Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. My name is James Gearing and this is episode 39.
And to summarize what the whole show is about, this is a show aimed at improving wellness, wellness
amongst first responders, initially police, fire, EMS, military, people in the medical community,
nurses, doctors, and everyone else on the planet. The people that we had on the show so far from
authors to farmers to Navy SEALs to UFC fighters, they've all taught things that specifically our
community can gain from but obviously anyone can gain from. We have waited to talk about this
specific subject until now. I had a project that I was working on a while ago, the Dark Side project,
which is a Facebook page where we touched on PTSD and mental health. Well, my next guest, Dustin
Hawkins, is a man who has literally been put through the wringer by God, by the universe,
however you want to describe it. This man has been tested physically to the lengths that very few
people on this planet, I think, have been tested so far. He got to a very dark place where he made
the decision to end his life, was intercepted luckily by his family and friends, lost one of
those close friends since then and has now made it his goal to improve mental wellness within our
community. Now, Dustin is going to have an announcement about a project called Red Line Rescue.
I'm here to spread the word. I'm using this medium to try and get this to as many people as possible
but Red Line Rescue and then ultimately Blue Line and Green Line, which are going to be the police
and the military, I'm guaranteeing are going to be the solution to the problems that we're having at
the moment with so many first responders feeling like they a can't talk to anyone and then b are
not able to find the right kind of help once they do reach out. There's a huge disconnect between
first responders and counselors and this project is going to basically bridge that gap. They're
going to bring training to the counselors and educate them and actually even do ride-alongs
where they understand what a firefighter, a policeman or even a soldier goes through when
they're in their work environment and then they're also going to create a network that's extremely
easily accessible for police, fire and ultimately military to look in their local area and see,
okay, which of these counselors has been through this, which of them understand so when I walk
through the door, immediately they know who I am and what I do instead of some of the horror
stories that you'll hear Dustin talk about with his own personal journey. So I ask you this,
firstly listen to it. This is a long, long journey that he talks about, he monologues.
I try to not interrupt at all. I literally just shut up and listen. I was moved to tears myself
at one point when he's talking about his darkest times, but this man has poured his heart out for
all of us and put himself out there, made himself extremely vulnerable and we owe it to him to A,
listen to this, B, comprehend it and then go to the website and learn more about the Redline
Project, but most importantly after that, to share this, to talk about this and if you're not in the
Florida area, then start making the same thing happen in your state or your country. We have
listeners all over the globe. So take this idea, they have all the blueprints I guess you could say
on their site and then start applying it to your community. We have lost so many people to
suicide, we've had so many marriages destroyed by our job, so many people turned to alcoholism,
to drug addiction and I truly feel that this is going to be one of the links in the chain
for recovery. The goal is post-traumatic growth, so we all see these horrendous things,
but the goal is just like a back injury or anything else, not to let it crush you and disable you and
then you just wish in a way time till you pass away, but to come back stronger. But the first
thing is identifying that, then using all the other things we talked about, the physical practices,
the mental practice, the good nutrition, the good sleep and adding that to everything else to enable
you to come out of the dark place, heal and then make it your mission to testify and tell other
people about the journey you've been through. So I don't want to make this monologue too long,
this intro, our interview is the longest one I've ever done, it's two hours, but I guarantee you it
is the most powerful two hours I've ever spent listening to another human being, behind the microphone or not.
And I know that this message is going to resonate firstly through our community and then all the
the ripple effect outside that and I think that this project may well even shape the way
mental health and depression and suicide are even addressed outside our community.
So without further ado, I introduce to you firefighter and my brother Dustin Hawkins.
So welcome to Behind the Shield, Dustin. Thank you so much for coming on. Obviously, we have been
planning this for a long time, but I know there are some things that we're going to reveal today
in this interview that you wanted to time so that everything was ready. So first question,
where are you right now? Oh, right now, physically, or would you like to know where the organization is
at? Physically. Physically, I'm enjoying one of the things as first responders that really truly
should be able to take the time to celebrate but at home here with my wonderful family in Fort Pierce,
Florida, off duty, which is a beautiful thing. So just celebrating being at home having a day off
and enjoying the simpler things here. Like we get done with this, I'll be outside gardening. So I am
very, very thankful for that. Fantastic. And were you born in Fort Pierce? I was born in Vero Beach,
Indian River County. Okay. And did you have firefighters in your family? No, I was born and
raised in an Air Force family and a law enforcement family. My dad's a law enforcement officer and my
mom is a teacher. Oh, okay. So between the two of them, they were able to, my mom was able to educate
me to listen to my dad who said, if you do anything, don't be a cop. Yeah, I think this,
you're either one or the other. This doesn't seem to be too much of a cross section there.
All right. So what was your upbringing like? Well, I was raised in a Christian based family.
My mom sent me to a Catholic school. I have a brother that older than me and then he stayed here
in town and just a really close tight knit family has had our, really our path. Our parents were
very supportive of whatever was holistic and healthy for us. They really facilitated that.
My mom was really a big part of me getting into the fire service and following my passion there.
As it mostly goes, you're either at 18, you go to college, you go to the military,
or you go to trade school and really just had that drive to be in the service of others and
watching my mom of 28 years in public school system and my father in law enforcement and
working for the city and just really being in the service of our community. It was a very guiding
inspiration and really role models to take after. So I definitely appreciate that as growing up,
having a close knit family as well as even now more so than ever having a family that's
protective of one another and very open and communicative with our successes and our
struggles. So it's been, they've been part of really who I am to a very core of getting me into
being in the greatest career on earth, which is being in the service of others.
Right. And did you go straight into the fire service from school?
I did. I got out of high school, had moved out of my house relatively early as far as
what typically people do, which these days you see young men and women living in their houses at 28
to 30 years old. I had moved out of my house when I was 17 and finished high school living in my car
and went working for Lowe's when Lowe's first started becoming very prominent here in Florida
and decided that as much as I love my family at Lowe's, I just wasn't, didn't see myself long term
there. So I signed up for a fire academy about a year after getting out of high school. And
it just seemed at the time the path, although there were struggles with it, it seemed like a path
that was appropriate. You look at everybody else, it was going to four years of college and then
were unemployed when they left. To me, fire school was kind of that no brainer, like they're going
to teach me a trade. I'm going to get to get into a career that my heart is pulling me towards,
and I'm employable. And this was the pre-911 day so that there wasn't that long line of firefighters
seeking jobs. So I went in right after high school, had a little struggle through
fire academy. About four weeks before state came in to test us and I had a female gate valve, a
swivel split and eject a three inch big old brass-elk-arp male coupling and hit me in the jaw
on the training grounds and broke my mandible maxilla left orbit and knocked out on my teeth.
So I can tell you one thing, the only thing you don't want to do is chew on a fire hose. And I
always laugh, we look at our SOPs now and say, well, you have to wear a helmet. And I look at
our traditional Carnes fire helmets, steeped in that mysticism of firefighting. And I look at it
now with that painful perspective looking back on why in the heck don't we wear motorcycle helmets?
Those helmets don't do a damn thing for our face. But yeah, so it was kind of a
really an early precursor that I didn't draw the intelligence from until much later in my career
of how dangerous our job is. And you wake up and I woke up in St. Mary's. It knocked me out cold
for a few days and I woke up in the same hospital as my daughter. My daughter was in NICU. She was
born at 25 weeks. So she was a little tiny preemie. She weighed about 11 ounces. Fit her in the palm
of my hand. I got a pretty neat picture of her in the palm of my hand. But she was in the NICU and
I was in the ICU, both of us in a bay. So it was kind of one of those moments where you say, am I
going to sit here on the flat on my back or am I going to get my ass out of this hospital and get
back on the firegrounds? Because it was a scary moment. Back when I went to fire school, I think
the whole dang program was less than $1,500. And it was all the money we had when we went in.
So it was one of those things where you're very surreal. Like do I put myself back out there and
finish my fire school? I needed a job. We didn't have enough money even to pay for the gas in the
car and I dang sure wasn't going to be able to pay for our rent and our little tiny one-bedroom
apartment if I didn't finish my fire academy and get a job. We were exhausting all of our funds
that we had just to get into fire academy. So it was that scary moment and that drive.
I look back now and especially when I look back to a lot of other firefighters that always put
their family and put their community first before they put their individual health, that's how we're
hardwired. It's not by choice, it's by design. So we had to kind of persuade the surgery team
with my jaw wired shut to let me go in and do the state big three, which then the state test is a
heck of a lot more intensive now. All we had to do was show that we could put on an SCBA and under,
I think you had 90 seconds, you pull a minute man in less than a minute or two minutes and spray
down three cones and throw a ladder and congratulations, you're a firefighter.
But when I did it and I put the SCBA mask back on, I ended up refracturing my jaw because I had no
teeth in my head and my head was all wired shut and had 40 something screws in my mandible and
a couple bars and when I put the old elephant trunk SCBA on, it split my jaw and I started spitting up
clots. But I finished the test and I was able to get hired in Indian River County shortly thereafter
and fortunately was able to have an apartment to bring my daughter home to. So it was definitely
flying by the seat of your pants going, wow, how much will God lay out in front of you type path
and the answer is he always lays out just enough. Okay, so we need a backtrack on that whole thing.
So just to show how much that you wanted to be a firefighter and serve your community, you were
living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, you had a prematurely born daughter, you had your face
smashed out by a piece of fire equipment and then you still put all that gear on even though you
weren't completely healed and took your state test. Yeah, we had to go in and talk to the
maxifacial surgeon and the team there in Palm Beach who basically made me sign a hold harmless.
We went and told them like, look, the state fire marshal's office, I've only been out of the
hospital maybe three and a half weeks and they said if I don't take my test, I lose my money,
I lose my 1500 and I have to take fire school next year and I was in the summer class and they said
I have to wait a year and he told the doctor like, listen, if I don't take this test, I don't have a
home, I don't have a place to bring my daughter home to, I wouldn't be able to pay for my car.
I had this little tiny beat up Grand Prix that was hanging on by a wing and a prayer. I'm like,
I need this. I know you guys don't want to medically take on that expanded liability profile here,
but I need to take this test. We basically had to scream and yell and beg and plead
to the physicians to basically say, we're signing it away. If you're going to go and take this test,
we take no responsibility to what could happen to you. We had a lot of hurdles to overcome to
even let that state fire marshal let me on the dang fire grounds. Of course, the college at
the time was a community college. The class was held in a double wide trailer that was
put together out in the middle of a field. That was before the state college became one of the
leading fire colleges in the area. They didn't even want me on the fire grounds. They're like,
man, you got your face wired up and your head, I'm a skinny guy and my head was still the size of a
bowling ball at that time. They're like, just come back next to your kid. That wasn't for me.
All I could think about was my little girl and having a place to bring her home to. It was a
unique struggle. It really, really truly was. I'm very fortunate my family was supportive.
I really appreciate good plastic surgeons and maxiofacial surgeons. I've got 20 something odd
implants and all my teeth in a mason jar here in my bedroom.
Well, that's incredible. I think that's just a huge testament to, obviously, you having a
complete grasp on your why, why you are a fireman. I think that's also behind some of the reasons why
some of the conditions in police and fire and EMS, these employers take advantage of these men and
women because when you have someone that's so driven to do a career like you are right now,
then it almost allows a platform for us to be taken for granted and make some of the working
conditions, the hours that we worked to become unhealthy. It's something that we're going to
talk about later, but I think that's such a testament to the spirit of a true fireman,
true policeman, true medic is that come hell or high water, you know that you were put on this
earth to do this job and serve your community. I couldn't agree more that balance for firefighters
of passion, pride and purpose. One of our strongest honorable attributes can really allow us to
positively alter the lives around us, but it's also that passion, pride and purpose when any one of
those is negatively affected by injury, whether it be mental, physical, spiritual, your career
and calling, when we damage those three very core values to all firefighters and law enforcement
officers, we become to our own detriment, do we really become harmful to ourselves. As you said
beautifully, a lot of times our long hours and the employers taking advantage of monopolizing on
that sometimes can be our own demise. Yeah, absolutely and we'll definitely delve into that
further. So just pulling back for a moment, you said that you were not a big lad as we say in
England and as you know, we've seen each other face to face. I am not blessed with the linebackers
physique myself either. So when you were an athlete when you were younger, what got you through the
physical demands of the fire school? Well, I was played football in high school, not very well,
but I did play and I've always been a runner. So fortunately my cardiac health was there and I think
that passion, that drive to complete what we set out to do, that failure wasn't in my vocabulary
and I think that's what truly, truly helped it because I mean when you walk into that
predominantly type A, very male dominated industry as we are and we're trying to integrate that it's
about no matter what your hardware is, your passion is what counts. So when I got there and
I saw these other firefighters that were really truly some massive dudes compared to my little,
you know, I was a little 135 pound bean pole going good lord, you know, I mean you look at
the quintessential firefighter, you know, they all look like Kurt Russell, you know, and you know,
just stout dudes and then there was me. So there were some struggles we had to overcome. I was very
fortunate that the passion overrode that. I was the squad leader and always pushed harder and further
than my body was telling me to but I think that helped me get through. Right, yeah, I know I've
several of the special operators that I've interviewed when I asked them, you know, what
would make the perfect Navy SEAL or you know, the perfect green beret, the answer always is never
the physical side, it's always the mental. So obviously what you went through with and then,
you know, the injuries that you had and you still completed your mission as it were, your mental
toughness definitely, you know, outweighed whatever physical deficits you had. Well, I
believe and agree with that. I think with any injury or any obstacle, you know, I've encountered
some people along the way, especially with what we'll delve into here in a bit about mental
wellness and changing the culture and what that means for firefighters and the positive life.
There's also something that happens along the way where when you do something that seems to be
out of the ordinary, where people say, man, you should give up or you shouldn't do this or
you're going to make waves or you need to sit quietly instead of saying, look, you know,
we can overcome these obstacles. I've seen people say that your passion will get you in trouble
and when I look at that comment now and I've seen that in the fire service, whether someone's,
you know, really striving to study more or, you know, get promoted or invent a new way to do
an old idea in a safer, more improved fashion, a lot of times the fire service will look at that
and go, you know, look at this guy, what's he doing? You know, his passion is going to bite him
in the rear. I disagree. I think that passion creates validity for you and allows you to have,
as you said perfectly, mental toughness and really allows you to deal with struggles.
And I didn't realize that early on in my career. To me, it was just as simple as putting your shoes
on. Okay, I got a broken jaw, getting ready to lose my home. I haven't even held my daughter and
she's been on this earth for two and a half months. She's still sitting in an incubator and
in the NICU, but the simple decision was get off your ass and get your uniform on and finish fire
school and get a job because that's what you have to do and falling short of that is not an option.
So didn't even have time to really sit down and look at the fear of it until later. I don't think
I had that emotional contact point until I think I'd been on the job about a year and it hit me one
day, you know, coming home from work. We just bought our first home, you know, got out of the
apartment and I remember taking my uniform off and, you know, I still had the scars on my face. I
hadn't done any acid peels yet. I didn't even have my teeth yet. My teeth would pop out and I'd put
them in a tray and I remember just sitting there in the mirror and just crying going, man, we almost
didn't succeed if they hadn't picked me, if I hadn't answered the right questions in the interview,
if I hadn't tested for the physical agility of testing and really gave it all I had to shine,
you know, because when they hired me, you had 100 something odd applicants, you know, and they
hired, I think out of our 100 something applicants, they hired myself and one other guy and we weren't
the, you know, volunteers that had been there for, you know, 10 years or the guy that was the fishing
buddy with the battalion chief or, you know, the guy that, you know, got the bid and painted the
station there so he was sure to get hired, you know, to us we were nobody. Oh, and the other part,
you know, how the good old boy system works, you know, the reality of getting hired in a county where
your upper echelon and brass are instructors at the State Fire College, you know, and they look at,
well, here's the guy that broke his jaw, we don't want to hire him. Or the opposite, here's the guy
that broke his jaw, we should definitely hire him. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, you have that huge
range of emotions that happen. So it didn't really even hit me until about a year later coming home
and our, you know, our house, we didn't even have furniture really and yet, you know, we got a couch
and a bed type thing and eating off two plates that it really hit me going, wow, that the drive and
that sense of purpose, you know, it almost didn't happen. It almost didn't work. So, and at that
point in time, you know, a firefighter crying, damn sure wasn't accepted in our culture, you know, so
I didn't tell anybody, who do you talk to about having that human side of it? Yeah, yeah. Well,
I think we just want to underline this as well. We've all heard these people that said, oh, I
didn't get hired because they were looking for this race, they were looking for women, they were
looking for this instead of owning the fact that, okay, I didn't get hired because I didn't train
enough for the physical agility, I didn't get hired because I didn't ace the written, I didn't
get hired because I didn't do my interview 15 times over in front of a bunch of strangers until
I had it down pat, you know, and I think that, you know, your story would be a great baseline,
you know, if, if this gentleman can get his face smashed off by a piece of hose appliance,
and finish fire school with no teeth in his jaw, wild shot, and then get hired,
then your excuses are invalid. Absolutely. I think there's a huge difference between a
human being that says the word if, and somebody that says the word when. And the thought process
of, oh, this is going to be great if I get hired. No, this is what we're going to do when I get
hired. This is what we're going to do when we succeed, not if. And I think about that even now,
like what we're doing with the Health and Safety Collaborative and with working with adjusting
the culture and the fire service for the better and improvement. There is no if. It is when.
And because we will. And I think that you find a really, really high number, a high quantitative
number of firefighters and law enforcement officers that are hardwired that way. There is no if. It's
a when because they have the drive to succeed. Yeah, absolutely. It's a positive affirmation as
well. If you believe it, it will manifest. All right. Well, I'm assuming then, Dustin,
I'm being totally sarcastic when I say this next sentence, that God had decided you've seen enough
trauma and you never had another injury in the fire service. Is that correct?
That is way off. If I have one more flight on the Trauma Hawk, I get a free windbreaker and baseball
cap from Rocky Mountain Holding Company out in Colorado who controls the Trauma Hawk. No, that's
definitely not the case. And you hear people say, man, I wish that hadn't happened. And I look back
lovingly at the lessons learned. And I say this cautiously. And I remember the first time that I
said this and my wife was there. We were talking to a group of 500, 600 firefighters and administrators
and executive fire officers at a conference. And we were talking about when I was blown up on the
fire boat, when I was burned. And I remember saying, I said the words and it almost seemed
surreal and I had to revisit it, that as much as I don't wish that sort of pain upon anybody to have
the skin off your body burnt, especially while your crew watches it happen and can't do anything
about it or the physical pain of having your skin being ripped off your body every single morning
from nine o'clock to 11 in the burn unit. And the emotional pain of watching your wife and daughter
and family cry and truly hurt as they sit there and watch you tied down to a bed as they're ripping
the burnt tissue off of you. And the psychological after effects of that that happens to a firefighter.
I look back at all of that as much as I wish I could take away the physical pain that we had to
walk through. I truly feel blessed for the path, even though there were some really wild injuries
along the way. And firefighters and law enforcement officers, we get into this job and one of the
things that we never really look at and the reason we're trying to change that with the Health and
Safety Collaborative is, my God, we can get killed doing this job, ladies and gentlemen.
I think of the amount of times I have woken up on the flat of my back in ICU because of this job.
And I'm thankful for that path. But yes, I have been injured multiple times
in the line of duty, as a lot of our brothers and sisters are. And the more recent injury,
I've had a few scuffs and scrapes and broken bones and things like that on the job. But the
most recent one was about three years ago. I was working on the fire boat in River County
on our 28 foot or 25 foot Challenger Boston Whaler doing a routine swap out of a pony pump, a little
portable 500 GPM fire pump. It sits on the deck and sucks through the hull. And as we know,
one of the most hostile environments on earth may be a scorned woman, but the second one is a salt
water environment. And the salt eats the pump up and we had to replace it. And we've been working
on the boat for about three, four days in the bay. It wasn't in the water, it was up on the trailer,
had all our safety protocols in, bay doors up, hatches open, power disconnected, trailer tilted
up a few degrees, all of those things. And I was using an electronic screwdriver, a drill,
with a Phillips head bit in it. And I'd already taken three of the screws out from the bottom of
the deck of the boat laying in the area in the center that even before this injury was named
the coffin. I think we should name it something else, but it was it was it still is named the
coffin. And I was laying down so you know, my crew can only see my my knees because you have to tuck
towards the back of the boat underneath the deck, probably three, four foot. And I'd taken three of
the screws out and handed it up to my crew on the deck where they were all standing above me watching
and pretty narrow that box is actually about the size of a coffin. You know, about 10 foot in length
and two and a half to three foot in width and two foot deep. And I went to go take the fourth screw
out and the drill up against the gel coat. We had no idea that the one of the fuel tanks, the port
fuel tank had been compromised and had been leaking fuel, which we found out post investigation for a
long period of time. And it had saturated the foam and that entire nacelle of the boat and where the
drill was, it just found a thin spot in the gel coat. And, you know, bear in mind, not using a
drill bit. You know, there were some people ask, Oh, you're drilling into a boat. No, I was using
a Phillips screw gun taken out four inch screws run up through the deck from the bottom to the top.
And another crew member was up top with a little 10 millimeter box wrench holding on to the nylock
nut. And I went ahead and squeezed the trigger and it's a hell of a thing. Firefighters have,
we know what the sound of ignition is. You know, you hear it when you like the grill.
But it's a hell of a thing to be trapped in the boat, squeeze that trigger and hear that sound
and watch a wall of fire roll out on top of you just to watch your eyelids and your eyelashes
singe and to hear it and to smell it. Watch the skin on your arms just drop off. And I just can't
remember hearing my crew saying, get out. And I couldn't get out. And me screaming, put me out.
And they couldn't. And I remember hearing one of my guys say it didn't work, you know, and
I revisit that. I had revisited that a lot when I was having nightmares. You know, our,
as all government agencies, low bid the hell out of everything. We had just had new extinguishers
put on the boat and the extinguisher didn't work. They pulled the pin and nothing happened.
Oh, God. And I remember the look of the guy holding the extinguisher's face when nothing happened.
I jumped out of the coffin there still on fire and liquid fire underneath me. And I jumped over
the gunnel. Bear in mind the boat sitting on a trailer. And Boston Whaler makes a stout boat.
They're way up in the air, especially when they're on a triple axle trailer in the bay.
And I jumped up on the gun and I jumped off the boat, took about a 12 foot fall and made a nice
splatting sound on the concrete when I hit. The engineer that was on duty that day, big bear of a
man, wonderful heart and soul on this guy, but just a massive guy jumped out on top of me and
tried to put me out. I walked out in the bay coughing and hacking. It felt like I drank pool acid.
I looked in a mirror. There was our personal vehicles are parked out behind the station.
And I looked in the rear view mirror. I remember pushing on the rear view mirror the wrong way to
fold it in so I could look and just saw the skin hanging off my face and my hair melted to me and
my lips were sticky and like he had glued them with a glue stick, like a children's paste stick.
I looked at my arms and there were these big fluid filled sacks just hanging off of me.
And I got love the medic that was on the rescue that day. He was there with the drugs immediately.
Just the foresight to be able to have the fentanyl ready to go. He looked at me. I remember
all the crew around me in dead silence, horrified. He's got his IV and I'm sitting down on the
concrete and his hand was shaking and he's getting ready to stick me in the AC, but you can't even
see it because it's just his charred flesh. I'm like, brother, just go for it. He's like,
and I'm like, brother, just go for it. I found that there's not enough fentanyl in the world
to appropriately treat a burn patient. The only way to regulate it is not on a scale of zero to
10, but just I can tell all the medics out there, just push that crap until you can just start
messing with the respiratory drive because you don't have enough drugs to put that pain out.
I thought I knew what pain was. I went through a hell of a time with my jaw and the subsequent
10, 12 years of getting oral surgery almost monthly between skin grafts and bone grafts
and hardware replacement and implants and you get used to it. I thought I had a high tolerance for
pain, but there's nothing like having the flesh just singed off your body. That is one of our organs
that I believe as human beings that we truly under appreciate and undervalue. It's kind of like when
they say nobody ever realizes how much they need their big toe until they hurt it. I never realized
how important our skin was until it was gone. They flew me from the local hospital there to
Longwood, which was a trauma center. I remember landing. My wife, we live in Fort Pierce, which
is really, really close to the hospital. My wife beat the trauma hawk. We flew from Vero, which
isn't far. She beat him there. She parked right next to the LZ. I remember the helicopter landing
and seeing her. I was just trying to tell her I was okay, but I couldn't really talk. My voice was
it's amazing what happens to your voice after you get your face burnt, mouth burnt.
I just wanted to tell her I was okay. I just saw the tears running down her face. They wheeled me
into the trauma unit there. I remember hearing the doctor screaming at the flight medic because I
guess the trauma surgeon didn't really care that they flew me to a trauma center instead of a burn
center. I remember him yelling and they just hit me with some more fentanyl. I remember hearing
him yell, if this asshole dies in my trauma unit, it's on you. I remember reaching over and grabbing
him and my hand was sticky. I'm like, you know, doc, I can hear you. Man, what's the matter with you?
They ended up declining. My SAT started dropping significantly. It's weird, you know, you have
medical knowledge and you do that job long enough and you look up at the monitor and go,
whoo, 68. That's not a number I want to see for my saturation level.
You don't want to be well educated when you're looking at your own monitor.
No, no. You're like, okay, sinus tachy and BP is dropping and my SATs are what?
Hey, doc, I kind of like to read. Is there any way you can maybe get me some O's here?
I don't want to bake what brain cells I've got left. They ended up flying me from Longwood to
the burn unit and I can tell you the flight medics were amazing. They really, really, truly were.
They did a fantastic job dumping every bit of drug they legally could in me.
They ended up taking me over to Disney. I got to watch. I remember seeing the fireworks over
Disney in Orlando as we were circling into the burn unit and sitting in the trauma unit and them
doing what they had to do. It's a hell of a thing to wake up multiple times in your career on the
flight of your back with a tube in your mouth. So was that ORMC they took you to?
They did. Okay. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go to the hospital. I'm going to go to the
hospital. They did. Okay. And I can tell you that Dr. Chadwick Smith and Dr. Susan Smith and all of
the angels at that burn unit are some of the most dynamically beautiful souls you will ever encounter.
You know, as firefighters, you know, we fight fire, but we never really address what the hell
happens when you get burnt by what you fight. And the simple things like, you know, knowing why burn
patients don't talk to one another when they're still a victim. They haven't gone from a burn
victim to a burn survivor yet. And I remember my dad walk it in who has a unique sense of humor,
really pissed poor timing on it, but a unique sense of humor. And I was on day two of my treatment.
And OFD had been amazing. They sent one of the officers, Garrett Lampe, they were there every
single day from station, I believe it was station one, station one or station 13. I can't remember
the number off top of my head, but I've got hundreds of letters from them, amazing group of
men. I was able to sit down and dine with them there at the station when I, you know, physically
was able, but they come every day to tend to my family, to be there to sit in the waiting room,
to be there by my wife and daughter's side. And it's just really a testament to what firefighters
are capable of, of exercising love, the absence of judgment to be there for one another.
And I remember my dad coming in and saying, son, did you make any friends today? Did you talk to
any of the other patients? Of course, my wife's sitting there and I'm like, well,
well, no, and it hadn't hit me yet. You know, but I said, no, dad. And he goes, yeah, I hear that the
burn patients, they really stick together. And I'm like, dad, you're such an ass. Like that's not
even funny. What the hell's the matter with you? But, you know, with the comedic side of it,
you know, aside, we burn patients don't have anything to say to one another when they're in
that setting. And there's a reason because there's nothing that has to be said. It's all done with a
quick look. There's no medication. There's no mechanism. There's no tool that has been devised
yet that overrides the physical pain. You know, my time was nine o'clock in the morning. You know,
and your entire time there is spent trying to move because if you hold still the scars,
your skin starts healing in one position and it's not good. And you're just weeping collagen out of
every pore of your body. And all you do is you smell like Basitracin and Silvodyne, which I still
can't stand the smell of that crap. The subconscious response of trying to protect me, I suppose.
But I knew at nine o'clock every morning that the nurses were going to come in
with those dang wash rags that felt like about 10 grit sandpaper and popsicle sticks. I still
can't stand a popsicle stick. My wife is amazing about having ice cream with no popsicle sticks.
But they come in there and they use the damn popsicle sticks and they dope you up and they
hold you down and they start digging. And all I would do is stare at the clock because there
was only two thoughts. I've either got an hour and a half to two hours of them doing this and you just
stare at the clock and beg for God's mercy or they're done and you don't have a moment's
relief because you stare at the clock and know it's coming again tomorrow in 23 hours and 59 minutes.
I remember going through the process, going through the grafts.
The firefighters have a great way of screwing with people even in times of pain.
We finished the skin grafting process and Dr. Susan Smith and Chadwick Smith who is the surgeon,
they're the best in their field. Amazing what they do for people. Something else I was surprised by
is there wasn't any female nurses there in the burn unit. I had one that had come over and God
loved her soul. I didn't know it but I grabbed a hold of the poor girl's neck while she was
de-breeding and scrubbing. I asked later, I apologized to her. I was doped up on all kinds
of medication and obviously a very visceral response to physical pain when I grabbed a hold
of her. But I had asked why is it all male nurses? The answer surprised me and it surprises a lot of
firefighters and people when I talk to them about this part. They said because the female nurse,
which my wife is a female nurse, they're too compassionate and too gentle. The male nurses
just basically grip it and rip it and get it done. I was surprised by that. I remember the young
lady that came in and she was. She was very gentle and took her time but when you're de-breeding,
you just got to get in there scrub and get it over with. All you do is tell the patient one,
two, three and you rip the skin. You do it until their sats drop and then you give them a break to
breathe. Their sats come up and then you rip another piece of skin off. Oh my god, it sounds
absolutely horrendous. Yeah, definitely not something you want to do for a holiday.
But Dr. Chadwick Smith did my skin grafts. They ended up xenografting. We had discussed it with
our family, the benefits, the pros and cons of autografting, xenografting. I remember when I woke
up, the firefighters have the ability to screw with anybody and the doctor came in and asked me
and for those of you who don't know xenografting, they use pigskin. I remember coming out of it and
I was still pretty loopy on sedatives and the doctor came in to follow up to ask me how I was
doing and I messed with him. I said, Doc, I can't believe you did this to me. I talk to Chadwick now
here when we go for follow-ups and things and he's lightened way up but he was very, very serious,
very good at what he does but he was very serious. I said, man, I can't believe you did this to me.
I said, this is pigskin, right? He goes, well, yes. I said, I can't believe you did this. You
didn't read my chart? He goes, what do you mean? I said, well, I'm Jewish. You should have seen
that man's face. He went pale and all he could do is grab the chart and just go, oh dear God.
I'm like, I'm just screwing with you, Doc. We're good. We did the grafting and when we started
after being there for way longer than I would have liked to have been, the feeling of being a
burn patient, ringing the bell to leave. I remember the first time I felt the sunshine and walking out.
The doctors did something interesting. They said, the physical care because you still have to go
home and you change your bandages every day for several weeks, which is a painful process in itself.
Everything you touch is greasy because you're just weeping that damn collagen,
which is the body's response to healing from that injury. Your nerves are starting to fire again.
You've got a lot of nerve damage underneath your tissue. You go on gabapentin, which knocks you
out, makes you loopy. If you're not on it, you have no control over your damn arms. You throw
glasses across the room. You're twitching like you're having a seizure as your body's trying to
remap and relearn things. You go through physical therapy, just the exercise of moving the tissue
is a crappy process in itself. The doctors had said, we really want to encourage you
to talk to a therapist. I'm like, well, I go to plenty of therapists. I'm going to my physical
therapist and the OT therapy and all those kind of things. They said, no, we need you to talk to
somebody like a psychologist. Firefighters do a fantastic job as we talked about earlier, ignoring
and putting others first. In my mind, I'm fine. I'm a firefighter. I can handle this.
There's no psychological injury to this. I'm physical. What I can see is all that matters.
I never went to talk to a psychologist. I remember Dr. Smith, Susan Smith, heartbroken. I told her,
I said, I want to get back to work. I need to provide for my family. I just took the test and
was at the top of the list for promotion. They're never going to promote somebody on workers' comp.
I need to get back to work. I need to show them I can do this. I ignored the psychological support
that was offered. I remember the tears running down her face. She had just been in Boston
with the firefighters that got burned up in the basement fire. One of the firefighters that died
in that fire was previously one of her burn patients. I remember her telling me, she goes,
you firefighters are a pain in the ass. You get an injury like this and what's the first thing you
want to do? You want to go right back in. What's the matter with you? In my mind at the time,
it was I just need to get back to my family, show my crew I'm okay, show me in some way that I'm okay.
The first introduction to the psychological side of our job
happened. I went back just eight weeks after being released from the hospital when the physicians and
professionals said, we don't want you to go back at all, but if you're going to, you need to take a
year. I went back in such a fraction of the time. I still had bandages on me. I remember walking in
the bay, the same very bay that I was burnt in. I walk in and the crew's all there. Firemen being
wise asses, they had an industrial Sam size bag of pork rind in a bag and they made a giant bacon
man for me because the pig skin, they had that ready on the table, which my wife still does not
for obvious reasons find any humor in burn graph jokes, which fortunately firefighters are smart
enough not to mess with the redheaded Irish woman. I walked into the bay and the tones went off. We
were there celebrating he's back, we're all okay type thing, like that near miss feeling we were
celebrating. The tones went off and I didn't hear the tones. I heard the sound because I was standing
in the exact spot where the boat used to be. The boat wasn't even back. I beat the boat back to
work. The boat was still at Boston Whaler torn apart in a bunch of pieces, but charred deck and
melted eyes and glass. They were trying to figure out what happened, but I was standing where it was
and I heard the sound of the ignition. I heard the echo of my screams when I was in the burn unit and
I didn't tell anybody. How do you tell that? Your brothers and sisters like,
holy cow, did you guys just hear that? I didn't want to say anything because I had just spent
the last five days convincing my wife to let me go back to work. I just left my home with my wife
and I just left my home with tears running down my wife's face. Then I went back. So I convinced
myself that man, I'm not going to tell anybody. I just heard the ignition sound. Grab your gear.
Don't be a pussy. Get on a truck and let's go. Because that's what we were taught. That's how
we were hardwired, right? That's how it was acceptable. You don't show emotions in the fire
because you're not going to tell anybody. So I got on the truck and I set that precedent not to tell
anybody. I guess I kind of hoped it would go away. You get ready to go to work and you start the
truck up and your starter makes a weird noise so you shut the truck off. Then you start it up again
and the sound went away. You're like, it must be nothing. I almost hoped that it was that. Whatever
just happened when those tones went off that it would go away. So I didn't need to look at it again
because it was just a rattle under their hood. I justified it. Oh man, that just happened because
I was my first shift back. I just got to get back at a swing of things. It'll go away. I don't need
to worry about it. It didn't go away. It got worse over about eight months. It got worse.
What would just happen when the tones would go off started to happen when the phone would ring,
when a door would close, when somebody would make a loud noise. It started happening with no prompt
at all. I would get off shift and I'd start crying on the way home and couldn't even tell anybody why.
I'm a rum and coke guy. I started drinking at noon. I started drinking at 11, 9 a.m. I started
drinking as soon as I got home from shift. I kind of had that excuse of who the hell is going to
judge me? This is my day off. This is my Friday. When I get off of my 24th shift, my B shift morning
is a Friday. I'm going to drink. My family didn't really even know how I was drinking that much.
They thought I was recovering. I started laughing a lot more. I'm not one of those angry drunks.
I'm a happy drunk and a quiet one. They didn't know it. I drank to feel better.
I drank to feel better. I wouldn't have nightmares. The problem that was happening
after about five, six months of it is it wasn't nightmares anymore. It was happening when I was
awake. I would start seeing people and kids that I'd bagged up over the years. The first time it
happened to me, I was in the frozen food aisle at the grocery store. There was this little girl
probably 10 years before. I remember her sitting down in the ditch. She had this little stuffed
dog in her hands. I remember bagging her up. I remember that whole call. The mom was too drunk,
so she left the daughter driving the car. She was probably seven years old, eight years old at the
most. Her eight-year-old drove the car because mom was too drunk. The mom survived. Obviously,
it's always the drunks because they roll with it when they hit. They just relax. This little
girl was ejected. She got t-boned at an intersection by the fairgrounds. She was faced down in the ditch
holding on to this little dog on the grass bank. It was the same dog that my daughter had. Toy
companies make millions in dogs, but it was the same one. Not a euphemism. It was the same one.
I had thought about that girl in what seemed like a lifetime. I'm in the grocery store,
and there she is, clear as day, standing there with the dog in her hand looking at me.
I'd never driven so fast. I actually ran out of the store. I actually ran.
Drove home, and I couldn't drink enough to get it out of my head. The shitty thing is she followed
me home. I started seeing her all the time, and then I started seeing all of the other bodies.
I started making rules. Just talk to them. You'll be fine.
And I was talking to them, and they were talking back.
And eight months to the date I was born, I ran. My conscious and subconscious couldn't handle
anymore. I didn't think about my subconscious at that point. I didn't think about that until I
started going to therapy. I had a
brain injury. I was drunk every day, and I was off. I didn't tell them I was seeing things.
I ran a call of a young man, 17-year-old young man that had burned himself. He was walking,
talking, second to third degree burn patient. He was cooking vegetable oil in the house,
cooking french fries, and caught fire. He ran with the pot and slipped in the garage and
coated himself. I remember pulling up on scene, giving the scene size up.
It was just another call, and here comes this young man down the driveway.
It was me, brother. I don't mean this as an analogy. It was me in my uniform walking down.
I didn't know what the kid looked like until I visited him in the hospital two weeks later.
It was me in my uniform the day I was burned walking down towards me. We talked with
firefighters and law enforcement officers and our veterans when they talk about time compression.
It's very real. Time stopped. It completely and 100 percent stopped.
My battalion chief, after I'd walked in the house and I closed the door,
I had ripped my gear off on the floor. There was no extension. I just smoked out the echo of the
dog barking and the smoke detector going off, bouncing off the walls and the tile. I ripped
my bunker gear off and just sat on the floor and cried. My battalion chief knew exactly what to do,
and he brought me home. I cried the whole way home. I cried for two weeks straight. I couldn't
stop. James, you could have said, Dustin, I'll give you $1 million to stop crying for a minute.
Or even tell me why you're crying. I couldn't stop. I don't remember how we got home,
what route we took, what speed we went. I remember the look on my wife's face because the battalion
chief vehicle—and I live in a different county than I work—when your battalion chief vehicle
shows up in your driveway, that's a pretty hard hit to your wife. She just got home from work,
and she was standing in the driveway getting out of her car. Then there's my battalion chief
looking at my wife. She had no idea I was in the vehicle. I was in the back, curled up crying.
Lynn and I have talked about this since, but she said she thought the fire department finally
killed my ass. She goes, I finally thought it was done. I'm never going to see you again.
They helped me out of the vehicle.
We had, in that timeframe, our union and administration was in the middle of a pretty ugly
contract impasse and vote of no confidence and all kinds of stuff.
Everybody wanted to reach out to the burn patient to use his injury to show how dangerous the fire
service was and use it as a negotiation tool to demonstrate that firefighters do a dangerous job,
and I couldn't even handle simple functions. I couldn't even give you a yes or a no on what
I was thinking or feeling. I can't really utilize words to tell you the feeling of hopelessness.
When I called to my EAP, I got the 1-800 number and I called it. I remember I could feel the sound
and the feeling right now. Thank you for calling Health Advocate EAP. You're on a recorded line.
Do you feel like harming yourself or others? When you say that to a firefighter,
and that firefighter hasn't had the opportunity to realize that they're a human being behind the
badge, that the helmet that they wear doesn't protect the mind that's beneath it, and you put
that in their mind, and you say it enough, it eventually starts becoming a good idea.
When I reached out to say I want to talk to somebody and I shared my story, bits and pieces,
which I'm sharing now, there was silence on the other end of the line, and I heard the counselor
crying, James, crying. I'm thinking, are you okay? It was really the first lesson that for the most
part our community only sees trauma once or twice in their life. They're going to lose their mother,
their father, their spouse, or to have mercy on them, their kids if it's before their time.
It can define them and devastate them. Firefighters and law enforcement officers and veterans
see stress and trauma in depth when I continue them.
So when I let all that out and all I hear is crying on the other line, I just went,
holy crap, who's supposed to help me? I just traumatized them. I'm talking to them about
their nightmares, about the call that I keep thinking about on 95 with those two little girls
face down on the middle of the highway being ejected from the minivan and the mom upside down
with her daughter. I'm talking to them about their nightmares, about the call that I keep
thinking about on 95 with those two little girls face down on the minivan and the mom upside down
with her neck wrapped around the seatbelt and the windshield wipers scraping across the broken
glass. Why in the hell do these vehicles, when they get crunched up and burnt, why the hell do
the horns always still work? All I could see is these two little girls and the sound of this horn
and we rolled the girl over and her face had been ground down on the asphalt. All I could see was
and you're telling this lady like I need help, the nightmares won't go away. I can't even function
in a family event. I don't even want to drink anymore because that doesn't fix it. I'm afraid
to go to sleep. I don't want to be awake. I don't think I can be a firefighter anymore. Oh God,
what if I can't do my job anymore? What am I? My passion is gone. My pride is there. What is my
purpose? Maybe the world's going to be better off without me. I'm not even good enough to be in it.
And then they send you to help and they sent me to a clinician. Brother, I walked in. They sent me
to a child psychologist because that was all they had in my area. And you walk in and they're reading
a guide on post-traumatic stress. And I remember this lady telling me, she goes,
she listened to what I had to say and she goes, sir, I think you have PTSD. And I remember hearing
that going, no, firefighters don't get that. Cops get that. Nobody shoots at me. Veterans,
they get that. Firefighters don't get that. You flip through that book. There's no way.
And she goes, no, you have PTSD. And I'm thinking, Jesus, is it contagious?
Am I going to give this to my wife? I don't know anything about this.
She goes, well, I'm going to have to refer you to somebody because I'm a child psychologist.
And you're thinking, I just came in here and poured my heart out to you
for an hour and a half and you're a child psychologist?
They referred me to the health department, brother.
Oh, yeah. And what I found is, talking to the firefighters, that our current EAP systems,
we do have some exemplary ones in this country. But for the most part,
fire departments approach EAPs to lower a liability profile and purchase the best value product rather
than the most efficient to armor their men and women. So you're going to EAP services to people
that the only time I've ever dealt with a firefighter or a law enforcement officer is either
watching them on CNN or when they called 911. That's it. They don't understand the culture,
the language, the process. So I found that the stories of other firefighters having these
experiences are common. It's horrifying. It's inexcusable. But I sat down with the
clinician that they sent me to at the Felsmere Health Department.
And I have my three visits. And on the fourth visit, they walked in and they said,
I'm sorry, we can't see you anymore unless you give us a credit card. Your county hasn't paid
their EAP bill in five years. I just thought, I'm done. This isn't getting any better. It's making
it worse. Some of the things we're talking about in these sessions are making my nightmares worse
at home. I don't want to talk to anybody anymore because the more I talk about it, the worse this
is seeming to get. And what we found out is when we reached out for EAP, my chief had grabbed a
brochure. And it was from our old EAP services that we weren't using anymore. We had a whole new
company. So I had to start all over again and call the 1-800 number. Thank you for calling your EAP
provider. Do you feel like harming yourself or others? And for the first time, it sounded like
a good idea because these were the doctors, these were the professionals, these are who we were
going to, and it wasn't going to get better. My wife and I haven't had a crossed word with one
another in 15 years. Never even had a fight. I love her with all my heart. And I remember when I
hung up the phone, my wife was going to the grocery store. And for the first time in almost nine months,
I finally felt like I had control over a decision. I decided that this wasn't going to get better.
It wasn't going to go away. Nobody's going to fix it. And I can't talk to my crew about it because
they're going to think I'm a coward or I'm nuts or I'm the only one because this job doesn't seem
to bother any of them because we don't talk about feelings or emotions. So I'm the weak one. I'm the
burden. And you know, think about all the calls over the years when you walk into a home of somebody
who's completed suicide. Hell, even in the terminology, we as a culture say they committed
suicide as if it's a crime. But it's not. They completed it. They did the one thing that they
felt in their heart would solve their problem. And you know, I can think about all of the suicides,
you know, the smell of a shotgun in a room after somebody shoots himself in the head, the smell of
iron on the floor, the sound of a break fragment falling off of the drywall and hitting tile,
the feeling of someone's neck when they stretch it out, when they hang themselves,
that acrid smell of vomit when they overdose, the feeling of the water on your skin when you reach
in to pull somebody out of a tub when they go up the tracks and slit their wrists the long way,
and your glove dips in the water and the feeling of that blood on your arm. You used to look at
them and say, man, how could they do that? What a coward, right? You look at the pictures, look at
they had kids, they had their spouse, they went on this vacation. How could they do this? And
sitting on it,
sitting on a porch,
I finally understood that
they were trying to find peace. And it's not for us to judge that
they're not trying to harm their family. They truly believe in their heart,
that by their very existing on this earth is causing harm to the ones they love. And that by
taking their own life, they're serving their family better. And
my wife came over to the porch and kissed me and said, I'm going to the grocery store.
And one of the pieces of advice I can offer to families
of law enforcement and firefighters and veterans is
when your firefighter or your law enforcement officer or your veteran is struggling
with the psychological effects
of trauma, don't start hiding all the scissors in the house and putting foam block corners on
the furniture and hiding guns and knives and taking their keys away from their truck. Listen,
if your firefighter or your first responder or your veteran wants to harm themselves, they can
kill themselves with a chopstick if they're dedicated enough. When you start taking all of
those things away from it, it makes it worse. The simple things of being able to hop in your truck
and go to the store and your family takes away your keys, or they start leaning forward towards
you and go, Hey, James, you doing okay, buddy? You're doing okay. You're doing okay. You're
James. You're doing okay, buddy. All I could think of is everybody that came to see me would lean
forward and whisper. I think, God damn it, there's nothing wrong with my hearing. Why is everyone
whispering to me? But they feel like they're helping and it's not. It's debilitating.
I remember she kissed me on the head and went to the store. I had found my spare key to the truck
and I had decided the night before and my wife felt comfortable going to the store because I was
happy that morning. I was happy because I finally had an answer. I finally created a solution. I
wasn't going to therapy. I had zip tied a bunch of weights in my BC the night before
and I loaded up my boat when my wife left and I grabbed a bottle of rum and my dog and
I was going to head to the west wall, go as far as I could in my skiff until it ran out of gas,
get shit house drunk, put my feet over the side and go in with about 500 pounds of air and figure
I've got just enough to get down far enough to where I'll black out and there's no way I'll come
back up. My wife will get insurance. My daughter will be able to go to school. I won't be a burden
I won't be a burden and you know what everybody will be okay with this because they know how much
I love diving. They'll think I just went out and had an accident and nobody will have to know.
And the sound of the ballpoint on the little table where I wrote to my wife that I'm sorry I wasn't a
very good husband and I'm sorry I couldn't fix this but I've got too many other people's lives
in my heart and it doesn't go away and I can't fix it it's not your fault.
I was very very blessed that my wife called my brother to come check on me
and when he found me he called Dave who was my best friend and a battalion chief for Indian River
County and we talk about firefighters exercising the beautiful display of love which is truly the
absence of judgment just like the guys in OFD to come and sit every day with a firefighter's family
that they never met to offer support for a burn survivor. My brother and Dave sat on the porch
and just wrapped their arms around me and said well why didn't you tell me man.
You know when you talk to other firefighters about suicidal ideation and having nightmares
and daymares and why we're so hyper vigilant all the time why we react so viscerally with
things like your daughter wanting to borrow the car and go out at 11 o'clock tonight at the movies
and you just have an outburst and say no are you out of your mind conversation done why because
we've just saw a teenage girl with her head split in an a-post at an intersection coming back from
an 11 o'clock movie why we're so hyper vigilant why we were so reactive it's uh you know and a
firefighter sits there holding your suicide note and you know you're like oh my god I'm gonna die
and they look at you and they they don't judge you they say brother I got your back and they get
your help and um it's the exact opposite of what our culture instills from the day one when you
get your gear and they tell you if you can't handle this McDonald's is hiring this is what we do why
we send our new firefighters into the graphic gory calls why we used to make them go hook up a four
lead do a guy that had no head just to shock the firefighter and then tell them later well if you
can't handle it rub some dirt on it don't be a pussy we do as firefighters the exact opposite of
what we try and scare our new incoming firefighters into believing that talking about feelings and
emotions and and psychological response to being exposed to the most graphic stuff on earth for 30
years man they didn't judge me they didn't laugh at me they didn't tell me to rub some dirt on it
I sat there and waited for my wife to come home and my beautiful wife was able to find me a
clinician outside of our EAP that got us that understood us that helped save my life I didn't
even know I had a subconscious James I remember I sat down and we talked about cognitive reframing
and cbt therapy and hypnotherapy and I'm like whoa doc hypnotherapy like the stuff they do at the
fair look you're not going to say look deeply into my eyes and then I'm going to wake up with
a greasy sensation in my rear end and use up in your pants and a tissue gets put in my hand we're
not doing no we don't know about those things because we weren't educated it was foreign it
was another language but those things work I remember him saying if you had to rate this on
a scale of zero to ten you every single day having a nightmare replaying and dreaming of you being on
fire having nightmares now that you're you're lighting your wife and daughter on fire you're
sitting at the crew and and you envision your crew burning and you just sit there and watch them and
you're terrified if you had to rate that on a scale of zero to ten how would you rate that I'm
thinking well I'd say a ten doc okay well what would you like it to be and I'm just was dumbfounded
wait a minute that's an option I can change the way I view this if I change the way I view the
world the world that I see will change are you kidding me and you say that to somebody and they
go well that's common sense but you say that to a first responder and they'll tell you your batshit
crazy until you teach them that it's possible so I started going to this therapy almost daily and
started realizing that that that I'm not crazy that that we touch thousands of lives in our career
it's not unreasonable that some of those lives that we interact with are going to touch us
I'll give a shout out here to a gentleman in Palm Beach County fire rescue his name is Larry
Doling Uncle Larry as we call them Larry Doling and Jeremy Heard are a dynamic duo that that that
I truly believe that that we talk about faith fate and circumstance that God placed in my
family's life they are part of my family not just friends not just brothers their family plain and
simple and they came and taught me some amazing lessons one of the lessons that Larry who is a
very colorful lovely man he told me a story once he goes you know firefighters first responders and
veterans he shared with me the story of the Garden of Eden you know and we all know how it goes you
know you have Adam and Eve or Adam and Steve if you drive far enough down to Fort Lauderdale I
don't judge nor do I care what your hardware is but you have Adam and Eve and they lived in this
beautiful blissful place right they wanted for nothing everything was perfect and as it should be
and God told them he warned them you can live here forever in perfect harmony just do not eat
ever in perfect harmony just do not eat from the tree of knowledge they were warned and as the
story goes Adam was a good husband and said yes dear when that Eve came to him and handed him this
fruit and they took a bite right the tree of knowledge they were immediately they knew pain
they were naked they were afraid they were scared they were banished from the Garden of Eden never
to lay eyes on it again and I'm listening to Larry and I'm going brother okay I know the story of
the Garden of Eden what's what's what's the lesson he goes well first responders are a little different
our family lives in the Garden of Eden they don't know pain they don't know death they don't know
sorrow you weren't warned and you were designed to take that bite from the tree of knowledge
you know what pain looks like you know what death smells like you know what sadness and sorrow and
emotional loss tastes like and feels like to the very core you know what it looks like when
somebody's eyes will glaze over they take their last breath the sound a mother will make
screaming down from the top of a bridge for you to bring up their beloved son from the bottom of the
river you know what visceral pain is to the very core you took that bite as if it was something
of honor that you were going to protect your family your community your country
and you spend a third of your life 30 years outside of the Garden of Eden and you spend
two-thirds of your life over those 30 years and beyond coming back inside the gates of the Garden
of Eden trying to dwell with your family that didn't take the bite from the same poisonous fruit
living in the same community and you don't tell them and you don't communicate with them
because you think you're protecting them remember that raw visceral thought of holy cow you're right
so when we come home from work and you just watched an entire family on their way to disney
wiped off the face of the earth like the hand of god because some guy was drinking and driving
rolled his vehicle and killed him dead or dead he was just a little boy and he was
better than crap right there on the overpass and then you come home and you have a family birthday
party that night and you don't tell your wife while you're crying out back in your beer
you tell her no i'm just tired well how was your shift yesterday it was good we did some training
uh we had a good dinner we had a good meat sauce last night just got a little heartburn
just a little choked up from it why do we do that it's because we think we're protecting them
instead of saying honey i'm terrified to touch our daughter because every kid that i seem to touch now dies
but to have that foresight to say the garden of eden story it really holds a lot of truth
that what we do as first responders
the irony of all of uh that path is um my best friend david dangerfield uh he kept my suicide note
and i didn't know it until uh october this uh this year last year he um
he wrote his suicide note on the back of mine he got in his class a uniform and he shot himself in
the head um they say that uh that you have to lose the uh ones that you love because otherwise how
how would you know how important they are to you until they're gone um
um i can tell you after 15 years in the fire service almost 13 of them being side by side with
dave uh i think about him every day um i uh i miss him with all of my heart and um
i think about all of the crazy ass one-of-a-kind horrific calls that we've been on together and um
i feel very blessed to have shared life with him and uh
i'm gonna kick him in the balls when i see him it's a hell of a thing to uh
have that horrific realization that your best friend is gone and then to have that phone call
from your administration going hey dustin uh we need you and you're the chaplain
it's a painful thing to will your best friend die
it's a painful thing to will your best friend into a crematory
and did uh did chief dangerfield ever talk to you about things that he was going through prior to
this quite a bit and uh he was going to professional counseling and uh
was going through a hell of a uh hell of a personal life process
and divorce and um really struggling and um
he was uh utilizing the traditional psychotherapy and emdr which he would share with a bunch of
firefighters and even in his last last wish on facebook encouraging
people to get help you know he was an advocate for mental wellness
you know to talk about your feelings to
seek and get that help and be supportive of others and um
truly bodes and speaks volumes to his character even just moments before he completed suicide
to say love to my crews i miss you all and to get the help that um
truly an amazing soul
david became in the last few weeks of his life jovial again celebrating his death
life jovial again celebrating laughing he had the most contagious laugh he would laugh until
he'd snort and piss himself it was amazing just amazing and uh we look back
he became that way looking now and reading through a lot of his notes that he had written
um that he had made the decision to take control of the one thing in his life he felt he had control
over and he had decided to end his life weeks before he did never said a word
he just became peaceful again
finding now working with firefighters that there is a um there's a recipe that happens
we talk about post-traumatic stress and triggers um i equate it to a musical score
each individual note by itself an instrument playing is innocuous um and makes no melody or
music but when all of the notes a firefighter's story that law enforcement and veterans
storyline each one of those notes is a trauma perspective if you will when each one of them
lines up and that score plays as a massive fill harmonic style orchestra
it's catastrophic when you throw in financial distress physical fitness lacking emotional
marital or divorce and discipline at work and you throw all of those together
you will without fail if we do not change the culture and armor our firefighters educate our
first responders families on resiliency tools recognition and making it safe to communicate
you and i and all of our fire service if we willfully stand idle and don't prepare our new
incoming firefighters and empower our incumbent firefighters across this country we will continue
to put firefighters beneath pieces of granite we will continue to etch their names on the fire
fallen firefighter wall and we will continue to lose some of the most beautiful souls on this planet
that are hardwired to be in the service of others if we do not prepare them
and make it socially and culturally acceptable to be human we're tasked with this it is our responsibility
that's where this path comes from we talk about mental resiliency i sat on the porch the night
before i gave dave's eulogy with larry and jeremy from palm beach county and i was in the middle of
the night and i gave dave's eulogy with larry and jeremy from palm beach county fire rescue
i sketched it on a napkin what redline rescue is and as jeremy eloquently puts you know i've
heard hundreds of firefighters come up with great ideas after drinking a lot of rum and sketching
it on a napkin and they never come to fruition but i don't have the word if in my heart i have
the belief of when the idea was firefighters 90 of the conversation that we have with one another
first responders and law enforcement officers and veterans alike 90 of the conversation is done in
the first 10 seconds that we meet each other just by looking each other in the eyes kind of like the
burned survivors when they're still burned victims for some things that don't even need to be set
because we know that look in their eyes their character the charisma their character
just by looking at them
so the vision is and how to fruition with the support of nova southeastern and
university of miami is if we armor all firefighters 70 000 plus incumbent firefighters
professional volunteer first responders in the state of florida alone if we armor and educate and
normalize explain what cathartic ventilation is listening skills and techniques recognizing responses
of actual emotional trauma teach them what psychiatrists do psychologists do hypnotherapists do
how the referral process actually works as opposed to putting a brochure on a cork board
and hoping it's the right damn phone number if we teach it through minimum standards it becomes
socially acceptable look at the air pack
we look at firefighters now that look at those scbas snapped into the truck hopefully all clean
cab concept inspired by coral springs from here on out but snapped into the truck wherever they
may be at this point and they believe that it always has been that way but it wasn't but a short
while ago that you were looked at as a coward if you threw an air pack on your back why because
the culture didn't accept it we didn't educate the firefighters so they wouldn't use it mental
wellness is no different so we identified a problem so we educated firefighters on if you don't wear
that air pack you're getting cancer this is how you get cancer this is the route this is what
off gassing is on a fire this is what happens when you absorb it into your gear this is why we're in
danger when an overhaul or we're shooting down and we're still in an idlh environment so what
happened firefighters started wearing it because they didn't want to die they wanted to live long
and healthy and happy lives long into retirement so the air pack became normalized so why not take
the same tried and true method and apply it to mental wellness so what we sketched out was
creating a block of education to normalize mental wellness to firefighters from day one and
firefighter one and firefighter two roll out that same block to all incumbent firefighters across
the country and we're going to have to do that again and again and again and again and again
across the state normalizing that the conversation of mental wellness can occur all of a sudden
because you talk about feelings you're not a coward you're human so those kitchen table counseling
sessions can actually be done with an educated measure of guidance so we're not just trying to
create a bunch of firehouse lawyers we're actually creating people that have the basic first responder
level to recognize when one of their brothers and sisters is in danger and know how to get them help
and what that help is going to look like and what the process is going to be and then we created the
sketch of red line rescue which is a portal sponsored and supported by the state this model
along with the health and safety collaborative as the vehicle is supported by the florida fire
chiefs association the fpf the iaff the bureau of training and standards and the state fire marshal's
office and deputy director ethridge and the cfo that this is the industry mainstay and standard
that uses technology supported and facilitated through education to link firefighters to other
firefighters and clinical providers that are versed in our culture so what we do is we have
a block of education that nova southeastern is assisting us with dr vince van hasselt and chief
ladue have created because we have the peer-to-peer model now cism and cisd is a mainstay and it still
does serve a very valuable purpose but peer-to-peer support is always ready all the time it doesn't
take a critical incident an sop protocol to be followed the example in case and point james if
you're my peer provider you're the one that has advanced training and a block of education received
and approved by bureau of training and standards with ongoing ceus to know how to actively listen
to a firefighter listen for alert and keywords no basic referral techniques and when to get that
firefighter to a critical care center you are always ready and available and if you i match to
you through redline rescue which uses math it uses an algorithm i am more apt to talk to a firefighter
that does not work in my department and does not live in the area why is that anonymity
firefighters when they speak into their own department what are some of the setbacks
what are some of the whole holding factors that keep firefighters from sharing
personal struggles in their marriage and their personal life and their finances
that's simple they were afraid if they tell their firefighter that works next to them in their county
that maybe they'll tell the chief and they won't get promoted right
maybe they uh they'll be looked at differently maybe they get fired so when you remove that
through the stigma process reduction through the bureau of training and standards the
firefighter is comfortable and they have a mechanism that they can pick up their phone
or they can pick up their tablet or their computer and go to redline rescue
knowing and they've already been educated on how it works through bureau of training and standards
through target solutions is one of our sponsors and they know that they can push in this button
that's 100% anonymous they put in their demographics not their name not their department
and it populates and ip pings them within a 60 mile block and provides them a list of 10 to 15
peer providers that are firefighters that now through this mathematical algorithm have similar rank
similar life experiences similar injuries and struggles religious beliefs and all they have to
do is push a button and they can be linked to that peer provider immediately and if they need an eap
clinician on the same algorithm process it matches them to a provider that has and accepts their
insurance that is versed in firefighter culture language experience we created a clinician
awareness program palm beach county fire rescue and coral springs have been instrumental in
delivering our clinician awareness program which is a two-day program which covers everything from
the way we speak interact the way we live in the fire service on duty and off duty and why is that
important because when you sit down and you're ready to go to the fire service and you're ready
to receive clinical help most firefighters pre-education on what mental wellness is looks
at reaching out for mental wellness as a demarcation point of failure like they couldn't handle it so i
have to go to the head doctor now and when they sit down in front of this doctor and they spill
their guts and the doctor goes wait a minute so you guys work like what nine to five monday to
tuesday thursday how do your shifts work you stay there for 24 hours oh my god do you sleep there
and the firefighter sitting there trying to express yeah we had a structure fire
went to go protect an exposure pulled a deuce and a half nozzle failed exposure went ahead and went
up and there was a little girl that was on side alpha bravo sleep in her crib and she burned up
because the curtains caught fire from the radiant heat and the fire and the clinician goes what's a
deuce and a half alpha bravo is that like a sandwich what is that so what we found is when
we educate these clinicians over a two-day period on language terminology basically give them a
rosetta stone of how firefighters speak so the harmful things don't happen in the very first
session like when i went and i'm talking to a child psychologist who's reading a ptsd manual
and they ask the stupid-ass question of hey dustin can i touch your scars on your arms do they hurt
so these clinicians don't do things that are prohibitive to care so the firefighters know
when they sit down with these list of clinicians that populate on the red line rescue site that
they have gone through intensive two-day training they've gotten in bunker gear they've gone into
blacked out simulated smoke environments they've gone and they've seen these graphic calls they've
done a 24-hour shift at a busy firehouse not one that's the sleepaway camp station where they get
one call a shift they they they can show effective empathy and now apply improved modalities of care
to get that firefighter armored with resiliency tools so the comfort level is there when we first
did the clinician awareness program the original concern was how do we get clinicians here are
they going to want to show up what i can tell you is after the very first class that we hosted there
was no shortage of clinicians there was actually lines of clinicians that were not there and so
we were able to get them in lines and we are backlogged again for a class that signed up in
october with the entire upper echelon ceo and cfos and their administrative staff of signa
that stepped up to say we want every one of our clinicians to go through this program
so we can better serve our first responders in this country i couldn't believe the response i
said hey we get 10 people that'll be great we have to use after october we talked to the bureau of
fire marshals office we will have to utilize every florida state fire college across the state
to keep up with the demand now of training our clinicians
so there's no more of hey uh james um do you have any clinicians around you i need to see somebody
and you'd have to hope that you had a list of doctors around you that would accept my insurance
and could help me every once in a while you get lucky but every once in a while they slip through
the cracks now when we have a state and nationwide populated list of culturally aware clinicians
and firefighters to pair to help with that language gap brother we have an armored new family
of firefighters that aren't just going to struggle to survive their 25 and 30 years in the fire
service but thrive through the fire service and long into retirement the thought processes
approach the same mechanisms that we've done for every other danger in the fire service identify
a problem paint the pattern and create a preventable measure to stop this pattern we're going to use the
same thing with mental wellness university of miami has created a team to create an eight-hour
block of education to go in our 480 i believe it's 480 hours of current curriculum and minimum
standards for firefighter one and firefighter two so we're putting a eight-hour block that can run
consecutively back to back matched and paired with the appropriate sections of
the curriculum a point case example let's say we work on um pediatric and um during that
pediatric group we put in and implement the emotional response to dealing with pediatric
death for the firefighter when we get into protecting scene safety and protecting evidence
on scene that's when we put in the efforts of the effects of dealing with suicides and
firefighter suicides and we input those into the appropriate section so we have a hybrid program
of education so university of miami is writing a evidence-based frontline psychological first aid
program that our health and safety collaborative is turning over to the bureau of training and
standards to be implemented nova southeastern is creating or wrapping up the peer-to-peer model
which they've already gone through multiple test groups we had some of our members through the
coral springs fire rescue that went through their program and it is a very intensive program
the reason we want to create a standard peer-to-peer is not to say we're going to invent something new
we're taking the best of the best of all of the peer programs and that's why the health and safety
collaborative is so effective is because they don't try and protect industry secrets like a
nuclear football they take everybody's ideas and create a think tank workshop and share the
information readily so we can take best management practices and you know basically bring thousands
of years accumulatively of fire service experience to the round table and create a standardized
predictable product so that's what we're doing with the peer-to-peer to create a nationwide standard
so we can have repeatable results we we're very very thankful and i'm very very thankful
you know we had spoken early on in this about honoring our past and i believe that
first responders at sometimes we think it's a curse but we're being offered an opportunity
as a gift to take all of the lives that we interact with in such visceral and painful ways
and inspire other firefighters and their families to use that painful perspective as a driving
purpose to celebrate life to thrive at home and through these processes of education teaching
firefighters and their spouses and it's okay to talk to one or give them the ability and the tools
to communicate and utilize peer support i believe that we are going to see a marked point of
reduction in firefighter suicide and divorce rates and substance abuse and uh creating
uh careers ending early because of ptsd and shift that model from post-traumatic stress
towards post-traumatic growth one of the uh other unique things about redline rescue is
we have already taken the algorithm and the process and trademarked and copyrighted it but
uh it's underneath the 501c3 we're giving this model away at um to free uh two agencies that need
it all across the country because this isn't something that should be protected and i'm not
trying to make any money off this if anything it shows that i have uh poor business acumen of
prowess because we liquidated our assets to get it up and going and i don't want any money back
i would rather die penniless and peaceful knowing that we save firefighters lives their marriages
that there's a kid or a child out there that their father or their mother can walk them down the aisle
because they were able to get peer support they were able to get a clinician that got them and
they were able to be uh instructed and guided to be resilient to me that's serving my life's purpose
not making a dollar money's just dirty ass rotten money i don't need any of it yeah you couldn't
put a dollar amount on on the effect this is going to happen anyway i tell you right right now
well we uh i agree with that and we're turning uh we'll be turning the process over we have a blue
line rescue that's already slated for law enforcement because there is no bones about
it firefighters law enforcement officers are two different breeds we see we're all on the same
calls but the way that firefighters law enforcement officers as we're looking through evidence-based
protocol react and interact are notably different so we're creating the blue line rescue for law
enforcement and frontline rescue to be turned over to the department of defense for all veterans
that's fantastic now let's let's talk about where where to access the red line rescue and then i
also want to then go on to if you're outside the state of florida where is your best resource for
now if you're looking to find help in the same realm of counselors that we've been talking about
well right now what we're doing is we have the basically the red line rescue 1.0 the 2.0 is the
algorithm method that we just discussed that will be up and fully functioning and live at the end
of this year beginning of january is the target part of the phasing plan the red line rescue 1.0
which allows you to have active lists of peer-to-peer providers that are vetted and have gone through the
process and the populated active list of clinicians that we're building almost daily will be available
on the florida firefighter safety and health collaborative site and that will be available under
the mental wellness tab which we just had our meeting yesterday for finalizing the web design
rollout the site is up and live however the red line rescue will not be live until january
the way to access and recreate this is we're giving away the vetting process the core course
and basically the step-by-step process of how to create a safety and health collaborative
how to identify and illuminate your map we're giving those steps away on the florida firefighter
safety and health collaborative site as well as providing the mechanism on how to reproduce this
so that's what's amazing about this organization is the cookbook and how to is available at no
cost so we encourage all of these entities and i believe we do have in your area we have our
physical fitness portion representative along with what you do there on the safety and health
collaborative site have you had the opportunity to go on the site yet i just saw it release the
other day i haven't accessed it yet just because i was on a trip out here to texas where we're
doing the the interview from but when i get back i'll be delving in and then and then sharing that
hell out of that too excellent excellent and that's how we adjust this and utilize this for
already working with the state of california where they're emulating our setup and our model of the
collaborative approach sharing everything from like the different facets which we have the
physical fitness facet getting out the the different ways for healthy eating lifestyle changes
exercise plans all of these things that people typically have to pay for we're laying out there
at no cost the cancer side we have some of the things that we're doing that we're doing
that sam eaton and vicki shepherd who are absolutely fantastic they're part of the face team
and the working with university of miami and silvester comprehensive cancer center and and the fci
for really talking about clean cab concept creating the model on how to do it giving the after scene
decon sops and and not charging for it not saying hey you want us to come in and teach this we're
going to charge you a thousand dollars a day no here it is editable document plug in your department's
name use it we're here to save lives so we encourage for those who are trying to do this
to take that multiple modality approach so we have the physical side we have the health and safety
we have the cancer side we have the general safety side and then we have the mental wellness side
so our team is absolutely uh astounding and i would encourage you guys to go on the florida
firefighter safety and health collaborative site which is florida firefighter safety dot org that's
florida firefighter safety all one word dot org you sign up it's no cost it gives you all access
and to all of the sops sogs white paper study evidence-based programs and you have the ability
if you have an sop or a program or a protocol or a special committee that has been established
that you would like to share this is the platform to where you're not having to pay to share your
information and it gives you the mechanism and vehicle to share it across the state and that's
one across the nation that's why it's just so amazing to see entities like the bureau of training
and standards and state fire marshals office the florida fire chiefs which has been fantastic one
of the committees that we we chair as a team is supported by the head of the committee which is
uh chief frank babnick of coral springs fire rescue has just been amazing in supporting
captain chris beder who's the head of the president of the organization and really just
fast tracking this and seeing it supported across the board has been neat because when you're
talking these major five entities of the fire service they typically don't get together and
work on one common goal they don't so to see bureau of training of standards state fire marshals office
and uh cfo's office and florida fire chiefs and the iaff all come together for one cause which
has finally stopped protecting and being prohibitive of safety and health by saying hey we had this
proprietary idea that we're going to protect they finally came together and go you know what
that that that protective nature that we're having and trying to keep our tabs and claws on this
health and safety and mental wellness and physical fitness is ultimately costing firefighters lives
so let's all come together and put our heads together create the medium which is how the
florida firefighter safety and health collaborative was born was was share the information so others
aren't recreating the wheel you know so we can start moving forward instead of sitting here
spinning our wheels so we have an amazing partnership with all of these entities and
university of miami's team is really replicating what they did with the cancer initiative which to
me is all inspiring and love to have you connect with sam eaton and vicki shepherd and the university
of miami team to really talk about what's coming up next what their next study group is
and really get that information out there to all of our firefighters but the university of miami
team is blowing us away again by stepping up the dean of education has decided to head the committee
to create that eight-hour block hybrid program to help save our firefighters lives through education
and i'm just i'm deeply moved to see universities academia get involved in real life and that doesn't
and that doesn't it doesn't typically happen so it's pretty amazing to see them step out of that
that role and use their abilities and amazing talents to help educate firefighters so we can
we can truly truly benefit and learn from this perspective yeah well that's the testimony to you
in the collaborative though of orchestrating this and i think that's the theme that we've seen in so
many in the interviews so far is the people that are doing the real good they're removing the
element of trying to get rich from that concept and like you said it's disgusting that that would
even be a factor in in mental health and first responders but by getting them to realize that
and remove that dollar sign from the whole equation lo and behold you know we're getting
this amazing information in all elements from sleep deprivation to cancer to mental wellness and
i think people are realizing go make your money somewhere else radio straps whatever but leave
these issues alone because me making money off people's health is just not an ethical thing in
my opinion i couldn't agree more could not agree more all right brother well uh one more question
i just want to put out because i've had this i resubmitted uh the essay that i wrote a little
while ago knowing that you and i were going to have this conversation just kind of put it out
there prior to this airing next week um but again every time one of these goes out i get all these
these uh messages from people that exactly like you talked about the peer to peer even though it's
not an official um uh relationship people reach out to me and i'm more than happy to to to respond
with what little i know but one of the big questions i get a lot is how do i find uh a
counselor in my area for now pre redline rescue release that i i would know at least is the right
kind of person to sit down with is there any sort of list nationally at the moment any sort of uh
governing body that can least give them lists of local people that will be able to help
that's what we're working on right now because there is no standardized list um and that's
and that's why uh we are encouraging uh the individuals to uh assist in populating the
clinician awareness program uh student attendee uh signa has been fantastic in illuminating a map
across um we have two other eap providers that are currently in negotiations with on populating
their list and the reason that these lists aren't available and why we're creating them
is a lot of eap providers don't know who's on their provider log list and what their specialty
is they just know their licensor and that they're covered in network they don't know what their
skill set is with firefighters so that's why some of them really hold back when you call and they
give you just a rotation name just like you would for a wrecker when your car needs towing
because they don't know they just go down the list and do an eni mini money mo they don't have that
qa qi feedback so the list that we're looking at is going to be statewide at the current time
is available on the health and safety collaborative site and that's why we are expanding across the
three regions here in the state of florida to get with each individual department have them fill
out the clinician review sheet so we can rapidly populate the list of providers that are effective
in their areas okay brilliant well thank you for that well i'm going to transition now to a couple
of short questions before i do i just want to thank you i don't think i've had anyone
that i've interviewed yet a pull their heart out and be so courageous in the interview and obviously
some of them it doesn't dictate that in the first place but for you to reach out i can tell you right
now hand on my heart i know this 100 that this interview alone prior pre redline rescue and all
the incredible things that you guys have set up just your interview is going to touch so many
people and i'm pretty sure it's probably going to span the globe and that in itself is going to get
people thinking get people talking and redefine that and then you add the second layer of the
redline rescue and all the other things that you guys have put in place i truly think that
you know chief danger field and some of the other suicides that we had recently had really really
got people talking and then obviously the pulse shooting was a very hard-hitting local thing but
there was always the possibility that it would it would be big for a moment and then disappear
and nothing has happened you guys coincidentally with the timing have taken this tragedy and truly
turned it into something that is going to change our profession law enforcement hopefully even touch
military forever so i thank you so much for your courage and i can tell you right now that that the
tragedy that you've been through and the hardships there's no question in my mind that that strength
that you derive from that and that courage that you had is going to be paid forward exponentially
and i think i talk for everyone listening to this recording thank you so much for
for doing what you've done and and being the courageous soul that you are well brother i
thank you thank you for the kind words and i truly believe and i've had this talk many times with
with my wife and daughter and especially all of my brothers and sisters and this amazing team that
is the collaborative and all of its members is i no longer believe in in i that i only believe in
we and us and that when we when we armor ourselves with that thought process and truly
become as protective of one another through our actions through our words through our passion
and drive when we become as protective of one another as we are of ourselves there is no doubt
in my mind that our healing will begin and i thank each and every one of you my team on health and
safety collaborative for all of my brothers and sisters for my doctor dr keith ebel superhero of
mine for my wife and for my brother dave and all of the firefighters that have gone before us and
the ones that should come after of us i love each and every one of you amen to that mate
well let's uh let's ask a couple of the short fire questions because i would love to to hear the
answer to these from someone that's been through such an amazing journey i always ask people
firstly are there any books that you would recommend to people on any subject that you choose
absolutely the the very first one is perspective changes everything it's a book written by dr keith
ebel you can get it on amazon but perspective changes everything is really an amazing way to
shift our thought process from what we believe trauma is and changes it to what we can actually
do with it for for ourselves and for our families and it's truly an insight to a
a sound way of living the other one that i really really draw from is a guide to joy and a guide to
happiness from the dalai lama and just really truly can provide strength to any first responder
to assist in changing their view to a positive one so i'd say those three books would be it but
the first and foremost one is from keith ebel doctor perspective changes everything
because that's part of what helped save my life fantastic and what about movies and or documentary
movies okay um
you know i used to really like war movies but after this many years in this i don't like seeing
death anymore i have an odd one and i'll probably get my my rear end busted for this
but uh the curious case of benjamin button that's a fantastic film it uh it's it's wonderful um and
it's also bodes a shining light that we as first responders are offered the reverse perspective
of life of aging of pain of death of all struggles and we in essence um have the ability to take our
unique view and celebrate our life in that reverse aging process um and uh celebrate and do an
experience while we are young so i would have to say the curious case of benjamin button is a very
very inspirational movie i didn't know you were going to take this into the rapid fire weird
q a i can't guarantee all these questions are going to get uh normal now you guys want to finish
it you know the way we normally do and obviously the books in the movies are someone you know
the journey you've been through that would be an interesting thing so um all right and then uh i
know we talked about this before because you were about to do it when we spoke the other day but um
what do you do to decompress to blow off steam i garden um the uh not like vegetable gardening um
the uh long before i ever realized um why i garden um i had bought a orchid you know we all know
orchids is an orchid you know for firefighters to talk about flowers you know joke jokes are abound
um but um my uh my my wife and i were heavily invested in uh to a restaurant my wife uh ran
restaurant for her own personal restaurant for 18 years that she created when she first moved here
to florida and then we started working for a chain and got really heavily invested in our own
restaurant there and uh i just noticed that when i was coming home from uh the fire service uh you
know coming off shift you can only fish so much and uh i know some firefighters debate that but
you can only fish so much it's a fact um and i just wanted to distract uh my wife for a moment
and i bought this orchid and i saw on the bottom of it this little tag actually one of the lows
and it had this tag that said phalaenopsis on the bottom and i'm like god that's that's one hell of
a scrabble word man and i sounded like nemo trying to pronounce it you know and then then then to me
type thing and when my wife got home i had this beautiful purple phalaenopsis and i showed her
i said honey it's a phalaenopsis and for a moment she was just amazed at its beauty and i just
i i noted how much peace that brought me that i didn't worry about the calls i didn't worry
about what just happened only mattered was that moment it brought me into the present moment
and over the years uh we've slowly bought up all the other properties on either side of us and
expanded in our home uh is now a nationally registered botanical garden um we've uh got uh
uh damn near close to 800 different species on the property um we run an animal rescue center
uh rescuing parrots and and all kinds of different birds and things like that and um
what i found is is when i when i come back and i want to find inspiration for calm for center for
a meditative practice coming back and getting lost in our jungle and our home literally looks
looks like a rainforest um and spending you know five six seven hours um just trimming and
nurturing and and observing growth in life what i find is is it offers that perspective
things in nature are just as beautiful and uh is unpredictable and violent uh is what we experience
on the job um and it also can be calming so when i come home uh and i need to re-center picking up
a pair of trimmers throwing in some good uh stick figure or revolution or some bob marley and closing
the gates on the property and disappearing into the garden really allows me uh to celebrate the
gift it brings me back to that present moment like the very first time that i started learning
latin on an orchid you know a firefighter trying to learn latin on an orchid you know you're going
to get your balls busted around the kitchen table you know but now all the guys that i work with and
the people have encountered and come to our home realize that it's not just an eccentric hobby
it's it's part of something that um shows that a firefighter if they find a healthy habit okay
whether it's physical fitness whether it's gardening whether it's meditation whether it's communication
um that um it can bring you back to the present moment which is right now and you can use all of
the painful past that you've had um and not consume yourself with worrying about the future and the
things that haven't happened yet but use it to celebrate the things in your life that you're
surrounded with and and gardening is is that empowering meditative practice that i use and i
love it fantastic yeah i think that's uh that's definitely a common denominator is having that
passion and and finding that gratitude in the moment um and it's not forgetting or ignoring
what's happened and you know the things that we've seen but but again if you're in the truly in the
moment then those things don't exist at that point without a doubt there is no doubt about it and i
definitely appreciate uh the three tenses of time um which uh staying in that center in that moment
is is truly a um a healing and holistic tool absolutely all right mate well we have been
talking for two hours by far the longest podcast but um i i would say that um you know this is
probably the most powerful interview i've ever done the most powerful conversation i've ever had with
a human being at 43 years old so i'm so glad that we were able to do it um and uh like i said before
i think this is gonna it's gonna reach so many ears and ultimately hearts and and certainly be
part of that jigsaw puzzle along with all the other things that you and the collaborative do
in in changing and revolutionary revolutionizing our profession um and redefining it just like you
guys said right from the very beginning as when you enter the academy you know what what is a
firefighter you know and and getting rid of that macho facade bullshit that we've had for so many
years where you know talking about that stuff is a weakness because show me a veteran that isn't
torn up by the things that they've seen and we're no different absolutely absolutely the one thing
that i offered to uh whether it's uh peer support or somebody that i'm engaging in the chaplaincy
role or getting them to mental wellness the first thing caveat i give is said listen i'm the feelings
chaplain if you're looking for the baby jesus chaplain we can you know i'll get you somebody
but i'm the feelings guy and one of the things that i talk with them about is no matter what
career no matter how macho you think you are no matter how many type a adrenaline field you think
you are um here's the here's the reality of it you're a mammal okay we have a herd mentality we
don't like to be isolated and we like to be shown affection if we address those issues there with
kindness and compassion and say that look i'm a human being and it's okay to feel these emotions
as long as they're constructive and i need to share and talk about the ones that are taking away
from me brother you're a mammal you're not a superhero and if you want to do something that
superhero quality then i encourage and task you and every one of our brothers and sisters listening
with this talk about feelings talk about emotions if you feel like you need to cry it's okay embrace
one another with love because that human that you're sharing with may be going through a similar
struggle and can help you and you can help them together but don't ignore your feelings it's not
something to run from amen to that yeah especially i think that an area that people forget as well
is someone may be doing perfectly well until they find that you know their partner is cheating or
until the bank threatens to take their house and that could be the straw that break the camel's
back and even though you haven't seen some pediatric traumatic death in several years it may be some in
a home that actually finally breaks them that's it and that's what triggers that musical score
that we were talking about all of the notes are there and you build cumulatively those notes and
store them and you may think now the note is no longer vibrating it's no longer tuned playing
it's still there so when you get those triggers of home life finances marriage or disciplinary
type settings at work where it triggers that stress brother that orchestra has been there
i've heard firefighters say oh i file it away or i just don't let it bother me or i just don't think
about it what i can tell you is every time i hear one of those my bullshit meter goes off
because you you are the mathematical the sum of your life experiences to that moment so those
things don't just disappear they don't have to define you but they don't just disappear
they're there waiting patiently amen to that all right mate well i'm going to put all the
the links for the collaborative on the website and i will share the hell out of them as well
is there anywhere else anywhere else online that people can find you through the collaborative
site we have our access our contact information upcoming events and scheduling all available on
the site that is the best way to get a hold of us and that's the link will be available on your
site but it's floridafirefightersafety.org okay mate well i will put that up there and as many
corners of the internet as i can possibly cram it but thank you so much again i'm going to let you
go now i'm sure you're probably starving and we will talk again face to face in the collaborative
and i just thank you again for such a candid and courageous interview well thank you for your time
i'm honored for what you do for all of our brothers and sisters getting that information out there
and i do i'm one of the ones that has got your website link there on the ipad on the computer
and i love checking you out and seeing what you're doing and what's coming next so thank you for
everything you do much love to you and have a peaceful day all right brother you stay safe