The Dr. John Delony Show - My Son Is Facing Prison and I Don’t Know How To Support Him

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

In today’s show, we hear from a grieving mother whose 18-year-old is about to receive a prison sentence for child pornography, a man suffering from night terrors that make coping with his bipolar disorder even more challenging, and a father wondering how his family should move forward following his daughter’s severe brain damage. Lyrics of the Day: "High Hopes"- Panic! At The Disco Let us know what’s going on by leaving a voicemail at 844.693.3291 or visiting johndelony.com/show.  Support Our Sponsors: BetterHelp DreamCloud Churchill Mortgage Resources: Own Your Past, Change Your Future Questions for Humans Conversation Cards Redefining Anxiety Quick Read John’s Free Guided Meditation Listen to all The Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our app. Download at: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq These platforms contain content, including information provided by guests, that is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The content is not intended to replace or substitute for any professional medical, counseling, therapeutic, financial, legal, or other advice. The Lampo Group, LLC d/b/a Ramsey Solutions as well as its affiliates and subsidiaries (including their respective employees, agents and representatives) make no representations or warranties concerning the content and expressly disclaim any and all liability concerning the content including any treatment or action taken by any person following the information offered or provided within or through this show. If you have specific concerns or a situation in which you require professional advice, you should consult with an appropriately trained and qualified professional expert and specialist. If you are having a health or mental health emergency, please call 9-1-1 immediately.

Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm really looking for advice on how I can, my husband and I can best help our son. He's recently been convicted of a federal crime. It's dealing with online child pornography. Woo! What's up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. Greatest show ever. Ever!

Except for Kelly's Murder Podcast. Which... I'm just going to leave it at that. I think you want to be in one of those one day. No, I mean, it's looking pretty promising that somehow you and I will both appear in one. Yeah, but I don't want to be on the end of that one at all. I, yeah, I, yes, I do not. But anyway, you listen to it anyway.

Hey, so I'm back. My wife and I celebrated 20th anniversary. A long time. And we went out town for a while. It's my longest time away since I started working here. And it was fantastic. We missed you. You didn't.

It was so good. My colleagues are more than enough sunshine, probably. Man, it was fantastic. So here's my 20-year advice. Don't wait 20 years to get away and go have fun and enjoy yourself. Here's the other piece of advice. It's the first time ever. On the show, I talk a lot about don't ever plan to do nothing.

When you plan to do nothing, you end this is what happens you go on vacation you crash You drink a lot or a little bit if you don't drink at all Then you eat some big dumb meal and you stay up real late watching tv or whatever making out whatever thing is And then you get up in the morning you oversleep you feel bad The only way you can prop yourself back up is by eating junk food and this whole cycle starts. And then one to two to three days in, you feel grumpy and you're like, and now you get into a weird vacation fight, which is stupid. This time we did none of that. In fact, we reversed it. We got up early intentionally. We went on long hikes, went to the gym at the place we were staying, which is super weird, right?

We took yoga classes in the evening, like whatever was being offered. Long, long rucks I did. I just took some weights with me in the car. Dude, it made the trip so great. We slept so deeply. We ended up making better eating choices. It was just fantastic. And I will never not do this again.

Never go. I'm just going to do nothing. I didn't get that normal sick that I get. Usually when I run real hard and then I take a week off, I get sick. None of that happened. It was fantastic, man. So anyway, do more fun stuff before you get old like me. And when you do fun stuff, don't aspire to do nothing.

Just get in there and get it done. It'd be awesome. All right, let's go to Kay in Tampa, Florida. What's up, Kay? I'm, well, happy belated anniversary. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for taking my call.

Of course, of course, of course. How are we doing? I'm doing okay today. Good. I've been having good days and bad days, but today's an okay day. Talk to me about it. What's going on? Well, I'm really looking

for advice on how I can, my husband and I can best help our son. He is 18 years old, so a legal adult. But he's recently been convicted of a federal crime

and is facing prison time. He has not been sentenced yet. So we don't know exactly what it's going to be. It's dealing with online child pornography. And so the attorney has told us basically with this charge to expect that he would be sentenced to a minimum of five years in jail. have a lifetime felony conviction and have to register as a sex offender. Yeah.

All because of something stupid, which I told them, I told all my boys when they turned 18, I can no longer protect you from stupid. Yeah. Well, and I know you know this, but one of the things I think holds back parents in moments like this is you really get forced into picking a side. And I want you and your husband, as y'all move forward, and we haven't even got to your question yet, but I want y'all, as y'all move forward, I want you to work to hold all of this.

Okay? And what I mean by that is this. There is no innocent player in child pornography. I understand that. I know. So I'm not picking at you. I just want you to hold the whole thing, okay? So I'm not talking down or anything like that.

Just a picture of you and me sitting at a bar, okay? Or we're sitting and grabbing nachos together. It's I love my son and I don't want him in jail. And what happened, he can't want him in jail. And what happened? He can't be around other people. Right? So it's all of these things all in one. And there's kids that were hurt on the other end of this.

So it's all that wrapped up into one big messy. And that's the path forward when we're grieving this kind of stuff, which just stinks. But I cut you off. Tell me about how I can help. I'm so sorry y'all are going through this. What an absolute mess across the board. Yeah. I mean, there's obviously not much I can do legally.

Let me ask you this. This is a hard question. I'm going to put you on the spot. What would you do? What would I do? What would I do? Yeah, because it's a balance between I don't want my kid in jail, I don't want my kid going to prison, and I don't want my kid trafficking child pornography

or hurting children. So what would you do if you could? I guess, you know, I'd look for alternatives to jail time, whether that's no access to anything online. I'm fine with that. You know, he's seeing a therapist regularly now, and he'd be willing to do that for the rest of his life, to have someone to hold him accountable and that kind of thing. But, you know, he is on the autism spectrum.

He is socially immature. And I think he was just... It was his first year at college. He was looking to meet some people and ended up in an online chat room and ended up texting with somebody. And that person sent arrested, then they looked at his phone, and because my son had been in receipt of what that other person had sent him, they came after my son as well. I don't think he was looking for that. He was looking for, I don't know. But here we find ourselves. How can I help you?

I'm just, I'm heartbroken by this whole mess. I'm just. Yeah. And I mean, I totally get that there's a victim in this. And, you know, sometimes I feel like my son's a victim, but I know that there's, you know, every child that's involved in this, they're the victim too. I get that. for advice on how to best support my son through the sentencing phase, through the incarceration phase. And hopefully, if I'm still alive when I get released from prison, that I can help him beyond. And, you know, I just don't know how to help him. Yeah.

Other than just tell him, hey, we love you. We'll always love you. And other than that, I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help him look forward versus thinking this is, I'm afraid he's going to say this is the end of my life. And I might as well be dead. And I'm afraid he's going to do something to hurt himself. Has he threatened suicide before? When he was arrested.

Okay. He apparently made some comments, so they had some concerns. Sure. So moving forward, here's a couple of things to keep in mind, okay? The first thing is this the sooner you and your husband transition in your hearts from we can stop this

to this is where this is we're going to make peace with what's moving forward now and we're not going to make we don't have to like it there can be days you wake up and think i can't believe they're treating my 18 year old baby like this whatever the thing

is the sooner you make peace with this train is leaving the station then you can be about what comes next but as long as you're trying to drag that train back into the station it's going to take off and what it's going to do is just drag you and your husband behind you a lot of couples split up over things like this because we one of them didn't grieve it one of them grieved too much the other one thought and it's sitting down and saying this is happening our son um was involved whether we think he was involved five years in jail worth he was involved in the worst of the worst of the worst and thank god i got caught early and in five years he will um what be 23 he's he'll be still be a young young young child you know that and then he'll be out and then we're going to figure out what comes next there the word i want you to keep in your mind is connection and i don't know what that looks like for you and your

son that might be a weekly book study that y'all do together for the next five years that might be y'all learn something together like i'll learn spanish if you learn spanish or whatever that thing is but he's got to know that he's got two people that are walking alongside him, even if they're not physically there. Does that make sense? Yeah. And so we're going to not

double down on what a victim, I can't believe this, like, nope, you broke the law, and when this person texted, either you asked for it, or you said, sure, I'd love to see it, or you didn't go to the authorities when it person texted either you asked for it or you said sure i'd love to see it or you didn't go to the authorities when it got sent to you either way here we are here we are and for a five-year sentence that that tells me something else is going on either he asked for it or participated in it or there was some back and forth exchange something more

than a single text message one way for five years. So something else is involved, but that's a whole other call here. All I have to say is, here's where it is. We're gonna do these five years with dignity and we're gonna learn and we're gonna keep our head up and we're going to see what does 23, how is 23 gonna be different than 18?

And that's the goal that we're shooting for here. And we're going to have good behavior and we're going to honor the young children in our communities. And you and dad are going to have to grieve this like crazy because you'll have plans. And you'll have pictures in your head. And you'd already thought about what graduation would look like from college. And you have those pictures in your head and you're going to have to spend some time grieving them.

You don't want to have this conversation at the supermarket. Hey, how's your son doing? They're at church or at somebody else's birthday party. You don't have these conversations. And here we are, right? There's going to have to be a dropping your shoulders and sitting in this for a minute. And by a minute, I mean a season, several months. It's going to hurt.

And you'll have to let that process happen. Okay? If you don't, it ends up in inflammatory responses. It ends up in rage. It ends up in anger. It ends up in blame. It ends up in a broken marriage. It ends up in a mess.

Okay? Okay. The single greatest book I've ever read on grief, in my opinion, is called Finding Meaning by David Kessler. I'd recommend you and your husband read that book together. And a chunk of that book is about David Kessler's work with parents who've lost young children. They've passed away.

In many ways, this is a loss for a season. Okay. And grieving it in a similar fashion, I think would be really, really helpful. Okay. And then connection,

connection, connection as hard as that's going to be. And it's going to be real hard. Yeah. Okay. And then connection, connection, connection as hard as that's gonna be. And it's gonna be real hard. Yeah. Okay. It may also be worth your soul. The back end of grief is finding meaning. What are we gonna do in light of?

It may be worth it may be worth down the road you and your husband finding ways to volunteer support care for love trafficked children children who are sexually abused children who are going through um deep challenges as not so much a restitution, but a restoration. How can we be a part of the healing in our community that our son helped participate in some of the hurt? It's similar when a mother of a son kills a young family in a drunk driving accident and he passes away too. mom may get really involved in alcohol regulations and drinking and driving and i she's going to be about dad's going to be about healing the community from something their kid was a part of and that may be a conversation you and your

husband have together what light can we shine in our community in light of what our son has done so we can model here's what this looks like. Here's what service and finding meaning looks like. That's going to be down the road a bit. Right now, you just need a season of grief. A season of hand-holding. You can't get in front of him and defend him this time. You know that.

You can hold his hand. And say, you got to go pay the piper on this one. But mom still loves you and dad still loves you. And we're going to be here with you every step of the way. I'm so sorry, Kay. It's heartbreaking all around. It's a big mess for everybody. And I'm so sorry you're going through this. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. October is the season for wearing costumes. And if you haven't started planning your costume, seriously, get on it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go as Brad Pitt because we have the same upper body, but whatever.

Look, it's costume season. And if we're being honest, a lot of us hide our true selves behind masks and costumes more often than we want to. We do this at work. We do this in social settings. We do this around our own families. We even do this with ourselves. I have been there multiple times in my life and it's the worst. If you feel like you're stuck hiding your true self behind costumes and masks, I want you to consider talking with a therapist. Therapy is a place where you can learn to accept all the parts of yourself, where you can be honest with yourself, and where you can take off the mask and the costumes and learn to live an honest, authentic life. Costumes and masks should be for Halloween parties,

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Hey, before we go on to the next one, we were just talking off air about that last call. A woman called and her son is 18 and he's been arrested and convicted of child pornography, some shape, form or fashion. And in the call, we talked about she wanted to know what she could do while he's in jail. Looks like he's going to go to jail for a while. What's the grieving process look like? And I want to make this super clear. Often in these conversations, if someone was a counseling client of mine or a coaching client of mine, there comes a moment when I will be very, very direct.

If your child, your 18-year-old kid, your 25-year-old kid ends up being a child molester or traffics child pornography, they are a cancer-run society and they need to go away. They need to be put, taken out of communities and put away. They're hurting children, affirmatively hurting children. They're participating in the hurting of children. And when somebody calls this first time, somebody sits down and has this hard conversation and says, what am I supposed to do? My baby's going to jail. That's most of the time, not the moment to beat somebody up. And that can happen across the political spectrum, across the trauma spectrum, across the whatever spectrum. Talk to mothers and fathers whose sons killed somebody in a drunk driving accident. And now they're worried, like, what are we going to do he's going to jail and i want to be like

he killed a family right and there's a hurting mom and so one of the things i hope this show does is help us help everybody model when somebody comes to us and they're hurting i don't care why they're hurting let's drop our shoulders and let's don't start with the advice and let's don't start with the shaming. Let's don't start throwing grenades of, well, you should have. Let's just sit with them and say, I'm so sorry. This hurts bad. And you're going to lose your son for years because he did some pretty horrible things. And here's what that might look like.

And here's a way to keep your marriage together. But it's sitting down with somebody and saying, let's figure this out. Let's go from here. And man, that's hard. It's hard. But I didn't want people listening to think I was just blowing off a guy. I've got a little girl. I've got a little boy. I have some really strong feelings about child pornography. Very, very strong feelings. And I also know the voice of a hurting mom. And the world could use a lot more, hey, grab a seat. Let's just sit down for a second.

And a little bit, yes, a little bit less yelling and screaming and throwing rocks at each other. Just my opinion there. All right, let's go to William in Reston, Virginia. What's up, William? Hey, how are you, sir? Thank you for taking my call. Of course, man. How are you?

Good. So what's up, dude? I have bipolar disorder and panic disorder. Okay. Um, and, and anxiety too. Um, but I, I, so I take my medicine regularly and then I, I try really hard not to like, um, let it affect my life as much as possible. Um, but over like the last month and a half, maybe two months, um, I've been having like nightmares, like kind of consistently a couple times, two to three times a week probably where they really like affect my sleep and whatnot.

So first of all, let me do this. Can I stop and celebrate you for a second? Thank you. And i mean this um life dealt you a pretty messy set of cards right in your seven hand card you got like you got like an eight high right you got like a two and a six and a four and then an eight right and the fact that you've said, okay, here's my lot and I'm gonna play. You've got resilience and character

that is absent from our culture largely. And I want you to hear me say directly, I'm proud of you, man. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. Getting up every day, even when you're feeling really good and still taking your meds, it's hard. It's hard. And if you haven't been there, you don't know. It's hard.

And riding that roller coaster through a panic attack is hard. And that low-level burn of anxiety all day, every day, it's hard. And you keep getting up and you keep doing it. Do you exercise too? Yeah, I go to the gym like six times a week. Dude, see, I'm telling you right now, man. Very few heroes wear capes and you're one of them. Thank you so much.

Hey, I'm not playing. I'm not blowing smoke at you. I'm telling the truth on this show. I'm proud of you, man. What you're doing is hard and it's really good work. And it's going to pay off generationally for the people around you. So good for you. So you know this, but just for the listener, panic disorder is a common comorbidity with bipolar.

They go together often. Does your panic disorder, does your anxiety does it run um only when you are are running manic or is it kind of run uh is it trying to align through the ups and the downs um it mainly mainly the well it kind of depends mainly of the of the ups or like just kind of general i usually have like a little bit of anxiety every day and then like the panic attacks come when i like get really obsessed about something that i may have forgotten or not done or messed up or gotcha um so your panic attacks have a trigger so they're almost more anxiety attacks than panic attacks huh yeah the ones that are bad like if i need to go to the er to get because i don't like to have strong medicine so uh you know for addiction reasons so like if I need to go to the ER to get, because I don't like to have strong medicine for addiction reasons.

So if I need to, I go to the ER and I just pay the bill. I don't mind. Yeah. Well, man, it sounds like you have a system down, which is phenomenal. I'm proud of you, dude. And then here come the nightmares, right? Yeah. Okay, so how long has this been going on?

A couple of months yeah well i you know i mean i've always kind of had them but they were really inconsistent but but the last like two months ish it's been more like two to three times a week i would have nightmares and what i've tried to do is limit i've almost cut tv completely out because i thought maybe that was it um and that did help like lessen the like severity of them but um but yeah like kind of consistent okay and have so a couple of times a week for a couple of months tells me you're getting close to the point if you're not there already where you start being nervous about going to sleep. Correct. And then that screws up your sleep,

which then really makes the bipolar management, and especially the anxiety management, more of a challenge throughout the day. And now it feels like that system starts spinning faster and a little bit faster. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, that's exactly what happens. I'm a little nervous to go to sleep.

So I have an app thing that I listen to before I go to bed, try to help it. Okay. The sleep is still decent, though, because my bipolar meds kind of knock me out. Okay. So the number of hours is still pretty consistent,

but the type of sleep has been not. Yeah, you're not getting that good deep sleep and good REM sleep? Yeah. Okay. All right. So there's several things. Some psychiatric medications can cause nightmares or can toggle the sleep a little bit. And there's so many different things when it comes to dreams and nightmares in the psychological literature but the one thing that's compelling to me is that nightmares fall in a

particular band of sleep so if you look at sleep like like um you know egbdf like notes on a on a staff like you're playing guitar it falls in like a band right and so we get stuck in this layer here of sleep we can't we're not up or down. It's that part where you have these thoughts and your brain's still a little bit on, but your body has been, I don't want to say it's paralyzed, but basically your muscles go into,

there's a word for it, it's not coming to my mind, but basically your muscles quit working for a while, right? And it's when your muscles are still working and you're dreaming, it's when you sleepwalk, right? So our body paralyzes itself, basically. It's not the right word,

but it shuts up down and you get caught in that trap here. So some of that could be medication related, but I want you to try something else, okay? Okay. It's called IRT and it's imagery rehearsal therapy. Okay?

And this is for anybody dealing with dreams. There is a correlation. There's some studies that talk about bipolar disorder and dreams and bipolar disorder and nightmares. I do not know of any literature that says here's how you deal with the nightmares outside of different medications and yeah so um and i'm always reluctant to do the black hole sleep unconscious sleep um i was pretty convicted by matt walker dr walker about the difference between being unconscious and being asleep right so i think you're wise at the same time you gotta take your meds you gotta take your meds so all right Here's what imagery rehearsal therapy is. All right.

The goal is to change the narrative of the story. And this sounds bananas, but the research says it's pretty effective. Now, I haven't seen it effective for bipolar disorder. So, you're going to be the N equals one experiment. Okay? Okay. So, here's all it means. You take one or two or three of your recurring nightmares, the ones that are showing up in some sort of regularity or the type, right?

So give me an example of a nightmare that's shown up more than once. Like demons, like not attacking me, but like my house. Okay. And then my family's inside with me as well. Uh, so that's pretty regular. Tell me about it. Um, just,

uh, like I'll wake up and they're, they're like attacking the house. So then I have to try to figure out a way to get my wife and my son to safety. Okay. Um, yeah, that's pretty regular.

Um, I did have a couple of night terrors here and there Where like you wake up and like you can't move Yeah Those aren't very common Okay And that's what we're talking about Your body is stuck in between those two states, right?

Yeah All right, so here's what we're going to do We're going to write down that nightmare Okay And we're going to be very, very specific And we're going to be very, very specific and we're going to change the ending. We're going to focus on the ending of that nightmare and we're going to make the ending wonderful and we're going to,

or conclude with a neutral ending where they get inside and then they just take some diet Cokes out of your fridge and then they leave. Or they come inside and repaint the house for you. It turns out they weren't demons after all. They were the neighbors trying to show you how much they loved you and appreciate being in it, right? So we're going to change the ending of this in your awake state. And we're going to write it down. And this is going to – dude, I know how bonkers this sounds, okay?

I know. We're going to write them down and we is going to sound, dude, I know how bonkers this sounds, okay? I know. We're going to write them down, and we're going to rehearse them. Okay. Probably don't rehearse them on your front lawn, or people will call somebody on you, right? Yeah. But we're going to write them down, and we're going to rehearse them. And over time, I want you to keep a dream journal. So what we would do is we would say, all right, I'm laying down to go to sleep.

All of a sudden, my eyes are open. I look at the clock. It's 12.14 a.m. So we're going to be that specific. I hear the air conditioner humming. My wife is asleep. And I see the shadow. And then I see the other shadow.

And then I hear them clanking around on the rooftop, right? You hear what I'm saying? We're going to be that specific, and then you're going to open the window and let them in, and it turns out they're really great. They're just trying to get your attention because you're a gas meter. You see what I'm saying? So what we're doing is we're teaching our minds and our bodies.

We're going to reclaim these stories that they're cycling through. Yeah. Okay. That's awesome. I never would have thought of that. We're going to rehearse it. And then what I want you to do is I want you to keep a blank dream journal by your bed. Okay.

Okay. And the only way you can change something is by measure it. Okay. And so I don't want you to wake up in four months and be like, oh, man, these dreams. And you really haven't had one for two months or you haven't had one for 45 days. And so I want you to track when you wake up and you're like, whoa, write it down. Okay. And here's what we're doing.

The word I want you to have in your head, ownership. I am not going to be subjected to these nightmares anymore. I want to begin to take ownership of my thoughts. I want to take ownership of my body in the daytime and let that move through the evening time. Okay? Yes, definitely. That's what I want.

And here's one other thing. I do love, love, love, this is the nerd part in me, talking about dreams. Walk me through that one you just mentioned real quick. So there's demons coming over the house. What does it look like? What does it feel like?

And don't put yourself into a panic attack. Okay. So stop before you get there. Um, but talk to me about it. Uh, usually, uh,

so we, we live in a townhouse. Uh, so it's like a two story situation, you know, and upstairs, downstairs. So we,

we live upstairs and then downstairs, a living room, all that good stuff. Um, and it's all fenced in and everything with our neighbor. So usually it's like at night when they come, and usually for some reason the trees are on fire. We do have quite a few trees in our little complex thing. And they kind of just like literally almost like a medieval siege type of maneuver where they

surround the house and then just start taking down the fences, which would be the door or the windows to my son's room, which are on the second floor. Then once they get in the house, usually when I panic and I wake up. Okay.

Can I tell you something yes your kids are lucky to have you and you probably beat yourself up over the bipolar and some of the choices you've made while having a low season

or an up season over the years is that true uh yes very true um your wife's lucky to have you she's married to a hero and at some point sometimes our brains will recreate stories that either reinforce how weak we are or give us an opportunity to do something in our dream state that we can't, we don't believe we can do in real life. And so hear me say, your kids are lucky to have you

and your wife's lucky to have you and you're lucky to have them. Do you live in a safe neighborhood? Oh, very safe. Yes. All right. So they don't need a new kind of hero. They got one.

They got one in you. And if you every day that you take your meds and every day you get home from the gym, I want you to think damn right with that smile on your face, they got me. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. Yeah. It's yeah. Yeah. It's hard to like, think about things that I used to do, like before and now, like I just, um, I really want to show like myself and my family, like, I just, I really want to show, like, myself and my family that, like, this is not okay, but it's, I can manage this and I can do what I want to do in life. That's right.

Despite, you know, a couple, you know, once or twice a month I might need to call out because I got to go home from panics. But other than that, you know, I can. The thing about bipolar is it always feels like, so I'm going to connect your dreams to the real world that you're being hounded they're coming for you and any mess up they're coming for you and they're going to get inside and I want you to flip that over

now you're in the driver's seat you know the path forward you just got to get up and do it anyway and so those shadows that have been haunting you for so long the only person who doesn't see the difference now is you so let the shadows go man they can't get you anymore

yeah you're right you've created a new path for yourself forward so one thing that is important i think is to is to always ask yourself, it doesn't, there's not a lot of scientific literature here, but it's more counselor stuff. But I always want to ask myself, what's my dream trying to tell me? Okay. What's trying to tell me? And your kids don't need a different kind of savior and the shadows aren't coming for you anymore because you got a plan and you're just going to execute the plan right yeah exactly i'm really really proud of you and you know this i've just got to say it anyway protect your sleep with all your might okay so

if this doesn't work in a couple of weeks um or your panic attacks increase please go see your doctor okay and let's let them know about the increasing frequency of your nightmares. We can go from there. Is that cool? Yeah, definitely. Dude, hey, will you reach back out and let us know if this works?

Yes, I will. Hey, if it doesn't work, blame Kelly. This whole thing was her idea. It wasn't at all. It'll all be on me but let me know and I'll be the first I'll let everybody know if you call me back and you're like dude I've tried this for two weeks

this is the stupidest idea ever my kids saw me rehearsing a dream in my mirror in the bathroom and that was weird and then it didn't work give that a shot and let me know how it goes man I'm so proud every time I talk to somebody who's wrestling with bipolar

and they've got a plan and they've got a management strategy and they've got a team around them, it just brings so much joy to my life because it's a microcosm of everybody. Everybody's got hard stuff. Bipolar's really hard. Everybody's got hard stuff.

You've got to get up and you've got to do it anyway. I'm proud of you, Brother William. I'm so proud of you, man. And your kids and your wife, everybody has their hero, man. Way to go. We'll be right back. Alright, we're back. Let's go to

John in New Orleans. What's up, Brother John? Hey, Dr. John. How are you doing today? I'm alright, my brother. How are you? I'm redefining the word good. I'm honored to speak with you. I can already tell. I'm sorry right, my brother. How are you? I'm redefining the word good. I can already tell. I'm sorry, man. Tell me about it. What's going on? 38 days ago, my daughter had some blood in her stool. And next thing we know, it was shiga toxin, E coli, which produced into HUS, causing her kidneys to fail.

They had to life flight her from the hospital we were at to a much bigger hospital here in New Orleans. And then the next morning, she coded for two and a half hours. It was probably the most terrifying and amazing thing I've ever seen. For two and a half hours, they did chest compressions, and then they put her on ECMO. it was probably the most terrifying and amazing thing I've ever seen. Yeah. Um, for two and a half hours as they did chest compressions. And then they put her on ECMO and, uh, she was on ECMO for eight days on a vent for another, um,

15 or so. Well, she was on a vent for a total of 15 days. And we were told that there was a 2% chance of her kidneys regaining function, and we had some pretty horrible conversations with some doctors, and we made some pretty horrible decisions that parents should never have to make. And before we made probably the worst decision a parent can make, we asked about transferring to another hospital.

And we did that, and everything changed. I mean, everything. The next morning, they were going to start the dialysis again, and we saw a blue line on her diaper, and her kidneys, the kidney doctor told us two days ago that it's a 90% recovery of her kidneys. But the bigger thing is that during that two and a half hours of CPR, she suffered global brain damage to the deep brain tissue. Yep. And her left side has been mostly paralyzed. Okay. But doctors told us that she would probably never be able to do much of anything.

And I'm telling you, when I originally emailed the show to her today, it's so different. But she's smiling. She's laughing. She's trying to clap her hands. It's so amazing to see how resilient this little baby is. But we're living a parent's nightmare, and we've got a long way to go, and we don't know what the end is going to look like. Yeah. and we don't know we don't know what the end is going to look like yeah so first and foremost

dude like if I if we were just hanging out I would give you a hug and I'd probably hold it a little too long okay I'm sorry man me too

gosh there's so much here I guess the first thing is y'all y'all got a rare opportunity to rappel down into the bowels of hell and have to ask questions and have conversations a rare opportunity to rappel down into the bowels of hell and have to ask questions and have conversations that no parent

ever, ever, ever should have to have. And to resolve to make decisions that no parent should have to have and then find out

that had you made that decision it might not have been the right you know what I mean like you've been in heavy trauma, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Hey, do me a favor, talk directly into the phone for me. Yes, sir.

Oh, there we go. And then you've got the illness. Does everybody blame everybody for this? Parents beat themselves up horrifically over things like this. Yeah, that was, yeah, it's, how can we cope with the guilt of not protecting her better? Like, you know, like, that's our job as parents. So, yeah, dealing with that has been rough. Yeah. I think the protection is something we strive strive for but in many ways it's an illusion and you got to see i mean you just got your bubble burst on that illusion sooner than most right um and in a much more horrific way than most right usually people find that out when their

kids are in a car wreck or they break an arm or they get COVID or something. And yours end up with, jeez, H-U-S. I mean, jeez Louise, man, what a mess. Kidney failure. I think that ultimately you got to sit down and grieve this whole thing start to finish and y'all aren't there yet and so the pressure you putting on yourself right now to Solve this what do we do now? I'm gonna tell you what you do right now as you get to tomorrow

And then you get to the next day and then you get to the next day you're in mile 14 of a marathon And you're trying to figure out how you can best massage your calves and best fix your hurting hip. You got to finish the race and y'all still got a ways to go. Does that make sense? Yes. I would love to see

y'all take care of your basic needs, eating and sleeping and being with other people. Do you have other kids? Yeah, we've got a five-year-old daughter. Jeez Louise. So those conversations are tough too, right? Correct, yeah.

I originally was like, how do I explain to my five-year-old that her sister isn't coming home? But now it's, how do I explain to my five-year-old that when her sister does come home, that she's not going to be the same? In very clear, simple terms, kids won't have the same baggage that you and I will have. And they will be very much more understanding. So it's as simple as little sis got very, very sick. And so she's not going to

be able to move her left leg and her left foot very well. And then a natural question for a six-year-old or a five-year-old is, well, am I going to get that sick? And you say, no, probably not. It's very, very, very rare. It almost never happens, but little sis got it. And so we're going to have to help out and you are going to get to really help your baby sister. And using words like her baby and her baby sister will give her some autonomy and some ownership. And that helps quell that anxiety. And that little girl is going to absorb mom and dad's grief and sadness sadness and that's okay. What's really important though is that y'all communicate with her.

We're very sad about little sister. Not like, no, it's all good. We're just plugging along and fake smiling in front of your six-year-old or five-year-old because she's gonna absorb the tension and she's gonna think it's her fault. And she's gonna absorb the gap between what she feels and what y'all are saying

and what she's seeing with her sister. And so it going to absorb the gap between what she feels and what y'all are saying and what she's seeing with her sister. And so it's just being really honest and saying words like, I'm really sad. I'm really sad that baby got really sick. Daddy's really sad that he wanted to protect his little girl and she got sick from a little tiny old bug that I couldn't protect him from. And I'm very, very sad that she got so sick. It's being that kind of honest and that language that she can understand, not overthinking it. And also not belaboring it all the time too.

Does that make sense? Yes. What I'd really love y'all to see is y'all get home and get settled at home and sleep in your own bed together as all four of you. And then as the reality of this begins to set in, because right now you're still running on fumes

and you're still running on adrenaline and cortisol and you get home and are able to exhale, that's when the deep grief of this thing will go. Okay. Yeah, we're too ahead of it. We haven't even got home and the whole thing started. That's when the deep grief of this thing will go. Okay. We haven't been home since this whole thing started. That's right. And so you haven't slept. Your mind's not clear.

You're probably not eating very well. Do you have people coming up to the hospital to be with you guys? Yeah, we've got a very good support system. Okay. It would be a gift to you and to them to give them some very detailed jobs. I need someone to go mow my yard. I need someone to go vacuum my house and wipe down the kitchen cabinets. I need someone to bring us food and vegetables and fruits.

We don't have to eat at McDonald's again, right? Some very specific jobs. And you've got a team of people around you who are dying for something to do, to be a part of this and help. And you're going to have to say, here's what I need and let them go chase that down. Is that cool? Yeah. We've been doing that.

We've got a really good, like I said, really good support system. Great. And yeah, we're eating too much. I'm eating too much. My wife's probably not eating enough. Dude, I would be, yeah, I don't even want to... Yeah, I would not be taking care of myself very well. But it comes a moment

when taking care of yourself well. I'm going to ask you a really hard question. Okay? Okay. And so, no, I'm going to ask you a hard question and no, it's not a kind question, but I want to be real direct with you, okay? Did you intentionally feed your little girl something

infected with E. coli with the intention of making her sick? Absolutely not. Then this is not your fault. Okay? You hear me? Yes. It's not your fault.

And I'll go further to say any meditation on this is our fault this is us, we should've we should've is a choice to take it's a false control over something that's already happened with a period at the end.

Okay? So the greatest gift you can give yourself, your wife, your marriage, your kid, and the same goes for your wife too, is to live as much as possible in the right now. And one thing that the doctors seem to have proven to you over and over again is their predictions are terrible. Right?

Yeah. She's defied the odds both for the good and the bad. There you go. And my gut tells me is she'll continue to. That's what we're hoping for. The therapies that are available to young children. And again, I'm not in the business of false hope. The number of parents I've had to tell them that I've been the guy that comes and sits in that little square room with you and your wife and says, your baby's not going to make it. Okay. So I'm not in the business of

giving false hope. My oldest best friend on the planet is a traumatic brain survivor and the change in technology and therapies that they have been able to come up with over the last 20 years is astounding. And I tell you that to tell you, I think you've got every reason to walk out of that hospital with your head held high. Okay. And quite frankly, the other alternative is to walk out of that hospital with your head held high. Okay? Yes, sir. And quite frankly, the other alternative is to walk out with your head held low, and that's not going to get anybody anything. Do be heartbroken, and do be really sad.

Right? We've done a lot of that. Yeah. And dude, you're going to keep doing it for a while, and there's going to come a moment when she's four, and she's either running around the neighborhood, and you're going to keep doing it for a while. And there's going to come a moment when she's four and she's either running around the neighborhood and you're going to be grieving over what almost was, or you'll be pushing her in some futuristic looking wheelchair

while you're out at the zoo and it will just overcome you with like a wave. That how unfair it is that she's not running around the other kids and it will be what it is and let that thing come and feel it and own it. And then bend down and give that girl a kiss right on her big sweaty forehead and say, let's go see the lions. Right?

Yes. But you are in the middle of this and this is not that moment. This is the moment to be with your wife, to be with your baby little girl, to be with your five-year-old. And they keep telling the doctors, not in this house. Right? Yeah. I'm glad we didn't make the decision

that everyone was telling us we needed to make. Yes, be at peace with that. Yeah. And, be at peace with that. Yeah. And, and, forgive yourself for even contemplating it. Okay? Okay.

You got to stop hanging on to it, man. Yeah. Yeah. You had a dance with the devil and then you backed out. It's good good good for you what made y'all change hospitals um

honestly it was the dialysis um she was going from acute to chronic and the hospital we were at did not do chronic dialysis so we had to go to the children's hospital that does the chronic dialysis. So we had to go to the children's hospital that does the chronic dialysis.

So that was the driving force of the move. Wow. That's fantastic, man. And then just so when your child moved over, their care was just different and better, and she perked up? Something happened in the ambulance on the way between the two hospitals she she fell asleep for the first time in days um she didn't she pretty much didn't wake up for about 36 hours and um that was you know that was when everything started to change

wow i mean everything it was they were legitimately there to hook the dialysis machine up and we were repositioning her when we noticed the blue line on her diaper so that they could get access to the catheter ports yeah dude that's amazing and each day has gotten better

each day we're getting a little bit more of her back but there's still a lot of her missing. Of course. And honestly, there might be. There might be. And that's not for today.

Is that fair? Yes. Very fair. Do keep this. I want you to get away from the hospital if you can in the next day or two. Get out into some sunshine. And I want you to go pick up a journal at a Barnes & Noble or someplace. And I want you to begin writing it down.

All of it. What you feel, what you think, what you're upset about, what you're mad about, what you're scared about. And the goal is when she turns 18, you're going to hand this over to her. And you're going to say, this is the journey we took with you. This is how much we loved you. This is how long we've loved you. This is a shadow of how much we're going to continue to love you moving forward.

But write all that stuff down. For you, for your wife, for your little one, your five-year-old, for everybody. I'm grateful for you, man. And my heart is broken for you. I wish I had something that I could snap my fingers. I can't. I can just tell you as another dad, I love you. And I'm so sorry. So, so sorry, man. We'll be right back. Hey, what's up? Deloney here. Listen, you and me and everybody else on the planet has felt anxious or burned out or chronically stressed at some point.

In my new book, Building a Non-Anxious Life, you'll learn the six daily choices that you can make to get rid of your anxious feelings and be able to better respond to whatever life throws at you so you can build a more peaceful, non-anxious life. Get your copy today at johndeloney.com. All right, we're back. And look at this.

It's Ben's favorite band ever, Panic at the Disco with an exclamation point in it. Because why not? You know your band is probably Disco, with an exclamation point in it, because why not? You know your band is probably not that great when you put punctuation in it, but that's just me. Song's called High Hopes, and it goes like this. Had to have high, high hopes for a living. Shooting for the stars when I couldn't make a killing. Didn't have a dime, but I always had a vision. Always had high, high hopes.

Kelly's always getting high, high, high. Had to have high, high hopes. Kelly's always getting high, high, high. Had to have high, high hopes for a living. Didn't know how, but I always had a feeling I was going to be that one in a million. Always had high, high hopes. I'm not one in a million. The show is, though, and you are, too. We'll see you soon. Coming up on the next episode.

My daughter carries my ex-wife's maiden name. Coming up on the next episode. that a person's name is a deeply important part of a person's psyche? He was in Spanish class and they had a Day of the Dead project and they had to make the little ofrenda where they had to make the memorial. Really, the only person that he knows that's died was his dad. So he made that and that resurfaced a bunch of questions. We were digging through photos and he found a photo of his dad's biological father. And he said, who's that? And I was like, okay, this is your dad's dad. Unfortunately, he died when your dad was younger. Well, how did he die? He committed suicide. So then you have this beautiful autistic brain sitting there. He looks for patterns in the world.

That's right. He said, well, if my dad did it and his dad did it, does that mean I'm going to do it?