Chloe Temtchine: My Journey with a Rarest of Diseases and the Relentless Power of Hope

0:03Darin Olien:Welcome to Super Life with me, Darin Olien, a podcast where we explore, discover, and share solutions that promote a healthier life and a better world. Together, we'll ignite possibilities, inspire change, and build sovereignty, creating a roadmap towards a super life for you and for all. Get ready to start living your super life.

0:32Darin Olien:Before we begin, I wanted to bring up something that I know you're going to love. You know those mornings when you want to feel energized, but also centered, not jittery, not buzzing, not just focused, but steady and ready to take on the day. That's why I started my mornings with Peak's Sun Goddess Matcha. It's not just a drink, it's a ritual. I love that. This is a ceremonial grade matcha crafted by T-Masters in Japan. It's shaded longer during the growing to boost the L-theanine and, of course, the chlorophyll, which means you get calm, focused energy that lasts without the crash. And here's a bonus.

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2:09Darin Olien:That's P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F-E dot com forward slash Darren, D-A-R-I-N. And it's backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. So you've got nothing to lose. Start your mornings with clarity, energy, clean ingredients, and glow and feel good from the inside and really feel the difference. What if your life's greatest calling arrived hand in hand with your greatest challenge? My guest today, Chloe Temchin, is a living embodiment of what it means to be super brave. She's an award-winning singer, songwriter, and speaker, but it's her story of radical resilience, optimism, and a defiant joy in the face of so many obstacles that will leave you speechless.

3:03Darin Olien:I promise. Diagnosed with one of the rarest and most devastating lung diseases on the planet, pulmonary vino occlusive disease. Chloe was given days, literally, to live. That was over 16 years ago. Since then, she's survived cardiac arrest and a coma, life support, and a double lung transplant. That's right. You heard that correctly. And she's done it all with a paralyzed vocal cord and a breathing tube. And yet, she sings, she speaks, and she inspires thousands through her non-profit, the Chloe Temchion Foundation, through her super brave series and through powerful programs like the Smile Tour, which brings music and magic to pediatric hospitals across the country.

3:59Darin Olien:In this conversation, we explore what it truly means to create your own second chance. We talk about the pillars that keep us grounded, that kept her grounded. Nutrition, movement, creativity, mindset, focus, visualization, and love. And how she used those to reclaim not just her health, but her voice and her purpose. Chloe shares why humor matters, how perspective saves lives, and why you don't need to face death to start truly living. You will be inspired by this conversation. I am touched by this conversation. I'm grateful for Chloe and all she's gone through and her relentless power, her relentless love and passion that beams from her very soul.

4:51Here we go, Chloe. Do it.

4:54Darin Olien:we did it thanks for jumping on the super life podcast with me um you know it's kind of perfect how i had to cancel on you twice just to get this podcast because i was laid out for basically two weeks man you made the whole thing up didn't you just didn't want to have me on you're like how can I get her off and have her believe me but what did you have do you know what you actually I don't know it was it was the most um stubborn oh no kind of head cold throat neck like like head you know like congestion in my chest like it was and you know i'm usually used to my body kind of snapping back and i was i i couldn't understand i was i was on my knees without a doubt like well i wonder what hit you and i heard it i don't even know you and i heard it in your voice i'm like oh he's really happening yeah oh man but so anyway we did it and i am better but yes but this but but but it also speaks to exactly what we're going to talk about at least one aspect of it and that is if we don't have our health um it becomes the number one objective for all of us right to get us to where we can actually operate No kidding.

6:34Darin Olien:In this wild life. So for you, maybe let's start because people getting to know you here, maybe for the first time, your story is so wild and intense. And at the same time, like before this podcast, I was listening to your songs, seeing your videos. I'm like, oh, my God. like getting days, literally days to live.

7:11Darin Olien:How, like you had so many hurdles, maybe talk through the beginning and how you got diagnosed and that whole journey. Oh my goodness. Well, first of all, thank you for looking at all of my music and all the rest of it. The story, as I always say, is so long. It's so long that I have kind of learned how to squash this thing into a very small chunk. And there are so many stories within this massive story of, like you said, being told I had days to live. That happens so many different times that you do, which is kind of a good thing, build a little bit of a tolerance to hearing things that are so intense that are very dangerous to believe, I feel.

7:52So, wow, I will not take it back to my childhood or my birth. I'm slightly too far back. But all of that to say that I had this incredibly healthy childhood and nothing was wrong with me. And I say this on purpose because pulmonary arterial hypertension, which I was diagnosed with, and pulmonary veno-occlusive disease, two sort of rare, although not that rare, diseases happen to happen to women who are kind of in their 30s. And it's one of those things that we don't know. And a lot of the time, once you're diagnosed, it's too late, which in my case is what happened. Technically, it was too late because it took five years to figure out what I had.

8:37And this point that I bring up a lot when I communicate my story is that, like you said, I'm this performer, I'm scheduling a tour, I'm recording music, and I'm becoming progressively short of breath. I'm coughing up a storm, my lips are going blue, you know, I'm just, nothing's right. It feels like I have the flu. So you, the, the symptoms again of PAH resemble the symptoms of so many other illnesses, which is why it's very difficult to diagnose. I was on stage. We'll never forget this at Rockwood music hall. I don't know if you've been to New York. I don't know if you know the whole sort of music scene, but music industry people were there.

9:20It's like that one time you don't want to mess up, you know, and I'm trying, I'm getting on stage and I'm pretending and I'm like, I can breathe, you know, and I get up and I, in the middle of this high note, I'm playing piano. I'm going for that note. All of a sudden I cough. And I don't know if you've ever seen a performer cough on stage, but I had never seen this. And then it turns out I was that performer and I'm like, this is so embarrassing. So I try to make a joke, you know, it didn't work because it turned into a coughing fit on stage. And that was sort of the beginning of me realizing that this was something that was no joke.

9:55And this led to five years of being misdiagnosed by top doctors in the country. And, you know, I was diagnosed with many things, as I say, autoimmune diseases, pulmonary embolism, rush to the ER, and then I'd be released. And they're like, yeah, you don't have that, but we don't know what you have. So, you know, worse and worse and worse until finally it was sort of an overnight thing. I put on about 10 pounds of liquid in my body, which is a very strange thing overnight. And I was in heart failure and didn't know it and ended up in the emergency room. And that was sort of the beginning. It led to that, you know, for them to actually figure out what I had, I had to be in heart failure.

10:38And your pulmonary pressures, I would imagine since you do not have pulmonary hypertension, thank God, are under 25, which would be considered normal. Severe pulmonary hypertension, and I say pH, but it's pulmonary arterial hypertension, PAH, are, you know, severe is about 60. And mine at that point, just for context, were at about 180. So I was like a dead person walking. And that was the first time. So when you mentioned, you know, being given days to live, you can't treat pulmonary hypertension properly if you have pulmonary veno-occlusive disease, which has a life expectancy of like 15 minutes, as I say, PBOD.

11:22So, and the drugs for one, again, you can't take if you have the other. PH has a life expectancy of about two years. So not the greatest thing. And I'd already lived five years with both of these things, which was already miraculous. So that was the first time. and then like I say this is my recounting of my story went into what I think you will relate to because I've looked you up with regard to food and mindset and used when given this horrible future which is essentially that there was going to be no future and that there was nothing they could do with me and you know sent home on massive doses of oxygen told to just kind of go home and really die because there was nothing, right?

12:10There's nothing. So at that point, I just sort of took matters into my own hands. And with my partner at the time, went into this just research mode of how can I heal? I know that it's impossible. You know, how can I heal my arteries, my veins? There's got to be a way because our bodies are made to heal. They heal, you know? so what can I do how can I biohack basically and these five seemingly simple key principles were sort of what I lived by for years and had to be so patient because you don't see results with natural things quickly and you have to continue to believe in the fact that this will help you and it really was my only choice so I was food which was a completely plant-based diet with nothing, as I say, no fat, no sugar, meaning no fruits in the beginning, nothing.

13:05Very simple, very boring, very basic. And this was through a lot of research. My mindset, which I know you're big on, which was brainwashing myself into believing I would get better, even though it was impossible. Feeding my mind, documentaries, books, people would overcome the odds. And it was exercise, which at that time was, you know, going from my couch to the bathroom, because that's about as far as I could go. And every day sort of doing a little bit more down into the lobby was a big deal for me, a lobby of a building in New York City. And then it was family and friends, which was spending time with the people that mattered to me most, but not focused on my symptoms or being a sick kid, you know, being my parents sick kid essentially, but on life and happiness and joy and making sure we kept our focus on that.

13:57And finally, creative expression, which for me is music. And that was really, you know, music has always been my therapy, as I say, and it's allowed me to live in a world where there was no pulmonary hypertension at all. There was no illness, nothing. So I could keep my mind in the right place. And over the course of time, years of continuing to believe in this, doctors continuing to say, you need to have a lung transplant or you're going to die. And we don't know if you'll even survive the surgery, which I didn't do, which is a whole other story. Years and years and years go by and I start to get better, which is incredible.

14:32And I started to perform with Steve Martin, who is my, or was my ex oxygen tank, who made Steve, he became the real Steve Martin and actually met the other Steve Martin, which is a whole other story, but you know, essentially doing what I could with what I had, vocal paralysis, everything started to kind of fall apart. And then the second wave, and the story's almost done, but the second wave of life ending, which was the most dramatic one of all, which was seven years after my diagnosis in 2020, I was home on a treadmill walking, you know, at the pace of a snail. And my heartbeat went up to 180 beats per minute.

15:17And after hours of not going to the hospital, I was so scared to go to the hospital because I was so scared of a lung transplant, which I thought would be the next step. Tried very hard not to go and ultimately was, you know, given the advice by everyone I talked to, every doctor that if you do not go, you will die in your house. So I went, went into cardiac arrest in the hospital, thank God, because I would have been dead had that happened at home. And then was in a coma for four days. This was an induced coma. And then I was put on ECMO life support for 21 days. And then on August 5th, 2020, received the miracle of new lungs.

16:02And I mean, I'm making it like it's all this concise story, but it's just the whole thing is just absolutely incredible. It feels like a story that happened to someone else. It's like a movie, you know?

16:12Darin Olien:Right, right. And here I am. And that is, again, a very shortened version of what happened. But in order to allow for you to speak. No, no, no. Well, the point is for you too. So I'm good. I mean, because it's... It's the point, you know? Yeah. Yeah, because, well, I mean, there's so much in there because on the one hand, And I'm always challenged with even, you know, under certain circumstances, yeah, the doctors can tell you that this is likely to happen or whatever. And they say, and the weight that their diagnosis sees and all of these things, that's heavy, right? So on that face of it, the first time you're diagnosed, no one knows what the hell to do.

17:05You take it upon yourself to what can I do, which is also, again, the fatalistic nature of what they've told you.

17:20Darin Olien:it's almost like how did you then find that space because it's finding that space within you to overcome what this current world is showing you and people telling you and at the same time you're like you have to find a place inside of you going what can i do so how was that at least this first time, how was that shift? And how did you start to find that space that can transcend maybe what is currently being presented? Ultimately, the will to live, which I think we don't even know necessarily that we have until faced with something like that, where this natural instinct. So how can I, you can't accept almost, I couldn't accept that reality.

18:17And it is a very dangerous thing, I think, to believe, you know, you will die and you're believing it. You're listening to people who know, you know, and they're telling you the facts. They're not trying to do anything other than to give you the facts and to, to based on their experience. So there's no malice in anything they're doing, but it can be very detrimental. So the switch is not only the will to live, but the continuous reminder, because every day, as I say, and I talk about the movie, The Secret, which I used to make fun of. I mean, I was like, oh, The Secret and all that, you know, I watched The Secret when I wasn't well, and it became my, a little bit of my church.

18:54And for context, every single day, I watched The Secret for about three months. And to answer your question, it's because every single day you go back when you're in a situation like that. So, oh my God, I'm going to die. And then you have to go back to retrain your mind. And sure enough, back. Now, for me, it took that continuous repetition. You know, it took things like a bell that my grandmother, of all things, gave me a bell. And it was my partner at the time who suggested, you know, these thoughts that you're having are so dark and they're so awful. You can't, they're so, they're like thick, you know, they're horrible.

19:31And the only way to cut them was to do something else. So I would take this bell. And he said, every time you have one of those thoughts, ring it. So, I mean, that thing was ringing, you know, compulsively. I mean, my neighbors were like, ring, ring, all day, right? To break the thought. And then it was a little bit less and a little bit less. And, you know, I was watching The Secret for three months straight. And then I just watched it once a week. And then, so it's mind training. You have to make yourself believe something other than what you're believing. And there was no choice to answer the question.

20:05I think my will to live again just kicked in and it didn't allow for the option to be death. Now it could have been, you know, I'm also a huge believer in God. So I have a lot of faith and I do believe that the combination of hard work and faith is for me, at least magical, you know, when it comes to things happening. But it really was miraculous, you know, but you can't sit there and necessarily pray for things if you're not going to do the work. So for me, it was that. How can I pick a new future for myself that's better than the one being presented? Yeah.

20:40Darin Olien:And then, I mean, having that, that very, you know, death stalking so closely, that's a, you know, and I also like, when you're describing this, there's a lot of situations where people get something intense diagnosed to them, and they don't have that. And where is their will to live? Where is their ability to perspective shift? And I think, you know, probably because of your faith first. and then but the but the biggest thing that that you're saying is you're doing the work because that's part of this kind of body matrix life that we live that we're we're a harbinger of the we're holding that soul and and only upon those actions and those actions based on in this case you wanting to live and figuring it out that that's a big chasm and and not everyone chooses that you know even in the face of and listen there's there's a million because you know i was around when the secret came out and and and there's a there's clearly a lot of intelligence within that.

22:17Darin Olien:Um, and, but at the same time, there's also a world to which we don't understand, like, we don't know God's plan all the time either. Right. And so for you, cause, cause now because of your advocacy and your foundation stuff, you're constantly being, you're you're showing up for people in such a massive way and you have to see sometimes when you go you meet someone you go they don't want to live like like so so for that like that that's a huge kind of chasm of some people you meet that are not you can sense that they're not wanting to live or that they've just taken this on and go, that's it. What, how do you, how do you, especially since you've kind of survived that and worked that muscle and when you're interacting with others, how do you kind of navigate that when you're working with other people, when you're trying to inspire and support other people, when you're seeing that whether they're choosing it or not choosing.

23:35Darin Olien:I'm just curious because that's a mysterious kind of void that sometimes people choose and sometimes don't. So I want to take a quick break here and this episode and thank my other sponsor, Therasage, another incredible group of people doing some great things for the increasing of your vitality on this planet using electromedicine in a lot of different ways from portable sauna and a thera 360 pro that i've been using for years the infrared pads that i sit on and meditate on every freaking day helps to detox and boost your immune system reduce inflammation help you recover and repair and restore helping weight loss to come off because of higher functioning of your cells even chose to potentially help with detoxification of molds and sometimes we don't even realize we have that increases energy and improves sleep especially before you go to sleep oh my gosh so good but did you know that you can reduce your chance of heart attacks by 51 percent and stroke 62 percent just being in a sauna four times a week incredible so there's advanced earthing technology and many other remediations of emfs shielding blocking all of that stuff so many benefits to these devices so go to therasage.com and you get 15 off or go or use the code darin d-a-r-i-n and you will love what they have to offer what do you see there and and and how do you think that that could be improved in people it's so interesting i have like 50 five answers for you as you're talking because there's so many things in that.

25:24And I think this is going to sound a little bit weird. And the answer is I can only tell you what I think because I don't know where that comes from really. But ultimately, again, this is the sort of weirder part that's been very helpful to me, is almost doing the opposite of what people say. So people typically say, you know, it's not your fault that this happened. Don't blame me. I went the completely other direction because when you are ill, I think the number one thing that happens is you feel powerless. Right. And so I told myself the opposite. I said that you created this, you, and I took the responsibility of having created my own illness, even though I didn't do it.

26:13It was, you know, I got it maybe from a bird or it doesn't matter. I let that in. So, and I do believe in psychosomatic illness. Now, nothing I had was psychosomatic, but I do believe in the immune system. It responds to your life, to who you are, to how you feel, to if it was a bird, why didn't the guy I was living with at the time get the same thing, right? So I decided I was going to take full responsibility. This was happening to me to teach me a lesson. Unfortunately, Unfortunately, a lot had to happen for me to understand the lesson, but I looked at the entire experience that way. And so for me, it was almost a little bit of a challenge in the, I didn't see it as, oh, no, that's it.

26:55It's over. Why me? Why did this happen? I never actually once thought of it that way. I also think that's a bit of a dangerous place to be. and I always saw it as, all right, how am I going to, and this is a lot of what I talk about creativity, but not in the form of, you know, music or painting. It's the creativity of how am I going to get from this to that, from A to B, which is impossible, though I don't believe it is. There is a way. I just have to figure out what that way is. So that's how my mind works. And I do see what you're saying quite a bit in people. And recently, somebody that I talked to, and I remember recounting to my mother, I was like, I don't think like they don't have.

27:40There's a little bit of a giving up in this person that I can feel. And how can I reignite that? And the only way that I think that becomes reignited is going to sound so corny and so basic and so simple, but is with hope. And the reason that I put my whole life out and try to share good things, you know, versus bad things is because I want, I basically tried to create the person that I wanted to find at that time, which was somebody thriving with illness and this disease. I wanted hope. And when you go online and you see death and progressive and, you know, you don't feel that. So you have to create your own hope.

28:18And that is what my mission became to save my own life and then to ultimately be the one person, if there was only going to be one, hopefully there are more than one, but that people could think of when a doctor was telling them, yeah, there's nothing, you're going to die. They could think, well, wait a second, one person didn't. And so the answer, even though I don't really know the answer to what you're asking, I don't know what makes that difference. But I think if you can reignite hope in someone, there's that potential. The hope can lead them to having a little bit more of that will, because when you feel hopeless, you don't, there's the give up in there.

28:57And then you're like, well, it's not worth the work because it's too much work. I don't want to do it. And it's understandable when I, you know, it's understandable. And when I was lying, especially on ECMO, on life support, and it was the most excruciating pain I've ever experienced. I can't believe it was happening and I can't believe it was real. And I was being, I was intubated on adrenaline. So I was hallucinating at the same time and I was choking for 12 hours straight and I was strapped down and I just had a trans, the lung transplant and every part of my The pain combined with the hallucinations combined with the choking for 12 hours straight made me realize at that time I thought, yeah, I can see how people would just give up right now.

29:40I could absolutely see that. I get it. And that's the choice of that person. You know, that makes sense if that's what they want. I get it completely. In my case, that's a whole other story. I had to lie to myself for 12 hours straight. But I understand all of it. I understand those that wouldn't want to put in that kind of work because it's so difficult and it's so painful and it's so exhausting. Some people don't have help. I had help. I had a partner at the time and have continuously that was there. You know, so everybody's facing a different circumstance. And I really do understand all of them.

30:18And so, wow, that was a long answer to just tell you that I think the magic word is the simplest one, which is hope. and just that glimmer of hope, which leads them to, wait a second, there's a chance. And if there is one, maybe it's worth putting in the work and maybe it's worth trying at least what she did, or maybe it's not over or, you know, so I think as far as I know, that would be my answer.