From Ranger Battalion to the OR | Dr. Mike Simpson | Ep. 448

Summary

Cleared Hot Podcast Ep. 448

From Ranger Battalion to the OR | Dr. Mike Simpson

Host: Andy Stumpf
Guest: Dr. Mike Simpson
Date: May 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the unconventional and remarkable career journey of Dr. Mike Simpson—Army Ranger, Green Beret, Special Forces medic, emergency physician, and author. Andy and Dr. Simpson explore the evolution of tactical medicine, military culture, medical advice for transitioning veterans, men's health, and navigating massive career change. The conversation spans from gritty reflections on life and death in both tactical and medical settings to lighter moments about movies, Jiu Jitsu, and life after service. Dr. Simpson candidly shares lessons learned from decades in the military, the ER, and the writing desk, emphasizing adaptability, continuous learning, and self-accountability.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Role in Tactical Medicine and SWAT Integration

• Dr. Simpson’s advisory role for Central Texas Regional SWAT as a real-time tactical physician—explaining differences between being a doctor and providing medical direction during high-stress law enforcement missions.

  "It's an interesting animal... As a tactical physician, 90% of the job should be training the operators and the medics." (03:00)

• Composite team structure: SWAT teams combining resources across jurisdictions for financial, manpower, and talent advantages.

  "They reran [selection] for themselves... put everybody on a blank slate." (01:31)

• SWAT medical directors often lack tactical experience—importance of trauma-specific knowledge vs. just clinical credentials.

2. Real-World Medical Decision Making and Authority

• Discuss the chain of medical authority during real-world medical emergencies, both in-flight and tactical settings.
• Dangers of limiting EMTs’ scope without higher authority, e.g., inability to perform medical interventions while waiting for orders.

  "The physician that was there was pissed... he was trying to do exactly what you were talking about: Give that real time guidance." (10:21)

• Street medics and 'battle of authorities' during civil unrest—false claims of authority and the need for clear protocols.

3. Military & Tactical Medical Advancements

• Tourniquet use evolution: Old vs. new thinking about field tourniquet application.

  "Ignorance is... the short answer. There was a lot of pushback—tourniquets have no place conus... But the data is there to show that... we had good outcomes." (21:00)

• Dr. Simpson’s stance: Don’t second-guess field medics; prioritize survival.
• Definitive care proximity in US versus combat zones: Immediate care vs. minutes or hours to reach hospital.

4. Transition: Military to Medicine

• Early aspiration for Special Forces, ultimate path through Ranger Battalion and SF pipeline.
• The value of institutionalized military discipline for development before SF selection.

  "If I, as a snot-nosed 18-year-old, had gone to SF... there's no way I would have had the maturity to operate on a 12-man team." (59:56)

5. Reflections on Correctional Officer Experience

• Brief foray into corrections as a means to stability while attending college: the psychological and practical challenges facing correctional officers.

  "It's like running a daycare with a bunch of toddlers who might have a knife between their butt cheeks." (78:07)

• Importance of simple respect and communication—defusing a possible inmate riot with leverage and rapport.

6. Tactical Medicine: Evolution & Challenges

• Application of SOF medical training to civilian contexts; initial resistance and eventual integration.
• Civilian ER procedures for trauma: Unexpected variables, resource constraints, and prioritization—busting the Hollywood myth of instant readiness.

  "You want that tank as full as possible; you want the holes plugged." (33:18)

• The reality of “battle of authorities” and conflict between perceived vs. actual medical authority in the field.

7. Military Career Progression & Medical School

• Transition from Army SF engineer to SF medic (18D) motivated by personal crisis and mentorship.

  "He told me numerous times: Go to the medic course, dude... You have this eye for minutia." (96:29)

• Discovery of a true passion for medicine after hands-on training.
• Importance of selfless service: Taking the job you’re most suited for, not just the most fun.

  "Whatever unit you're in, you need to be selfless enough that you are doing the job you are best suited to do." (103:32)

• Graduate medical education, challenges of medical residency (academic and relational struggles), and rediscovering purpose through perseverance and mentorship.

8. Returning to Special Operations Medicine

• Practicing medicine at the Joint Medical Augmentation Unit (JMAU) for Tier 1 units in JSOC.
• Balancing operational secrecy, professional pride, and the responsibility of representing the SOF medical community honorably.

  "Far, far forward. Medical care for special operations is the best way I can say it." (115:18)

• Recognizing the scrutiny and responsibility around public narratives and "Stolen Valor".

9. Transitioning Out: Planning, Disability, and Documentation

• Importance of documenting injuries throughout service—the pitfalls of “toughing it out” and neglecting medical records.
• Honest reflection on the conundrum faced by SOF operators: Do you risk being sidelined by documenting injuries, or risk your health and benefits by hiding them?

  "You don't want to be a sick call ranger. But you also don't want to be 50 with 0% disability." (134:56)

• Advice: Don’t hide injuries; modern medicine can return most to duty—and if not, it’s probably safer for everyone.
• Men’s health awareness: Dr. Simpson shares his own recent diagnosis with early prostate cancer—importance of regular PSA screening, especially for men over 40.

10. Men’s Health, Longevity & Medical Literacy

• Annual labs, tracking PSA for prostate cancer detection.
• Prostate cancer: Slow-growing, nearly universal with age—catch it early, treatments have improved vastly.
• Caution against “always/never” oversimplifications in medicine—everything is context dependent.
• Simpson’s book Honed: A practical men’s health reference, based on his own journey and audience questions.

  "I basically just wrote... everything that I had answered in an email and made it into a chapter." (158:48)

11. Life Out of Uniform: Writing and Creativity

• Pivot to fiction: Simpson’s fantasy series "Hiram Blunt".

  "Every military guy thinks he's gonna get out and be the next Jack Carr. But I wanted to do something totally out of the wheelhouse to set myself apart." (167:47)

• Process: Discovery writing, integrating decades of story ideas, drawing on military/fantasy tropes.
• Continued service: Ongoing clinical work, teaching potential, and supporting the veteran community through writing and engagement.

12. Lighter Moments and Community

• Rich tangents on military movie nostalgia, authenticity in military culture, and the inefficiency/messiness of even the “elite” teams.
• Jiu Jitsu as a theme—both Andy and Mike discuss training, injuries, and lessons about attributes versus longevity on the mat.
• Humor and candor about aging, injuries, and masculinity; engaging anecdotes about medical mishaps and Jiu Jitsu with John Danaher.
• Montana lifestyle and appreciation for simple joys and community.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "If you're not going to be the gray man, get it right. At least put some effort in. I mean, Google works for everybody."
  – Andy, fashion faux pas and military insignia (18:41)

• "We know now that if I had been honest about all the injuries, none of those things would have taken me off status. But I didn't, because you're afraid of what they're gonna find."
  – Dr. Simpson (135:20)

• "It's a microcosm for all the other medical shit... Why am I getting shooting numbness down the back of my leg? That's probably some type of spinal injury, but that's bad, so I'm just going to put a salon pas on it and take 800mg Motrin every single day."
  – Dr. Simpson, on the culture of ignoring injuries (136:34)

• "Black belt is not the end of the journey. It's totally the beginning."
  – Dr. Simpson, on the endless journey of Jiu Jitsu (192:36)

• "I want my last act as a carbon-based unit to be somebody learning something from me that maybe 10 years from now saves a life."
  – Dr. Simpson, about donating his body for medical education (47:59)

• "There's a reason we have more living triple and quadruple amputees in the modern era of warfare. Historically, you didn't survive that."
  – Andy, on advancements in combat trauma care (24:41)

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Segment Timestamps

• SWAT & Tactical Medicine: 00:14–06:00
• Medical Authority, In-Flight Emergencies: 07:24–13:30
• Tourniquet Philosophy: 20:58–25:06
• Military Path, Ranger Battalion to SF: 58:03–62:00
• Correctional Officer Stories: 75:16–81:04
• Transitioning to 18D/Medic: 96:29–104:49
• Going to Medical School: 105:02–111:17
• JMAU/JSOC Medical Job: 114:02–119:18
• Retirement and Exit Planning: 120:12–124:35
• Disability & Medical Documentation: 127:25–136:32
• Prostate Cancer & Men’s Health: 139:43–154:35
• Book Discussion (Honed): 157:16–161:44
• Fiction Writing: 165:11–177:43
• Jiu Jitsu, Recovery & Longevity: 185:06–194:38
• Closing Remarks, Where to Find Dr. Simpson: 195:03–196:41

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Resources & Where to Find Dr. Mike Simpson

• Instagram: @mikesimpsonusa
• Website: drmikesimpson.com
• Books:
  • Honed (Men’s Health, Amazon)
  • Hiram Blunt fantasy trilogy (Amazon, Goodreads)
• Podcast (archived): "Mind of the Warrior"

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Final Thoughts

This long-form conversation is both an education in tactical medicine and a candid discussion about the challenges of service, health, transition, and living with purpose after the uniform. Dr. Simpson exemplifies curiosity, humility, and a commitment to service—reminding listeners to seek uncomfortable growth, pursue self-improvement, and take care of mind and body, whether still in the fight or moving on to new missions.

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Transcript

[A]

Okay, I got the red smoke. Sun runs north and south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke.

[B]

Okay, copy.

[A]

West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now.

[B]

Oh, wait a minute.

[A]

Give it to me. I mean, it cleared hot. Copy, cleared hot. So it, it's weird. I'm not a sworn officer, but I do have a state numerical designation as if I were.

[B]

And so you're augmenting the SWAT team as essentially their real time medical.

[A]

I. Well, so it's, It's. It's an interesting animal. Yes. Yeah. So the way that it works is Central Texas Regional SWAT is what's called a composite team. Okay. So it's four different. Four different law enforcement agencies, two different EMS systems. So they had been. They'd been rolling for. They. They originally. They were original separate teams. A lot of smaller SWAT teams had like a come to Jesus, right. 10, 15 years ago. And we're like, you know what? We can't. We don't have the finances or the manpower or the talent pool to do this on our own. So what we should do is we should. We should work with surrounding organizations, bring it all together. And that's what they did. So they made a composite team. And to their credit that everybody that was on the team at the time, they ran. They. They ran a selection for themselves, but they all went through it again.

[B]

They reran it.

[A]

Yeah, they reran it for themselves.

[B]

That's clean.

[A]

Went through training from day one again to do. To kind of pick up all their ttps from the beginning.

[B]

Put everybody on a blank slate.

[A]

Yeah, this was before I even got there. Then they had. They're like, okay, where are we going to draw our EMS from? So they drew partially from Williamson county, partially from one of the cities. So they had like three different medical directors to deal with. None of those medical directors had any tactical experience. So they had another guy who worked as their medical director for a while. And this guy doesn't have the. He doesn't. I'm not gonna throw him under the bus, but he doesn't have the best reputation in Texas because he's done this with a couple of different organizations. Hey, I'll be your medical director. It's a little bit of an issue, like, if a guy doesn't know how to put on a tourniquet and how to. How to stage a tourniquet, shit like that, he probably has no business being a tactical medical director. And this guy didn't. Right. He was basically a doctor who really wanted to be a cop.

[B]

Hmm.

[A]

And he did some Very valuable stuff for the team. But he was a cardiologist, so it didn't have anything to do with trauma. It didn't have the two things that

[B]

you could help him with. Their VO2 Max, perhaps?

[A]

Actually, no, really, all he was doing was giving him their risk assessments.

[B]

I mean, here's the thing. I don't actually know what a cardiologist does, so I just assumed that it had something to do with VO2 max.

[A]

Yeah, I think VO2 pulmonologists tend to be more in the. In the realm of VO2 max. Yeah, basically. Yeah. So you have two jobs. You have three jobs as a tactical physician. One is the tactical aspect of it, which 90% of it shouldn't even be you. It should be training the operators and training the medics. Right. That's a huge chunk of the job. That's the sexiest part, and that's actually the smallest portion of your time, really right in the middle. You're a sports medicine doctor. These guys are. You know what it's like on a team. Everybody's hurt all the time at all times.

[B]

Everybody is dealing with something.

[A]

Yeah. So you're constantly. Okay, I'm gonna set it up so you can get imaging, or I'm gonna set you up with a physical therapist, or I'm gonna prescribe physical therapy for you. I'm gonna take a look. I'm gonna make a recommendation on what subspecialist you need to see all that stuff. And then the third is just sick call stuff. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, hey, I got this. Hey, I got that. All right. Okay. Well, I'm gonna put you on an anti histamine, so you can't go. You can't go on target tonight. You know, shit like that. So. So those are basically the three portions of the job. And this guy was already on the way out. I guess they didn't really like him very much anyway. And it just so happened that one of the guys on the team, one of the senior guys on the team knew me. He was a former 10th group guy, and he knew me peripherally. Like, we'd met in person, like, one time, and I guess. And that was also when I was podcasting. One of the medics listened to my podcast, and he goes, hey, man, didn't you say you know Mike Simpson? You know, he lives right here in Georgetown. Right. So he's like, hey, man, you want to meet for lunch? I. I got something to talk to you about. And he's like, hey, would you be interested in doing this? It pays nothing. Like literally nothing. Like it's gonna cost you money. And I'm like, yeah, I'll do it, whatever. So we did an mou. So I don't get paid. I'm a private citizen. I'm there in an advisory capacity. And the MOU specifically says that basically when the medics are doing tactical stuff, I can provide immediate real time medical direction. Like if I happen to be on the target with them and they're like, should I crack them, should I not crack them? And I say crike him. That you know, that basically their actual medical director is saying, hey, he's a licensed emergency medicine physician in good standing. So there's no reason, you know, this is no different than if you went into his home to treat a patient and he's like, hey, I'm a doctor, I'm a higher level of medical training than you. This is how we're going to run this code. It's really no different than that.

[B]

I've actually seen that play out in real life. I've had a guy die on a commercial flight before.

[A]

Really?

[B]

And we.

[A]

I've had a fair amount of in flight emergencies. I've never had a death though.

[B]

We weren't in flight. Yeah, we were actually still attached. This story is wild. Have I ever told you this story, Michael?

[A]

No. This is how recent today's episode is

[B]

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[A]

Oh, are we recording, by the way? Oh, for sure. Okay. I was just saying the quick thing. So I didn't really. Yeah.

[B]

So I'm on a Delta flight. Yeah, we're in Salt Lake City. I can leave most of the details out of it. We're boarding and it was in the evening and I kind of just assumed that they would work the medical issue and get to a higher level of care. But I actually saw what you were talking about in real time happen. We're in the boarding process and I'm like, evening time, headset in, kind of nodding off. And then I have the realization that we're kind of at the gate for a lot longer than we should have been. And then I also notice a lot of people are starting to look into the back. Okay, what's going on? Well, a gentleman was boarding and had what I'll have to assume to be a heart related issue. So took a seat and kind of went over. There was a doctor who was there working him hard on the aircraft in the aisle, which by the way, not an easy task. Limited in space, everything.

[A]

I would literally rather. And from experience, I would rather do it on the floor of a, uh, 60.

[B]

Oh, for sure.

[A]

With all the operators crowded around me.

[B]

You're gonna have more room than you would.

[A]

You're gonna have. Yeah, yeah. Because you'd be surprised at when you tell. When you tell eight 250 pound dudes in full kit that you need room to save their money, you'll get room. All of a sudden you have space.

[B]

Yeah. Guys will actually jump out of the helicopter.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. They'll hang on the outside. They'll do a Tom Cruise if they need to.

[B]

So this guy's working it. It takes forever for I believe it was the fire department to respond. And if These details aren't 100% correct, I'm not trying to like give a documentary here. Whatever. I'm Pretty sure was the fire department. They respond, they pull the guy out of the airplane on what I can only describe as a Visqueen tarp. And thinking about it, that might actually be the move.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because what are you going to do under the armpits, feet. There wasn't enough room to go side by, so they drag him out.

[A]

I think probably what you saw was what's called a mega mover, which basically. That's what it is.

[B]

Yeah. So they dragged him out. The person I was sitting next to, I looked over and his head stopped right where we were. I seen enough dead people in my life to understand what was going on. The person next to me, I believe was experiencing their first dead person in life. Very different trajectories.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm not laughing about that. Just in hindsight, it's just, you know, it is what it is. The job comes with some experiences that I don't wish upon other people. They work him out to. They get him out to the skybridge. They keep working him. And the paramedics or firefighters were on the radio getting guidance from somebody. And the physician that was there was pissed because he was, you know, I think he was trying to do exactly what you were talking about. Give that real time. This is what you can do. But they had to go get authority over the radio.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then I think, again, this is just my perception. I think he started getting pissed because they kept going be. And he's just like, dude, the guy is.

[A]

It's done dead.

[B]

Like, they're like injectables and all. Which they couldn't do until they got a hold of the higher level of care. So I'm assuming that they were on the phone or radio with a doc. They move the evolution off of the skybridge. They get on the radio like, hey, there's going to be a delay. I'm already on my phone, like booking a hotel for them. Like, yeah, there's going to be a delay. It's called the flight being canceled.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As I'm walking out, I hear the people at the desk up there talking about a realization that they had just made. They assumed that the person's identity was based off of the seat that he was sitting in when he keeled over. Wasn't as assigned seat.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

They had initially reported the wrong person as dying.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know how that worked itself out. I went to my hotel for the night.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I've seen this battle of. I'll call it battle of authorities. I didn't realize that, and I guess I had never really thought about it. That there is. Based off of your medical training and the tools, you have probably a limit of what you can do without getting that higher level of guidance.

[A]

Yeah. And so it's difficult. I don't envy. And I went through paramedic school as part of my training as being in 18 Delta. But my experience working the road as a paramedic is minimal. Right. Because I had to do it. I had to go out and ride every weekend when I was in school. I didn't really. I, you know, since, you know, since then, you know, there's, I've rode out with a couple of different EMS organizations in that capacity, you know, before I was a physician. And it's, it's really challenging because, you know, you go into somebody's home or you're in a mall or restaurant, you never know when somebody's going to come up to you and identify yourself. And there's, there's memes about it. Right. Somebody's going to identify. I'm whatever. Right. I'm taking medical control of this situation. And there's not really time to vet that person. Oh, there's no time. So are they who they say? So your department really has to have protocols in place of either, you know. No, we never, you know, whoever that is, they pound sand, you know, and you do your thing without them. Or, you know, it varies from department to department. I've been in situations where paramedics have shown up on scene that recognize me. One was an in flight emergency, one was a. There was. We were, I forget where we were going exactly, but we had a. Stop the plane. When I got on the plane in Denver and it had stopped over from somewhere else and it was one of those where you, and you don't see this very much anymore, where you get on a plane and some of the people never got off the plane.

[B]

Oh, yeah. I don't think they allow that anymore.

[A]

I don't think they do either because

[B]

I have landed many times and they're like, we're arriving at gate 18.

[A]

Right. But you needed a plane anyway.

[B]

And I look, I'm like, I'm also departing from gate A18. You don't stay on the plane. You get off and you reboard.

[A]

And I think, and I could be wrong, everybody might have had to have gotten off. But the short version is I want to say this person was flying from someplace at a low altitude back to San Antonio, which is a low altitude, but in between they ended up at high altitude and I'm pretty sure that's what triggered all this. I'm pretty sure this lady was having a heart attack, right? Probably from. She probably had one of her arteries was, you know, just barely big enough for one red blood cell to squeeze through. And then the. The lack of oxygen in this place that she landed kind of pushed her over the edge because she was having pretty clear MI Symptoms on the plane once we took off, right? And at that point, it's not an issue of how high we're flying because we're pressurized, right? So put an oxygen mask on her and did some other stuff and helped her out. And she didn't even let the flight attendants know she was having symptoms until we were already, essentially. Well, the fastest thing is to continue and just to land in San Antonio. So we land in San Antonio, and I tell the flight attendants, and there was actually two of us from my residency on board. We were coming back, actually, from a conference, and I said, yeah, so we're gonna have to have EMS pick her up. This isn't one of those, oh, we'll just walk her out, and she's gonna be fine. I'm like, it would be advisable that they meet us at the gate, and they take her. And the EMS crew comes on, and they're like, oh, hey, Doug Simpson. What's up? These are paramedics who have come given me a report in the ER before with patients or San Antonio paramedics. So I told her. Told them what it was, and they said, all right, we'll take care of it. And I got report back from one of them later on that, sure enough, she ended up getting two stents during her stay. So. But that was a case where they knew who I was when I walked in.

[B]

You know, that's an easier one. Your bona fetus has already been established,

[A]

but you also have problems. So I worked during. During the bl. During the George Floyd riots. I worked with a state task force in Houston, and they had. Had. I had already, by that point, had a number of incidents where they were in the middle of treating people, usually civilians, when another civilian, somebody who's an active protester, not just a bystander, would come over and start interjecting themselves. No, you got to do this. No, they need that. No, you got to do this. You know, I'm a chiropodist. I'm. You know, I'm an acupuncturist. You need to listen to me. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they had a. They had. And I Asked him specifically about that. I said, what are you doing? Like, we know there's these guys out here that call themselves street medics. And I can. I can. The whole street medics thing that weren't really medics. That's. These are guys carrying Molotov cocktails in their rucksacks, but they've got a little Velcro patch that says street medic, so they think they can get away. And I actually heard one of them actually invoke the Geneva Convention because they were a medic. So basically trying to play both ends against the middle. Right.

[B]

I feel. I mean, the Geneva Convention's a good thing, but that's really a misplaced ideology

[A]

for a moment there. Yes. Slightly. Slightly. Well, and my response to that was. So you're admitting you're at war with the United States?

[B]

Yeah. Like, what's going on?

[A]

Because that's the only way that you can invoke the Geneva Convention.

[B]

Are you in a mature theater of war? Are you a combatant? Is that what you're saying?

[A]

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Do the rules of land warfare really apply here in Houston, Texas, on this day?

[B]

Did he at least have his patches on correctly?

[A]

Well, it was just a Red Cross patch, so it was all. It was.

[B]

So I. I want people to live their life however they want to. I was traveling home two days ago, and it's interesting to me, it's not an accident when people flare out or make attire choices to say, hey, I am either in the military or was in the military or can't let go of either of those. Sure. Like, I guess I can appreciate it when I'm going up an escalator and I can see that somebody has no known allergies. Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

A positive.

[A]

Great, great.

[B]

You know, AB negative. Gotcha. Not a problem.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The number of people that I see that have the wrong American flag on their. I just saw one where I have a picture on my phone, and I put it up on Instagram. The flag. It's the. It's the one, you know, flag etiquette. It was the right. Right shoulder patch, which has the stars leading the way.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It's. It's going back because.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Because I'm riding a horse with it. Correct.

[B]

And if you look at the left shoulder, the stars are always leading the way. The stars are always up and to the left. Unless it's on the right shoulder.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Well, that's what was on the backpack. Like, completely flared out. American flag hat. And again, I said nothing. Blacked out any identifying Marks and just put on social media. Like, listen, live your life however you want to, but if you want to be this guy, be good at being this guy. Like, yeah, you don't even know that you're fly. Like, if you were to wear that on your uniform, the wrong one, you're gonna get tore up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Your boss can be like, hey, dude, you look like an idiot. Like, understand the etiquette of what it is that you're trying to do.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I am.

[A]

And nobody's saying you got to be the gray man. I get it. I don't care how I get undressed. I'm not. I'm not the gray man today. Okay. Sometimes you give up on being the gray man. But you also, like you say, if you're gonna. If you're not gonna be the gray man, get it right.

[B]

At least put some effort in. I mean, Google works for everybody.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Some people are like, I always use that flag because it shows I'm never retreating. Like, it doesn't mean that you're never retreating. That's the flag for your right shoulder, you dipshit.

[A]

To each their own.

[B]

Totally. Given your mou, which means memorandum of understanding for those of you listening, if you had to, could you go hands

[A]

on and I could treat a patient and good. And good Samaritan laws would apply. Apply, apply to me. In that case, how much.

[B]

I mean, how much stuff do you take out in the field with you? Because at some point, you're going to be limited by the tools you have, I'm assuming.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How bad can it be for you? And then you can actually get somebody to a higher level of care.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, what's. As far as you've ever seen it go? And you're like, this guy's definitely not going to survive, but you're actually able to plug holes and get somebody to

[A]

a higher level in the civilian world or in civilian world.

[B]

That's different because we're talking IED stuff. Like.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Thankfully, that stuff is not replicated in the civilian world.

[A]

I've been. I'm a little bit of a white cloud when I roll out with the team.

[B]

Is that a good thing?

[A]

And that's a good thing. Yeah. So you have a black cloud. Means we're getting all the sick people. Like, anything that can go wrong is going wrong. White cloud is, hey, it's somehow there. Before the grace of God. Somehow we came out unscathed. So the injuries that I've seen in tactical scenarios in SWAT have all been easy, easy stuff, you know, scrapes bumps, bruises, easy stuff. You know, our team has had, and, you know, the medics, you know, that I supervise have had pretty bad stuff. I mean, they'd have had to do some, you know, pretty high level interventions. The answer is, you know, anytime. The great thing, and this was a conversation that I had years ago. We were having a problem right about the time I was transitioning out. I retired in 2016, and we were still having a little bit of a problem convincing civilian organizations that a lot of what we learned in TCCC overseas was applicable. Believe it or not, there was a lot of pushback. And I actually had a civilian ER physician who was acting as a tactical medical director tell me tourniquets have no place conus.

[B]

How could they say that?

[A]

Well, and that's.

[B]

That is one of the. For clarity. When I joined in 96, it was the. The narrative around tourniquets was very different. It was last resort, measure of last resort. Make sure the exact time that you put this on needs to be notated.

[A]

No more limb than an hour, and that limb will be lost 100%.

[B]

Yeah, no more than an hour or the body's gonna turn septic. By the end, it was like, hey, how many tourniquets do you have? Like five. They're like rookie numbers. Half a dozen.

[A]

Bump it out and you need two for each limb.

[B]

And regardless of what happens, slap one of those things on there. Don't worry about the time. Get them to a higher level of care. Yeah, it was a diametrically opposed shift.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How could a civilian doctor say that?

[A]

So ignorance is. That's the short answer. I could go into a long diatribe,

[B]

but you'd have to search to be that ignorant.

[A]

But here's the thing is this was the argument that I said to him. I said, you know, really, I can make an. I can make an argument. In fact, I don't have to make the argument. The data is there to show that overseas in combat, we have. We have put on a lot of tourniquets that did not need to be put on. But guess what? We had good outcomes. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because. Because I have a. I have always had the rule I don't second guess when a paramedic brings me something in the error. I don't second guess their treatments in the field. I wasn't there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't know what visibility was like. I don't know what the situation was like. I don't know what they saw. I don't know what kind of patient feedback they were Getting. I don't know any of that. I don't know what kind of day they had overall. I don't know what kind of day the patient had overall. I don't second guess. If I see something that was a blatant mistake, I might pull a medic aside later or get in touch with his.

[B]

Emphasis on after.

[A]

After.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Never during the. Now is not the time and say, hey, man, great job. But these are the things that I think maybe you could have done better. Take that for what it's worth. You know, based on my level of experience, I was going somewhere with this.

[B]

We were talking about the tourniquets.

[A]

Oh, the tourniquets. So, yes, you can make the argument that a lot of tourniquets that were put on overseas didn't, you know, they got converted right away or they weren't necessarily needed, or when we got there, we found out the tourniquet wasn't on properly.

[B]

Anyway.

[A]

Luckily, it was only a venous injury. Okay, great. But the great thing about being here, conus, in a tactical situation is you are never, pretty much never going to be more than an hour away from definitive care, from a place with fluorescent lighting, linoleum, guys in scrubs, right, who just came from the doctor's lounge, who can now strip that patient down and correct any mistakes that were made in the field. Yeah, usually minutes, I would guess, since we know that the tourniquet. And this is the argument that I made with that guy. I said, if I line up 100 people, 100 people, and I paper cut all 100 of them, and I put a tourniquet on each one of them, and then I activate ems, they go to an er, they all get the tourniquets taken off. No harm, no foul. They had some discomfort for a little while, maybe they're going to have a little bruise, right? For a little. For a little while. Nobody's hurt. Everybody survived. If I line up that same hundred people, right, and I paper cut 99 of them, but one of them has an arterial injury, and I use your protocols, that one person's dead.

[B]

What was his response to that?

[A]

He said, maybe I need to rethink this.

[B]

That's a good answer.

[A]

Exactly. And that's what I said. I said. And I didn't say this out loud because it would have been an insult, but my thought was, you're trainable. You came into this with a misconception, but you're trainable.

[B]

I work with that.

[A]

So you're one of the good ones.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We can work with that, because that's literally all you need for success, is to be trainable.

[B]

I mean, there's a reason that we have more living triple and quadruple amputees in the modern era of warfare. There's a reason why, historically, you didn't survive that. You know, some people would make an argument. Maybe you're not supposed to. I leave that argument out there. But probably one of the most.

[A]

I think Joey Jones would probably. Probably agree with you and disagree with them. Yeah.

[B]

And to each of them, you know what I mean? They can feel about it how they want to. But the man. The results to that test are clearly published. That's wild.

[A]

You know, you. You're. I'm. I'm. I think 12 years older than you.

[B]

Depends on what year you were born.

[A]

1966.

[B]

77. So only 11.

[A]

11. Oh, so you're born the same year as my wife. You and your wife.

[B]

Take it easy. All right.

[A]

Whoa. Whoa, man. I just turned 60. I'm feeling a little. I've turned 60 in March.

[B]

How does that feel?

[A]

I'm a little salty. Feels exactly the way you think it's going to.

[B]

Can you tell that death is just around the corner from old age?

[A]

Yeah, you see him in the mirror every morning. I'm brushing my teeth. I'm brushing my teeth. And right behind me, he's going. He's doing one of these numbers.

[B]

I can't believe I'm 48. I don't feel like I'm 48. I feel more active now, honestly, than I was in different phases of my life.

[A]

So imagine this. And I don't want to go too far in this rabbit hole, because I wanted to say something about my age first, but I was your age going out on target.

[B]

Yeah, I've thought about that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I would change how I behaved on target. I actually think I could probably be more effective now, but it would. I would move differently and do different things.

[A]

I definitely. The efficiency, the shakedown efficiency. And what I was carrying on my person.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Was definitely echelons above what I was doing in my 20s and in my 30s and even in my early 40s. But what I was going to say about, you know, the reason I brought up age is I grew up in the 70s when you would see. You would be at a gas station or in a restaurant or something like that, and you'd see a guy with a hook hand, and you just knew that guy was in Vietnam. Yeah, that guy was in Vietnam. You didn't see a lot of guys with prosthetics the guys who hit Bouncing Betty's and stuff like that, a lot of those guys didn't make it. You know, usually those guys, it was the guys with the arms. It was some type of through and through. Like either shrapnel took their, you know, took their hand off or you know, they machine gun round something like something of that nature.

[B]

I mean, they were, weren't carrying tourniquets to my knowledge. I mean what would they use? Like a cravat? They would try.

[A]

They were using this. They were using, you know what we call drive on rags. Right. Cravats. That's what they were using.

[B]

The most I've ever, when I went

[A]

through the 18 delta course, we were still using those.

[B]

The most I've ever seen put on a leg associated with an IED blast was six tourniquets and it was the sixth one that stopped the bleeding. Yeah, that's 100% a fatality if you don't have those. So it makes sense that you didn't see people with, you know, double above the knee amputees. I mean it was, it was at that point shortly after that people started carrying magnitudes of order greater number of tourniquets because we were pulling off of people. Like, I got one like, dude, hand it over.

[A]

Yeah. There's a law enforcement officer in the state of Texas who I met who had a tourniquet on each limb, was serving a high risk warrant, ended up with a tourniquet on each limb and lived and is back on duty.

[B]

And there's a reason for that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, here's a question for you because I think this is a common misconception. I'm going to use an example of something that I don't think this would have made a difference. I'm going to use Charlie Kirk getting shot in the neck. When I saw that, my instant thought was wound incompatible with life. Like, you're done, you're going to be dead before you get to the hospital. But my question is this. There's this thought process that when you arrive at a hospital you're going to be received. He probably needed a thoracic surgeon on the spot with an OR prepped. And the misconception is that hospitals are just sitting around waiting for somebody like that to show up. I had a GI blockage, I had an intestinal blockage which ended up requiring surgery. Not the same issue, by the way. I am not in any way trying to compare these two. My point is they couldn't do the surgery when I would have preferred it to happen because they had to wait for a doctor that was doing a rotation at a different hospital to drive over. How much? I mean, somebody. So somebody like Charlie Kirk, using this example, they're hauling ass in a civilian vehicle. How prepared is a hospital to receive them? Like, how quickly can you.

[A]

Actually depends on the hospital.

[B]

Let's. I'll let you decide. Like. Like average. Average. And whatever that means in. I don't know what the Salt Lake City area would necessarily have, but it's not like you just get thrown into an or, I'm assuming.

[A]

No.

[B]

And the person's got to be ready and you have to kind of assess what's going on. I'm just curious on the actual speed and velocity with which people are actually able to take life saving measures on something like that. You get to the hospital, like, awesome, we made it. Maybe depending on what they have ready.

[A]

Yeah. So the. Or. Think of the. Or think of the operating room as a dive. Do you dive without a plan? No, absolutely not. Right. So you have to have a plan to go to the. Or you develop that plan in the trauma bay in the er. Right? That's when you do the full head to toe.

[B]

Are they usually pretty close to each other?

[A]

Actually, no. So trauma bay. The ER was always on the bottom floor. There's a saying in medicine, Right. The higher you go in the hospital, the smarter you are because you get to second guess everybody beneath you.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

So as an ER physician, I get to talk shit about the cafeteria and literally nothing else.

[B]

Oh, but you're on the receiving end of the cafe.

[A]

Everybody else is considered smarter than me because there are floors above me.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

So you come in by ambulance or in some cases by privately owned vehicle. I've been involved in mass cals a couple of times where that's happened. I was, you know, I was. I was.

[B]

And I'm not judging that, by the way. Like, get him there. How you can get them. Yeah, you know.

[A]

Oh, I was. I was chief of emergency medicine at Darnell Hospital when we had the second Fort Hood shooting. And all of the serious casualties that arrived in that first wave, all of them arrived in privately owned vehicles. Las Vegas, the shooting at the concert in Las Vegas. Privately owned vehicles. One guy stole a vehicle.

[B]

I'm not judging that.

[A]

And the owner of the vehicle ended up saying he could keep it.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm saying, like, I got. I have no judgment against that.

[A]

Yeah, man.

[B]

Can you imagine? Well, you've experienced it. That all of a sudden the floodgates open and now it's like, yeah, you have a surgeon on, but you have eight people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Leaking hydraulic fluid.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That's a capital P problem.

[A]

Yeah, it's huge.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what is, what, what happens is that. And we'll use the, use the example that you gave, which is a single casualty.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He arrives, he or she ARR in the emergency room, goes directly to the trauma bay. First thing that happens is whoever brought them in gives some type of report. You know, this is a 38 year old male, shot in the neck. You know, this is what we did in the, this is what we did in the field. This we did in route. This was, these were his vital signs when we picked him up and these are his vital signs currently as we're handing them off to you. Yeah, you strip all the clothes off, you do a head to toe treat as you go, plug in any holes that you see. If the airway needs to be taken, you take the airway. This is the point. Typically when an ultrasound machine gets slapped on, you do what's called fast or an E fast exam and you're looking for internal bleeding. Right. So you're making an assessment because you have to identify, well, these are the injuries. If you're going to go to the or. Now we're making our dive plan. Yeah. So yes, we're going to go to the OR and. Oh, it looks like the carotid artery was transected on the right hand side. So this is where you can start blood products. Right. So you're doing everything to stabilize them. You're going to close holes. Yep. You're going to try to, you know, the tank has been somewhat emptied. You're going to start trying to refill the tank at this point by giving some blood products because you want them stable enough that they can go to the, the OR and survive that surgery. Because that's surgery. You know, if I put a perfectly healthy person under anesthesia and start poking them around inside him, that takes a toll on the body. Right. So you want somebody as healthy as possible, you want that tank as full as possible, you want the holes plugged. Right. What you don't want to do is just start giving blood full blast and then you find three other holes that you didn't even know were there. Because now that his blood pressure's up, you've blown out the clots and now he's leaking all these other places. Right. So like you say, it's a process and typically there's imaging involved and sometimes that might be some simple imaging that Might just mean, okay, let's get a unit of blood hanging, get them over to the CAT scanner just to kind of assess what the damage is. So they know what tools they're gonna need for that dive upstairs, right? Cause they're gonna be pulling out tools. Right. They need. The surgeon needs to say, I want the trauma set, I want the chest set, I want the whatever set.

[B]

Would the surgeon at this point be working their way down to maybe get visibility of what's going on?

[A]

Typically, in a trauma center, the surgeon, somebody from the surgical team is there. Okay. Okay. So you're working sided. And I've seen this. I've seen it work different ways in different hospitals. So some hospitals, the surgeon will literally stand at the foot of the patient with his arms folded and watch the ER crew do. Do their thing. And he's just listening to everything you're saying. I had that. I had somebody come in one time. They'd been stabbed, and I had to do a thoracotomy. So in other words, I had to crack their whole chest open, go in there, find where they were leaking, clamp it off so that they could survive long enough to go to the error. Right. And what this. What ended up happening to this individual is that when they got stabbed, it went through the pericardium, through the. Through the heart. So the ventricle was leaking into the pericardium. So they had what's called a tamponade. So imagine a balloon full of blood pushing, compressing the heart, almost like a tension neuro. Yeah, yeah. So what I had to do was I call it birthing the heart. I had to tear open the pericardium. So now the heart's beating, you know, and I, you know, throw a staple in that hole in the heart just to keep it closed so they can get up to the or. And I remember doing that. That it's. You don't do a lot of thoracotomies. It just. It doesn't happen that often. And I was getting ready to do the thoracotomy, and it was the first one I'd ever done. I'd participated in, I think two previous to that. This was the first one I was doing as a senior resident, running the trauma myself, so. And I came to the term, hey, we've completely lost pulse. So we've confirmed that pulse is lost. Now this is a trauma. We have penetrating trauma of the chest. So now the chest has to get cracked. So I said, okay, I'm going to do a thoracotomy. And I was Waiting for somebody to go, hold on. This person was down for whatever time in the field. You know, there's always a. Like you say, you know, you don't. You don't want to waste resources. Right. So I said it out loud, waiting to be rebuked from my staff, you know. Oh, hold on. You know, or him come. No, no, no, you're not doing it. I'm doing it. Something like that. And I didn't hear anything. So I looked up and this surgeon is standing at the foot of. He's standing, like, literally right there with his arms folded. And he had been asleep when the page came that a trauma was coming in. And he just went like this. So I'm like, okay.

[B]

Do you give the guy any pain meds before you do that?

[A]

No. So in this case, the person.

[B]

That's not fun.

[A]

Well, the person had been unconscious completely. I mean, because they had lost a lot of.

[B]

Like, hook him up a little.

[A]

Funny story. Funny story about that. Now this is. And I. And I'm going to caveat this by saying I was not present at this. I have heard this story told from three separate people that claim to have been there.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. And this was at a hospital in Texas, which I shall not name a surgeon, which I also shall not name. But supposedly this guy was very, very overeager. He had a reputation for being overeager and similar type situation. The kid came in. It was actually. It was a gang kid got stabbed in a club, came in, and the kid was. Apparently had been stabbed in the chest, but it never even really made it into the chest cavity proper. Right. It was a very superficial injury. Right. So he has a stab wound. But the kid is being very dramatic. And he's. He's pretending to be unconscious, basically. Cause he doesn't. Cause he's seen so many movies, he's like, well, I got stabbed, so I'm supposed to be unconscious, so I'm just gonna lay here. Right. I guess he wasn't faking.

[B]

That's a strategy, I suppose.

[A]

He wasn't faking. You know, it's just like, you know, it's like the old saying. Why do people fall down when they get shot? Cause that's what they see in the movies. Yeah.

[B]

The misconceptions abound.

[A]

Yes. So this kid's laying there. Well, the leads came unhooked, so on the monitor it looked like he flatlined. Right. So this surgeon, again, I wasn't there. This is what I heard. Grabs a scalpel, decides he's gonna do this kid needs A thoracotomy. He's got trauma to the chest. The chest needs to be cracked. We need to see what's going on. So he rams the scalpel between the ribs and starts to cut. The kid goes, oh, shit. Grabs his wrist. And while the guy's cutting, he says, can I get somebody to restrain the patient? But he's still cutting.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Yes. And again, I cannot confirm that this story happened.

[B]

Three data points.

[A]

Yeah, I do have three people that told it to me. And this. And I guess if I get subpoenaed on this, I'll go ahead and tell people who I. Who I heard it from and who it was supposedly about, but. Wow. Yeah. The kid ended up doing fine. Yeah.

[B]

Maybe don't play dead or unconscious.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So in your professional estimation, from flash to bang, of a guy like Charlie showing up at the front door of the er, how long do you think it would on average take to get him into an OR?

[A]

That's really hard to say because it depends.

[B]

10 minutes? Like 15.

[A]

I was going to say, like a real. A real shit hot level one trauma center.

[B]

Under 10 minutes, which, I mean, honestly was too much for him anyway. Like, he was. There's no way that guy was alive by the time that he arrived at the hospital.

[A]

What I've seen, and I did immediately afterwards, I watched the video. Like most.

[B]

I didn't mean to see it the first time, but then, you know, I did take a look at it a

[A]

few times after I watched it again and again. And I think if you would have inflicted that. There are some injuries that we say, and I've treated this in combat. An injury that had. I taken that same individual into the operating room and introduced it there, sterilized them from head to toe and introduced that injury and said, surgical team, go.

[B]

Still done.

[A]

Same outcome.

[B]

Yeah, there's. There's just wounds that are incompatible with life. What is. So they. Let's say they did get. Eventually the body makes it into the. Or does the surgeon just dive in there and see what he has to work with? Trying to put pieces together or stop. Like, what are the. What is the approach with that?

[A]

So it's not a surgeon, but from. In talking to surgeons about their approach to something like that, it's. It's. I think the closest thing that I can liken it to is cqb is I have principles. Right. I'm not telling you you're. Oh, you're going to definitely go to the left when you go in this room. I'm not telling you that you're definitely going to do this in this order, but these are the principles that you're going to operate in. Right. And it's kind of a loose algorithm. Right. Okay. Step one, I'm going to open up like, so, neck injury. Yeah. I'm going to open up the skin, I'm going to open up the platysma. I'm going to see what's there. If, when I identify this vessel, if it appears to be damaged, I'm going to put in a temporary shunt going from here to here. Once that shunt is operational, then I'm going to assess what the damage is. I'm going to remove the damaged tissue. I'm going to see if there's enough room that I can splice it. Oh, there's nothing. Harvest the safeness vein, bring it up here so I can do it. And again, I'm not a surgeon right now. There's a trauma surgeon listening to this, freaking out. That's not what we do. I'm using it as an example, is things are probably the best illustration that I ever saw of that. Do you remember the old TV show er?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. So Eric Lasalle, that's where I got

[B]

most of my medical training.

[A]

A lot of people did. So that show was actually on. The first season of that show was actually on when I was in the 18 delta course, and we were swearing up and down that they had our course syllabus because, like, whatever we happened to learn about that week was on the show. There it is. There it is. Right. There's a scene where Eric Lasalle, who's a surgical senior surgical resident and then he ends up becoming a fellow, he gets up early in the morning and he's running on the treadmill. And while he's running on the treadmill, he goes, place the scalpel between the fourth and fifth ribs, cut, you know, to this depth, spread the ribs, identify the. And he's basically running through what he's been taught of. This is the surgical procedure, right? And as you run into stuff, it's, you know, it's just like doing cqb.

[B]

It's reps, man.

[A]

You're looking for work, right? See a problem, fix a problem, move on to the next problem, See a problem, fix a problem, move on to the next problem. And that's what surgeons are doing. See a problem, fix a problem, move on to the next problem. Everything, you know, we've got enough reps in this that everything, you know, we. Everything's prioritized, right? We know, you know, like, we Used, Used to be first aid. Used to be A, B, C, D, E. Right. Right. Now it's hemorrhage first because we know I've got two minutes. You could die in two minutes from that hemorrhage, Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's what I have. That's the problem that I have to solve first. So for trauma surgeons, it's a lot like that. It's like, okay, what I need to go in and right away, you know, if, if the aorta's got a hole in it all, you know, big red is going down, all bets are off. Obviously that has to be fixed first.

[B]

How do you even fix that?

[A]

These guys are wizards. You know, I've, I've watched them. I've watched him do it on human beings, and I've watched him do it on. I've, I've hypothetically watched them doing. Do it on properly sedated animal models. I will neither confirm nor deny.

[B]

Why is there so much concern or issue about the live tissue training with animals when it comes to soldiers?

[A]

So there is some debate and there's some legitimate debate because they're anatomically different. Yeah. So. So, you know, so the debate is

[B]

I've never heard a claim that they're identical. I've always heard from the people putting the training on that it's, it's similar in nature.

[A]

Yeah. And that's, that's why the profused cadaver idea is, is. And, and we've been getting better and better and better.

[B]

What is a profuse.

[A]

So a profuse cadaver is you, you take a, you take a cadaver, take a dead person. Right. And there's a process that you have to do it. You can't just go, oh, we're just going to pump more blood in you. Like, it doesn't work that way because a lot, a lot's gone on, you know, and die, you know, wherever. You know, blood just stops where it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it starts to form kind of pseudo clots. Right. So you got to take care of that.

[B]

The pump's not working. Yeah.

[A]

So you have to hook up to their vascular system. You have to kind of blow all that gunk out. Right. And then the high level ones, and I used to be, I was formerly medical director for a company called Safeguard Medical. And they have a perfused cadaver system that they use that is absolutely outstanding. It's called True Bodies. And they use a sealant technique. They have a special patented sealant that they run through the vascular system. So now it's not going to leak, it's not going to third space into the tissues. Right. Because that used to be. In the early days of profuse cadavers, about 20 minutes in, they look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Right. Because that's. Because of osmotic pressure. This would be. People think that a vessel is not like a straw at McDonald's. It's made up of little overlying things, and there's little gaps in there. Right. There has to be. That's how nutrients and fluids and oxygen and everything else kind of gets passed. Right. So there's a reason for that. That. So they run a sealant through the system, and now I can perfuse it with simulated blood. Right. I can use animal blood or I can use a simulated blood. Now, when you go and cut on it, tissue will bleed. If I cut a vessel, that vessel will bleed. So now the realism of. Now I got to repair that vessel while it's bleeding. Right. I'm not just going into an empty vessel, because if I go into an empty aorta and just put a cut in it, you can just. You know, I could teach you in two minutes, even though you've never even been a medic. Okay. All right. I stitched it up. It's taken care of.

[B]

Probably take one end and the other and put them together.

[A]

Yeah. And that's basically what you do. Right? Yeah. Although. Although when that vessel's bleeding. Right. Yeah. It's a little bit different. And. Yeah. You know, you're going to do things like clamp above it for sure. You know, but now, as soon as you clamp something, the clock's running, too. Right. So you got. You got to worry about that.

[B]

Wow. So I. Identical. That is interesting. I mean. Yeah. There's an argument that can be made that the animals used in life tissue training.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Are not bioidentical.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, their airways are not the same. You know, their anatomy is not the same. I would say the net.

[B]

It's a net positive, though, from what I've seen from that training, it's not perfect.

[A]

There are values in it that are kind of. I don't want to say they're intangible, but when you know, it's a living thing, it. It feels different. Everything about it feels different. When you. When you're working on it, it's just. It's just not. It's not the same feeling. It's not. That's not what a mannequin feels like. That's not what a simulator feels like. Yeah. It's when it's a, when it's a living thing, you know, even under anesthesia and even not a human being, they know the flesh feels different when you're, when you're getting your hands in there and you're doing. Feels very, very different. Yeah. And plus there's no, you know, there's, you can't, you know, I can, I can have you, you know, put a crike or a chest tube in a simulator and then I'm watching to see what your technique was. And then I'm going, okay, yeah, you did that. Right. Let's continue on to the next task. But if you, let's, let's say you're putting a crike, an emergency airway in an animal model that's been sedated. You do it wrong, you go into the subcutaneous tissue, not in the airway. Hey, hey, doc, why isn't your patient breathing? What's going on? Hey, there's no, there's no mist in your tube. I don't feel anything coming out of your tube. What did you do wrong? Right. Whereas if it's a simulation. Yeah, right. It's like, okay, that's not going to happen anyway. Okay, yeah, you did it. Let's move on to the next task.

[B]

Do people have to volunteer to have that stuff done to their bodies? Like sign paperwork, like after?

[A]

Yeah, people volunteer to, you know, to have, you know, basically that's when you hear the term, I'm gonna give my body to science. That's shout out to. When I was in medical school, there was one of my, one of my teachers, one of my staff at USIS was a guy named Simon Oster. Simon had never been in the military, but he loved teaching at USIS and he was a fixture there. He'd been there like forever. And Simon had said for years, he said, when I die, I will continue to teach here. And when he passed away, his body went down, it found his way down to the cadaver lab. Man. And he continued teaching even in death.

[B]

I mean, I guess, well, first of, I'd rather be cremated for clarity. But yeah, I mean, if you didn't want to go that route, I mean, what a way to continue giving back. I suppose.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's, you know, there's, there's, there's some nobility in that, you know, to say that, you know, I want, I want my last act as a carbon based unit to be somebody learn something from me that maybe 10 years from now in a little five minute period on an airfield somewhere Saves a life.

[B]

Do you ever think you were going to be a doctor?

[A]

Growing. Never. Never. Yeah.

[B]

It's going to join the Army. Did you want to go down the 18 delta path?

[A]

Furthest thing from my mind, I never even thought about.

[B]

Most 18 Deltas have told me that.

[A]

Yeah. So I went in and I graduated in 1984. Two weeks after graduation, I shipped off to basic training with a Ranger contract.

[B]

How did you choose the army and where the Ranger idea come from?

[A]

So I wanted to go. I wanted sf. I wanted to be a Green Beret. So a buddy of mine who was a year ahead of me, Brian Edwards, who ultimately became SF Command Sergeant Major,

[B]

he did the job.

[A]

Yeah. So Brian was here, and we. We watched the movie the Green Berets, and we started to look at. We started buying.

[B]

With John Wayne.

[A]

Yes. Started buying Soldier. Started buying Soldier of Fortune magazine.

[B]

You know, people talk a lot of shit about movies that are made about seals for clarity. Yeah, well deserved. But let's not forget the Green Berets. That movie with old John Wayne predated Navy seals. With Charlie Sheen.

[A]

It did.

[B]

Now we could argue about which one's better. Clearly, Navy Seal seals is better.

[A]

All I'm going to say is this. When I was in. Because my first exposure working with seals was when I was in the 18 delta course. And one of the instructors said, he goes, all I'm going to say is we got John Wayne. You got Rob Lowe.

[B]

Rob Lowe. Charlie Sheen, you mean.

[A]

No, there was a directive video.

[B]

Oh, I've seen it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's called Silver Strand.

[A]

It's the one where they have the big fans.

[B]

It's called the Silver Strand.

[A]

They're in a canopy with big fans.

[B]

Michael, just to confirm this, because I'm going to recommend that everybody go watch this, go on to YouTube and look up Silver Strand. Navy SEAL movie. I believe it is out there for free, probably.

[A]

If it's not, it should be.

[B]

It should be, and it should be watched. It is one of the worst examples of both acting and cgi. It's so bad, you can't turn it off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. But still, though, the John Way movie predated that.

[A]

So I got a. I got a quick side question here. So Michael Byrne has played a seal, what, five times now, if not over a dozen?

[B]

He's got to be an honorary Triton.

[A]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. Give him the eagle and give him the anchor and the pistol, at least.

[B]

It's like, come on the Abyss. Navy seals. There's a couple Other ones that are not as popular as those two. But the Rock. The Rock, of course. Classic documentary.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

String of Pearls configuration. It's not that big of a deal.

[A]

Yeah. So I love the Rock because it shows you what a hard charging battalion staff can do. Because that's basically what they were.

[B]

Yeah. And just why MP5s are not the right choice of weapon for m anything other than being on the range. I love MP5s, but. Damn, that is the most useless siren.

[A]

They're. They're. They're fun. Yeah. But that's it. Yeah. I wouldn't make entry with one.

[B]

Michael, what do you got? Yeah. Silver Strand and the Rock. Who cares about the rocks? The Silver Strand is the origin story of all Navy SEAL movies. Pull that up. Yes. Oh, it is so, so bad.

[A]

Oh, wait, I don't think that's the one I'm talking about. The one I'm talking about has Rob Lowe, and they're. They're doing the Powered Parasailers.

[B]

I know. I watched it. Yeah. Put in silver. Finest hour. Finest hour. That might be it. Try that. Pull that up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes. Look at that. Dick Broom on Rob Lowe.

[A]

Are we going to talk about Thunder in Paradise while we're here?

[B]

I am unfamiliar with Thunder in Paradise.

[A]

Oh, my God. Bring up Thunder in Paradise. It's a movie. Hold on. No, no, it was a TV show.

[B]

Just so you know, Michael, I'll expect to report on all of these movies the next time we see each other. Which will be tomorrow, by the way. So you have your homework cut out. Was it with, oh, what's his name? The wrestler guy?

[A]

Yes, it was. Tired of your car insurance rate going up? Even with a clean driving record? You're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry AI Libson today. That's J E, R R Y AI Lib. S Y N. Yeah. Thunder in Paradise.

[B]

Did you just say the wrestler guy?

[A]

Yeah, I'm blinking on.

[B]

You mean Hulk Hogan or Terry the Wrestler Guy? That's for clarity. Likely the most iconic wrestler guy.

[A]

And I think. I think Sting played a villain on a couple episodes.

[B]

Just, just so you know, all of these movies were, like, late 90s or mid to late 90s. I don't know what was going on then. I know that there was no combat operations or anything to base these off of. So I think the screenwriters just took a little creative liberty a bit. Yeah. Them flying around in basically the parasailers.

[A]

Have you. You've done everything else under canopy. Have you done that?

[B]

No, no, that's never interested me. But I can tell you what, you're not sneaking up on anybody with those things. No. Basically a huge lawnmower.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Michael Bain has been a team guy. He has to have been a team guy in more movies than any other actor.

[A]

Does he get invited to events?

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

Come on, man. Give him. Give the guy some love.

[B]

I've heard in real life he's a little out there.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yeah. Huh.

[A]

I mean, I hate hearing like that.

[B]

No, I don't mean in a bad way. He's just.

[A]

Just kooky.

[B]

He's a thespian, you know.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Okay, Enough said.

[B]

He. His body is his art form, you know, I mean, it's. I don't know. I. I don't have what it takes to go in front of a camera.

[A]

Kyle Reese, man. I mean, come on.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. You know, he's a lot of things.

[A]

Yeah. Yes. He's a lot of things.

[B]

Yeah. There were some pretty funny stories about the making of Navy SEALs. Apparently, they, they, they did come to the BUDS compound and they would take some breaks from time to time and come out with a little powdered donut under their nose just to get back into the old pt.

[A]

Well, I know Charlie. I remember, I remember reading an article back then that Charlie had team guys as his, like, security, probably. Yeah. Like, like everywhere. And they, he would go to the gym with them. Yeah. And then they would, like, go out and, you know, and they were going. They were hanging out, like in SEAL bars and like that.

[B]

So why not?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right. So you were inspired by the Green Berets.

[A]

Yeah, so I was inspired by that. And also. So, so I'm going to give. This is a deep cut. And this, you probably don't recognize this name. Do you know who Beau Grights is?

[B]

I have heard that.

[A]

Do you remember that name? So Bo Gryitz was a retired Special Forces colonel.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Vietnam era. He had been a team leader in Vietnam, battalion commander in seventh Group. And he's battalion commander of three, seven, I believe, at one point when he retired. So this was back in the 80s and 90s. There was a lot of talk about that there were MIAs still in Vietnam somewhere. Yes, that was a very widely held book. Many. Chuck Norris made a whole movie franchise

[B]

Even in the 90s when I got in. I don't. I don't know if I would necessarily say it was a deeply held belief, but I had heard those conversations.

[A]

Very deeply held, especially in the 80s. Very deeply held belief, yeah.

[B]

80s makes more sense to me because the proximity to Vietnam.

[A]

So one of the guys on Bo's team in Vietnam was a guy named Chuck Patterson. Chuck Patterson became a sheriff's deputy in my hometown. I went to high school with his kids, so. And I was. I played football with. With his stepson. I would, you know, go over to his house, and he had all the SF stuff, and they had these really cool. So, you know, everybody remembers Vietnam. Tiger stripe. But there's also the leopard pattern, you know. You know what I'm talking about? It's like the old colors. It looks like the Marine Corps camouflage from World War II.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Ooh, that's actually a great pattern.

[A]

He had a really cool parachute silk bandana that his whole team had worn. And he had it on a.

[B]

Maybe even could be considered a scarf.

[A]

Yes, one could say so. Scarf.

[B]

I mean, with a beret, you might as well wear a scarf.

[A]

Sure, why not? You're accessorizing. It's a weird French painter hat.

[B]

Let's throw an ascot on there. It's like, go for. Go to town.

[A]

Yeah, fuck it. Ascot. So you had the Fairbairn Sykes knife in this plaque with the scarf hanging around it. And he didn't tell us a whole lot of war stories, but, you know, we. We had kind of, you know, heard enough, and he. He would tell them to his kids and then they. Hey. Chuck told us about this one time when he got shot in the lip and all this other stuff.

[B]

That would hurt like a bitch. That would.

[A]

Yeah, quite a bit. Quite a bit. But he ended up going. They ended up going to do a rescue mission. And basically it was a reconnaissance that they.

[B]

In the 80s.

[A]

In the 80s.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

It was in. It was. It was in all, like a military operation. No, civilian.

[B]

These were.

[A]

They were, you know, basically Mercs title 51. Yeah. So they went over. I forget where they made infill from, but they basically swam across the river into Vietnam or whatever.

[B]

Breaking some laws at that.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was a big deal. It was a bit. They're like, you know, basically, it's like, this is an international incident. Right. Chuck ended up writing a book about it. Yeah. But before. But before that, even, you Know, before that even happened, that they went and did that. I remember looking up to this guy, and I'm like, that's. That's what I want to do. I want to be a Green Beret. So when the time came for me to sign into delayed entry there, you couldn't do that anymore. It a year before, you know, if you're. If you're graduating 83, you could do it. There was a couple of guys in my basic training class that got in, like, just under the wire.

[B]

I'm talking about just a direct pipeline.

[A]

Direct pipeline? Yeah, from, you know, high school, the Q course.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Couldn't do that when. When I went in. So I. They were. You know, I went to the MEP station, and they said, not a thing anymore, buddy. So you can. You can go airborne or you can go Ranger. And I'm like, I'll go Ranger. So I had what they call an unassigned Ranger contract as an infantryman. I was an 11x ray because I didn't have my MOS yet. So I spent a year on delayed entry. I go to basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. I go to Airborne School. I go to Savannah, Georgia, which is my first duty duty station with 175. I go through at the time. At the time, 2nd Ranger Battalion and 1st Range Battalion each ran their own Ranger indoctrination program.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Regiment was a thing, but was not really a thing yet. Its regimental headquarters was still very new. 3rd Ranger Battalion had not stood up yet. We were still wearing different patches. I was still wearing the old Ranger battalion scroll, the first Battalion scroll, and the second Battalion scroll. Other than the fact that they were the same colors and they were both scrolls didn't even look alike. Right. While I was there. I'd only been there a few months. After I made it through rip, made it to my platoon, we changed over to the regimental scroll. Right. And then that was right about the same time that 3rd Ranger Battalion stood up and became active. And we actually did. We were actually the OP4 for the exival. For them to be certified as. Yes. You know, you're. You're a real Ranger battalion now.

[B]

So OP4, for people, is opposition force. You're playing the enemy. And I'm assuming the X is the. Basically the exercise or the certification exercise. We used to call them Certex. That would allow a unit to be deployable or distinguishable.

[A]

Yeah, they used to call them RTEPs was a word. I don't remember what that stood for. Exival means you're getting an evaluation from an external source. EDRI was a term that used to get thrown around a lot. That's an acronym that. I don't even know what it means.

[B]

I don't know if I know that one either.

[A]

It basically means you get, it's an idri. For it to be an idri, I think it has to be like an alert call out, like, you know, you're eating at Ryan's Steakhouse and you know, you get a, a phone call, hey, you know, come to work, let's go, we're going. I think that's the qualification for it, to be an IDRI, but yeah, so I had wanted to be SF. I ended up in the Rangers 100%. Not only the best thing that ever happened to me militarily, probably the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. If I, as an, as a snot nosed 18 year old, if I would have gone to SF, there's no way possible I would have had the maturity to operate on a 12 man team of my own accord, doing everything the way that you're supposed to be doing it, in a professional manner. I don't, I, maybe there's 18 year olds out there that can do it. I would not have been one of them, in my opinion. I needed that. The atmosphere of, hey, the guy who got here 10 minutes before you got here is senior to you and if he fucking tells you to do something, you're gonna do it. And oh, by the way, anybody that has a Black and Gold Ranger tab on their shoulder, they're a God to you. And if, if they tell you, if you're sitting on the seat in the, in the truck when we're coming back from the range and they tell you to get off the seat and sit on the floor even though there's plenty of seats available, you're gonna do it. Right. This is, there's a pecking order, there's a hierarchy, there's hazing involved. I don't. And it wasn't, in my opinion, it was not malicious hazing. It wasn't bad hazing. You know, there's all these discussions about the intent behind.

[B]

It really matters.

[A]

If the intent, if the intent is I'm gonna train you. Yeah. Because I'm gonna put my life in your hands and you're gonna put your life in my hands. That's good. If it's. I was getting shit on a week ago, now there's somebody I can shit on. That's a totally different story.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

Right. If you're coming up with new and inventive ways to just shit on people. Not cool. Right? If you're coming up with. This is corrective training, you know? Oh, you. You left whatever it was in your room, or you left it on the drop zone, or you left it on target. Well, maybe I'm gonna make you carry it around your neck for a week with a sign that says, I lost my NVGs or something like that. Right.

[B]

That's not a fun sign to carry.

[A]

It's not a fun sign to carry, but guess what? That's somebody that's never going to leave their MVGs in the room again.

[B]

I lost my nods on my first real world target.

[A]

Did you?

[B]

I went back and got them.

[A]

Well, there you go. I made up for it.

[B]

So I was like, hey, boss, I'll be right back. I got to go get something.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because I was getting ready to flip them down. We were going external. I was like. Because I was sledging a door. Hit him right off my. Right off my helmet.

[A]

Yeah, well, see, it's not like. That's a little different, too, in your defense. It's not like you set them down, down.

[B]

No, no, I hit him right off my own head.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Idiot.

[A]

Yeah. Happens. I had.

[B]

I'm just glad I recognize it.

[A]

My.

[B]

I feel like a jackass running to the helicopter, though, holding your nods in your hand. You're just like, hey, guys.

[A]

Yeah, Hi. Oh, hey. Who's that? Oh, yeah, let me take a look at you when you put your monocle in.

[B]

Thankfully, we never had to roll with those. I can't. I've put monocles on. They give me a splitting headache.

[A]

Do they?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The binos are the way to go. For sure.

[A]

Yeah. I don't. I get. I get very claustrophobic under knots.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. I. I don't. I don't. It's. It's something. It's a me thing. Right. It's. And I think the. The biggest part of it is, we know we. I never got quads. Yeah, right.

[B]

Is most guys have gone back to binos.

[A]

I know. Yeah. And it's.

[B]

The quads are just. They're heavy.

[A]

They're. They're heavy as.

[B]

Yeah. And the way they increase your field of view maybe 30%, I'd rather just move my head around a little bit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And just get that field of view back as opposed to add three to four more pounds to my head.

[A]

You know, on one hand, I would like. Because not having the peripheral vision is what really screws with me. Okay. But on the other Hand. I have two herniated discs in my neck because of wearing a helmet with MVGs. Yeah. So.

[B]

And then, of course, you can counterbalance it, but, like. Yeah, okay. You're gonna put a dive weight on the.

[A]

It's more weight.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

It's just more weight. It's more compression. Yeah.

[B]

Then you take a whipper.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or you do a jump and, you know, you take a heart. Like, all that stuff is just going all the way through your neck.

[A]

I had my first Afghanistan deployment. We. The way we would do things in the unit is a lot. You know, obviously, your weapon is your weapon. So you would. You would fly over with your weapon. But nods and radios were a handoff. They were.

[B]

Oh, turnover. In country type thing.

[A]

Yeah, they were in country. Turnover. Right. So you would. You. I would go to. If you were my counterpart, the guy that I was relieving. Here's your stuff. Here's your. And it would be. It was usually nods, radio, and Garmin. Like, here's your stuff.

[B]

Just 1149 between guys.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So for whatever reason, the NVGs that I had, they weren't quite right for the mount that I had. It was like the teat, you know? And you know where this is going? The teat was just a little bit too short.

[B]

Right. It just describes the military perfectly.

[A]

So I've got the. I've got the bungee cords. Like. Like, we all did. Right. So I got the bungee cords on. I got the NVGs down, and we're. And this happened to me. I don't know how many times that we're driving and we had this. This shitty vehicle. It was. It was. You know, I don't even know what they're called. It's. It's like the groundskeeper vehicle at a football stadium. You know what I'm talking about?

[B]

Yeah, it looks like.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So we're driving out to. To go. To go get on the aircraft and hit a pothole. And the nods are going to do one of two things. They're either going to fly backwards or

[B]

right in your eyeballs.

[A]

Or go right in both of your eyeballs.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Right. So. And I had. I always. Not everybody did this, but I always wore either goggles or clear Oakleys under my knot. And people were like, how can you do that? They fog. Well, I'm like. Because I've had this happen so much. Yeah. Like, I'm. I. It's. It's either this or live in constant fear and be squinting everywhere that I go.

[B]

Yeah. People made night Vision goggles are amazing. What you're describing. Like, it not fitting properly. There's always a little bit of slope.

[A]

There's always. Yeah.

[B]

And so people started putting bungee cords, and they basically loop them into the nod so it's pulling them into your face. And it is great. It takes all the slop out. But, like, you're saying there's a price

[A]

to pay for it.

[B]

If you're up there and you're like, maybe you didn't latch it into the tongue and groove as much as you thought you did, you're gonna take a whipper right in the eyeballs, and you might have a pair of black eyes that you gave yourself.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

You would think that the military would have figured out a better solution than basically, Ace hardware. Small bungee cords. No, I'm sorry to tell you, they have it. So.

[A]

And people that complain about all the different charging attachments for Apple products and Androids and all that. Let me introduce you to nods mounts. Okay. 20 times worse. Because I swear to God. I swear to God, there are so many. And I've seen. So this is which.

[B]

None of that makes sense, by the way. One universal NOD mount for everybody. Conventional and special operations.

[A]

Should be.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Should be. Why not? Yeah.

[B]

Aviators have their own. Oh, ours are based off of this battery system. And. Yeah. And our mount is different. I'm like, why?

[A]

Yeah. Sometimes it's a battery here, sometimes it's a battery here. You know, sometimes it's both. You know, it's. Who knows? This is how old I am. When I came in, we were wearing PVS5s, which is basically the old View Master.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In green.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's basically what it is.

[B]

Yeah. I got issued my first set of Bino Nods when I was. Went out to the east coast command. Up until that, it was. I think we had, like, two sets that we would hand each other.

[A]

Like, trade. Yeah.

[B]

It's like, you know, at SEAL Team 5 and the platoon I was in, we were just walking around like idiots without night vision. I think, like, the OIC would have a pair, and every once in a while, he'd be like, talking about stuff that he could see and be like, yeah, I can't even. What are you talking about? Did I get.

[A]

Can see the stars, dude. When we first got the M4 systems. So every M4 system was supposed to come with. It was basically, when it came, it was supposed to be. I think you're supposed to have four optics with it.

[B]

Wasn't it called the SOP mod system?

[A]

I Didn't want. Yeah, I didn't want to say it, but yeah. It's called the SOP mod system. And they had that poster. It's the whole SOTMOD system.

[B]

I never once saw a complete set of that.

[A]

It was supposed to be that every weapon had an acog.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

A reflex sight.

[B]

Yep. So ACOG is a four power reflex sight is a red dot.

[A]

Yeah. An AIM point.

[B]

Yep, red dot.

[A]

And then there was like one other. I don't remember what it was, but somebody decided, well, obviously you're not gonna. You're only gonna have one optic on your weapon. So we only need the number of optics that we have. Weapons.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

So, yeah, so and this was in. This was in an SF crew. Now. This was in an SF group. This wasn't. This wasn't the Connecticut National Guard. This was in an SF group. Right. This could. This decision was made at SF command level. Because this was right around the time you came in. Right. This was the 90s. This was during the Clinton administration where anything, anything that had to do with weapons. Oh, you could cut. We can cut money on that. We can totally cut money on that.

[B]

Bold caller.

[A]

So what ended up happening is when they got the stop mods, there was like. It was like getting George Strait tickets. There was like a run to the arms room. Don't be the last one there or you're gonna get the shitty optics. Yeah, right. You're not gonna get what you want. You're gonna get shit. So. But I was on a recce team, so I ran an ACOG up top because it had magnification, so that was good for recce. And then actually we started doing this as a team. We started doing. There was a real push in the late 90s for everybody to do more CQB. That's when we started doing the Safal courses. So on my team, we started running the reflex sites forward and at the 1 o' clock position so you could have a near accident. So you'd come up to target and you just transition. The only problem was brass angle you.

[B]

Yeah, but it looks cool.

[A]

It looked cool as. It looked cool as shit. Right? And so I'll never forget this. This was the Warren on my team. We were. We were doing building clearing one time and he ended up looking like so incredibly cool because we were in one room and he's going on the reflex site. And we come out in the hallway and they purposely had a target on an outer door all the way down this hallway. So it's a pretty long Shot. So he goes. Translates to acog, boom, headshot, and goes right into the next room.

[B]

It's not bad.

[A]

No. He ended up having a lot of cool points for that one.

[B]

Only real life was like that.

[A]

Yeah, right?

[B]

Yeah. I try to tell people, you know, there's the perception of how high speed they think things are. You and I could talk for more space than we have on the hard drive about the reality of the radios or the guns or the uniform or, like the helmets and how people's neck, they're like, no, no, no. It just always looks amazing. Like, it kind of is amazing, but at the same time, it's an absolute catastrophe. And clown show at all times as well. Both things are true.

[A]

Yeah. Well, that's what somebody, Somebody asked me one time. I was talking about a particular thing that I'd been on. And they're like, what were you thinking about in the moment? And I'm like, I was thinking about how much pain I was in from the hook, Velcro grinding into the back of my neck. And I literally could think of nothing else. Like, I just wanted everything to be over. There's always some little thing. You're like, I'm just not. I am not Chuck Norris in this incident, in this instance. Because this is really bothering me, and I did not think it was gonna be like this.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's wild. So when did you make the jump from Ranger to SF?

[A]

So I did four years in Ranger Battalion, made it to E5. I was an anti tank section leader. That was. We had the 90 millimeter recoilless rifles back then. We were, we. We were making the transition to the Carl G's. As I was getting out, I decided that I wanted to stay. I'm like you. I'm a California expat. So where in Cali I was born Redondo Beach. I spent my formative years in Tehachapi.

[B]

Tehachapi.

[A]

Nobody knows where it is.

[B]

I've heard that name, though. But where is that?

[A]

In Cali. So it is 40 miles east of Bakersfield.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

If you follow the Sierra Nevada chain all the way down, you go to the last mountain in the Sierra Nevadas. There's a little blank spot of desert, and then there's one little mountain off all by its lonesome that's not allowed to be part of the Sierra Nevada chain. That's us.

[B]

Okay, fair enough.

[A]

Yeah. So I didn't want to go back to California, so I said, I'm gonna stay in Georgia. So looked for employment, found employment. And I was Gonna go in the Georgia Guard. They had.

[B]

So you exited active duty?

[A]

I exited active duty. They had a. They had a, like a LURSE unit, a reconnaissance unit somewhere in North Georgia. And I was, I was gonna go and do that, and I talked to them on the phone and they were really like, well. And I said, hey, this is who I am. Like, I'm Ranger qualified. You know, I'm on jump status. You know, I made a T5, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, well, yeah, I guess maybe in a couple months we can have you come up for an interview. I was like, oh, okay. But I called 20th group in Florida and they're like, yeah, how soon can you be here? I'm like, I can come down on this day. Okay, yeah, we'll give you come down on Friday. So we'll issue your TA50 so you can, you can drill on Saturday with everybody.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

So went into 20th group. I wasn't SF qualified at the time. So they put you in a pipeline at the time they called us the NQPs, the non qualified personnel. So they put you in basically in a pipeline and you do separate training while the team guys are doing their team guys stuff. Every drill, you're doing classes in land navigation, stuff like that. Over time, it ended up a lot of us that had come from either. We had a few guys that came from Ranger regiment and a few guys that came from. Had been like squad leaders in the 82nd. We ended up teaching a lot of those classes and kind of keeping everybody else corralled to get ready to go. I wanted to go to the Q course as soon as possible. It didn't work. It's. With problems with orders and my physical and a bunch of other stuff. It ended up not happening and I ended up putting it on hold. So I ended up. I was in. I got there in 88, and we got mobilized for Desert Storm in 91, and I still had not gone to the course yet. So guess what? We showed up at Fort Bragg and they said, hey, there's going to be a bus outside in 10 minutes. Get on it. You're going to Selection. And I'm like, oh, when am I going? Tomorrow. You're going to Selection tomorrow. So I went from being a college kid at Georgia Southern University, you know, luckily I had enough background that, you know, you could do it from memory as they speak. Yeah. So I went to selection, made it. There was. They sent 11 of us from our battalion to selection, and I think four of us made it.

[B]

And this is the pre Q course selection.

[A]

This is pre. Yeah. This is sfas. Right. So made it through sfas. And at that time, I, I said, you know what? I. I want to play with explosives. So I'm going to be an 18 Charlie. Be an engineer. So I went through the engineer course. Loved it. Loved everything. I loved playing with explosives. I like building stuff. Hey, I'm learning to build bridges. Hey, that's kind of cool. I'm learning to work with mines. That's pretty cool. I figured out while I was in the course, I'm like, you know, I have been without direction. You know, I've been. I was working as a corrections officer. I was going to college.

[B]

How is that, by the way? That is an occupation that seems to be just savage.

[A]

It's soul killing. Yeah, it's. If it's not soul killing, either you're working someplace that has a really good system to keep you up, or there's something wrong with you.

[B]

Well, how'd you get into that line of work to begin with?

[A]

Yeah. So.

[B]

Little niche, if you will.

[A]

Yeah. So what at the time, the, the career track in the 80s for most guys in, in rangers was you're either gonna stay in and then go SF Delta, maybe, you know, go to Korea for a tour and come back or something like that, or you're going to get out and you're going to be a cop. That's pretty much what everybody did. So I got out, and initially I. I applied to Savannah pd and there were a few former battalion guys who were on Savannah pd. I applied. Boom. They went into a hiring freeze, like, immediately. So I worked at. I worked at Sam's Club stocking shelves just to pay my bills. I decided, I said, you know what? There's nothing going on for me right here in Savannah. I'm going to move down the road to Statesboro. I'm going to go to Georgia Southern. Right. That was the college up the road. So what can I do there for work? So I got out the want ads. Boom. Corrections officer called them up.

[B]

How did they describe that job?

[A]

In the one ad it said officer of corrections duties, you know, 40 hours a week, working inside, supervision of inmates, security, blah, blah, blah.

[B]

So they really rounded some edges on it.

[A]

Yeah, it was. Yeah. But I mean, I knew I, I. So growing up in Tachby, there's a, there's a state penitentiary in Tachi.

[B]

Oh, there is that area. Yeah.

[A]

I knew I had friends who had fathers who worked in corrections, so I was not clueless about what corrections entailed. Right.

[B]

And you still wanted to go.

[A]

And I still. Well, because here was the appeal is it was, it was nights, Right. So it's like I can work nights, go to school during the day, and I'm like, I'm like. It's not law enforcement, but it's law enforcement adjacent. Yeah. So maybe, you know, it gives me a little foot in the door. So I applied for the job. I went down there, interviewed. There wasn't. There was a very low bar to get the job. I was the guy who showed up and interviewed. So I got the job. I started on the job training immediately. I think I worked for two months before I went to the Corrections Officer Academy. Then I went to the Corrections Officer Academy in Forsyth, Georgia, at a place called G Post. That was their big training center that they had there. And I did that for almost three years. Yeah, just shy of three years. So it's, it's a, it's, it seems

[B]

like almost an impossible job.

[A]

Well, the problem is it's like running a daycare with a bunch of toddlers who might have a knife between their butt cheeks.

[B]

Yeah. The difference is, well, there's the knife and then they're full grown adults and have the capacity associated with being a full grown adult. Yeah, physical capacity. Maybe not mental, but physical.

[A]

It's. Everything's a battle. Like, it's. They don't want to be there. Obviously you're a symbol of that to them. So you might be telling them something that's 100% in their best interest and they're going to do the exactly the opposite of what you're telling them, because you were the one that told them. Okay. It's. I'm trying to think of the best way to say this. So the big thing, the big determiners that I saw of how people ended up there had a lot to do. Well, I won't say ended up there, but whether they were gonna keep coming back had to do with accountability. Interesting, right? It's not about, you know, I tell people this all the time. There's a huge misconception. Everybody in prison, oh, they're full of badasses. These are the toughest people on earth. No, no, not at all.

[B]

Just like special operations.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's not a bunch of badasses, toughest people on earth.

[A]

No, it's. But you know, I tell him, I said, if I line up 100, pluck me 100 convicts out of any institutional system, line them up across 100 civilians, cross level them to make sure you have basically, you know, they're all about the same age and come from similar backgrounds. The civilians are gonna run through them like a hot knife through butter. Cause most of these guys, okay, they're not. They're not watching out for their fitness and health. Most of them were smokers. I didn't see a whole lot of fighting ability, you know, in inmates. I wasn't. This was before, you know, I trained just like you. I trained jiu jitsu. Now, I didn't have a lot of formal fight training at that point, and I had to go hands on a good bit, and I never had issues with it. And this wasn't. I said that to somebody one time, and they're like, well, that's cause it was six on one or whatever. No, I worked nights when there was two of us in the entire facility.

[B]

Oh, that's not good odds.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

At all.

[A]

Yeah. Oh. I had to wait. When I knew that I really needed to get out of it was. We had an inmate strike once that almost became an inmate riot.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

And I had to wade into the dining hall with a hundred and whatever it was. I think we had 157 inmates on the census at that time. I had to wade through 157 inmates to walk up to the biggest son of a bitch in there and go, hey, man, you need to have everybody get back in the dorms, because I got to do a headcount while a bunch of fellow officers are watching from behind locked doors.

[B]

How did he respond to said request?

[A]

He did. I had a really. You know how they say, you know, make friends with the biggest guy in prison?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. I'm not technically familiar with that phrase,

[A]

but I inadvertently made friends with the biggest guy in there, and he. I had worked there for two years before this guy got transferred into there. Big son of a bitch, big weightlifter guy. Well, when he got there, I was already in the process because they had no physical fitness equipment for the inmates. And I go, you know, you should really, like. They're not the ones that play. They play softball on the yard. Some of them shoot hoops, but a lot of them don't have anything to do. I said, you got 150 some odd guys with no outlet for, you know, for all this energy and everything. I said, you know, why? You know, get him a gym. You know, get him an outside gym. And I ended up getting tasked. They gave me a budget. I took one of the county vans, I drove to a sports store, and I ended up getting a bunch of dumbbells and a bunch of other stuff. So this guy, I got him weights. I was. I was his friend for life because he wanted weights and I got him weights. And he ended up being the guy that was kind of the titular figurehead of this convict strike. And I just walked up to him, I go, hey, man, I need you to get everybody back in the dorms because I got. I got to do a count. And then, you know, we get it. You guys aren't refusing to work today, that's fine. But you can't be doing it out here. Right. Because this is. This is. I said, this is bad. People are gonna start getting worked up, and then pretty soon tables are gonna start getting thrown. That's not good for anybody. Yeah. I said, people are gonna start getting more time. And once you say that, you're speaking their language. Yeah, Right. So he stood up on the table and he goes, everybody back in the dorms now. And they went back in the dorms, and I went behind him and I locked down all the dorms and I went to where officers were watching from the other side of the bars. I said, let me out. They let me out. I handed one dude the keys and I said, I'm going home.

[B]

I feel like my shift is done.

[A]

Yeah. I feel like I think I had 20 minutes left in my shift, but I'm like, I feel like I've done enough for the day. I defuse that. While you guys watched and potentially could have watched me get torn apart, and you all were just stood here and done nothing.

[B]

A lot of people would think that violence is the solution to that. Or forcing in some way them to comply.

[A]

Yeah, like fire hoses or something like that.

[B]

Oh, man, no.

[A]

You'd be surprised what a man to man conversation will accomplish. Yeah.

[B]

Not always the correct move, but I get it. All right, so you eventually get your chance. And how does that work? Do they activate you? You were in the National Guard at the time, or Reserves? Do they activate you to go through the Q course? Because it's about a year, right?

[A]

Yeah. So typically the way that it happened. So we were activated anyway because we got activated for Desert Storm.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

We only got activated, though. There was no intention of deploying 20th Special Forces Group overseas for that conflict. We only got activated to literally to validate the concept of a National Guard SF unit. So they're like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna activate you, we're gonna bring you to Fort Bragg, and we're gonna X the value. And that way we can determine okay. If we did have to deploy you, either you would be able to perform these missions or you would not be able to perform these missions. Right? Yeah. So we got activated for that purpose. So I was already activated when I went through selection, and then I just stayed on active duty to finish out the Q course. But in answer to your question, so most people, they would go to selection. Selection's three weeks. And selection is the way that it works in army sf. Selection is a go and return. So whether you're in a National Guard unit like I was, or let's say you're stationed in Korea or Germany, right? You say, I want to go SF. They don't say, okay, all right, you're PCs into Fort Bragg, because that's in the 80s. That's how they used to do it. It's like, I'm going to go to the Q course. Okay. Move you and your family and everything to Fort Bragg. Oh, you failed out three days in. Here's the 82nd. Yeah, that's where you're going. So they don't do it that way anymore. Or. And they didn't during the 90s is you would go on TDY orders to

[B]

Fort Bragg, which means temporary duty.

[A]

Temporary duty. So you go through selection, you get. If at the end you go selected, you get selected, they say, okay, now go back to your unit, turn in all your shit, you know, do what you need to do and then. And communicate with us on. When the, you know, like. Because you might get back. And this happened to some people, they get back to their unit, they're like, hey, we're getting ready to do X or Y. We really, we. We need you for this. And then you can start clearing. Right? That would happen to some people, so they might have to delay it. But that was good. That was actually good for people because you came out of selection pretty busted up. That was.

[B]

That.

[A]

That three weeks beats you down a lot. Like, I, I remember I had stress fractures in both feet. I remember just like, it hurt to walk for a few weeks after I got out of SFAs. So if I would have had to go right into the Q course, that probably would have been a problem. So I had about. I had about a month to six weeks maybe between the time I went to SFAS and the time I started the course, which was good for me. It gave me plenty of time to heal up and get back to running again without my feet hurting. And then I went through the Charlie course. But, yeah, that's, you know, for most people, they would get basically if, you know, another 20th group guy would go to SFAs, come back for a couple of drills and heal up, and they say, okay, we're cutting your orders for the course. And they would go to the course.

[B]

Yeah. So you make it through the course, obviously. Where'd you end up going from there?

[A]

I went to seventh group. So while I was in. I would have gone back to 20th group, but I decided. I decided I made my intentions known when I was still in the Q course, and then those solidified when I was in language school. So I went to Spanish language language school. I waited till about halfway through, Then I started talking to recruit. I'd already talked to the unit. I said, this is my plan. And they said, okay.

[B]

Is that a pretty easy process since you were you Reserve or National Guard?

[A]

National Guard.

[B]

So you were. It's not that you weren't active duty, but you were acting in that capacity. Is that just paperwork on their side?

[A]

Basically. Okay. Yeah, basically. So all that happened was they said, okay, you know, you're going to finish language school, right? And you're on active duty for language school. So you're gonna get a DD214 and separate go back to inactive status to the Guard.

[B]

That's why they have so many DD214s.

[A]

Oh, I. Dude, you have. I have, like 62 14s.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Maybe even more than that. I have a ridiculous number because every

[B]

time you end a stint as active, if it was essentially discharged, if it

[A]

was six months or more, you get a DDG 14.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So I've got one from Ranger battalion. I've got one from Ranger battalion, one from activation with 20th group, and then deactivation, one from the Q course and one from language school. Then I got one from when I got out as an E7 and got commissioned. I think I even got another one for the end of medical school because you're still on active duty. But it's a weird system. It's. We're decommissioning you as a second lieutenant, recommissioning you as an O3. So I might even have one in there. And then I have my final retirement one that has basically everything on it. So. But it's a little bit confusing when you read it because it's like, wait a minute, how do you have all these awards but all the schools aren't listed? All the schools are listed on all my other DD214s because I have a whole stack of them. Right? Yeah. So for me, I went to the. I went to a regular recruiter There in. In Spring Lake. And I said, hey, this is who I am. I'm a staff sergeant 18 Charlie, and I want to go on active duty. And they're like, okay, so. And he goes, so you're going to have to take the ASVAB again because it's been more than X number of years since you took the asvab. So I had to go take the asvab. I had to go do the regular. The physical, all that stuff go through MEPs. So I went through the Raleigh maps.

[B]

Hell yeah. Got orders for Fort Bragg, duck walking, all sorts of.

[A]

Oh, yeah, all that, dude. The number of questions that everybody has else is like, all. All the. I get. And you can always tell, like in between, you know, you're doing all the different stations, like, yeah, one. One of the guys, you know, because you. You know people. Oh, yeah, we're go around the room, tell me who you are and what your contract is, blah, blah, blah. So everybody knew that I was already an E6 and all. And the guys would come over. I'm like, okay, here it comes. So, hey, question for you.

[B]

You know, this episode is sponsored by Better Help. If you follow the show, I hope that you realize I consistently and constantly push people towards getting a higher level of care when it comes to anything that they are struggling with between the ears. And the reason I do so is that I have had to do that or I have chosen to do that would be a better term for that in my life. And it has had an immense impact, and I'm not gonna stop. May is mental health awareness month, and that is a reminder that whatever you're going through, you do not have to go through it alone. I'm going to say that again. Whatever you're going through, you do not have to go through it alone. Some days feel good, some days feel overwhelming. That happens to me just like everybody else that you see out there, regardless of how they are presenting themselves on social media, whatever it may be, maybe something's keeping you up at night, something perhaps monopolizing all the bandwidth between your ears. It's easy to feel like you have to figure it all out on your own. But the truth is this. No one has all of the answers, and no journey should be done alone. Having somebody with you to listen, to understand, and to support you can make all the difference in the world. And this is where BetterHelp comes in. BetterHelp therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US and there's a therapist match commitment so BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences. And with their 12 years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate, that means that they typically get it right on the first try. But. But if you aren't happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time from the tailored recommendations. There are over 30,000 therapists working with BetterHelp. It's the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for live sessions based on over 1.7 million client reviews. You don't have to go on this journey of life alone to find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] Cleared Hot. That is BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com ClearedHot Back to the show.

[A]

Yeah, so I ended up being the unofficial. The G2 channel.

[B]

You gotta get your Bailey from somewhere.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And then they were getting it from me. I had taken it upon myself in the interim to make contact with the 7th Special Forces group sergeant major, because I didn't. I wanted to go to 7th Group. Everybody that I knew was in 7th Group. I spoke Spanish. It was logical that I go to seventh group. But they were still filling up third group. So there was a chance that I could go to third group. And I didn't want to go to third group. I wanted to go to seventh. So I made contact with the seventh group Sergeant Major, told him, you know, this is who I am. This is where I'm coming from in the background. And initially he was a little bit standoffish about it, but I think he'd been burned before by taking some guys on. But he's like, oh, you came from the Ranger battalion. And he's. His name was Sergeant Major Bone. He was a little bit infamous in. In Special Forces. And not, not necessarily for good ways, but. But he did like guys that came from Ranger battalion, ran from Ranger regiment. So he said, okay. Which he said, call me back when you get your language rating and then I'll decide. And I ended up getting a. I think a. I was a 22 or a 22 plus.

[B]

Damn. And for people listening, that's based off of a test. It's. I mean, I never took one of those tests because I went to language school. You tell me it's essentially your proficiency and fluency.

[A]

Yeah, it goes the highest it goes is 33 which most people get a 1 1. Most people get a 11 which is functional. Or some people. A 0 plus 0 plus is considered. Hey, I can order a glass of water and find out what the bathroom is. Exactly. Exactly. Sometimes that's all you need. I was, by the time, you know, years. By the time I'd been on a team for six months, I was 3 3.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I maintained a 3 3, which is.

[B]

Well, that's very proficient.

[A]

Yeah, it was, you know, I, I would, I, you know, I lived in Peru for six months and you know, all of my reps in it. Yeah. All of my daily, you know, interactions with people were in Spanish. And they say, you really know you've mastered a language when you dream in that language. So it seems fair. I did ultimately get to that point where I would have dreams that were completely in Spanish.

[B]

Can you imagine if you had gotten assigned like, like Farsi or Arabic?

[A]

Oh, I can't even imagine it so well. And I, I had enough DLPT score that I could have gone to Mandarin. And I'm so glad I didn't. So, so glad I didn't.

[B]

I just, I mean, I feel like it's almost impossible to master unless you grew up in that environment.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It gives people fits. So.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I was really for. Not only is, you know, Spanish, I mean, it's a Romance language. It's considered somewhat easier to learn. But the other advantage is in Spanish is like you say, getting the reps in is, you know, you can, you know, we were constantly actively deploying to Central and South America. So you're getting the reps. Alphabets are

[B]

similar as well too. You're not working off Cyrillic or like these other.

[A]

Or Arabic.

[B]

Yes. Symbology based stuff where they all have

[A]

a different meaning and there's places you can go to them. You can go to a Mexican restaurant if you need to get. You know, we did that when I was in language school. Hey, we're gonna go, we're gonna go out to Mikasita tea today so you guys can all practice speaking to somebody. You know, we're not allowed to speak English while we're at lunch. You know, stuff like that. Can a Farsi speaker do that? There's a lot of Farsi restaurants out there. A lot of, A lot of restaurant. You might not even, you know, just because you go into a Chinese restaurant, they might be speaking Cantonese, might not be speaking Mandarin, you know, and if that's your language of choice, the language you got assigned, you're not going to get the reps in, so.

[B]

So how'd you switch from being an engineer? The Bravo pipeline to the Delta? Yeah, so I haven't heard many people making that choice.

[A]

Yeah, it's more than you think. It does happen. So it's. A lot of guys will do. Hey, I want to. And I wasn't one of them. I didn't even have my eye on 18 Delta at all. But. But I did know some guys that were like, I always planned on being an 18 Delta, but I wanted to hedge my bets because I. My number one priority was being SF. My number two priority was being an 18 Delta and SF. So I went to the Bravo course or the Charlie course first. So. Okay, now I'm sf. So the worst that can happen to me if I fail out of the 18 delta course is I go back to this great job that I already loved anyway. So. Okay. Yeah, so that was their strategy. That was not my strategy. I was going to be an 18 Charlie till the end. And I did think about, you know, I was looking at, you know, what's my path going to be? Am I going to. Am I gonna work my way up to being a team sergeant, or am I gonna go to the warrant officer course and be a Warrant. NSF warrant? What am I gonna do? I ended up having a personal crisis. A lot of stuff was going on in my home life, and I needed. For lack of a better phrase, I needed to get the fuck out of Fayetteville. I just needed to be away from Fayetteville to get my head right. I needed a total change of scenery. I needed something to focus on because I was not in a good place. And I had already had the medic on my team. Rick Silva had already. He had told me numerous times, he goes, you need to go to the medic course, dude. You need to go to the medic course. He goes, you have. He goes, I know how to pick out the mindset of somebody who would kick ass. In the medic course. You totally have that. You need to go. You have this eye for minutia. You love learning. He said, you should go.

[B]

And the medic course, the first one is the short course, right? Six months.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So. And it was. So the way that it was structured then was you went to Fort Sam Houston and it was. It was more than six months, I think. I think end to end was nine, I think.

[B]

I think it was based off six months schoolhouse and then three months basically out doing rotations and ambulances with the way it's a. It's described to me.

[A]

Yeah. So the way that it was for us, I think it was nine months on station there. But one entire month of that was what they called cpt, Clinical Proficiency Training. So you were basically. I worked at an Indian reservation hospital in Gallup, New Mexico, for a month.

[B]

I bet you saw some wild shit.

[A]

I was taking out appendixes, appendices, you know, with a surgeon looking over my shoulder, you know, I was doing ortho, scrubbing down, orthopedic procedures. I was intubating in the or. I was running traumas in the trauma. It's not a trauma hospital, but you do get some trauma. Saw a lot of rodeo injuries. Oh, I bet. Yeah. So did a lot of just general medicine stuff. I got to work. They have a clinic in Tohachi that is, you know, basically like a military clinic almost, you know, running, like, sick call, urgent care type stuff. I got to work there. Really, really great experience. Just really, really good experience at that time. You came out of the course with an EMT basic, not a paramedic. You went and got that later. So we finished up at Ford, Sam. Then you pick up and move to Bragg. And that's when we talked about live tissue. That's when you start doing the live tissue portion of it, which was a forma. So you'd go to Bragg. When we picked up and moved to Bragg, the way that it worked at that time is everybody who was in my class who was already SF qualified, and there were a few of us, you had guys that were already SF qualified. And we also had full Trident wearing seals in the class as well.

[B]

We sent guys to the short and long course.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had some guys who only went to the short course. Just a couple. And then they peeled off. Didn't go with us, but most went with us. And we basically sat around and did admin stuff while the rest of our class went out and did phase one. So they went out and did, you know, the first field phase that you do before the MOS phase. Then they came back. We did four months of the 18 delta core stuff there at Bragg, and then they went on and then we graduated and they did phase three. And that was my first experience really being around seals, which. And some of them might be guys, you know. Herschel Haynes was in my class.

[B]

I recognize that name.

[A]

Yeah. I would not be a physician today if it were not for Herschel.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. So Hershel and I ended up being really good friends, and Herschel went back to the West coast and forgive me, I don't remember which team he was on.

[B]

It's just an odd number.

[A]

Yeah, just an odd number. Team might have been five. He was there briefly, and then they're like, hey, we need. That was when they're opening up the new 18 Delta schoolhouse. So they shipped him back to Bragg. And Herschel comes up to me one day, and he goes, hey, man, we're gonna go to med school. I'm like, what? What do you mean, go to med school? He goes, we got it all mapped out. He goes, we're at Campbell University. We're gonna get undergraduates. They're gonna give us 60 resident hours for a health science degree. He goes, we've got it all mapped out. You wanna do it? And I was like. And I was thinking about going to PA school at the time. I said, I don't know if medical school is longer, and then there's residency and I'm a little bit older than you. And he's like, come on, come on, come on. He goes, if nothing else, you get the college credits and you go to PA school. Whatever. So really, because of Herschel Haynes. He's the one that talked me into finishing my undergrad, getting my health science degree, and then going on and going to medical school. So I basically. I dove. Herschel's plan.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it worked.

[B]

Did he also dive?

[A]

He did not dive the plan. So he. So there was like, six.

[B]

Classic tale.

[A]

There was like six of us that started out and people were peeling off. The farther we got in the process, the more people peeled off. And there was one guy that we were in an MCAT study course together, and we were about halfway through that MCAT study course. And we used to meet and drive up because the study course was in Raleigh, so we would drive up on weekends. And I meet him to drive up because we'd carpool up. And he goes, hey, man, this is my last time going up. I'm not taking the mcat. And I'm like, what? I got too much going on. I'm gonna go to PA School instead. And he did, and he ended up being a really successful pa. Yeah. So the day that I sat down to take the mcat, I was out of this, I think six of us that started. I was the only one in there. But I had some really. I gotta say, I had. Not having been around seals a lot, I had some just absolutely. I became really close friends.

[B]

It's all the same.

[A]

Scotty Clark.

[B]

Yeah, I recognize that name, too.

[A]

Ran Yanaga.

[B]

Yanaga, for sure.

[A]

Jerry Wegner.

[B]

Don't recognize that one.

[A]

Yeah, I saw Jerry. Jerry almost boxed the ears of a fucking instructor that got out of his lane one day. And I was there for it.

[B]

It's a ballsy move. I'm there for it too. But there's consequences to that.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, this was a. There was a. There was a little blow up that happened in the schoolhouse. Basically, they felt that all of us, all the guy. All the guys wearing tabs and tridents, they thought we were a little bit too big for our britches. So they picked a day and they're like, today's the day. We're gonna really smack them the fuck down. And one in particular was feeling a little bit salty, came in, throwing his weight around, and Jerry. I remember Jerry pulling off his surgical mask and Jerry's a big dude, and he goes, I'm gonna kick your ass. And that guy went, go to the head shed. And Jerry's like, no, we're doing it right here. And he didn't. He didn't lay a hand on him.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Are you glad you went through? I mean, Cause medical school, Pack a lunch.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I've never gone, but I've heard the tales of the schooling, the residency. I mean, it's multi year.

[A]

Yeah. I realized in. So the big thing. And I mentioned. I went to the metacourse to begin with because people were like, hey, man, you should totally do this. And I did. I wanted the mental challenge more than anything. I'm like, yeah, it's a mental challenge. You know, and I want to challenge myself. And the thing, the way that, you know, whether you're an 18, Charlie, 18, Bravo, whatever. Everybody looked at the medics on the team and they're like, those guys, bar none, you can say those guys are at the top of their game because those are the guys that can walk out of this. This life tomorrow and get a job.

[B]

Infinitely employable.

[A]

Yeah, infinitely employable. Right. They're always the. $18 is always the most under strength mos because you can't qualify enough of them. Yeah. So I knew that I wanted to do it. I wanted the challenge. I wanted to. I wanted to equate myself with that level of professionalism. I didn't really know that I liked medicine until I started doing it. And then I'm like, wow, I really do like doing medicine. And I had a conversation with myself that basically had to do with. I've always felt that whatever unit you're in, you need to be selfless enough that you are doing the job you are best suited to do. Even if it's not the job that's

[B]

the most fun, it's a tough one.

[A]

Yeah. And that's when I started realizing, you know what, I need to be either a doctor or a pa and I need to come back to the community. Because I'd seen enough, I'd seen enough medical officers that they were good. They didn't really understand what we do in the soft community. They didn't, you know, yeah, they ran sick call and they gave physicals and stuff like that. But they needed a lot, a lot of them needed a lot of train up. You know, battalion surgeon would show up to group, you'd have him trained up about the time he was scheduled to rotate out. Like he finally got it. He finally had figured everything out and now he's leaving. And what's funny is I had that exact conversation when I, when I ultimately got accepted to med school. I had the group commander pull me aside and he goes, you're coming back, right? And I said, yes sir, I'm coming back. Come back to the community. And he said, good, because that's what we need. He goes, he goes, you know, God bless him. He goes, I love the guys we've had, but he goes, it's a little bit of a pain in the ass. You know, we gotta, we're on this learning curve as soon as they get here and then by the time they're flying solo, they're leaving and then we're training somebody else up. He said, we need somebody. And this was, I got accepted to med school post 9 11. So he said, especially in this environment, we're going to need guys that can hit the ground running.

[B]

How long did you have to detach for? Is that a four year?

[A]

You're off medical school's four years. Residency was three.

[B]

And at that time, were you just fully immersed in that medical pipeline military site? Totally. And then you came back?

[A]

Well, but so I went to uc, so I was wearing a uniform every day. What is USIS Uniform Services? University of the Health Sciences. Okay, so it's in Bethesda, Maryland.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. It's on the, it's on the Navy installation there. It's the F. Edward A. Baer School of Medicine. It's been around for a little while, but it's basically a, it's, it's the West Point of medicine.

[B]

But for seven years that's where you were?

[A]

Four years I was there. Okay. This is medical school. And then I graduated and then I went to residency and I went to A military residency in emergency medicine in San Antonio.

[B]

Okay, so you're still in the military,

[A]

still wearing a uniform, still drawing a paycheck, still, you know, still taking PT tests and signing OERs.

[B]

Straight up, head down to the. Straight up to the grindstone on medicine.

[A]

Medicine, medicine, medicine. That was it. Yeah.

[B]

How is it getting out of that, going back into the community?

[A]

Great. Because it's.

[B]

Change of pace.

[A]

Yeah. So I. I had some come to Jesus moments in. So I graduated undergrad with a 4.0. Okay, well, so let me caveat that when I went to Georgia Southern University, initially, that was my first foray into higher learning. I was a C student because everybody told me, hey, just get the degree. So I phoned it in. But when it came to my undergrad and I knew I was going to be applying for med school, I'm like, I need an A in organic chemistry. I need an A in physics. Like, I need to do this. I need to do this for real. So I had a 4.0 when I. When I graduated undergrad, and then I got to med school, and I failed my second biochem test. Failed it. I'd never failed a test before in higher learning, and that shook me up bad. I ended up getting a C in biochem. Pretty strong C if I do say so myself. So that was one come to Jesus moment that I had. And then in residency, I started to feel like I'm like, you know, I can do working on shift. I don't have any problem with, like, I can do all the procedural stuff. I know when I know sick versus not sick. Right. You know, I know this is a person I need to really be worried about. You know, stuff wasn't slipping through my fingers when it. When it came to seeing patients. But we have. Every year you get. You know, you have. You're academically measured constantly. You know, once a year, you take what's called a shelf exam. It was basically a fake board exam, right? They take old board questions and they recycle them into another exam.

[B]

To this day, you do that and.

[A]

No, no, no. Okay, no. But in residency, you do.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I was passing those tests, but I was far behind my peers. I was in the lower third of my residency class on those tests. And that was difficult for me. I'm like, wow, this is. And I don't know what it was. You know, still to this day, I don't know what it is about that. You know, I've. I've never. I've. I've taken. I took my Boards out of residency. And I've had to recertify my boards one time. And I didn't have any. Any difficulty passing either time. But there was a point in residency, and it was. It was for a lot of things, not just the academics, but I was starting to get an attitude. I was starting to really. I was starting to dislike patients. And I was really disliking other doctors, especially. Especially consultants, because everything was a battle. Like if I wanted to admit somebody to internal medicine. I'm on the phone with another guy whose life is just as miserable as mine because he's a resident too. And I'm basically telling him, hey, I have more work for you to do. I'm gonna take this guy that's been my patient for the last two to three hours, and now he's gonna become your fucking problem. So you're gonna. And I'm probably waking you up to tell you that, right? So he can think of every reason in the world to either delay this process or to block this process entirely. So I'm constantly dealing with that. I'm constantly being talked down to, and I'm constantly being talked down to a lot of people that I'm looking at a. The guy who's talking down to me is an 05 morbidly obese, who I would not fucking. I would not get on an aircraft with on any day or night. And to me, he's a complete piece of shit and doesn't measure up to what I consider to be a good soldier. But he gets to talk. He gets to lecture me like this in front of the whole department because I didn't run his little. He has his little pet lab that he has to have run on every patient. And I didn't run that lab. So now I have to hear about it. And it just. Over time, it just started wearing on me. And I wasn't. We had my residency class was. And I don't. I don't remember the exact number. I could crunch it. But we had more prior service in my residency class than any other residency class they'd ever seen. And we were also considered the class with the worst attitude.

[B]

Interesting. How'd you reorient your headspace and get through that?

[A]

I had a talk. I reached out to one of my staff, which is a guy named John Rayfield. And I would take a bullet for this guy. So I trusted his judgment and I said, hey, I don't know what the way to put this. I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't be a doctor because I'm being told by staff, you probably shouldn't be a doctor. I'm feeling like I shouldn't be a doctor. I'm looking, you know, I'm looking at where my peers are academically, and I don't feel that I'm measuring up to them, and I don't want to be here. I'm absolutely miserable. And he's like, mike, listen. He said, you're going to graduate, you're going to deploy. You're going to be back around people that you respect. You're going to be back in the type of environments that you grew up in, and you're going to realize that you're there and you can make a difference because of the training you're getting here. He goes, we all go through a phase like this. You're no different. He said, this will come around. You're going to see this will come around. And I ended up emailing him on my second deployment and saying, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for talking me, you know, talking me out of quitting, because this is where I belong.

[B]

So let's fast forward to that time where, you know, you get out of the residency, you're back with in Special Operations. What did your life look like then?

[A]

What kind of great.

[B]

Back in the community, back doing the things you wanted. What'd they have you doing? Obviously, medicine.

[A]

But. So I. My last year in residency. It was early in my last year in residency, and I still wasn't quite sure where I was going to go. And I'd pissed some people off in the leadership in the residency program, so I wasn't going to get a lot of help as far as, hey, can you make a call, put in a good word for me? You know, get me this job or get me that job. I had. I had burned some bridges, and that's. That's on me. I take that. I would. Had been on nights, and I remember it was. I'd been on a night shift. I had to stick around for like an hour to go to the first. We have what's called grand rounds. So once a week you have like a teaching day that kicks off in the morning. If you were on the night before, you only have to go to, like the first hour. You know, they understand you've been up all night, you know. Cause usually that's. If there's any admin stuff like, hey, we need to have everybody fill out a. Whatever form, whatever it's gonna be during that first hour. So after the first hour, you can go home and get some sleep. So I go home, and I just fallen asleep, and my phone rings, and it's a Fort Bragg number. That's weird. So I pick up, and it was my old battalion surgeon. And he was. He had been assigned. And I knew this. He'd been assigned to jsoc, to the Joint Medical Augmentation Unit. And he said, hey, it's Sean. And I said, hey, how's it going, sir? And he was. I don't sir me. He said, you know where I work, right? I said, yeah. He said, would you like to work here? I said, yeah. He goes, okay, you're gonna get a phone call here in a couple of minutes, and somebody's gonna get all your information. So a couple minutes later, I get a phone call and that he had called me from his cell. The next call that I got said, you know, unidentified. And it was the. The admin guy was a retired Navy chief who ran all of our admin. He said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna send you. I'm gonna. I'm gonna send you hard copy TDY orders and a blank travel voucher. We're gonna have you come out. And I looked at my schedule. I said, yeah, I can come out on this day. He said, okay. He said, make sure you tell them that you're going tdy. So, you know, they're not surprised by that. He goes, but we're gonna cut the orders. They don't have to do anything. And I was like, okay. So. And I hang up, and I'm like, wow, is this really happening? Because this. You know, this isn't a typical job you get right out of residency.

[B]

Yeah, Explain what JMAU is for. People listening.

[A]

Yeah. So. And I'm gonna do this as delicately as possible, because I don't. There's been some close scrutiny on podcasts, so I'm. I'm gonna. I'm gonna endeavor to not say anything that.

[B]

You can find it on Google.

[A]

You can find it on Google.

[B]

JM A U. Yeah.

[A]

So people want to.

[B]

But, yeah, I understand the sensitivity.

[A]

The JMail, the Joint Medical Augmentation Unit. So what the. What the JMAU is. It's. It's been renamed since, but was a medical unit to provide direct support, specifically direct trauma support to Tier one units. Okay, so this is. You know, when you think of the guys that are at the tip of the spear, you know, you think of guys like Andy, you think of, you know, guys like, you know, CAG stuff like that. You know, obviously, you Want to have a medical asset that they can depend on that is, you know, so they don't have to just drag along some, you know, cash unit or, you know, you know, forward surgical unit that doesn't know what they do. You know, something that understands some. A group of people that understand special operations, that they're kitted out appropriately, that they're trained appropriately, and they know how to work in that environment. Okay. So that, you know, far, far forward. Medical care for special operations is the best way that I can say it. I was. A couple years ago, I was on. I was on Kyle Lamb's podcast, and he went like a 10 minute, very descriptive thing about exactly what we do.

[B]

People can find it. Yeah, it's out there. My only interface, actually was indirect. When we actioned the hospital in Nazarea, there was a JMail C130 on standby. So Jessica got taken from her hospital room to a helicopter, transferred to the JMO C130. And where they went from there, I don't know. But that was the beginning of the repatriation. But exactly what I mean, they were legitimately on standby. I think they were actually spinning by the time that. I think they probably fired up once the helicopter was lifting and shifting, probably back to the airport we launched from. But that was my only tangential interaction with the JMAIL guys.

[A]

Okay. And that was before my time. Yeah. So. But I knew. I was aware. Yeah. You know, and. And I was. I was not so really aware because, you know, in seventh group, we never interacted with him. But one of the guys in my medical school class who was also in my residency class was a former CAG medic. And he was intimately familiar.

[B]

He should know all about it.

[A]

Yeah. And we had multiple staff when I was going through residency who had also been in the unit. Either or. Either was in the unit at the time or had been in the unit at one time. So after I got that call, I couldn't sleep. I actually drove to the hospital. As luck would have it, I walked in, the three staff that happened to be on. You have what's called staff day. While all the residents are over doing grand rounds, you have staff running the ER without residents. And the three staff that happened to be there were all. One was a current unit member and two were former unit members. And I said, hey, I just. I just had this phone conversation. And they were like, I can't. I can't overstate how incredibly supportive they were. They're like, oh, yes, we were hoping you would get that call.

[B]

Sweet.

[A]

Like, like, like we weren't going to be the ones to. To make the call because it's, you know, that's not the, you know, that's not the way this works. But we were hoping you would get the call and you got the call, so. And I interviewed and assessed and I got picked up, and that's where my orders were. So when I packed up my Jeep and I drove out of San Antonio and drove back to Fort Bragg, back to my old stomping grounds and signed in. And so I would work at Womack Hospital, you know, regular. As a regular staff there. But my. My cool guy job was to work at the compound.

[B]

Did you do that job until you ended up getting out?

[A]

I did that job three years out of Bragg and then another three years out of Ford Hood. Well, we're gonna get technical because I know how podcasts are. So somebody's gonna go through this with a fine tooth comb and try to call me a liar. So I was in the unit for 5 years, 10 months, and 18 days. So. Yeah. So, yes, I can, though. So I. Yeah. Six. So, hey, I don't want to say. I don't want to say six years. And somebody goes, no, it was not six years.

[B]

The thing, though, I'm glad there's people out there with fine tooth combs, because for far too long, there wasn't. There was no comb, there was no cone. And people that you and I both know pretty well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Started coloring outside the lines.

[A]

Yeah. And that's. And I'm acutely aware of that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because of. Because of events over the past few years. I'm acutely aware of that. It's a.

[B]

It's a net positive. I think that there are people out there with a fine tooth comb.

[A]

And I. And I also know for a fact that the PAO will listen to every minute of this podcast.

[B]

Public affairs officer people.

[A]

Yeah. And if I say. And if I say anything that violates my NDA, I'll get a phone call.

[B]

Let's just focus on those things, then. That'll violate your NDA. Tell me everything.

[A]

You're not supposed to roll up the sleeves and have at it.

[B]

You know, it's funny, most of the stuff in NDAs that I've seen, if you know what to say, search on Google. You can.

[A]

You can find it.

[B]

Yeah. It's just a matter of people don't know necessarily where to look. And I just leave it at that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All the dumb programs that I was read into and I'm not joking. The technical term would be dumb. They all exist on Google because I might have gone sniffing around peripherally.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just to see what was there. People just don't know where to look.

[A]

Yeah. Well, that's like I. And we can. After the mics are off, we can talk about it. But the. The coolest thing that I ever got to do in my military career, I have told five people about that. Five. I've been approached by dozens. Dozens. Hey, man, tell me about X, Y and Z. How do you know about that? So and so told me. I don't even know so and so. Where did so and so hear about it? I don't know. You know, so what's the old saying? There's two types of secrets. Those that aren't good enough to keep and those that are so good that you can't keep it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or how do you keep a secret between three people? Two of them are dead.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, that's literally the only way it's.

[A]

Yeah. See, that's the thing is, out of the five people that I told, I know my. My dad's passed away, so I know he didn't tell anybody.

[B]

Yeah. He might have written it down somewhere.

[A]

He might have. You never know.

[B]

Why did you decide to get out?

[A]

The war was winding down. I had already. Purposely so. I was already on a glide path to get out. 2016, which is where I got out. I was on a mission with some guys that. Some guys from the unit that I had worked with that I had known my whole time there. And I'm sitting next to one and we're sitting on a ship. That's all I'll say. But sitting on the fantail and.

[B]

Which is the back for listening?

[A]

So his. His watch goes off and he goes, fuck. And I go, what? And he goes, that's my reminder that I'm supposed to have this appointment in 10 minutes getting ready for my retirement. And he looked at me and he goes, mike, he goes, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, I'm going to stay in the unit and then I'm going to stay until the last day possible. I'm going to turn in my gear, I'm going to fly back to Texas, and then I'm going to out process the army. And he goes, don't do that. And he goes. He goes, since we've been out here, I've missed five very important retirement appointments that I'm now going to have to reschedule. He goes, I'm almost going to Be in for probably a whole nother year to take care of all this shit.

[B]

That's rough, too, especially if your trajectory is heading on the outside.

[A]

So I really took that to heart, and I did one more deployment after that. And about two thirds away from that deployment, through that deployment, I said, yeah, I think I'm. You know, I've kind of seen. When the. When you kind of feel like you've seen this movie before a little bit, right? And I've heard some of your fellow seals say stuff. It's like when you go out on a target and you feel like, have we already hit this target? Like, it feels the same, and my heart rate's not even going up. It wasn't to that level, but I did feel like I'm like, you know, it's time for me. And I'm older than most of the guys in the unit. Like, I say I was 48 on my last trip. I'm like, you know what? I'm a little bit older. I'm slowing down a little bit. I've kind of done all the things that I set out to do while I was here. It's probably time. And six years ago, you know, three years in town, three years out of town. That's probably. That's probably a good time frame, right? So I said. And I said on that trip, I said, yeah, I'm going to talk about turning in when we get back. And, you know, and you always want to. You want to leave a job on your own terms, right? You don't want to stick around. You don't want to stay too long at the dance, for sure. And I kind of. When it comes to being department chief at Darnell, I kind of did stay too long at the dance because I went into that job like a fucking fire hose, like, hey, we're gonna change shit, you know, And I'm gonna fight. I'm gonna fight all these battles against all these other departments. By a certain number of years into the job, you're. You start to just. Am I fight really fighting this battle again? Like, I just. I don't have the. I don't have the heart for it anymore.

[B]

I think it's so important for people to remember that regardless of what you're doing and how good you're at it and how much you love it, that it is going to end at some point.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You can't lose sight of that.

[A]

Yeah. And I never had the illusion that I was indispensable either. Ever. Yeah, Ever. Like, I knew somebody can come in and take this job, and they're going to be as good or better than me.

[B]

But you tell yourself it'll probably happen to Bob, who's sitting next to me. Right. Or Frank, who's on the other side. The people I see who have struggled the most as the end comes, act as if two months before their EAOs, which is your end of service. Like, oh, shit, I didn't know. It's like, dude, you've been in for 28 years.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, yeah, I just started my bachelor program. I'm like, what?

[A]

What do you mean, you just started

[B]

your bachelor program two months ago? What have you been doing?

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Those are the ones that struggle the most.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm not gonna argue against fully committing yourself to that job, but I was literally on a call this morning where people. People were asking about, you know, what advice would I give to people who are looking at bridging the gap between military and civilian. I'm like, listen, give yourself 12 months, 24, if you can dedicate yourself to your job. But just lift your gaze up a little bit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And build the bridge to where you want to be so you're not standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon going, guess I got a broad jump.

[A]

Yeah. And that's what. So my last. I turned in in 2014 to the unit, I went back to Hood, and I said, okay, I'm gonna start my glide path. And that meant documenting 32 years of injuries that I had avoided sick call for.

[B]

At least you knew how to write the paperwork.

[A]

Well, so here's what's funny is I go. I didn't even know at this point. I'd been. I'd been on Fort Hood for two years. I didn't even know as a patient. I didn't know what clinic I was assigned to. I had to ask, what clinic am I assigned? Oh, you're assigned to the family medicine clinic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I go down to the family medicine clinic. I go, hey, yeah, I need to. I need to make an appointment. For what? Stuff I said. And I'm like, so medically, right? You always say head to toe. Right? So head. I have a headache. Headaches. I'm getting headaches. Which is true. Right. So I said, headaches, among other things. And they said, okay, who's your primary care? No idea. Oh, it's major. So and so. Okay, we have next Tuesday this time. Perfect. I'll see you then. So I go home, I type again. Head to toe. I type. Everything that's wrong with me that I know is Wrong with me. So we can figure this out. So I show up to my appointment and my PCP was a, was a kick ass major 04. So she comes in and she goes, hey, Dr. Simpson. Yeah, so weird. I was looking because typically what they do when they have a new patient come in is they open up the electronic medical record and they look at your most recent visit and then they do copy paste. Oh, here's your medical history. I'm gonna copy paste that into this document. I'm start a new visit. She goes, there's nothing to copy paste in your record. It's blank. How is this possible? And she goes, well, don't answer that. I know how it's possible because I'm looking at your uniform. She goes, you wanted to deploy, you wanted to be on jump status. You've been keeping all this a secret. She goes, so she goes, so tell me your secrets. And I pulled out three typewritten pages in her language. Yeah, here are my secrets. And she goes, okay, all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna. These are all the MRIs that you need. Yeah, this. You need a sleep study, you need a podiatry appointment. I found out I had had a fracture on my left foot since 1986 that never healed. That the bones were worn smooth because I'd just been walking around on it with a neuroma under it. All this other stuff, I got MRI'd basically from head to toe. Everything documented. And that's what I spent the last couple years getting, everything documented. Applying for a job because I knew I'm gonna need a job when I get out.

[B]

Thankfully, you were infinitely employable.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's the other thing I used to joke when people go, why'd you go to medical school? Because I didn't have a retirement plan.

[B]

I think medical school might be one.

[A]

It is. Yeah. So.

[B]

So let me ask you this because you bring up a really interesting situation that is very common from people in the special operations background. I was five days from being out of the Navy and I went to have my discharge physical side.

[A]

And the doctor, it's less than ideal.

[B]

Oh, totally. But I had plans, right? I had full. I had aviation stuff lined up and I, I mean, I was going to get out. No retirement. I wasn't even going to submit for a disability, nothing. I was just going to leave service. That would have been 16 years. And the doc looks at it, maybe a six page document, and he's like, no. I'm like, I don't think you Understand I have plans so I'm going to go ahead and need your John Hancock right here. He looks at me, goes, no, I'm not going to do that. What I'm going to do is I'm going to send you to Nico. And at first I was very, very, very pissed. And I have reconnected with this guy. He's awesome. I'm so thankful that he ended up doing this. But it launched a year of basically paperwork and going to Nico, getting some of the best care I've ever received. Hundreds of pages of documentation that then buttressed what they put me through. The PEB MEB process, once you start into that, that's your. The ship is down the street, you know what I mean? Like it's going now.

[A]

When you went for that five day. Cause you were medically retired, right?

[B]

I wasn't. I was eventually after that Dr. Hung.

[A]

But you had 20. So you had 20 years.

[B]

No, 16.

[A]

You had 16.

[B]

I had 16 years when I was sitting in that doctor's office. I was just going to get out of the military.

[A]

You were just gonna ets?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

And he was like one of the last signatures I need to get. He just.

[A]

So you were pissed at him at the time? Probably. But he did you a massive, massive seller.

[B]

So I, I had to call the officer detailer because I had I think five or seven days left left on my contract. I had fortunately worked with the active duty officer that was sitting there at the detailer's desk and he said, give me a second. A couple minutes later calls me back, he's like, I extended you for a year. Okay, this is pretty awesome. The rest of that year was admin time upfront heavy. It was about three or four months getting a slot at nico. Going to nico. The PEB MEB paperwork process, not short. I mean we're talking stack finished all that, submit it and then though you just wait. So. But like I said, once that trains out of the station, you have no control of it. The military is going to make their decision. The guy reading it was like, I'm not going to guarantee you what this decision is going to be, but more than likely you're going to be medically retired from this. We'll let you know when you know. Ended up finding out about six months later. And then they gave me I think 90 days to get my affairs in order. That is a more common story. Somebody coming to the end having no documentation of the things that will ail them for the rest of their life. But you risk if you Go in your career and are honest about these things. You risk well. What's going on with your neck, man? You may shouldn't be on jump status, dive status. You're getting headaches. I don't know if we should put you under pressure. How do you do both? Protect yourself for the end, but also fight to stay in the career that you want to stay in. It's like walking a razor blade. What advice would you give guys?

[A]

So the. The one. One thing that people in our community lack is patience.

[B]

I was going to say intelligence, but I'll go with yours. You know, you can't argue instantly.

[A]

A little more generous patience. So. So, because, you know, guys see, like, I want this and I want it now. And you know, what have I been doing my whole career? I've been. I've been envisioning what my goal is, and I've been achieving that goal, right? This doctor telling me he's not going to sign my paperwork. He's being an obstacle to my. My goal is on the other side of him.

[B]

That's exactly how I feel.

[A]

And he is blocking that goal. How dare he, Right? And you can't look at it that way. And I've seen. A couple years ago, I was in a Facebook forum that's all former Rangers, and this Ranger was talking about, basically he had no. I don't remember how many years he did, but basically he had zero disability rating. And he's like, yeah, they just totally screwed me. They just said goodbye and gave me my paperwork. I'm like, no, they didn't.

[B]

Yeah, let's put an asterisk.

[A]

No, they didn't.

[B]

What was your role? And not being honest about the shit that was going on with you?

[A]

No, you were sitting in a room because. Because what is like when you out process, you go into a room on main post and you know, you're a Ranger, you're in a room with a bunch of people you don't want to be around, right? Because these are all conventional Joes, right? You don't want to. It feels. You feel it's a little bit beneath you to even be in this room. And they're up there speaking to the lowest common denominator. On block two, Mark, yes or no. On block three, put your last name, don't put your first name, or we're gonna have to tear up the paper and you'll do it again. I'm like, you did a lot of paperwork like that. And they were telling you, if you have this, now's the time to raise Your hand. If you have that, now's the time to raise your hand. And you didn't do any of that.

[B]

Or in your career leading up to that. You weren't going in and documenting the things that were actually happening.

[A]

Which is what I did.

[B]

Which is what I did, too, because I did. Don't take me out of the game, coach. Right, then you have a massive hurdle you have to clear at the tail end.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's what it's. It's tough. And I think that you might risk if you're completely. I mean, I don't know a single guy who made it through a career without being banged and bruised and just bumped along the way. Everybody is always dealing with something you do risk. If you go into medical and are transparent about what is actually going on with you, you might be put on the bench for a little bit, and nobody wants that, so they don't do that. But it actually might save your life in the long run. So it's this balance that I know guys struggle with, and I don't know what advice to give them, because I don't. I wouldn't. I wouldn't follow the advice that I would give, which is go in and be honest when I was a younger man, because I wanted to be in there. But looking back at how the exit happened and the difference in exit between leaving the military with no disability rating, which, by the way, after a career in the Rangers, statistically impossible.

[A]

Unless completely.

[B]

Yeah, unless you didn't talk about, with medical professionals, any of the things that you were dealing with, because it's not about what you're feeling, it's about what's documented in your record.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's what all these decisions are based off of. You might not like it, but you might be put on the bench and it might save your life.

[A]

Yeah, totally.

[B]

And telling guys that they're still not going to do it. So I don't know the solution.

[A]

You know, there's a great scene in the. In Band of Brothers.

[B]

Several great scenes in Band of Brothers, by the way.

[A]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Period. End of story. But there's one where a guy comes back and he's been in the hospital and people are like, oh, you're back. He's like, yeah, I was in the hospital. And they're like, why? Why did it take you so long to get back? Well, I just got discharged. Oh, well, so and so came back and so and so. Because what were guys doing? They're going AWOL for medical to get back to their units. You Know some guys, half of their ass cheek blown off and they're going AWOL and hitching a ride.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, to jump into. To, you know, to jump into Holland, you know, like that. And this guy didn't. And they're giving him for it, you know, because that's the mentality. Right. It's like, you know, it's. You know, you don't want to be a sick call writer. Right. You don't want. You don't want that attached to your

[B]

name, but you also don't want to be 50 and 0% disability rating.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because of the things that you were asked to do, that you dedicated your life to and your heart to. To the detriment of almost everything else. Personal, professional relationships. But because you didn't have it documented, now you're in an uphill battle for the rest of your life.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

I don't want that either.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Again, I don't. I know what advice I would give, and that is be transparent and go in and talk about those things. And I wouldn't have done that.

[A]

Yeah. As a younger person and in, you know, hindsight's always 20 20, we. I know now that if I had been honest about all the injuries, it wouldn't have, you know, none of those. None of those things would have taken me off status. None of those things would have kept me from deploying. I still could have done it, but I didn't. Because you don't know. You're like. You're kind of afraid of what they're gonna find.

[B]

It's fomo, though, too. It's fear of missing out.

[A]

It's fear. It's fear of missing out is a big part. There's layers to this. Right. It's FOMO is part of it. Right. Finding out that something's really wrong with you, having somebody look you in the eye. So this is a joke that I. This is a very bad taste joke that I've been telling for years.

[B]

Tell me more.

[A]

So you know what's. Whenever. Whenever you have something in your life trying to get you think of a good example. Like, somebody will say, I'll be in a situation. Somebody will go, hey, what do you think we should do about such and such. And I'll joke, I'll say, oh, let's treat it like a testicular lump. If we ignore it, it'll just go away. And the reason that joke is both in bad taste and funny is that's what most young men do. Oh, there's a lump on my testicles. Oh, shit. This could be nut cancer. Oh, that could mean I had my nut chopped off. I'm just gonna forget about it. Right.

[B]

If only it worked like that.

[A]

And that's. That's a microcosm for all the other medical shit. Oh, why am I getting shooting numbness down the back of my leg? That's probably some type of spinal injury of some type. But that's bad, and I don't want to talk about that. So I'm just going to put a salon pass on it and take 800mg Motrin every single day at every meal. And I'm going to ignore it. Right. And you can't do that. You know, you have to. Like I say, I ignored a. Ignored a broken bone on my foot for so long that there's nothing they can even do about it. And you can't do that. You know, you have to. If you're hurt, you need to say you're hurt. And guess what? Modern medicine is such, you know, for you. Anybody active duty listening to this, they can fix you up and get you back in the fight. All right? They can. You know, there's very, very few things that are going to permanently dniff you to the point that you're not going to get back out there.

[B]

And if you have one of those things, it's probably to the benefit of the people around you that you're not back out there.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

As much as you may not like to hear that diagnosis. Sorry. At the end of the day, it's actually not about you. Yeah.

[A]

Because. Because what if that injury causes you to become a liability at a key moment? Right. And how. How would you feel if. Because you blew off that injury, somebody else. Something bad happened to somebody else on your team because you couldn't keep up and they had to carry you or, you know, or. Or at the last minute, you couldn't go through that door. They had to go. The stack was a man short because your leg wouldn't work. You know, and you were. You were on the second deck when they were going through that door in the third deck. What if something like that happened? So you have to consider all those things. You know, it's not just. It's not just about you. It's about the unit. It's about your kids. Right. You know, what's the old saying, you know, do you want to play catch with your kids? Then you'll do this. You know, do you want to go on one more deployment, or do you want to play catch with your kids? You Know, do you want to take your grandkids to the park and fly kites or do you want to go on this mission? You know, that might be the choice that you're making. So. Yeah, don't hide injuries, man. So there was. It wasn't my team sergeant. There was a team sergeant, seventh group that I ended up hearing kind of through the grapevine. This guy had, like, out of control blood pressure, and so he was avoiding getting physicals because he didn't want it documented and he wasn't saying shit. And he was like having daily splitting migraine headaches. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, headache and high blood pressure. Yeah, that. That seems like those things go together in a pretty dangerous way and he's just riding it out. So what's going to happen when he strokes out during free fall or on an objective somewhere?

[B]

Nothing good.

[A]

Yeah, nothing good for him. But. But then the question is, is it only going to affect him or is it going to affect somebody else? You know, so at the end of the day, you're kind of. You're being. You think you're being selfless, you're being selfish, and you're being selfish.

[B]

It's a tough one.

[A]

Yeah, it is hard. It is hard. And I understand the mindset, man.

[B]

I'm being honest. I wouldn't have listened to my advice as a younger man because that's all I wanted to do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I would have crawled my way into work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And even in the face of demonstrable evidence that I wasn't okay. Like, no, I'm totally fine. This is. Yeah, I always didn't have a left arm.

[A]

So. So, so let's talk, let's talk about this because. And I mentioned it briefly. Briefly before. So I have prostate cancer. So. And I.

[B]

For early.

[A]

Like, early. Yeah. So, yeah. So I was, I was diagnosed, actually, a couple months ago. So what happened is I, I would get a. I'm on. I'm on trt. So I would get a PSA drawn every year. I ended up changing doctors, and the, the doctor that I switched to, who's a. Who's a good friend of mine, taught me everything that I know about trt. He was in a transition phase of his practice and he kind of took. Took for granted a little bit of professional courtesy. It's like, oh, Mike's on top of his own labs, I'm sure. And then he said, hey, man, send me your most recent labs. I'm like, oh, they're 2 years old. He's like, what, dude? He Goes, I never should have given you that option. And he goes, go get your labs drawn.

[B]

Yep. So your normal blood draw.

[A]

Normal blood draw.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

My PSA was elevated. Four and a half. 4.5.

[B]

Okay. Because I am on TRT as well. I have been for a of years. Couple. Couple years. And PSA is one of the numbers

[A]

always look at now. And we could do. I'm actually going to do a deep dive in this with Drew Winge on his podcast later in the week. Used to be prostate cancer. Suspected prostate cancer. Stop. Trt. Not the case anymore. Yeah, not the case.

[B]

What number are you looking at? Considered elevated.

[A]

You want it to be, depending on which assay you're looking at and who you're talking to, it's either under three or under four.

[B]

Do you say assay or assay? Because we got to be careful here when we're talking about the old process.

[A]

Are you looking at. Mine's like a point.

[B]

Whatever. Still, like, I haven't noticed.

[A]

Oh, you're. You're.

[B]

Yeah, I haven't noticed an elevation.

[A]

I ran in the twos.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I ran in the two. So the. The indications for if it's over again, it depends on the assay, but if it's over three or over four, that triggers secondary evaluation or if it goes up by 50% or more between tests. So, like, if you go from. If you go. Yeah, so if you go from 0.8 to 12 to 3, you go to 2 to 3, it's like, whoa, that's a big jump. Yep. And if it doubles, and mine almost doubled, so I went from like two and a half to four and a half.

[B]

Do you think you would have caught it in those 24 months if you had been doing blood draws, you would have seen this increase?

[A]

No, we probably would have watched. Okay. Probably would have still watched. So. But that was a big enough jump at that point. I think we probably caught it. And this. I don't take credit for this. It kind of, you know, God intervened and said, hey, Mike's going to draw his labs. So it was four and a half. We redrew it just to make sure, because you can. There's some confounders there.

[B]

Yeah, smart.

[A]

Same result. So, luckily, I have Tricare select, which means I don't have to wait for a referral. I can call a subspecialist and say, give me an appointment. Which I did. So I made an appointment with urologist, went in. Urologist was great. And my big concern was, okay, I'm go to the urologist and they're going to go, okay, we need to draw the lab now and see for ourselves. But I had the lab with me, so they didn't. So they said, okay, we'll schedule for the mri. So I got the MRI in January. And then based on the morphology of what they see in the mri. So what's the size? What's the shape, what's the location of this different tissue in your prostate? They grade it and it goes to seven. I was a six.

[B]

I'm assuming the higher the number, the worse.

[A]

The worse? Yeah, the more likely that it is cancer. Okay, right. So I was a pirad. Six. Right. So I'm like, okay, done deal. It's cancer. Let's take it out. So I go to my next appointment. I'm like, hey, when are we doing this? And he's like, whoa, slow down, cowboy. He's going to do a biopsy. And I said, but why? And he goes, because it's only. He goes, 83% chance of it being cancer is not 100%. He goes, and you don't want to. He goes, once we take your prostate out, he goes, that's. It's done. That bullet's out of the gun. He didn't use that phrase. That's mine. But he said, you know, you don't. We don't put it back if we decide we made a mistake, like this is permanent. And he goes, and it's not. Yeah. You know, we minimize complications, but it's not without complications.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He goes, so you don't want to make that decision unless we're 100% sure. He goes, so the next phrase, next step is a biopsy. So I got the biopsy, came back cancer. Right. So then I got enrolled in a study. So I'm in. In a study called the Water4 trial. So quarter of the people in the study are getting traditional radical prostatectomy. So you remove the entire prostate, and it's done under this big robot machine that they slide you into, where a guy uses a video game controller across the room to spare the nerves. Used to. Used to be a prostatectomy. If you look up a YouTube video of prostatectomy, I'm not sure I want

[B]

to see a YouTube video of that.

[A]

You don't, because. So the penis is cut off completely. So you know what a Foley catheter is, right?

[B]

It's a catheter that shows up your dick hole.

[A]

Yes. So imagine this. I put a Foley catheter in the penis, then I take the end of that Foley catheter. And I connect it to an arm hanging up here. Then at the base of your penis, I cut it off and then I slide the penis. So your penis is now three feet away from your body while I'm down here working as the surgeon.

[B]

Fuck all of you that ever created this.

[A]

Yeah. So what the fuck? Imagine an entire room full of 18 dels is watching this video, and they. Oh, at the moment that they slide

[B]

it away, Michael, I will absolutely beat the shit out of you if you pull this video.

[A]

Do not put up that video. Okay? So that's. That's. That's what a prostectomy used to look like.

[B]

Used to what, in 1742?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What the fuck?

[A]

This was 1990s. So then they came out with this robotic procedure. That's nerve sparing, because it used to be. Once we chop it, we chop everything off. So the nerves are not connected anymore. We got to reconnect the vessels. So guess what? You're never getting a hard on again. Right. This is where penis implants became a thing. Right? Because you get your prostate out, they sever the nerves.

[B]

The pump just doesn't have to be just for shoes. All right? It doesn't have to be just for Reeboks.

[A]

Yeah, and that's, you know, that's, you know, the pump, the rigid. They had just some rigid ones that look kind of like Legos. They had a bunch of different ones that you. Oh, that's another surgery you don't want to watch, so.

[B]

No, I don't.

[A]

And I'm not even going to describe

[B]

that one, thank you.

[A]

Because it's incredibly barbaric.

[B]

Michael's already writing down a watch notes for himself later.

[A]

Put penis implant, corpus cavernosa.

[B]

You're welcome, Michael.

[A]

Anyway, so. But I got randomized to what's called aquablation. So rather than go into the robot and have the prostate removed completely with the capsule and the seminal vesicles and everything, I'm gonna get what's called an aquablation procedure. So basically, they're gonna shove a fire hose in my urethra, and they're gonna blast that shit out.

[B]

I think what you're saying is you're gonna get a fire hose shoved in your dick hole.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Where is the prostate?

[A]

It's at the base of your penis.

[B]

They're gonna blast it out.

[A]

Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail]. progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[B]

This sounds like not good.

[A]

I think this is a procedure that they've been doing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For prostatic hypertrophy, which is a thing. Right. For years.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it works great. And I. Do you know who Rich Jadik is? No. So Rich Jadduck was. I believe he was a Marine infantryman. He went to medical school. He wrote the. There's a book called On Call in Hell. So he was a Marine Battalions Infantry, Marine Battalion surgeon, I think. First Battle of Fallujah. Really, really good book. Really good explanation of combat medicine and how things work. And Rich and I worked for a nonprofit together called Save Our Allies. We met over in Poland. Great guy. He's a urologist. So I reached out to him about this, and he said, oh, yeah, I do aquablations for BPH all the time. He goes, great procedure. Patients love it. He goes, I'm. He goes. In fact, he goes, In 10 minutes, I'm on my way to go in. I just. I just did one recovery. Recovery is great.

[B]

How do you know you get it all?

[A]

They can tell, so. Because they're gonna. They're gonna. They're gonna visualize it while they're doing it. So all they're gonna see that's left is capsule. So the prostate has a capsule around it. You know, imagine it like an eggshell.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They're going to see that the capsule's left. Then they'll also do some imaging afterwards to make sure.

[B]

Where do they blast it to? Like, where does it come from?

[A]

They pulverize it and then suck it back out. So they're going to suck it right back out my urethra and flush it out.

[B]

All this is happening in your dick.

[A]

In my dick? Yeah. It's like a party in my dick. Everybody's coming. Michael, why are you playing? So there's the prosthetic. Yeah, so there's the prosthetics. Oh, by. Oh, oh, and by the way, I

[B]

caught out of the corner of my eye him pulling something onto the screen. And I. For a second, like, I don't want.

[A]

Before. Before I got. I'm glad, you know, given your audience. I'm actually really glad that we're talking about this, because hopefully, guys, get your PSA checked. Get your psa.

[B]

Well, and it's just an additional lab that you can put on the blood screen.

[A]

Right? Like, totally. So. So if you look at where the. That's. That's the Prostate. Right. So you see how your urethra runs through it right there. So look, go just forward of his finger. That line coming down, that's the urethra coming through it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So your prostatic urethra is, you know, however big your prostate, it's about the

[B]

size of a walnut your prostate is.

[A]

Your prostate.

[B]

What is it responsible for?

[A]

So it makes prostatic fluid. So the bulk of your ejaculate is prostatic fluid.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. So the. When they take out the prostate, right, you lose all that prostatic urethra. So they. They reconnect the base of your urethra at the base of your penis, basically, to right where the bladder is. So you lose a walnut's worth of penile length in that process. So. And I don't know about you, but. So I'm of Welsh ancestry. Have you ever heard the phrase hung like a Welshman?

[B]

Yeah, but I don't know what it means.

[A]

It doesn't mean anything because nobody brags about being hung like a Welshman. Okay. We're not known. We're not. Maybe we're known for girth, but. But we're not known for size.

[B]

Doesn't matter. Yeah, I think dudes say that.

[A]

Yeah. I'm not so sure. Women say a guy with a really big dick said that. Let's be honest. So. So before I got randomized to the aquablation arm of the trial, they're like, oh, yeah, if we do the prostatectomy, you're going to lose about an inch. That was exactly the. The facial expression you just made was exactly the way I looked at the surgeon when he said that.

[B]

Fuck me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm gonna have to rewatch this episode to figure out how we ended up down this rabbit hole. Cause this is the most scary conversation

[A]

down this urethral hole.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, I'm glad that you have options, and I'm glad that things are. Michael, can you change the picture from a finger up somebody's to literally any other picture?

[A]

I give him credit that it's a gloved finger, at least. Right?

[B]

God, that's a medical procedure. Yeah, literally. Anything else, Michael? Any other picture that you would like?

[A]

Let's go back to thunder.

[B]

If you want to have it as a screen grab on your computer over there, you do that. When are you getting this done?

[A]

So actually, the scheduler called Friday and I missed the call, so I'm actually going to wait. I'm flying back tomorrow. I'm going to call on Wednesday that I can have all of my work schedules out in front of me because obviously there is going to be some recovery involved. I didn't want to do it. It's probably going to be sometime end of June. I don't want to do it before that because I'm going to. There's a. There's an event my. In Monroeville, Pennsylvania, called the Living Dead Weekend. Okay. So it takes place at the Monroeville Mall, which is where they filmed dawn of the Dead.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Back in the. Whatever it was 1970s.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

My youngest son, Daniel, is a huge George Romero fan, so he's always wanted to go to this. And it's the last year they're doing it, they're going to tear them all down, turn it into a Walmart. So this is the last year. So I didn't want it to interfere with that trip.

[B]

There's no risk in waiting, though.

[A]

No. So. So here's the prostate cancer. They even said they gave me the option of just watching and waiting at one point because prostate cancer is very slow growing. So here's the. Here's the things that you absolutely need to know about prostate cancer. First of all, whatever your age is, that is your percentage likelihood of having prostate cancer. Really? In other words, if you're an 80 year old man, you have an 80% chance of having prostate cancer.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay. Everyone, eventually, every one with a prostate eventually gets prostate cancer.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I have one. It's a done deal.

[B]

Yeah. If you live long enough.

[A]

So that's one thing that you need to know. And for that reason, you need to get your PSA from age 40 and on. Right. And just think of it as, oh, I'm coming up on a 50% chance from age 40 and on. You definitely need to get it drawn every year.

[B]

Most people think it's the gloved image that Michael. Michael is probably airdropping over to his phone right now, though.

[A]

Yeah, no, it's.

[B]

It's a blood.

[A]

It's a bloody test.

[B]

It's a box.

[A]

It's a blood test. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not the Dre. The digital rectal exam is not. You know, we used to think that that was how we detected prostate cancer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think they found it. It's like it had like a 5% effectiveness or something like that.

[B]

I think that's how doctors just fuck with people.

[A]

Just really wanted to stick their finger up people's asses.

[B]

I mean, listen, I'm not here to tell people how to party.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But some people are into that.

[A]

Yeah. It's. You know, if that's your Thing, you know?

[B]

Well, it's the doctor's thing.

[A]

Yeah, that's. That's their thing.

[B]

My throat hurts. They're like, yeah, take your pain. Like, no, no, no.

[A]

My throat.

[B]

Tonsils.

[A]

Yeah. No, not connected at all. Yeah. So then the. The other thing that you need to know, it's slow growing, so you want to catch it early. Okay. Then you have time again. I had time for an mri. I had time for a biopsy. They even said, hey, now that we even know what it is, if you want to watch it for a little bit. Because the question was. Because I'm like, hey, now that I've heard about this aquablation procedure, I really want that procedure. I don't want to get traditional, radical. And I said, so what happens? I said, so, hypothetically, what happens if I get randomized? Because this is a study, right. So the control group. What they call the control group, which is very important whenever you're doing research, is the radical, because that's the gold standard. And I said, what if I get randomized to the control group? I'm like, I don't want that. And he goes, well, we can talk about that if it happens. And he goes, you know, theoretically, you know, you could withdraw from the study and then come to me as a patient, like, six months down the road, maybe.

[B]

There's ways around it.

[A]

Yeah. He said, and. And I said, but what I ultimately decided, actually decided on the drive home, I'm like, you know what? It's. I'm not an incredibly religious person, but, you know, I am a religious person. I do pray on things. And I'm like, you know what God's gonna decide? You know, if this is. I've got a. I've got a 75% chance of getting randomized to what I want. If I don't, that means there was some reason that I shouldn't have got that procedure, that I should have got this procedure. So I'm fair enough. Yeah. So I'm just gonna. Whatever they tell me, that's, you know, that's what I'm gonna get. So it ended up, you know, that I did get randomized to the procedure that I was hoping to get. So hopefully by the end of June or sometime in July, I'll get that procedure, and it'll be done, and then I won't have to worry about it again.

[B]

I will check in with you from. Sure. Around that time period, I won't have

[A]

to pee every 10 minutes like I do literally right now.

[B]

Go for it. Take a break.

[A]

Okay. Go for it.

[B]

Yeah. What else should guys be paying attention to? Is there any other warning signs for prostate cancer?

[A]

Yeah. So getting up to pee multiple times a night. Okay. Which I've done my whole life because I don't like the sensation of a full bladder. But you find yourself doing it more right. Your stream is not. You don't have the forcefulness in your stream anymore. These are all signs. It could be a tumor. It could also just be an enlarged prostate, in which case you do need to see somebody. You can get put on medication for bph. That'll help with that. So these are things you should definitely be looking. Looking at. I talk about in my book Honed. I talk a lot about men's health and screening and the importance of getting regular labs, especially your psa, your cholesterol, stuff like that. I had some people. When I published this. This book, it was right about the time that the Carnivore diet was really taken off, and I had people trying to say, oh, no, no, the whole cholesterol thing is bullshit. Thankfully, there's been enough studies since then that have kind of put the kibosh on that, that people realize, no, it's. It's not bullshit. It's. It's legitimate.

[B]

So I am not a scientist. I'm not a doctor, but every time people try to simplify the root cause of all issues down to one things or one thing, in what I. From the best that I can tell, is an incredibly complex system where things are playing off of each other. It's like, I get the marketing aspect of that. If you just cut fat out of your diet, you're gonna be fine. I don't think that's the case.

[A]

So that's. It's the two words you never want to use in medicine because they're always wrong. Are. And I just used one of them. Always and never.

[B]

Yeah. Those are the two numbers, 0 and 100%, that I dislike the most, because over a long enough timeline, both of them will absolutely be untrue at some point.

[A]

And I'm automatically gonna. If you're giving me a zero or a 100, I'm automatically distrustful of that.

[B]

100%.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, dude, tell me about your books. We've been talking for two and a half hours.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

About gloved fingers up your asshole.

[A]

Yeah. So let's talk about something better. So I wrote. So I wrote. Honed was the first book that I wrote, and it's basically. It's a men's health book. At the time, I was still podcasting and why'd you stop? Let's get into that afterwards, okay? Yeah. Cause that's layered. Okay. So I was getting a lot of emails. I was getting a lot of social media questions, and I was getting a lot of emails about, hey, Doc, I love your show. You know, I have two herniated discs. I've been thinking about doing jiu Jitsu. Do you think, you know, hey, Doc, I'm having trouble. Will you look? I would have guys randomly. Could I send you my lab results? I don't trust my doctor. Can you look at my lab results? Can you tell me if I need to be on TRT? Stuff like that? Hey, Doc, I'm 45. I was an active duty infantry guy for 12 years. Now I've gotten out, I put on some weight, blah, blah, blah, blah. What type of exercises should I be doing? Stuff like that. And I'm gonna caveat this by saying right now I'm in probably the worst shape I've been in in 10 years, because it's been a pretty rough year for me. I'm not making excuses, but at the time, life happens. Yeah, life happens. When I wrote, I was in really. Especially for my age, I was in great fucking shape. I was in great shape. And I basically just wrote in there. I took everything that I had answered in an email and I made it into a chapter, you know, and that's a. That's one of the things I really like about your book is you have it set up by lessons learned. Yeah, that's basically what I did with this book. But from a men's health kind of

[B]

point of view, it kind of fell into that. I didn't necessarily know I was going to do that. It was a little bit accidental.

[A]

That's why. But that's why it works, because it's organic. Yeah, that's totally why. Because the book that I had set out to write was actually not dissimilar from your book, is I wanted to write a book kind of on my own experiences. But what I was going to write it about was I was going to take things like the oath of enlistment and the Ranger Creed, and I was going to break down why these are important and how you can apply them in your daily life. Totally type things. And Tucker Max, who used to own Scribe Publishing, which is a self publishing service, I pitched the book to him and he goes, no. He goes, that's not the book you want to write right now. He goes, the book you want to write. He goes, I've heard you. We had been At a range together. And people were coming up to me asking me about stuff, and I was telling him about little things. Like, first thing you should do every morning when you get up is you have a bottle of water on the nightstand and before you even get out of bed, you drink 16 ounces of water. You know, things like that. He goes, he goes, these are the things that people are gonna gravitate towards. That's the book that's gonna give you not only sales in the short term, but longevity. Cause people are gonna be interested in that. He goes, philosophy books. Another book's gonna come in and eclipse it later on down the road. You know, somebody's gonna have a different out. You know, he's like, if you look at, you know, and a good example is if you do, you know, Hackworth was. Yeah, yeah, Nobody really reads Hackworth's book anymore, but for like 10 years, it was all the rage, dude.

[B]

About Face is a phenomenal book.

[A]

Phenomenal book. Phenomenal book. So I decided to write this, you know, basically, you know, about men's health and, you know, using myself as a guinea pig and describing the type of health I had to be in at 48 years old. You know, doing an eight click offset with a. With a ranger platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan. You know what that was like for me, what type of routine that I had to have, how I had to monitor my nutrition, my supplementation.

[B]

That's a whole different game at that age.

[A]

And at the time, it's since gone out of business, but I had my own supplement line, Gray Beard Performance. So I meant for this book to kind of dovetail with the supplement line.

[B]

Makes sense.

[A]

And I've sold over 11,000 copies total, so I don't even promote the book anymore. And it's still. I sold one today. You know, it's. It's still, you know, people. And what I love about it is people buy it in paperback, they don't buy it in Kindle. And I said, when I first started, when I first put the book out there, I said, I hope people will buy it in physical form. And I want you to write in the margins. Yeah, I want, I want you to underline stuff, I want you to highlight stuff.

[B]

It's one of the things the digital format misses.

[A]

Yeah. And I put bullet points at the end of every chapter. Okay, These are your takeaways. You know, this is how you're gonna. This is the amount of sleep I want you to get every night. This is how I want you to get there. These are things that you can take that'll help you sleep. These are things that you can do to make sure you're getting quality sleep. You know, things of that nature. And it was really well received. And, you know, I've gotten. I've gotten emails, I've gotten social media message. Hey, man, you know, since reading your book, I started lifting again. I started. I started going to Jiu Jitsu. My life's totally turned around. I got my cholesterol under control because. Because of you. And that makes me really happy. Yeah.

[B]

How could it not?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And then. Then I transitioned.

[B]

Slight genre shift.

[A]

Yeah, slight genre shift.

[B]

So did you have aspirations of writing fiction before you started writing fiction?

[A]

Forever?

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I mean, like, literally going back, I used to tell people about screenplays that I wanted to write when I was in the Ranger battalion.

[B]

So that seems to be the common narrative. I have yet to meet somebody who says, no, I accidentally became a fiction writer. Fell into it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It seems like you either have that or you don't.

[A]

Yeah. Desire. It's. Some people can make up stories and some people can't make up stories. There's a lot of people that can make up stories and make up some damn good ones, but they lack, for whatever reason, they lack the confidence of the opportunity to put it on paper. There's some great stories out there that we'll never get to hear.

[B]

Oh, for sure.

[A]

But what ended up happening to me? I had numerous stories that I bounced around in my head in different genres. Everything from science fiction to stories about a private detective taking on the CIA. I had all these crazy ideas. Then what ended up happening is there was a unique confluence of events kind of all at once. I got a raging case of cellulitis on my back. I got hospitalized with it. That's how bad it was. This was. Right? This was 2024. So pandemic was over. We're still in the recession. So I get out of the hospital, and at the time, I was medical director for a company called Safeguard Medical. Great company. I would never throw them under the bus. They're awesome. They had to let me go. And it just coincidentally, it happened to be right after I got to the hospital. But they're like, hey, we gotta make some cuts.

[B]

Sound good?

[A]

Yeah. And I don't bear them any ill will. I still buy their products. I still support everything that they do. But I got let go. Fortunately, they gave me severance. They gave me eight weeks of severance. And I looked and I said, like you said, as a physician, I'm employable So I have a retirement plan. I always have a backup plan. I had not worked clinically at that point in years.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

I had not. Yeah, because before I was medical director for them, I was medical director for a company called. Called Persis Medical. I had worked in a couple of different ers. Then I transitioned to doing what's called locum's work, which is you work for an agency and then they identify hospitals that have a need and they credential you through that hospital. And then you might have never been in that hospital before. But I drive a couple hours, I show up on a Friday night, and I'm working in that hospital for a couple of days. It's called locums. Locum tenants is the full Latin term. I don't know what that means in Latin, but so I start. I transitioned to locum's work. Well, what ended up happening during the pandemic is patient sentences in emergency rooms dropped drastically because people were like, I don't want to, you know, there's going to be a bunch of sick people in the hospital. I don't want to go there. What ended up happening is for the first time in American history, only true emergencies were going to the emergency room. So that's when we saw what our, our all along, what our emergency room censuses should have been.

[B]

Yeah, those people using their primary health care system.

[A]

Exactly. So like, for the first time, this was like a wake up call. But what ended up happening is they had to cut man hours. Right. They're like, well, if we're at 30% census, so what are they going to cut first? They're not going to cut the guy who's been working there 10 years and is like, is a partner in that practice. Yeah, no, the locums get. So locums got cut. And at one point I get an email from, excuse me, from one of the hospital systems where I was doing locums. And they said, hey, coming up next month, you have not worked a shift in 12 months. So you have one or two choices. You can either ask for your credentials to be turned off or we can turn them off. But if we turn them off, that you have to report that to the state medical board that we, that we, we withdrew your credentials.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

And it's. It wouldn't have been a big deal because they said, well, why are they withdrawn? Well, because they didn't have hours for me. Yeah. But I still would have had to. Every time I applied for a job, I would have to get an explanation. Every time I Applied for a new license, I would have had to. So they said. And I said, okay, what do I need to do? They said, just reply to this email and say, please deactivate my credentials. Which I did. So by the time I got let go from Safeguard, I had not worked clinically in over a year. And I'm like, you know, I don't really want to go back to the ER and now, and now, that being said, I'm still. There's still a couple of locums companies that I'm attached to that if I get a good enough offer and like, okay, I'll drive three hours for that rate. Yeah, I'll drive and stay in a hotel for that rate. But for the most part, I just, I worked urgent. I work urgent care now. And I knew I couldn't jump right back into working locums because they don't care that you need the money. They, you know, you're not working based on what you need. You're working based on what they need. 100 and the need wasn't there. So I'm like, okay, I need to find something else. So I guess, I guess I'm gonna have to have to work, you know, like, like urgent care or a family medicine clinic, something of that nature. So I found a local urgent care company and I applied and I, I know how this works. I used to be a department chief, so I know the flash to bang is about three months from the time they say, okay, yeah, we want you to, you know, okay, fill out all this paperwork. Now we're going to vet you, we're going to check your references. Now we're going to put you in the credentialing pipeline. Now you're working. I knew it was going to be three months. And I'm like, okay, I've got eight weeks severance, plus I've got some money saved up, so bills paid wise, I'm fine, but I basically don't have anything to do for three months, so what am I going to do? You know what? You should write that story that you've been kicking around in your head all this time. So I sat down and I didn't. Even though there's a bunch of fictional stories, like I say, that have flashed through my mind over the years, and every military guy thinks he's gonna get out and be the next Jack Carr, right? But I'm like, no, Jack's already out there, so I don't want to compete with Jack. He's doing great in that space slaying. I don't want to be another former soft guy writing about the hardened former operator getting revenge, because that story is out there, right? So I said, I need to do something totally out of the wheelhouse to set myself apart. This story that was based on a Dungeons and Dragons character that I played years ago had been bouncing around between my ears for years. And I said, you know, you know what? I'm gonna write that story. So it's basically, the guy you see on the COVID there is. Is a dwarf. He's 6,000 years old, and he has been.

[B]

Is this a memoir?

[A]

Yeah. Well, so I'm. I'm five six.

[B]

A dwarf.

[A]

I'm five six. He's five five.

[B]

Stop it. Yeah, not five six.

[A]

I'm.

[B]

That's what Evan says, too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He could walk without crouching under this table.

[A]

I stood next to Evan, and I'm trying to think. Somewhere there's a picture of me and Evan together. We're both wearing hats, though, so I think we're the exact same height.

[B]

Tom Cruise says he's 5 8.

[A]

Okay, I'm 5 6. But. Okay, I was 56 when I enlisted. I have four herniated discs now. Okay, so maybe I'm five five and a half. I don't know.

[B]

I'm calling it five three.

[A]

There's no way I'm five three, dude. There's no way I'm five three. I'm calling. I am not five three.

[B]

I will give you five, three and a half.

[A]

All right, I'm gonna have to take. Because I'm in your home. I'm gonna take that. This guy's five five.

[B]

I'm saying you said dwarf, and I'm like, hold on.

[A]

Yeah, so. And he's considered tall for a dwarf, by the way. I should caveat that. So for 6,000 years, he's been around, and he. His job is he finds magical objects that humans could potentially harm themselves with, and he destroys him. And, you know, he's like, basically the last guardian of humanity and the last remnant of a bygone age from 6,000 years ago. So that's his backstory. And I wrote the first book, and I did everything on my own.

[B]

Did you get it done in that 90 days?

[A]

I did, yeah. I had to go back because I showed it. I showed it to my friend Randy Searles, who runs a professional editing service, and he gave me some tips up front about some stuff that I needed to change. So I went back, and I made some revisions. So by the time it was probably. I wrote the bulk of it, in three months. It took me another two months to fine tune it.

[B]

That's still not bad.

[A]

Yeah. And then I ended up going through. I didn't. Randy didn't do the bulk of the editing. I actually got a guy named Brian Niemeyer that did the copy editing for me and went through it. In the meantime, I got on fiverr. I found a cover artist. You have the first edition that I sent you, which is a different cover from this.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

This is the. I have a new cover artist now that does all of my covers. So she's did these. But I uploaded. I already had a KDP account, because when I published through Scribe, they gave me a KDP account for honed. So all I had to do was figure out how to do the uploading and all that stuff, which I did. I've done all my own. I uploaded it myself. I've done all my own marketing. All my marketing has been organic. The feedback that I've gotten on the first book has been really good. I've sold over a thousand copies at this point. Got almost 300 reviews on Amazon.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

And then I went to work on the second book, which is complete and has been out since April 1st. I'm about to hit 300 copies sold on it. I already have 56 pre orders on book three, which I'm two chapters into writing.

[B]

How do you write? Do you go sequentially or do you write the segments of the story as they come to you and then weave them together?

[A]

I write. I envision it as they come to me, but then I make notes and write it sequentially like I already know what the. The very last scene of book three is.

[B]

You're just not sure how you're gonna get there.

[A]

Yeah, I'm 80% sure how I get there. But I'm a discovery writer, which means sometimes the characters do and say things that I wasn't necessarily expecting.

[B]

Do you whiteboard and have, like, a story arc?

[A]

I write it down on a piece of paper. I actually, for book one, I did none of that. It was all in my head. I tried to write an outline, and I failed. And then I ended up writing the outlines for book two and three at one sitting. It was. I think book one had been out, like, two or three months, and I was laying in bed. I'm like, okay, I gotta start tomorrow. I gotta start working. I had a day off the next day. I'm like, tomorrow, I gotta really start working on book two. I'm gonna have to write an outline. So I closed My eyes. I started thinking about Book two and I basically got all the way through it in my head.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And then I was like. And I left it on a cliffhanger. So I'm like. And I didn't probably fall asleep until 1 o' clock in the morning that night, but I just laid there going all the way through both Book one and Book two. And then I went back and thought it all through again because I didn't want to do that thing where you get up in the morning, you're like, oh, wait, what was that idea that I had? Because you know how often that happens?

[B]

Only every day.

[A]

Only every day? Yeah. And I didn't want that to happen. So I kept like, that's why I was up until 1 o', clock because I kept repeating it in my head. And at one point I almost got out of bed to go write it down. I said, no, I'm not gonna do that. So I got up the next morning, I went over to the printer in my wife's office, I yanked out four pieces of paper and I just started basically automatic writing and wrote down the outline for Books two and Books three, and then launched into it. And then I launched book two three months early. Yeah. And I'm hoping book three, my goal is to have it the 1st of January, 2027. In an ideal world, I'm going to the Author Nation convention in Vegas in November. So in an ideal world, I could get it done before then. But I'm not going to punish myself if that doesn't look like it's going to happen. Because I don't want to try to rush through and get a rush product that it's not 100% something that I'm proud of. I like to look at every piece of dialogue, every scene description and go, yeah, I'm, you know, that, that is good. You know, I, I, I'm, I'm proud of that. So, and I, I, I think I've gotten better as I've gone too.

[B]

I was gonna ask you, the more you do, is it getting easier?

[A]

It, it, some of it gets easier, some of it gets harder. Because, like, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't wanna be known for constantly using the same descriptive terms. I don't want one scene to be, oh, this is just like that other scene you did in the other book.

[B]

Retreading the same.

[A]

Yeah. So, you know, so coming up, up, especially when it comes to things like battle scenes and stuff like that, you don't want to Use. You don't want it to be cliche that you're throwing out the same. You know, his. You know, his shield rang out. You know, you know, you don't want to use the same terms and shit like that all the time.

[B]

So how many do you think are in the series?

[A]

There's going to be. So this is going to be a trilogy and it's. It's going to wrap up very, very nicely. There is the opportunity, because this character has 6000 years background. There is. I would like to go back. Are you familiar with the Casca series?

[B]

No.

[A]

So this is a little after your time. So these were really big in the 80s. There's a book, a series of books called Casca the Eternal Mercenary. They were actually written by Barry Sadler, who is famous for composing and singing the Ballad of the Green Berets.

[B]

Interesting tie in.

[A]

Yes, yes. So he became a novelist. Casca Rufio Longinus was the sergeant of the guard at Christ's crucifixion.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

In the fictional world that Barry Sadler is created, he became immortal. Christ cursed him with immortality and said, soldier, you are what you are and that you shall remain until I return. So Casca wanders the earth as a soldier until the second coming. That's the premise of the books. So you follow him. Like, book one starts, he's in Vietnam and he's telling his backstory to a field surgeon. Right. That's how the whole. The book starts.

[B]

But he was treating him after that point for insanity.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, no. So what happens is he arrives. He arrives at a MASH unit and they put him in the expectant pile because half of his skull's blown. Yeah. But he doesn't die well. And they go over there, they're like, hey, you need to see this. And the doctor goes over there and he can see white blood cells pushing a piece of shrapnel out of his brain.

[B]

Very Wolverine Ish.

[A]

Yes. And the skull is coming back together, like, as he's watching it. So he ends up x raying him from head to toe. And there's like, there's a bronze arrowhead in his thigh and all this other stuff. So the books go then. They're all pretty short. They're all like novelettes, but, like, you know, he was a gladiator. He was a Viking. He fought for the Confederacy. He was worshipped as a God by the Incas at one point, all this other stuff. So I would like to someday go back after the trilogy is over. And I think it's fertile Ground for me to fill in that 6,000 years.

[B]

That's a lot of time to work with.

[A]

I've dropped a lot of breadcrumbs in both of these books about places that the character has been in history that you would, you know, that. That. Oh, he was right there at this battle, right along. He was so and so's number two man. You know, this. This famous person that you're familiar with. There's a book, and this isn't spoiling too much, so I'll go ahead and tell you. In the first book, there's a scene where he talks about how he was one of. At Oxford, he was one of J.R. tolkien's professors.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So.

[B]

And one night in a little inspiration for Tolkien's stories.

[A]

Yeah. One night he got a little bit drunk and he got a little. Little bit loose with what he was talking about. And that may or may not have given Tolkien some inspiration. Yeah.

[B]

So do you like writing more or. Medicine writing?

[A]

No question. Yeah.

[B]

Damn. Well, I think you've answered what you'd be spending most of your time doing going forward then.

[A]

Yeah, medicine. You know, I. I'm very thankful that. That God has given me the abilities that he has when it comes to being a physician. To ignore that would be, you know, like I say, you have to play to your strengths. Right. So it would be wrong for me to ignore that. I'm thankful for what I can do in medicine. I appreciate it. I do. I love the feeling of alleviating somebody's pain. I love the feeling of, you know, this is a sick person and I'm gonna make them better. But it would be one thing if medicine was just, hey, I'm gonna show up every day and you're gonna come in. Okay. What's going on? I'm gonna examine you. Okay, here's what we're gonna do next. It's another thing when it's medical legal documentation, so. Oh, here's my online training. It's. Oh, make sure you certify in this. You know, it's all the things that kind of SAP the joy from it. You know, I ran a. When I was an 8, as an 18 Delta, I spent 90 days running a clinic in Chimore, Bolivia. And that was some of the funnest time I've ever had practicing medicine, because all I had to do was write a little. A brief little note, three lines on what I did for these guys. But, you know, I had people coming in that had been dealing with stuff, and. And I was treating them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, treating them. And treating them.

[B]

Patient centric.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Practicing medicine centric. Yeah.

[A]

And that's. That's the draw, too, for, you know, for. For people that work with, you know, for things like, you know, Team Rubicon is a great example. Samaritan's purse, another great example. You know, Operations Smile. You know, these. These guys that go in these medical teams, and it's like, we're not worried about paperwork. We're not worried about anybody suing us.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're not, you know, worrying about, oh, I had the wrong color lanyard on my name tag. It's. No, we're seeing sick people, and we're making them better, which is why people,

[B]

I feel like, want to go into medicine in the first place.

[A]

Yeah, but there's a lot. You know, there's. It's like anything. It's like being on a team. You know, the. The deployment part of it. You know, the. The training part of it and the deployment part of it. Those were great. The paperwork. Oh, you didn't fill out your hazmat form. Right. So you can't put that ammo. Can't go on this pallet. It has to go on this pallet.

[B]

You know, nobody believes me when I tell them those stories.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They're like, what do you mean? You guys would mission plan for 72 hours? I'm like, yeah, if not 96.

[A]

You should have heard me laughing, driving in my car, listening to you explain to Joe Rogan what a Spindex was.

[B]

Oh, God. He didn't believe it. I'm like, no, you wouldn't leave until you shot it all.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Or you don't get it next year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

He's like, what do you mean, you shoot Carl Gustavs until you bleed out of your ears and nose? I'm like, they're. You shoot them, and what else are you gonna do with them?

[A]

Because otherwise, we're not gonna get him next year. We might need him next year. We didn't need him this year, but we might need him next year.

[B]

That's why I told him, ask some other people. Just so I'm not your single data point. And they're all gonna tell you the same thing. It's 100% real.

[A]

Yeah. 100% real, man.

[B]

What else do you want to accomplish in your life?

[A]

For me, like, so speaking specifically about authorship, to me, somebody. Somebody posed this question the other day. They said, when do you feel like you've made it as an author?

[B]

It's a good question.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Very individualized answers, too.

[A]

And for Me, it would be being somewhere in an airport, in a restaurant or something like that, and somebody saying, excuse me, me. Are you Mike Simpson, the author? Like, to me, that would be it. That would be like the pinnacle of. I've made it. Like, I don't care how many books I've sold. Just somebody read my book they recognize, and then they looked me up to see what I looked like, recognized me in public, and took the time, not just to go, oh, I think that's it. That shithead that wrote that book I read. No, they came over to actually talk to me about it. You know, to me, that would be like the pinnacle. But I think for me, I want to continue to write. I'm going to practice medicine for as long as I can practice, which I think I got another five years left in me. You know, we all slow down. You slow. You slow down cognitively as well as physically.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's a thing. Yeah. I don't want to take my boards a third time. I don't want to take my boards at 65. I just. I don't feel like doing that. So my exit strategy is I'm going to practice medicine for probably five more years. Ideally, at that point, you know, if I still need the income, maybe I can move into, like, a teaching position somewhere. You know, there's plenty of med schools looking for people. I gotta say, I'm. I know you probably don't want to hear this, but after coming up here, I'm seriously thinking about moving up here.

[B]

Oh, I love it when people say that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I'm also, you know, I'm not a Montana native.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Probably technically, neither is Michael. I've heard people where it doesn't count unless you've been here for six generations. I'm like, I can't control where I was born.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah.

[B]

But there's nothing wrong with good people coming here for the right reasons. Yeah, I mean, there's also, I think, just under 1.1 million people in the entire state, so there's plenty of room for you.

[A]

Yeah. I looked up how many people were in kalispell. It's like 28,000 or something like that.

[B]

Michael, you lived here most of your life. This is a debatable number. Actually, my guess would be 40,000. I'm including in that, like, Evergreen.

[A]

How many high schools are there? Two. Two. And what's. How big is a graduating class at that high school?

[B]

Three hundreds.

[A]

Ish.

[B]

Yeah, there you go.

[A]

Three hundred Ish. So there were in Tetchapi High School when I graduated in 1984. There were 122 people in my graduating class.

[B]

What was the population of the city?

[A]

I don't know. The high school was a little over 500 people. We had one high school. My graduating class was 122, of which I graduated 102nd.

[B]

Those are good numbers. Yeah.

[A]

So do you think my guidance counselor thought I'd ever be a doctor? Not so much.

[B]

Yeah. Who ends up being a guidance counselor, though, Anyway? Right. Like, he's like, I know what I want to do with my life. I want to be a guidance counselor.

[A]

Yeah. So, yeah. You're taking advice from somebody who couldn't get a better job than guidance counselor.

[B]

Yeah. Those who can't do, teach, they say.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, I mean, there's Whitefish has a high school. Sea Falls has a high school. Big Fork has a high school. What do you think, Michael? In the valley, 100,000?

[A]

Yeah, probably 100,000 in the valley.

[B]

Yeah. That's my guess. I have yet to find a good number for. If you say just Kalispell City, like, where the PD is responsible for, it's probably 20,000. But then there's Evergreen. There's a little bit north of town, a little bit south. I don't know, somewhere between 20 to 40. Call it that.

[A]

Beautiful area. Really beautiful. Yeah. Well.

[B]

And you guys went into GNP Glacier national park yesterday. You can see it. I mean, the opening and entrance to it. It's a sleeper.

[A]

It's.

[B]

It's not as big as Yellowstone, but, man, it. It rivals it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For beauty.

[A]

It's beautiful. Yeah. I. I grew. I spent a lot of time in Yosemite growing up. We had friends there. My parents had friends there, so we would summer up there quite a bit. And it's the. The ride when you're up, when you're at the park and you're. And you're on the road and the water's right there to your left. That reminds me of the drive into Yosemite.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because the Merced river is right there as you're coming in. And then you cross the South Fork.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you go on into the park. Park. But, yeah, it's. God, the mountains are just so beautiful.

[B]

It's beautiful. And there's plenty of room for everybody.

[A]

Yeah. My wife had no idea we were this. This close to Canada.

[B]

60 miles as the crow flies.

[A]

Yeah. Well. And when you're in the park, you're 40 at one point. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Depending on where you are in the park, for sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We're much Closer. Where can people find you? I've had. I've monopolized your time for over three hours. So.

[A]

No, this has been awesome, man. I appreciate the opportunity to be on here. I wanna. I wanna publicly acknowledge. So Blake Hayes was the one who. He made the connection with somebody. You and he have a mutual friend somehow.

[B]

Yeah. I forget. We originally got connected over text, right?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. But that was through Blake Hayes.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Out of Tulsa. So he's a. He has a jiu jitsu school. Sheepdog in Tulsa.

[B]

How long you been a purple belt?

[A]

I'm a brown belt now.

[B]

Okay. I was gonna say.

[A]

Yeah. I was a purple belt forever.

[B]

Well, how often were you going to class?

[A]

Not as much as I should have. Yeah.

[B]

Okay. I'm seeing a probable reason here as

[A]

to why you don't know purple belt forever. Okay. The amount of time that it's. That I've been on this road.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I own it. I do not put that off on anybody. You know, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna. Okay. Did I have a hip replacement as a purple belt? Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I'm not gonna blame that. It's. It's. It's. It's me. I control that. Nobody else. You got five and a half years to black belt, Right? Good for you, man.

[B]

I just was able to train.

[A]

That's like kit dale level there.

[B]

It's definitely not. I just had an opportunity and ability to train more frequently than most people. Like I was explaining with Joe the math. Still maths. If you go two times a week and you get your belt in 10 years. If I go eight times a week, five and a half years is no longer that, like, insurmountable of a feat. My schedule allowed me to train a substantial amount. It was really all it was. There's no magic to it.

[A]

I actually. Just to see, this was a. This was a few years ago. I think it was right. Or was it pandemic time? Might have been right around pandemic time or just after. It was like 20, 22, 20, 23 timeframe. I just. For a week, just to see what it would do to my body. I did a strength and conditioning workout every day and I went to Jiu Jitsu every day.

[B]

How'd that treat you?

[A]

And. Oh, I needed two full days to rest around. Was done. Because I was. So. I did. I did three Cl. I did two GI classes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

my school. John's. Jim. Georgetown. So I did two GI classes and one no GI class. And then I did three nogi classes. With Danaher. That when. It was when he was doing. Before they opened Kingsway, when he was working with.

[B]

At the ROKA facility.

[A]

He was. Yeah, he was doing. No, it wasn't a Roka. So those. Oh, those are private. Rokas are private.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

Yeah. No, no, this was. He was. Jason Rebsch owns Henzo's. Austin.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

So that's where they were teaching out of. And. But. But John. Professor Danner would go to Roka's every morning to train his team.

[B]

His competition team.

[A]

Competition team. And then he would drive straight, straight to Henzo's to teach the 10:30 class, which was often like an 11:15 class because you had to wait for. For John to get there.

[B]

What do you think the odds are he's a serial killer? My personal guess is 93.8.

[A]

So that's probably a decent number.

[B]

I mean, if you. If a report came out. Jiu Jitsu instructor John Danaher.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Found collecting human heads in jars.

[A]

I would say so.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But. But here's the thing. We will never. So, like, we will never really know who Jack the Ripper was.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We will never know if John. John Danaher would be such a good serial killer that we will never know. In fact, I could see someone else getting convicted for it and that he planned it that way all along.

[B]

Yeah. He'll definitely hang it on somebody else.

[A]

So.

[B]

No pun intended.

[A]

So I gotta. So I. I know that I derailed. We're closing out now. I've rerailed this again. One of the proudest moments of my life was having Professor John Danaher yell. So we did the technique of the day and everything. And then you don't. In Danner's classes, you don't just. Okay, now we're gonna roll. No, no, no. You do specific training. Yeah, yeah. It's. It's all positionals. Because you do positionals. Right. So we were doing the positionals, and I shot a double leg. And the technique that we had been using was a specific variation off the double leg leg. And he calls me. Always calls me Doc. Hey, Doc. I think he doesn't know my real name, but.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But he shouted across the room, great, double leg, Doc. And I was like, this is it.

[B]

That's when you retire.

[A]

This is the pinnacle. Yeah.

[B]

You literally stop mid roll. You're like, I'm out.

[A]

I'm out. I'm. I am retiring from Jiu Jitsu. I got a compliment from John. It's like the joke. It's like the joke. That was the greatest moment of my life. And then my son says, well, after me being born. Right. No, not even close. Yeah, yeah, sorry.

[B]

No, I'm actually a huge fan, John. What he's been able to produce, athlete wise, is just amazing.

[A]

It's phenomenal. Have you. So have you been to the ROKA sessions?

[B]

No.

[A]

Yeah, so I've been to roka. I've rolled at Roka, but not. Not with dinner. Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, I've been to roka. Probably the same people that you have. Yep. Yeah. And. And I've hung out there. I've done workout. Done horrendous work. That's a great gym.

[B]

It is a phenomenal.

[A]

There's no, there's nothing like doing a horrendous workout and, and literally vomiting afterwards. And then. Okay, now we're gonna roll.

[B]

Yeah, that's not great. After your science experiment, you basically felt like you were dying doing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And I did it, you know, I did a. At least an hour of strength and conditioning a day. Yeah. Plus a full jiu jitsu class every day.

[B]

Like, I felt like you got hit by a semi truck.

[A]

Yeah, it's all my, my inflammatory markers were like, off the scale. Like, I was in. I. And. And I was. I had to be really religious about how clean I was eating.

[B]

Oh, for sure.

[A]

That week. Like, I couldn't put anything bad in my body or it came back like a vengeance. Yeah. Like that's. I cannot overstate that because one thing you. I mean, you're. You're at an age where you're finding it already, but you're gonna find it even more when you get to my age is it's not about what you're doing. It's all about the recovery.

[B]

Oh, for sure.

[A]

In the moment, you're like, yeah, yeah, I still got it. I still got it.

[B]

It's how you feel after, Afterwards.

[A]

Yeah. The drive home, you start to feel it. Brushing your teeth, you're like, ooh, I'm already next morning.

[B]

I'm already my game. I mean, Michael can tell you he and I have rolled probably thousands of times at this point. It's not. I don't have a complex game. I don't do anything fancy. I don't rely upon attributes or speed or any of that. And I think that that will probably serve me well over a longer time period because everybody who out there is relying upon attributes. I wish I had them. I would too. But they're going to, they're going to leave you high and dry one day. Just give it enough time on the old clock.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And so I'd rather develop a game that doesn't really rely upon those things and hope that it serves me well as I get older.

[A]

Yeah, it's. I started, I started Jiu Jitsu late. You started Jiu Jitsu late. And I think that's one of. One of the advantages of doing that is you have to do old man's Jiu Jitsu. So you have to do a game that's going to give you longevity. Yeah.

[B]

I didn't go into it with the attributes that I wish I, you know, I see other people having. Which again, use them when you got them.

[A]

I'm not going to cartwheel.

[B]

No.

[A]

Through somebody's guard. It's not going to happen. You know, I'm not doing dynamic. I will never do a flying arm bar.

[B]

I have tried to cartwheel.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It didn't work out.

[A]

It doesn't work out so good. It's not you. You don't even want to see that. My professor always talks to me about. He goes, john, he always, he says, you got a video. You need to video your roles. That's how you get better. And it's like, like. But I can't stand to watch myself. There is so cringe when I watch myself. I'm like, I'm like, you're terrible. You are terrible. Go turn your brown belt in right now. You are terrible.

[B]

I hate to tell you, you're gonna feel like that when you become a black belt too. It just never ends.

[A]

Yeah, well, and that's, you know, that's one of the great things about it is it's Jiu Jitsu is a never ending journey. You know, black belt is not the end of the journey.

[B]

Oh, it's the beginning.

[A]

It's totally the beginning. Yeah. And, you know, I, I love it. I have so many chronic injuries now and that's. Those do hold me back schedule. Holds me back. Dealing with the prostate cancer thing has held me back. At the end of the day, though, I'm gonna be totally honest. Yes. Those are all excuses. You know, I could train.

[B]

Some of those are very valid reasons.

[A]

But I could train more. When I look in the mirror, I know that I could train more. And you know, at the end of the day, that's on me, you know, But I'm also, I'm also at a point where I've had to prioritize some stuff that, you know, that maybe wasn't Jiu Jitsu. I had. I was able at a couple of years there where I was able to really prioritize it because the way that my job worked, you know, jump on a video call at 10 o' clock and, you know, everything else, all my strength and conditioning, everything else is taken care of. And that's another thing is I can't, I can't imagine at my age, and I talk about this in the book, I actually thought at one point, like, oh, Jiu jitsu is going to be my fitness. No, you know, I absolutely, positively have to be doing other stuff.

[B]

It'll actually degrade your fitness. It's not an equal measure of push and pull. You're way more contorted and inflection than you are in extension.

[A]

And you're gonna be way. Your, Your injuries. Yeah, you're gonna be so prone to injuries.

[B]

It's asymmetrical, too. Like, most people pass to the passer's left, you know, like, I don't have any data to support it, but almost everybody does.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that means you're probably playing guard off of your right hip more than your left. You know, I mean, like, there's some asymmetric, asymmetrical stuff that will develop as well.

[A]

Notice, I mean, you're always, you're 90% of the time, if you're in top half guard, your right leg is what's trapped. Yep. That's just the way it is. Right. So, you know, so like, like you

[B]

said, that's because people pass to the left.

[A]

Yeah. So it's not symmetrical. That's, that's the way, you know. Same thing when you're on the bottom. Yeah. You know, you've, you're, you're, you're locking down the guy's right leg. So all of your sweeps. I haven't done.

[B]

Lockdown doesn't work.

[A]

That's trash. I haven't. Well, I'm not a lockdown guy, so I'm an early sweep guy. I go, basically, as soon as you get there, I'm going for.

[B]

That's the most.

[A]

I'm going for the under, hook and go.

[B]

Don't let him settle. Don't let them settle, man.

[A]

Well, what do they say the difference between a white belt and a blue belt is? Transition time.

[B]

I don't know if I've ever heard that. Yeah, yeah, I could buy that.

[A]

Is it that a blue belt doesn't get to a, you know, a white belt? We all did this as a white belt. Oh, I passed. Now what am I gonna do?

[B]

I still do that.

[A]

Yeah, so do I.

[B]

Where can people find you?

[A]

So I am On Instagram. Mike Simpson usa. I do have a website that I don't. I don't use that much, but you can contact me through it. There is a contact page, drmikesimpson.com that's-r m I k-e s I m p s o n dot com. I've got a Facebook page too, to push my books, but most of my time, social media wise, is on Instagram. You can find all of my books on Amazon and Goodreads. I don't use Twitter. I think my Twitter account got suspended for non use. Threads is a cesspool. So I don't. I don't want to do anything over

[B]

there, either of those.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I like, I like being on Instagram. I like sharing pictures of stuff I like doing. I like making AI generated images because it pisses a certain segment of people off to see AI generated images. And they accuse you of destroying the environment and putting artists out of work. And so I get a little bit of a kick out of that, but yeah.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Yeah, so that's. That's pretty much where it is. And.

[B]

Well, let's get you back to your wife.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You guys out here tomorrow?

[A]

Yep. Fly out noon tomorrow.

[B]

What do you got planned between now and then?

[A]

We are gonna go eat at Jaliscos tonight.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Yep. Yeah. So I gotta say that we're staying at the Lodge of Whitefish. Yep. Restaurant. Restaurant there is really good. And of course you got the, the port. You watch the sunset right over the lake there. It's absolutely gorgeous.

[B]

Place is. You've eaten there, right, Michael?

[A]

Yes, just recently. Actually.

[B]

I would say the best Mexican food in the Valley.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Now would you agree, Michael?

[A]

No, actually don't say it's very good. It's very.

[B]

Don't say Costa Mexico, cuz slap that mustache off your face.

[A]

Now. My wife's Mexican American. So what were you gonna say?

[B]

There's a place, it's called.

[A]

Of course, I'm La Casita, right by the fairgrounds.

[B]

It's connected to a gas station, first off, which throws people off. No, absolutely not.

[A]

Oh, that's right.

[B]

Immediately. No. You've never been to this place.

[A]

But you always say you're never.

[B]

Immediately. No. Did you hear the initial? It shares a door with a gas station.

[A]

But to me that's a good thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Immediately.

[B]

No.

[A]

Did you ever eat at Jalisco's in Coronado?

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

That was. Herschel Haynes took me there. That was like his favorite place. They had a little cool, little patio area. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah.

[B]

All right, man. We'll get you out of here. Thank you for taking the time.

[A]

Thank you. Yeah. Of course. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.