Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galligle people of
Speaker 1: the Urination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 2: It's January twenty fourteen and we're inside a US Navy
Speaker 2: FA eighteen plummeting towards the Atlantic Ocean. A dogfight had
Speaker 2: gone terribly wrong, and now Lieutenant Keegan gil can do
Speaker 2: nothing but hold on tight as his jet succumbs to
Speaker 2: an out of controled diet. He's forced to eject at
Speaker 2: the unbelievable speed of six hundred and ninety five miles
Speaker 2: per hour. He crashes into the shark infested icy waters.
Speaker 2: His injuries are so severe he should be dead instantly.
Speaker 2: Keegan's limbs are torn and he's suffered a traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 2: It's a long battle with hypothermia as rescue teams race
Speaker 2: to find him. When he regains consciousness in hospital, he
Speaker 2: realizes his injuries are catastrophic. His life will never be
Speaker 2: the same. I'm at Middleton and this is head game today,
Speaker 2: Keegan Gill on his epic journey to Helen back. Mate, Look,
Speaker 2: you look like you're in one piece, so that's good news, mate,
Speaker 2: that's good news. And haven't read your story. Car. How
Speaker 2: you're stealing one piece is absolutely amazing, and you've almost
Speaker 2: fought through an impossible scenario to be where you are today.
Speaker 2: But let's go back to the beginning. Mate. You know
Speaker 2: you're a former retired because of the incident US Navy
Speaker 2: fighter pilot. Was the military always in your family or
Speaker 2: always in your bones? And how did you come to
Speaker 2: joining the military at such a young age.
Speaker 3: You know, it really wasn't in my family very deeply.
Speaker 3: I had an uncle who was a marine, and my
Speaker 3: grandfather served in World War Two, but my immediate family
Speaker 3: was actually sort of a group of hippies.
Speaker 4: You know. They wouldn't let me have Gi Joes.
Speaker 3: When I was a kid, I couldn't play violent video games.
Speaker 3: I was allowed to have guns so I could go
Speaker 3: out and go hunting. So I was always out in
Speaker 3: the woods, camping, hunting, fishing, just being a kid, climbing trees,
Speaker 3: doing all the stuff that little boys should be doing,
Speaker 3: building forts, you know, catching salmon with my hands in
Speaker 3: the river behind our house, and just having a good time.
Speaker 3: But I definitely wasn't built to be stuck in a
Speaker 3: cubicle sitting at an office job under fluorescent lighting all day.
Speaker 3: And I had a really good professor in college who
Speaker 3: was a former Navy test pilot. He had flown with
Speaker 3: the Sea Wolves back in the Vietnam War, so he
Speaker 3: had he had been in the heat of some of
Speaker 3: the most intense conflict, flying Huey gunships and all sorts
Speaker 3: of stuff after and so he sort of rubbed off
Speaker 3: on me a little bit. But I ended up becoming
Speaker 3: a flight instructor while I was in college. I ended
Speaker 3: up becoming a corporate pilot for about a year after
Speaker 3: I graduated from college, and I had a friend who
Speaker 3: was applying to go to Navy OCS Officer Candidate school
Speaker 3: to become an officer in the military and try to
Speaker 3: become a pilot. And at the time, I didn't realize
Speaker 3: that you could even do that. I was a community
Speaker 3: college kid, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 3: I thought you had to go to the Naval Academy
Speaker 3: and your dad had to be an admiral.
Speaker 4: I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize just a guy off the street with
Speaker 3: a bachelor's degree could apply and potentially make it to
Speaker 3: fly F eighteens.
Speaker 2: So basically you went down the commercial route and then
Speaker 2: a buddy of yours said, hey, listen, this is what
Speaker 2: I'm doing, and that sparked something within your within your
Speaker 2: mind or within your within your heart, where you thought,
Speaker 2: do you know what I'm going to see if I
Speaker 2: can not transfer over but start this program.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 3: And until that moment, it, you know, kind of dawned
Speaker 3: on me like, well maybe I can do that. And
Speaker 3: there's this website called air warriors dot com that gave
Speaker 3: me a guide on like how to prepare what I
Speaker 3: needed to know, how to get the application going and everything,
Speaker 3: and so I just kind of dug into it and
Speaker 3: realized this was a viable option for me, and I
Speaker 3: was getting a little while the corporate job was great.
Speaker 3: It paid really well, it was really cushy, got to
Speaker 3: go out to really nice dinners all.
Speaker 4: The time and travel the world. Uh it was. It
Speaker 4: was a good gig.
Speaker 3: But I got bored of it, you know, I was like,
Speaker 3: I need, I need something more than this. It became
Speaker 3: very routine, and I had that calling to adventure which
Speaker 3: led me to apply and I ended up getting in
Speaker 3: and so I headed to Navy OCS, spent a few
Speaker 3: months getting my ass kicked by Marine Corps drill instructors
Speaker 3: and graduated as a Navy insign one officer that basically
Speaker 3: doesn't know what in the world they're doing, and headed
Speaker 3: to flight training.
Speaker 2: And what was it like? What was it like that
Speaker 2: that t transition, Because like you said, you know, you're
Speaker 2: flying around the world, You've got a cushy job, you're
Speaker 2: eating good food, you're being super respected, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden you're being yelled at and screamed that by
Speaker 2: the drill side. Was it quite a shot for you
Speaker 2: or did you? Were you completely expecting it?
Speaker 4: I mean, that's what I signed up for. I wanted it.
Speaker 4: I wanted that experience.
Speaker 3: I know, I'd seen Full Metal Jacket and all these
Speaker 3: movies that guys getting I was like, I knew what
Speaker 3: I was getting into, and I prepared for it. You know,
Speaker 3: I hit the gym really hard. I was in really
Speaker 3: good shape. I prepared myself, memorized everything I possibly could,
Speaker 3: and advanced and I showed up ready to.
Speaker 4: Get my ass kicked.
Speaker 3: And I really, I really liked it because I don't
Speaker 3: know when there's other people around you that are freaking
Speaker 3: out at the scenario yet you're like dead calm.
Speaker 4: It's somehow there's.
Speaker 3: This this weird place that I could get into with
Speaker 3: that where I was just at peace in that environment
Speaker 3: and I really liked it and thrived at it and
Speaker 3: made my way through flight school.
Speaker 2: I reacted well to that. When someone was on my
Speaker 2: and they were yelling and screaming at me, I'm thinking, right,
Speaker 2: just get it done, you know, right the first time,
Speaker 2: and they stopped yelling, they'll stop being on my ass.
Speaker 2: And it worked really, really, really really well for me.
Speaker 2: So you've done that, and then you say you went
Speaker 2: to flight school. So is there of two stages to this?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So so the OCS portion, the officer candidate school, that's
Speaker 3: just kind of like boot.
Speaker 4: Camp for the officer side of things.
Speaker 3: As long as you have a four year degree, you
Speaker 3: can go in and do that program. But once you
Speaker 3: come out of that, you still got to earn your
Speaker 3: wings if you're going to be a pilot, and the
Speaker 3: whole way through that is incredibly competitive. You're competing with
Speaker 3: all the other guys for the slots for the jets
Speaker 3: and the more desirable aircraft. But yeah, you do a
Speaker 3: little water survival training, some ground school. Everything's graded everything.
Speaker 3: You know, people are kind of dropping like flies the
Speaker 3: whole way through OCS. A bunch of people drop out
Speaker 3: api the ground school, people drop out. Water survival people
Speaker 3: freak out when they have to wear their boots and
Speaker 3: flightsuit and go swim a mile in the pool or
Speaker 3: get flipped upside down and the helo dunker for the
Speaker 3: survival training.
Speaker 4: People freaked out. But I was like, I love that.
Speaker 4: That was like what I signed up for.
Speaker 3: You know, I winged as a naval aviator in May
Speaker 3: of twenty twelve, and then I headed for the most
Speaker 3: challenging training yet, which was the training in the F
Speaker 3: eighteen super Hornet. And you know, walking into that hangar
Speaker 3: and seeing these jets and how big they are in person,
Speaker 3: it was it was surreal, like I can't believe this
Speaker 3: is going to be my job.
Speaker 2: And you said, there, what was it like getting your wings?
Speaker 2: You know, passing that training, because just getting on selection
Speaker 2: is a big, big feat, like you said, But then
Speaker 2: you start to see all these sort of experienced, you know,
Speaker 2: elite soldiers drop and it motivates you just to keep going.
Speaker 2: You look around, you go, God, there's only a few
Speaker 2: left out of out of you know, this big batch
Speaker 2: of individuals and then you get badged or you know,
Speaker 2: you get your wings. For me, it was one of
Speaker 2: the proudest moments of my life. Take me back to
Speaker 2: the moment, because I can imagine that imposture syndrome. From
Speaker 2: becoming a commercial pilot to to now receiving and receiving
Speaker 2: your wings. How did it feel?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it was. It was incredible.
Speaker 3: It was like a serious, deep pride that I experienced.
Speaker 3: I'm sure similar similar to yourself. You know, when you
Speaker 3: put that you put that little thing on your chest
Speaker 3: that says you've done it, and it's like, holy shit,
Speaker 3: I can't believe I did it, and I'm so proud.
Speaker 3: And then very quickly you show up at the F
Speaker 3: eighteen training You're like, I'm a winged aviator.
Speaker 4: I know what, I know.
Speaker 3: You realize you don't know anything. You go right back
Speaker 3: down to the bottom of the food chain.
Speaker 2: You know what that's that was. I made sure that
Speaker 2: I relished in the moment for all of a couple
Speaker 2: of hours, you know, and they're like, you know, you
Speaker 2: pass selection and they give you your burying belt and
Speaker 2: they say it's harder to keep them to earn and
Speaker 2: then they kick you into a squadron and then like, hey,
Speaker 2: get get the bruise on, you know, get the tea
Speaker 2: and coffees on.
Speaker 4: You're back to making coffee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty as quite lucky because I went, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: deployed straight to Afghanistan. So I was quite lucky. Within
Speaker 2: two weeks I was out with the boys, you know,
Speaker 2: so I managed to sort of miss that butt. But
Speaker 2: walking through that hang and what you just mentioned, what
Speaker 2: was it like walking through that hang and knowing that
Speaker 2: you were going to jump into one of these beasts?
Speaker 4: You know, it was absolutely surreal.
Speaker 3: It was a mixture of excitement and nerves of like, okay,
Speaker 3: you can't screw this up. You made it this far.
Speaker 3: So there's just so much pressure on you. While while
Speaker 3: you get those little moments of just bliss in surreal,
Speaker 3: a lot of the time you're just so busy and
Speaker 3: so stressed out about all the things you got to
Speaker 3: know very quickly. It can kind of diminish that that
Speaker 3: excitement that you showed up. It's like you show up,
Speaker 3: I'm ready to do this thing, but now I actually
Speaker 3: got to do it.
Speaker 2: And how how long until you have sort of left
Speaker 2: to your own devices to one of these FA eighteen
Speaker 2: fighter jets.
Speaker 3: It's pretty quick before you start solo and the jet,
Speaker 3: I think there's there's a very robust ground training, so
Speaker 3: you're doing lectures, computer based training as well as simulator training,
Speaker 3: so you learn the procedures of the aircraft, you learn
Speaker 3: the emergency procedures, and then you're only in the aircraft
Speaker 3: for about I think it was maybe four flights that
Speaker 3: you have an instructor in the back with a stick,
Speaker 3: and after that you're solo. So you really only have
Speaker 3: a few hours in the F eighteen in real life
Speaker 3: before you you're sent out the door on your first solo.
Speaker 2: You do, you guys train pretty much like us, like
Speaker 2: as if it's real time, don't you So you are
Speaker 2: going into these dog fights as if it's as if
Speaker 2: you are, you know, serving and protecting your country.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean you hear the term routine training mission or
Speaker 3: training mission, and I think people in the civilian world
Speaker 3: hear that and they're like, oh, they're just training, like
Speaker 3: they're just you know, just dicking around out there. But
Speaker 3: are like you, guys, our training is as close to
Speaker 3: the real thing is possible, and oftentimes we're training in
Speaker 3: skill sets that are very infrequently used in real combat.
Speaker 3: But you know, you're still fighting the jet. Especially with
Speaker 3: dog fighting, casts all these things, your close proximity to
Speaker 3: the ground, you're maneuvering these aircraft at the edge of
Speaker 3: these the capability, you're multitasking, managing all these systems, talking
Speaker 3: on multiple radios. Like, there's a lot going on, and
Speaker 3: it's really difficult and it's extremely dangerous. And with dog fighting,
Speaker 3: you are doing everything that you would do in a
Speaker 3: real dogfight with with just a couple training rules put
Speaker 3: in place to keep you keep you a little bit
Speaker 3: safer than you would maybe be in a real scenario.
Speaker 3: But other than you know, not hosing off real missiles
Speaker 3: or ordnance at like guns at one another, we're doing
Speaker 3: it dang near as close as you can get to
Speaker 3: the real thing.
Speaker 2: Just explain to me what a dog fight looks like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a dogfight is two or more aircraft within
Speaker 3: visual range of one another, basically trying to shoot each
Speaker 3: other down. It's sort of the epitome of what people
Speaker 3: probably think when they think fighter pilot. So you're trying
Speaker 3: to hit the other guy with a missile or gunfire
Speaker 3: to shoot them out of the air and so in
Speaker 3: order to do that, you oftentimes got to get their
Speaker 3: jet in front of you and get behind them ideally
Speaker 3: so that you can get a missile or gunfire that's
Speaker 3: going to actually hit them with the real shot. So,
Speaker 3: as a pilot, you're maneuvering the jet, you're pulling seven
Speaker 3: and a half g's, you're performing this thing at the
Speaker 3: edge of its capabilities. So if you can imagine your
Speaker 3: body here with your gear on, weighs two two hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty pounds, Now you're under all that g force
Speaker 3: at seven and a half g's. Now it's like you
Speaker 3: weigh fifteen or sixteen hundred pounds. That you can feel
Speaker 3: and you can imagine that crushing weight. So it's sort
Speaker 3: of like doing a high intensity interval training. You're playing
Speaker 3: four dimensional chest, you're operating weapon systems, radar, defensive systems,
Speaker 3: you're talking on multiple radios, like there's just a ton
Speaker 3: going on, and it's not uncommon, especially when you're a
Speaker 3: younger guy, to what they call a helmet fire, where
Speaker 3: your brain is just so overwhelmed with information that it's
Speaker 3: just like you don't know what to do. So it's
Speaker 3: it's incredibly intense and it's it's probably the most demanding
Speaker 3: thing that we do as far as the physical demand
Speaker 3: and the mental demand combined together as that dogfight.
Speaker 2: You talk to me about the physical demand because you
Speaker 2: mentioned the G force there. You know, you're not only
Speaker 2: fighting the enemy where you have to be psychologically switched
Speaker 2: on and in the game, but you're fighting the aircraft.
Speaker 2: Like you said, you're bending this aircraft. You're fighting the g's.
Speaker 2: You have to be trained enough to ignore that so
Speaker 2: you can stay psychologically switched on one percent on the target,
Speaker 2: otherwise you're not going to make it out right. What's
Speaker 2: it like physically to be in that situation under those
Speaker 2: g's wist having to perform at such a high.
Speaker 3: Level, Yeah, it's it's you can imagine you're squeezing your legs,
Speaker 3: you're squeezing your your glutes, you're squeezing your core to
Speaker 3: try to force that blood up into your head. You're
Speaker 3: doing what's called the anti G straining maneuver, which is
Speaker 3: where you're breathing and then you're kind of locking up
Speaker 3: your throat and kind of forcing the blood into your head.
Speaker 4: And so you're.
Speaker 3: Taking these really shallow little breasts to try to force
Speaker 3: that blood up in your head. You're doing everything you
Speaker 3: can just so you don't pass out. So imagine just
Speaker 3: doing like a max deadlift and you're pushing at the
Speaker 3: extremes of your deadlift and your freaking your vision's getting narrow.
Speaker 4: And while you're doing that, you're having to think.
Speaker 3: You're having to fly the jet, you're having to operate
Speaker 3: the weapons systems, you're having to talk on all these radios.
Speaker 4: It's kind of.
Speaker 3: The edge of what I think the human mind and
Speaker 3: body are capable of doing.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to the fifteenth of Jam twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Now I can see you nodding your head. There. That's
Speaker 2: a that changed everything. Could you just take me back
Speaker 2: if you can keeganto that morning when you woke up,
Speaker 2: you know, just you know, And I don't want to
Speaker 2: say just a normal routine because when people say, oh,
Speaker 2: just this, you know, practicing in such a high stressed
Speaker 2: situation and you know, dog fights in training scenarios, It's
Speaker 2: not just a normal routine. Everyone is so different everyone
Speaker 2: who requires you know, it depends how you wake up,
Speaker 2: depends how you feel in the morning. How did you
Speaker 2: feel in the morning of the fifteenth for jan twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: going into work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, got up and it kind of felt
Speaker 3: like a routine day. At this point, I had been
Speaker 3: in my first fleet squadron. You know, I'd been through
Speaker 3: years of all this flight training to earn my wings,
Speaker 3: to get through the F eighteen training pipeline, and now
Speaker 3: I'd been in my first fleet squadron for nearly a year,
Speaker 3: and so it was starting to feel like a normal job.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to go fly an eighty nine
Speaker 3: million dollar fighter jet, but it was it was starting
Speaker 3: to become.
Speaker 4: A bit routine.
Speaker 3: And despite as crazy as what I was about to
Speaker 3: go do that day, I woke up in the morning
Speaker 3: just like I was heading into the office, you know,
Speaker 3: just just and it's also you don't realize that any
Speaker 3: day could be life altering if things don't go right.
Speaker 3: And so, you know, I got ready just like anybody
Speaker 3: else does. I took a shower, got dressed, headed into work,
Speaker 3: drove in, showed up at the office the squadron in
Speaker 3: the ready room, and was ready to go fly, but
Speaker 3: just had no idea what was about to come.
Speaker 4: Down the line.
Speaker 2: So when you go in and you go and fly,
Speaker 2: you're you're going in. You know, you're going to be
Speaker 2: doing a dog fight training scenario. What you're feeling particularly
Speaker 2: nervous or excited that day or was it, like you said,
Speaker 2: was it just the case of, right, let's see what
Speaker 2: we're going to go, let's get out there, and let's
Speaker 2: let's get this this scenario done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was, you know, I was feeling good that day,
Speaker 3: Like I felt like I was doing well in my squadron.
Speaker 3: I was still a fairly new pilot in the squadron,
Speaker 3: but I was well respected. I was I was working
Speaker 3: and hard, that same mentality that I had in flight
Speaker 3: school where I would just I would work my butt off.
Speaker 3: You know, I might not be the smartest dude, but
Speaker 3: I'm going to outwork everybody if I can. And so
Speaker 3: I showed up prepared for my flight. We brief everything
Speaker 3: extremely meticulously, everything from the admin of just getting to
Speaker 3: and from the airspace we're going to utilize that day.
Speaker 3: We're looking at all the different factors from the weather,
Speaker 3: the water temperature, the air temperatures, the cloud conditions, and
Speaker 3: we brief everything in great detail, and then we get
Speaker 3: into the tactical side of things and what are we
Speaker 3: going to do today, How are we going to fight
Speaker 3: these jets, What kind of setups are we going to
Speaker 3: do for the.
Speaker 4: Dog fighting, and so you brief all of that ahead
Speaker 4: of time.
Speaker 3: And that morning I showed up at the squadron and
Speaker 3: my buddy Fisty was at the duty desk, which all
Speaker 3: the pilots rotate through, just answering the phones and coordinating
Speaker 3: the flight schedule. And as a joke, he had put
Speaker 3: up on the whiteboard the airspace that we were going
Speaker 3: to utilize that day, which is normal, but then he
Speaker 3: put all these these little positions of GPS tagged sharks
Speaker 3: that were out in the airspace. Is this shark tracker
Speaker 3: app on his phone to look up all these sharks
Speaker 3: positions and put him up there, and he said, hey,
Speaker 3: today would be a terrible day to eject. The water
Speaker 3: temperature is at thirty seven degrees fahrenheit, so near freezing
Speaker 3: water temperatures. The air temperature is below freezing. We've got
Speaker 3: wind and churned up ocean swell, and there's a great
Speaker 3: white shark named Mary Louis. The sixteen foot thirty five
Speaker 3: hundred pound white shark was directly underneath. So we're laughing
Speaker 3: about this, and then an hour later I'm out over
Speaker 3: that airspace and that's and that's the moment that really
Speaker 3: my life took a drastic change.
Speaker 2: Wow, take me back to the moment and you know
Speaker 2: of seconds before the moment that you realized that you
Speaker 2: were going to have to eject, that you you know
Speaker 2: that you were going to end up in these icy
Speaker 2: shark infested waters, and why did you have to eject?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, so we had done several rounds of fighting
Speaker 3: for the day. We did a little aired air fueling
Speaker 3: before we started the dog fighting, and then the flight
Speaker 3: lead and I broke off to our own airspace and
Speaker 3: did several rounds of this fighting. So you can imagine
Speaker 3: it like a round in martial arts, where you fight
Speaker 3: until there's a clear winner or loser, and then you
Speaker 3: set back up and you just kind of do that
Speaker 3: over and over again. And we had hit joker fuel,
Speaker 3: so we had just enough fuel left to get one
Speaker 3: short fight out. So we ended up setting up quite
Speaker 3: a bit lower and quite a bit faster than typical
Speaker 3: for a one mile a beam set, which is what
Speaker 3: it was caused. So the aircraft were side by side
Speaker 3: about a mile apart from one another, and the flight
Speaker 3: lead called fights on. We pitched our jets in. As
Speaker 3: I came to that merge where our flight paths crossed,
Speaker 3: I was already about thirty degrees nose low and partially inverted.
Speaker 3: So I opted to continue to roll my jet inverted
Speaker 3: and pull down in a split as maneuver to dive
Speaker 3: the aircraft down towards the ocean. And normally that aircraft
Speaker 3: can do it in about five thousand feet of vertical airspace.
Speaker 3: But I didn't realize how fast my air speed had
Speaker 3: gotten because of the unusual setup of the fight, and
Speaker 3: so as I hit about bull's eye nose low and
Speaker 3: this jet, all of a sudden, a system on the
Speaker 3: aircraft kicked in that thought that there were bombs on
Speaker 3: the wings that weren't actually there, and it limited the
Speaker 3: G force that I could pull. So I went from
Speaker 3: the seven and a half G pull where I can
Speaker 3: feel just my head and helmet ground would weigh about
Speaker 3: twenty pounds with the Gehemick's helmet, which is sort of
Speaker 3: this big bulky superspace helmet that we wear where all
Speaker 3: of our weapons displays and everything can go with you
Speaker 3: wherever you look. So say that my head and my
Speaker 3: helmet weigh about twenty pounds on the ground. Now at
Speaker 3: nearly eight g's that's like having one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: pounds just on my head. You can feel that you're
Speaker 3: looking around because you got to keep sight of the
Speaker 3: other guy.
Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden that just eased.
Speaker 3: Is I'm looking up trying to spot my flight lead
Speaker 3: so I can try to shoot him.
Speaker 4: I just feel the jets settle. So it was like.
Speaker 3: Going around a sharp corner and a sports car and
Speaker 3: then having the steering wheel kicked back halfway. Only instead
Speaker 3: of skidding off the road, I'm stuck in a dive
Speaker 3: at the ocean. And this all just happens in a
Speaker 3: few seconds. Before I know it, my radar altimeters go
Speaker 3: off going altitude altitude, meaning I just broke through the
Speaker 3: five thousand foot hard deck that we put there for
Speaker 3: training purposes as the ground when we're training. So now
Speaker 3: in the at least in this training environment, I'm dead
Speaker 3: because I just went through the ground.
Speaker 2: I have a hard deck in a ceiling, don't you?
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Sometimes you'll have a ceiling, but oftentimes where we were
Speaker 3: training that day, we didn't have a restriction on the ceiling.
Speaker 2: So you're going through this hard deck that you're not
Speaker 2: meant to penetrate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I went through the hard deck, which my
Speaker 3: heart sank. At this point, the aircraft is not responding
Speaker 3: to my control inputs. I'm now in an out of
Speaker 3: control aircraft. The ocean is rushing up at me. In
Speaker 3: my display and my helmet and the hud. There's an
Speaker 3: arrow and it's saying pull up, pull up, and I'm
Speaker 3: thinking I'm pulling up. The stick is in my lap
Speaker 3: and the jet is not turning as it's being commanded,
Speaker 3: and the ocean just rushed up at me and filled
Speaker 3: the canopy. And if you get that feeling where your
Speaker 3: heart just sinks, like something terrible is about to happen,
Speaker 3: and that's the emotion that just kind of froze. And
Speaker 3: from there my body just took over. Instinctually. I assumed
Speaker 3: the ejection position. I grabbed that cable between my legs
Speaker 3: and pulled and freaking. Within a half second, that rocket
Speaker 3: motor ignited under the seat, blasting me. Initially, you get
Speaker 3: a fifty g instantaneous blast, which you can imagine your
Speaker 3: body weighing fifty times its normal weight. That compresses your spine,
Speaker 3: knocks the wind out of your lungs, that ease to
Speaker 3: a twelve to fourteen g sustained rocket boost. A normal
Speaker 3: ejection is very violent, even if you're straight in level
Speaker 3: flight below one hundred and eighty knots, which is ideal.
Speaker 3: I was well outside of that envelope. I was two
Speaker 3: seconds from impact, going six hundred and ninety five miles
Speaker 3: per hour, so basically at the speed of sound. And
Speaker 3: what messed me up so bad was impacting the sound
Speaker 3: barrier with my body. And it turns out the human
Speaker 3: body is not terribly aerodynamic at the speed of sound,
Speaker 3: and it just wrecked me. I mean, rip my helmet
Speaker 3: off my head traumatic brain injury, bashed my face up
Speaker 3: like I look like I got my ass kicked and
Speaker 3: fit fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson. Broke my c one
Speaker 3: in my neck, my left shoulder, the scapulus shattered both
Speaker 3: my arms just rag doll, shattering my humorous and my
Speaker 3: upper arms. My right humorous tore through my right bracul artery,
Speaker 3: causing rapid internal bleeding. My left forearm shattered the radius
Speaker 3: inalna and severed the median nerve that controls my left hand.
Speaker 3: I had a brachial plexus injury from my spinal compression.
Speaker 3: That that's the nerve group that controls a lot of
Speaker 3: the upper body. The gear on my vest was all
Speaker 3: ripping off, My radio, my signaling equipment, all of it gone.
Speaker 3: My dry suit that I was wearing to protect me
Speaker 3: from that icy cold ocean water below ripped apart and
Speaker 3: shredded open. My boots were flailing around so violently they
Speaker 3: became like wrecking balls, smashing open my lower legs. So
Speaker 3: I had two open tip bib fractures, chunks of my
Speaker 3: bone falling out of my dry suit, dripping and fallen
Speaker 3: into the water to chum it up for mary Lee
Speaker 3: down below. And this all just happens in a split second.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: By the time the ejection sequence had completed, I was
Speaker 3: a second and a half from impacting the ocean. In
Speaker 3: that time, the jet impacted the ocean and just vaporized
Speaker 3: into nothing. And miraculously that parachute deployed that slowed me
Speaker 3: enough so I didn't die impact with the water, but
Speaker 3: very quickly that parachute that had just saved my life
Speaker 3: then sunk underneath that churning ocean swell and started to
Speaker 3: pull me under. The dry suit that was supposed to
Speaker 3: protect me from this icy, cold like needle light freaking
Speaker 3: water going in my face and neck and filling up
Speaker 3: the dry suit turned into this big old sea anchor.
Speaker 3: And so now with broken arms and legs, I was
Speaker 3: just at the mercy of that parachute. The sea words,
Speaker 3: which are the explosive devices that detect salt water and
Speaker 3: automatically disconnect the parachute from you. Both of those devices failed,
Speaker 3: so I remained trapped to the parachute, which then, if
Speaker 3: for anybody who's ever been held underwater when you need
Speaker 3: a breath of air, it was just that over and
Speaker 3: over and over, and I was getting held under the
Speaker 3: point where I needed a breath of air and I
Speaker 3: couldn't get it. And at a certain point your lungs
Speaker 3: just start to spasm and you start to slurp in
Speaker 3: that salt.
Speaker 4: Water, and.
Speaker 3: I don't know how I eventually would get pulled back
Speaker 3: to the surface. Luckily, my LPU, the life preserver unit
Speaker 3: around my neck, had inflated, and that created enough buoyancy
Speaker 3: that on occasion I would rise to the surface, cough
Speaker 3: up some water, get a quick breath of air, or
Speaker 3: yell for help, and then pulled back underneath in the meantime,
Speaker 3: my flight lead spotted my parachute opening and knew that
Speaker 3: there was an emergency. He rapidly coordinated the Onseen commander.
Speaker 3: He got a hold of air traffic control, and he
Speaker 3: spotted a fishing vessel about a mile from my position,
Speaker 3: and he was able to get down really low and
Speaker 3: really fast when they wouldn't answer on the radio, and
Speaker 3: blast it over their bow and thump them so like
Speaker 3: a show of force over these fishermen that are out
Speaker 3: there just chilling, and he got their attention. He was
Speaker 3: able to get them over to my GPS position that
Speaker 3: he had dropped, and while when they got there, they
Speaker 3: tried to rope out to me to get me to
Speaker 3: pull in, and I wasn't able to grab it. It
Speaker 3: just ended up getting tangled in the parachord. But at
Speaker 3: least that fishing vessel provided a rough location for where
Speaker 3: I was at because I was in the drifting ocean
Speaker 3: with those currents. Otherwise I would have drifted out and
Speaker 3: wouldn't be here to tell you this story. Eventually, a
Speaker 3: couple Navy H sixty Seahawk helicopters arrived on scene, and
Speaker 3: on that forty ish minute flight, I was in and
Speaker 3: out of consciousness.
Speaker 4: I was coding.
Speaker 3: They were doing everything they could to resuscitate me and
Speaker 3: keep me alive, and they said I would go from
Speaker 3: like stillness of death to just shouting and screaming. And
Speaker 3: I don't have memory of it because I was in
Speaker 3: such bad shock, in such a bad brain injury. But
Speaker 3: you know, it was a wild ride for that crew,
Speaker 3: and they eventually got me to the hospital. They rushed
Speaker 3: me in. They took my core body temperature. I was
Speaker 3: at eighty seven degrees fahrenheit, so I should have been
Speaker 3: dead from the hypothermia, but the hypothermia had actually constricted
Speaker 3: the blood flow and preserved my brain function well enough
Speaker 3: to keep me alive. They had to do multiple blood
Speaker 3: transfusions for all the blood loss. They had to treat
Speaker 3: me for rabdough because my kidneys were so overwhelmed with
Speaker 3: all this tissue breakdown. And once I was semi stable
Speaker 3: and the water was pumped out of my lungs, they
Speaker 3: induced a coma and then rushed me into surgery. I
Speaker 3: spent the next week undergoing over a dozen different trauma
Speaker 3: surgeries as they reconstructed my skeleton from titanium rod steel plates, screws.
Speaker 3: They sutured me back up from all the fasciotomies that
Speaker 3: they performed to salvage my limbs from amputation. I was
Speaker 3: covered in hundreds of staples and sutures. I had a
Speaker 3: brachial artery bypass where they took a vein from inside
Speaker 3: my arm and did it like a Frankenstein job, so
Speaker 3: that I could get blood to my hands. Anyways, it
Speaker 3: was a miracle that I was still alive, but I
Speaker 3: was still in a comatose state. And you know, all
Speaker 3: the members of my squadron, my family are at the
Speaker 3: ICU waiting room waiting to hear is he even going
Speaker 3: to live? And someone in the squadron piped up and said, ah,
Speaker 3: he's a scrap motherfucker.
Speaker 4: He'll be all right, Megan.
Speaker 2: One question for you, mate, how are you still alive?
Speaker 3: It was it was seriously miracle after miracle. All these
Speaker 3: little twists and turns throughout it were unbelievable. I really
Speaker 3: think there was some kind of divine intervention that I
Speaker 3: was still meant to be here for something, you know,
Speaker 3: because I shouldn't have lived, and and you know, I
Speaker 3: I'm just lucky to be here.
Speaker 2: So that stage that you eject you your training just
Speaker 2: kicks in, right, it's not okay, what's that thought process?
Speaker 2: Is it I'm gonna die here or is it just
Speaker 2: gonna or you'd write, I need to kick into to
Speaker 2: my my training and I need to eject asap.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It was.
Speaker 3: It was as that oh shit feeling hit me and
Speaker 3: the ocean was rushing up. It was just instinctual and
Speaker 3: that training kicked in, like we had practiced getting into
Speaker 3: that position and all the time, and like all that
Speaker 3: just kicked in. And from there, I don't from the
Speaker 3: moment that I felt that oh shit feeling and I
Speaker 3: looked down and saw the ocean from there, I have
Speaker 3: no linear memory, like my mind just what we got
Speaker 3: it from here, buddy, hold on for the ride, and
Speaker 3: and just my survival instincts and training kicked in. And
Speaker 3: I have little flashbacks from being in the ocean, but
Speaker 3: most of what I'm telling you has been recreated through
Speaker 3: the investigation process, the retrieval of the black box. So
Speaker 3: I was really in and out of consciousness in the water.
Speaker 2: Any memory whatsoever? Do you have any flashbacks? Is there
Speaker 2: any sort of memory sort of reconstruction that you're doing
Speaker 2: or was it just one blur? Until you find yourself
Speaker 2: in the hospital.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So for years I dealt with night tears where
Speaker 3: I would go back into the water and I would
Speaker 3: be I'd be feeling the emotions, I would be feeling
Speaker 3: the darkness, I'd be feeling the tear, you know, the.
Speaker 4: Combination of one.
Speaker 3: I'm being drowned alive, I can't breathe, I'm being pulled
Speaker 3: underneath the water, and I can't swim, and there's a
Speaker 3: shark that's going to freaking finish me off.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: So I got those those moments of just the emotional
Speaker 3: tear of being in the water. But other than those
Speaker 3: little clips, I don't have really anything from from the
Speaker 3: time I reached to pull that injection handle until about
Speaker 3: two weeks later and the lights finally started to come
Speaker 3: back on.
Speaker 2: Wow, and what does the you mentioned all your injuries.
Speaker 2: What was your thought process? You know, what was going
Speaker 2: through your head when you obviously realized that you could
Speaker 2: never you know, fly again and never go back to
Speaker 2: doing something that you trained so hard for that you
Speaker 2: spent your whole life thriving towards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I woke up and it was like
Speaker 3: waking up from a dream, except for some reason my
Speaker 3: bedroom wasn't my bedroom. And there were all these people
Speaker 3: there smiling and talking to me, and I was hooked
Speaker 3: up to all these machines, and I was covered in
Speaker 3: staples and sutures in wound back, and my arms were
Speaker 3: basically my arms and legs were all vacuums. And one
Speaker 3: of my first thoughts was they had tied me down
Speaker 3: the bed, like why am I tied onto the bed?
Speaker 3: Why is this blanket holding me down? But it was
Speaker 3: because I was paralyzed. I couldn't move. And eventually the
Speaker 3: medical staff came in and they kind of explained the
Speaker 3: scenario and said, you've been in an ejection. You're lucky
Speaker 3: to be alive, but you're likely never going to walk again,
Speaker 3: You're never going to be able to use your arms
Speaker 3: or hands again, and your military flying career is over.
Speaker 3: And in that moment, there was a spark in me.
Speaker 3: It was, I think, the same spark that got me
Speaker 3: to be a fighter pilot in the first place, which
Speaker 3: was go ahead and tell me I can't do something.
Speaker 3: I'm going to fucking prove you wrong. And I spent
Speaker 3: I spent the next two years undergoing all sorts of
Speaker 3: intense rehabilitation. I spent three months in the polytrauma center
Speaker 3: just doing speech therapy, vision therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy,
Speaker 3: kinesio therapy, you name it. I was doing it, working
Speaker 3: my ass off. It may have meant I just I
Speaker 3: just wiggled something that day, but every day I was
Speaker 3: doing everything I could, and I had this opportunity in there,
Speaker 3: in that darkness. I could have just bit off on
Speaker 3: all the darkness, all the dread, all the statistics, all
Speaker 3: the hey, you're not going to get better. But instead
Speaker 3: I had this little spark of fire in me still,
Speaker 3: and that's what I started to feed. What if I
Speaker 3: do get better, what's it going to be like when
Speaker 3: I come back into this hospital in my flight suit
Speaker 3: with my wings on my chest upright and say, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm back flying jets. And so that's what I started
Speaker 3: to cultivate instead of biting off on all the dark shit,
Speaker 3: which there were some hard days, no doubt, But what
Speaker 3: I really started to feed and work consistently towards with discipline,
Speaker 3: was what do I need to do today to get better,
Speaker 3: even if it's just a tiny bit better. And every
Speaker 3: day wasn't always progress either, but it was I was
Speaker 3: always working at that light, working towards that little spark
Speaker 3: of hope, and little by little, you know, I eventually
Speaker 3: got out of the polytrauma center. I started to be
Speaker 3: able to get around on a walker. I started to
Speaker 3: be able to wipe my own ass again, brush my
Speaker 3: own teeth, all these things I said I couldn't do.
Speaker 3: And after two years of more surge, undergoing, you know,
Speaker 3: overcoming prescription drug addiction to all the pain meds they
Speaker 3: had me on, I was able to gain a stack
Speaker 3: of medical waivers. I had to go through a Field
Speaker 3: Naval Aviator Evaluation board, so an investigation into the crash,
Speaker 3: which ruled in my favor and gave me the option
Speaker 3: if I could get my body physically back, I could
Speaker 3: go back and fly. And after two years of all
Speaker 3: of that, I was able to max out the Navy's
Speaker 3: physical fitness test again. I was literally running circles around
Speaker 3: the people at the command that I was at while
Speaker 3: I was recovering. And I returned to the cockpit of
Speaker 3: that F eighteen after all of that.
Speaker 2: You got so you've flown since?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I went back to active duty as a Navy
Speaker 4: F eighteen.
Speaker 3: You are shitting me now, and to tell you the
Speaker 3: truth this is it gets even crazier from here, just
Speaker 3: so you know, like we're just getting into the good
Speaker 3: stuff now.
Speaker 2: So two years you've got that spark inside, and I
Speaker 2: understand that spark where someone says you can't do something,
Speaker 2: or someone doubts you, or someone you know, you're just like, right, listen,
Speaker 2: So you actually believe in your mind from the moment
Speaker 2: they tell you you're never going to fly again, you
Speaker 2: believe in your mind that you're going to get back
Speaker 2: in the fight in in an F eighteen vice jet.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it was the same.
Speaker 3: It was the same little belief that I had that
Speaker 3: imagined that I could be an F eighteen pilot, you
Speaker 3: know all the people, Oh who could be an F
Speaker 3: eighteen pilot?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: And in that same I didn't you know, I didn't
Speaker 3: know what I was doing at the time, but it
Speaker 3: was the same process. It was, what's the goal? Can
Speaker 3: I do it? I'm going to visualize doing it. How
Speaker 3: do I get there? I start now with consistent work
Speaker 3: and discipline, and I work towards it little by little.
Speaker 3: And that was the same thought mindset that I went
Speaker 3: into this accident. Was Okay, they're telling me, this is impossible.
Speaker 3: That's what they said about becoming an F eighteen pilot.
Speaker 3: I'm going to apply the same mindset to this. So
Speaker 3: how do I do it? What's the mindset? And I
Speaker 3: think the mind is so powerful, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: think that we even can comprehend the power that it has.
Speaker 3: When you are positively affirming what you can do and
Speaker 3: then you work at it with consistent action, I think
Speaker 3: we can really accomplish damn near or anything.
Speaker 2: And I love what you said about, you know, being
Speaker 2: consistently disciplined, because ultimately that's the key. How did you
Speaker 2: remain and what is discipline? In your eyes?
Speaker 3: Discipline is just holding yourself accountable, you know. Discipline is
Speaker 3: those days you wake up and you hurt and you
Speaker 3: don't want to try, but you do it anyways. That's
Speaker 3: the discipline. It's nobody else is telling you. Nobody else
Speaker 3: may even know that you're you got this going on,
Speaker 3: But it's holding yourself accountable and doing that and.
Speaker 2: Almost doing the things that you know you should be
Speaker 2: doing but you don't want to do. Right, it's you
Speaker 2: mentioned it. It's the small percentages, the zero point zero
Speaker 2: one percentages. You know, it's tiny tiny progress. People don't realize.
Speaker 2: People think being disciplined, you're going to go from zero
Speaker 2: to one hundred. It doesn't it. It's the small steps.
Speaker 2: Little steps take me back to the home. And were
Speaker 2: people absolutely shocked that you got back into a jet?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the duty station I was at the
Speaker 3: job I was doing. The commodore of the strike Fighter
Speaker 3: Wing was my boss at that point, and he saw
Speaker 3: me at command pt out there just crushing it, and
Speaker 3: he was just in disbelief. You can see his mouth
Speaker 3: is just like, huh, how is this guy back doing this?
Speaker 3: And and but because of that, they saw where I
Speaker 3: had come. And you know, I was doing well at
Speaker 3: my ground job too. I was you know, doing some
Speaker 3: taking on a lot of responsibility, and I was doing
Speaker 3: the same stuff at work. I was working hard at
Speaker 3: what I was doing and doing a good job at it.
Speaker 3: And they saw I was physically and mentally back, and
Speaker 3: so I was blessed with the opportunity to return to
Speaker 3: the cockpit. One day, he walks into the office. I'm
Speaker 3: filling out emails. I've been sitting at the stupid desk
Speaker 3: for you know, a year or whatever while I was
Speaker 3: doing the recovery and he comes in, he says, again,
Speaker 3: what are you doing. It's like, oh, I'm just working
Speaker 3: on this. He's like, you want to go back and fly.
Speaker 3: He's like yeah, thinking like, oh, maybe I'm going to
Speaker 3: start in a few weeks or a month. He's like, no,
Speaker 3: you start right now. And so I basically just headed
Speaker 3: out that day and my mind's just crazy, like holy shit,
Speaker 3: this has really happened. It was overwhelming, a combination of
Speaker 3: excitement and then and then the nerves hitting me of like, oh,
Speaker 3: I actually got to do this now, you know, the
Speaker 3: game's back on, the pressure's back on.
Speaker 2: Take me back to you getting in there, because obviously
Speaker 2: there must have been a wave of emotions, nervousness, anxiety.
Speaker 2: Was there a moment and I can I'm probably getting
Speaker 2: a bit too Drew. Was there a moment where you're
Speaker 2: just flying along and it's surreal, you can't believe you're here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: On my first solo back, I definitely had that surreal feeling,
Speaker 3: and I went out into the airspace and I decided
Speaker 3: I need to roll this thing inverted and I need
Speaker 3: to pull it at the ocean and do that maneuver
Speaker 3: because I want to see, you know, I'm I got
Speaker 3: back on the horse, but I need to see am
Speaker 3: I going to freak out if I do the same thing?
Speaker 3: And so I rolled that thing inverted and pulled down
Speaker 3: at the ocean and it was just pure joy and excitement.
Speaker 3: You know, the ocean's rushing up at me. I pulled
Speaker 3: out the bottom as the jet should have done in
Speaker 3: the first place, and I was just like, yes, I'm back.
Speaker 2: So you went and done the exact same maneuver that
Speaker 2: you were that was supposed to happen on the day
Speaker 2: of the fifteenth of jam and you went and executed
Speaker 2: that and came out of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but at a slower air speed so that the
Speaker 3: jet didn't freak out, and it didn't have a code
Speaker 3: on it that was telling it not to turn, so
Speaker 3: it Yeah, it was. It was basically doing the same
Speaker 3: thing more or less.
Speaker 2: And what did what did that feel like? What did
Speaker 2: that flight feel like?
Speaker 4: Just just overwhelming joy, you know.
Speaker 3: And and then I got back to flying and I
Speaker 3: was made it through the flight training pipeline. I graduated
Speaker 3: as the top Stick. I graduated with the River Rat
Speaker 3: a war meeting. I was a lot of fun to
Speaker 3: hang out with outside the cockpit, and I went back
Speaker 3: to a fleet squadron and I was back at it.
Speaker 3: And this is kind of where the happy ending Disney
Speaker 3: version of my story would be, but this is really
Speaker 3: where the real mindset and difficulties started to begin. As
Speaker 3: my career progressed. I was on a flight on a
Speaker 3: detachment down at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. We
Speaker 3: were doing a live fire missile exercise. So I went
Speaker 3: out and I got to fire a live a nine
Speaker 3: mic sidewinder missile, a heat seeking missile at a drone,
Speaker 3: and then broke off and got to do some dog
Speaker 3: fighting with an F twenty two Raptor. So just like
Speaker 3: the world's most premiere freaking dogfighting aircraft, just this thing
Speaker 3: that I had seen at air shows as a kid
Speaker 3: and drooled over, and I got to be up there
Speaker 3: wrapping it up with this guy. And so I came
Speaker 3: back from that flight and I remembered fighting the Raptor
Speaker 3: and all of that, but I couldn't remember what was
Speaker 3: going on in the missile shoot. And while I was
Speaker 3: watching the debrief watching my tapes, I was getting confused
Speaker 3: by the symbology and like stuff that I normally know
Speaker 3: was really hard to understand, and I just thought, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe I'm just tired, and I tried to sleep it
Speaker 3: off that night. The next day I felt even worse,
Speaker 3: and when I got back to my hotel room on
Speaker 3: that second day, I was just I was in a
Speaker 3: panic for some reason. I was having panic attacks, which
Speaker 3: I had never had. I sat down on the edge
Speaker 3: of the bed in the hotel room, and it felt
Speaker 3: like the whole room tumbled around me.
Speaker 4: I was experiencing vertigo.
Speaker 3: I was having a really hard concentrating and it was confused,
Speaker 3: and I sat down on the bed to try to
Speaker 3: set my phone alarmed because I had to get up
Speaker 3: in the morning and fly and I couldn't do the math,
Speaker 3: and I couldn't operate a cell phone, so I realized
Speaker 3: something was wrong. There had been a number of incidents
Speaker 3: in the F eighteen community where the pressurization systems had
Speaker 3: been malfunctioning, causing rapid decompression to the cockpit. And as
Speaker 3: a you know, divers would know decompression sickness. If you
Speaker 3: come up from depth too quickly, the nitrogen can come
Speaker 3: out of solution in your blood and it can form bubbles. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you get those in your joints, get the bends. It's painful,
Speaker 3: but you get those bubbles in your brain, it can
Speaker 3: block the blood flow and it can give you like
Speaker 3: stroke like symptoms or aneurysm or even kill you, you know,
Speaker 3: when you're not getting proper blood circulation to the brain.
Speaker 3: And so it was suspected because there had been a
Speaker 3: number of these in the F eighteen community, to the
Speaker 3: point that they had started to put hyperbarret treatment facilities
Speaker 3: on the aircraft carriers to treat guys coming back from
Speaker 3: flights with this condition. They rushed me to a dive
Speaker 3: base that was nearby at Mayport and treated me for
Speaker 3: decompression sickness overnight in the hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
Speaker 4: The next day I was still a bit out of it,
Speaker 4: but a little bit better.
Speaker 3: And when I got back from that detachment, I kind
Speaker 3: of reluctantly went into the medical kind of weighing my
Speaker 3: options at this point, which is in a high speed
Speaker 3: job in the military, as you know, as soon as
Speaker 3: you start to say there's something not right, like there
Speaker 3: goes your medical clearance, there goes maybe your security clearance.
Speaker 4: So it's very taboo.
Speaker 3: But I knew like whatever was going on there's no
Speaker 3: way I could safely operate in aircraft, and so, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of knowing the way of the situation, I went
Speaker 3: in to see the flight surgeon and pretty quickly I
Speaker 3: got a delayed onset PTSD diagnoses and they all kind
Speaker 3: of just bid off on that PTSD thing, and it
Speaker 3: all just became about my emotional state and let's sit
Speaker 3: down and talk about this state. And it was not helpful.
Speaker 3: It was frustrating because hindsight, what was going on is
Speaker 3: the hardware of my brain had been messed with pretty hardcore.
Speaker 3: I had physical damage to my brain from not only
Speaker 3: the ejection, but now a decompression event that exacerbated, adding
Speaker 3: insult to injury, and it was just screwing with my head.
Speaker 3: But the way they made me feel was this was
Speaker 3: all just an emotional thing that I needed to get over.
Speaker 3: And I was thinking, I can compartmentalize anything. I've been
Speaker 3: compartmentalizing my whole career. I can put that in a
Speaker 3: bottle and move on. But this wasn't working because the
Speaker 3: hardware was damaged. But instead of fixing the hardware, what
Speaker 3: they did is they started to give me these pills.
Speaker 3: They started SSRIs, they started an antipsychotic metay cation called
Speaker 3: quatiopine for sleep. It was supposed to help with severe insomnia,
Speaker 3: and the thought was, if we can just get you
Speaker 3: some sleep, you'll get better, which I think there was
Speaker 3: merit to that. But when you give somebody a sleeping
Speaker 3: pill they're not getting RESTful sleep, it may knock me
Speaker 3: out into this unconscious state. So as things progressed, I
Speaker 3: just got worse and worse.
Speaker 4: I went in.
Speaker 3: Not sleep rest and and I started to go into
Speaker 3: hypervigilance and paranoia, into full blown psychoses. I thought, I
Speaker 3: thought the government was hunting me. I thought they were
Speaker 3: trying to poison me and my family, and it just
Speaker 3: got worse and worse. I was eventually medically retired, and
Speaker 3: that treatment continued at the VA once I got out
Speaker 3: and my family moved back to Michigan, and I was
Speaker 3: just getting worse and worse. And within a couple of
Speaker 3: days of having my dosage at quatyopine increased from three
Speaker 3: hundred milligrams a night to four hundred and fifty milligrams
Speaker 3: a night, my wife came home from a job interview,
Speaker 3: and that's like a heroic dose of this shit, and
Speaker 3: you know, she came home and she heard me rustling around,
Speaker 3: and when she came into the room, I was completely naked.
Speaker 3: I had shaved off all my hair and chunks. I
Speaker 3: had shaved off my eyebrows for some reason. My facial
Speaker 3: hair was all shaved off. The only thing I had
Speaker 3: on was I had a black plastic garbage bag tied
Speaker 3: around my neck like a cape, because I thought I
Speaker 3: was like Batman or Superman and I was going to
Speaker 3: go out into the northern Michigan snowy weather and fight
Speaker 3: crime like that.
Speaker 4: So she loaded us up.
Speaker 3: She's a trauma nurse, so she had dealt with psychotic
Speaker 3: patients before in the er, but now it's her husband,
Speaker 3: which was a whole different thing to deal with. But
Speaker 3: she loaded us up, took me to the emergency room,
Speaker 3: and I spent a couple nights in an out of
Speaker 3: body experience in the psychoses. And when I came to
Speaker 3: I had been transferred to a VA in patient psych facility.
Speaker 3: And as I became lucid and more aware in that facility,
Speaker 3: you know, what I saw was truly abysmal treatment of
Speaker 3: veterans in that facility. When you're on one to one care,
Speaker 3: every fifteen minutes. They would come into the room, shine
Speaker 3: a fl slash light in your face to wake you
Speaker 3: up and make sure you're being safe. It's hard to
Speaker 3: sleep in this place to begin with. There's all these
Speaker 3: other guys having psychotic events. There's yelling and screaming all night.
Speaker 3: There's people walking in and out of your room. Everything's
Speaker 3: hard tile floors and concrete wall, so everything just echoes
Speaker 3: through the place. You're confined into a very small facility.
Speaker 3: We were lucky if we got to go outside into
Speaker 3: a concrete yard surrounded by metal fences and brick buildings,
Speaker 3: maybe once a week if we were lucky. So we
Speaker 3: were getting no exercise, no sunlight, and the only again,
Speaker 3: the only answer there was more pills and more pills, And.
Speaker 2: To me, it was the detox yet, to detox yourself
Speaker 2: off these pills in order to become saying again, right,
Speaker 2: it was the pills that.
Speaker 4: Was yeah, yeah, you know. I eventually got out of
Speaker 4: that facility.
Speaker 3: I spent forty days living in that nightmare of a place,
Speaker 3: but with the advocacy of my family, they were able
Speaker 3: to get me out. And then I sought a different
Speaker 3: route to treatment, and I stumbled across psychedelic assistant therapy,
Speaker 3: and I still to cross this whole world of modalities
Speaker 3: for treating brain injury and mental health issues that aren't
Speaker 3: available at the VA, they aren't available through mainstream insurance.
Speaker 3: And that's what really worked for me and it gave
Speaker 3: me my life back. And you know, through the use
Speaker 3: of psychedelic a system therapy traumatic brain injury clinics where
Speaker 3: they actually went in and addressed the physiology that was off,
Speaker 3: doing a lab work to actually see where the physiology
Speaker 3: and my body was off, and then addressing that with
Speaker 3: nutraceutical supplementation, hyperbaric oxygen therapy. There's this whole world of
Speaker 3: healthcare that can actually heal the brain. And what's amazing
Speaker 3: about the brain is I remember growing up and they
Speaker 3: always say, you know, you damage your brain or a
Speaker 3: brain cell and it's gone, you're never going to get
Speaker 3: it back. Well, that's simply not true. The brain is
Speaker 3: constructed of cells, just like the body is, and when
Speaker 3: you give it the right conditions, which are sleep, good food, clean, hydration, exercise, sunlight,
Speaker 3: you know all that stuff, the body heals, the cells
Speaker 3: heal and regenerate, and it's amazing seeing what the human
Speaker 3: brain can heal from. Even the level of damage that
Speaker 3: I had going on has been mitigated through through this,
Speaker 3: you know, several years of this kind of treatment.
Speaker 4: But pretty much everything that.
Speaker 3: I've had that works is not available at the VA,
Speaker 3: and it's not available through mainsure, through mainstream medical system.
Speaker 3: You know, they're actually actively trying to fight this stuff
Speaker 3: because it's it's competition with their business model. You know,
Speaker 3: they don't want something that can fix you. They want
Speaker 3: to be able to give you a pill the rest
Speaker 3: of your life and make a profit off of that.
Speaker 2: What you've just explained is something that I'm working on
Speaker 2: for VETS as well, which is which is super interesting
Speaker 2: that you just hit on that. But let's finish off
Speaker 2: on the Phoenix revival. Talk to me a bit about
Speaker 2: about this, about your memoir and where we can get it,
Speaker 2: and and why you voted.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, you know, I really felt inspired to share
Speaker 3: my story after having gone through that seeing so many
Speaker 3: guys struggling in that system. So, and this is a
Speaker 3: widespread problem throughout the world right now. I think I
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of healthcare systems that are pretty
Speaker 3: messed up, especially with the mental health treatment. And I
Speaker 3: remember being in this place of darkness and all of that,
Speaker 3: despite my hard charge and attitude to get me through
Speaker 3: the physical recovery of the ejection and got me into
Speaker 3: the world of the fighter pilot being.
Speaker 4: An faighteaen pilot to begin with.
Speaker 3: Even with all that, I got into a place that
Speaker 3: was so dark and lonely and broken. I was ready
Speaker 3: to end it and felt so alone, and so I
Speaker 3: wanted to be the light for other people that are
Speaker 3: in that same darkness, the same light that I wish
Speaker 3: I had. And so that's what inspired me to write
Speaker 3: write this book, Phoenix Revival, The Aftermath of Naval Aviation's
Speaker 3: fastest survived ejection. It goes in much more detail about
Speaker 3: some of the things we talked about today that I
Speaker 3: hope will help inspire people and also give them the
Speaker 3: proper tools so that they can get themselves out of
Speaker 3: whatever they're going through, some practical guidance, some resources that
Speaker 3: can really make a difference in people's lives. So that's
Speaker 3: why I wrote it. But please check out a copy.
Speaker 3: I promise you you're going to have a hard time putting
Speaker 3: it down.
Speaker 2: Do you know what, mate, you are the epitome of
Speaker 2: physical robustness, psychological resilience and emotional intelligence. Wrap that all
Speaker 2: into one. You have Keegan Gil Keegan, it's been an
Speaker 2: absolute pleasure. Thank you for coming on board. Make sure
Speaker 2: you pick up a copy of Phoenix Revival to hear
Speaker 2: more because we've just scraped the surface here, Keegan, Thank
Speaker 2: you so much.
Speaker 4: Mate, Thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure to hear more about Keegan's life story.
Speaker 2: Pick up a copy of his memoir Phoenix Revival. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining me on this episode of head Game. If
Speaker 2: you enjoyed it, please leave me a review. I'm at Middleton.
Speaker 2: See you in the next episode.