Maggie's Creative Journey with Chronic Illness

Maggie Bushway's journey of overcoming brain cancer and navigating life with seizures is nothing short of inspiring. Diagnosed at just seven, she turned her battle into a beacon of hope through storytelling. As she shares her experiences, Maggie reveals how her father's blog posts and her sister's artwork helped her transform her story into a heartfelt book during her chemotherapy treatments. Through sharing her own trials, Maggie sheds light on the struggle of living with a chronic illness, aiming to inspire resilience in others and foster a deeper understanding for those unacquainted with these battles.

Throughout our conversation, we explore how Maggie's health challenges shaped her creative path. From navigating surgeries and treatments to embracing the therapeutic power of writing and filmmaking, her insights are a testament to finding beauty in adversity. Maggie discusses the importance of flexibility and adaptation in pursuing creative careers while managing chronic conditions, offering valuable advice for others on similar journeys. She also teases upcoming projects that focus on resilience, including adapting her memoir into short stories. This episode is a powerful narrative of strength, creativity, and the transformative power of storytelling.

https://www.instagram.com/mkbushway/

https://x.com/maggiebushway

https://www.facebook.com/people/Pearls-A-Memoir-on-Childhood-Brain-Cancer-and-Hope/61562132164153/

https://bsky.app/profile/mkbushway.bsky.social

Chapters

• 0:00 Maggie Bushway
• 6:41 Navigating Chronic Illness and Creativity

Transcript

Jen: 0:08

Hello everyone and welcome back to my Spoonie Sisters podcast. Today I am incredibly honored to introduce a truly inspiring guest. This is Maggie Bushway. Maggie is a 28-year-old author and filmmaker from Shannon, Mississippi who has turned her personal challenges into powerful stories of resilience and hope. Having faced brain cancer, growing up and continuing to navigate life with seizures, Maggie's experiences have profoundly shaped her creative voice. Her work masterfully weaves themes of pain and adversity, inspiring audiences to find strength in their struggles. Maggie, thank you so much for being here and let's dive in.

Maggie: 0:50

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Jen: 0:53

It's my pleasure. Your journey is truly remarkable. Could you share more about how your experiences with brain cancer and seizures have influenced your creative process and, if you want, you can even start by introducing us to how this kind of started for you?

Maggie: 1:09

When I was seven I was diagnosed with brain cancer and I started chemo when I was eight. When I was in chemo, I had already been interested in writing ever since. I learned how to write. But when I was in chemo I got the idea to write a book about my experience with childhood brain cancer and I didn't know where my surgery was going. I just knew that there were a lot of kids out there who are going through similar things and need some hope. So I started writing a book then and it was pretty short. In my head it was an entire book, but I stopped writing it at some point because I got too sick to finish.

Maggie: 1:57

Last year I found the manuscript for it and all of my dad's old blog posts, so I put it together, filled in the gaps you know my memories and interviewed my parents and siblings and we turned it into a book. Interviewed my parents and siblings and we turned it into a book. So that's one way that it's impacted. My creativity is, you know, we like. That was something very hard that we went through, but we turned it into a creative process. My little sister did sketches in it that look like a seven-year-old drew it. She's actually a professional artist, but she did it as if it were a child who drew them. So on the pages of the manuscript where I call it Little Maggie, quote something. Then I have a sketch under it. It was a very creative process for us and even though we were, it was very hard to look back on those memories and it was very hard when I was eight to deal with some of the things I was going through. But creativity is like healing in both of those ways.

Jen: 3:08

That sounds incredible and I bet it's just an absolute labor of love.

Maggie: 3:11

Yes, it was really exciting. At the same time, even though it was like difficult and healing, it was very fun.

Jen: 3:20

I think to have your family involved in such a way, that also makes it extra special.

Maggie: 3:25

Yes, I have my dad listed as the co-author because when I found his blog posts, it was as if I was reading a book about myself and I didn't know like 50% of the things in there. So it was like I was reading a book about myself that I had no clue. You know all the details in it.

Jen: 3:45

Was it kind of interesting looking back and reading it from a different perspective and what your life was like for all of them?

Maggie: 3:54

Yes, it was especially as an adult. I had a completely different perspective as a seven, eight, nine year old, but as an adult I can completely see my parents' perspective.

Jen: 4:06

I think that's fascinating to be able to look back and see both sides of what things were like Seeing what it was like through your eyes getting diagnosed as a child, but then seeing from your parents' eyes what it was like raising you as you were going through this.

Maggie: 4:23

Yeah, it was very interesting.

Jen: 4:25

So, as a filmmaker and author, you craft stories that delve into themes of pain and adversity. What draws you to these topics and how do you hope they resonate with your audience?

Maggie: 4:37

I think what draws me to the topics is just life experience. I still have seizures and I have some autoimmune diseases as well. I can relate to a lot of the themes and the target what life is like when you have chronic illnesses and I want to raise awareness to that and hope that other people who see it, who don't have chronic illnesses, will understand their family members or friends a little bit better.

Jen: 5:14

So do you mind taking us back a little bit into the beginning of your journey? So you were diagnosed at did you say seven years old? Yes, how did your parents find out what was going on with you?

Maggie: 5:28

I was very smart. When I was younger, my mom was homeschooling us and at four I learned how to read because my brother was learning how to read and I just kind of kept up with his grade level. And then all of a sudden it was like I was unlearning everything and just was doing terrible at school and I was afraid of everything when I had been pretty much fearless right before then. It was just a complete change in like personality and cognitive abilities. My mom was she advocated for me a lot and my dad. They took me to lots of doctors and for about a year and a half they're just trying to figure out what was wrong with me. And I was sent from specialist to specialist psychologist and no one could figure it out until a doctor from our church said that she wouldn't mind seeing me. My mom brought me in and I had a temporal lobe seizure in front of her and she knew exactly what it was. So we're really blessed to have that connection.

Jen: 6:39

What was the path forward from there? You mentioned that you had treatments. Was that all that you had to go through, or was there any kind of surgery? Walk us through that a little bit.

Maggie: 6:50

I had a tumor resection surgery when I was first diagnosed and they weren't able to get the whole tumor. They got as much as they could but my tumor is very deep in the brain. It's still there because it's too deep to recite the whole thing. So then I had chemotherapy and it was resistant to that. And then I had gamma knife radiation and that killed the tumor but it also made my seizures a lot worse. So I had for a few few years I was living in and out of the hospital and just having seizures all the time. I had a right temporal lobe ectomy. I took out the right temporal lobe, amygdala and hippocampus, and that helped a lot with my seizures. Also, getting a vagal nerve stimulator has helped with my seizures. We've done a lot of different surgeries and treatments over the years, but right now I still have them, but I'm at a more stable point.

Jen: 7:49

That's absolutely a lot to go through at such a young age.

Maggie: 7:52

Yeah.

Jen: 7:53

Facing such significant health challenges at a young age can shape a person in profound ways. How have these experiences influenced your perspective on life and storytelling?

Maggie: 8:05

I was so young when all this started that it kind of has felt normal to me. You know, growing up in this medical world I didn't know anything different, and my siblings didn't either, so it felt weirdly normal. But as I was growing up I started realizing oh, this isn't normal, there's something wrong. And so growing up it shaped me into someone who has gone through a lot but can also look back and see, without all of these different things I went through, I wouldn't be who I am now. I wouldn't. In my book I call it that like pearls, that all these hardships over time they turn into something beautiful pearls. In my writing I like to kind of highlight that that you go through a lot of adversary but it doesn't end there. You can find something beautiful in it.

Jen: 9:07

I love that and I think your description is so great Calling it pearls like that, it's beautiful.

Maggie: 9:14

Thank you. My dad actually came up with the concept of it. I need to give him credit.

Jen: 9:18

Absolutely Well, good thinking, I love it. I need to give him credit. Absolutely Well, good thinking, I love it. Creativity often serves as a form of healing. For many. Has writing and filmmaking helped you process or navigate your own journey?

Maggie: 9:30

Yes, especially with my memoir. A lot of like my short films and documentaries have also been healing with. I've done some documentaries on long COVID and interviewing people who have some health conditions and those have also been healing. But writing my memoir, I think, has been the most healing experience I've ever had, just going back through my entire life and piecing together all these memories that I couldn't really put on a timeline or you know, I just vaguely remembered connecting dots and seeing okay, this is a, this is a full story, but it's not over yet. It's okay that it doesn't end up that I suddenly got better and then everything's okay. It's kind of ongoing, but it's still a story.

Jen: 10:22

And to go with that, what advice would you give to someone living with a chronic condition, whose dreams of pursuing a creative career but feels overwhelmed by their challenges?

Maggie: 10:33

That's something the past year probably I've struggled with is I've had a hard time working on film sets because I was recently diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, which impacts the muscle strength. So you know I'd be like working on a film set and just get completely drained and have to like lie down before I can get back up and keep going that. But that doesn't really work well on a film set, you know, you just kind of have to keep going. I kind of had to rethink what my career is going to look like and I came to the conclusion that I love video editing. That's something that I can do on my own time and, you know, from the couch, from bed and sometimes from my desk, or sometimes I coffee shop, and I can do it, you know when I feel up to it. And same with writing and I can, you know, take my time, I can do it. You know how I want to do it and how I'm able to do it.

Maggie: 11:47

I also started doing social media management and graphic design. Those are all careers that you can have. That it's not what I wanted to do originally, but it's something that still is creatively fulfilling to me. It's something I still really enjoy. I would just tell people kind of rethink the definition of like creativity, and it's not just one career or one corner of the creative process. There's many options and you can do it at your own time. You can do it when you feel up to it, and it's not just a this is something I can't do, this is something I can't do or this is something I can't do. There's a lot of gray areas, but the gray areas are, you know, more. It's more of a positive thing, you know.

Jen: 12:46

Absolutely, and there's a lot of flexibility in positions like that. I think that's what's so wonderful in our community is, again, the flexibility that we have. That I think that's what's so wonderful in our community is again, the flexibility that we have to do the things that bring us joy and we to do. Yeah, I guess my advice to chime in there with you would be don't be afraid to look at things from a different perspective. Try to angle to find a way of still loving the things you love to do.

Maggie: 13:10

Yeah, there's so many things you can try, even from your bed.

Jen: 13:17

Can you tell us about any current or upcoming projects that you are working on and what you hope to share with the world through them?

Maggie: 13:27

I got the idea to take my book and different individual stories in it and write a series of short stories based off of stories within my book, but written from a different perspective, or see from my parents' perspective, or see from a doctor's perspective even, and just kind of rewrite it a little bit so that a lot of different people can identify with it. So I'm calling it the Pearls Collection and hopefully I'll be able to do it soon. We'll just have to see what my body allows me to and when that's exciting. Yeah.

Jen: 14:15

Can you tell listeners where they can find your current book and ways they can follow you?

Maggie: 14:22

You can find Pearl's memoir on childhood brain cancer and hope on Amazon, both paperback and on Kindle. I'm working on hardcover. Hopefully that'll happen soon. You can also find it on Barnes Noble website and Walmart website. I'm working on getting it into local stores and right now you can just find it on the websites. So I'm working on distributing it to hospitals as well. That's my main goal is for people in hospitals to be able to get it from gift shops. So, yeah, still a lot of work to do.

Jen: 15:02

That's exciting. You mentioned that you also have been diagnosed with a couple of autoimmune conditions.

Maggie: 15:07

Do you mind?

Jen: 15:07

talking about that a little bit.

Maggie: 15:09

Yeah, I was diagnosed with Sjogren's syndrome when I was in college. And I got diagnosed with that because I start having severe neuropathy in my feet and so it felt like I was walking on shattered glass and we were doing a lot of different tests. I was struggling with, you know, working on film sets and stuff because of that, and I got diagnosed with Sjogren's. I'm getting treated for it and I still have neuropathy, but it's not as severe. Now it doesn't hurt when people touch me most of the time. So I have that. And then with my stenia gravis, that was a more recent diagnosis, but I am in treatment for that as well, and my mom actually has it too. So it's been really interesting to compare notes with her, and usually if it's a weather related flare, then she doesn't feel good too, so we're able to relate to each other in that way.

Jen: 16:09

It's always nice to have someone that we can talk to about it, and they know exactly what we're feeling at that moment. Do you feel like each of your conditions are pretty well managed at this point?

Maggie: 16:19

I think so. My seizures are kind of like a they find ways around my treatments. So things will work well for a little while and then we'll you know kind of have to adjust my meds. I just started a new medicine yesterday, so it's like every three months we kind of adjust my vagus nerve stimulator and adjust my medicine and that'll hold for a little bit. But we have a good pattern down with figuring out when I need to try something else.

Jen: 16:52

That sounds really good.

Maggie: 16:54

Yeah.

Jen: 16:54

Is there a last piece of advice that you would like to share with listeners?

Maggie: 16:59

I would just share that if you're listening to this and you have a chronic illness, even though you know it's not going to, you're not going to get completely better. There are, like you know, ups and downs with it and in the ups there are a lot of things you can do creatively and you know you can pursue your career and your hobbies. And I know that there's downs as well, but just, you know, hope for the ups and you know, put your hope in. There are times that you'll, you know, be able to be more active with creative things and with your career. So I would say, hope in that. And then for people who, who don't have chronic illnesses they're listening to this, maybe your friends or family do and I would just say to you know, listen to their experience and to just be there for them. And there were a lot of people that were there for me and still are there for me, and that's been like one of the most helpful things is just having close friends and family.

Jen: 18:12

Absolutely agree with you. I think that's really sound advice, thank you. Thank you so much, maggie, for sharing your incredible story and creative spirit with us today. Your work is a beacon of hope and inspiration for those around you, and I cannot wait to hear about your next book when it comes out.

Maggie: 18:30

Thank you.

Jen: 18:31

Now, how can listeners find, follow and get in touch with you?

Maggie: 18:35

You can find me on Instagram, twitter, blue Sky and Facebook.

Jen: 18:42

Okay, we'll be sure to link all of your important links in the show notes so that people can find and reach out to you and thank you for your time. It was such a pleasure to have you on today.

Maggie: 18:53

I enjoyed it.

Jen: 18:55

All right, listeners, until next time. Don't forget your spoon.