Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Kegan Gill on Not Just Surviving but Thriving Again in Life EP 141

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. I started to have my brain treated at a physiological level. Dr. Michael Lewis and Dr. Mark Gordon are a couple of the physicians that are on the leading edge of this. And that's, how do we help people's brains heal at a physiological level, rather than just suppressing people with a bunch of pharmaceutical drugs that essentially just suppress symptoms and over time really aggravate the situation.

Starting point is 00:00:26 So, I'm kind of on this new path to holistic healing and I've gotten access and it's been life-changing. I'm just kind of beginning this new journey in a lot of ways, but for the first time I have hope again in my life. I have hope that I'm not only going to just survive, but thrive again in my life. Thrive is a parent and a husband, and it's incredibly encouraging to have the support that I have now, and know that there's these options out there

Starting point is 00:00:49 that I don't have to be just stuck on a bunch of drugs through my life feeling miserable. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality

Starting point is 00:01:12 so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 141 of PassionStruck. Recently ranked as one of the top 50 most inspirational podcasts in the world. Thank you to each and every one of you who comes back weekly. To listen and learn, how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And in case you missed my interview from yesterday, I had on Admiral James Stavridas, the former

Starting point is 00:02:00 NATO Supreme Commander from 2009 to 2013 and we discuss his new book to risk it all and did its official launch where we discuss leaders ranging from Stephen Decatur to Admiral Halsey to Admiral Michelle Howard and so much more. Such a great episode, please go check it out if you haven't had a chance to listen to it. And if you missed my solo episode from last Friday, it was on our belief system and how that influences who we are. I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews. We now have globally over 8,000 of them on iTunes alone. It means so much to us when you give us those ratings. And I know both we and our guests love to hear your comments.

Starting point is 00:02:44 And if you love today's episode yesterdays or any of the others that you've listened to, please forward them to your friend and family members and share this inspirational podcast. Now let's talk about today's guest, Keegan Smurf-Gill is a former US Navy F-18E Strike Fighter pilot. He endured the fastest-survived ejection in the history of naval aviation. Despite devastating injuries, he returned to flying super hornets until the effects of his traumatic rand injuries and diagnosis of delayed onset PTSD ending his military career. He is now on the journey to heal mind, body, and soul. And in our interview, we discuss the four by four by 48 challenge, which is running four miles

Starting point is 00:03:32 every four hours for 48 hours. And it was during that competition that he and I first met. We go into that experience and the benefits that we both got from being around so many veterans who were also doing the event with us. We discussed the events leading up to his ejection from a spider, his heroine two hours infrigedly cold shark-infested waters. We go into the elements of his rescue and the extensive recovery that he endured. We go into how he earned his way back to flight status, but realizing there were long-term

Starting point is 00:04:06 medical issues posied by the TBI's that would go on to prevent him from further flight operations. What he and the Navy learned from his mishap and how his life is different today, thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your hosting guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so excited to welcome my friend, Keegan Gill, the PassionStruck podcast.

Starting point is 00:04:37 How's it going, Keegan? Great job. Thanks for having me on. It seems like yesterday that you and I were doing the 4x48 at Andrew Mars property, but man, that was the beginning of March. What were some of your favorite takeaways from that event? Well, that was an incredible event where we met. I think some of my favorite takeaways were largely

Starting point is 00:05:01 the people that I met there like yourself, just being in a community of people that had been through similar situations and had some similar struggles, post-military service, was incredibly powerful in itself, so that was a big one for me definitely. I also left the event with sort of this whole new network of support, not only through the people that I met there, but also through the Warrior Angel Foundation and that they're basically treating me like a Red Bull

Starting point is 00:05:32 athlete or something now with medical care that's been pretty refreshing and been getting access to a lot of medalities that one, I didn't even know existed, but have been hugely helpful in improving my health overall. My favorite things I have to say about the experience was I didn't realize that we were gonna have Native Americans there until just before the event.

Starting point is 00:05:58 I didn't realize the significance of them being there until it was probably the last night before we did our final couple of runs. And I was talking to one of the ladies who had come in from Miami, and she had actually prophesized about this event 10 years before that, which is why she was there. The chief who was there saw this event 25 years ago and was taking this as his opportunity on behalf of his nation to declare peace to the US military when they brought out a crazy horses peace pipe and then offered it up to Chris Miller, the former Secretary of Defense. I had no idea how meaningful an event we were witnessing there. It was truly history.

Starting point is 00:06:49 There was something special in the air, and I didn't realize all of that backstory myself while I was at the event, but there was no doubt there was something incredibly powerful going on there. And I felt it in the run, I felt it in the atmosphere, the people being on the Comanche warrior land that we were on. And it was just like everything had aligned for that

Starting point is 00:07:12 weekend. And it was something incredibly powerful. It certainly was. So was my having the opportunity to spend four of those 48 miles with you on one of those segments, and I think that was one of my favorite things about the event is that each segment, I got to spend it with a completely different veteran, which to me was a great way to get to know someone in a relatively short period of time. But while we were there, you told me your amazing story. Keegan is a former F-18 super hornet pilot. And on one faithful day was doing some dogfighting,

Starting point is 00:07:57 and maybe you can walk them through the evolutions that would happen. the evolutions of what happened? Yeah, absolutely. So it was January 15, 2014. I had been in my squatter and long enough to start not feeling like the new guy anymore, starting to get the hang of things. And the day kind of started like most other days, just busy morning of planning and mission planning

Starting point is 00:08:23 and doing my ground jobs and all that. And then I was going to go out and I was going to get to fly some air combat maneuvering with my commanding officer, my skipper. And we took off. We did a few air to air refueling plugs off one of the aircraft that had a ARS refueling pod that had just come out of maintenance. And so we checked that pod up airborne doing some air to air refueling pod that had just come out of maintenance. And so we checked that pod up airborne doing some air air refueling.

Starting point is 00:08:48 That all went really smoothly. And we had some extra gas and some extra time. So the skipper and myself were going to go make the best of it. He was in a jet. I was in a jet. And we went off into a working year. And we set up for some high aspect BFM, which is one of the most fun things you can

Starting point is 00:09:05 do in a fighter jet. And it's probably what a lot of people think is sort of the epitome of what it is to fly a fighter jet. And that is fighting another jet, trying to shoot them down. In this case, for pretend, but for training within a visual arena. So within a few miles of each other, and's kind of that old fashioned dog fighting. So we're ripping around Max performing the jet pulling a lot of G's trying to engage weapon systems and defensive systems and run a radar and all these systems of the jet and it can be a little overwhelming but it's incredibly fun. And so we had done four or five sets that day and it kind

Starting point is 00:09:44 of when is expected, my skipper was smoking me on every single set, but that's kind of how the Navy trains you, as you're aware, are where is kind of throw you in over your head and you figure it out. I had also just received my Qualifications the prior week or so with what's called the Jehemix helmet, which is a joint helmet mounted queuing system,

Starting point is 00:10:04 which is just a big helmet with a visor on it that gives you all of your displays. So wherever you turn your head, you can see all the weapons displays and your airspeed and your altitude and everything. And it gives you a lot of ability, especially when you're fighting a jet, you can kind of look over your shoulder

Starting point is 00:10:21 and engage weapon systems. That's a pretty incredible feature. So I was still kind of getting used to a new piece of gear. And like any new piece of gear, especially one this complex, it takes some practice to get fully used to it and get back into a habit pattern with it. We had set up for our last set. We're at 12,500 feet. We had hit Joker fuel and reset our bingo bugs down to bingo, meaning we were just about out of gas, but we had just enough time for one more round

Starting point is 00:10:47 of this dogfighting. And we set up, we were down to 12,500 feet, a little faster than we normally set up, but no big deal. At this point, I'm over two nautical miles above the earth. I'm not really thinking about the ground as a big factor in this fight, which I should have been retrospectively.

Starting point is 00:11:06 But he called the fights on. We pitched in. I went up to full max afterburner and I pitched my jet in towards him. And our jets kind of shot in each other. And as we cross paths, which is called at the merge, I was about 30 degrees nose low and partially inverted. So I was already partially through this turn and kind of distracted trying to shoot my skipper down using that helmet. I didn't fully realize how fast I had gotten

Starting point is 00:11:32 in just those few seconds from when we started the fight. And I opted to maneuver the jet nose low. And when I did so, the jet rapidly accelerated. And when I was about bullseye nose low, so this thing has pointed straight down in this dive from this basically a split esponuber that I had done. All the sudden, a system on the jet, the G limiter kicked in with what's called the G bucket. And it's the speed in the transonic speed reason, which is right before you break the speed of sound. There's an incredible amount of parasitic drag acting on the aircraft.

Starting point is 00:12:08 And so that system, sensing that I was potentially going to overstress the aircraft, reduced the amount of G that I was pulling. So I went from a max performance really hard pull in the jet, where my head and helmet combined weight over 160 pounds, that I could feel all that weight acting on my head and helmet combined weighed over 160 pounds that I could feel all that weight acting in my head and my body. And all of a sudden that eased up to about half of the normal, the normal G, which is the equivalent

Starting point is 00:12:33 of going around a sharp corner in a sparse car, and then all of a sudden having the steering wheel kick back halfway. And sort of at the apex of that turn, you can go skidding off the road and crashing to a tree. But in my case, I'm in the sky. And now all of a sudden, I'm just diving at the ocean. We will be right back to my interview with Keegan Gill.

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Starting point is 00:14:04 for up to 60% off your subscription, Babel. Language for Life. Now, back to my interview with Keegan Goal. This all, again, happens just a few seconds. So, had I thought of it quickly enough, I could have reached down and there's a paddle switch that I could have overridden that system to override the G-limiter, but I just had a few seconds to figure out my reaction time was not what it needed to be to enable that feature. So I basically was just stuck in a dive at the ocean thinking that the jet just wasn't turning the way it was supposed to. Maybe there was a

Starting point is 00:14:37 malfunction in the flight control system. That's kind of what I thought. I pulled the throttle to idle. I put out the speed brake to try to slow the jet and at this point I'm at 51 degrees nose low, so a pretty steep dive at about 2,000 feet above the ocean Going 604 knots indicated airspeed, which is equivalent of 695 miles per hour or 0.95 indicated Mach which is 95% the speed of sound. So I'm basically, I am at the sound barrier. And at that point, my only option was to get out of the jet. And two seconds before the jet impacted the water, I pulled the ejection handle.

Starting point is 00:15:14 And coming out at that speed was devastating on my body. I mean, if you've ever stuck your arm out of a window on a car going about 70 on the highway, you know that feeling of parasitic drag acting on your body, how it pushes your arm back forcefully. Well, imagine that force at 700 miles per hour that I was at, which is exponentially stronger. So 100 times stronger than that force, you'd feel at 70 miles per hour essentially. And when my body impacted that, I mean, it ripped off my helmet. I got a traumatic brain injury from my head smashing. I broke my neck.

Starting point is 00:15:49 I broke my left scapula, bilateral humorous fractures. So both my upper arms were fractured. My left radius and all know was fractured. And basically, my radius was just shattered to pieces. Both my tip-fibs and both my lower legs were just shattered apart. I lost some chunks of the bone out of my tibia into the ocean forever and I had a variety of nerve damage. I had my break your artery torn open and I was just bashed and beaten. Normal ejections pretty violent. There's an instantaneous force of about 50 Gs when that rocket ignites under your butt to get you out of the cockpit.

Starting point is 00:16:26 And less than a half a second, people will commonly have spinal injuries. They'll have compression of their neck and their spine. And a lot of guys will permanently lose like an inch off their stature. And that's an enormous injection going less than 200 knots straight and level in a controlled scenario while I was way outside the envelope for an injection, but I didn't really have a choice. It was either get out if I could or die for sure. And so that just destroyed my body. My parachute opened just enough to keep me from dying on impact with the water. And this is January and off the coast of Virginia Beach over the Atlantic Ocean and the water

Starting point is 00:17:06 temperature that day at the nearby buoy was 37 degrees Fahrenheit. So just about ice water and I was wearing a dry suit because we do that in case we do have to go into the ocean on an ejection like this, but I had ejected so fast that my dry suit had shred open. And I mean, the gear on my vassette even ripped off that force that I hit was like hitting an explosion, a powerful explosion with my body. So now I'm just tattered, I'm broken up.

Starting point is 00:17:35 I landed in the cold ocean water and ocean water at that temperature, it feels like needles on your skin. And when your head gets in it, if you've ever had a brain freeze from drinking a slurpee too fast, that's the sensation that you get on your head. But I didn't really have any ability to swim now with my arms and legs destroyed. Fortunately, my LPU, which is a little life preserver unit around your neck, that automatically

Starting point is 00:18:00 inflated and that helped to give my head some buoyancy and occasionally get a breath of air. My parachute, which had just saved my life sunk under the current of the ocean, the sea state that day was not the most rough it could be out in the ocean but it was still the open ocean in January and things were moving around. There's big waves and smashing me around and as that current caught hold of my parachute, it sunk under and started to drag me under the water. And if you've ever had that sensation where you need a breath of air and you can't get one, well, that was just happening over and over and over again. And I spent the next hour

Starting point is 00:18:38 and a half plus, just basically being drowned alive. There's a system on our parachute risers that connect into our harness that are supposed to disconnect a parachute automatically for whatever reason, one of those sewers units fired but didn't disconnect and then the other one didn't even fire. So that automatic system didn't function and I had no ability to reach up and disconnect the parachute.

Starting point is 00:19:11 And so now I'm just getting drowned alive. Fortunately my skipper saw where I went down. He assumed a onsen commander. He dropped a mark on my position. He got down as low as he could to keep an eye on me. He coordinated with air traffic control and so there were multiple other aircraft coming in, air traffic control knew, and he spotted a fishing vessel that was about a mile from my position. And he tried getting a hold of them on maritime guard. They weren't initially answering. So he got really fast and really low. And he stumped the bow of their boat,

Starting point is 00:19:38 which got their attention really quickly. And they spun up maritime guard, and he coordinated to get them over to my position. Once they got there, he was out of gas. He had to bingo back to the shore to an associaena and some other aircraft had arrived overhead to keep an eye on me through their flares, which is like a fancy camera on F-18. And at this point, the Coast Guard had been notified and there were two Navy helicopters coming in my position. The fishing vessel, at least, they tried to throw a rope out and help me, but the rope was just getting tangled

Starting point is 00:20:12 in the paracord and around my neck. It was making matters worse. And, but luckily, they gave me a good visual position of where I was at because my helmet had ripped off in the ejection, which has like a white reflective cover on it and for whatever reason the beacon did not function the way it was supposed to that was on me but that boat was able to give me give a visual reference to where I was to everybody that was inbound and eventually after roughly an hour and a half to two hours depending on which report I read on it these other helicopters showed up.

Starting point is 00:20:46 One was from HSC-9 operating off an aircraft carrier that was out in the Atlantic at that point nearby. And the other one was from HSC-28 and they were actually out to do a weapons exercise with some of the SEAL team folks. And they diverted their mission and came my way. And they both got there about the same time. And HSC-9 thought their rescue swimmer and their crew had thought

Starting point is 00:21:12 I was on the fishing boat itself. And so there was some sort of miscommunication that led them to leave that. And in the meantime, HSC-28 arrived in their H60 Seahawk Navy helicopter. And they saw that the other rescue swimmer and the other helicopter were confused in my position and they were looking around for where I was at and they spotted me. I think it was the pilot of the HSC 28 helicopter initially spotted me and the rescue swimmer had been on a mission to save a Navy H-53 C-Dragon helicopter that had gone down full of marines in roughly the same area. And because of the sea state and the frigid cold water, unfortunately everybody in that helicopter crash, I think, perished that she should try to rescue. And so he was coming off a really bad prior week. He was at this point where he should have probably had some leave to go collect his thoughts.

Starting point is 00:22:10 But he was there that day in this helicopter, ready to jump back in the freezing cold Atlantic ocean to save me. And he took some lessons learned from that previous weeks helicopter crash and applied them to my situation. He got in, they got the helicopter as close as they could in my position. He jumped in.

Starting point is 00:22:29 And once he got in that cold ocean water, he swam up to me. And he hooked into my D-ring, which is like a titanium carabiner on my harness. He hooked into me. And he said, as he hooked into me, that parachute just started dragging both of us underwater. And despite him being an elite rescue swimmer swimming as hard as he could, it was still pulling both of us under the water. And he said he went underwater. He

Starting point is 00:22:53 could just he's used to training in the pool for a sarsan area. And going underwater, you can see the bottom of the pool. He said when he dunked his head under this water, all he just saw was just the blue of this beneath us with that parachute that was yanking us. So he got underwater. He used his knife to cut all those paracord sluice and he threw a strap on me and he got me back into the helicopter as quickly as he could. Cheat said on the right up, we were just spinning around like crazy and sway in all over the place and they got me from, from the water up into the helicopter and onto a backboard to stabilize me.

Starting point is 00:23:31 And she said that, that ride to the hospital for a, it might have been 30, 45 minutes, but he said it seemed like five hours because he was just trying to keep me alive and conscious. At one moment, I'd be yelling and screaming, and the next moment, I'd be out, blacked out, and he would rub my sternum with the rest of the crew in the back of the helicopter. And I would come to you, and that kind of repeated over

Starting point is 00:23:54 and over the whole ride of just me kind of being on the verge of dying the whole way. They got me to a level one trauma center, at Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia's level one trauma center hospital. And they got me out of the helicopter. And luckily the dream team was on that day. Some of the best surgeons in the world happen to be all on the same shift. And they started to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. They treated me for hypothermia. My core body temperature, once I got to the hospital, was 87 degrees Fahrenheit.

Starting point is 00:24:28 So I should have been dead from the hypothermia. I should have blood to death, but fortunately, because my dry suited shredded open and filled with ocean water while that being filled with icy cold sea water almost killed me as well, that hypothermia actually kept me from bleeding to death from my torn open breaky lottery and my right arm and my open fractures

Starting point is 00:24:51 and my legs. And they said had my dry suit function the way it was supposed to and not ripped open, I would have blended death way before the helicopters ever showed up. So they got me in. Another just wild miracle of this whole story and they started treating me for the hypothermia. My lungs were full of water. So they were treating me for that.

Starting point is 00:25:13 I was experiencing kidney failure from a rabbiomyelosis. Basically all that muscle damage and stress on my body was overwhelming. My kidneys. So they were treating me for all that. They induced a coma, and then I spent the next week undergoing over a dozen surgeries. They reconstructed my skeleton with titanium rods, titanium screws, steel plates. If you see my X-ray now,

Starting point is 00:25:40 I look like an undersized Wolverine basically. But they got me back together. Then I spent the next week right now I look like a undersized Wolverine basically. But they got me back together. Then I spent the next week where they didn't know if I was gonna live and it didn't look good and the doctors kept coming into my friends and family and squadron mates that were in the waiting room and saying it doesn't look like he's gonna live. And if he does, he's gonna be a vegetable,

Starting point is 00:26:02 he's not gonna fly, he's not gonna walk. And it didn't look good at all. They had taken me out of that in Dooscombe, but now I was just in a coma and not coming out of it, not responsive whatsoever. That kept going on and they kept saying I wasn't going to make it. One of the junior officers in my squadron, another pilot, they were all in there just, you know, with the weight of the situation, kind of weighing over everybody, and Basil is his call sign.

Starting point is 00:26:32 He said, he's a scrappy motherfucker. He'll be all right. And so they took that scrappy and they shortened it down to smurf, so that kind of became my call sign out of it. But a week later, and I came too, and I didn't know how I got there. I was completely disoriented. I thought I was fine.

Starting point is 00:26:53 I remember the first sign that something was wrong was I was trying to get out of the bed. And I thought that the little wool blanket that was over me was made out of lead or something, I could not get it off of me. And then I started to realize that I was paralyzed. And anyways, the doctors eventually came in after I had stabilized in the ICU and they told me I was never going to walk again. My flying career was over. And something inside me said, I'm going to

Starting point is 00:27:23 prove you all wrong. And every day I started working to just, you know, try to wiggle a little bit, try to scoot a little bit, get a little bit of function. And week after week and motivated by trying to get out of the terrible hospital food that I was eating, I started to get a little bit better. And it took three months. I was moved down to the Richmond, Virginia, VA, a polytraumatic center they had at the hospital. And then I spent every day all day doing therapy. I was doing speech therapy, vision therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy,

Starting point is 00:28:00 kinesiotherapy, and everything you can think of to try to get better. And little by little things just started turning on. And after three months I could walk on a walker, I had limited use of my arms. And then I continued my therapy outside doing outpatient therapy to Naval Hospital Portsmouth. And my buddy Tom Fistie, he took me into his house and basically adopted me and him and Vinnie, another friend of pilot, they started taking care of me. And I had a ton of support from the strike fighter community

Starting point is 00:28:35 of people wanting me to get back at it and get better. Didn't look good, I could barely walk up and down the stairs. I was still on a walker. And fortunately, one of the department heads in my squadron, Uncle Smugs, his wife is affectionately known as Ant Smugs. She was a physical therapist and she started working with me one on one kind of outside the clinic and she showed up day one and she had a nalgean bottle and on the side of it said patient's tears. So I kind of got the impression of what this was going to be like with her. And on the side of it said, patience tears. So I kind of got the impression of what this was gonna be

Starting point is 00:29:06 like with there. And she showed up first day and I was walking with a cane at this point. She grabbed that cane. She said, I wanna see you walking with that. She snatched it away. And then she proceeded to just kick the hell out of me every day that I went into sear and I loved it.

Starting point is 00:29:22 I was really big into fitness before this. I think that's part of the reason I lived is really big into CrossFit and running. I was fit and short and stocky. I think that saved my life initially and I think it also helped make the recovery a little easier. Tween Aunt Smugs working with me. My friend Aaron, call sign Spacoli, he started taking me out surfing, along with some other friends, Richard Neal and a bunch of guys in Virginia Beach. And I remember the first time going out, I couldn't even, I could hardly get my wetsuit on my upper body was so weak. But I still went out, we went out one day out in the outer banks and it was probably like

Starting point is 00:30:01 10 to 12 feet of heavy waves. And I didn't even use a surfboard that day, but I just swam out. And I got smashed by this huge wave and held under for a long time. And as I came to the surface, I got smashed under again right before I got a breath. And I made it through and I popped up and I had a big smile on my face. I was thinking maybe that would trigger all the terrible stuff that just happened to me, but for whatever reason I just was smiling about it and little by little I was able to start surfing. My friends Pecoly started taking me mountain biking and started doing that. I could barely use the front brake. I could barely ride the bike, but I was out there doing downhill mountain biking with him. And I kept falling off and getting smashed up, but I was out there doing downhill mountain biking with him. And I kept falling off and getting smashed up, but these were all the things I was doing

Starting point is 00:30:49 to get better. I was going to yoga. I was eating really well. I was eating a lot of plant-based foods and nutritionist stuff. And little by little, I got better. And after two years, I was maxing out the Navy's PRT again. I was maxing out the Navy's PRT again, I was feeling great and mentally I felt good. I'd undergone a lot of neurological assessments and all the test-known

Starting point is 00:31:12 to man I had the tallest stack of medical waivers possible for NAMI so I could get my flight physical back and eventually the command I was at pushed for me to go back and I went back to flying super hornets. And I went back through the F-18 training and I was back at the fleet with FFA-136 out in ASL-MOR and I thought everything was good again. I started to experience some stuff that I mostly brushed off when it was happening, just assuming, well, I'm still getting better, I'm still healing. Went from like little maybe mood and personality things and memory lapses and cognitive impairments. One day kind of manifested pretty poorly while I was doing a weapon shoot at Tindle Air

Starting point is 00:31:57 Force Base. We were down there on a detachment with our squadron and I had done a a life fire exercise that day using an A9 Mike sidewinder missile that I shot at a drone and after that I went and got to fight a F-22 Raptor from the Hawaiian Raptors in what's called DACC, which is a similar air combat training. So we were basically doing dogfighting. It was me and this other F-22 Raptor and getting to see that thing move up close and it's like a spaceship the way that thing can move. I remembered when I came back,

Starting point is 00:32:30 all the fighting of the Raptor and that part of the flight but I was watching my tapes in the debrief and I realized I didn't remember hardly anything from a missile shoot. So I had this massive memory lapse which was pretty concerning. I went back to the hotel that night and I got some sleep and thinking

Starting point is 00:32:45 maybe I just need to get some rest. The next day I was on duty and kind of pushed through the day and I wasn't feeling great but I made it through the duty day and that night I went back to my hotel room and the floor was pulsing under me. I had vertigo. I was trying to do the math to set my alarm clock on my phone and I could not do the math, which I should have been able to do. And so that's the point I really realized something was bad and there had been a common problem in the super hornets of a decompression sickness issue

Starting point is 00:33:17 caused by the environmental control system. So there had been some faulty mechanical functioning on some of the environmental control systems, which controlled the pressurization of the cabin. And what was happening to some pilots and air crew was when the cabin would rapidly fluctuate or lose pressure, it can cause decompression sickness, which people might be familiar with if you're a scuba diver. If you come back up too quickly to the surface, it can cause nitrogen in your blood to come out a solution and create these little tiny bubbles. And if those get in your joints, you get the bends

Starting point is 00:33:55 and it's uncomfortable and painful, but if those little bubbles form in your brain, that's what the Navy calls type 2 decompression sickness. And that can cause all sorts of mental dysfunction. Like I thought I was experiencing potentially caused by it. It can even kill you. It can basically give you an aneurysm if those bubbles form in the right spot or the wrong spot. So I thought maybe I had decompression sickness. I contacted the Squadron Safety Officer.

Starting point is 00:34:22 They rushed me to, I think, as Mayport dive face, nearby Tindle Air Force base there, it's a Navy dive base and they had a hyperbarek chamber. So they put me in the pressure chamber and they squeezed me over the course of several hours, I was breathing pure oxygen. I started to feel better as I came out of it and I kind of went from the sort of zombie mode that I was in and kind of got a little sense of humor back and started to feel okay and the doc there was like hey maybe you had decompression sickness we don't know but looking at your medical history there might be more going on here so they advise that when I got back to Le Mansur that I went and saw the the docs which as a pilot you never want to hear that because that could

Starting point is 00:35:02 be the end of your career but I didn't want to injure anybody. I didn't want to crash a jet again. I didn't want to be the cause of something terrible happening because I ignored my medical issues getting worse. So I reluctantly went in when I got back from the attachment and spoke with the medical staff and they started treating me. Initially, they didn't really know what to make of it. I had an incredibly complex background in medical history and if you saw my medical records, it's like a stack of encyclopedia

Starting point is 00:35:33 Britannica, this massive pile of medical records. So the doc started trying to dig through all that and what time they had and try to figure out what to do. They sent me down to Stanford University, and I underwent a couple more surgeries to address some of the pain issues I was having from some nerve damage in my left leg. And before long, they had a diagnosis of delayed onset PTSD and started using a variety of different medications to treat that.

Starting point is 00:36:03 And at this point, I started going into psychosis and things got really bizarre. I mean, kind of reality in my imagination started to blend together and I kind of went through a pretty rough time. Luckily, my wife, she was taking care of me like a baby. We had just had a newborn son. He was not even a few months old and now my wife is trying to manage him and take care of me who is a baby essentially mental function wise, but I could use a phone, I can drive a car, I can get access to her bank account,

Starting point is 00:36:43 it's incredibly difficult for her. And the medical staff on base really wanted to hospitalize me for mental health, but fortunately she kept me out of that facility. And as time went on, things weren't getting better. There was a point I was contemplating suicide. Really the only thing that kept me from taking the pistol out of my end table by our bed was the fact that my wife and my son were sleeping next to me. Um, really the only thing that kept me from taking the pistol out of my end table, uh, by our bed was the fact that my wife and my son were sleeping next to me,

Starting point is 00:37:09 and I didn't want to wake him up. And luckily that was just a little bit of hope that I needed to get through that. And eventually I was put through a medical board. And uh, that's a process I wouldn't wish on anybody and fortunately made it through after having to go to appeals and fight through that whole system that is just riddled with cracks for people to fall through it seemed. And luckily I came out of the other side. I was medically retired from the Navy and I moved back to Northern Michigan with my family. And then I spent several years struggling with these psychoses in and out of various degrees and mental functions.

Starting point is 00:37:51 Some days I would feel okay. Other days things got way worse and I actually went into the worst psychosis I had been in to the point where my wife had to rush me to an emergency room. She found me, I had shaved off most of my hair and chunks. I had shaved off my beard. I shaved off both my eyebrows for some reason. I was completely naked other than I had a garbage bag around my shoulders like a cape. And I was about to go out into the Northern Michigan February snowy weather, dress like that to fight crime.

Starting point is 00:38:23 And my wife was like, okay, this is really bad. And she got me to the ER, and then I spent the next month living in a VA inpatient facility, which was another exposure. Some really poor treatment of veterans that I saw and experience myself that was pretty disheartening. And fortunately, I got out of there

Starting point is 00:38:46 with the advocacy of my family and my wife and my parents. They all try to get me out as best they could. My mom is a physician, my dad's in healthcare. My wife is a trauma nurse. She worked in the ER for years. And so they had their combined medical experience to get me out of there despite the hospital not really wanting to let me go. And had I not had them advocating for me,

Starting point is 00:39:11 I mean, I would have been stuck in that place for who knows how long undergoing a lot of treatment that I don't think anybody deserves. You're kind of forced on drugs, and when you don't wanna take some of the drugs because they make you feel worse, they'll hold you down and they'll inject you with held-all, which feels like fire ants are trying to eat their way out from inside your skin. And you're incredibly restless, like you cannot, if you've ever had like a restless arm or

Starting point is 00:39:37 a restless leg, it makes you feel like that all over. And all you want to do is run and scream and get out of your own body. And that's the kind of medicine they're giving you to try to help you heal. Waking you up every 15 minutes with a flashlight in your face, feeding you just abysmal food. And so all these basic staples of what you really need to heal your brain and your body, when you're at the lowest point in your life, you're just not getting there. You're not getting sleep. It's noisy.

Starting point is 00:40:06 There's people yelling and moaning in the hallways and there's other people in your room. There's people waking up at the flashlight when you finally do fall asleep. And it's just, it's not a place to heal. Unfortunately, I got out of there and I spent the next several months regaining a little more function. And I really struggled

Starting point is 00:40:28 for years. And in and out of these psychosis states, getting angry, the answer was always just more drugs, more pharmaceutical drugs. And the more I took the worst I felt, and I had become depressed and angry and short tempered. And fortunately, I discovered the world of psychedelics. And I did a guided psilocybin retreat that I had found locally. And it kind of reset my brain. And it got me out of some of these negative behavior patterns that I had been entrenched in.

Starting point is 00:41:02 And these negative moods and everything that I had been entrenched in and these negative moods and everything that I had really just become. And it put me on a new path to getting off the pharmaceutical drugs that I was on. I got off all of that kind of on my own and because every time I wanted to see the psychiatry, people they said I had to be on these things and that was the only way forward

Starting point is 00:41:21 and that was my new normal in my life and to get used to it. And that's the best they could do. I didn't accept the answer. Kind of the way I didn't accept the doctors answers when they said I would never fly again or walk again. And I kind of set off to prove them wrong again and to do better for myself and for my family. A lot of healthy eating, a lot of physical activity,

Starting point is 00:41:42 a lot of the basic things that should be the foundation of everybody's health, I really pursued. And then I discovered vet solutions and I sent them an email because I had heard about their psychedelic retreat and they're the ones that put me in contact with Warrior Angel Foundation. And I put together a fundraiser page to for that event and I ended up getting invited down by Adam and Andrew. And then I had that incredible experience there, not only the spiritual experience that that was in the community of people I met,

Starting point is 00:42:15 but and then left with just this tremendous amount of support in all these access to medallys that I didn't even know existed. Some of the nutraceuticals that they put me on. And they started checking my blood, my lab work with really great detail, checking on my hormone levels, and started giving me treatment for anything that was out of balance in regards to those things.

Starting point is 00:42:42 And I started to have my brain treated at a physiological level. Dr. Michael Lewis and Dr. Mark Gordon are a couple of the physicians that are on the leading edge of this. How do we help people's brains heal at a physiological level rather than just suppressing people with a bunch of pharmaceutical drugs that essentially just suppress symptoms and over time really aggravate the situation. So I'm kind of on this new path to holistic healing and I've gotten access and it's been life-changing. And here I am. I'm just kind of beginning this new journey in a lot of ways, but for the first time I have hope again in my life. I have hope that I'm not only going to just survive, but thrive again in life,

Starting point is 00:43:25 in thrive as a parent, in a husband, and I don't know what my future is at this point. I've just kind of been waking up from the fog, but it's incredibly encouraging to have the support that I have now and know that there's these options out there that I don't have to be just stuck on a bunch of drugs through my life feeling miserable. I don't even know where to start, Kigin. I mean, that is just one of the most remarkable stories. And when you look at all the events that transpired, it's a complete miracle that you're even alive today. Definitely. But one of the things I know and you alluded to it is that the force of ejection is extremely violent.

Starting point is 00:44:11 It's violent enough to compress the spine. Did you end up losing any height after the ejection? And if so, has any of that been permanent? So fortunately, I had a wrestler neck. I was a wrestler in high school. I'd been very active with CrossFit and Olympic lifting. And I was already a short guy. I was 5'7 and I weighed about 180 pounds.

Starting point is 00:44:33 So I was pretty stocked the build. And I think that prevented me from, you know, sustaining worse neck injury than I did. I did lose a little bit of height. I'm maybe a quarter to a half inch shorter than I did. I did lose a little bit of height. I've maybe a quarter to a half inch shorter than I was before. I did lose a little bit of height, which is a bummer, because I was already short. I know that feeling very well myself. So what was your biggest fear about ejecting before the mishap and did that change after the mishap?

Starting point is 00:45:09 I didn't really fear ejection. I always had it in the back of my mind as a possibility. There was actually one of the physiology courses that I went through. There was a, I think it was just Photoshop, but there was a picture of a guy and he was in an ejection seat and there was a, there was a, basically a vape, the vapors were coming off from like he was breaking the speed of sound in this ejection seat. And I think it was just a, you know, the Navy and put it, they'd Photoshopped this picture, but I had seen that and I thought, man, that would be an incredible thing to survive. And this is before my ejection, not that I wanted to be that person, but I also had in the back of my mind, if I ever have to do that, what can I do now to prepare for the stress that that would place on my body?

Starting point is 00:45:58 And that also helped to fuel my workouts and my efforts. I wanted to be in the condition that I could survive if I ever had to do that. It was way worse than I could have ever imagined what you'd have to actually go through in an ejection. And I was at the extreme limits of what's even survivable. That moment when you pulled the handles and you knew you were going to eject, what was your biggest fear at that point when you were leaving the aircraft? I had the ground rush of the ocean coming up at me.

Starting point is 00:46:30 So I was only about 2000 feet. I was literally two seconds before impacting the water. So my biggest fear was if I don't pull that handle, I'm going to die for sure right now. So my fear was dying on impact of the ocean. So pulling the handle That seemed like the way out. So I wasn't afraid to pull the handle. I was afraid to crash into the ocean. Well, I have no idea how you survived in the water for that long. I was stationed up at Newport and we had to do damage control

Starting point is 00:47:02 Simulations. I can't even imagine being in those conditions as long as you were. Did you fear sharks or anything else when you were in the water? So kind of a funny story about the shark. My buddy Tommy, Carl Sine Fistie, was on SDO the morning of my ejection, which basically means he sets at the desk and he coordinates the flight schedule and he runs the radio and he's there in case there is a mishap, he can

Starting point is 00:47:29 help coordinate. And something funny that Tommy did is he, on the whiteboard behind the SDO desk, he had put up a shark tracker and he had an app on his phone called Shark Tracker, which is through OSearch, which is like ocean and research stuck together in one word. And what they do is they go out and they tag these sharks with GPS tags and they keep track of them. They'll take them out of the water, they'll measure them, the way up, the name them, and they put a tag on them and that way they can track their activity for research purposes. And so there was that day, Mary Lee, who was 16 foot, she was, I think at the point, this point, she was about 3,500 pounds. And she was right underneath my working area where I was going to go out.

Starting point is 00:48:15 And so Tommy had put Mary Lee on the board. And he's like, hey, whatever you do today, don't eject, Mary Lee is right underneath your working area. And the time we were just laughing about it. right underneath your work in area. And the time we were just laughing about it. But once I was in the water, it was kind of like, oh man, there's actually a massive, great white shark right underneath me right now that could eat me in any such. So looking back, what would you change about the day that this occurred and looking back, what wouldn't you change? that this occurred and looking back, what wouldn't you change? So I think, I mean, the biggest thing is I made a mistake. I didn't realize how quickly I was going to eat up that altitude at that air speed. And I didn't, I mean, I had read the natops in and out and I understood what the G limiter was and the G bucket.

Starting point is 00:49:02 But I wish that I had a better understanding of it going into it. It was really my own fall. I mean, I knew these things. I just didn't put them together in that split-second decision that I made. So if I could change anything, it would be the fact that I just made that mistake. The G bucket wall, it does protect the aircraft from overstress. I'm not the first nor the last guy to have either nearly died or died

Starting point is 00:49:27 because of that system. And a lot of times it's been people with a hell of a lot of more experience than I had. So I hope that can be changed. I know that funding is a massive issue for anything. In the Navy, there's a lot of things that could use improving our survival gear, our systems like that, but it's expensive. What do you think looking back are some of the lessons that you learned from the events leading up to the mishap, and how did those lessons change your mindset when you went back into the cockpit? I didn't really have a whole lot that I felt I needed to change. And unfortunately, what happened to me was only something I could have got from experience. I guess you could say I didn't have this feeling that I was invincible and thinking,

Starting point is 00:50:18 well, that's, it's unlikely that's going to happen to me. Despite the fact that I would train for just in case I really in the back of my mind, I think I thought that that going to happen to me. Despite the fact that I would train for just in case, I really, in the back of my mind, I think I thought that would never happen to me. But then after it happened, now I came out of it with this, that really does happen. I kind of came back with a deeper appreciation for what that really meant. I think I used that to just be that much more focused

Starting point is 00:50:43 on the importance of how I needed to approach flying. How much did you think that being recently trained on that new helmet system had any impact on the event? And what would be your recommendations as pilots are learning a new system that the Navy could do differently? I think it did have an impact because I was distracted a little bit using that new system, but at the same time, you have to use those systems in order to get used to them. And that's the only way, I think in an ideal world,

Starting point is 00:51:21 if when you entered the F18 community, if after you did maybe an initial transition period into the F18, you started using the jahemics on every flight. That could be largely beneficial. I always thought something that could be really beneficial. We have all the simulator training in the Super Hornet. If you could have a simulator where at some point in that Sim lesson, you got put into the situation I was in. And you could basically be put in this nose-low dive at the ocean and then practice actually hitting that paddle switch to override the system.

Starting point is 00:51:57 I think that could be largely beneficial. Because you can read about things all you want. I mean, I could have played strike fighter at 18 trivia all day. And if they had asked me at zero G, or at one G sitting at a desk, how does the G bucket work? How does the G limiter work?

Starting point is 00:52:17 And if you put in this situation, what would you do? And I could have told you all the right answers, but to actually have that knowledge in the split second and put it into action is a whole different level. And I think if people had the chance to be in the simulator and practice that, whereas we are largely told they don't press the paddle switch, it's just going to cause an overstress of the jet. There had been a guy down in Key West that had accidentally hit it on one of the flights.

Starting point is 00:52:45 And he got in trouble for it because he shouldn't have hit it, stressed the jet. So again, it's just training for those events and actually doing the things rather than just talking about a filling out tests is way more valuable than just focusing on knowledge. So I think that was a big recommendation that I had was let's do this in the simulator. Let's actually have people almost hit in the ground and then hit

Starting point is 00:53:11 that paddle switch to know to override it. But as far as I know that hasn't gone into the syllabus yet, despite recommendations. I know after this, you had to go through a whole mishap board along the process where they looked at the whole incident. What lessons do you think the strike fighter community learned from the events that were leading up to the mishap, and have they changed anything afterwards? It sounds like in a couple areas they have and in a couple areas they haven't and a couple areas they haven't. I think a big lesson was they, I actually spoke with some of the new classes coming into the F-18 and they put together some discussion about what I had done and people were able to learn from my mistake and see that early on in flight training and say, okay, here's a guy, he may have started up at two miles in the sky, but look what happens when he's

Starting point is 00:54:05 going this fast. And so they kind of painted that out so people could see it and be like, okay, and I think people were able to learn from that lesson for sure, and I'm glad that that was shared. And that's a big part of naval aviation is when people do make mistakes and sometimes pay for it with their lives, there are a lot of lessons that are taken from them and shared and put into procedures and put into things so that that injury or death or loss of aircraft doesn't just have to be, you know, go without helping people too. And they say the natops is written in blood. And that's the

Starting point is 00:54:46 the nataps is basically the operator manual for the F-18. And so all the procedures and everything in there are are based off of a lot of times people that had made mistakes. So I was fortunate that my mistake could be learned from in a lot of ways. Okay, and I thought we could spend some time talking about the aftermath of this. And because I think this could be valuable to, whether you face any type of trauma, your mind does some very interesting things, such as the memory loss she talked about, such as cognitive deficiencies, such as people having vertigo or hypofestibular

Starting point is 00:55:35 dysfunctions, etc. As you look back upon this and you're now eight years out from it, was there medical intervention that you wish you would have gotten four or five years ago. Why did it take you so long to get it? Yeah, that's a great question. I think I had an incredibly complex situation. Like I said, my medical records are taller than I am if you stack them all together.

Starting point is 00:56:01 And so the docs who are already, you know, overworked and underpaid and in there, they're struggling just to get to see you and get to spend 10 minutes with you. They had to make decisions based on what information they had in hindsight's 2020. So this isn't a knock against the docs that I had. I'm here because of those docs and the medical professionals I've worked with. But looking at it, hindsight 2020, I mean, the biggest thing was I was displaying all these symptoms that were, and I think 100% certainly caused by my brain injury. I mean, your brain is essentially the consistency of soft butter. And so what do you think is going to happen to that when you shoot off a rocket underneath your butt at 50 G's and then smash into the sound barrier? It's going to smash that butter around inside a hard skull and

Starting point is 00:56:55 cause some brain injury. But largely the brain injury piece of what I had in my medical records was sort of overlooked and they focused on some of the symptoms and the symptoms were TBI. I mean, they were the fact that I was having vertigo in confusion and I was having some mood dysfunction in and out of things. A lot of this stuff was brain injury but it got labeled as delayed onset PTSD.

Starting point is 00:57:26 And maybe there's some ties between the two of them, but I've heard some of the more recent physicians I've spoken with are like, I don't even think PTSD is a real thing. I think that's some symptoms that are often related to TBI or neuroinflammation. And so I think if early on, if it had been identified, that are often related to TBI or neuroinflammation. And so, I think if early on, if it had been identified,

Starting point is 00:57:49 a lot of the symptoms I was having were actually due to my brain injury, and I was treated at a physiological level for my brain injury, like I am now, I think there is an extremely high chance that I would have gone back to flying super hornets, and I would have been better than I had ever been with all the experience that I had gone through. And unfortunately, it got labeled as this PTSD, which, you know, maybe there's a component of that, but rather than treating it at a physiological level, it was treated through suppression, through the use of psychiatric medications. And the more those psychiatric medications I was put on,

Starting point is 00:58:28 the worse my psychosis got, the worse my mental function got. To the point where, you know, at one point I wanted, several points I wanted to kill myself, I went into these psychosis to the point where I had to be hospitalized. And every single time I said, I think the medications making it worse, the answer was always, that's just because you're not taking enough of it. Here's some to take during the day. Here's some more. And at a certain point, I was all the way up on 450 milligrams of serachyl or Quattayet plane, which is an anti-psychotic medication. And that's also

Starting point is 00:59:02 at the exact same week that I went into that extremely intense psychosis immediately after starting that medication at 450 milligrams a day. And so there's all these things I can see with hindsight that we're pointing to the problem which was the fact that I was just getting these meds that were making things worse in so many ways and And I know that a lot of society has been conditioned to think, well, here's a person struggling with psych issues that doesn't want to take their medications. That's like the classic, the classic line of a, you know,

Starting point is 00:59:37 plot of a TV show or something about this and how, you know, what is the psych person know or the psych patient know? And sadly, that's just, there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, a lot of truth to the fact that the medications are making it worse. And now that I've had those medications removed and I've been treated at a physiological level for my brain injury, a big part of brain injury

Starting point is 01:00:02 is it can disrupt your hormone production. So as you're aware, it can cause it so you don't produce the hormones that you should at the levels you're supposed to. And anybody whose hormones are out of balance, they're going to have issues with their mood and behavior and memory and all these cognitive impairments impairments, so when you get a blood draw that actually goes into depth and looks at all of these different factors and then addresses them and gives you tools to improve your hormone levels

Starting point is 01:00:35 and all of your vitamin levels and all your factors of your blood work, I've seen incredible improvement just from that approach. And so are a lot of other people. Like the people we met at this War Angel Foundation, I know I've talked into you. It sounds like you've had a lot of benefit from these approaches.

Starting point is 01:00:53 And I wish that was the approach when I went into the doctor after that debt where I ended up never flying again for the Navy. And I wish the approach was, let's treat your brain at the physiological level. And maybe do some of these psychedelic retreats as well. And I think if people that have been through a lot of trauma in the military and just the chronic stress of it,

Starting point is 01:01:17 combat stress, the physical trauma being blown up or beat up or everything that military members go through. When you start to treat the brain so that it can heal, which it can. It's made of cells, just like all the other parts of your body. Sadly, there seems to be this disconnect in a lot of physicians' minds and that the brain is the separate thing that doesn't work at all like the rest of your body. And it can't heal like the rest of your body, and it can't heal like the rest of your body. It can't heal like a bone, but maybe it's more complicated, but in the end of the day,

Starting point is 01:01:50 it's still made out of cells. Those cells can heal. And when you reduce the inflammation, when you reduce that neuroinflammation and you feed it, the fuel that it needs to rebuild, which is largely fats, like found in omega-3 fatty acids and fish oil. When you do that, you reduce the inflammation and you give it the fuel and the right conditions, the brain can heal itself. And that's fortunately the process I'm in now is actually letting my brain heal.

Starting point is 01:02:20 Instead of just suppressing those symptoms with psych meds that in the long term are not the solution at all and actually aggravated, I feel very fortunate to be actually addressing the real underlying issue. have very similar experiences to you, although the onset of our injuries are quite different. But I also experienced long-term post-concussion syndrome that the medical community wanted to say was a mental health issue up into the point where I went to the head of up into the point where I went to the head of traumatic brain injury at the local VA facility here in St. Pete. And I remember my first discussion with her, she said, I have no clue why you're here because concussions only get better with time.

Starting point is 01:03:20 And I said, well, upon all the reading I've done and the experts I've talked to, about 5 million people suffer from long-term concussion-based symptoms that never go away. So you should know that. She refused to treat me. And so I ended up going to the Polytromos Center in Tampa and talking to their doctors there and after three conversations, they said, you have 99% of the same symptoms that we treat here on an everyday basis.

Starting point is 01:03:56 And our approach is completely different. Around that same time was when I met Andrew because I had heard the Joe Rogan episode that he did with Dr. Gordon. And for me, I originally just went into it because everything else that I've been treated for isn't working and the psychedelic medicines, like you said, only make it worse because what I found is they're not treating

Starting point is 01:04:22 the underlying issues. For me, I had vestipular hypofunction, I had vertigo issues, I had constant migraines, I had short-term memory issues, cognitive issues, and they want to pass them off as something that's a side effect of depression or something else, which I'm telling you, you've probably experienced this too, when else, which I'm telling you, you've probably experienced this too when you know something's wrong with you and people keep telling you there's nothing wrong with you, you are going to get depressed because. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:04:56 But I like you, I'm treated by Dr. Lewis. I actually had him on the podcast and I think that's one of the great things I found about doing this podcast is I was able to bring him on Dr. J Lombard, who is one of the foremost experts in neurology around he is now actually reversing ALS, and he's now looking at other neurological disorders and TBI's, but he is also looking at brain inflammation, but also the fact that proteins get stuck and for whatever reason, don't go down the spinal cord and get flushed out. And when that happens, plaque starts building up and over time that can cause dementia and other things. And then just before your episode,

Starting point is 01:05:44 I head on Dr. Scott Scher, who's affiliated with War Arangels, and he specializes in HBOT treatment, which you yourself have been through for both traumatic brain injury and other things that people are going through. So I think that there is a lot that people can learn from this. My biggest takeaway to anyone in the audience who is listening to this is if you are suffering from any of those things, reach out to people like Kegan and I, or the Where Are Angels Foundation, or Vets like you brought up, because there are many alternative, holistic approaches that are not only impacting the two of us, I mean, there are thousands of people,

Starting point is 01:06:25 veterans, first responders who are now going through these treatments, including Joe Rogan himself, who are seeing dramatic improvements to their quality of life. It's really life changing. And it's wild that this isn't just the foundational medicine in our country. It's sad that this isn't just the foundational medicine in our country. It's sad that these are not the default. Instead the default is take a pill and hope for the best.

Starting point is 01:06:53 I actually not only brought up what these other doctors were doing, I ended up sending doctors at the VA, probably 20 reports that I had found, where all these things are going through clinical trials or they're being used, especially the hormone replacement treatment, because you would think that would be a no-brainer. And they said, unfortunately, in the VA medical system, it just hasn't been yet approved to be a protocol.

Starting point is 01:07:18 So we are forbidden to do that for you. And they don't do some of the other things like interactive metradome and some of the other things that can help you that you have to go and spend money on the outside world to get done by doctors who are working far outside of the norms of typical Western medicine. It's a widespread problem with a lot of the Western world

Starting point is 01:07:46 is there's all these modalities out there. It's like a person who doesn't want to pay for a meter when they go park on a street. And instead of just paying the meter up front and actually not getting a ticket, we're getting a ticket and now we have this huge bill that we have to pay rather than just pay the ticket up front. And I feel that that's the way medicines being

Starting point is 01:08:09 treated in a lot of ways is rather than maybe it's a little more expensive to go and get a whole blood panel done with all these hormone and all these biomarkers that they're checking but what if we do that up front and mitigate having to put somebody on disability and pharmaceutical drugs the rest of their life. And at the end of the day, you're gonna save a lot of money. And not only you're gonna save money, but you're gonna have a productive member of society back thriving in life again.

Starting point is 01:08:35 And this is such a bigger issue than just the military. Well, this is something that's affecting everybody. The neuroinflammation of just the chronic stress of life can cause a lot of this stuff to happen to people home. And when it's treated properly and we're maybe more extreme cases, some of the things we've been through and survived, but the fact that people like us

Starting point is 01:08:56 and like these special forces operators that get blown up and all the things that they go through and all the things that you've gone through working in the elite community that you did, if we can get better and we can get back to thriving at life, I think this is a beacon of hope for so many people out there. And I wanna get the word out. And I really appreciate podcasts like yourself

Starting point is 01:09:18 and giving people access to this kind of information that is so crucial to moving forward in the world is just being able to talk about things like this openly. Yeah, and I appreciate how authentic and vulnerable you've been throughout this entire interview. And I have two more questions for you. So the first, first would be, what are the best outcomes from this chapter of your life that you never guessed or expected would have occurred? After everything that I've been through and survived, I'm coming out with a new life

Starting point is 01:09:55 perspective. While I would never want somebody to go through what I had to go through and survive, it's given me a very unique perspective and a very unique voice in the world. It's given me a lot of hope to kind of have my soul recharged the way it has been. Reconnect with my spirituality or whatever you want to call that God or whatever the miracle is that I've felt and I know is real that has gotten me where I'm at. I would have never expected that reconnection with some sort of higher power or this interconnected of all of us. And now that I've felt that and felt this interconnected spirituality or God or whatever

Starting point is 01:10:39 you want to call it, I don't know what it is. I'm just a dog looking at the moon here and this stuff, but that's been something unexpected. I never expected to be reconnected in a way that I am embraced on this level that I have been. It sounds like you feel like you've been given another opportunity at life. And now going through some of these new protocols, it's freeing up your mind to a point

Starting point is 01:11:02 where you're starting to feel normal again if I had to put put in my own words. That's exactly right and just incredibly grateful to have the ability to share this with people and share what I've been through because I know there's a lot of other people that they have been going through similar things and worse in some cases without the support that I had. going through similar things and worse in some cases without the support that I had. And I hope this can bring some people hope and maybe give them a new way forward in life. Your wife seems like she is a trooper as well and probably deserves some recognition. My wife Kara, my family, I'm lucky I've been surrounded by incredible friends and family

Starting point is 01:11:44 that have gotten me through this because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. You know, my wife has, she's been through trauma with this and the situation she's been put in are pretty terrible that the treatment that some of the spouses get trying to deal with all of this. And a lot of the programs out there that are supposed to give them support. I know the VA has a caregiver program that's supposed to help spouses like my own that are dealing with the injured veteran going through times of mental and physical dysfunction. And sadly, a lot of these programs are, they look good on the surface, but when you actually try to apply to them and use them use them there almost nobody can get the can get them.

Starting point is 01:12:28 And so my wife is she had to quit her job she had to move around she had to deal with me and all the struggles I was facing and unfortunately has had very little support in that world has had very little support in that world. But I'm so grateful that she's still here by my side and loves me. That's so, yeah, she's incredible. I'll end on this question. How do you recognize it? Do you go back and have an anniversary of that event

Starting point is 01:13:06 in any way or? There's an old tradition that was started by World War II pilots. And these World War II pilots, if they survived like a crash that should have killed them, they got shot down or captured and they somehow escaped. Whenever they got back to their friends and got to sit down and have a beer and celebrate. They would have a, every year on that day that they almost died, they would have a rebirth party. So now I get two birthdays. I have my actual birthday and then I have my rebirth party.

Starting point is 01:13:37 Every January 15th every year now is a big celebration that's a celebration of life and being here kind of started by those old World War II guys, old World War II pilots, but that's kind of how it is. It's a celebration of life and yeah, it's a good time. I'm glad we're ending on that question and Keagan, thank you so much for joining us today. And if someone in the audience wanted to reach out to you or wants to learn more about you, how can they do so? I actually just started an Instagram account. You can find me at Kagan Smurf Guild on Instagram.

Starting point is 01:14:19 That's probably the best way to get in contact with me. I'm happy to answer genuine questions from people wanting to learn more, going through their own struggles. Yeah, please get in touch with me or follow me on there if you'd like to learn more about my journey, my way forward, and the things that I'm experiencing that are helping me, maybe could help you. Okay, and thanks again for joining and it's been awesome to see you again. Thanks, John. Thanks for having me on. Well, I have done a lot of interviews on the show, but that had to be one of the most intense ones I've ever done. And so thankful for Keegan being so authentic and sharing his relatable

Starting point is 01:14:57 story that so many people can benefit from. And during today's interview, we discussed some previous interviews that I had on with Dr. Michael Lewis, who is a doctor who treats both Keegan and I, Andrew Marr, who runs the Warrior Angels Foundation, and also Dr. Scott Scher. Please go check out all those episodes if you haven't had a chance to listen to them before. And if you're new to the show, or you would just like to introduce this to friends or family members, we now have episode starter packs, which are collections of your favorite episodes that we organized by topic to give any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything that we do

Starting point is 01:15:35 here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And I so appreciate all the support that you were given, this global movement, keeping our momentum going forward and helping us so much to reach people all over the world who need to hear this inspiration. I couldn't do it without you, the audience, and we appreciate you so much now. Go out there yourself and live life passion struck. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make Passion Go viral. And we do that by sharing with you the knowledge and skills that you need to unlock your hidden potential. If you want to hear more, please subscribe to the Passion Strike podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcast ad.

Starting point is 01:16:23 And if you absolutely love this episode, we'd appreciate a five-star rating on iTunes, and you sharing it with three of your most group-minded friends, so they can post it as well to their social accounts and help us grow our passion-struck community. If you'd like to learn more about the show and our mission, you can go to passionstruck.com, where you can sign up for our newsletter, look at our tools, and also download the show notes our mission. You can go to passionstruck.com where you can sign up for our newsletter, look

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Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Kegan Gill on Not Just Surviving but Thriving Again in Life EP 141

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