This episode is sponsored by Global Medical Response, yet another sponsor that I have tracked down because they have a solution to one of the biggest problems we have in emergency medicine and healthcare.
We often hear the term 911 abuse, but what I love is the concept that this should be a three-tier system. ALS, BLS, and then the non-emergent element.
With the evolution of telehealth and telemedicine, that third tier is now possible virtually.
In 2018, Global Medical Response pioneered 911 Nurse Navigation.
In communities across the country, GMR's nurse navigators use evidence-based clinical protocols to screen a patient's current condition, providing an appropriate resource to meet the patient's unique healthcare needs,
whether that's dispatching a rideshare to an urgent care, an appointment at a federally qualified health center, or virtual care with a physician on the spot.
The five-level screening system ensures patients receive the right resource at the right time, in the right setting, to achieve the right outcome at the right cost.
So as a huge advocate for our first responders' health and of course the people that we serve, this solves three issues.
It allows the patient to have a far less expensive option when it comes to their non-emergent issue.
It stops a firefighter or a paramedic being woken up for that call, and it frees up an ER bed for a true emergency.
So if you want to hear more about how GMR can integrate nurse navigation in your 911 system, listen to episode 998 with Joshua Rose and Dr. Jared Troutman,
or go to globalmedicalresponse.com.
This episode is sponsored by Team Builder, yet another company that's doing great things for the first responder community.
As a strength and conditioning coach myself who also trains tactical athletes, dissemination of wellness information is one of the biggest challenges.
Now Team Builder is the premier strength and conditioning software for tactical athletes, and there are several features that really impress me.
Firstly, there is a full exercise library, so you, the personal trainer, does not have to create that within your own department.
Secondly, you can send out programming, but also individualize, which I love.
So you blanket program for everyone. Now you can tweak based on someone's injury, someone's need to maybe drop some body composition,
rather than having to write a program for every single person on their own.
Team Builder also allows you to build custom questionnaires to collate health and wellness data.
It integrates with wearables, and I think one of the most important things is obviously it tracks.
To me, it's imperative that we as a profession start tracking our people from day one and then over the full span of their career,
therefore catching potential wellness issues and injuries before they happen.
Now, if you want to try Team Builder, they are offering you, the audience of the Behind the Shield podcast, a free 14 day trial to experience all of the features.
And if you want to take a deeper dive into Team Builder, listen to episode 1032 with Melissa Mercado or go to teambuilder.com.
And I'll spell that to you because it's not as you think. T-E-A-M-B-U-I-L-D-R.com.
Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing, and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back onto the show
firefighter and former Team Canada hockey player Kendra Fisher.
So in the second conversation, we discuss a host of new topics reflecting on the pandemic from the other side,
head trauma in our youth athletes on the ice, her mental health story, tools she's accumulated on her healing journey and so much more.
Now, before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment, go to whichever app you listen to this on,
subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of over 1000 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show Kendra Fisher. Enjoy.
Well Kendra, I want to start by saying thank you so much for coming back onto the Behind the Shield podcast today.
James, it's my pleasure.
So we spoke last November 2021 was when I pushed our last episode out, which is episode 540 for people listening.
Approximately. So that was kind of as we were all starting to come out of COVID with you being a first responder and in Canada.
Let's start with that. Talk to me about the kind of the back end of that because I think that revisiting things that were done well and things that weren't is a responsible thing to do.
What I've seen is a lot of sweeping under the carpet and therefore we can't be better next time this thing comes along.
Yeah, I mean, it was such a unique experience. And I mean, I hadn't been on the job that long when COVID hit.
And so to be in a position where you're kind of facing this huge unknown.
I mean, there was just so much about it we didn't know. And everybody was just kind of trying to go on the best information we could get.
And immediately you started to see the like polarizing opposite viewpoints coming out.
And that was tragic. I think that was the worst part of it all because I think what people forgot was everybody was just trying to do their best.
I mean, everybody was trying to move forward with whatever set of beliefs and information they believed was going to keep themselves and their people safe.
And instead of it looking like that, instead of it being about compassion, instead of it being about working together to do our best,
I felt like there was just so much of it that became conversation that was, you know, butting heads and they've got it wrong or they've got it right.
And that made it really difficult. It made it really difficult to show up for people never knowing what you're about to walk into,
never knowing whether or not you're about to be the person that they want to see at the door or the person that they're going to tear apart for how you show up.
And, you know, you're showing up in various levels of PPE and you're showing up in so many different scenarios is so foreign to us.
I mean, we were learning on the go. And so I think that I feel like we did our best to work with the information we had.
And I think that even now, I mean, so much of it is still just like, whoa, what happened? What did we just go through?
Absolutely. Well, I feel like, you know, this is the wildfire that went through and now we've got to go back and find the point of origin, you know, and look for survivors.
But there was definitely a kind of like you said, it was two camps and it was like World War I, you know, two trenches firing things at each other.
And people are missing, you know, the football game that happened at Christmas, you know what I mean? The human element.
And I think that the common sense voices in the middle, you know, we were really viewed as heretics.
You know, how dare you talk about, you know, obesity as a contributing factor or diabetes or all these other things that, you know, the childhood diabetes obviously isn't preventable, but the type two is super preventable.
The obesity is preventable. I mean, a lot of these things.
So I was hoping that we were going to emerge from this really empowered to start making a massive dent in the health of the nation, especially here in America.
I mean, we have 70 percent more now, I think, of our population overweight, of which 40 plus percent are obese.
So what a beautiful captive audience to make a difference in that.
But because of this polarization, really, to me, the most censored voice was the one in the middle.
Like vaccines, you know, have an application here, but do I think that they should be mandated and first responders lose their job if they don't get it when it becomes evident that it wasn't the the efficacy that we were told at the beginning?
Also, no. So standing in the middle, I think, you know, that's where we would kind of collect the pieces.
OK, this side was right on these areas.
This side was right on these areas.
But let's learn from it.
Let's make sure that if and when is probably a better term, that we get a similar incident happen, that we are better prepared, we make better decisions.
I mean, just the mental health ripple effect of the isolation, for example, is stealing lives today.
Yeah. Well, and I mean, I think that, you know, there's a lot of points to that.
I think that one in terms of accepting what we did well, what we didn't do well.
I mean, even at this point, how much how much can we say because we can sit there and say, you know, shouldn't have been mandated.
We can also sit there and say, had they not been mandated, what would the difference have been?
And to me, that's not the conversation. It's not the fight worth getting into at this point.
The fight worth getting into is how do we learn to do better next time?
Because inevitably, history has shown there's going to be a next time and people are going to look back and they're going to look at this, you know, world event and they're going to try to learn from it.
And right now, they're just going to see a lot of discourse and hatred.
And and and and I just for me, it's, you know, you speak about wellness and health.
And absolutely. I mean, what a wonderful foundation to say, look, like ultimately, physically, there are things that we can do to better our situations when health issues arise and preventatively.
And prevention is something that I'm huge on, especially working in mental health as well, as you said, because I'm somebody who firmly believes it is impossible to teach somebody to swim when they're drowning.
You can't do it. You need to start teaching them before you throw them into crisis.
Well, we got thrown into this crisis with very little tools to understand how to manage it and how to mitigate it.
But a lot of the pieces that were necessary.
It comes with a lasting effect. I mean, isolation being one of them.
And isolation is so detrimental when it comes to mental health.
We are not we are not people or beings that are meant to be alone.
We're not supposed to get through it alone and kind of that that sense of safety that was conveyed with isolation.
That was this idea of be alone and you'll be safe. And now there's this fear coming out of that.
And also I'm finding in some instances, there's also the narrative of, you know, well, we can live like this.
This can be our world now. We can be this remote world. We can be this.
And I think embracing that has been so detrimental for so many people.
This is the game where the extremes come in, I think, because if you take, you know, let's say, you know, a commuter in Toronto, for example,
and, you know, he leaves his family, he has a one hour, you know, hour and a half, two hour journey or say London, three hours, you know,
and then they go and sit at a cubicle and do a job on a computer and then they come back the same journey time.
You know, they barely see their family. That remote element, I think, is amazing.
I think it really empowers. But like you said, you know, it's also got to be coupled with community.
And a perfect example is, you know, the divided individual dorm rooms or bedrooms in a fire station.
Incredible. You know, you shouldn't have to wake up an entire station for one rig to go on a call.
But equally and oppositely, it's up to the leadership in that station to make sure that most of the time is spent in the communal spaces
around the dining table, working out your TV room, whatever, so that you're getting that community as well.
Yeah. And it's become so easy, right? Because now we have an excuse for it. We have a reason for it.
And unfortunately, that middle ground, that common ground that exists between the polarizing opposites is usually the hardest to hear.
It's it's really easy to hear people who are standing there screaming and, you know, adamant about how right they are.
And what often happens is the vast majority that lives in the in-between gets muted.
And unfortunately, that negates a lot of common sense in a lot of areas.
But I think that, you know, coming back to community is, you know, whether it be in the fire service,
whether it be in families, whether it be in workplaces, no matter what, at this point,
that's something we actually have to aggressively work towards again, I think, because, again,
we've been armed with the excuse of separation. We've been armed with the excuse of, I'm going to, you know,
I'm going to finish my meal and I'm going to go into my little space there on my phone and do my thing.
And it was necessary. So so that's now become acceptable. And unfortunately,
I think that we are going to have years of decline because of it.
I see it working in the mental health space now. I mean, we are at an all time worst for statistics around suicide,
around mental health crisis. You know, when I started working in mental health,
we were looking at stats like one in five, one in six adults dealing with mental health issues.
And now we're at one in two. Yeah. Now, I mean, you look at, like you said, the term community.
There's an amazing book called Chasing the Screen by a guy called Johann Hari.
It's about addiction. And he has a quote, The opposite of addiction isn't sobriety.
The opposite of addiction is connection. And if you look at a lot of the places where they've invoked healing,
and I just interviewed Sam Quinonez yesterday who wrote Dreamland and Portsmouth, Ohio,
the Dreamland is built on now. They have become like the hub for recovery.
So the very kind of nucleus that shattered their community initially, it's almost like the wildfire.
Now those little green shoots are starting to peak through and they've had CrossFit gyms spring up that have brought,
you know, people in. They've had revamping abandoned houses and finding, you know,
addicts that as he talks about, you know, they were plumbers and carpenters.
So they give them purpose and they give them community again.
So when you look at the divisive nature of our media and our politicians,
that is one of the huge reasons why we're seeing a mental health crisis,
because these people that are hurting fear and shame is being pumped rather than community and camaraderie.
Absolutely. And I think if you look at any modality that comes with supporting good mental health and good health in general,
because I don't think we can separate it. There's no there's no differentiating mental and physical health.
I mean, health is health. And whether you like it or not, if your physical health is bad, your mental health is going to suffer.
If your mental health is bad, your physical health is going to suffer.
And it's, you know, any of the modalities that we see working and and not just like it's tough, right?
Because it's it's hard to push something that's good for your mental health because it's not necessarily always measurable in the same way.
It's really easy to convince somebody that a will cause weight loss.
You step on a scale and there's an easy black and white. You see it. It's it's tangible. You know that you're losing weight.
And when it comes to emotion and when it comes to, you know, trying to convince people that it is so necessary to put in the same level of, you know, work, practice, training and in bettering our mental health.
It's a lot harder to convince people of that. But I think that this, you know, unfortunately has been a resounding display of what happens when we disconnect, what happens when we lose community, what happens when we lose purpose.
And those things come hand in hand.
What are you seeing as far as the environment in Canada?
Obviously, here in America, we just had the election getting to choose the worst of two or the least of two evils yet again after four years. 400,000 people have seen me 400 million people almost now.
So terrified you are going to bring up the election. I'm not going to lie.
Yeah, no, and we don't need to. Please don't make me. No, no, no.
That's not about them. It's, you know, our system is broken. So to me, discussing those two is pointless.
I mean, they both emerge from a broken system. So let's not even waste our breath.
But you talk about polarization. The last few weeks have been, you know, the crescendo of that.
Yeah, being behind us, this kind of puppets that people hail as their orange Jesus or whoever it is.
But that's obviously very, very polarizing at the moment. And we've got red and we've got blue and all that stuff.
What is the landscape in Canada? Are you exposed to the same division at the moment or is it a little bit more integrated?
I think the ripple effect is real.
I mean, you can't ignore the fact that the entire world was holding their breath watching the U.S. election
and everything that it potentially represented in terms of humanity and in terms of, you know,
and the ability to judge based on what we see and what's depicted in whether it be media or, you know, online social communities.
It's so easy to judge. I mean, I will honestly say I think U.S. politics has torn apart families and friends globally
just by watching and hearing people's viewpoints on who they're backing.
And to me, the biggest struggle with that is, again, it's that focus on the differences.
It's that focus on the worst. It's the focus on the worst of everything as opposed to how do we fix it?
It seems like a whole lot of yelling out all these problems and never addressing any potential solutions.
And I think that that trickle effect is real because everybody very quickly is holding what just happened in the U.S.
as a mirror to their own systems and their own politics because it's now it's like, OK, you know,
it's real easy to criticize what just happened in the U.S.
But how far off are we and what exists next? And that's just like I mean, for me personally,
like I've had to pull my world in so much just to remember that that's not.
I can't I can't give every ounce of my energy to what I can't control, but I am sure as I'm not going to be the person who sits there and accepts that I can't play a role.
And so I don't think any I don't think anybody right now can safely just sit here and say, wow, thank God, we're not them.
Because I think that there's that ripple effect across the world where it is there are lots of things that we could all be doing better
and lots of systems that we could be putting in place that better support people and better ways of doing things that would potentially prevent
or at least work towards having a foundation that we can use, you know, come the next massive global pandemic or the next.
You know, I just there's so much discourse in the world right now that it's so easy to sit there and name everything everybody's doing wrong.
Yeah. And we don't discuss what who's doing right. This is the problem.
You know, I've had I've had prison governors from Norway who do prisons or corrections so well have educators from Finland who are always at the top of the world rankings
when it comes to education and, you know, children's health. Portugal, who decriminalize addiction.
All these amazing systems. But like I said, you don't hear about that even in the political conversations.
You don't hear what these people stand for. You don't hear what they have done. OK, because no one's 100 percent bad either.
So what have you done that was good? That's the educate us. You know, that's what I love about Joe Rogan when he has some of these people on.
Now you get an hour and a half to hear about this person and what they really stand for.
And then you either go away. I still don't like you or wow, I just heard that you wanted to steal from the rich and give to the poor.
But actually now you've just justified how you were going to fund these social problems. That actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah. And it's it's tough, right? Because I think that our natural inclination as as people is to better our own image by by, you know, the people we take down.
Well, I'm better than this or I can do better than this.
And it's it's such a failure, I think, and, you know, something that introspectively I I I try to focus on and try to work on.
I mean, I don't I don't profess to have anything in my life figured out.
I will forever be a work in progress. But. I don't want to get better by putting somebody else down.
I want to work with people to figure out how do we all do better.
And, you know, I think that with politics, especially we have this like I mean, as soon as the advertising starts, it's never about, you know, you can always tell when elections coming up because you start, you know, all these ads start popping up that are like, oh, these guys are horrible at this or this person's going to do this absolutely atrocious thing and you should be ready for it.
And that's just how we we seem to operate and we seem to accept it now, which is let me tell you how horrible everybody else is and how horrible the world is and how horrible everything is.
And maybe then you won't recognize that I'm not offering solutions.
Absolutely. Well, while we're on kind of news and topical topics, I guess would be the term.
One of the my guests I had on Kelsey Sheeran was talking about the assisted suicide being offered in Canada, and I'm not very well versed in it.
She talked about it, but it sounded like there was an element of irresponsibility where maybe it was presented front and center to people who were simply struggling and were not what we would assume would be the true candidates for that, meaning, you know, end stage ALS or cancer or some of these applications that, you know, most of Europe are actually using it for.
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm not going to I'm not going to sit here and profess to be expert on the subject, but I certainly have done, you know, some I have some awareness of it in terms of statistically where we stand against the rest of the world that are utilizing medically assisted suicide.
And I was pretty shocked to see our numbers. I mean, it seems that Canada has a fairly high rate in comparison to other countries that are utilizing it in terms of the numbers of people who are actually using it.
Now, I do know people who have used it properly, and I'm so grateful and happy that it was available to them. I think that, you know, it's something to be considered when you recognize that you're giving your animals more dignity and death than you are people.
And so I certainly understand the need for it. But also, I started seeing the stories coming up in the news and having done no research on the credibility of the stories.
But, yeah, I'm not even going to say typically trusting those outlets, but it's, you know, it's a matter of you're seeing situations where there's people who are opting into the program, simply because of, you know, social issues and socioeconomic issues that are preventing them from receiving the support to have a basic standard of living, or to access supports and help or to reduce the burden on their family.
Or their friends. And to me, that's tragic. To me, it's, it's absolutely terrifying that we are more willing to support any system that is essentially giving somebody an out so that we don't have to necessarily face the fact that the rest of the systems aren't in place to support that person.
Well, you can't help us think as well, but you know, this is obviously the kind of more, more, I guess, deeper leaning element of this conversation is that, you know, you've got veterans, for example, that would be receiving years and years of pensions when now those pensions are gone if they opt this, you know, so sadly, you know, I think most of us listening, you know, we're wearing a uniform because we actually care, you know, but I think most of us listening will also know that when it comes to advocating, you know,
working environment for our first responders, there's a lot of people that either wear bugles and or are in a city building that the funerals really don't matter. They really don't hit home because nothing changes. So then you have to look at the, you know, dollars and cents. And sadly, with this situation, taking care of someone and giving them the environment to allow them to get out of their addiction, to allow them to get off the streets and back on their feet and ultimately become a taxpayer member of society.
It's a lot cheaper just to offer them that option and be like, all right, well, you know, the same with the first responders. Well, if we don't take care of them, even if they do retire, they'll be dead in five years. So, you know, there we go. Problem solved.
Yeah, I think it's I mean, I don't know. I know that we do have criteria in terms of what sign offs have to happen and what has to happen in order to be able to enter into the program and and see it through.
I think that there definitely are some things that need to be put in place that are better mitigating factors in terms of making sure that it's not being abused for any reason.
And I mean, again, I I remember I read one article and it was about a doctor who literally went from being a practicing doctor, had an accident, was in excruciating pain.
They weren't able to to do anything, but also found themselves homeless, found themselves in a position where they went from being a doctor to trying to access social assistance and care for their family.
And to me, those aren't necessarily to me, you know, the purpose of it is is terminal illness. The purpose of it is you're not going to survive and instead of and the fact that we have such broken systems that would allow for somebody to feel that unsupported,
to think that that was the means in which they could then, I guess, end that is very troubling to me.
And I mean, I don't even want to maybe this is the naive half glass full part of me, but I don't even want to consider the the implication that people are doing this simply to get people off the books.
But I guess it's you got to question everything.
Yeah, I mean, I just I know those people exist. I mean, let's look at two farmers behind the opioid crisis.
I'm sure they slept soundly in their beds. You know what I mean? The people behind cigarette companies, these sociopaths do exist. And a lot of times they get a lot of power.
So is that the sole reason? No. But is there a little pressure, you know, coming from those areas that were like, well, you know, the bottom line will be helped if we have this.
And of course, I don't think that's most people. But this does have to be addressed because, as I said, the human element, I've watched it not matter.
Even where I am at where I live now, the local department, there are people that dropping like flies.
They are being overworked and forced to work so much mandatory overtime. And the leadership refuses to do anything.
And they've actually had the facts presented to them by this leading research organization in the country. Yeah. And they still turn their heads.
So, again, you know, I know that there are people that these funerals do not matter whatsoever.
And it's heartbreaking. But it's up to the rest of us to come together and say that's unacceptable.
It's so it's such a catch for me, too. And I mean, I I do a lot in terms of trying to navigate how to provide support to those in crisis.
And I mean, I'm certainly not at the level of of, you know, big pharma or anything else. So it's it's it's my my own efforts and my lived experience that I that I garner that from.
But a lot of the research and a lot of what I've been looking into lately has been the effects on the nervous system and how do we recover and how do we recuperate
and what do we do to actually allow people to be in a place where they can work from a safe place? And you speak about forced overtime and you speak about a lack of recovery.
And and that's huge. I mean, the bottom line is sleep deprivation is a real thing.
I mean, I and I guess what what worries me is that some instances seem to be that we are more concerned about making sure that it's just a functioning machine
than we are considering the fact that these are people who have limits and that have requirements for support.
And I mean, to me, it's just it's this back and forth where there's this giant abyss in the middle, which is between meeting the bottom line and and making sure that the dollars are spent wisely versus
recognizing that we are failing people. We're failing to show up for people and give them an opportunity to be the best at what it is we're expecting them to do.
Well, the irony is, and I've I've learned this through trying to present the case for more rest and recovery for first responders.
Now, obviously, it should be just downright obvious. We're working 56 hours. That's the standard basic work week.
The person in our grocery store works 40. Now we get a forced overtime. Now we're working 80 hours a week.
So we're working twice as much as the person who's stacking shelves. And I mean, no disrespect to that profession, but you're not saving lives.
So that wasn't enough. But what I realize is that it becomes a budgetary cost to destroying human beings.
And you pay for it in the lack of recruitment, lack of retention, you know, the mistakes that we make, the workman's comp claims.
So, ironically, this saves you money if you actually invest in your people. And what I've said to people over and over again, look at the corporate space.
The leaders in industry now are actually shifting to four, eight hour work days or nine hour work days with a lunch for their employees.
So four day work week. And they're finding the same productivity, sometimes even higher because people are being efficient.
They're being innovative. And when they come to work on that Monday, they feel good because they had a three day weekend with their family.
So when it comes to the budgetary side, it's a complete fairy tale that working them into the ground is going to save you money.
If you look at any proactive organization, you invest in your people, you actually end up saving money because you have a healthy workforce.
I think it also comes back to those measurables, right? Because at the end of the day, right now, you can show what your losses are.
You can measure how much you're losing in people who are off on leave, who are on workers comp, who are retiring early.
And the money that has to go into retraining and the money that has to go into investing and creating another individual to take that spot, these are all measurables.
And the problem is, is that it seems to be that constant balance of we want to spend just enough to make sure that we're not losing.
But also, we can't show that up front. So now all of a sudden you start to invest those things that are OK programs like wellness programs or support programs or better training or time for recovery.
And now you get into this place where you have one fear because departments don't want to provide that type of information to the employers.
They don't want to then go to them and say, look, my guys are burnt out because then the employers have that in their pocket, right?
There's the ammo. Well, you've got these resources that aren't good enough, these resources that aren't trained.
And it's this constant back and forth about union versus. And on the flip side of it, it's OK.
So let's say we start investing in these wellness programs and doing the right thing and making sure that people are set up for success and to be the best at their job.
Well, ultimately, those other things start to reduce in cost. You start to see that you're not losing as many people on leave.
You're not losing as many people to work hours lost. And what's the first thing they're going to start cutting?
Because it's going to seem like an unnecessary expense, right? Why are we going to spend a million dollars on a program to better train these guys and give them the supports that they need?
Well, we don't need to be doing that because, look, none of these things are happening.
And it just seems to be this constant leveling of like, OK, well, we're going to invest in wellness. Well, they're fine.
We obviously don't need to be spending this money. So let's start cutting these programs.
You start to see those other numbers creep up. And then we get back to this conversation.
There's a phrase that I love, and it says, don't wait for science to prove what you already know is true.
And I'll give you a kind of interesting example. When I first started getting sponsorship for the podcast and my first sponsor was five eleven.
So shout out to them. But it wasn't them. But some after that, they would say, well, we're going to give you a discount code and therefore we'll be able to see how many people listen to it.
And there'd be a data, you know, statistics. And I'm assuming that came from a social media model.
It took me literally like two or three years to figure out that this was completely wrong.
I just kept getting told, look, hardly anyone's listening to it. You know, it's not working.
Well, the thing is, people listen to podcasts when they're driving, when they're mowing the grass, when they're working out.
No one's walking around with a pen and piece of paper to write down a code and then going back to a computer and logging on.
You know, so it's storytelling, it's brand recognition. And I think this is the thing with this conversation.
You know, oh, it's the data or statistics. Well, if that was the case, then we wouldn't be in an recruitment crisis and you'd be fully staffed.
You'd have a happy workforce, but you don't. So maybe the common sense route actually makes a lot more sense.
Asking, for example, the simple question, why do the people who you rely on on your worst day work 16 hours more than your barista?
If you can't answer that, then that's where you should start. Yeah.
Well, and I mean, again, it's that whole expectation that comes just with the title, right?
You're a firefighter. You're supposed to be able to just carry that. You got that.
And, you know, you show up and people expect that you're just at your best.
People forget that that's a person who has a life that is showing up, who has all of these other circumstances that are happening.
And we have the expectation of being able to and gratefully.
I mean, that's a great responsibility. And that's something that a lot of, you know, a lot of pride goes into, a lot of training goes into a lot of and those individuals who show up.
You know, it's not diminishing their ability to do the job well.
However, why do we not offer them that support? Why do we not proactively take care of them to support the actual level of job that it is they're doing?
Because at the end of the day, you have to be able to lift big, heavy things in stressful circumstances.
You have to know how to problem solve some of the oddest and craziest situations that you can't train for.
Because, unfortunately, there's a whole lot of rooms that you walk into and it's like, wow, didn't see that on this year's card.
Like just, you know, like that's that's new.
That didn't make any sense to me. But let's figure this out and let's figure it out because somebody else in this room right now feels as though their life is at risk.
And that's my job.
But ultimately, I think that there has to be so much more done to break that down and recognize that in order to provide people with the skills to do that job long term and with longevity and come out of it healthy, there has to be a lot of work.
And I guess those are, you know, it's I think that's the forever argument for a lot of extreme positions in life, right?
It's no different than athletes, professional athletes. We don't we don't invest in athletes for them to be good after their career.
We just invest to make sure that they're the best entertainment value and the highest reward on investment during their career.
Well, it's interesting because I was going to segue to just that.
When I had this meeting with this research company, it's actually a human performance and robotics company called IHMC.
And we did the kind of pre meeting before this think tank where they came out and said, yes, the shorter workweek is number one on the list of things that you need to do on this preamble that we had.
And the local department's chief was with me.
He asked him, you know, so what do you have as far as human performance?
And he said, well, we have a centralized gym that any firefighter can use.
And once a year we do an athletic test.
And he just looked at him and goes, that's not human performance.
And so we're just trying not to die.
That's how far from the scale every other elite organization, including yourself, you know, international hockey.
You're trying to find performance.
You know, you've got independent and obviously I know Olympics is different than professional, but you've got nutritionists and strength and conditioning coaches and the actual sports coach and sports psychologists and all these things.
And yet when you look at the fire service that, you know, the tactical athlete that goes from a dead sleep to, you know, if it's a high rise fire, putting a hundred pounds of gear and then climbing 28 stories before you even go to work.
Oh, no, no, you're fine.
You actually need less sleep.
And it's insane because the people that we idolize in the sporting world, can you imagine telling them that they couldn't sleep three days a week?
No, I'll watch the NBA because every freaking shot will be missed.
But yet the people that are on the other side of a 911 call, we're fine with them just surviving, not being the absolute best, the fittest and the most, you know, the best critical thinkers, you know, and the best, you know, mental preparedness and the best level of training and the best retention of skills.
No, just, just show up, put your gear on the rig and do 24 hours and shut up.
And it's, it's crazy.
And ongoing as well.
Right. I mean, the ultimate is you look at an athlete and that support during their career is far greater than after.
And the difference is it is ongoing though.
And there's still a lot of places too, don't get me wrong, where professional sport has it real wrong in terms of providing the level of support that's necessary, especially from, you know, that, that mental health side of things.
However, that training that ongoing training is, is also missing.
It's also lacking. I mean, you, you take on a lot of self advocacy to become a firefighter.
In the beginning, I mean, it's not an easy job to get hired for.
And you are taking it upon yourself to make sure that you are in the best physical shape, that you're able to perform all of the tasks.
And it was amazing to me because I remember when I was hired, one of the questions that I was asked in my interview was how are you going to manage the most horrible days?
How are you going to manage the things that you're exposed to? How are you going to manage?
And the only reason I had an answer to this is because I work in mental health.
I've spent years and years and years and years training my mental health and establishing coping strategies and mechanisms to, to actually make sure that I have those supports in place for myself.
But that's not something that comes to us on a daily basis at work. That's not something.
And yes, there's, you know, CISM teams and there's peer support teams and, and, and, but they're typically crisis response.
They're typically based on, you know, a circumstance that happens at work. You do a debrief and then you go your own way.
And more often than not right now, you go your own way to your own little cubicle and you sit with it.
And that's, that's where you're going to, you know, get ready for the next one, which could be five minutes later.
And it's that ongoing training component, that ongoing support component doesn't seem to exist at any level.
I mean, like you just said, great. So there's a gym that they have access to and there's a physical test once a year.
I mean, okay. So what about the other 365 days a year? And are you just measuring how much they can deadlift?
Or are you measuring their ability to still perform at the capacity they need to be able to perform to do, you know, a vent enter search
and to find a, you know, somebody who's on the second floor of a building you can't see.
And, and, and like, it's just, to me, there's just so many pieces of it that we're not putting the effort into making sure people succeed.
Someone said something really profound to me the other day in an interview.
We in Florida label our firefighter certification minimum standards. That's what it's called.
And I love, I've always referred to that. Like that's the most shit you should ever be physically, skills wise, you know, you just walk through the door.
But yeah, there's a lot of people romanticize about they were fit when they were in the academy.
And the guy said, the problem is that our minimum standards have become maximum standards for a lot of people.
And I was like, that's true. The annual test. I know there's a lot of people that train up for the last couple of weeks for that test, barely scrape through.
And then the other 11 months are back down to being dog shit again.
You know, so this is the point is, you know, when you have an environment that really creates and encourages performance, you can put the standard high.
You can make it punitive because it should be punitive.
I've had ocean lifeguards on here and I was a lifeguard myself, not on the ocean, but in open water and in pools.
And I think it was every two years you recertify. If you can't pass all the swim tests, then you're not a lifeguard anymore.
The SEAL teams, the Green Berets, the SAS, you know, you get you get chunky and out of shape.
You're not going to be operating anymore.
We're the only profession along with the police that lives truly depend on us.
And most of us have no punitive standard whatsoever.
But when you've got an organization that's working 80 plus hours a week, you can't ask them to perform at that.
So it's a kind of catch 22. So you fix the environment.
Then you can put the standards back up where they should be in the first place.
Yeah. Well, and I mean, arguably, and I'm not going to make any friends by admitting this in some places, but at the same time, you have a lot of departments that aren't even testing.
I mean, you have a lot of departments who do not do annual testing.
You have a lot of departments where it then becomes sacred, that information becomes sacred.
And it's that whole protecting the members versus what the expectation is.
And can there be any type of reprimand for failing to maintain a minimum?
And and it's to me, it's terrifying.
And I think that that's there's definitely I think it was something that I was shocked to realize when I got into the service that there was that that that that wasn't more ongoing, that it was really up to me.
It was up to every individual to take the accountability on themselves, whether or not it mattered enough for them to be.
Fit and mentally healthy and and and and you essentially have to advocate for yourself if you feel not.
And in a lot of places, that's still difficult because to advocate yourself for yourself and say that you're not OK, you're still going to in a lot of departments face the
the kickback of admitting that, you know, that that I hate the word, but the stigma is alive and real.
And there's a lot of departments in this, you know, in North America, I can speak to where there's not a lot of members who would feel comfortable getting up and being like, whoa, I can't handle this or that really got me.
And I'm sorry, but as somebody who works in mental health and as somebody who has done the job and as somebody who understands the exposure and understands the science and understands the psychology and understands the implications of it.
People aren't meant to go through what firefighters go through and not manage it somehow.
And unfortunately, most people don't manage it well because most people don't seek out or engage in positive supports or training or practice that will give them an opportunity to truly.
Recover or be well with it. And, you know, that's where you see a lot of addictions.
That's where you see a lot of lives lost. That's where you see a lot of people burning out and not able to continue. And whether you want to label it, you know, post traumatic stress, whether you want to.
To me, the label doesn't matter. What matters is we just we don't have any consistent support or way that we are educating these people.
And to me, it's something that should be included proactively in training. I'm I'm less inclined to think that your ability to do 50 pull ups in however many minutes.
I'm sorry, but to me, that's.
I'm more interested to see how you're going to walk in and deal with that family or how you're going to walk in and deal with, you know, the tragedy and the loss and do that simultaneously while maintaining your physical capability.
Absolutely. Yeah. The thing is, those are completely interlaced as well. You know, the better you are, hopefully the more mentally resilient you are.
You know, and I think the other thing that I've talked about a lot is also acknowledging the fact that a lot of us bring, you know, from birth through to whatever age 18, 20, 25 into the job.
And we do nothing other than a complete box checking bullshit psychological assessment that was never supposed to be a standalone assessment, certainly not for first responders.
And they were like, all right, they're good. Like, well, where's the hey, you're probably going to be a good fit for this job because of your turbulent childhood.
Those there can be so many positive things from them. But if you've buried anything down, if you've pushed it away, we need to address that.
Otherwise, it will rear its ugly head. And, you know, when compounded with the sleep deprivation and the stuff that we see and organizational betrayal and all these new stresses that you're about to be exposed to.
And I mean, it's I mean, I was kind of the the poster child for that. Right. I mean, I came into it already having quit Team Canada because of mental illness and openly living with anxiety and depression and working as a professional speaker, living with mental health issues.
And then I became a firefighter. And I mean, I say it, I'm not going to lie. Like, I get laughs every single time I admit to that when I'm on stage, because everybody is like, you know, who who dealing with those things becomes a firefighter.
And my challenge is, you know what, dealing with those things makes me a better firefighter because my ability to be resilient, my training and my practice of actually going through these things and knowing how to support myself makes me more compassionate to others.
It makes me able to navigate those situations and still walk away from it, knowing, okay, that's going to impact me. And now I have to do the things to make sure that that impact doesn't become a negative in my life.
But we're so shy and we're so careful to not admit that we go in with baggage. We're so careful to I mean, it feels like there's this acceptance for not even post traumatic stress disorder. We're not calling it that anymore. It's post traumatic stress injury.
Because there's something more valiant about being injured. There's something more acceptable about the reason that I am messed up by this is because this is a traumatic injury.
And we accept that we are far more willing to accept that than we are to say, look, I think maybe you weren't managing your emotions very well when you became a firefighter, we really got to work on that.
And maybe you didn't know how to deal with the stress or the chaos of this or maybe this is a, you know, trigger for you. And the acceptance for that is just shockingly low still.
And I'm not quite sure. You know, you start to see some people, I have a buddy here who bless him. He is a fantastic combination of mental awareness and physicality and truly a representation of, you know, what's good about taking this on and having the accountability, but he has the strength and accountability within himself.
And so the fact that that's not enforced is a little bit disconcerting to me.
Well, we touched on hockey a minute ago. What about the head trauma conversation in your sport? Has that evolved?
I mean, it can't not. It can't not. In sports, in life, you can no longer deny, right? I mean, I think it's like any progressive conversation where we learn more information over time. And unfortunately, when you see TBIs coming up over and over and over again, you see the impacts on, you know, mood and personality and functionality and, and, and, you know, it's, again, there's that, that
trouble with kind of pinning it down because unfortunately, when it comes to the brain, it's not like we can do a whole lot of poking around in the brain while somebody's still alive.
And it's sad that you see these instances of people losing their lives to suicide or losing their lives due to behaviors that are quite possibly related to traumatic brain injuries.
It's, it's tragic that we have to wait until it's too late to figure that out. But now it's undeniable. It's undeniable that repeated injury to your brain is going to affect your ability to navigate life.
And I think that, again, that's a dangerous thing to admit. It's, you know, that's a dangerous thing to admit in sports where it's like, inevitably, you're going to get hit in the head. And we want to discourage that without taking out the entertainment value of what it is that people come to see.
And so how do we do that? Where's that, where's that fine line to walk? And how do we do it in a way that is, you know, keeping athletes safe, but still not taking away the, the impact that people come for.
And so it's, it's tough. It's tough to see. And it's tough to navigate because it's, and again, you know, every athlete has, has some autonomy there. And you look at some athletes who take another shot to the head and the, you know, you hop on social media the next day and everybody's just begging them to retire.
And, you know, so obviously the conversation is real. The development is there. We have far more knowledge. We know that the detriment to it and the standard of life that comes from that decline and deterioration.
What to do about it and how people are choosing to respond to it as a part that is up in the air.
Are they doing more when it comes to the youth athlete at least?
I think that they've taken certain types of contact out at a younger age. I think that they've tried to mitigate in terms of standards of safety equipment and what's required in terms of, you know, mouth guards or, you know, things that will, will ultimately have some impact on, on what the damage is when those, those impacts are made.
Again, though, I mean, you're limited, right? There's only so much you can do to prevent that from happening in environments that promote speed and physicality. And in these games that keep getting faster and better, you know, you saw it last week in the NHL.
There was, you know, more than one instance where shots to the head and, you know, we had one, John Napoli, Ryan Reeves. He, he got in on, on Darnell Nurse of the Oilers and, and unfortunately the contact was straight to his head.
And, you know, you have Reeves apologizing for it. You have nurse taking a stand that it was intentional. And either way, I think the, the problem is the inevitability of things like that happening. These guys are playing a sport. They're playing it hard. They're playing it faster than it's ever been played.
And you've got a split second to, to navigate situations where unfortunately these things are going to happen. And so again, there's a lot of conversation around it. And I think that the part that is tough, right? Is it's really easy to get people involved in the conversation when it's affected them personally.
It's really easy to get people involved in the conversation if it's something that has an impact on their lives, but it's very difficult to draw people into wanting to create change when they are experiencing success in the same, same sport at a level, but haven't necessarily been affected by it the same. So they don't want the sport they're playing to change.
Yeah. I mean, it is, it's, it's, you know, again, like you said, it's ultimately their entertainment. And for the people that are sitting on the couch, they, you know, they're the ones that are accusing the athletes of being pussies or whatever it is when it's made safer.
But I know, you know, if you look at the, the bare knuckle stuff in MMA, one of the points I've heard Joe Rogan make is, you know, you can't take as many punches to the head when it's bare knuckle.
You know, you get split, you get knocked out, whatever it is. So arguably, you know, it's sometimes it's safer. So sometimes maybe it's even taken away some of the gear, you know, like the American football, for example.
What a bizarre thought, right? But yeah.
It's true. Like, I mean, I've never even thought about framing it like that. But I guess there would be some legitimacy to the human, the human desire for self preservation at some point, our bodies would kick in, right?
And ultimately, you're going to break your knuckles or you're going to break your head and that's going to prevent you from being able to do it a thousand times instead of 10. But that's not not something I'm going to test out.
It's not my next career choice.
I did martial arts my whole life and this is a thing for the fire service. We don't have a lot of head trauma built into the profession itself. Obviously, if you're a swap breacher or, you know, military in the scene combat, then yeah, now you're exposed to a lot more.
But a lot of us in uniform, like you played hockey, like me, were martial artists or boxers or they played football in school.
So understanding that that could be part of the piece of the puzzle of your mental health journey that can operate a syndrome rather than just simply mental health issues. I think it's an important conversation in the first responder professions.
And I think there's so many factors. I mean, at the end of the day, we can sit here and we can look for the cause, we can look for the reason and the root of it.
And ultimately, I think we just have to go into everything, assuming that there are multiple factors. It's complex and we need to be mitigating all of them. And I think the problem is, is that we don't do that. We look at individuals, we look at what we can see, what's black and white, and we try to limit the most obvious negative outcomes.
But we don't necessarily put anywhere near as much into the forethought of, okay, all of these things could happen. So how do we create scenarios that give everybody the opportunity for safety and success, but also longevity?
And I think that it amazes me, given the cost, given the cost to train and gear up and support one firefighter. The fact of the matter is the fact they don't treat that as an asset that's worth protecting.
And that shocks me, because it's, I mean, it's not like a revolving door type scenario. You can't have a great firefighter go down five years into their career and replace them easily. And unfortunately, sometimes it seems like the system set up to think that that is the reality and it's just not.
It's funny when I retired, they said, you got to put in two weeks notice. And I gave him, I said, I'm not going to be there next shift. Because two weeks, what are you going to do in two weeks? You're not going to find someone to take my place. It's going to take your next new hire class. So no, I will not be here next shift. That is ridiculous.
So just like you said, you know, it's a completely different system than the corporate world. Well, and not only that, but I mean, in fairness, I'm not, I'm somebody that if I were in a place of leadership doing a job like firefighting, and I knew that the firefighter didn't want to be on the truck the next day, I don't know so much that I'd force them to do it. I don't, I just feel like it would be one of those things where it's like, okay, consider that.
And the very fact that you have to consider that suggests the uniqueness of the position, which is you need somebody to be mentally in it, physically in it, and willing to take the risks that are required every second of the job.
And if there's somebody who's not at that capacity, why would you want to force them to be in that seat and better yet wouldn't you want to put every single resource you have into making sure that the capacity is there?
Absolutely.
Well, that's a good segue. So we spoke, as I said, end of 2021.
We kind of had a discussion before we hit record. I think this is one of the kind of fallacies in the mental health conversation is people, you know, find some of the things that work for them and then you live this Disney life where nothing goes wrong again.
So walk me through the last three years and some of the challenges and the highs and the lows that you've had to experience.
What do you mean it's not a fairy tale? I, that's not been my experience at all.
Yeah, I mean, I, I life has been very lifey in my world, and it's, it's not unique. I think that the things that I've gone through are things that everybody goes through at some point, but the reality of it is, is it's impacted every facet of my life in a way that I have had to manage differently because of the work I do.
So I, I was working and got to a point where I was diagnosed just following, I guess just following the pandemic pretty much I was diagnosed with endometriosis, which is a, an illness that causes a lot of chronic pain.
It's very unpredictable. It's not something that I could manage simply and essentially everything that they tried to do to make it manageable was either going to be creating higher risk.
They tried hormone therapies and such that started creating issues and other parts of my body that were a higher risk potential for cancer, which isn't a good trade off to endometriosis.
Or essentially live on painkillers and one, you can't firefight on painkillers.
And two, I don't want to live on painkillers that's not that's not my journey.
And I've also been sober for 24 years and that's something that helps me stay healthy and helps me, you know, mitigate that that mental health issue that is underlying for me. So there was no option that was working and I was forced to go on leave.
Which was very challenging for me. I, I'm somebody who takes a lot of pride in being able to show up and so being put in a position where all of the sudden I was forced to concede is what it felt like that I couldn't push through it, it took a lot out of me both mentally and physically and living with an illness that's been deemed one of the most 20, the 20 most painful illnesses that you can live with it.
It's not a fun one.
And so just kind of going through those motions unfortunately at the same time my father was living with dementia.
So, caring for my father with dementia which also just an absolutely atrocious illness to witness and and essentially going through losing somebody who was my best friend every single day, and having to really go on this journey of meeting him where he was at to to recognize that I got to have that time with him, but was doing that while I was living with chronic pain.
And I have a two boys, my youngest is actually a type one diabetic so managing that illness as well as is constant, there's there's no downtime with type one diabetes I think this, there was a study that came out of Stanford and they suggest that type one diabetics or their
caregivers have to make between 120 to 300 medical decisions per day. And I can attest to that, it's just, it's every single part of your day you are considering whether or not you're, you're managing this well and whether or not he's safe.
And so accumulatively, no matter how many hours of therapy and practice and managing my mental health. This started to take its toll on me obviously I took a waited a year and a half to get surgery.
And the leave time here is two years is how long I could be on long term. And so that is coming up in December actually, well, it is December there we go.
And six from now my leave ends. And the problem got to be that it was this kind of a cumulative effect of in the past six months I lost my father, I finally was able to have surgery three days after his funeral, which then required me to not lift anything
greater than 10 pounds for 12 weeks, and when I finally could I had, I was down to like a month to be able to be job ready. And also dealing with the mental and emotional sides of all of these things.
And an unfortunate event at my son's school that almost resulted in an overdose with insulin, just got to a point where it shut me down. And unfortunately, all of those coping strategies that I knew to lean on, and that I had spent years and years
on were taken away. I didn't have the ability to be physical I didn't have the ability to go run or do the things that I needed to be doing to stay healthy and now I'm in a position where it's like okay you got to be back on the truck and I, what is it, 12 days.
And I don't have a surgeon or a psychologist to who necessarily think that that's a possibility for me at this point.
So let's talk about that because we hit again we talked before I hit record. One of the things that I think we do so poorly in the first responder professions is if a person spends four years in the military here, you know we honor them every year and you know
they're working for their service and if they had any sort of kind of medical issue then the VA would take care of them the rest of their life, and they might be getting the GI bill and they get education. If a first responder stops working after five years or 10 years or 15 years.
We say why did you quit.
That's it, you're a quitter.
I think it's so backwards because it's a service that anyone should be proud of no matter how long they serve as long as I did it correctly, but it doesn't have to be your entire lifespan for some people it does and kudos to them.
For a lot of people, your actual journey may end at 10, 15, five years, whatever it is, and then you get to turn the page and go to something else.
Talk to me about the kind of resistance about this decision for you, but then you know talk to me about the opposite side, you know what would be next and how healing would that be for you.
Yeah, I mean it's for me this is kind of one of those like deep soul searching questions because the initial emotion that comes to me when I think about having to no longer be able to say I'm a firefighter is shame.
It feels like a failure, it feels like
again it feels like quitting, and I guess the part that I struggle with in that is I don't feel like I'm being presented with an option that allows me to make that decision completely separate from what is available.
I mean the end of the end of the day.
I have a home, I have children, I have expenses in life, I have to be working.
And the way that the long term support is here right now in my situation.
That's going to stop supporting me and 12 days I think I said.
And I have had to advocate for that support for the past two years, there hasn't been a moment that it's been made easy or that I felt like I was just being offered the support to get better and come back to work it was like, I had to keep proving that I wasn't okay,
which was really patronizing on top of spending you know a week in bed because I'm in pain, or not being able to manage day to day things or having to manage them because I didn't have a choice but doing so at a level that was so diminished that it was just, it was very incapacitating
and I just kind of that constant feeling like I'm fighting for support, as opposed to being offered support was really challenging through this process.
But on top of it now I want the freedom and the autonomy to be able to have the time to either go back to work or not, and I'm in a position now where basically my understanding is times up you're either ready or not and I have a surgeon who's sitting here saying,
I can't do that yet, like I hit that like 12 weeks I'm allowed to start working out again, I'm out there running 8, 10k, I'm lifting, I'm doing everything and then a month later I'm in pain again and my surgeon's like what did you expect and I was like okay but you don't get it.
Like, if my buddy who's 250 pounds goes down and I need to get him out I need to be able to get him out so I need to be able to be able to do that.
If I need to be able to get up a ladder and I have to be able to do that. So here's me working and doing everything I can with the timeline that I'm being given.
And that's also just adding more stress it's just also adding more like okay like I can't carry this all, I can't do this all and I got to a point where it was just it was shutting me down and now my psychologist is like yeah you're not going back yet.
So you've talked about some of the immense lows that you've had with challenges and losses.
And in the last few years, what have been some of the tools in your personal toolbox that have worked as far as helping navigate these these you know troughs and valleys.
Yeah, I mean as somebody who lives with mental illness I think that there's that.
There's that fear of when does it become too much, and I think that that's more from the outside than it is for me personally because something I did years ago that has made me very successful in living with my mental illness and doing so from a place of perceived recovery
or whatever it is that ultimate, you know, design is when it comes to navigating life with mental illness.
Is that I took giving up off the table a long time ago, I don't give up. And so every morning I wake up, you know 50% of the decisions already made for me, because now I've taken that option off the table it's not.
Can I do this it's how am I going to do this. And I think that with, you know, three very significant instances you know going through losing my father.
And that unfortunately is something everybody experiences losing their parents and and, you know, whether it's having never known them or whether it's, you know, having a short time with them or a great time with them or having a good relationship or not I was
I was, I was so blessed my father was an angel, like he just was the epitome I have never heard anybody say a bad thing about my father he was just a great man.
And I got to have that time with him, I got to meet him where he was at I got to make sure that there was no doubt in in anybody that I love my father he knew I loved him.
I know he loved me.
And
there's no preparation for the grief. There's no moment of like okay, I got this and I'm, I'm, I'm a pretty proud person so there were certainly moments along the way where it was like okay, I know this is coming and I'm going to be okay, I know that, like I
am prepared, I got this. And then it happens near like nope, like, nope white flag.
But again, it's, it can be beautiful, living through pain and suffering as part of life, and we can fight it, and we can try to deflect it and try to outrun it and you know all of the hokey one liners of you have to sit with it, it's true,
like it's so true, and great grief does not exist if there wasn't great love, and I'm so blessed that I had great love and I get, I get to share him, you know how cool is that it's my job now to keep him alive, you don't know my father unless I share my father
with you and I, I take that with gratitude, like I am, I'm the lucky one he was ours.
So one that grief journey has been just this like, I have pulled on mindfulness and I have pulled on like the basics of just truly like everything from like having to breathe through it, and also just accepting like you're going to ugly cry, you are going to
pop in a ball and ugly cry sometimes reach out to people like, don't do it alone, don't, and you're going to have moments of going through it alone but also it's okay to call somebody and guess, you know, I'm sad right now and you can come hang out with me.
And so really that whole pushing away the isolation that it made me want to embrace was huge for that.
When it comes to my physical health that played with every level of my anxiety so I live with generalized anxiety and a panic disorder. And so for me a lot of my anxiety and panic has always stemmed from the fear of illness and and dealing with those things.
So that was just a trip like to be carrying that as a constant through this all, having come through the pandemic far better than I thought I would have because I would have thought that would have had me locked in my basement, but I managed it using all of those, you know
anxiety, staying physical running those types of things so now the uniqueness of this was I wasn't able to run I wasn't able to stay physically active as a main coping strategy for managing it so it made it that much worse and, and I want to say I did it well.
I didn't, there were a lot of days that I got complacent and felt bad for myself and just sat in pain, and like the best I could do is tolerate it, but I think that what carried me through those things were showing up for dad, showing up for my boys, knowing that, regardless of what's going on
with me. I have to continue to do those things. And so having those responsibilities and that purpose was enough to drive me I think to manage it and then I got to a point where like all of the treatments are failing.
All of the things working the only option is, is a major surgery. And I'm like a child about surgery this is like greatest. Let's talk like, what are your top three fears in life don't put me under, like I've had previous to that I had three surgeries awake, because of how scared I was
of going under. But this wasn't one I could get away with doing awake. They were like, yeah, no, that's not. That's not a thing this surgery doesn't happen awake.
And I'll be honest, I, and I can smile about this that I have no doubt my father was ill for years, but it wasn't expected that he'd be gone yet.
And his decline happened very quickly, and we had to let him go, and I have no doubt that it happened when it did because he knew wholeheartedly that I would have like used it as an excuse to not have the surgery yet, like there was.
I was having surgery and not being able to care for him for the next 12 weeks. So I also had to accept that I had to accept the fact that it was like okay you can't, you can't use the excuse at his funeral was three days ago because this has happened for you to be able to make this
possible and receive support to get through what you need to to be healthy again. And so, as hard as that was, and as patronizing as it was to have a massive surgery right after my father passed and now my only option is to lay there and think about it,
which was like worst case scenario.
So the surgery gratefully went well and recovered and and again mindfulness mindfulness journaling meditation and when I couldn't like falling back on the like cheats like adult coloring books.
I just just making sure that I'm, I'm just trying to stay present and deal with it. And then it was the stress of my son's incident at school that really kind of toppled me a bit, and I got to a place of just like, I, I've been through a lot of levels of, you know, my
health in terms of like, I'm doing well or I'm not doing enough from complacent or I'm doing great.
The focus on the level of stress that came from that incident, and then every day questioning his safety as he's going out the door. Finally, that was what was just like here.
If you thought you had this all figured out and you thought you had all the tools. How are you going to handle this one. And so for the past few weeks it's been like all hands on deck so I'm doing therapy weekly sometimes bi weekly, I am like having to be real honest
with myself I'm finally back to a place now where I can use physicality positively and being able to kind of rely on that getting into cold plunging and that whole purposeful like resilience and learning how to work through that discomfort breath
and work and managing stress and anxiety and I'm doing a lot focusing on the nervous system right now, which interestingly enough has led me into conversations with a company that that has technology that were that they're utilizing for first
around learning how to fully recover and and being able to to see tangibly the effect it's having on your nervous system. And so realizing that I have just been in a constant state of fight or flight for a couple of years now and coming out of it.
And this sounds sadistic but it's been beautiful, like it's, it's really been I'm grateful for it, and I'm, I'm not grateful for any of the horrible things that happened to make it to make it happen but at the same time, I am like I am, I get to, I get to keep showing
up I get to do the right things and I get to learn new modalities that impact new circumstances and new situations and I think the piece that I love the most is recognizing that they exist, you know it's it's not like I'm stuck with these tools that I learned to manage my anxiety
and my depression to a level that I could be a firefighter now it's like okay but you throw in all of these other life experiences and crises and moments of just absolute like paramount.
And there's even more to learn. There's even more to grow through. There's even more that I can now share in those experiences and be like look like people are asking me how you getting out of bed in the morning.
And I'm looking around thinking, why wouldn't I get out of bed it's frickin amazing life.
That is so amazing to hear because I'm pretty sure when we spoke three years ago you know there was still a large element of the struggle.
And yet here you are on the other side of so many things that have been like extremely challenging. And yet doing the work and finding these modalities and working out what works for you and what doesn't work for you.
You're yet another example of I think what we need to be hearing about in the mental health conversation which is post traumatic growth, you know, again, that doesn't mean, you know, homeostasis it doesn't mean utopia, but to be a better version of you.
I think that puts excitement that puts hope into the first responder, you know, mental health, especially. And then you're wearing your scars with pride and again we talk about cliches that's one but I mean, truly that that Japanese are putting the gold glue on the broken part.
This is it, you know, when you have been through this, the empathy the compassion the relatability that you have now with people who are struggling because you've been there.
But now you're truly I mean you've just been tested for two years two and a half three years, you've been tested with all these things that would have broken you before.
And here you are saying why would I not get out of bed. I mean that to me is, that's just it's amazing to hear.
It's amazing to experience, I mean it's, I think that we are guilty of limiting ourselves far more than anything else in this world has the ability to do to us, and there are always two paths, and we make bad choices sometimes, but you have every opportunity to live through that
and take the pieces of it that serve you and continue forward without beating the crap out of yourself for having chosen wrong.
And I think that it's just been this kind of.
It's weird because as a, as an athlete I'm so used to like push through it, go hard, do your best. And I think this was just the world teaching me a whole new lesson in like, but what what what about when you can't.
What about when you can't outrun it, what about when you can't run into a burning building to clear your mind, what about when you can't do the extreme thing that makes it so you can tolerate the rest of life.
What then.
And then all of a sudden I ended up with all of these circumstances that were I am watching my hero struggle with basic life tasks. And it was so humbling. And it was such a pride that I discovered and being able to help care for him in those times.
And it was something that.
I mean, if you had asked me at any point of my life if I would survive losing either of my parents, it was like, no, like, I'm one of those people that I would much rather my parents have to go through losing me, then have to go through losing them which is selfish
and horrible to say but like I couldn't conceive of being okay without them.
And
going through that was just like I got to, I got to go through that I got all of that extra time with him and even if it was absolutely heart wrenching to see some of the struggles. I still got a lot of great, you know the day before he, he was put in to sedation he.
And I sat there with him in his hospital bed, and I have a picture of it I was sitting there flipping through my phone showing a pictures of my boys. And he just had the biggest smile on his face and like, he knew he was, you know we never lost the ability to connect with
him yeah he had, you know, days that weren't clear and he had a lot of deficits.
And he could still connect. He knew we were there. And we knew he was there and he knew who we were.
And that was incredible, you know, not everybody is that lucky, not everybody gets to have those moments.
And, you know, with my health.
We all get handed something, you know, and, and I'll be honest like endometriosis is an inflammatory condition, like how much of this is just how much of this is emotion based, how much of this is trauma based how much of this is my body saying, you better start
dealing with these things because, because they're going to put you on your ass and we're here to make that very clear.
And so, I now like I'm in a program that is literally retraining like learning how to desensitize your pain response because your body is incredible. Your body's ability to be like, oh I got to protect myself.
It's massive.
It's like I get, I get to understand that journey differently than I ever would have. And there's such peace in that there's such there's such an incredible empowerment that comes from being able to relate to yourself that well.
And with Bodhi I mean it's, you know, type one diabetes is no joke and and a lot of people don't get it and it's a struggle constantly. But also, it's an illness that they have made so many strides, and the technology that surrounds it we've just transitioned
him to a pump.
And I like he was so upset, and he looked at me, and he said mama hate my new pump. And I said why buddy and he goes because I never go low anymore. I don't get to have candy all the time.
I don't get to do that things. Right, like, and I'm just sitting there going, you know, I, it's a challenge. It's a challenge but I'm grateful he's ours because it's a challenge that hopefully in the way that, you know, we live and we show him it's just an
opportunity that he can turn into a superpower. I mean I tell them all the time you have type one diabetes buddy because it makes us all eat better keeps us all healthier.
You know it's it's there to keep us healthy.
And so, it's all perspective right it's all. You can let anything sit you down, you can let anything shut you down. But you can also use it all as power.
Okay. All right, well I want to kind of close out but just before we do talk to me about your new podcast speak easy.
Yeah, I mean I, it's.
I have such like a focus right now on connection and I mean, going back to what we were talking about in the beginning around isolation and and and I just think that community is is so key, and so much of life, and so much of success, whether it's emotionally
connected, whether it's love whether it's, you know work whether it's just day to day living, it, it takes a community. And when you connect with people.
You are opening yourself to an opportunity to learn and grow through means that you may never experience otherwise, and I just I feel like in my, especially the past couple years like the opportunity to just.
I want to be in 1000 rooms that I am not the smartest person. I want to be in 1000 rooms that I can just turn around and hear something and have that like emotional response that is just wow, just wow, because there's so many opportunities for that
incredible way to open yourself to do that you would understand as well as anybody then to be open to sitting and having real conversation with people without having to edit without having to worry.
And, I mean, it was kind of a natural opportunity for me to be able to one share the information I have and the experiences I have and the work I do in terms of, you know, tangibly managing mental illness but also the, the innuendos and the
experiences that come with that, but also just you know completely self serving to because the people I get to speak to are just incredible.
All right, well then for people listening if they want to learn more about you kind of book you for as a speaker will learn about your book when it comes out where the best place to find that.
My website Kendra Fisher calm is an easy one to start at I'm on all the socials, you can find all the links to those at my website.
The easiest I guess at K Fisher 30 would be my, my Instagram and I think most of my other, my other ones, as long as I was the first one to try to type that in.
Yeah, beautiful. Well I want to thank you so much it's been such an amazing conversation we've gone all over the place from euthanasia diabetes.
I think the highlight is really just, you know, hearing where you are now seeing that growth and and understanding that you know, again you're getting punched in the face by life but realizing that your ability to deal with that is that growth, you know that is that
the element and once you navigate out of the latest struggle then you're really going to be looking around going wow, you know, I'm here now, so I want to thank you so so much for being so generous with your time and coming back on the behind the shield podcast.
Absolutely my pleasure. Thank you as always for having me I was when you said that the year there I was like wow it's been that long.