Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - BUD/s duds and Emergency Surgeries

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

Today's episode kicks off by addressing a heartfelt and raw listener question, painting the picture of a 23-year-old man at the crossroads of his military career and personal life. The listener shares his turbulent journey from aspiring SEAL, battling through weight loss, smoking cessation, and the harsh realities of SEAL training, to facing a disheartening setback and feeling lost in a career path he never desired. Should he attempt training again, or should he move on? I close out the episode by doing my best to explain my recent emergency surgery, and what I have learned from that short but extremely painful journey. Be safe and I will see everyone in 2024!

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not dead yet. That was a wild week, but I'm back, kind of. Got probably 50 staples in my abdomen. But it feels good to be back. And some of you might be saying, well, why the hell would you even take the time to do an episode as opposed to resting? My answer to that is, I've been resting as much as humanly possible, and I'm bored out of my goddamn mind. So I came in to do a quick Friday episode to end off the year. I'm going to do like one question to get back into the swing of Full Auto Friday.

And then I'm going to talk about what happened to me last week because a bunch of people have reached out and asked me to talk about it. I'll talk about it to the best of my ability, not a doctor by any stretch. But damn, it was wild. And you want to talk about a shift in perspective on what is important and what is not. So let's get into it. The last fallout of Friday of the year, 20, 23. in review. I don't know. Whatever it is, whatever it's going to be. Let's go.

To the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. All right, everybody, like I said, I'm going to do one question, and then I'll dive into kind of the medical journey, if you will, that I went on in the past 10 days. And from there, we're going to go, hopefully enjoy a New Year's Eve and a good start to 2024. So, question one, and the only question for today. Andy, I am typing this email at 2300, which is 11 p.m. for you non-military folks. On a Monday night from my bed in a barracks room for an intelligence rating school. This person is in the Navy. In the Army, I believe they call them MOS. In the Navy, it's called an NEC. But it's your rating or another way to think

about it would be occupational job training. This is not where I want to be in the slightest. I'm a 23-year-old male who believed he had finally found his purpose in life after discovering a passion for what the seals do and the training they go through to do it. I heard this calling a little over a year ago when I was a cigarette smoker and weighed 240 pounds. I quit the smoking quickly and managed to lose about 30 pounds before becoming frustrated with the efficiency of my workouts and the general cluelessness of how to prepare for buds. So I decided to visit a recruiter much earlier than I ever should have. I barely passed my PST, which I believe stands for physical standards test, sounds about right, and was willfully ignorant enough to believe that I was ready to ship out to boot camp so quickly.

I went to Bud's prep in Coronado and dropped after only a few weeks. And another way to put that is that you D award or dropped on request or you quit. I couldn't believe how far behind the rest of the class I really was, especially when it came to running. I am miserable. I kick myself every day for giving such a feeble attempt at a dream I still care so much for. I feel imprisoned in a rate that I don't care about, being forced to learn skills I don't ever want to use. I'm getting married soon, but I can hardly even think about that no matter how much I love this girl. The reason being is that I think about buds every day. It was almost easy to get there when I wasn't ready, and now when I know better how to prepare and could actually give it a real shot, it seems impossible to get back. It gets increasingly difficult to stay focused and also committed to working out. I can't just give up on this dream. I have no clue where to find a mentor anywhere near me on a base that doesn't care about what I really want to do. Emeling you about this probably isn't a good idea either, but I'm so damn lost and destroyed

that I don't even know where to start to look so I can begin to rebuild myself. Maybe all I am asking for is some wisdom on how to keep on keeping on when my world is crumbling and my mind is in a bad spot while continuing to pursue a goal that slipped away and to seemingly further away every day that I wake up. Man, rough spot. Okay. So I'm going to give you some feedback here that you may not want to hear. But you need to hear this because you are going to have to change the way that you are thinking about the Bud's training pipeline and the career in what you are willing to do leading up to it, or you need to put this dream aside and find another passion or pursuit. A goal that slipped away. Okay, your goal didn't slip away. You threw your goal

away. And that's hard to hear. But you made the decision to no longer pursue your goal. And we have to be completely and utterly clear about that. This isn't fate. This isn't bad luck. This is 100% something that was inside of your control. And I suspect, you know, because you mentioned it in here, you couldn't believe how far behind the rest of the class that you really were. And, you know, what's the quote? Comparison is the Thief of Joy. Buds is an individual team sport. So nobody in Buds can make you quit unless you actually make that decision yourself. And a lot of the evolutions are individual in nature.

But a lot of them are team focused in nature as well. And that's why I say it's an individual team sport. You have to perform at a high level when you're doing those team evolutions for your team to be successful. And you need to perform at the requisite level individually so you can meet the minimum standards for training. But in either one of those environments, the team environment or the individual environment, you are in complete and utter control of whether or not you decide to raise your hand and say IDOR and ring the bell.

And I'm not even sure they have a bell in the pre-training program. I know actually nothing about it because it didn't exist when I went through training. The vast majority of people who attempt seal training do not make it through. And one of the beautiful things is the training. is the training program allows for people to come back for a second or even a third attempt, I believe they'll give you up to three attempts, meaning you come into training, you're not successful, you go back to another military command, you come back again, you're not successful, another military command, and you can come back. Now, in that is a lot of time. They're not going

to just let you, you know, hey, over and over and over again. You're going to have to go. You're going to have to do a duty station or a billet. You're going to have to perform well there. You're You have to get permission from your command to go back and screen, and then to detach from that command and go back into buds. And that's how it should be. It shouldn't be easy for people to just recycle. Actually, the easier it is, I think the higher the attrition rate would be. What I'll say to you is this. Anecdotally, what I saw as an instructor, people coming from the fleet or people who had been to the fleet because they had quit buds a first time and now were coming back.

had a higher rate of success than those who had just joined the military and pipelined straight into butts. And I believe, personally, and I have no doubted to support this, that the reason for that is, is that they realized what the fleet military or the fleet navy was going to look like for them. And that is not why they wanted to join the military in the first place. They joined for one particular thing, were not successful, had a very different experience than they were looking for in the military. and at that point in time when they get that second chance, they are willing to burn themselves to the ground to not return to that. Now, I'm not advocating that as a path or a route or an approach for people. I'm just saying it's not necessarily a bad thing that you are having this experience right now.

I got a bunch of questions for you. The first one would be we live in a digital age where information is out there, probably more information than you would ever actually be able to usefully do something with. why did you not research and spend, if this is your passion and this is, what was the words that you use, your calling, why didn't you take the time to figure out what the requirements were going to be? Like you shouldn't be surprised at the amount of running that was going to be required from you in Bud's training. You should have had a robust training protocol for running, for swimming, for calisthenics, for weight training, for short duration, higher intensity events, longer duration, lower duration, lower. intensity events. The information is out there. Why didn't you take the time to actually do your research and put a plan into place? And if you're not willing to do that now, you need to shit can this goal. Like if you are, I know you're feeling in a place where don't we want to be here. And you actually said in here, you're having, staying increasingly difficult to stay

focused and also committed to working out. How the fuck do you think your second route at seal training is going to go if you're finding it difficult to stay focused and committed to working out. The physical issues challenged you your first time in buds and it took you to a place where mentally you decided to quit. And now you're in a place where you can't even commit to physically training, even though you call this your passion or your calling. I'm here to tell you, and this is why I said in the beginning, you need to change the way that you were thinking about this goal or you need to get rid of this goal and do something else with it because if you're not happy with where you are, if you're not happy with the fact that you can't focus, if you don't like the school that you're at,

if you don't like the skills that you are learning right now and you don't like what is going to look like when you go to the fleet and have to apply these skills, if you are unable to turn all of those things, each of those being a log on a fire of motivation that is burning so fucking hot that it can, you know, smelt metal. If you can't do that yourself and dedicate yourself and focus and train and put all of your energy towards what you described as your calling and you described as your passion, you need to let it go. Because if you can't do those things, it's not your calling and it's not your passion. It's something that you heard about, that you sounded to you like it would be something that would be great to do. You'd probably like the idea of being a seal, but you didn't want to put in the time, energy, or effort.

in the preamble to that to actually be successful and stay the course and fulfill that career. I get it. We used to say it was a common phrase inside of the seal community. Everybody wants to be a frogman on Friday because it's sunny and you're at shorts and you're probably having a kegger in the grinder. And it's a true story. Those Fridays can be great in the seal community. It takes years to arrive at a seal team as somebody who is a trident wearing seal enjoying that kegher

and you can't forget all of that. You can look at the Friday and it can be inspirational and aspirational. But if that's all you're focusing on, when things get difficult, I'm going to tell you right now you're going to end up throwing in the towel. So you need to do some very deep soul searching. I'm not saying that I don't think you can make it, but I'm also not going to say that I think you can. Because right now you have to determine who you are and what you want to do with your life. I personally look at the fact that you're miserable right now is a good thing. because you have the opportunity to use this misery or discomfort or frustration to achieve something

amazing in the future. And really the only thing standing in your way, and this is true of almost everybody for every goal to include myself, is yourself. The only way that you'll uproot this and not be successful is if you are unable to stay focused and you don't have the discipline to continue working out. And you don't take the time to research every possible evolution at buds that you need to train for. I mean, you need to know, I mean, I didn't even have access to the internet the way that people do now. And in an era where it was like rumint, you know, rumor intelligence, I knew the four mile time runs, the two mile ocean swims, the obstacle course times. I knew of the vast majority of those testable gates because you have to train to that. And if you're not doing that,

you're wasting your time and you're wasting the military's time as well. So pull your head out of your a little bit on that one and use the tools that you have available for you right now. You can't find a mentor. Why do you need one? If you are the type of person that needs somebody to tell you what to do and how to do it and then hold your hand so you can be accountable, I'm here to tell you right now that the SEAL community is not for you. Having a mentor is great, not having one in your local area or one that you have access to locally is fucking irrelevant.

All right? The information's out there. Put together a plan. Train smartly. Focus your life. Focus your energy. Focus your efforts. And put something out there on the horizon for your goal.

And let's start small, graduating buds, not becoming a seal. That's like 18 more months of training on top of that. and you can shift that focus after buds. Let's start with graduating buds, and everything is pointed in that direction. Now, I don't know how that's going to impact your marriage, unless you are not open and honest with your future wife. Then I can tell you exactly how this is going to impact your marriage.

The amount of time you're going to need to dedicate to this particular goal is going to be immense. If you're not communicating with her why you want to do that, why you need to do that, the requirements of what it is that, you want to do. Again, you're wasting your fucking time. So overcommunicate early and involve her in this process. And you might find yourself at an interesting split in the road. She may want no part of this. And then you have a very hard life decision ahead of you. And I'm going to leave that to you to decide pros versus cons. But if you can't even change your your headspace about training and preparation for buds and she tells you she wants no part of this, you might be better

off finishing out your military time and just enjoying your married life with the woman that you love as opposed to gambling it on something where the odds are not stacked in your favor. So food for thought. Hopefully that helps. I'm not trying to talk you out of your goal. I would love nothing more than for you to be successful, but you're going to have to do it for yourself. Spend some time figuring out who you are and what you want to do and then put a plan together that is commensurate with those beliefs and who you are in what you want to do. And that's all I have for that question. Okay. What happened to me in Utah? Where do I begin? Let's start with this. I'm an idiot. I think most people would agree if they know me. So we're down at Glover's HQ. My wife, Leah,

who is a three-stripe, Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt, was teaching a seminar at the Fieldcraft HQ in Provo. and Mike and I were doing a little bit of content in the morning, and I remember sitting across from him at a table and feeling like a little bit of discomfort in my stomach. I remember the moment that was like, oh, that felt a little bit weird. I thought up until a couple hours after this, I thought this was a gas bubble. That's really what I thought it was.

And before anybody says, oh, that's ridiculous or idiotic, I opened with I'm an idiot, so we can agree upon that. So finish with the content. Leah was finishing up with the seminar. I didn't really know if I was going to be able to participate that people were out there and they were training. So you know what? I decided to roll afterwards. So I did about an hour of jiu-jitsu with my stomach, increasingly starting to get a little bit more uncomfortable. And again, not a stomach pain that I hadn't felt before, not a level of discomfort that I hadn't felt before. No alarm bells were going off for me. I thought I had a gas bubble. So we roll, end the seminar. By the end of the rolling, I was sitting in one of the chairs at the Fieldcraft H.Q. And I couldn't really sit up straight. And it was at that point that Leah was like, hey, what's going on here? And I had taken some Tums.

And we were going to drive the Bronco, which has been recovered from Moab and has been repaired. And is now back in Montana. I'm so happy it's back in Montana. And now I'm just going to invest the money in it that I probably should have done to begin with to prevent the damage from happening. but again, I'll circle back to the fact I open with I'm an idiot. So sometimes I have to learn by doing. She was going to drive, went to a drugstore, got an ant acid pill, like the most powerful antacid pill that you can take.

Well, she got a snack and she said, hey, if this doesn't make you feel any better, we're going to go to the hospital. Because by this point, I was having a little bit of difficulty standing up straight. I was kind of just sitting in the passenger seat of the Bronco. So fast forward about 30 minutes and guess what? I wasn't really feeling that much better. So I told her in my infinite wisdom, you know, just keep driving towards Salt Lake City because Provo is south for those of you're not familiar with the geography.

We're going to be driving towards a higher level of care. You know, what's the risk in driving north? It's not like we're driving, you know, you get north of Salt Lake City and you start like there's gapped areas, you know, whether it be in between Salt Lake City and Pocatello or Pocatello, Idaho Falls, all those things. Between Provo and Salt Lake, like, you're in humanity the entire time. I just figured, hey, the bigger we get, the closer we get to a bigger city, the better the care is going to be.

And we were at the, where were we? We were at the, it's like a Walgreens or something. She goes, oh, hey, I'll drive. I'm like, okay, cool, drive. And drove me straight to the hospital, an American fork. She totally swindled me. And I'm really happy that she did because I was able to get to the check-in counter at the ER and then was pretty much in the fetal position on the floor of the ER waiting room.

And a couple people went in before me. I got pulled in and kind of trying to describe the pain. Doctors put me on some pain medicine to help reduce the amount of pain that I was in and line me up for a CT scan. So go in for a CT scan. They pushed some iodine through, which was an interesting sensation, a little bit of warmth for about 20, 30 seconds. I don't know if I've ever had one of those.

I think they may have given me one of those when I was injured overseas, but it was so long ago, and honestly, I don't remember it that well. Come back, and the doc's like, hey, you have an obstruction and your small intestines. And then they started asking questions about previous abdominal injuries or whether or not I've had an abdominal surgery, which I never had. And I think that baffled them a little bit because apparently this, the type of blockage, one, if you've had an abdominal surgery, and this is. me repeating what the doctors said. If you've had an abdominal surgery where they interacted with

your intestines, the likelihood of something like this happening is way higher. But if you haven't, it really shouldn't be occurring. So I must have been asked about a previous abdominal surgery 10 times. Not because they didn't believe me, but every time a different person would come in, it was the number one question. So the decision was made to check me into the hospital for that night and in the morning I was scheduled to drink this fucking red potion of death. It's only red because they mixed it with cranberry juice. Um, but essentially, and I forget the name of it, and this is what if you, apparently elderly people will come in not uncommonly where their bowels are just not working. Like they haven't shit in two weeks, which I can't even fathom.

And they have you drink this stuff. And what it causes is like cramping in your, your abdomen and it basically works and flexes your stomach and pushes things through. It tastes horrendous. It's the red juice of death. And I started drinking it and almost immediately like my stomach started absolutely cramping. And I'd say like my pain at that level was creeping up to like a six or a seven. And I drank eight tenths of the of the fluid and I wasn't able to get any more in. And then for the next four hours,

I was at a nine and a half or ten out of ten on a pain scale. I sweat through the pants that I was wearing at the time. They had switched me out into a hospital gown, like full dripping athletic sweat from pain, unable to have anybody touch me. I couldn't stand up, couldn't really lean back. So I was at like this 45 degree angle, completely sweating through my clothes. They were giving me as much dilated as they could. And it was, oh my God.

absolutely gnarly to the point where, you know, the doctor came in and was asking me how I'm doing. I'm like, I didn't say anything, but I feel like he could probably tell how I was doing by looking at me. And I just said, hey, can you put me out or just cut this out of me? I don't know what this is anymore, but this is unbearable. Eventually, they moved me over to the ICU and were able to give me a dose of ketamine, which I did not enjoy. I have heard that people recreationally abuse ketamine, and I've heard people talk about the K-hole, that experience of being, like, shot into a different, what would it be, a different orbit or a different reality? I didn't get that sensation, but it was very disassociative. It felt like the hair inside of my ears was clapping.

That was that sense, as they pushed the ketamine and that sensation, as the pain meds kind of walk, wash over you. It was, I did not enjoy it. And I remember the room apparently was just bone quiet and I was telling Leah, why is it so loud in here? Why are people clapping? And it was this weird 15 minute ride. What I will say is my pain went to close to zero for the first time in hours. So that was great. I did not enjoy the disassociated effect of it. And again, not a doctor. I know that they use it for therapy. I was assuming they'd give people a smaller dose than the dose that I was given. But then right after that, I was scheduled to go into the OR.

And they were going to attempt to do an exploratory surgery laparoscopically. I guess there's a robot that they put on your left hand side. And there's three small incisions. So I guess they fill your stomach up with carbon dioxide, which makes sense because it creates that gap. There's a light in there. And I think there's some robotic arms that. allow them to do a certain level of articulation, not really familiar with exactly how that goes.

So the doctor did start with that, though, and I had to sign a bunch of consent forms because I knew they were going to start with that, and I knew there was the potential that they would totally open me up. So I started with the laparoscopy for clarity. I remember, so I remember being wheeled into the OR, being lifted over to the table in the OR, having my arms strapped to the side, and the anesthesiologist saying, hey, I'm going to give you something for the pain. then that's it. It's my first time under anesthesia, first time ever having surgery, zero sensation of falling asleep that I remember, and zero sensation of time passing. Super bizarre. Man, and when I woke up, it sucked. I had an NG tube, a nasal tube down the left,

my left nostril. My nostril was still bothering me a little bit. They kind of just inflame my sinuses. And that actually was, that was in for about a day and a half. and that was a rough, that was a rough road. That was very interesting getting out as well because they basically stand there and take a grip on it, tell you to bury your chin and hold your breath, and they pull out about two and a half feet of hose.

That was in your stomach. One out of one, do not recommend. So there's that. Come out of surgery and I know the doctor had talked to Leah, my wife, and explained a lot of the stuff. So I would think I was physically present for that, but not mentally present for that.

And they ended up having to open me up all the way. So essentially what had happened was there was scar tissue on the inside of my abdominal wall that had somehow wrapped itself around a portion of my small intestines and then like herniated on top of that. So it was basically a noose. And when the doctor laparoscopically went in, they could see the, I'm going to call it an obstruction, obviously noose is not a medical term, but they could see that cinching and about apparently two feet of my intestines beyond that

were very dark and discolored, almost black. So I believe his original thought was he was going to have to remove about two feet of my intestines. And from my understanding, when it goes that route, that's when things start getting really complicated for the rest of your life when it comes to abdominal issues and also your recovery. So when they opened me up, though, he liced or cut off the tissue that was constricting my intestines. And he said almost immediately the intestines went back to a normal color. So it wasn't dead, which is what he thought he was going to have to be dealing with. And it's hugely beneficial for me, like I said, from a recovery perspective or a surgical

complication perspective. So he focused on removing the scar tissue that had obstructed via just that cinching knot around my intestines. And I don't know what else they do. I've heard that they take all your intestines out and work your way through them. I don't know. I was in La La La Land with the breathing tube and, you know, down my throat and the NG tube as well, all those things.

So as far as it could have gone from my understanding, it was as good as could be. So he left everything in there, didn't have to do. like a dissection of the bowels or any of those things. Staple or sutured the way out. Staple me back up. I got about an eight and a half inch scar from just below my belly button to just underneath my sternum. Staples in it right now.

And then, you know, spent the next three and a half days in a hospital bed, which is just rough. You know, people are doing the best that they absolutely can to make sure that you're doing well. But it's impossible to rest in a hospital where they come in and are basically having business meetings every two hours. Pretty heavy pain meds. You know, I think, God, I got Demerol.

I got dilauded. I got ketamine. So mostly dilauded every two hours when I was in the surgical recovery room for the first two days. And then I started trying to wean myself off of that stuff. I was getting headaches. It was really weird, too. I would reach up and, like, feel the sweat on my forehead. And it was, like, greasy and oily.

And I think it's just your body processing all of this stuff out. But it makes it hard to rest. it slows down your digestion. And like their criteria for you to get out of the hospital is you have to be able to tolerate liquid in food. Obviously, you have to fart and you have to go to the bathroom. Number two for them to like exit criteria. Heavy pain meds slow all that stuff down. So yeah, that was a journey in and of itself.

But about three and a half days after that was able to get out of there, walked out under my own power, was not sprinting by any stretch. Cobbled my way out of there. Took three days to drive home from where we were. American Fork to Montana, finally got home completely off the pain meds for like the last four days. I'm limited to walking until I get the staples out, which will hopefully happen next week. Then I can do like some light problem. I don't even want to call it calisthenics. Maybe we can add a little bit of resistance for the next two to four weeks. And then they say after six weeks you should kind of be back up and running or at least able to move normally.

I don't know if that's actually the case. I don't know necessarily what to expect. I'm just super happy to be home. I made it home before Christmas. And, you know, I mentioned at the very beginning, you want to talk about a shift in perspective and what's important. You know, we were going to go out to our lakehouse and decorate the house and have family come out there and hang out and do a lot of Christmas stuff for the Christmas season. And by the time we left the hospital, we just wanted to fucking be home, you know, and took the

two overnights in the hotels and slowly worked our way. And by the time we got home, all we wanted to do is relax and just spend time together. And it's just funny how it carves all of the bullshit away. Like the decorations, I get that stuff. They're important. The presents, all of those things, all of that stuff can be very important. But who actually gives a shit at the end of the day? It's not going to make or break your life. So I had the most chill Christmas I think I've ever had with the fewest decorations and just had my kids there with me. my wife with me, my dad and his wife there with me. We went over to their house for Christmas. We didn't have to cook. And it was amazing. And it was more than I could have hoped for.

When I first got out of surgery that first day, I coughed, not because I wanted to. But that was one of the more painful things I've ever done in my life. Just that abdominal contraction into my mind. I was thinking, okay, nobody ever gets better from this. I'm never leaving this hospital. This is the worst pain anybody's ever experienced. It was brutal. And I had almost resolved myself to staying in that hospital over Christmas because I didn't think we were going to get out of there. And now I think I'm 10 days post-surgery and I'm able to walk.

I'm walking a couple miles a day, trying to stick with softer foods still, like, allow my stomach to get back up and running again and slowly every day pushing myself a little bit more, which brings me to, you know, why I was in the studio today to begin with. boredom like I joked about in the beginning is obviously true, but I want to push myself a little bit and just keep, you know, trying to move the needle to shorten the recovery time as much as possible smartly, not trying to put myself into the grave. But yeah, that's how my 2024 ended. I'll do a podcast maybe in the future about what I'm hoping for. I'm sorry, that's how my 2023 ended. I'll do a podcast

in the future about my goals for 2024. There's some stuff that, even from an outside of the medical emergency that I had from a medical perspective. I just had a bunch of panels done, and I'm going to take some, I got to change the course of a few things with both lifestyle, diet, rest, all of those things, some of the metrics that came backward, startling and stomach turning, to say the least. But I'll get into that in a different episode. But other than that, that's where I'm at. That's what happened from a non-medical perspective, who I can't give you the exact terminology. And I hope it never happens again. And I asked the doctor, you know, why do you think this happened? And he said, bad luck. And I guess that's good in one hand because it means that I wasn't

dealing with like some internal trauma, but bad because I'm worried like, do I have enough luck to make sure it doesn't happen again? Yeah. So I don't know. I necessarily view that one. But it doesn't look like there's anything I could do about it. But now I'm in total control of what I'm doing afterwards. And that is going to be a large portion of what 24 looks like for me. And on that, I'm going to shut up because this comes out Friday before New Year's Eve. So hopefully all of you have a good, safe, healthy entry into 2024. Don't be an asshole. Don't go out and get drunk and drink and drive. If you can go out and get drunk, that's totally fine. Have a designated driver, but don't ruin the early part of your 2024 and beyond with a bad

decision on New Year's Eve, please. And I say that as somebody's going to be sitting on the couch doing jack shit, probably in bed by 9 o'clock. So, See you guys on Monday with an episode that I recorded. The last one I recorded before ended up in the hospital. See you guys then.