LUCKY TO BE HERE!

In this exclusive segment of Coffee in The Barn, we are privileged to hear a conversation highlighting the importance of listening to your instincts, advocating for yourself, and prioritizing self-care. With Casey and Kaylee, together with Morgan, share their powerful stories. We dig deep into the transformative impact of trusting your intuition, seeking help when needed, and valuing your well-being above all.

What You Will Learn:

- Trusting Your Gut: Casey emphasizes the significance of those gut feelings that often signify when something isn’t right. Listening to your intuition, even when it may seem cliché, can guide you towards making crucial decisions for your health and well-being.

- The Power of Advocacy: Reflecting on a critical moment in her life, Casey ponders the potential alternate outcome had she not been pregnant, illustrating how advocating for oneself can be life-saving and transformative.

- Lessons in Self-Care: The conversation underscores the importance of self-advocacy, prayer, and self-care, with Kaylee’s story exemplifying the impact of listening to one's instincts and taking proactive steps for personal well-being.

- Acknowledging Strength in Vulnerability: The exchange between Casey and Kaylee reveals the strength found in vulnerability, the resilience in seeking help and listening to oneself, and the profound impact of sharing personal stories to empower others.

- Community Support: The acknowledgment of Kaylee’s courage to listen and act on her instincts showcases the power of community support and the significance of amplifying voices that encourage self-advocacy and well-being.

This segment of Coffee in The Barn serves as a reminder of the transformative potential that lies in trusting our instincts, advocating for ourselves, and prioritizing self-care. Casey and Kaylee’s stories inspire listeners to listen to their gut feelings, seek help when needed, and prioritize their health and well-being.

 Tune in to this empowering dialogue that exemplifies the importance of self-advocacy, listening to one’s instincts, and the strength found in sharing personal stories to empower and uplift others.

Transcript

Casey
 0:00:00
 Welcome to a special episode of Coffee in the Barn, where we discuss exclusive content featuring our captivating guest speakers. Today, prepare to be enthralled as we dive deep into the minds and hearts of our extraordinary guests, from pioneer figures in the world of agriculture to trailblazers pushing the boundaries of innovation. Each speaker brings a unique perspective and a wealth of insight to share. So grab your coffee and settle in to learn more about our incredible guests.

Morgan
 0:00:29
 Well, we are having a special guest on Coffee in the Barn today to celebrate the working moms of the agriculture industry. And we have, we have Kaylee Keppy-Macdonnell with Zinpro, to the call. And we're glad to have you. And we really wanted to start out with this conversation and have the audience get an exclusive behind-the-scenes of who is Kaylee and what makes you tick and things like that. We want to hear your story.

Kaylee
 0:01:12
 Yeah, well, first off, thanks Casey and Morgan for having me on the show. Super excited to tell my story, but super excited to share about an upcoming event that we've put together and have been working on for quite some time. So a little background about myself. So from eastern Iowa, probably typical Midwest girl, grew up on a crop and livestock farm. My dad has had finishing barns since 1995.

Kaylee
 0:01:44
 So from the beginning. Grew up there, typical, I would say, my passion and roots and foundation for the swine industry really stemmed from our parents getting us so involved at such a young age. I remember, well, to back up a little bit, just the Kepi name in general, Roy Kepi started the pork checkoff. So I think it's just kind of in our blood, in our roots a little bit, to be passionate about the swine industry. And our parents from a young age had us involved with Scott County pork producers. We, I don't know if you guys remember, but back in the day, going to the grocery store and the pork producers were handing out samples every Saturday and Sunday at the grocery stores or doing ag in the classroom.

Kaylee
 0:02:33
 They kept us very involved. You know, ran for Scott County Pork Queen, Iowa Pork Queen, went to Pork Congress, went to World Pork X at a young age and gathered all the goodies we could. So I really think my passion has stemmed from those roots for sure. And then got involved in 4-H and SFA and showing livestock.

Kaylee
 0:02:56
 And from there went on to Blackhawk East there in Keewanee, Illinois and judged livestock and got to meet a whole different dynamic network of people there and started networking and really grew my base or realm, if you will, and folks like Dan Hoag and Lee Dinser and Brian Arnold are still mentors to me to this day, but really kind of broadened my horizons to what else was out there. Then transferred to Iowa State University, where I got a degree in animal science.

Kaylee
 0:03:31
 Love Ames, Iowa, loved Iowa State University and the professors and the people I met there are just priceless. Right out of college from 2011 to 2019, I worked for ADM, wore a lot of different hats, great company, did a lot of different things, met a lot of different people, and then did a short stint at Vitagro, and now I'm at Zinpro.

Casey
 0:04:16
 And what is your role today with Zinpro? 

Kaylee
 0:04:39
 So I'm a swine account manager. We don't really have territories, if you will, but I would say it focused really mainly out east with Dr. Zach Rambo  

Casey
 0:05:02
 And for the audience who might not know what an accounts manager is, what doe that mean? Whats your life like and your week like? What's a day job? Obviously, we have you at home, but that's not normal. 

Kaylee
 0:05:48
 Right, right I would say day-to-day looks different, right? In a sales role, you're constantly calling on accounts, calling on integrators, calling on industry partners, talking internally with your team, strategizing. I would say every week looks different for a salesperson,but what I enjoy most is connecting with different people and working within the industry and just hearing everyone's different stories. But yeah, really focus on calling on large integrators, feed companies, and working in the swine space that way. 

Casey
 0:06:29
 And I'm going to ask you to be a little vulnerable here,because I think you have a really great story about your family, and we kind of bond it a little bit over our pregnancy difficulties. And can you kind of talk about that for maybe the mothers listening that may need to feel like they're not alone and walk us through that and how that impacted you and your career and different things beyond just we love pigs. But yeah, yeah, you know, kind of go into that because I think our story and being able to tell that is very powerful for people who are experiencing similar, I'm going to call it traumatic experiences.Or shattered dreams of motherhood experiences. And I think having that out in the space is important. So I'm going to ask you to be vulnerable with our audience and kind of walk us through your story on being a mom. 

Kaylee
 0:06:55
 Yeah, sure. I would love to. And I'll try not to get kind of teary-eyed thinking about it because I'm grateful to be sitting here and having a conversation with you and Morgan today. But, you know, everyone has this vision of what their life is going to look like, right? They have this vision of I'm going to get married, have a successful career, have the kids, and everything's going to work out just fine. And, you know, I got married later in life, I would say, you know, and we had discussed kids. So, waited about a year, year and a half after getting married. I knew I needed to be a stepmom first. So, my husband has two older girls. So, we have currently I was 14 and a two and a half year old. And at 10 weeks pregnant, thank God I knew I was pregnant, but at 1 weeks, my husband was traveling for work.We both travel for work and I was thankfully home. I didn't feel good. And I just chalked it up to being pregnant. I was short of breath. I felt like I was just tired all the time, right? Those are first trimester type things.

Kaylee
 0:07:10
 Like you Google it and it says yeah you're gonna be short of breath you're gonna be tired you're you know all these things so I didn't think anything of it. Had lunch with a friend in Muncie, Indiana so thankfully I was close to a hospital. I stood up and I had shortness of breath so I called the hospital and they said why don't you come in we'll check you out if you know you're pregnant let's definitely check you out.

Kaylee
 0:07:40
 Thank God I just had that gut feeling. You know, as a mom, you just kind of have gut feelings, right, of probably just need to check this out. Otherwise, any other time, if I wasn't pregnant, I think I would have just ignored it. I drove myself to the hospital. The ER was about five miles away. Thank God. Got to the parking lot and they had to come out and get me in a wheelchair because I couldn't make it to the ER door. And I just literally couldn't catch my breath.

Kaylee
 0:08:06
 They did an EKG. The waiting room was completely full in the ER, and they said it could be up to two hours. I don't know if just a higher power God was looking out for me that day, but it cleared out pretty quick, and they got me in within 30 minutes. Did a CT scan, and my lungs lit up like a Christmas tree, they said. And I had PEs, also known as like blood clots, that made it to my lungs. So they called my husband, who was in West Texas, so in a car long ways away, and they said, we have your wife and she's in, going to have to have emergency surgery.

Kaylee
 0:08:36
 So they don't put you to sleep for that surgery. So the whole time I just kept praying the entire time that the baby was going to be okay and I was going to be okay. And they did surgery to remove as many clots from my lungs as possible. And I'll be honest, I didn't know that I didn't know that that was something that could arise during pregnancy.

Kaylee
 0:09:04
 I hadn't looked into it that far, that PEs, blood clots, what to look for. I didn't know any of those signs. So I'd encourage anybody, not to scare anybody, but just to be aware. But yeah, made it out of the hospital, was put on Lovenox injections for, I think I counted and I did over 400 injections twice, or two injections a day,

Kaylee
 0:09:25
 but over 400 of them during the course of pregnancy. And I ended up having 39 and a half hour labor with little Marca Marie, but she's here, she's healthy. I had, outside of that, I didn't have a C-section or anything else, just had a pretty decent pregnancy outside the hours of labor. But yeah, thankful to be here. They, you know, the doctor sat me down afterwards and said, somebody was looking out for you, because most of the time, this is not how people are found with PEs. So, thankful every single day and it really puts things into perspective from a life standpoint when you're out and about and

Kaylee
 0:10:06
 you know, you get frustrated on some work days or you get irritated or some people or just certain challenges arise you kind of step back and really put things into perspective of what's life about and You know, you kind of start putting faith and family first in a lot of situations. So yeah, that's my story. And I would sit here and tell everyone, you know, know the signs of a blood clot,

Kaylee
 0:10:32
 whether you think you're apt to have them or not. I never would have thought in a million years that that would have been my pregnancy story, but I'm thankful to be here to tell it.

Casey
 0:10:41
 It's amazing. What are some of the signs for somebody that's maybe thinking about getting pregnant or early pregnancy with this?

Kaylee
 0:10:49
 Yeah, so I didn't have a lot of the normal typical blood clot signs besides shortness of breath or just really tired or fatigued, but they usually start in your leg as a DVT. So you'll really have like a hot spot in your calf or a charley horse that won't go away. You know like a charley horse after time just kind of goes away. This won't or kind of bruise like symptoms or it could feel like a pulled muscle in your leg.

Kaylee
 0:11:15
 More than half the time it starts in your left leg versus your right leg. And those can be knocked loose and travel up to your lungs. 

Casey
 0:11:37
 So that's really cool. I mean, it's kind of scary because blood clots, well, I didn't have major surgery. I didn't have these things. And I've known several of my family members have blood clots and different things. things but being pregnant and that to me is kind of like kind of scary but can I laugh a little bit just a little make it fun buddy yeah is I bet it was the pig God saying she gave us all these shots and now it's her turn to get shots because that's kind of what I feel like sometimes like 400 shots I'm like it must have been some angry pigs up there wreaking havoc on you to say hey we're gonna make her go through this so she can feel what it's like to get 400 needles stabbed in her.

Kaylee
 0:12:13
 Well they need to laugh her to jump on top of that basically so they were like your husband can give you give you shots if you don't feel comfortable doing that and I was like do you know how many pigs I've injected over the years. I think this is going to be no problem. Plus, I just, yeah, I'd rather just do it myself. Maybe it's a control factor, but yeah, they're like, well, you can come in and they can give you shots twice a day, or you can do it yourself for your husband, or somebody else can can inject you every day. And yeah, when you're a livestock person, you just, you just handle it. 

Morgan
 0:12:51
 So were the injections supposed to help like as a blood thinner? 

Kaylee
 0:13:10
 Yep, so they thin your blood. Yep, and then I did those six months postpartum, kind of transitioned to a known blood thinner like Eliquis. 

Casey
 0:13:26
 Well, and you just got some really good news this last month you know, two and a half years.

Kaylee
 0:13:53
 It didn't stop after the baby. No, no, super, super thankful. And I will say that it's valuable to get a second opinion on things, just like in life or just like in our industry. Sometimes, you know, it comes different perspective, different lookout. So I've gone to two hematologists now, and one said, I just, maybe I just don't feel really comfortable after everything that you've been through to pull you off a blood thinner. And the other one was, again, maybe just a hidden blessing, but he did his residency and what they were focused on with me, which was a protein S deficiency or a blood clotting disorder, and which is very rare. And I went to him and he was local and he said, you know what, I feel really comfortable pulling you off blood thinners. You're doing all the right things. All your tests came back great. And so two and a half years of fighting to find a new hematologist that would listen, dig into my story, you know, it was just kind of an uphill battle or fight, if you will. And I'm glad I looked into it. So yeah.

Casey
 0:14:17
 Yeah. And I think that's good advice for anybody, children or not, is you have to be your own advocate. And then if you have children, Marca's beautiful and healthy Arthur was not born with that. And, you know, I still have to be an advocate for my child to get the resources he needs in the school system. So it never changes. But if you don't advocate for yourself or your loved ones, nobody's going to help you.

Morgan
 0:14:39
 Absolutely. I would second that all day long. Absolutely.

Casey
 0:15:42
 Mama bear power. 

Kaylee

0:15:43

Yeah and you just have those gut feelings sometimes and  I know it sounds like cheesy if you will and I know peoplesay it all the time but it's like listen to your gut it's telling you something is off something's wrong do what you got to do. 

Casey

0:15:44

And I wonder if you didn't happen to be pregnant would this have maybe this would have came about in a whole different scenario. Yeah, I hate to say it and I said it before, if I wasn't pregnant, I don't know if I would have gone to the hospital. So I don't know if I would have been here speaking to you guys. Well, we're glad to have you and your story is very powerful for the people who need to hear it today because yes, advocate for yourself, trust your gut, pray,and take care of yourself. I've learned the hard way. Kaylee was smart enough to listen. I wasn't, but that is a lot about Kaylee and her story, which to me is very powerful. Listening to and the part of the coffee in the barn and part of our exclusive content. And so thank you for sharing your story with us. And so thank you for sharing your story with us. Yes. Thank you for allowing me to do so.