Kat Phillips

Intro: checking in on Boz's heart, atrial fibrillation, going to the doctor.
Interview: We talk to Kat Phillips about fire pet rescue, being a Commissioner on Human Rights in Sonoma County, coming to Chicago for the first time from Indiana, competition vs lifting each other up, seeing life as an improv game, almost not getting the role and working with Mel Gibson on Payback, subverting the dominant paradigm by playing punk rock Juliet, the Hothouse, gibberish operatic improv, the upcoming director's cut of But I'm A Cheerleader, and the lovely surprise of finding all kinds of people you know on TV!

FULL TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1: (00:08)
I'm Jen Bosworth from me this and I'm Gina Polizzi. We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? I mean, you know, it's all good, right? It's all,

Speaker 2: (00:34)
It's fine. As long as my heart keeps beating, you know, I'm fine. I know when you wake up in the morning, do you have that, like one of your first thoughts? Like is my heart. Okay. Yeah. It's more, it's interesting. So [inaudible] happens more at night when you lay down. If you're going to have it at that's the time, because your heart usually sends your brain sensing most to your heart, we're going to sleep calm down. And if you have a fib, it doesn't calm down. So I'm always like, is it? But I am okay. And I'm on medicine to slow it down. So, um, I know I'm covered and the other thing, but yes, the answer is yes to that question, but I also then can calm myself down because they did so many tests on my heart while I was there. That I, they know it's fine.

Speaker 2: (01:16)
There's no sign of heart disease. So it's more like, um, yeah, it's just anxiety. That's what it is. It's it's hard anxiety. All right. Well, since we S we tend to do so many, um, you know, public service announcements for our adoring public, tell us what it is like to get your heart tested. Like what do they do? Okay. So it's really, it's quite crazy. Um, so first of all, they just take tons of blood and you realize that it's true. What they say, that you could fill up three bathtubs with your blood, or to ask Aaron, ask Erin, I couldn't make that up, but my nurse said that, but, you know, she said, I guess it depends on how big you are. But she said that she said that, um, I think she said two or three bathtubs of blood. If you emptied out a person.

Speaker 2: (02:03)
And I was like, uh, cause, cause they took 10 vials of blood over two days, like big vials. And I was like, am I gonna bleed my going to bleed to death? And she was like, no, honey, but she may have been using what hyperbole or whatever. I don't know. But the point is we have a lot of blood in there, but anyway, so first they did a battery of blood tests and everything was fine. So that didn't freak me out. But what is freaky is the echo-cardiogram. So the echocardiogram is where it's basically an ultrasound of your heart. However, they shoot you with dye so they can see it. And you have to lay in these weird positions and they're literally like moving your ribs out of the way, moving your organs out of the way to get to the heart on the outside.

Speaker 2: (02:50)
So they don't go inside anywhere. Um, but it's like late lean here in, and at that time I was and puking. So I was like, lady, I was like, can we she's like, you're really sweaty. I'm like, no I've been, I'm like having some kind of problem here. And she's like, Oh, but she doesn't care. Her job is to get the tests done. She right. He was funny since she was doing a heart test, but she was literally the most caring one. And I understand she's got to get these pictures of the heart. And at one point I made the mistake. I should've never done this, but I said, how's it looking?

Speaker 2: (03:32)
She goes, I can't tell you that it will be read by your cardiologist. I'm not allowed to say anything. And I said, Oh, I don't know why it just came out of my mouth because I was so nervous. And I was like, what does she see? Is she seeing well, I, my only, I think I can relate to it. That is when you go to get your ultrasound, when you're having a baby, you know, you are kind of trying to read the person's face, but they do say, I mean, just to be, they always say like, well, you know, obviously everything has to be interpreted by your doctor, but it's like, it's looking good. It's looking good to me just to say like, they're not like, wow. Well, she goes, she, she did. She helped me out because I was like, Oh my God, she's not going to say anything.

Speaker 2: (04:15)
But then she goes, but you know, she goes, I can't say anything, but at the same time, I'm not running out of here. Call getting ICU on the phone or whatever, or like the heart doctor on the phone. So that made me feel better. And I did know already that my heart was beating irregularly. So I thought, well, maybe she's just talking about that, that it, but I thought, Oh, what if she see something else? Cause that's where they can really see if there's heart disease. If there's, um, valve problems, clogged arteries, they can see that with the, with the ultrasound. Um, um, and they take, I always forget with, with ultrasounds and with MRIs, I didn't have an MRI this time, but it's, it takes forever. They, they, they, because they're measuring each function of the heart, but so basically half naked on your side, but then being told to contort and then being told to hold your breath, when you feel nauseous and have to puke and you're sweating just to hold your breath.

Speaker 2: (05:07)
And I was like, Oh, I'm going to, this is not going to end well, like we,...