Speaker 1: Paul Taylor. Welcome back to the You Project, my friend.
Speaker 2: I know that we're recording. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yes, I did nearly get caught. Well I did know
Speaker 1: nearly caught.
Speaker 3: I was about to introduce show everyone, and there's this
Speaker 3: little thing that you've got to do. I mean, look,
Speaker 3: I'm no technical giant, but apparently you've got to press
Speaker 3: the button that says record before you start talking on
Speaker 3: a podcast. Usually Melissa or Tiff or someone who's smarter
Speaker 3: and better than me does that. But stupidly they gave
Speaker 3: me the control today. But fuckingly fuck we're under way,
Speaker 3: we're recording. It's been an interesting time of late on
Speaker 3: Planet Taylor. You and I have had a bit of
Speaker 3: a chat, like we've chatted on the phone a bit,
Speaker 3: but even I don't know all the story.
Speaker 1: So yeah, tell us what's been on on for you?
Speaker 4: Well, on Monday, the twentieth of January, I had open
Speaker 4: heart surgery to correct day at birth defect what's called
Speaker 4: congenital heart defect. And I'm very lucky actually, and I
Speaker 4: think the first lesson here is you got to be
Speaker 4: proactive about your health. And fortunately for me, I play
Speaker 4: soccer with a cardiologist and Monday I was sitting with
Speaker 4: him and I said, hey, ma, I want to get
Speaker 4: the full mot's. Actually that's a British term and that's
Speaker 4: where you get your car all a big luck.
Speaker 2: I said, what so you know and he said, look,
Speaker 2: come and see me. We'll do the lot.
Speaker 4: So did everything, basically, did the stress test of cardiac MRI,
Speaker 4: all of that, and he came back and he, you know,
Speaker 4: talks about the plumbing, the electrics and one other thing.
Speaker 4: Can't remember, but anyway, he was going, like, your heart's
Speaker 4: in good ship, you very fit. However, you have a
Speaker 4: i cuspared aortic valve rather than a tri cuspared aortic valve,
Speaker 4: and we need to do a little bit of investigation.
Speaker 4: So what that means is that the aorta that's the
Speaker 4: main artery and so you're left centrical pumps blood through
Speaker 4: that ardy to the rest of the body. And the
Speaker 4: valve a one way valve that's supposed to have three
Speaker 4: leaves a try cuspard. Mine had two leaves. And what
Speaker 4: happens over time is it doesn't shot properly, so as
Speaker 4: the heart pumps the blood out, some of it regurgitates
Speaker 4: back in. Right, So they had to do some further
Speaker 4: investigation and find that I had significant regurgitation.
Speaker 2: So this was that you need to get this.
Speaker 4: Done and now, but soon, and I went, let's just
Speaker 4: do it straight away.
Speaker 1: So when when did you all?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: So the operation was January twenty, When did you get
Speaker 3: this information?
Speaker 4: I got the information about a year earlier.
Speaker 2: That's when we first noticed someone was wrong.
Speaker 4: I would have done the operation quicker, but I went
Speaker 4: and checked my health insurance and I was covered for
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff, but not aortic valve, not hard
Speaker 4: valve surgery, and it would have cost me probably fifty grand, right,
Speaker 4: So I had to upgrade my think and in weigh
Speaker 4: it for a year. Look, the reality is there's probably,
Speaker 4: all in all, maybe.
Speaker 2: A six month delay, which was fine.
Speaker 4: But by the time I ended up getting in my
Speaker 4: actually surgeon say to me, your regurgitation level was over
Speaker 4: fifty percent, right, which means that I was working on
Speaker 4: half capacity basically, Yeah, and what symptoms?
Speaker 3: What symptoms did you have a year ago? And what
Speaker 3: symptoms did you have pre of right?
Speaker 4: So a year ago I had no symptoms whatsoever because
Speaker 4: my regurgitation was significant but not horrendous. Look, I reflecting
Speaker 4: back and probably, you know, my fitness had gone. I
Speaker 4: was playing soccer, and last year, because Kira was playing,
Speaker 4: I was playing over thirty fives, right, and I'm fifty
Speaker 4: three now. But because Kira started playing on a Sunday,
Speaker 4: I then stopped playing in the and a me and
Speaker 4: of mine who was coaching another team, said hey, how
Speaker 4: about you come over and play.
Speaker 2: For us on a Saturday because I know you're free.
Speaker 2: We got a lot of.
Speaker 4: Young boys, but they need a couple of old heads,
Speaker 4: so me and a tyrone went and played for them.
Speaker 4: So that was open the inch, right, So it was
Speaker 4: quite interesting playing against the eighteen year olds. But on reflection,
Speaker 4: you know what, I really noticed my speed was just gone,
Speaker 4: and that's the first thing to go. But actually I
Speaker 4: think the heart had a fur bit to do with
Speaker 4: that on reflection, but I didn't really start to notice
Speaker 4: overtly any symptoms.
Speaker 2: I'm prove probably November.
Speaker 4: And I'm thinking, oh yeah, I'm starting to notice my
Speaker 4: exercise capacity in December and I'm thinking maybe this is psychosomatic.
Speaker 4: But certainly January, whenever I came back from the UK
Speaker 4: and was going again the CrossFit, I was way downing,
Speaker 4: like way dying and he said. The surgeon said to me, yeah,
Speaker 4: your regurgitation was over fifty percent. Once your regurgitation hit
Speaker 4: sixty percent or so, you start to develop heart failure.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I'm not a catiologists, but I'm thinking of block with
Speaker 3: a congenital heart dayfect. You probably not be sprinting on
Speaker 3: a soccer field year olds.
Speaker 2: So, and it's really interesting because there's a bit of
Speaker 2: a trade off. Right.
Speaker 4: So the first thing I wanted to do, I actually,
Speaker 4: let's reflect back, and you know some stuff that that
Speaker 4: I saw I learned was you got to be careful
Speaker 4: what you pay attention to, because what you pay attention
Speaker 4: to creates your narrative and your belief systems.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: And as whenever my correologist told me that I had
Speaker 4: to have open heart chargery, I remember going out and
Speaker 4: getting into the car, and I sat into the car
Speaker 4: and the words of Seneca, the historic philosopher came to me.
Speaker 4: I pity the man who has not faced adversity, because
Speaker 4: he is not faced an opponent, and nobody, not even him,
Speaker 4: knows what he is capable of.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So I went straight home and I wrote on my
Speaker 4: bathroom mirror worthy opponent. Right, because historics talk about finding
Speaker 4: a worthy opponent to challenge and test you. And I
Speaker 4: wrote beside it my training program that I was going
Speaker 4: to do to really get myself on tiptop shape. The
Speaker 4: other thing that that came to mind, I've got a
Speaker 4: good a guy called Rege ex Lieutenant Colonel Special Forces
Speaker 4: for Australia. He was a very very senior guy in
Speaker 4: the First Iraq War. He was the first Australian to
Speaker 4: go into Qait and I remember having a conversation with
Speaker 4: him and saying, man, how did you feel? And he said, look,
Speaker 4: there was clearly a bit of anxiety going to warris Is,
Speaker 4: but the overwhelming emotion was this perverse sense of excitement
Speaker 4: because this is what I trained for. And as I
Speaker 4: was driving home that just came into my head and
Speaker 4: it just went, this is what I've trained for, and
Speaker 4: so I've chose to view it as a challenge. And
Speaker 4: that's why I'm saying you got to be careful what
Speaker 4: you pay attention to, because, as you know, I'm doing
Speaker 4: my paid steel and resilience and particularly something called heartiness
Speaker 4: and listened to a lot of stoic philosophy over the years.
Speaker 2: So straight up way, because of all of that input
Speaker 2: into my brain.
Speaker 4: My first instinctual reaction was, this is a challenge and
Speaker 4: I need to lean into it, and I need to
Speaker 4: embrace my worthy opponent, right, and all sorts of.
Speaker 2: Negativity that come into your head, because.
Speaker 4: Obviously there is some negative stuff that comes into your
Speaker 4: head that that fucking woul is me the whole victim mentality, and.
Speaker 2: I just nipped that in the button.
Speaker 4: Then the other thing that came to mynd straight away
Speaker 4: was that Carli's idea from Japanese psychology of arigamama, with
Speaker 4: things as they are, what needs to be done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on a level, it's like stimulus response, right, So
Speaker 3: there's the thing that happens, and then there's what you
Speaker 3: do about the things that happen. Ye, So here's what
Speaker 3: I know now based on what I know. Now, what
Speaker 3: am I going to do?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: That's right, it's kind of you know, it's exactly that.
Speaker 4: And so from you know, looking at that negative and
Speaker 4: you've got to do a bit of a risk assessment, right,
Speaker 4: So so I think again, in my background in Helico,
Speaker 4: we always did a thorough risk assessment.
Speaker 2: And I remember from my time in that you know.
Speaker 4: What's the likelihood of it happening and what's the impact.
Speaker 4: So I did all the research, you know, we decided
Speaker 4: to do something called the Ross procedure.
Speaker 2: I went and saw the surgeon, so he give me
Speaker 2: the options.
Speaker 4: Right, one was mechanical valve and you'd be on warfare
Speaker 4: and blood Tenner's for the rest of your life. I'm like, nah,
Speaker 4: it's the other one is a tavvy, which is where
Speaker 4: they just go.
Speaker 2: Through the thigh and they have this.
Speaker 4: Fucking awesome, this little sort of balloon thing that goes
Speaker 4: right up to your aota and they inflate at the
Speaker 4: valve and it pushes your own out of the way,
Speaker 4: and there's this like false valve. But he said, look,
Speaker 4: you're not going to be able to exercise a maximum
Speaker 4: capacity if you get a tavvy. And the issue is
Speaker 4: they only last for about ten years. And you can
Speaker 4: have a tavvy on the tavy on the tavvy and
Speaker 4: that's you. So if you want to live more than
Speaker 4: thirty years at tavy's not your thing. And then he
Speaker 4: talked about the Ross procedure, which is quite a rare
Speaker 4: one but is now the preferred one for people my age,
Speaker 4: which is more complicated. What they do is they cut
Speaker 4: out your pulmonary valve, which doesn't do a lot of work.
Speaker 2: Right, that's my surgeon said to me.
Speaker 4: It's under about five millimeters of mercury pressure. You know,
Speaker 4: your blood pressure one twenty over eighty, and that's what
Speaker 4: your aorta is under your pomonary valves under bugger all.
Speaker 4: So he says, what we do is we harvest that
Speaker 4: because it's your valve and it hasn't worked very hard,
Speaker 4: and we put that into your aorta.
Speaker 2: We cut out your aortic valve.
Speaker 4: We put your own pulmonary one in there, and then
Speaker 4: we put a donor valve into your pulmonary He says,
Speaker 4: it's a harder, more complex operation, quite a longer recovery,
Speaker 4: but a much better prognosis in terms of long term.
Speaker 4: So I'm like, that's the one I want. And I
Speaker 4: went and researched everything to do with it. Obviously, then
Speaker 4: research the death rates less than one percent, and I thought, well,
Speaker 4: that so really reasonably good, and for somebody who's fit,
Speaker 4: I guess it would be about one on a size
Speaker 4: and risk, which is pretty bloody low, right, I'll take
Speaker 4: them risk. But when you're actually faced with that, like
Speaker 4: if you were going walking out the house and they went, Craig,
Speaker 4: there's a one assize and chance you're going to die today.
Speaker 4: It starts to sort of change your mentality a little bit.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I'll be doing door dash and over rates
Speaker 3: to my house.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But so it's like, well, okay, so what do
Speaker 2: I need to do?
Speaker 4: Right, You've got to sort out all our first chat
Speaker 4: to Carly, you know, I had a life insurance policy,
Speaker 4: had the conversation with Carly about you know, what I'd
Speaker 4: like to be done with the kids, all of that
Speaker 4: sort of stuff. And then, you know, the hardest thing
Speaker 4: in all of this was then filming some videos for
Speaker 4: my kids just in case. Was definitely lea the hardest
Speaker 4: thing of all of it. But I think the other
Speaker 4: the real lessons for me was, you know, you've got
Speaker 4: to embrace this stuff as a challenge, right, and embrace
Speaker 4: it and focus on what you can control.
Speaker 2: And the other thing I did a shit heap of research.
Speaker 2: I've gone to.
Speaker 4: See my surgeon, I'm both my cardiologists and they said, look,
Speaker 4: you need to take six weeks.
Speaker 2: Off work, like six weeks get away.
Speaker 4: And started looking into it and it said, like everybody's
Speaker 4: fucked for six weeks and I looked into it, about
Speaker 4: ninety five percent of people they end up anemic, right
Speaker 4: because of you. Yeah, a lot of people are aren't
Speaker 4: going in because of the heart issue. But then you
Speaker 4: lose a shit heap of blood, right, and they have
Speaker 4: to thin your blood. So they operation's pretty frigging amazing
Speaker 4: what they do. So they cut your chest open with
Speaker 4: a saw, fries it open, and then they clamp your
Speaker 4: heart and they bypass it, right, so all the blood
Speaker 4: gets bypassed from your heart so as they can work
Speaker 4: on it, and then they thin it and it goes
Speaker 4: through like a false lung that oxygen eats it, and
Speaker 4: then they bring it back in on the other side
Speaker 4: so as it goes around your body, right, which is
Speaker 4: frigging amazing stuff. But what end up is you lose
Speaker 4: for a bit of blood and they have to thin
Speaker 4: your blood, so you end up with bugger all iron. Right,
Speaker 4: So part of my thing was I need to get
Speaker 4: my iron up right, and I'm so glad I did.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So my hemoglobin levels which are supposed to be one
Speaker 4: thirty to I think one seventy or something like that
Speaker 4: host operation. Five days post operation, they were down at
Speaker 4: about ninety then and then about ten days ago they
Speaker 4: were up at one hundred and seven. Wow, So I'm
Speaker 4: glad that I did that stuff. I also did research
Speaker 4: and found that there was a prebiotic that you could take,
Speaker 4: which I had the order from the UK, that massively
Speaker 4: improved your gas strow intestinal function, because that's another reason,
Speaker 4: because your guts are just screwed because you know, they
Speaker 4: carpet bomb your gut microbiome, and obviously there's a lot
Speaker 4: of stress.
Speaker 2: So I took that pre and when I was in
Speaker 2: hospital and I restored.
Speaker 4: My biofunction within two or three days, and they were
Speaker 4: they were shocked.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, So you.
Speaker 3: Know you would have thought you and I'd be chatting
Speaker 3: about your pooing on a podcast, and who would have
Speaker 3: thought that I'd be proud of you for backing one
Speaker 3: out so quickly.
Speaker 1: Well done.
Speaker 3: All right, So just to give our listeners context, as
Speaker 3: we recall this, it's the twelfth, So my calculations are,
Speaker 3: it's twenty two, twenty three days since the operation.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 3: Clearly you're not having six weeks off work because I know.
Speaker 1: You've already had enough.
Speaker 3: I'm meant to say this, you've already traveled and made
Speaker 3: doing work right.
Speaker 1: And it's not like that was yesterday, that was a
Speaker 1: bit ago. So what was their kind of projected recovery
Speaker 1: for you? And how have you compared? Like how has
Speaker 1: it actually worked out? Like what are you right now?
Speaker 4: So my sergeant and my cardiologiys book said you got
Speaker 4: to take six weeks off work, right, and then they
Speaker 4: give you this book and it's like after four weeks
Speaker 4: you can hang washing out, don't lift anything other than
Speaker 4: one to two kilos for I can't remember it was
Speaker 4: six or twelve weeks, right, I've already done a light
Speaker 4: weird training session, but it was twelve weeks before, you know,
Speaker 4: return to full function. But they said six weeks before
Speaker 4: you can go back to work, maybe late off as
Speaker 4: studis if you're lucky after four weeks.
Speaker 2: And I'm just looking at that going now and.
Speaker 1: So we're we're three weeks now, you're.
Speaker 2: Tight, We're we're three weeks.
Speaker 4: So day seventeen, I flew to Sydney, got a tree
Speaker 4: into the to the central coast, ran a tow our workshop,
Speaker 4: and then came back home in a day.
Speaker 2: So that was I hope.
Speaker 4: I sat, it's not listening to this, but yeah, I
Speaker 4: think you just boy, did you warranty? But I you know,
Speaker 4: that was my target because that boxhod been booked in penalties,
Speaker 4: Like do we need to cancel this? And I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: not cancel it because that's my target.
Speaker 2: And so I was.
Speaker 4: Incrementally going, here's what I need to do on the
Speaker 4: gateway right fourteen days.
Speaker 2: I need to be doing this on the Monday.
Speaker 4: I need to be able to record a twenty minute podcast,
Speaker 4: and then I need to be doing I need to
Speaker 4: do on the Wednesday.
Speaker 2: I was showing Tuesday, two days before.
Speaker 4: I need to be doing up around ten thousand steps
Speaker 4: and so I did that and then I took an
Speaker 4: easy day on the Wednesday, Thursday, I traveled up.
Speaker 2: I also made it again.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm sitting I'm sitting to get to the
Speaker 4: airport out of a driver and I'm sitting in the plane.
Speaker 4: I'm sitting on the tree in it's you know, it's
Speaker 4: travel still a bit tiring. But I got a hotel
Speaker 4: room because I had two and a half hours, So
Speaker 4: I got a hotel room and had a sleep and
Speaker 4: that that really helped. So I did the workshop and
Speaker 4: was fine, and then came home. I was tired because
Speaker 4: I didn't get home till half eleven I think it was.
Speaker 4: And I was pretty frigging tired. And I earned my
Speaker 4: bed that day, and then the next day I had
Speaker 4: a real rest day. But then Saturday I felt great.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So, but I have also been I've been more invested
Speaker 4: in my recovery than I think probably anybody would be.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: I've got a red light panel. I was doing red
Speaker 4: and near infra red light therapy every single day.
Speaker 2: I was doing saunas.
Speaker 4: I started off just with five minutes because it's good
Speaker 4: for your cardiovascular system. I've also taken a whole heap
Speaker 4: of supplements Klinac, which is has been clinically proven to
Speaker 4: combat inflammation and oxidative stress. So I knew I got
Speaker 4: my sareactive protein measured right, They don't measure in the
Speaker 4: hospital because it's off the chart. So she reactive protein
Speaker 4: for the listeners is a level of inflammation in the body,
Speaker 4: and my whole history was it's less than one, and
Speaker 4: they like it to be less than five. It's above five,
Speaker 4: you're in trouble, you're inflamed. Mine was fifty seven last Saturday. Right,
Speaker 4: So I knew that my body was just a really
Speaker 4: low and really low hemoglobin inflamed like crazy, Like my
Speaker 4: resting heart rate had gone from the mid forties to
Speaker 4: high eighties. So I know, I'm just in, you know,
Speaker 4: a sympathetic state. Your body's just fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting,
Speaker 4: and so it needs did all the help that it
Speaker 4: could get, you know, as well as the glinag. I
Speaker 4: was taking circumen, which is anti inflammatory. I was taking
Speaker 4: fish oil. I'm taking beef liver, which is the best
Speaker 4: source of iron with vitamin C. I'm taking zinc, I'm
Speaker 4: taking vitamin D, I'm taking B vitamins. And then I
Speaker 4: actually been working with an integrative doctor and I went
Speaker 4: and got an infusion and IV of gluedacione. It's called
Speaker 4: a Myers cocktail, so glued tocione hide those vitamin C,
Speaker 4: B vitamins, zinc, and magnesium, and after that I felt
Speaker 4: fucking amazing.
Speaker 3: Tell me about through this journey cognitive function. How's your
Speaker 3: Brian going? How was your Brian going in the first week?
Speaker 4: Then I never had any issue like I was in
Speaker 4: the I was in the in the hospital.
Speaker 1: I've got a video that says otherwise.
Speaker 4: Overally, Ah, that was that was under the influence of
Speaker 4: a fair bit of morphine, but within by So I
Speaker 4: got out of ICEE.
Speaker 1: You.
Speaker 4: I mean I was reasonably like Monday night, I hardly
Speaker 4: remember Carly was there, oscar was there, and I might
Speaker 4: woke up on Tuesday, I'm like, were they there?
Speaker 2: And then I talked to the surgeon. Did he do
Speaker 2: the ross procedure or not?
Speaker 4: Because you know, there was still he had to check
Speaker 4: the geometry when he went in there, so you know,
Speaker 4: Tuesday it was like, yes, we were there, and yes,
Speaker 4: you did get the ross procedure right. So but then
Speaker 4: I see my cognitive function was fine, and I was
Speaker 4: doing some work on my PhD in hospital because I'm
Speaker 4: doing a lot of sitting around. But yeah, I had
Speaker 4: an interesting experience in hospital. You know, I've always said
Speaker 4: hospitals are dangerous places. I don't like them. I don't
Speaker 4: think they're optimal for recovery, and that was certainly the case.
Speaker 2: So I got out of ICEE.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 2: I think it was here Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.
Speaker 4: I got put in a room on Wednesday and had
Speaker 4: a fur bit of sleep on Wednesday, but it did
Speaker 4: a fair bit of walking. I did I think about
Speaker 4: twelve hundred and fifty steps, which was reasonably good.
Speaker 2: Thirsty I was feeling quite good.
Speaker 4: I did over three thousand steps, and I'm thinking, actually,
Speaker 4: I'm doing quite well. I mean, the breathing was really hard.
Speaker 4: But in Thirsty Night, I had a fucking night from hell. Right,
Speaker 4: So I was in this room where the rcon was
Speaker 4: super large. Right, So there's a bit of a bit
Speaker 4: of context to this. And as you know, a lot
Speaker 4: of the listeners don't know. When I was in the military,
Speaker 4: I went through combat survival of resistance to interrogation training,
Speaker 4: which was ten days of pretty hard core stuff. You know,
Speaker 4: they don't give you any food for ten days, they
Speaker 4: thrash the life out of you, and then for five
Speaker 4: days you get hunted by a hunter force in them.
Speaker 4: When you think it's all over, you're introduced to the
Speaker 4: shock of capture. And then we spent twelve hours hoo
Speaker 4: did in this room in stress positions which are fucking evil,
Speaker 4: with white noise at the volume you'd hear music in
Speaker 4: a nightclub, right, and that ever since then, kitchen fans,
Speaker 4: bathroom fans, ceiling fans.
Speaker 2: I fucking hate them. I hate them with a passion,
Speaker 2: like if there's a fire.
Speaker 4: I walk into a room and I feel a bit edgy,
Speaker 4: and then I realized.
Speaker 2: The fans on the kitchen fan. I turned it off.
Speaker 2: I'm like, ah. And the only ongoing argument.
Speaker 4: That we have is the ceiling fan in the in
Speaker 4: the bedroom because Cornie loves it and I detest it.
Speaker 2: So she would go to.
Speaker 4: Bed early put the ceiling fan on, and then I
Speaker 4: come to bed and I turn it off because I
Speaker 4: just can't sleep with a ceiling fan.
Speaker 2: And this thing was so loud.
Speaker 4: And I was laying there on Thursday and I'm I'm
Speaker 4: a side sleeper, and you can't sleep on your side
Speaker 4: when you've had your chest cut open, right, So by thirsty,
Speaker 4: I'm starting to get like massive paying all the way
Speaker 4: up my back and neck and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But then I'm lying trying to sleep on thirsty.
Speaker 4: Night, and that fan get in my head big time,
Speaker 4: and I'm actually, I looked at my sleep I got
Speaker 4: not one minute of sleep on thirsty night, and I
Speaker 4: was lying there and it just it fucking really got
Speaker 4: in my head. And I'm like, half the time I'm
Speaker 4: back in that room in fucking stress positions.
Speaker 2: I think the peeing in the back you know, it
Speaker 2: all amplified and.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's trauma. It's trauma, it's literal trauma.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I mean Cardie says, that's PTSD.
Speaker 4: I think it does a disservice to people who have
Speaker 4: reaped real PTSD. But it's I would describe it as
Speaker 4: very unpleasant memories.
Speaker 2: And it took me back there.
Speaker 4: Right. Some people might be listening to this going do
Speaker 4: this fucking PTSD, but you know not, I really just stuff,
Speaker 4: but it really, it just fucking warned me up like
Speaker 4: a spring. And Carli came in on the Friday and
Speaker 4: she's like, Jesus, I've never seen you like this. And
Speaker 4: she actually said to me, you've got to channel your siege.
Speaker 4: And she thought I was going to bite her head off,
Speaker 4: and I went, oh, fuck it, right, because my gremlin
Speaker 4: is running the show. So for those who are not
Speaker 4: familiar with this, me and Carli have this concept of
Speaker 4: siege in gremlin. Gremlin's that negative thing in your head,
Speaker 4: all the negative self talk, blah blah blah, everything.
Speaker 2: That's negative, and siege is your best version of you.
Speaker 4: And she actually joted me out of that because I
Speaker 4: was I was I was at a ship state on Friday,
Speaker 4: I was going to check myself out and all sorts
Speaker 4: of stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I got to get out of here.
Speaker 4: I have to get out of here. And she's just like,
Speaker 4: pull your fucking head in and be your siege. So
Speaker 4: they ended up and I went and saw them and
Speaker 4: said can we move?
Speaker 2: Can we move rooms? And they moved me to another room,
Speaker 2: which was a shit a little better and that was
Speaker 2: really helpful.
Speaker 4: But then and on Saturday that the plan was that
Speaker 4: I was going to get home on Saturday, and then
Speaker 4: the cardiologists came to see me and he said, look,
Speaker 4: I don't want to let your home because he said, look,
Speaker 4: you've had a little bit.
Speaker 2: Of VT ventricular attack of cardia.
Speaker 4: And which is normal. You know, it's only a problem
Speaker 4: if you hit thirty seconds. Mine were two seconds. There
Speaker 4: was just a couple of little things, he said. But
Speaker 4: your rejection fraction, because they did an echo, was only
Speaker 4: about forty percent, right, and they like.
Speaker 1: Mind people, what just explains people? Rejection fraction?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's when you're when your ventricle contracts, like
Speaker 4: how much of the blood actually gets out and around
Speaker 4: your body, And mine was at forty a typical one.
Speaker 4: Most people walk around fifty to seventy percent, right, and
Speaker 4: they like it post up to get sixty.
Speaker 2: So they said, look yours a bit low.
Speaker 4: It's understandable because you've had the Ross procedure, which is
Speaker 4: more traumatic. But given those two things, he said, I
Speaker 4: want to put you on this drug Ammy of their
Speaker 4: own right, and that will just kill off those those
Speaker 4: little taki cardias and just give you the best chance
Speaker 4: of recovery and you can go home tomorrow. And I
Speaker 4: rather stupidly and didn't ask what you should ask on
Speaker 4: every medication, What are the side effects? What are all
Speaker 4: the side effects? High often those side effects? And if
Speaker 4: there's bad side effects, is there any alternative treatment?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: So I got a dose of the drug sorry after
Speaker 4: anoon or Saturday evening, and then on Sunday another one.
Speaker 4: And I woke up Sunday and I was feeling shit harsh.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, fuck, I've gone backwards here, And.
Speaker 4: Then Cardy was was was there her and Oscar visiting
Speaker 4: me and then they left and I they get out
Speaker 4: of bed, and I thought I need to get up
Speaker 4: and move because they tell you you need to move.
Speaker 2: And there was this walk that I was doing, lots of.
Speaker 4: Down to the fish tank back down, and I was
Speaker 4: kind of doing laps, so I thought I'll just walk there.
Speaker 2: I walk slowly, and I was walking. I was really
Speaker 2: struggling to walk, and my breathing was labored. And I
Speaker 2: got to the fish tank and I sat down.
Speaker 4: I'm like, fuck, I'm screwed, and this this guy walked
Speaker 4: past me and he went, are you okay? And I went, nah,
Speaker 4: I'm not okay, and he said, okay, let me go
Speaker 4: and get a chair.
Speaker 2: They got a chair, and that's when I twigged this,
Speaker 2: this is the drug. It's just white man.
Speaker 4: And I told him he was obviously a senior medical guy,
Speaker 4: and I just went, I'm not taking that tug again.
Speaker 4: And he brought me back and he said to the nurse, call,
Speaker 4: call the cardiologists, stop that medication, and let's get him
Speaker 4: in the bad I'd get him monitored.
Speaker 2: And then it really hit me.
Speaker 4: So this drug on me, on their own is a
Speaker 4: sympathetic nervous system suppressant.
Speaker 2: But I had a bad reaction to it.
Speaker 4: It dropped my heart rate low, dropped my blood pressure,
Speaker 4: and I was being monitored and my breathing fuck, I
Speaker 4: was struggling to breathe and I was lying in bed
Speaker 4: Saturday night and I was frigging her or someday night,
Speaker 4: I think this was. It was her rndous and I
Speaker 4: was in pain. I could hardly breathe, and I was
Speaker 4: trying to move and then get up, and it was
Speaker 4: so people and I'm just like, you just got to
Speaker 4: get through this, you just got to breathe. They came
Speaker 4: and they did an EKG on me at four in
Speaker 4: the morning, and the nurse was like, ooh, this has changed.
Speaker 2: And then I'm just trying.
Speaker 4: To just say and get through the morning, doing all
Speaker 4: my breath work, trying to control it. And then I
Speaker 4: managed to get some sleep and I woke up and
Speaker 4: I thought, actually, I'm starting to feel a bit better.
Speaker 2: And she came in.
Speaker 4: My heart rate had gone back up, my blood pressure
Speaker 4: gone back up. She checked my EKG and she said, oh,
Speaker 4: you're back to normal.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: So then the cardiologist came in and he said, look, sorry,
Speaker 4: that clearly didn't work out as planned. He said, the
Speaker 4: good news is that your VT's all gone. And he
Speaker 4: said the bad news is you've obviously had a reaction
Speaker 4: to that drug. So you're not going home today because
Speaker 4: we need to observe you, and I went incorrect, I'm
Speaker 4: going home.
Speaker 1: She did, Can I just can I pause you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the middle of the night because the first
Speaker 3: night you had no sleep. All the second night so
Speaker 3: you had zero minutes sleep. And then when you're when
Speaker 3: the shit hit the fan and you got to the
Speaker 3: fish tank and you're rooted in the and then you
Speaker 3: were in agony and you couldn't breathe.
Speaker 1: And did you at any moment think is this it?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: No, I didn't, because I knew I was being monitored.
Speaker 4: I knew I was having a reaction to the drug.
Speaker 4: I'd looked the drug up at that stage on a
Speaker 4: drug data pius. I knew that it paked three to
Speaker 4: seven hours afterwards. But then I started reading the fucking
Speaker 4: side effects. Twenty percent of neurological issues, twenty percent of
Speaker 4: pulmonary issues, Seventy percent of people who are on it
Speaker 4: long term have to come off it because of the
Speaker 4: side effects. Right now, it's normally used for people with
Speaker 4: life threatening arrhythmias.
Speaker 2: But you know, he decided to use it on me.
Speaker 4: I've heard a cardiologist said he used a sledge hammer
Speaker 4: to crack a knot. But you know it is it
Speaker 4: is what it is. I get the reasons that he
Speaker 4: did it, and I didn't give many shit. I was
Speaker 4: just like, and he was apologetic. I just went, I'm done,
Speaker 4: I'm out of here.
Speaker 2: Because I looked at my sleep as well.
Speaker 4: I had in five days, I had a total ly
Speaker 4: at our sleep track of my sleep, and I'm like.
Speaker 1: That's that's going to kill you without the surgery.
Speaker 4: Well, that's exactly my thinking. I'm I'm massively sleep deprived.
Speaker 4: I cannot fucking sleep in this hospital. They've given me
Speaker 4: sleeping tablets to work. I'm like, I've got insomnia. I've
Speaker 4: got industrial insomnia here that is massively driving inflammation and
Speaker 4: oxident of stress in my body.
Speaker 2: I know all the negative effects of sleep.
Speaker 4: The food is shit in this place. It is so
Speaker 4: low protein. You know protein, as you know you need
Speaker 4: more protein when you're sick. I ordered steak and it
Speaker 4: was about fifty grams of steak. And then the next
Speaker 4: night I ordered pron linguini. I thought I'd get some seafood.
Speaker 4: There was two fucking prawns on it. There would have
Speaker 4: been about five grams of protein in the main meal.
Speaker 2: I'm like, and the.
Speaker 4: Ox there's no fresh air in this place. I'm not
Speaker 4: outside in nature.
Speaker 2: You know. If I go home, I'm out looking at
Speaker 2: the water. I'm in a great environment.
Speaker 4: I can release all of my back and all of
Speaker 4: that stuff.
Speaker 2: I'll get sleep. So I'm just like I'm out here.
Speaker 4: I'm like, you guys have lost the right to be
Speaker 4: in control all of my recovery.
Speaker 2: That was my view.
Speaker 4: My surgan didn't take it too well. We had a
Speaker 4: bit of a robust conversation, so we say, and I
Speaker 4: just said to him and he had his run and
Speaker 4: I said you done?
Speaker 2: And he said yeap, And I said, I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said, thanks for your feedback.
Speaker 2: So you I was.
Speaker 3: My man had a heart attack and he's a diabetic,
Speaker 3: and he was, I don't know, three or four days
Speaker 3: post top open the art surgery. And I'm in standing
Speaker 3: next to him and one of the catering staff brings
Speaker 3: a snack and the snack is scones and cream and
Speaker 3: jam for.
Speaker 2: An tarabatic fucking love it.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, who's I'm like, oh, he can't eat that.
Speaker 3: She's like why, I go, well, he's a diabetic.
Speaker 1: It says it right there. And she's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I just bring what they tell me to bring. I'm like,
Speaker 1: well take that away. My old man's like, shut the
Speaker 1: funk up.
Speaker 2: So CARDI was bringing in my food.
Speaker 4: Lucky enough, there was a Vietnamese across the road, so
Speaker 4: she was bringing me in a protein cheek with a
Speaker 4: hypercollagen and berries and all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: And then I was getting my food from the Vietnamese.
Speaker 4: I was getting far from across the road and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. So I didn't eat in the hospital again
Speaker 4: from my think Thursday or Friday. But I was just like,
Speaker 4: and you know, some people go Jesus, that was irresponsible.
Speaker 2: But I knew I was out of the woods.
Speaker 4: I knew I was out of the woods, and I
Speaker 4: knew I had to get out of there for my
Speaker 4: sanity and for my recovery as well.
Speaker 1: If ten out of ten is you when you're normal
Speaker 1: and healthy and fit and strong and robust, like two
Speaker 1: years ago, you with no symptoms, just healthy, that's you.
Speaker 3: Ten out of ten? What do you reckon you are
Speaker 3: at the minute as we record?
Speaker 4: Look, I'd say I'm probably a five right, so normal function, talking, walking.
Speaker 2: Moving around.
Speaker 4: When I get up, I'm got to be a little
Speaker 4: bit careful because my blood pressure I had to stop
Speaker 4: my blood pressure medication, so they put me on three
Speaker 4: different heads, aspiring a blood pressure medication, an SGL two
Speaker 4: inhibitor the strengthen my heart, and the blood pressure. I've
Speaker 4: been taking my blood pressure four times a day and
Speaker 4: it was getting really, really low, so I've stopped that.
Speaker 4: So I've just got to be worry if I spring up.
Speaker 4: But you know, normal function, I can walk around and
Speaker 4: go up and down the stairs, go right for a walk,
Speaker 4: but you know I'm doing half our walks every morning.
Speaker 4: Going up a hill is really interesting, right. I hit
Speaker 4: one hundred and three beats a minute and I'm in
Speaker 4: zone three right, zone three, zone four. I'm breathing, starting
Speaker 4: to breeze really heavy. That used to be one hundred
Speaker 4: and twenty two beats a minute just when I.
Speaker 2: Was doing that.
Speaker 4: So, but that I think is a combination of my
Speaker 4: ejection fractions still not there, and my hemoglobin and iron
Speaker 4: are are really low. Right, So if you've got low
Speaker 4: iron and low hemo globe, and anybody who's anemic knows,
Speaker 4: you've got fucking no energy. And also I'm feeling the
Speaker 4: cold and that's a low hemoglobin thing as well.
Speaker 1: Right, But do you know I have ficious tsunamia. Did
Speaker 1: you know that? No?
Speaker 2: I didn't, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know I have to jet myself with a twelve.
Speaker 4: Right, okay, yeah, because I'm taking be to Yeah, jeez,
Speaker 4: anybody's got any mayall. I feel them, I really do.
Speaker 4: But I've got that combined with low ejection fraction. So
Speaker 4: and look, the great thing you know for me was
Speaker 4: going and doing that workshop. I did another workshop yesterday,
Speaker 4: and I reckon, I was probably ninety five percent on yesterday.
Speaker 2: Wow, so that was pretty good.
Speaker 4: I reckon, I was probably eighty percent eighty five last week,
Speaker 4: and I did a very light resistance training sess. I'm
Speaker 4: just I'm curling nine kilo dumbbells when I used to
Speaker 4: be doing it eighteen. I'm doing twenty four kilos on
Speaker 4: the tricep pushed up. But I'm just like, my body
Speaker 4: needs stimulation. I rackon, I've lost between two and two
Speaker 4: and a half kilos a muscle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you'll get tell me about your your wound, tell
Speaker 3: me about that big bloody slice and dice down there.
Speaker 3: Oh god, wow, Well you know you've just made my primo.
Speaker 1: Thank you. So that looks to me like that is
Speaker 1: fuck twenty centimeters?
Speaker 2: God is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 3: Maybe more maybe so we're looking at like an eight
Speaker 3: nine ten inch scar everyone, wow, and then you.
Speaker 2: See those two little things done there.
Speaker 4: Yeah wow, where they had tubes, So they have tubes
Speaker 4: and your dreamage tubes about as thick as your finger.
Speaker 4: And then on the I think it was on the
Speaker 4: Friday or maybe the Saturday, they pulled the tube.
Speaker 2: Sight Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Bet mother fucker.
Speaker 2: And there was about four or five inches of juben there.
Speaker 2: So they're pulling and it just keeps coming. It was like,
Speaker 2: that's smarted, I can tell you.
Speaker 4: And now, of course the second one hurt twice as
Speaker 4: months as the first one did.
Speaker 3: Well, you got Marc's really as like.
Speaker 4: Fuck, be a stoic lean into it and then like
Speaker 4: fox stoicism this.
Speaker 2: I think there might have been an F bomb that
Speaker 2: sneaked out for sure.
Speaker 1: Did you have any did you have any philosophical moments like.
Speaker 2: Why yes, so so pre.
Speaker 4: So. You know, I'm a fan of the stoics. I'm
Speaker 4: a fan of Memento Maury. I've got a tattoo on me.
Speaker 4: You know that's Marcus really, you know, it was all
Speaker 4: the stoics, remember death, Remember that you were mortal. So
Speaker 4: I've always I've always been very aware of my mortality
Speaker 4: and very grateful every day that I'm alive.
Speaker 2: But what I did deliberately was meditated on.
Speaker 4: My death, and I actually think it's a really good
Speaker 4: exercise for people. I thought a lot about my not
Speaker 4: from a morose perspective, but just like, well, if this
Speaker 4: was to be it, you know, how would you feel?
Speaker 4: And my reflection, I think was I would be really
Speaker 4: content with the life that I had, but changed with
Speaker 4: a huge bit of sadness, and that I would not
Speaker 4: get to see my kids grow up, and that I
Speaker 4: wouldn't get to enjoy my retirement with Carly. And I
Speaker 4: think the third bit of sadness for me would be
Speaker 4: that my parents would have to bury one of their children,
Speaker 4: because that is now my major goal in life, not
Speaker 4: to bury one of my children.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: But when I reflected on it, I thought, fucking hell,
Speaker 4: I've had a good life, and I've had an action fill,
Speaker 4: I've crammed a shitload in right.
Speaker 2: I had a pretty good.
Speaker 4: Upbringing that also prepared me for the world, you know,
Speaker 4: being brought up as an Irish Catholic in a Protestant neighborhood.
Speaker 4: I think that helped an in university, I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 4: I did a shitt heap of travel. I joined the military.
Speaker 4: I had a wonderful time in the military, but also
Speaker 4: saw quite a lot of stuff, and it prepared me
Speaker 4: really well. You know, I've visited over sixty countries. I've
Speaker 4: explored consciousness in numerous different ways.
Speaker 2: I've done you know, shit, had to poison. I've had
Speaker 2: toad poison.
Speaker 4: I've had shamanic rituals and deep in the Amazon jungle
Speaker 4: with this Italian guy thousand kilometers from the nearest road,
Speaker 4: no sat phones.
Speaker 2: Like, I've done some really cool shit in my life.
Speaker 4: But you know, just reflecting on it, it was like, well,
Speaker 4: if I do good ide the other side, well, I
Speaker 4: do differently last time on my phone, right, even though well,
Speaker 4: probably not my phone, I'm not that big of my phone,
Speaker 4: but last time watching news and sport.
Speaker 2: That's probably my weakness.
Speaker 4: I think the other thing that would that I was
Speaker 4: a bit rueful of if it had been all over,
Speaker 4: was got so close to my PhD but didn't do
Speaker 4: it right.
Speaker 2: And I was actually trying to get it submitted before
Speaker 2: just so I might get a posthumous PhD.
Speaker 1: That's hilarious. But that's that's crossed my mind. If I
Speaker 1: die before I finished this.
Speaker 2: I'll be pissed off. But the other thing was, you know,
Speaker 2: if if my time is up, I get.
Speaker 4: To see I get to go on life's last great
Speaker 4: adventure and find out is there another side?
Speaker 2: And more?
Speaker 4: All the fucking holy jewels? Have they just wasted their
Speaker 4: lives because there's fuck all on the other side?
Speaker 2: Oh? You know, what is it like?
Speaker 4: So I think that's philosophically, and I actually think coming
Speaker 4: out of this, everybody should meditate on their death and
Speaker 4: actually go, fuck, if I was to die tomorrow, what
Speaker 4: would I really regret? And if I did get a
Speaker 4: second chance, what would I do differently? I think that's
Speaker 4: importantly do that.
Speaker 3: I think it's a really I mean, it is people. Obviously,
Speaker 3: people are scared. We're scared at times, and it's uncomfortable
Speaker 3: and it's not you know. I did an episode about
Speaker 3: three weeks ago called in the Proximity of Death and.
Speaker 1: I call her my second mom.
Speaker 3: She calls she called me her fifth kid, because she's
Speaker 3: got four daughters and me and our families grew up
Speaker 3: intertwined with each other.
Speaker 1: She was very much my second mum.
Speaker 3: I was always at their house four sisters, four pseudo sisters.
Speaker 3: And she passed away about three or four days after Christmas,
Speaker 3: and our families spend every Christmas Day together.
Speaker 1: And I left the barbecue or the Christmas.
Speaker 3: Lunch and I went to hospital and sat with her
Speaker 3: for an hour and it was just, without trying to
Speaker 3: be weird, but it was so fucking profound. And I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm sitting with this person that I love, that this
Speaker 3: is it. This is the last conversation, this is the
Speaker 3: last hour that I will spend with her. And she
Speaker 3: knew that and I knew that, and yeah, it's like, oh, this,
Speaker 3: like everything else melts away like nothing. And I know
Speaker 3: this sounds cliche. I don't mean it too, but truly
Speaker 3: all that I couldn't fucking I couldn't get enough of her,
Speaker 3: I couldn't get enough of It's like that hour went
Speaker 3: really quick but really slow, and I can remember that
Speaker 3: hour more vividly than maybe any other hour I've had
Speaker 3: in the last decade.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And it's just oh, and it's funny how certain.
Speaker 3: I don't know situations or events or whatever environments or
Speaker 3: can just give you a level of perspective that you
Speaker 3: seemingly can't have unless you're in that Yes, that's right,
Speaker 3: you know, imagine if you could have that like in
Speaker 3: that Like towards the end, I was I was about
Speaker 3: to go, and her name's Ray and she goes, you
Speaker 3: know how much I love you?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well that was it. I was fucked right.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm I'm.
Speaker 3: Out, and I go, like a sun does dismissively. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I know, like yeah, I know, like a fucking alpha
Speaker 3: male moron. And then she grabs my hand with her skinny,
Speaker 3: little cancer ridden body and makes me look at her
Speaker 3: and then says it again.
Speaker 1: And then that was it because I knew that would
Speaker 1: never happen again, you know, and she knew that, and
Speaker 1: she wanted to make sure that I left knowing that.
Speaker 1: And what was interesting was.
Speaker 3: I feel fucking she was more worried about me. She
Speaker 3: wasn't worried about herself at all. She wanted to set
Speaker 3: me at peace with that. She wanted me to be okay.
Speaker 1: And I came out of there going fuck, I've got
Speaker 1: so much to evolve and learn, and you know, I
Speaker 1: felt like I wish I could be a bit like her,
Speaker 1: you know, so interesting, so interesting?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I really don't you know that that experience of
Speaker 4: really thinking about your death. I think everybody should do
Speaker 4: it and and really think deeply about it, right, and
Speaker 4: think about then through that LANs.
Speaker 2: Where are you spending your time? Right?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: How much of your time is spent fucking doom scrueling.
Speaker 2: How much of your time is spent doing a.
Speaker 4: Shit job you don't want to do, or particularly around
Speaker 4: your your free time?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Are you using your free time in an optimal manner
Speaker 4: or close to an optimal manner? Right?
Speaker 3: And even turning up the volume on things that really
Speaker 3: don't matter?
Speaker 1: And you like, this is a one out of ten issue.
Speaker 1: I'm making it a nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you go.
Speaker 1: This is not a nine, you fucking idiot. This is
Speaker 1: maybe not even a one.
Speaker 3: Yes, But your get like whatever's got your attention's got
Speaker 3: your mind, has got your body has got you.
Speaker 2: Like you are.
Speaker 3: Literally creating an emotional and psychological prison for yourself. Like
Speaker 3: there isn't a problem, but you're inventing one. We're so
Speaker 3: good at that, absolutely, you know, just pluck plucking a
Speaker 3: problem from mi there, Hey, tell my my listeners about
Speaker 3: you and your stuff? How can they find you? And
Speaker 3: I know we're doing a co share, but for my audience,
Speaker 3: how can they find you and follow you? When by
Speaker 3: your book he has written a fucking brilliant book.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: And my book is called Death by Comfort and my
Speaker 4: second book I'm just about to start once I get
Speaker 4: my PhD submitted.
Speaker 2: But we'll keep up on on their wraps.
Speaker 4: My podcast is the Paul Taylor Podcast. On website is
Speaker 4: Paul Taylor dot bisbeei Z.
Speaker 3: Perfect, perfect, well mate, it's been good. In the words
Speaker 3: of the greats, I'm glad you're not dead.
Speaker 2: That's it. Glad to be on the other side.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're not dead. And yeah, we'll chat again.
Speaker 2: Thanks buddy, cheers. Could you say yeah,