emma Cooksey: one.
Kath Hope: Right. at the time. Anyway, but I don't like being told when I have to go to bed, but because this recording was coming on you know, I went to bed and of course then you're supposed to sleep.
So I couldn't fall asleep. So I thought, well, they won't get much from that. So it was just one night and then he had to take the equipment back the next day. So I said, I don't think it was very successful because I didn't sleep as good as I usually do. So she said, it's okay because we don't expect that you'll have sleep apnea anywhere.
This is going back.
Emma Cooksey: I Can't remember how many Because you're a woman or did they Because
Kath Hope: I am
Emma Cooksey: obese. [00:15:00] Right. You're not obese and you're a woman. No,
Kath Hope: I'm not thin. I don't know if you can see me. I'm not thin, but I'm not, you know, I'm not
Emma Cooksey: Right. You're not obese. No, no,
Kath Hope: no, no. And and so the sleep clinic said you won't have it.
Now, we're going back, and I think it's 2007, this. Well, back in 2007,
Emma Cooksey: people I was 2008. Yeah.
Kath Hope: Oh, really? Yeah.
Emma Cooksey: Yeah, that's when I got my diagnosis. Really a
Kath Hope: difference, yeah. Yeah. So, a lot of people were overweight. Well, in fact, nearly everybody was. Oh, yeah. In the UK. In the UK, anyway. Yeah. Mm hmm. I always remember going to my first support group meeting, connected to the hospital, and I've never felt so slim in my life.
And I'm not slim, I'm just average. But because I was the only person at that support meeting that was of a [00:16:00] normal size. So you know, and so the, the clinic said, don't worry about it because we don't expect you'll have it. But we had to do the study because the consultant asked us to. Yes. So then, so then I get a letter in the post and it's to go to see the consultant.
So my husband said, do you want me to come with you? I went, no, no, it'll just be to tell me I haven't got it. It'll send me back to Mr.
Emma Cooksey: Smith. You're fully expecting. To just be like, this is a waste of time, can you fix my ears?
Kath Hope: Absolutely, yeah! So, so I got off I Tootles to the you know, to my appointment, and so I goes in, and he said yep, well, alright.
So I said, What do you mean? He said, yes you have, you've got sleep apnea. I went, no I haven't, I can't have. He said, oh yes you have. I said, well it must be mild. He said, oh no. He said, it's severe. He said it showed us that you were stopping breathing 32 times an hour. [00:17:00] sO I went, I think you've got the wrong patient.
So I was right in denial. Yeah. And so he said it was paper notes then, it wasn't on the computer. Yeah. So he sent the notes round and he said, could you just check those details? Is that you of that address? So I went... Well, it is. He said, we haven't got it wrong. You've got severe obstructive sleep apnea.
So,
Emma Cooksey: And at that point, did you know anything about, so your, your daughter said five years before, I think you have sleep apnea and he's sending you for testing. Did you know anything about it or? Absolutely
Kath Hope: not. Because in my, in my head, my daughter was talking a load of rubbish because she'd read something silly on Google.
Right. I knew that it involves snoring, but that was the only thing. I honestly didn't expect it would be sleep apnea and not severe either. And anyway, so I was, I was in a bit of denial there [00:18:00] and he said to me, so I said to him, right, okay. If you're telling me, oh it was explaining how sleep deprived I am and all this, I said, if you're telling me I'm so sleep deprived and I've got severe sleep apnea, can you tell me why I'm a night owl and go to bed too late, usually about one o'clock in the morning?
So he went, yes, it's simple. So I went, What do you mean? He said, because subconsciously, you know, your bed is a dangerous place. Well, that really shut me up. It really did, I thought. Yeah. You know, so I was absolutely in shock. And then I came home and did more googling myself. And I saw these horrendous pictures of the, I remember, I can picture the image now.
And it was a man with this great big tube coming, you know, out of this horrendous big mask, because that's what they were like then. Yeah. And all I thought [00:19:00] was Elephant Man. I just thought. Gosh, surely not. Right. They're not expecting me to wear that. So then how it puts it in perspective because at that time it was not well known about.
Yeah. It probably was a lot more in America, but it wasn't. I don't know.
Emma Cooksey: Yeah, I don't think so. Like, because I was diagnosed in 2008, and that's part of why I started a podcast and everything, because I just never came across, like, all of my doctors were really surprised that I had sleep apnea as a woman, and You know, like you were saying, like an average weight,
So I think, I feel like things are changing a lot now, but yeah, back then, not so much, so.
Kath Hope: But it's you know, it was rare. I felt a bit of a freak, if you like, because I have this rare condition. And obviously, we know it's not now, there's 8 million of us in the UK.
Emma Cooksey: But you didn't have any friends or [00:20:00] family members using CPAP or talking about it or any of that. Absolutely. And as
Kath Hope: I'm on your podcast, I would like to thank every American who came to my help. Dr. Park, Kimberley Turner. Yeah. There's lots. Of them who helped me because there was no help here in the uk.
Yeah. There was no support, you know, back then. And it was me, American friends who I obviously became friends with, who helped me, you know because the next part of my story is that, I told my dad. He said, what is this sleep apnea then? So I explained what it was and about how you snore, not everybody snores, but the common, most common is in a snorer, and how you would snore and then jump or, you know, he went, crumbs your Mum had it.
I went, are you sure? He said, yeah. [00:21:00] Well, I remember myself, my mum was a horrendous snorer and she was so bad, it used to vibrate the radiator in my bedroom as a child and then the noises she made, it wasn't just snoring, it was grunting and everything. sudden the noise would stop so i think oh i could go to sleep now so i would just be on the verge of sleep and she'd start again so i knew without a doubt well my mum had had that sudden heart attack fatal heart attack at age 49 oh bless her and yeah if only we
Emma Cooksey: knew so sorry for your loss that's
Kath Hope: terrible it's one of those things we couldn't have changed things we're going back a long time she's been She's been gone about 35 years.
What would they have done back then, you know? Sleep apnea was barely here and it certainly wasn't like it is today. My mum was claustrophobic, again another sign of people with [00:22:00] sleep apnea, not for me but for many. She would never have coped, you know, back then with the horrendous big bubble mask. it's just one of those things I don't feel bitter because life has moved on.
I'm sad, I'm sad. So
Emma Cooksey: glad you got your diagnosis though.
Kath Hope: But that was why I knew I needed to cope with this treatment no matter what because My son, Alex, he was only about eight, I think, at the time. I had quite a big gap because the pregnancies weren't good ones for me. Nine year gap!
Yeah, and then, and so I knew I had to treat this no matter what, because no way did I want history repeated itself. My mum died when my daughter was a baby she was barely one, she'd just learnt to say grandma, and then my mum was no more. It was a sudden heart attack, no second chances. And I was frightened then [00:23:00] because I thought whatever it takes I've got to make this work.
Yeah. Because otherwise history might repeat itself. Yeah. And that is why I was desperate, absolutely desperate, to you know, get this treated. So
Emma Cooksey: the doctor that that gave you the diagnosis, so are they, how does it work in the UK? Are they then referring you to somebody who gives you That's the treatment option or how, how does that work?
Kath Hope: Yeah, yeah. Well, he, it all works in, within the NHS, so he's...
Emma Cooksey: Yeah. With people talking to each other, which is amazing.
Kath Hope: Yeah. Yeah. Well, not quite amazing. We've got a lot going on.
so what happened, the chest physician at the time, you've got to bear in mind sleep apnea wasn't as common as it was now, so he was a chest physician dealing with, sadly, giving people cancer diagnoses before me, literally as I was waiting to see him for my sleep apnea diagnosis, [00:24:00] but he worked within the sleep clinic, so that's when I'm passed back to the sleep clinic into the physiologist's hands.
Got it. But again, you know, gave me the site because we get the CPAP machine. We don't have insurance. We don't need insurance. I mean but there's plus, you know, there's pros and cons for that because you have to have what you're given. Yes. But we're grateful in the NHS. because you know we do at least get there's
Emma Cooksey: no cost to the end user no there's
Kath Hope: no cost no that's right i mean sadly because of the long waiting lists now you know the way things have gone some people do you know
Emma Cooksey: End up paying out of pocket for things yeah
Kath Hope: yeah absolutely but but anyway back then but there was a delay so there was a delay I think the delay was something like October to March before I could get the CPAP machine.
Yeah. Because it had only [00:25:00] just been approved on NICE, the NICE guidelines. Yes. Who guide the
Emma Cooksey: hospitals of what. Which I'm familiar with just because of our friend Vik Veer when they updated the NICE guidelines, I think he did a video about that. And so then I was like, what. these nice guidelines.
And then I went, yeah, well,
Kath Hope: the nice guidelines, we was stakeholders in the charity that I run, the Hope2Sleep charity. And we helped with those nice guidelines because the problem was not everyone was getting treated. Yeah. So a lot of good changes came from the NICE guidelines.
And
Emma Cooksey: so, so to explain for people who aren't in the UK or maybe haven't heard of that, my understanding of those guidelines is that the person who is seeing the patients can use those when they're looking at treatment options and it kind of helps them. Yeah,
Kath Hope: absolutely. [00:26:00] Because on the latest guidelines, they brought in other things.
They actually said that mandibular advancement devices. Could now be given. They already were in some hospitals, but it wasn't on the guidelines. It's on the guidelines now. And so is the night shift. We sell the night shift at the charity. Which
Emma Cooksey: is a positional therapy device that encourages people to sleep on their side.
Kath Hope: That's right. Yeah. And things like the neuromuscular stimulation that could be looked at. So that, I mean, it's still very early because not a lot of them realize those options. Right. That's
Emma Cooksey: good to have them on the guidelines so that, you know, people have options.
Kath Hope: That's it. So, with me, NICE had only just approved it.
So, each hospital, because there wasn't many people getting diagnosed back then, Yeah. The hospitals had to get [00:27:00] approval from, within the hospital to have these CPAP machines. So, I did have a wait. Now, that is not NICE. And that does happen, sadly, where sometimes clinics are giving a diagnosis, And they'll say we can treat you in a year.
That is very, very sad. I would actually rather not have the diagnosis until they could treat me. Because I made the mistake of repeating in front of my young son,That I was stopping breathing 32 plus times an hour. So poor Alex was out of bed all the time, looking at his mum, hovering over me.
He said I was like a goldfish. A book like that and he would nudge me and then I'd, you know, stop and I might add my husband just carried on sleeping next to me and Katy in the other bedroom wasn't bothered
Emma Cooksey: [00:28:00] Yeah, it's like my youngest daughter, I can't remember what she heard, she heard part of me interviewing somebody who had lost a loved one and After it, she was asking me about, you know, do people die and, and I kind of said like sometimes if people don't get treatment, but mommy has, you know, that's why I wear my CPAP and, you know, my sleep apnea is treated.
And so that's why so that I don't worry about dying.but somehow that stuck with her. And so if I'm. Like, I don't ever fall asleep without my CPAP on, even if I'm on the sofa kind of watching a movie and just like half closing my eyes, I know I'm not gonna fall asleep, but same thing, I'll open my eyes, she'll be hovering over me like, are you going to bed?
Do you need to put your CPAP on? Yeah,
Kath Hope: absolutely. I mean, before I was diagnosed, before I was on CPAP, those are the times I did fall asleep. I wasn't falling asleep during the day, I was too busy, but [00:29:00] as soon as I sat down and I would sleep and, and then it was mainly Alex again, you know, looking after his mum.
And he would come and he'd be nearly crying trying to wake me up to get me off that sofa. Not, we didn't know about sleep apnea. I couldn't be woken. Yeah. That was the problem. I would go into such a deep sleep. Mm-Hmm. . So I never had a nap. My, you know, when I fell asleep it was for hours.
Emma Cooksey: so you waited that time, but then you got CPAP. So you said you had so and so. Tell me about
Kath Hope: that. So well I remember go, I'll just tell you about my gp. all of a sudden that's something else. We were talking about this in the group the other day is that I was always ill with chest infections.
You know, I used to get a lot of tonsillitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis. I think you call 'em all strep throat
those are the type of things I yield, [00:30:00] and one lot of antibiotics never got me better. The older I got, the more it went on my chest. Somebody said... In our support group, I've just found an amazing benefit, she said I used to always be ill and I used to always with chest infections and things and, and pneumonia even needed lots of antibiotics.
She said, I've just had a real bad infection and it just went within days. Is that, 'cause I'm on CPAP and I said that was one of my stories. That was the biggest thing I noticed. And I honestly, since 2007 can count on again one hand how many antibiotics I've had
Emma Cooksey: I'm literally in real time. Going, oh my word, me too, because that's something I haven't really ever thought about, like, I think I just kind of thought I'd somehow grown out of that, but I suppose it does coincide with when I started CPAP, like, I used to have, I mean, before I had my [00:31:00] tonsils out age 19, I had tonsillitis multiple times a year, and then during my 20s, I would just Like, have, you know, colds that wouldn't shift, and I think, I think probably because you're not getting restorative sleep, and so your body just can't get
Kath Hope: over it.
Your immune system's rubbish. Your immunity's rubbish. You know, there's probably a lot. Other reasons as well. Yeah,
Emma Cooksey: for sure. But that's kind of
Kath Hope: interesting. That's the bit and the fact that you're getting sleep. We all need sleep to heal, whatever we're healing from, mind or body, and we're not getting that even though we think we are, and it's your immune system.
And honestly, that, you know, was the biggest thing. So I won't go back to my GP anymore, because I didn't need him. Right. And then. I can't remember what it was even for but I walked into his office and he just sat back on his chair and went, well, I'll be damned. So I said, what?
He said, just [00:32:00] sleep apnea diagnosis. He said if only we'd have realised, we could have saved the NHS, all that money from all them tests you've had over the years. And at the time he told me that he only had, I think it was two or three, including me, people in the whole of his practice with sleep apnea. My GP was fabulous.
Every time I visited him for anything, he would have me in that office for a good 45 minutes, pumping me for knowledge about sleep apnea. Thank you. That
Emma Cooksey: happens to me too. Yeah.
Kath Hope: Really? Yeah. And by the time, by the time he'd retired, he had hundreds, yeah. Hundreds of
Emma Cooksey: people. Yeah. Because my, so,one of my primary care physicians here, so similar to the gp.
Yeah. She, one time said to me, pretty much everything she knows about sleep apnea she's learned from me. Just from, coming up every time and me telling her stuff that she doesn't know. Yeah, no we are. [00:33:00] I say partly because we're both chatters. Yeah,
Kath Hope: as well, yeah, that's true.
And, and I'm very inquisitive as well. Yeah,
Emma Cooksey: You went in with this mindset, I'm going to make this work, no matter what, and you didn't want to turn out like your mom and all of that, but like, how did you feel when you actually got the CPAP, like the first kind of week?
I got the
Kath Hope: CPAP machine, and you know how it says in the books, I put it on my face, and I went to sleep, and I lived happily ever after, except it wasn't true! Ooh! Ha ha ha! So! Of course the masks weren't made for my type of face in those days. The headgear, you probably remember this Emma, the headgear. I remember one of them, it went twice, trying to keep the mask on my face.
I mean they're much better now, much better now. But I had one problem after another, after another, and I would chuck... The masks, [00:34:00] and I don't, I'm not a big swearer, I don't swear a lot. I have to be very angry to swear, but believe me, I was very angry in the middle of the night when I could not get their masks to sail and I've thrown them across the bedroom in temper, and then I'd grab another one and I'd try that, because the hospital were great, they gave me loads of masks.
That's good. No you know, so, and, and like I say, I got loads of help from my friends, you know, across the pond in, mainly in the USA. It was I read lots of resources and I, I needed some comfort products. And this is what you know, it was, I used to cut up T-shirts. to put a liner on my mask.
Yes. I got the, cause I used to wake up with bruises under here. Yeah. I look like I've been in the boxing ring, not bed. Yeah. You know, because I really had to tighten these masks so bad, but it literally bruised my face. Yeah. And then, you know, we learned [00:35:00] about the strap, strap covers we could have.
Then of course I'd get me mask sorted and then I'd get poured with rain in the middle of the night, you know, I had a problem. I paid a lot of money because you have to pay duty and all that. And I got the things from the USA, but the clinic were amazed because they'd never seen anything like this before.
And so they said, You know, next time you buy, will you buy extras and we'll send people to your house to buy them off you. Yeah, well, I like things like that. So I'll set up an eBay store, literally to help people. I won't making money on anything. I'll literally, whatever it costs to get them, including the duty and you name it.
I put my eBay oh, but a little bit extra because I had a little pot. So every time I sold things. Yeah, every time I sold things I would build it up so I could buy more and this is how it went on. But what flabbergasted [00:36:00] me was the hospital used to send Patients, they'd knock at my door, sometimes in the middle of people's piano lessons.
So, in the end I had to say, can you get them to make an appointment to come? And, but it wasn't just that. It wasn't, they didn't just want that little strap cover that maybe cost them five pounds. They wanted to talk. Yeah. And it was the same on eBay.
Emma Cooksey: So had you, so at that point you hadn't even started a charity?
No, no, no. You were just like... That's just me! That's hilarious!
Kath Hope: I know, this was Kath Hope, just little old Kath Hope And I was just doing that to try and help people, which is my nature, I mean, you don't start a charity if you're not that kind of person. So it was almost like an unofficial charity. And this was 2009 by the way, I remember that day.
And that date, I mean, when I [00:37:00] started doing this, and, and the trouble is, you see, it wasn't just an eBay sale, I always go the extra mile, so I'd say, I hope you found the order help, and, you know, what you've bought helps you, and, and that's when they'd realize I had sleep apnea too, so then, you know, all these messages through eBay, I thought, right then, you know.
And and that was when I realized the need. It wasn't just the comfort products. It was, it was people. Absolutely. Yeah. And so this is how it started. So I thought, right, what I'll do is I'll, I'll in my head, I always wanted a charity, but I couldn't really do that from the beginning. used my name, her.
So we used Hope2Sleep, and that's where the name came from. So I set up this Hope2Sleep as just a little, I say business, but it was an unofficial non profit business because every time we sold anything... You just put it back
Emma Cooksey: in to [00:38:00] buy more stuff for people. Plus all your time of... Talking to people. Oh yeah.
You know.
Kath Hope: Yeah, yeah. That's right. Trying to teach 85 pupils. So this was back in 2009 and I went to the bank cause I thought we need to get this going better. I didn't have spare money myself. So I went to the bank and I thought the bank will give me a loan. And you know, if they give me a loan, I'll be able to get a lot more of these products and help a lot more people quicker.
And so the bank, I can remember him now. He looked at me, and I know what he thought. Silly woman. What the heck is she talking about? This sleep apnea. He humoured me. He gave me a thousand, not as a loan, a thousand pounds. That is all, I could get. Well, a thousand pounds don't buy that much, but it was a little star.
But it was fantastic. It was a little star, yeah. So, I bought more products and I added cleaning wipes, because the wipes, I [00:39:00] still use the Beaumont ones, the citrus ones. They are quite expensive, but they're brilliant for cleaning off the... Oil is from the cushion because I can't be doing, doing the mask every day and soaking in water.
Yeah, that's right. I do that once a week, but the other days, wipe on the mask. So I started bringing that in as well. And people will say, what a difference because they weren't having all the leaks that we're getting. Even with the detergent, I know it's with different sides of the pond, so here it's like Fairy.
Fairy is a fabulous product for your pots, but it's not so good for the mask because it leaves residue behind. Yes, So it looks beautiful and shiny, does your mask. Cushion, but it's because the residues clung to it and that means mask leaks, right? So I added them and then it moved on to the hose lift.
And, but all the time, you know, it was draining me because there was more and more people building up [00:40:00] and
Emma Cooksey: you're already overdoing it with your. piano lessons in your music.
Kath Hope: Yeah, yeah, that's right. And going into the schools, I taught in the schools as well. So what I did was I thought, well, the dream is the charity.
My heart does rule my head a little bit. You know, sometimes I make mistakes that are not quite so good because what I did was, as pupils left, because when you've got Music pupils, you've got them for about 10 years when you're taking them through all the exams, so, you know, it's a commitment and I would never, never have stopped teaching them in the middle, you know, so what would happen is When they went off to university or music college or whatever I didn't replace them.
Got it. But of course, then we were struggling even more because the money was down as well. Yeah, so, but
Emma Cooksey: that's what I'm saying. What was your husband
Kath Hope: saying? Eh, well, he's supportive because I'm very convincing, [00:41:00] you know.
Yeah, so really Hope to Sleep was an unofficial charity because I never really had the time, the, literally the time to get it started and you know, people had joined me and I remember it was a friend who we got her husband diagnosed because he, his blood pressure wasn't they couldn't get any better.
So yeah. Sort his blood pressure out. Turns out, the usual story, he was living with untreated sleep apnea, got diagnosed, blood pressure sorted. So, Carol helped me, and she said, Kathy, you can't go on. It was breaking me. We were, I, I, on my own, was supported by about 5, 000 people, which, to one person, one person is quite a lot.
That's too much. Yeah, and also the orders. And like, my husband's fabulous. He works for the trains. So, he worked shifts.
If he was on an early [00:42:00] shift, then... It meant he got back about an hour and a half just gave him time to do the orders because there's no way I could teach, do orders, and support. And so Carol said enough's enough, I'm going to help you get started as a charity.
Thank goodness she did. Yeah. Yeah.
Emma Cooksey: I haven't met her, don't know anything about her, but that was a really good one. I love Carol too,
Kath Hope: yeah, because it saved me, because by then you know, I was being well treated for my sleep apnea, and then I was getting exhaustion for trying to help
Emma Cooksey: people with sleep apnea.
Doing way too much, yeah.
Kath Hope: remember this went on from 2009 to 2016. Oh, wow. All that time. And then in 2016, we became an official charity. And it was because people used to want to donate to Hope2Sleep. Yeah. But I used, I, I wouldn't take the money because I wasn't.
Officially a [00:43:00] charity, so I would send them to other charities to give you money, you know, there. The British Lung Foundation, or SATA, that was a charity here. So I'd do all the work and send some of them to go elsewhere with the money! But that's not the case now, obviously. You know, we're an official charity, and the story is that...
We are now, on our last count, we're supporting 22, 000 to 23, 000 people now. That's an amazing count. A team, a team, not just me. Right. You know, we've got Natalie and Sue in there, John in there, you know, I'm at the charity now. Yeah. And we've got all the trustees, and we've got our super chairman, Samantha Backway.
You'll have seen her in our group, because you're in our group. And she runs a very busy sleep clinic herself, and she's chairman of our charity. Nowhere could I do what [00:44:00] I'm doing today without the backing of that team. And the team who says, Kath, you need to rest a bit. Because I do need, I do need... And I'm
Emma Cooksey: on that team.
I would like to be a member of that team. Yeah,
Kath Hope: so that is the story. Right, so how, what Hope to Sleep do as a charity is that our... Priority is always support, helping people get diagnosed, you know, people who come to us and I think I might have sleep apnea or, or my GP won't refer me and, you know, and we're helping people with the CPAP therapy.
So that is the, you know, big part of our work. The other part is raising
Emma Cooksey: awareness. Yeah. I see you all over at the moment, like going to different health fairs and, you know, out into the community. Yeah.
Kath Hope: Yeah, and we go out into supermarkets. Covid stopped a lot of it, but things are getting better now. We go into supermarkets and we set a stand up and we put a big sign up, Do you snore?[00:45:00]
Yeah, I think it's behind me. Oh no, it's the other one. It's the other one. It's got all the signs and symptoms of Yeah. Sleep apnea. Could be. Yeah. And we have we're at, we are, you we're at the charity now. I'm at the charity now and we have High street presence. So people walking past see the signs.
They come in. I've just read your signs. That's great. You know, so people get diagnosed just by walking past the charity, we needed the premises because the charity, before it was a charity, well no, even for the first year of a charity, it was literally taken over our house. I bet. Yeah, yeah, products were everywhere.
So we needed a place Mm-Hmm. to, to dispatch the orders. So this is what we do. Is that, so the biggest the two biggest things as I've said is raise awareness. Yes. sUpporting patients. But what we do is we sell [00:46:00] products which are just comfort products.
Emma Cooksey: Yeah. , so all the things that you talked about before,
the
hose covers. Hose covers, like the strap covers, that's what I'm trying to think of.
Kath Hope: Mask liners, cream, but we do sell masks as well. Yeah, it's great
Emma Cooksey: that you have them all in the one place accessible for people because I think sometimes, you know, people ask me about these things.
We have a ton of different Places people can get these,
Kath Hope: John, he did retire early from the railway. He already did the job from home anyway, unpaid for years.
So he joined, when he retired, he took care of the retirement and when he did that he, he's the main, I mean there's a whole team of them, but he's sort of in charge of the the orders and all of that. Yeah, that's right. And what we do is the orders is what, you know, funds the charity. Yeah, that's great.
And we get a lot of donations. We obviously go [00:47:00] for funding as well, charitable funding, but the good thing for us is that we don't solely rely on that. If we did, we might not be here because during COVID, there wasn't as much funding around for those two years, unless it was... Specific to Covid. Yeah. So it is almost like we're, we're, we're selling the products that help the patients.
anD and that is the only thing our charity ever, ever charges for. It's literally for, we do a sleep studies as well with the consultant. Yeah. So we do sleep studies, a battery rental service, and the products, which is what funds the charity, pays for the, you know, premises that we're in. Keeps the lights on.
Absolutely, yeah. And, so we can, you know, support ourselves and that's why a lot of people want to [00:48:00] buy from us because they know they're buying from us to keep us running. So it actually works really good and obviously we take in donations as well. People might say, look, I got this mask but it's no good and I can't send it back.
Can I send it to you? We'll clean it up if anyone's struggling. Perfect. We donate, we don't just sell, we donate as well. You know, so, and it works, and we go for funding, you know, sometimes people can't afford a sleep study, so we go for funding for that, and then, you know, we might get funding for 20 sleep studies, say and so, you know, when the need arises we'll use that, so it actually, Really, really works great.
But it also means that we can help practically, even with the sleep clinics, because they might have a patient who they've tried everything with, the patient really, really wants to be compliant with a CPAP, but they've run out [00:49:00] of ideas. So they might just give us a call.
so the clinics will ring up, you know, and it'll just be, I'll say, oh, all they need is a mask liner that'll sort that, and, you know, it's just something so, so
Emma Cooksey: simple.
I often, like, when I talk to doctors, that's one thing that I often talk about, is this. I think sometimes people are looking at compliance data in a big, you know, chart and they're like, Oh, you know, why is the compliance so low? But when you spend a lot of time talking to patients, a lot of people I talk to absolutely want to do well with CPAP.
They just have a problem that they find. Like, they can't find a solution to, and it's insurmountable to them, but then when they get a solution to it, like, they're delighted to be as compliant as possible.Of course there's going to be patients that don't want to use CPAP, right, but I think for a lot of people it's more overcoming [00:50:00] some of these smaller issues that can become so annoying, you know, mask irritation, you're getting so Leaks all the time, and you just can't figure out the leaks.
That can be enough just to make people give up, so that's great. I love all that you do.
Kath Hope: Going back to what, you know, when we was talking about how, how did I cope? Yeah. As I said to you, I was not disturbed during sleep, even though I had severe sleep apnea. I slept through. All of a sudden, I've got a CPAP machine and a mask, and I'm waking up every hour.
If, if not more. So I was then getting disturbed sleep trying to treat her and this is why if patients can, you know, can find us quicker, which a lot of the sleep clinics give our leaflets out when they give them the CPAP. That's great. Because if we can get those people immediately diagnosed, we can help them straight [00:51:00] away with any of the little hiccups.
the majority of people who use CPAP And I'm not saying about, you know, there's other ways to treat, we know that. The reason why CPAP is really used, first and foremost, is because no matter what the cause of the sleep apnea is, whether it be the receding jaw or whatever, or position even, Yep.
That will treat it, but some of the other things, like I mentioned... And also
Emma Cooksey: it treats it tonight. Like that's sometimes the thing that when I talk to people who are looking at kind of longer term, like maybe they want to do a surgery or, you know, there are lots of different ways to treat sleep apnea.
But my thing is always like... Why are you doing it like right
Kath Hope: now? Exactly, yeah. For whatever it has to be. You know, some people it can be caused through being [00:52:00] overweight.
So, you know, without the weight, they genuinely don't have sleep apnea. So they'll say, well, maybe if I try to lose weight first. Yeah, but you'll have a job to lose weight with untreated sleep apnea. Get them onto the CPAP, they'll suddenly start to sleep. All of a sudden, the diets they tried before that never worked, suddenly work, because they're able to sleep.
They're getting good sleep.
Emma Cooksey: the more doctors I talk to, The more it's really that way around of find a treatment that works and then whatever diet and lifestyle things you're trying to do are going to go so much better. That's
Kath Hope: right. Exactly. And the thing is as well, you know, like, like the NHS, we get treated by the NHS.
The NHS can give CPAP. The NHS.they don't have the resources to find out the exact reason why that person has sleep apnea as to whether a mandibular device might
Emma Cooksey: work. Right. Well, it's partly resources, but, but [00:53:00] we absolutely have that in the United States as well.
I mean, people aren't being offered, you know, there's, there's drug induced sleep endoscopies. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I've had one of those. CBCT scans and all different tools that people can use to figure out what's going on. But they're, they're used in a pretty narrow way where like, you know, if you're going to an ENT and they're considering a surgery anyway, like they might do a drug induced sleep endoscopy as part of that.
But like, I'm not coming across people all the time that are having all these diagnostic tests, so No, no, that's right. It tends to be like, try it and see, which can be really frustrating and expensive for patients. And the thing
Kath Hope: is as well, like we, you know, we sell the Excite OSA. Yeah. And we sell the Zeus, which you can't have in the USA.
No, we don't have it.
Emma Cooksey: No, you can't have that. I saw Vik's video about it, but that's all I know. Yeah. Yeah.
Kath Hope: It hopefully you will eventually. Yeah. [00:54:00] thE, the Zeus is at the moment for snoring. Yes. But tests are going on right now. Reset, which we're part of. Yeah. As to how well it will treat sleep apnea.
Yeah. Which we fully expect it will in the USA. Apparently, snoring is a medical condition. In the UK, snoring isn't a medical condition. Right.
Emma Cooksey: So the FDA process to have that approved is different. They won't allow
Kath Hope: it, yeah. They won't allow it, do you see? But once it's proven, which we expect it to be, you know, watch this space, obviously, because we will be talking about it when the trials are over.
They're going on right now in the NHS, in one of the hospitals, and then the Zeus will be able to come your way as well. But so we have like the night shift as well, if it's positional, because some people, you know, they don't even know whether [00:55:00] it was only on the back. No. So, you know, the idea is get on your CPAP, get treated, you can start thinking better once you've been treated.
Then if you do want to look to see if you look on our YouTube channel, you will see about the Zeus, Z E U S. Yeah. You will see us talking with Professor Steyer, who is one of the medical advisors of our charity and my own sleep consultant. And you will see the manufacturer of the Zeus as well. And we talk in that webinar, where we actually talk about combination therapy.
Sometimes people are trying their best with CPAP, they'll never be comfortable with it. Let's try and help them, but it takes time, Emma, and like you just said, at least with the CPAP, it's treating them while they're looking. So what people do, who can afford [00:56:00] it, because like I said, we don't have, we don't usually have medical insurance over here for sleep apnea.
They might sometimes pay for the sleep study, but they won't pay for anything else.
Emma Cooksey: So if people want to try.
Kath Hope: Absolutely. Yeah. So they might buy the eXciteOSA and they might use it. and they'll use it and then they'll have a repeat sleep study and then we'll be able to say, That's good.
Things have improved. You've still got sleep apnea, but you've dropped now into the mild criteria, from moderate, say. And then someone else will use the eXciteOSA and say, sorry, it's made no difference. Because not everything will work for everybody. It depends on the cause of the story. And then, and then you'll get people who might pay and have a, a mandibular device made by a dentist.
And again, the same story right? That's
Emma Cooksey: why you're probably [00:57:00] exactly the same as me. I feel like you're one of the few people that gets this, right? My email inbox and my DMs on Instagram are like, oh my word, I'm so glad I got my diagnosis. I love my CPAP. Everything's great. Next person, I hate my CPAP, it's awful, you know, and then the same for every single treatment option you have.
Absolutely. It really depends on the person.
Kath Hope: And I think the other thing is, the person, it's great when we get mostly good stories, once people use it and feel better, but you get those, I absolutely hate it. Don't get us wrong, if me or you, Emma, could manage to 100 percent treat our sleep apnea you know, if there was another way where it would treat us and we didn't have to use the mask, we wouldn't.
Right. But we accept it and at least we only put the mask on for bed, don't we? Right. For sleep, I should say, not even for bed, for sleep. You know, so, [00:58:00] so people say with the mandibular devices, this is a big problem I've got, is that sometimes the snoring stops. And people assume the sleep apnea has as well.
Emma Cooksey: But you need a follow up sleep study is the thing. This
Kath Hope: follow up sleep study, which, you know, Vital. Even the NHS don't always do that because you can't afford it. Yeah. And so these people, and we've had it, they'll go and they'll pay, you know, a thousand pound or more for, you know, to have the mandibular device made and we'll say, oh, well that's improved things, but yeah, not me personally, the consultant will look at it and say that, and the consultant will, you know, compare the last sleep study and they'll say, well, yeah, actuallyjust have a word with your patient.
Dentists and see if they can do some adjustment because it looks like it's improving. Some snoring still coming through and so they'll have an adjustment to the [00:59:00] mandibular and then they'll come back and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. That's brought you right down. Or sometimes it's not the right treatment on its own.
You know, so sometimes you'll work with someone and they've managed to, with a mandibular device, they've managed to get from, say severe to moderate. But then we found, hang on, there's a lot of apnea's going on on your back, so let's try with the night shift as well.
Emma Cooksey: Yes, combining with positional therapy and...
Kath Hope: Absolutely!
Emma Cooksey: I just added an oral appliance. So I wear an oral appliance and a CPAP. Yes, and a CPAP. And so for me, like I have severe sleep apnea and mine got significantly worse when I started perimenopause. And I gained some weight and my hormones were all over the place.
So my doctor was like, let's increase your pressure with the CPAP to make sure it's treated. And so for me, and this is not everybody, but for me, I found I was getting more mask [01:00:00] leaks. I, you know, I had CPAP for. 15 years at this point or whatever.
so just the increased pressure, like for me, just wasn't as comfortable. And I was kind of like waking up more. So I've been reading more about, I've been interviewing people who had tried doing an oral appliance and a CPAP together. And I've been reading about that a little bit.
And so I thought, well, I'm just going to try it. And for me, like, it's not the same for every person, but for me, what I found was it's helped because I had another sleep study and I was, during the sleep study, wearing the oral appliance and the CPAP. I was able to titrate it so that it was correct for, you know, like, wearing the oral appliance.
So I was able to reduce the pressure and That's really helped me a lot. So, I think that it's often this combination where...
Kath Hope: This is so important that you've just mentioned that, Emma, because we're not twins in [01:01:00] everything. Because I also always had high pressures. Yeah. Run up to maximum if I was on APAP, they had to change me to CPAP, you know, and so my sleep consultant at the time Sent me via the NHS to have a mandibular device made Specifically for me.
So I was really excited to do it
Emma Cooksey: with CPAP With the CPAP. So,
Kath Hope: I had this made and I was dying to see my results. So we left it back on CPAP to see the difference in what the mandibular would do for me. It never did a thing. It never did a thing, Emma. And even worse... I'm unlucky, even worse, I ended up with a dental cyst after two weeks.
It was not for you. It was not for [01:02:00] me, but the dental cyst, and I've realised by saying that I don't want to, you know, worry people because I am a bit unlucky. You know, that would not happen to most people, but for me it did, and I had to go in hospital for surgery. But the disappointment was... It didn't do what a consultant.
So for me, the mandibular, for you, it's great. And that's why our treatment is individual. And I think that
Emma Cooksey: that's one of the things that it's, it's tricky for people to get their head round because There are so many moving parts to this. Like, so, a mandibular advancement device is not going to work for a person where their tongue and their soft tissues kind of blocking their airway is not part of it, right?
Like, people who have extremely compromised airways, where their airway is collapsing in on itself. Like, there's nothing a mandibular advancement device is going to do for that. I think [01:03:00] that this is why, for patients, it can be really frustrating because they're paying for, you know, like, different treatment options and having to just trial and error it.
Kath Hope: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And this is why it was important, your story and my story, us two, you know, the same thing, it didn't happen for me, what happened for you. Yeah. You know, the consultant was disappointed, but it wasn't the right thing for me, but it is for somebody
Emma Cooksey: else.
Kath Hope: Tell everybody where they can find you.
Alright, yes well, find us like I said to you, we've got the charity premises in Hull East Yorkshire in England, and what I didn't tell you, Emma, is we have often had people, I mean, obviously, not
Emma Cooksey: from the
Kath Hope: USA.
USA, [01:04:00] Canada, Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, you know, Greece now obviously, you know, I'm saying that, Australia. Some of them are on holiday here, but whilst they're already connected with us, there's no way they're coming to England without having a drop in in.
Emma Cooksey: Next time I'm in England, I'm going to rock up.
Kath Hope: You must come.
You must come. We'll have some quality time together, Emma. we have people traveling from all over the UK. Another, another service we do, no obligation, mask fittings. on our bed, they're laid down with the CPAP on, with the pressures, and sometimes it'll take us two hours to find the right mask.
You know, they don't have to buy the mask.
Emma Cooksey: And they don't have to go through that all for themselves at home. Absolutely,
Kath Hope: yeah. So we know that not everyone can travel to us, so they can find us [01:05:00] online. So the charity is you'll probably put the link up Emma. I will, I'll put it in the show notes. Hope to sleep with a number two, Hope2Sleep.co.uk
They can find resources to help them. We're still working very hard on a new website, which is going to be a lot better. And then we have a lot of people, as you know, Emma, in our support group, which is the, yeah. Facebook support group linked with the charity be careful because there are a lot of people who set up these groups just because they happen to have a condition.
Be very careful, you know, for any health condition. Yeah. who's running the group, you know, because obviously the advice is very important. It's the correct advice and not medical advice. Right. You know, so we but we have a lot of these sleep nurses and doctors,
You are
[01:06:00] fabulous on Instagram. I'm not very good on
Emma Cooksey: Instagram, Emma, I miss a lot. Which, which I really feel like I would love to see more of you on Instagram. Yeah,
Kath Hope: yeah, we need to build that up. Yeah, we need to, but that, Facebook is my place.
Emma Cooksey: You don't have enough hours in the day, so I also think you need a rest.
Kath Hope: you know, you do fabulous work.
I've seen the work you do, Emma. Oh, thanks, Kath. Yeah, we do a lot of fabulous work on Facebook as well. We're trying to build up more
Emma Cooksey: on our YouTube. But I, I think it's good. Yeah, I saw your YouTube, so that's cool that you're doing that.
Kath Hope: Which is what we do. And that's, and the group that you're going to share a link to Emma is a private closed group. So questions need to be answered to join our group. And we're, you know, the admins work really, really hard to make sure that we don't get those advertisers in and all those other [01:07:00] people.
They're not welcome. Yeah. Patients, people who support patients Vik Veer is in our group he doesn't have a lot of time because he's very busy as a consultant. He also needs a rest. He needs, he's another one, but he's there that we can tag if we need it. Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Emma Cooksey: I just want to say thank you so much for joining me.
Kath Hope: No problem at all. It's been real nice chatting. Thanks, Emma.
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