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listen in wherever you're at to veteransradio
.org and its podcasts. We want to welcome to
Veterans Radio today, Derek Damets, a naval aviator,
spent a long time in the Navy, is out now and
that explains kind of the background drop for
him with the plane behind him. But more importantly,
Derek, you have written a book, it's your story,
kind of a personal memoir called Unbreakable
Wings. piloting the impossible journey through
cancer and naval aviation. And we just gave it
away a little bit by the title about some of
the struggles. But before we get there, how did
a nice kid from a small town in Wisconsin get
turned into a naval aviator? What was the impetus?
You know, it kind of started early, but I didn't
recognize it until later. You know, being on
the farm and growing up, there's always crop
dusters flying overhead and being a kid sitting
on a tractor raking hay or doing yard work or
throwing bales. There just was always something
intriguing about it. And then of course, 1986
comes along and I'm a young kid and Top Gun comes
out. And, you know, there's a part in the book
where I just wanted to see Short Circuit. Man,
that Johnny Five is alive. That was the movie
for me. And dad forced me to this movie called
Top Gun. And I went kicking and screaming. And
when I came out, I'm like, that's what I want
to do. It's like both parts clicked, you know,
that watching that plane fly overhead when I
was young and seeing, you know, the military
aircraft flying off the aircraft carrier. I'm
like, I finally, for the first time, figured
I think that's what I want to do. I think a lot
of people can relate to the story in that they've
had sort of portions of your upbringing, and
by that I mean great relationship with your dad,
great relationship with your grandpa, farm life,
hard work, high school sports. Give us that flavor,
because that's really, Derek, where your foundation
is built. Yeah, it's uh, you know everybody has
a story and nobody really knows everyone else's
story and your story is the only one that you
know and growing up from since I remember it
was Get down on the barn. You're helping milk
the cows, right? And then as a young kid, you
don't do much and as you grow older You're you
kind of take on a lot more responsibility and
there's no vacations. There's no breaks, right?
It's a long day of work in the field just to
come home at 7 p .m and then you got to run to
the barn and feed the dogs and milk the cows
and I think that constant just work ethic is
just kind of how when you develop at that age,
that's just was my mind. It was just built to
get up in the morning and work all day. And if
you can eat, that's great. But if you miss a
couple of meals, well, that's just too bad because
there's chores to do. And it doesn't matter how
skinny or small you are, you still got to throw
that bale of hay, don't you? Yeah, those bales
of hay, thank God they got lighter when I got
bigger. But those first couple I picked up, they
were probably as heavy as I was. Well, and again,
what's very relatable from a Midwestern standpoint
is those high school years. And you had a couple
of challenges in those years that maybe, again,
were foundational for challenges you were going
to have to have in the future and get over. So
talk a little bit about the high school years
and kind of how that built into your character.
Yeah, I think it um, you know growing up on a
farm you're eating a lot of dairy Right. So I
call it my dairy fueled farm physique. Right.
So I'm entering high school, probably the largest
kid in the class. You know, I'm going to be the
center of the football team. And a couple of
my friends encouraged me to run cross country.
Right. And thank God they did in hindsight. But
there I was that freshman year of high school
and cross country. You know, everybody's clapping
at me as I come across the finish line 10 minutes
after everybody else. And they already have the
shoot already cleaned up. You know, but But again,
I wasn't going to give up. So it goes back to
kind of that farm work. I say, if I'm going to
do this, I'm going to do this. And I lost the
weight and went through. And there was some challenges
there. And I don't know if that goes into college,
too, where we talk about if you're getting into
college is great. I finally have it all figured
out. I love running. I'm running 10 miles a day
or every other day. And college is coming to
an end. And all of a sudden, there's a huge medical
emergency where my lung decides it's had enough
air. Yeah, exactly. So you went to the University
of Wisconsin, like a good farm boy. But again,
there's not a lot of cash around. So how did
you get through college? Well, obviously, growing
up on a farm, I was on my own. And that was pretty
clear from the beginning. If you want to go to
college, go to college. And so, you know, the
whole thing about being a pilot is kind of coming
into view. How am I going to get money for college?
And so, you know, getting on an old school typewriter,
I guess it was a word processor back in the day.
There were no computers. Tip, tip, tick, tick,
tick, as the fingers went across the keyboard,
you know, I typed up my application for both
the Academy and ROTC. And that was how I was
going to get in. And if I didn't get either one
of those, I probably wasn't going to college.
um and and but got achieved both uh but uh my
guidance counselor sat me down one day and said
i think you're a razi guy you know you got way
too much energy to go to the academy and be kind
of combined in and sit in those rooms all day
and not get outside those walls and so he really
convinced me to take that razi scholarship go
to madison you know do the military thing they
pay for college and then that's that's kind of
what got me there i think today so many people
sort of rule out or don't even think about ROTC,
and you went to Naval ROTC again with that idea
that I want to ultimately be an aviator, but
I think a lot of people don't even consider it,
maybe because they don't know anybody who's gone
through it. Talk to us about that experience,
and would you today recommend to kids, hey, look
at the ROTC scholarship program? Yeah, I think
I think everybody looks at it from the military
point of view and social media gives you almost
too much information And not all of it is real
right Top Gun wasn't real There's nothing in
Top Gun that was real -life Navy, but it you
know It's a movie and it's meant to be a movie
and even today the those commercials you see
it's it's not really what the military is and
I don't know if I would have made it through
college without it right because the first day
You're sitting there, you're at attention, you're
making uniform, you know, they're putting in
uniforms and you're marching around and it instills
that. Just that mental toughness. I think I already
had it, but I never realized that until you get
Narazi and then they have expectations, you just
can't go out and do what you want. You have a
GPA expectation or the scholarship goes away
and you're getting up at five o 'clock in the
morning to march on Tuesdays and you're in uniform
and you're walking around the McLean Center where
the Badgers play football practice and you're
learning things, right? And it instills that.
a character, I'll say as well. Right. It just
it changes who you are as a person into a more
responsible, mature kind of character. And I'm
not sure I would have matured as quickly if I
didn't have that. It sort of accelerates growing
up to be a to be an adult. I think that's right.
One way to look at it, because if you don't,
if you don't mature quickly, you'll be out and
you'll be without that scholarship and you'll
be spending your days back on the farm. So there's
a little incentive there. But we're back to,
and I think in high school you had an eye problem.
I want to mention that because then we're going
to talk about the problem in college. Then we're
going to talk about the problem in the Navy.
So let's start with the eye problem. There's
so many problems, Jim. I appreciate you keeping
me in line there. We were good there so that
the first problem is just the weight really and
you know losing the weight was the problem and
then there was a day on a tennis court and you
know if you were back in the 80s there was no
safety equipment right so we were having a tennis
thing for gym right where we go and learn how
to play tennis and keep score and they had a
little ball machine and we'd hit it back and
one day I look up trying to fill the balls in
the ball machine and I hit it my buddy of mine
hit a tennis ball back and hit me square in the
eye No goggles, no protective equipment. We just
didn't think about that stuff back then. I kind
of let it go until I ran into a neighbor and
she saw my eye and it was purple. Usually your
purple isn't a color when you go for your eye
color on any kind of application. She could see
there was blood pooling in my eye and grabbed
me and took me home. Ended up in the hospital,
and it was a hyphae month. So the tennis ball
didn't pop the eye, but it made this big packet
of blood back on the retina. And so I had to
kind of sit in the hospital. And where this comes
is now I'm scared, right? I'm just a young, I
think, sophomore at the time in high school.
And they have to patch both my eyes. Because
as you know, if you move one eye, the other eye
is going to move. And so if I have one eye free,
I'm still going to look around. And so it was
the first time for seven days. I had sat there
in complete darkness and stillness and blindness
and it, you know, you kind of get in your head.
I really wasn't prepared for for how hard and
difficult that was to get through that time.
Yeah. And again, veteran radio listeners were
talking to this pilot who had this dream from
being a young kid. Well, we all know you got
to be able to see to fly and you got to be seven
days of not being able to look out. You got to
be thinking, is that dream over with? Obviously,
you overcame that problem. Everything healed
up. We get to college. Life is beautiful. Everything's
wonderful. And then you run into another medical
problem, this time with a lung. Tell us about
it. Yeah, I thought. I definitely thought the
eye might be a distractor as we got there. But
there was a lot of time lapse between sophomore
and high school. But still, it was on my mind
for that first entrance physical, right? Are
they going to find that little scar tissue in
my eye? And back in those days, we didn't have
internet where you could look things up. So what
you knew is what you knew. And so that was scary.
And actually, that also means that the medical
exam couldn't find a digital record of that problem.
That's right. That is true. Which today has often
created bumps in the road, because they find,
oh, when you were a kid, you had this problem
or that problem. But let's get us to college,
because this becomes even more dramatic. Yeah,
the issues definitely amplify as they move along.
But yeah, I never really happened to mention
that. I just forgot about it, too, when I filled
out that application. I don't know why, I just
did. But yeah, in college, college was going
great and I was really in shape. Things were
going well. And it really wasn't until my senior
year that last year where I kind of crossed that
threshold like, hey, I was a little bit excited.
I'll even say a little bit arrogant, right? The
whole world's in front of me and I'm going to
flight school and I get accepted. It was that
beautiful Friday afternoon after classes in the
fall and the leaves were turning and I had my
baseball cap, my badger cap on backwards with
my Walkman pinned to my shorts to listen to my
Whitesnake cassette and I go out on a run and
I come back and all of a sudden I'm about a mile
from home and it feels like someone stabbed me
in the back. And I actually looked around to
see if there was an assailant, right? Like it
felt that real. And then come the weekend, like
the lung hurt, I'm kind of moving around and
my lungs sloshing around like there's a little
bit of water in my lung. It's hard to understand
what's going on. My breathing rate elevates quite
a bit. I get through Friday night, I get through
Saturday, I go to the emergency room on Sunday
and I'm sitting there breathing like I'm running
a marathon. Go up to the front desk. They had
me fill out paperwork. I'm panting like a dog,
sitting trying to fill this paperwork out. Hand
it back, and I sit in the ER for 45 more minutes,
just almost unable to breathe. Can't take any
more. I go up and ask, and they say it's going
to be some time. I said, well, I can't do this
anymore. I go home. So I go home, lay down, go
to bed. Again, panting away, but laying down
kind of helped. Next morning I get up, it's Monday,
so the University of Wisconsin medical clinic
was open, so I just, I'm like, let's go in there,
because I can't go to class like this. I can
hardly breathe, it's labor breathing, my chest
is heavy. I go in, they take an x -ray, and before
I even know what's going on, I get thrown in
a wheelchair into the back of an ambulance and
just sent to the emergency room at University
of Wisconsin hospital. And so I have no idea
what's going on, right? At this point, I don't
even know if I have a thought, because it's all
so dramatic. They rush me in, throw me on the
table. I mean, it wasn't really nice, like you
see in the movies, like it was tossing me around.
And they put me on my side, pull my shirt up.
Nurse grabs my hand, starts talking to me. And
I see out of my left eye, this doctor just kind
of feel with my ribs, takes a scalpel and poof,
right between the rib cage. Still got the scar
today, still a little sensitive. Sounds like
a gigantic release of air. I pass out. The pain
is immeasurable, right? Like I never experienced
anything at this time in my life. Wake up, tube
in my chest, doctor comes in, I have a spontaneous
pneumothorax. spontaneous because it happened
on its own pneumothorax I have a collapsed lung
left lung was completely collapsed my heart was
on the right side of my body my esophagus looked
like a question mark I was breathing on a half
and all that pressure was on my heart so it was
a tension pneumothorax why my heart could have
stopped any time because it just can overcome
the pressure of that air escape in my lungs so
that's what I had to to look forward to right
at my senior year right before I was ready to
leave for flight school Yeah, again, this is
one of these medical complications nobody can
anticipate and There's a couple of choices that
you just sort of fold the tent call it a day
Or figure out how you're gonna get through it
with some support You got through it tell us
about getting through it because they kind of
have to glue your lung back up together Yeah,
the this this was really where I was ready to
give up probably the first time Because I thought
no way a pilot needs eyes I'm questionable at
that. A pilot needs lungs. I don't think there's
any way. And once the doctor went and did surgery,
he came back and he told me, put a couple rows
of staples in the hole in the top of my lung.
And what they usually do is they scrape the scar
tissue or scrape the lung so it's irritated.
And when the lung inflates, it would adhere itself
to the wall to kind of keep that lung inflated.
So just to prevent any kind of additional. tear
in the lung. Well, because I waited three days
and I kind of went out with friends and there's
smoky bars backed in and hailed all that air,
I had an infection. He's like, why didn't have
to scrape because there was kind of an infection
in there. Oh, how lucky. So that's great. I didn't
think anyone like okay but you took care of it
right until until I think it was that night or
the night after when my that infection kicked
over and also my temperature spiked a hundred
six i'm starting to hallucinate i'm starting
to have trouble breathing again and i don't think
i'm gonna make it through the night i just had
that feeling. You know call my girlfriend at
the time said hey, can you come with me? You
know, I just I just I just don't they want to
make it I need I need somebody here and you know
This is the point where she's making excuses
and the relationship ends right there, right?
So it's not just the long it's not just flight
school I was dating this girl for five years
my high school sweetheart and she leaves me sitting
there in a hospital So if there's a culmination
where I'm just ready to give up. It was that
point right there And as I say you get through
this but it's not without a lot of time passing
and I don't know. I'm not sure I'd call it luck,
but fate. Because now you medically have to recover,
physically have to recover, mentally have to
recover. And oh, by the way, I got to go see
the flight surgeon. So talk to us about what's
going on during that period in your head and
I guess physically. Yeah. And so I thought for
sure they just pulled my papers. And I don't
know if I'm even in the Navy is going to take
me anymore. So before I even got to the flight
surgeon, There were days and days where I couldn't
walk, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't laugh. I
could barely go to the bathroom because that
long, remember all that rib cage just healing
was the rest of that semester was a blur. But
you know, like you said, okay, I get the flight
school. They let me go. But I'm like, they let
me go because that's why I selected. But there's
no way I'm gonna get through that Naval Aviation
Medical physical, right? Like this is over. So
I didn't even unpack my clothes. I just kind
of found a hotel and stayed and went in there.
And if you've ever sweat before, I'll tell you
I was sweating in front of that doctor. It was
a full day of tests. They looked at everything.
I didn't lie about the lung because I still had
the open scar pretty much. And he looked at me,
and he looked at my record, and there was a pregnant
pause that lasted two years if it lasted 30 seconds,
right? And I'm for sure he'd be like, sorry.
Like, I was just waiting for that. And when he's
like, oh, you're cleared, and he signed that
medical clearance form and handed it to me, otherwise
known as an up -chip for those aviators, boy,
I was shocked. I thought I'd be happy, but I
think I was shocked and stunned in that moment
that I'm sitting here with an up -chip like,
I'm going to fly, because I never thought it
was possible. And what year is this now? This
right now is 1996. So I graduated in 96, so I've
been late 96, maybe early 97. So off the flight
school, and you do some activities at Pensacola,
is it? And you get through flight school, and
then you're off to, I think maybe it's Puerto
Rico? Yeah, so if the quick the quick is you
go to flight school Pensacola everybody goes
there aviation pre -flight indoctrination And
then you kind of do t34s I selected p3s because
it seemed like the great kind of personality
and lifestyle I wanted even though top gun was
all jets go to Corpus Christi, Texas for advanced
you get winged down there Send you to Jacksonville,
Florida, and that's how I learned to fly the
p3 That's a couple months. It's now about beginning
of 1998 and I'm finishing up No more problems.
The rest of your career is just straightforward,
isn't it? That's what I thought. Just like you
said, hey, the past is behind me. I'm in the
Navy. One, I never thought I'd get here after
all of that. Nothing else is going to go wrong,
right? Big, big question mark. And then I select
from my squadron. They're on deployment. They
give me a call. And then I'm like, all right.
So I go down there, meet them in Puerto Rico.
Do a couple flights in Puerto Rico. We go to
Panama with my crew for a month. I am living
the dream. Panama, if you've never been to Panama
City, Panama, man, it was so much fun. Flying
out of Rodman Air Force Base there. And then
one day I wake up and we head back to Puerto
Rico just for some little bit of training and
some rest. And we're going to Panama again the
next day. And I'm super excited. And I wake up
with some chest pain. Oh, boy. So I'm like, all
right, it was so bad. I couldn't get out of bed
It was again back to the lung where it felt like
someone stabbed me in the back and I'm like I'm
breathing Okay, I can't be the lung. So I'm like
me go to the dock. I got an hour before pre -flight
So I go to the dock they they take some x -rays
He takes a long time. He comes back. I'm now
late for pre -flight now I'm not worried about
the health anymore. I need to get to the plane.
I just really want to get back in the cockpit
I don't I can't think about another medical problem
and he didn't even tell me what it was. He's
like, sorry, you're down And tomorrow you're
leaving on a medevac to Bethesda, Maryland for
some tests. That's all I heard. So I packed a
small bag thinking, oh, I'm going to be back.
He didn't say anything about a long -term stay.
He just said some tests. And so I really didn't
take anything. I jumped in a plane. Flight surgeon
came with me. We jumped to Bethesda. And there's
no time wait, right? We go right to the hospital.
And it is different place after different place,
ENT throat. They took some blood. They took some
bone marrow. And all of a sudden I'm in front
of the oncologist. I don't know what an oncologist
is back in those days, right? And then he sits
down in front of me and he's like, so the test
came back, they took a little bump out of my
neck, part of a lymph node. And he's like, well,
we got the results back and you have Hodgkin's
lymphoma. And I look around the room a little
bit like, are you talking to me? Like, I'm healthy,
I'm running. Like, what do you mean Hodgkin's
lymphoma and what is that? Yeah, this is again,
one of these like, okay. When is enough enough?
both from a personal standpoint, but but now
it seems that that's That's a cancer diagnosis.
It's got to sound like okay that ends my career.
Yeah Yep, and it wasn't even understanding the
cancer because it's again. I did didn't really
have internet You can't just go research hot
skins and foam and gives you all the symptoms.
You're like Oh, here's a bunch of pamphlets He
gave me and I only knew what I could read in
front of me And he's like and by the way in ten
days you start chemo And there's a 50 % chance
you could be sterile from chemo. So now I'm thinking,
wow, so now I'm not flying. I'm starting this
chemotherapy. So now I'm starting to, you know,
the gravity is starting to kick in and like,
this is big, right? Like this, I actually didn't
start thinking about flying. I'm just now thinking
about, am I going to make it through this? And
one of the things too, I think most of our veteran
radio listeners having been in the military or
have friends and family in the military understand
that that the military medicine is pretty damn
good, that the doctors and the nurses and the
specialists really kind of have trained, and
some of these folks are the best of the best.
And you received great medical care getting you
through this. But at that point, you're just
sort of thinking, what the heck has my life turned
into? Yeah, you know and a lot of the book I
really kind of anchored at this point because
there was a lot You know, it's not just go to
chemo and go home and you know every every cancer
is different every treatments different and so
You all fall into the same umbrella, but everybody
has different experience even with the same chemo
So in the book I anchor a little bit about kind
of going treatment to treatment and kind of that
I call it the staircase into the basement You
kind of level off and then they step down a chemo
level off and step down and you never quite make
it back up And it's just a continual kind of
body degradation from losing the hair to losing
the weight to just no energy. And it was great
care. But my body was taking a physical toll.
And there were times where I didn't think I was
going to make it out. But they told me six months.
Six cycles, so every cycle is two treatments.
So 12 treatments, six months, and I'm done. And
they take a CAT scan to make sure the tumors
are reducing. And an emergency within an emergency
then happens at month six, right? I get to month
six. I actually got some energy thinking, hey,
this is it. I'm going to go in. The doctor's
going to say I'm done. And I can leave. And he
says, well, there's a further reduction in the
tumor. So we're going to have to either do radiation.
First, he just says, we're going to do radiation.
And then I fought with the doctor a little bit.
I said, I'm not doing radiation. This is working.
And so then he's like, well, then you're doing
two more cycles of chemo, four more treatments.
And at that point, any kind of hope I had just
just went out the window. Like I'm like, I can't
do four more treatments. I am not going to make
it through this. And so that was kind of an emergency
within an emergency. Yeah. And you know, let's
talk a little bit about who the audience for
this book is, because while we're talking about
it here on Veterans Radio. And certainly a lot
of veterans, even post -service, have a lot of
medical challenges that I think this book would
help them realize, hey, stick with it, you'll
get through it. But when you were writing this,
who did you feel your audience was? So I think
that was the hardest part of writing the book
was one I had to dig up a lot of memories and
thoughts that I buried right and so I had to
go through those emotions and so you know I I
got the chills a lot when I started thinking
about the chemo and and there's a lot more in
there packed in as you read the book and we'll
let the readers kind of maybe experience the
book but you know I had to if I'm going to write
this honestly and raw I have to put myself back
in there and so at first I thought I was just
gonna write it to people who are undergoing cancer
answer, going through an issue. But the more
I wrote, it doesn't matter what the challenge
is. The problem is, it's resilience redefined.
It's about embracing discomfort. This whole life
of mine has been almost discomfort. And I just
have to embrace where I'm at, redefine what resilience
is, and just find my way with grit. And it's
just a story of true grit for anybody who needs
a story that really has a lot of grit in it.
And get through that problem, because the other
side is going to be better. The other side is
going to it. It may be opportunities you never
thought you wanted or would experience, but there
will be those opportunities. And that's what
happened. You kind of get through the cancer
treatments. And then it's like, well, now what?
You're not going to put me back in the plane
right away. What do I do? And there were opportunities
you never would have expected, right? Yeah, I
think I think to the it's not explicitly stated
in the book, but I think you get the sense after
reading it is life changes. Now, like my life
is never going to be what I imagined for the
past 20 plus years. Right. I'm like, at this
point in my life, I'm just along for the ride.
I feel like it's I have no control. It's just
medical emergency after medical emergency. And
I feel like I'm just on the back of the bus getting
bounced around. And but But I gotta keep fighting,
right? As long as there's a breath, I gotta keep
fighting. And I get through those two, and it
wasn't the easiest two months, and then I'm on
my own, right? And this is kind of the hard part,
is back in... the day, I'm just a young JG, right?
I just had my first squadron. I'm kind of got
left at the hospital. I don't really have military
Navy leadership helping me right now because
it's a hospital. It's not a command. And so I've
got to pave my own way. And in some of the struggles
then afterwards, the reason it says piloting
the possible journey through cancer and naval
aviation is some of the biggest challenges of
my professional life are about to come. You know,
it's easy to talk about the personal ones with
the cancer in the lung. But, you know, professionally
now, I'm different. Like I've spent a year in
chemo. while all my other colleagues are at their
squadron. And now, BUMED, I have to wait two
years before I could ever think about getting
a medical certificate or a dump ship to fly again.
So I've got to find where to go. And I'd like
to go to Monterey, go to Naval Plus Graduate
School 1, because I know I got to rebuild my
mind, because it is deteriorating quickly. And
we talk about the chemo brain in there. you know,
how that's treating me. And so I go to Monterey
and I go to get a master's in mechanical engineering,
which would never been an opportunity otherwise.
And so, you know, I made that happen by just
the determination and the perseverance to get
through. And finding a new path and not expecting
somebody necessarily to give you the path. But
for you, you know, the book talks about who you
had to write to and who you had to talk to. And,
hey, I'm way behind these other guys in terms
of experience. I'll never get promoted. I've
got to I've got to move myself into a position
to kind of catch up, maybe is the right word,
or try to catch up. All of that occurs, but it's
because you have grit and determination and you
don't give up. Geez, I think I hear a kid from
the farms in Wisconsin here, right? That's part
of where that upbringing really comes back. Yep,
and that and that was a recommendation that wasn't
really in the first draft and somebody who read
through my draft recommend He's like I want to
know he used the word. It was great It wasn't
great, but it was like grades like I want to
know why you have so much grit You need to talk
about your upbringing because I think that makes
the book so much better And you know, there's
a fine line between selfish and selflessness,
right? And so I felt going through that first
squatter when I was a whole, you know, two years
three years behind I had to be selfish and put
myself on a path to succeed while trying to be
selfless, too, and just kind of being part of
the team. And that was hard to balance. I made
a lot of people very upset because the Navy's
not structured like that. They're very structured.
were their expectations and it's a conveyor belt
and you show up and you do your time and you
leave after the guy in front of you and the guy
behind you stays behind you and that the professional
career became more of a challenge almost than
my my personal side of trying to fit into naval
aviation kind of as an outcast. Well, and because
you have to explain every time. Are you the dumbest
Lieutenant? Here or what? What is it? And you
have to explain the medical history problem and
why you now are. may be seen differently than
what other guys have been able to do. Before
we run out of time, there were so many medical
off ramps you could have taken and just sort
of let that dream or goal go away and find another
one. And I think that rings true with a lot of
people facing adversity. But Derek, your story
is really there for them to realize. You may
have to change the dream a little bit. You may
have to go a different route. But you didn't
give up the dream, did you? No, I think I think
what what a dream means to every person is what
it means to that person. And for me, when I set
myself on this dream to fly, that was it. Right.
And especially when I got that taste that I'm
in the squadron and I had it for a short time,
but lost it that that, you know, it was easy
to give up and move out. But I just I just wanted
that again, and I was going to do everything
possible to get back no matter what that took.
Well, this is I want to read a couple of lines
here from the conclusion before we run out of
time. This is the conclusion. And I'm reading
quoting from the book. There was a time when
I believed life followed a neat, predictable
path with checkpoints and milestones laid out
like a flight plan, leading to some picture perfect
destination. But life doesn't work that way.
It throws storms in your path, forces you into
uncharted aerospace, and sometimes rips away
the very things you thought defined you. The
key is learning to navigate the turbulence, to
stop chasing an illusion of an unattainable perfect
future, and find joy in the moment you're in.
Really well said, and I think sums up the advice
you're trying to give people in Unbreakable Wings,
Piloting the Impossible journey through cancer
and naval aviation. Derek, if folks want to find
the book or find you, how do they do that? You
can find me on Facebook. You can find me on LinkedIn.
There's quite a bit of information and profile
there. The book is on both Barnes and Nobles
dot com and Amazon dot com. And then the publisher
Ballast Books dot com. They have it there as
well. And so it's pretty readily readily available,
both hardcover paperback and the Kindle version.
And it's Derek D -E -R -E -K, damn it, A -D -A
-M -E -T -Z, for those of you who are trying
to put it in a search engine and say, I can't
get the, it's not the normal spelling of anything.
So Derek, thanks for taking time to talk to Veterans
Radio today. I think the, your story should be
inspiring to many. We've all had challenges in
life, maybe not a series of medical challenges
like you, Dan. And most body parts are still
working, it looks like. So that's good, too.
Yeah, I'm still all in one piece. There's definitely
a lack of veins in my arm from some chemo track
and some moments there. And we won't even get
to the Jolly Rancher story. I'll leave that to
the readers to enjoy that. Well, good. And thanks
for talking to us today, Derek. Thanks, Jim.
Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
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