Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: May 22, 2025: Interview with Brandy Schantz, Host, Living Chronic Podcast, Founder Schantz Business Group Disability Consulting, Chair, State of Virginia Rehabilitation Advisory Council

In this 34-minute episode, Dr. Kirk Adams speaks with Brandy Schantz—former U.S. Army officer, consultant, and chair of Virginia's State Rehabilitation Advisory Council—about her late-onset disability journey. Schantz describes being diagnosed with severe Crohn's disease, the complications that followed, and how an adverse reaction to medication led to dysautonomia and neuropathy, forcing her to create her own work-from-home accommodations years before remote work became common.

The conversation compares the medical and social models of disability, highlights flexible scheduling as a low-cost but effective accommodation, and outlines how wellness and hybrid-work programs can help employers retain skilled staff who develop chronic conditions. Schantz also explains the role of state rehabilitation councils in connecting disabled workers with career supports.

TRANSCRIPT:

00:09

Welcome to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Dr Kirk Adams.

00:38

Welcome everybody to podcasts with Dr Kirk Adams, I have a wonderful guest today, Brandy Schantz. Brandy is host of The Living chronic podcast. She's the founder of Schantz business group disability consulting, and she is chair of the state of Virginia's rehabilitation advisory council. So you are a busy bee, Randy, yes, yes, I am. But you know, I have to say, it's been some of the most rewarding work of my life, so busy and humbled at the same time Wonderful. Well, we're going to come back to you and just just a minute and dig into your really interesting journey and your great vision for the future. And for those who don't know me, I am Dr Kirk Adams. I'm talking to you from my home office in Seattle. I am a totally blind person. Have been since age five. My rep was both detached. I went to a school for blind children for second and third grade, and learned to read and write Braille and travel confidently and proudly with a white cane and to type on a typewriter so that I was equipped to succeed in public school, which I started in fourth grade, and I was I was the only blind kid in all of My schools from fourth grade through my PhD,

02:02

I entered the world of business out of college, facing a lot of the barriers to employment that so many of us with significant disabilities experience. So I have a frustrating time finding employment, but I have had the experience of being a successful

02:22

disabled employee in corporate America, working in banking and finance, and I have had the experience of employing large numbers of people with disabilities as president and CEO of the Lighthouse for the Blind and then the American Foundation for the Blind.

02:38

I focus my time and energy now with my consulting practice, innovative impact LLC, and I say I was looking for fun, innovative, high impact projects that will accelerate inclusion of people with disabilities,

02:54

to work with people that I like. And so I met Brandy some time ago, and she kindly invited me to be a guest on her living chronic podcast. I wanted to I wanted to talk less about myself and more about her on so invited her to join me today, and Brandy would just really love to

03:17

hand you the talking stick and hear about your journey and what has led you to focus your intention on disability inclusion,

03:28

what you're doing currently? Where do you see your work going in the future? I would love to love to hear some successes, what's working well, and, of course, any challenges that you may be discovering, and we always learn from our challenges, and then then we'll let people know how to get in touch with you. So the floor is yours.

03:52

Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. You know, I was so excited to meet you, have you on my podcast. I really love the collaboration. It's such a different world here. You know, like you, I started in a different industry. I was an Army officer, and then I went into consulting and did a lot of work in the housing and finance sectors before I really had my own experiences becoming disabled much later in life. As a matter of fact, I had switched careers originally because I was diagnosed with a very severe form of Crohn's disease, and I just frankly, couldn't leave my house before noon, even on my best days. And I needed some sort of job that I could work from home in the mornings. So, you know, I had a little bit of an idea of what it was like to be challenged with a disability. Fortunately, I was able to pivot pretty quickly and deal with that. But five years ago, at what stage you your army career had ended?

05:00

Yeah, at that point, yeah. And you were Yes, yes. I left the army.

05:04

Yeah. I left the Army in 2007

05:08

and decided, you know, I, you know, got married, my husband, who was a little bit older than me. Well, he still is. I like to pretend I'm still much younger, but I guess I got much older as well.

05:22

He was retiring, and a few years beyond that, in the army, you can retire after 20 years. So if you commissioned at age 21 right after college, you're retiring at age 41 it's not it's not the worst setup,

05:35

but I wanted to be able to spend time with him rather than traveling with the army, so we settled in Washington, DC, like most of us do, and I moved on to consulting, okay, the obvious move, and Crohn's. I actually had an executive assistant who lived with Crohn's here, here at the lighthouse in Seattle. I know he would, his schedule permitted him to go for infusions regularly. Could you just tell,

06:08

tell a little bit about the onset? What? What? Yes, so actually, what? How does, how does that manifest? Oh, gosh, you know what? It manifests differently for everyone. And you know, that's the crazy part of chronic illness, especially autoimmune diseases. It just looks a little bit different in everybody. And I had actually been having symptoms since I started having symptoms while I was in Afghanistan in 2006

06:37

and I just assumed that, you know, I mean, there's all sorts of nasty stuff in Afghanistan that we're not used to if you've lived in the United States or Europe, these westernized countries, for years. So, you know, I didn't really think much of it. Pushed through. It wasn't so bad that it took me out of my job. So I just kept pushing forward. It wasn't until I was training for one of my marathons, I was training for Marine Corps Marathon, which has always been my favorite race, and I suddenly realized that I was having to kind of break away from my running group and go find a tree or a porta potty pretty frequently.

07:15

And it kept getting worse until I was dealing with severe pain every day, and just unable to leave the house. And I knew then that something was very wrong, and I went to the doctor, and that's when I was told that I needed to get a colonoscopy. They needed to do some biopsies, and I was finally diagnosed with Crohn's disease. What's interesting about it is, you know,

07:41

it's not one of those things where you get diagnosed and it's like, okay, well, here's the treatment plan. This is what you're going to do. We're going to go through this three months, and then you can go about your life. It's very trial and error. Nobody knows what's going to go to work. Nobody knows who's going to respond to what. So you have to try things and see how they're going to work for you. And we tried a lot with me, it did take me a long time to find something that would get me into remission.

08:12

So can you just, can you define

08:17

Crohn's disease? So tell us what. Tell us what it is. I know the one, but I Right. Like I said, I had the limited experience with one person I worked with. Yeah, so Crohn's disease is an

08:35

goodness. So you know what? I say it so much. You know how it is. You forget your your acronyms. I'm so here and not mess up my acronym, it's IBD, which is inflammatory bowel disease. Nothing like irritable bowel syndrome at all, but it can manifest in many different ways.

08:54

Some people just have terrible bloody diarrhea all day long. Sometimes it comes about, there's Crohn's, or you see with constipation, which is very painful. Of course, those can lead to bowel obstructions, which is an emergency. So you have to know when those The right time is to go to the doctor, go to the ER.

09:15

But it comes with some other things as well being an autoimmune disease. So it's not just the cramps and the pain.

09:23

There's, you know, various perforations you can get on your bowel, the blockages, which are very dangerous. It manifests in your joints often. Unfortunately, I have those symptoms as well. It feels a lot like arthritis, and then,

09:41

don't, want to get super clinical and medical, but, yeah, how would you define them? Autoimmune Disease? You've mentioned it several times, right? So an autoimmune disease is, you know, kind of the easiest way to explain it is, it's just your body attacking itself. Your immune system is really overactive.

10:00

Effective and it's attacking itself.

10:03

Of course, they're on the rise, and many women are very familiar with this. 80% of all autoimmune disease patients are women, in fact. So this is very much a women's issue. We're seeing a lot of women being diagnosed more and more frequently, as matter of fact, just last week, an old friend of mine that I used to work with reached out, and, you know, turns out, Hey, she's been diagnosed as well. And, oh, by the way, it's so severe, she had to take a step back and leave her job to focus on health. So the stories are not uncommon, yeah, so I interrupted you, but you are a very active person. You're on active duty serving in Afghanistan. You're a marathon runner, and you start having these symptoms, and it gets to the point where you really can't leave the house. You're diagnosed with a chronic illness, and all of a sudden you are a person with a disability? Yes, I'll let you take I'll let you take it back over. Yeah, well, you know, and it's just, I think I'm actually, I know I'm no different than a lot of people. I never said the D word. I didn't say the D word for years. It took me a long time to say the D word.

11:21

I just thought, well, you know, I have an illness. Let me just smooth right through this. I'll be fine. I'll be fine.

11:27

You know, there's a big joke in the military, you know, whatever you have, legs been blown off. You know what? Drink water. You'll be fine. Press on. Drink water. You know, we'll just move through anything. We don't complain. We don't say anything. And unfortunately, there just, there comes a time where you realize, well, I think I'm gonna have to complain about this one. I kept trying to just get right through it, but unfortunately, I just could not leave my house, and I had severe, severe pains. What makes this especially difficult is it restricts your life in ways you don't think about, you know, I talk about those, you know, bowel blockages. You know, you can get infections. There's not that uncommon to get these very serious infections in your GI tract, all these various things that could happen. IBD, you know, again, a lot of people confuse it with IBS, this is autoimmune disease your body's attacking itself. IBS is an irritation

12:25

usually caused by food some other things. I know there's some doctors out there that probably have a lot more to say about it, but with IBD, you can very much die from IBD. It does happen. So it starts restricting your life and things you didn't necessarily think about, if you're not in remission, your disease is very active. I was restricted from going on vacations that I may have, you know, gone on before I know, my husband and I used to love to go to the Bahamas, especially around Christmas time, because it's nice and quiet. You just get to kind of hang out on a hammock instead of participating in all the drama and purchasing and all that around Christmas in the US, we just could be and do nothing. But unfortunately, I had to stop going for some period of time because they just did not have the facilities if I had an emergency, and the nearest facility would have been in Miami, which is not a far plane ride by any stretch, but if you can't get a plane, yeah, you know, you only have hours. So there's, there's a lot of little things you just don't think about that suddenly become very important in your life. For me, the most important was I couldn't get to work. And of course, this was when I was diagnosed. It was 2013

13:42

we weren't talking about work from home. It wasn't a thing. All I knew was I wasn't able to get to work. Nobody had a good plan for me. Nobody could give me a suggestion. It was just, well maybe apply for disability. And I said, No, I don't want disability. I have a career. I would like to continue moving forward, please.

14:03

So I had to really pivot and try to think about, well, what does my life look like if I can't leave my house? Because even on my best days, sometimes I just could not leave the house before noon. You know,

14:16

it was just my it was my reality. I did find my own accommodations, and I didn't know that word in that sense back then, accommodation again, I never said the D word, so I didn't need to learn about the a word. I was just moving through everything. Nothing to see here. Everything's fine.

14:35

But I did find my own accommodations. You know, I would work

14:40

from home, I often would just bring my laptop into the bathroom with me and just keep plugging away.

14:47

You know, I just did whatever I needed to do to figure it out. I

14:51

made all my appointments, meetings, things like that I had to do outside of the house in the afternoons, where I typically felt much better. So I did find a way to work around.

15:00

Bit. I actually never had to really confront the D word until five years ago I started, I thought I was an over training syndrome. I started having these terrible joint and muscle pains, and I couldn't run, which is very unusual for me. I could run through anything, even through the worst, well, maybe not the worst of my currents, but I ran through a lot, but I just suddenly couldn't run it. I'd been training for Iron Man Chattanooga, so

15:27

it was unusual. And that started a period of 19 months where I slowly declined until I was paralyzed. For a short period of time, I was dealing with severe, severe muscle pain, joint pain, rashes. My brain was fried. I had crazy. I mean,

15:46

I couldn't think. I couldn't, you know, I

15:49

had trouble with words, crazy, emotional,

15:54

just swings, just swings. I've never experienced anything like it in my life. And that's when I finally found out that I'd been having a reaction to the HUMIRA I took for my Crohn's disease,

16:06

and it really knocked me down even still. I did not want to say the D word, even though I had been completely wiped out, I had not been able to move. I had been bed bound for a period of time.

16:18

I thought, well, this is fine. I'm on the upswing. I'll I'll be okay. Of course, that actually kicked off about another

16:28

two and a half years I spent finally getting to a diagnosis, and I was diagnosed with dysautonomia, pots, cardiac autonomic neuropathy, small fiber neuropathy in all limbs. It really has changed my life. And I finally realized it's time to say the D word. It is time to say the D word. And when I said the D word, I realized, you know,

16:53

I'm not the only person going through this, and there really is nobody giving us any directions. There's no help. I kept asking, Hey, what do I do? What do I do? How do I get through this? And there was nowhere, really. I found anybody to help me, to guide me, to help me figure it out. It was well, if you can't get to work, just apply for disability. I didn't want disability. I wanted to work.

17:19

So what happens when you know this happens to you, and you know, I really thought to myself, my goodness, I am a pushy broad, you know, I'm going to get what I want to get. It's real hard to tell me no.

17:34

So if I'm going through this and having this many challenges, what about the people who just don't want to push back, who hear no and say, Okay, well, if they said no, that's it, you know, who's helping these people? And that's what made me really question things. And made me say the D word, made me ask myself, what are people doing when they become disabled? What do these accommodations really mean? What are companies actually doing? Because, you know? I mean, I have two master's degrees. I think of a, you know, decently intelligent person. I have some great experience. And I was like, Where do I go? So, you know, there's a lot of people out there, I'm sure, who are saying, hey, what next? And

18:17

are people really doing a lot for accommodations to help people who really have changed their entire life and now need a new career and they don't want to go on disability. And I think that's the biggest message I try to send to people. You know, there's this idea out there, particularly, probably, if you've never been ill, disabled, have anybody like that in your life where you think, oh, welfare, all these people just trying to get money from the government so they can do nothing. Well, I meet people every day who are like, hey, is there a way I can get off of this and get back to work? I'd love to hear,

18:53

yeah. I'd love to talk a little bit about the medical model and social model of disability and impairment, the relationship between impairment and disability, and just get your take on it. So obviously, you're deeply embedded in a medical model.

19:09

When my retina is detached, I was operated on multiple times, and I can remember the students coming one by one, the look in my eyes, I was very much enmeshed in a medical model, and that's still the most common model of disability in United States, which, you know, bluntly says, Hey, if you have, if you have an impairment that we can't fix, you're you're a broken person. You know, you're less than there's no way you can contribute on the level of someone who doesn't have this impairment. So like you said, just, just take the disability check. The social model says

19:53

disability comes when we have challenges interacting with the environment because of the way it's.

20:00

Built so the built environment, the digital environment, the social environment, you know, but not not surprised, like constructed mainly by and for people without impairments. And if we have an impairment, like you have to show up nine to five to work. You're not able to do that. You have a situation where your set of physical characteristics does not fit well with the built environment of the workplace that requires you to be there at nine in the morning. Right? The relationship

20:33

between impairment and disabilities? I have a visual impairment. So it's visual, hearing, physical, cognitive are kind of the four main categories of impairment, and you described a lot of physical impairments around pain and joints and the inability to be as independently active as you were in the past. So

21:00

just because I have a visual impairment does not mean I'm always in a disabling situation. And my little example I always use is, you know, I ran a couple big nonprofits. If I'm at the conference table, I'm running a board meeting, and I have all my materials in Braille. I can read that Braille just as well as a sighted person can read print. I can run the meeting. I'm not in a disabling situation at all, even though I can't see if you hand me a stack of print that I can't read, then I'm in a disabling situation. I can't run the meeting because of my impairment. So

21:37

you know, in your case, I'm sure that di obviously, the dynamics are are somewhat different. But you know, you have an you have impairments

21:48

which are restrictive in some situations and not in others. And I just, you know, my my job, and I think yours, is to decrease the number of disabling situations that people with impairments are placed in by making the world more flexible, more inclusive,

22:11

and you just talked about employment, and people trying to move off of that transfer payment From the government get back in into productive employment activity. That's what I focus on as well. And I know you are. This is a, this is a pretty big leap from someone who couldn't say the word disability three years ago to someone who's chair of the state of Virginia rehabilitation advisory council. So I I'd love to hear how you You've obviously accelerated your thinking, your activity, your attitudes, and would would love to hear a little bit more about that part of the journey.

22:52

Well, I, you know, I think, I think that's probably the most important part of the journey. Honestly,

22:58

there's been a lot of work that's gone into getting my physical to a good place. There's been a lot of work getting to medical diagnosis, getting to a treatment plan, but there's a mental and emotional component that's really difficult to overcome, and it's the component that's not treated first, as a matter of fact, it's really an afterthought. I've so much I've gone through over these years. I've had one doctor, just one, ask me if I've gotten therapy, because I've been through a lot of trauma, just one, and I have been through a lot of trauma that that's a lot of trauma.

23:38

We should be thinking about things like that, and when I finally took that time to recognize that I needed to take care of my mental health as well, it was not just about me losing my physical health, that's when it forced me to really think about,

23:56

you know, what does this mean? What have I gone through and for me and everybody processes things differently, you

24:05

know, I think there's just that army spirit that's always going to be in me. I grew up a navy brat, you know, I commissioned in the army. I always joke that I went from one part of the military to another seamlessly. I was a military dependent, and then I walked across that stage to get my degree from University and walked to the other side of campus to commission as Second Lieutenant Baker in the US Army. But there is, you know, a huge component of service, you know, and it's just not something we talk about enough service. What does it really mean? Leadership. We do a lot in the army around leadership. What does being a leader truly mean? And that means you reach out and you help the people around you, especially the people who are depending on you. And as I was going through this, this emotional, mental process, you know, I realized that you.

25:00

It doesn't matter how tough a cookie you are, you can easily be broken,

25:05

and somebody does have it worse. It does not negate what I'm going through. But at that moment, I realized, if I'm suffering, what else is going on? And that did part of my healing process was going around and finding out, what are other people experiencing? What are you going through? What kind of help do you need? Because at the end of the day, I've lost a lot. I lost a career I loved. I lost my athletic ability, which I loved. But I do have a very lovely savings account. I have money coming in each and every month. I have a husband who makes plenty of money he could easily take care of both of us, even if I didn't already have that nice bank account. I have two forms of health insurance. You know, all of these things give me the ability to fight through diagnosis the way I did. It gave me that ability to heal, to focus on rehab. And there's so many people who are going through this with nothing, and they're trying to figure out how they get through an illness or a new disability and pay rent, and if you can't get to work because you've been in an accident and you have a job that is very physical,

26:15

well how are you going to pay rent to be able to go to the doctor? And if you just lost your job, where's your health insurance? So there's all of these things that other people are going through. And I thought, You know what? Let me find out what's going on there, and that will be a part of my way of healing, is to reach out and see what I can do for others, because I have the privilege and the capability to do so. And I think that's what really got me to embrace disability, because I realized that disability could be anything if it's preventing you from being able to perform at full capacity, you have a disability. Think about it like your golf handicap. What's going on? You know? What do we need to do to get you to the next place and understanding it that disability was not about my own personal failures, it was about my current situation and how I can overcome that, to be able to live the life that I would like to or need to, or just bridge that gap. You know, what do I need to not be disabled in this moment? And how can I help others to get to that next place? And that's really why I love the mission of the state's rehabilitation councils. Nobody had ever talked to me about this. I'd never heard of it. I don't think most people have. I spend, you know, if anybody's ever been on the internet pretty late and there's this crazy lady saying, Hey, let me see if I can help you to rehab into a new career. That's probably me, you know. Um, I'm always, you know, Hey, did you have you ever heard of a rehabilitation Council? No, I have not,

27:43

but it is important, because these things, this is how people this is how people are failed, whether you know on the social, even though there needs to be a stronger glue between the social and the medical aspect, I feel every doctor's office should have information on how to rehabilitate your career? Should you become career disabled?

28:05

Because everybody needs that help. We need that help. You know, we need especially in the United States, where most people need their job to keep their insurance. How am I supposed to get myself well if I don't have my insurance? You know, it's chicken before the eggs. So

28:20

putting these together and finding ways to bridge, put these bridges out there for people who need them. I just felt it was so important. So now I'm very proud to say I'm disabled, and I say it as much as I can. I'm very upfront and open, because I know that if I say I'm disabled and that I can help others to also find those accommodations so that you're not disabled in this particular Yeah,

28:48

do you primarily work with individuals, Brandy or organizations, or both,

28:53

both mostly organizations. Right now, in the near future, what I'm putting together is an advisory service to go in and help companies put together wellness programs. There's so many, there's so much great research out there showing that if you put in wellness programs for your employees, you have employees that are first, more productive, and second, you keep them, which you know, anybody who's worked in business knows retention, that's that's a big number. You know, constantly having an employee overturned is very costly. And when I looked at the number of women, especially leaving the workforce, who are very skilled workers, where this is these are mostly women in their 40s and 50s who suddenly are just like me, suddenly find yourself with a severe autoimmune disease, and you can't find an accommodation to help you get through it all at work, and companies are losing this talent. And I've heard companies say over and over again, why are we losing these people? And I say, Well, it's because they're now chronically ill, and you need some programs to help keep them in place. You.

30:00

And these programs can help.

30:03

You know, I can't change everything. I mean, my joints are going to hurt forever, but we can put in programs in place at work to help to accommodate those issues.

30:15

Flexibility I'm really worried about. You know, we love to swing a pendulum here in the United States, don't we? And we went to all

30:24

work from home. Now there seems to be this big push. Well, let's just get everybody back to the office. Well,

30:32

guys, I think we can find something in between, because hybrid work really does work, and some people don't even need to be in an office at all right, the most common, helpful accommodation across all categories of disability is a flexible work schedule, yep, and that doesn't cost a penny, not not a bit, and it does so much for diversity. When we talk about, I refuse to stop talking diversity, I will admit that there are some problems with diversity in most companies, and that's a topic we could certainly discuss at length.

31:10

But real, true diversity, including people from various backgrounds and disabilities, really do contribute to the bottom line of companies. They really

31:19

do contribute to a more well rounded workforce. So I think we really don't want to throw out that kind of a benefit when looking at this, you know, return to office. You know, maybe hybrid work does work best for certain people. Let's, you know, talk about how that could be done. Well, yes, well, people have got a little taste of who you are and what you do and what what you're focusing on. This half hour has flown by, but I would love to have you let folks know how they can get in touch with you. Certainly, my podcast is living chronic on all platforms, and my website is brandichs.com

32:02

that's S, C, H, A, n, t, z,

32:06

brandys.com

32:07

and you can find my podcast, a lot of my advocacy work I'm doing, and of course, my consulting business, Schantz business group, where I'm always ready to help get People to that next level and live a better life while disabled and for companies, of course, meeting that

32:28

higher goal of diversity hiring.

32:31

Fabulous. On me. You can find me on LinkedIn, Kirk Adams PhD, or my website is Dr Kirk adams.com Your Kirk adams.com and I'm sure Brandy, and I know I would be pleased to speak with anyone who's listening about accelerating inclusion of people with disabilities and supporting people with disabilities and finding situations where they can thrive. Yes, Brandy, really appreciate you and our friendship and our collegial professional relationship and our joint dedication to disability advocacy and activism. So wonderful to spend time with you today. I really appreciate you. Thank you so much.

33:18

Thank you for listening to podcasts by Dr Kirk Adams, we hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at WWW dot drkirk adams.com,

33:31

together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change until next time. Keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact.