Want to Conquer Fear of Death with Dr Michael J. Hession

What happens when the doctor becomes the patient? Dr. Michael J. Hession's world turned upside down when a simple cold escalated into life-threatening pneumonia, putting him on a ventilator for 11 days followed by complete paralysis from Guillain-Barré syndrome. His remarkable journey from the edge of death to recovery offers powerful lessons about resilience, purpose, and finding happiness in the face of overwhelming adversity.

The distinguished cardiologist shares his near-death experience where he encountered a luminous figure who told him, "It is not your time, you must go back. There's much to do." This profound spiritual moment, coupled with the brutal realities of rehabilitation – learning to swallow, sit up, and eventually walk again – transformed his understanding of what it means to be both a physician and a human being.

Drawing wisdom from Viktor Frankl, Admiral Stockdale, and his own father's immigrant tenacity, Dr. Hession developed a framework for overcoming seemingly impossible challenges: acknowledge the facts, accept the situation without anger or denial, and adapt by finding a path forward. His story demonstrates how vulnerability and strength can coexist, and how gratitude becomes the foundation for genuine happiness.

For anyone supporting loved ones through critical illness, Dr. Hession offers crucial insights about the power of presence. Even when patients appear unresponsive, they can likely hear and remember conversations – connections that provide an essential lifeline during the disorienting experience of intensive care. Whether you're facing health challenges, career setbacks, or relationship difficulties, his three-step approach provides a roadmap for navigating life's most daunting obstacles.

Ready to transform your own challenges into opportunities for growth? Explore Dr. Hession's book "Physician Heal Thyself" and discover how confronting mortality can lead to a more authentic, purposeful life.

Key moments in this episode:

04:13 Michael's Near-Death Experience

11:28 The Struggle and Recovery

21:14 Finding Purpose and Happiness

29:38 Faith and Resilience

33:36 The Power of Relationships

35:39 Balancing Vulnerability and Strength

40:11 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

How to reach Dr Hession:

Website: https://www.acknowledgeacceptadapt.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560101224931

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaeljhession/

Book:

Chapters

• 0:00 Confronting Mortality
• 7:21 Living with Integrity Challenge
• 16:58 Dr. Michael DeHessian's Introduction
• 21:09 The Near-Death Experience
• 27:40 Life on a Ventilator
• 34:13 The White Light Experience
• 35:45 Finding Purpose and Happiness Again
• 39:08 The Road to Recovery

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Imagine finding yourself on the brink of life and death. It's a moment that challenges everything you thought you knew about yourself, your purpose, even your profession. For many, the idea of mortality is abstract. It's something distant and it's intangible. But what happens when it comes to your reality? Facing such a harrowing experience can either break you or transform you into someone stronger, more empathetic and deeply connected with your life's purpose. And so, in today's episode, we're going to explore how adversity, resilience and the human spirit intersect to create a profound personal and professional growth, and, through the lens of a near-death experience, we're going to uncover what it takes to rebuild not just your body, but your mind and your soul.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Now, before we dive into today's topic, let's take a moment to talk about something else that could change your life as well, and we all know that it's hard for us to stay true to ourselves in a world that's constantly pulling us in lots of different directions, and so the pressure to provide and to perform and persevere can leave us feeling disconnected, like we're drifting further and further from the man that we want to be.

Speaker 1: 1:05

And so if you've ever felt stuck or frustrated or unsure of how to bridge the gap between your life you have and the life that you want. Let me introduce you to something that we call living with integrity. This is more than a program. It's a roadmap of transformation, so it's going to give you opportunity to align your actions with your values, rebuild meaningful connections and create a legacy that truly matters. So if you're ready to take control with purpose, then become the man your family wants you to be in the community, the future you need you to be. And I want you to start the challenge today. Go to membersthewakenmannet and begin your journey by taking the integrity challenge. And because? Not because the only thing that's truly standing between you and the life that you're capable of is taking a decision, making a decision today, taking that first step. And so, with that, let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 2: 2:00

The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man Movement and your host, alan DeMonsoul. I have a couple questions I'd like you to consider. How might your perspective on life and purpose shift if you came face-to-face with your own mortality, and what lessons could you learn from navigating fear, resilience and recovery after a life-changing event? The journey from the brink of death to a renowned sense of purpose is one of profound transformation and it's filled with lessons, like I said, about resilience, faith and the power of our human spirit. And today we're going to explore how these experiences can shape not just one person's life but the professional life of many others as well. So allow me to introduce my guest.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Michael DeHessian is a distinguished physician and cardiovascular specialist whose career is marked by resilience, empathy and academic excellence, and he graduated of Dartmouth Medical School and a fellow of the American College of Medicine in cardiology, and he's been recognized eight times in Boston Magazine's top doctor's annual edition. So currently Michael is serving as a chief medical officer at Brigham Health, harbor Medical, and Dr Heshen also contributes to medical education with appointments at Harvard and Tufts Medical Schools. And outside of medicine, he enjoys life on Cape Cod with his wife of 40 years, colleen, that is awesome and sharing love with boating, history and world travel. He's also the author of a best-selling book, physician Health Thyself, a Memoir about his near-death experience. Michael, welcome to the show, my friend. How are things? Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3: 4:09

Zayon, Things are well and things are very well.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Excellent. Thank you so much for being on the show, and I'd like to dive right in and talk about your hero's journey and truly your life, your death and rebirth moment, and how that experience shaped you into the man you are today and the work that you're doing.

Speaker 3: 4:29

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss that. So, as you said, I graduated from Dartmouth Medical School. I did my internship and residency at Boston Medical Center and my cardiology training at the Brigham and Wins Hospital. I started practice in 1985 and my life was that of going to work. We have two sons, and the rhythm was the same for decades until it wasn't In the middle of December of 2013,.

Speaker 3: 5:02

I came down with what initially was, I thought, just a common cold. It got worse and shortly before Christmas I was seeing my primary care physician and diagnosed with pneumonia. My chest x-ray didn't look that bad, just a single area of pneumonia. My white blood cell count was normal. I didn't have a fever. My blood oxygen level was good, so, by all accounts, I should have been well with antibiotics in five or six days, except I wasn't. My breathing continued to get worse and it fell off a cliff on December 31, 2013.

Speaker 3: 5:42

I woke up struggling to breathe 2013. I woke up struggling to breathe. My wife had already been awoken by my labored breathing, and my wife is a nurse. We both knew I was in trouble. We called 911. I was taken to the emergency room of the hospital that I'd worked with for close to three decades. In the emergency room I was in severe respiratory distress. My chest x -ray had gone from showing one area of pneumonia to both lungs completely encased with pneumonia. I was diagnosed with acute respiratory distress syndrome, commonly known now since the pandemic as cytokine storm. They tried me on a mask, but my oxygen didn't improve, so I was taken to the intensive care unit and placed on a ventilator. I remember before I went on the ventilator, my wife told me what was going to happen and did I want that? I said yes, I want to live.

Speaker 3: 6:43

And for the next 11 days, time ceased to become a dimension. There was no way to distinguish whether it was morning, evening or night. I couldn't see that well without my glasses. I couldn't move. I was sedated heavily and paralyzed. To prevent fighting the ventilator, which is commonly done, it was terrifying. It was beyond terrifying. I could hear people talking but I couldn't speak back. I couldn't move and it was extremely disorienting.

Speaker 3: 7:21

And one of the treatments I had to undergo was suctioning a piece of tube in your lungs and suction out the mucus and debris from the pneumonia. It's a very unpleasant treatment. I've seen it done to many patients but having had it done to me it was probably the worst thing I'd ever experienced. I don't know if you ever saw the movie the Mummy with Brendan Fraser, when Nemo Tepin hails the breath out of the grave robbers, that's what it felt like, wow. And I was drenched in sweat after each treatment.

Speaker 3: 7:56

And after one of these treatments I don't remember waking up. I felt my body become cold and I felt like I was drifting away, but I really couldn't see where I was going. I became aware of crying in the background. Really more wailing the Gaelic word is keening. It's the sound that's made by feeling members more in the depth of a loved one. Keening the sound that's made by feeling members mourning the death of a loved one. And it began to hit me that they were mourning my death, but I didn't feel dead. But I don't know what being dead felt like. So all I could see in the distance were their tear-stained faces trying to pull me back. But I kept drifting further away and then I couldn't see their faces and I couldn't hear their crying.

Speaker 3: 8:51

After some time I have no idea how much time I began to see a white light, and I remember reading stories of people who would come back from near death and experienced a white light and I kept being drawn inexorably towards it. A force greater than myself or anyone else was pulling me towards the light and after a while it took on the shape of a woman in luminous white robe and she said something to me that I will forget. Michael, it is not your time, you must go back. There's much to do. Next thing I remember is my wife speaking into my left ear, telling me that she was told good news by the doctors that I was getting better. I didn't really understand what had happened just yet. I thought I might have been dreaming or it was a hallucination, but my wife's words were very reassuring. I was not dead, even though I think I'm being pretty close.

Speaker 3: 10:05

But the whole 11 days spent on a ventilator took every ounce of effort to endure. It really tested my sanity. It's like being locked in a cave or drifting in space. You couldn't talk, you couldn't express any emotions, you couldn't move. And towards the end, when I was getting better, they wanted to wean me from the ventilator and they cut back the sedatives and the opioids to relieve the pain. Both of those medicines suppress respiration, so they really need to be withdrawn in order to be weaned and I began to experience unrelenting pain from that tube down my throat. It felt like a hose covered in barbed wire and there were many times I thought I was going to go insane. Tube down my throat, it felt like a hose covered in barbed wire and many times I thought I was going to go insane. The pain was unrelenting, but I knew I just had to persevere and get through it, minute by minute, and eventually, after 11 days, the tube was removed and the pain was gone.

Speaker 3: 11:28

Shortly thereafter they determined that I couldn't move. I was paralyzed. At first they weren't sure whether or not it was a side effect of the paralytic agents they give you to keep you from moving around while you're intubated, but it didn't wear off. Agents they give you to keep you from moving around while you're intubated, but it didn't wear off. And then they came back with a diagnosis that had Guillain-Barre, which is a known complication of viral infections Not common but definitely well-described and I'd actually never taken care of a patient with Guillain-Barre.

Speaker 3: 12:01

I knew what it was like to be in an ICU and take care of patients on ventilators, but this was something totally new for me. It was terrifying and I couldn't even really yet wrap my mind around the fact that I had been on a ventilator for 11 days and now I was paralyzed. I really had no long idea how long this would take to get better from, or even if it would get completely better. They were talking about putting me in a chronic care facility because my recovery wasn't certain. But my wife and I insisted on going to Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, which is one of the top rehabilitation hospitals in the country, and they quickly accepted me. And when I arrived they brought me up to spinal cord injury floor and when I got out of the elevator on the stretcher I saw that sign. It was like really terrifying. It was a different type of terror than I had experienced when I was intubated. I had no idea what was in store for me.

Speaker 3: 13:27

Other than that I had to be retaught. How to move I was still learning how to breathe, something I had taken for granted for years. But now I had to be taught how to swallow. I couldn't swallow safely. How to swallow I couldn't swallow safely. Speech therapy spent hours training my tongue and the muscles involved in swallowing. There are 640 muscles in the body. Almost all of mine had atrophied from the two weeks of the cell illness and the Yen Beret and they had to be rebuilt. So my first victory was learning to swallow solid food.

Speaker 3: 14:14

It took weeks before I could even get up in a wheelchair. I was strong enough to get up in a wheelchair, but with a lot of help. They took me down to the gym and they had me try to do some exercises, just really simple things, beyond simple. I couldn't do them. It took all the energy. I was drenched in sweat from the effort, but they kept encouraging me to keep trying, that I was getting better. I couldn't really see it day to day, but week to week there was noticeable, albeit minuscule, progress. But it built on itself and each week I got stronger and stronger.

Speaker 3: 15:03

It went from being in a wheelchair to block-strand crutches the ones that Forrest Gump used, and they're especially designed for people with neuromuscular injuries To help walking, as opposed to regular crutches. You might get a broke your leg or broke your ankle. They were hard to use but I persevered and I got better. They took me to the big gym at Spalding, which was an impressive facility Two stories high, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out of Boston Harbor. I looked around and everybody was in the same situation I was. They were paralyzed, some from the neck down, some from the waist down, some who, like myself, were covering the began beret. But none of us could move on our own independently. But little by little they worked. My muscles encouraged me to keep going and it took every ounce of strength and determination I had. I had to dig down deep. This was something new for me. I had no experience like this in my life to draw from what to do.

Speaker 3: 16:19

But I remember my father telling me as a child he immigrated to the United States when he was 17 years old, 1929, the depression. And I asked him why. Why did you come to the United States in the middle of depression? He said in Ireland it was much worse. He said if you're willing to work, you could live. He said if you fall down, you pick yourself up, Even if you don't know where you're going. You walk a few steps and eventually you'll know where to go, but never, ever quit.

Speaker 3: 16:54

I kept telling myself that over and over again, and as I got stronger, I was able to do more and one day, after about a month, maybe five weeks, they allowed me to have a day pass. My wife took me to lunch at a restaurant that we had gone to many times on the Boston Harbor waterfront. It was intoxicating, but when I got back to the room I was totally exhausted. It was, I was done. I didn't have any strength left. But I told myself that I must be good enough to go home soon. And I kept thinking that I was going to be home within a week or so. And when the week came and I didn't go home, I became very despondent and I cried and I just didn't see a way forward. And I remember my father's words don't quit. And I remember my father's words don't quit. And I had read Viktor Frankl's account of being an Auschwitz and search for meaning and Admiral Stockdale's account of being a prisoner in Vietnam.

Speaker 3: 18:19

And both of them said you must never lose sight of the fact that someday you will persevere, that you will survive this. But if you dwell on the past or the horror of the present, you'll drown. You won't be able to move forward. And so I took the wisdom of those men and the wisdom of my father. I kept trying to get better, to work hard. One of the physical therapists loved ballroom dancing and she did it professionally after work on the weekends. So one day she took my wife and I to the big gym and put on a little boom box, played music. Your lesson for today is you're going to dance with your wife. It seems so silly now, but I have to say that just resonated with me very deep and visceral. It was something I could have never dreamed of myself as a way to motivate me to do dig down, do more work harder. But it did. It just showed me the future, that I was on the right path, and it helped me greatly.

Speaker 3: 19:39

I made it home, but I was far from ready to resume work. I still using crutches to get around. I couldn't drive, I really couldn't walk safely. It was still winter outside and the streets were covered with snow and icy and slippery. So I used some of the old exercise equipment I'd bought from my kids when they were in school. I did what I could do and tried to keep as regimented a schedule as I had at Spalding, and it was hard because I really couldn't do very much. It was humbling, much it was humbling. So I decided to just keep it a record of even if I only could go on the exercise bike one minute more, do one push-up more. That was my goal. And week by week I got stronger.

Speaker 3: 20:47

Spring came, I was able to walk outside with crutches and my wife's help steadying me, and then I just kept getting better and I began to see a future. It wasn't, I was not going to be able to go back to what my life was before that, but I could see that there was a point in the distant not too distant future that I would be able to get back to work. Getting back to work, I knew, would give me meaning and purpose again, and it did. And getting home to my wife was my first goal. Getting back to work was my next goal, and it took me about a year and a half, but I did it. A lot of rehabilitation, a lot of setbacks, a bunch of hospitalizations, surgery, emergency surgery but I overcame all those.

Speaker 3: 21:46

And then one day I said am I ever going to feel happy again? And I thought long and hard about that what is it that makes you happy? And I did what I have done my whole life I just read and read until I found some thoughts and ideas of people who have written about happiness. And it was really simple. I couldn't be happy if I was constantly looking to the past. And what was the past could not be reclaimed. My present life was still limited, but I knew from the trajectory that I was on that I would continue to be a physician, to take care of patients, to help them, and that it was up to me to choose happiness.

Speaker 3: 22:59

And it was then that I realized that happiness is a choice and happiness is a choice. And the trap that many people fall into when they're unhappy is they constantly look to what they don't have anymore or maybe what they never had. You have to be grateful for what you were. So I started keeping a gratitude journal. Every day I would write down five things that I was grateful for and how my life would be worse off if I didn't have those things in my life, that simple act of being grateful and every day thanking people who helped me. The acts of gratitude, the benefits, don't come to those you thank. They come to you for recognizing people as equals and human beings who are trying their best to. And once I reoriented my thinking, I found that I was happy and my life had meaning and purpose again.

Speaker 3: 24:14

And I found the happiness that I thought I lost, but hadn't it was there all the time I just didn't realize it and I think in my book I talk a lot about my experiences, my reading, and I use my story to normalize what it's like to have a critical medical illness, to come back, to rebuild your life, even though it's not the life you knew before, but to rebuild what's possible and to find meaning, purpose and happiness that is such a powerful story, michael.

Speaker 1: 24:54

Thank you so much for sharing it and giving us an opportunity. You've dropped so many pieces of wisdom there that I'm sure our listeners are going to pick up on, but I just wanted to touch on a couple of things there. You talked about really about having those incremental moments of change and how you were looking at while it didn't seem like you were having much progression, but it was a step forward, and so what I really appreciated in your story you talked about even if it was one more minute or it was one more of something else, it didn't need to be the whole goal. And the other thing you talked about is how when I was thinking as you're telling your story about Stockdale and Frankel and it's so true and how we may not encounter in life a life-threatening situation we have those things in life that give us a similar feeling, whether that's going through a divorce or loss of a job, even retiring. I think even more of that as you get a little older.

Speaker 1: 25:59

If there isn't something to go to look forward to, and you talked about first was getting home to be with your wife, and it was that one piece, that sense of purpose, and the next one getting back to living your career, and I just think that there's so many great messages in that for all of us men to understand that we're going to have these moments, we're going to be challenged in life and how we decide to show up isn't necessarily going to be this great epiphany. It may take a battle. It is the hero's journey. Your story is the hero's journey of facing these demons and finding the mentors, and you had three of them there, with Frankl and Stockdale and your father. And I just want to know, as a physician and coming more and I'm going to make a generalization here as a physician and coming more and I'm going to make a generalization here but having a more of an analytical and scientific mindset, then experiencing more of the metaphysical aspect of it, what kind of patient did that make you be as you were going through this transition?

Speaker 3: 27:01

That's a great question. Somebody was visiting me during my illness and they asked me two questions. Did all that I had gone through make me angry? And I said no. I realized in my own life experience that anger is a useless emotion. It doesn't do anything positive. The second question surprised me. I didn't know how to answer it.

Speaker 3: 27:32

Did it make you a better person? And I thought about that and thought about that and I have to say it did, and it gave me a life lesson that was invaluable and I don't think I could have learned any other way. I learned to be a better husband, a better father, a better physician. The therapist at Spalding had suggested that I try mindfulness, meditation and dealing with all that I was going through the pain, the rehabilitation was painful, and to just focus on the breathing and the present and put the other thoughts to the side. And I found that ability to be more present.

Speaker 3: 28:35

Whether it was my wife, my children, my friends or my patients, I was totally present. I didn't allow distractions to take me from the moment. I didn't allow distractions to take me from the moment, and I also learned empathy. I knew what it was like to be a patient. So in talking to my patients, when I listened to them, I experienced it through a different lens, having been there myself on the other side of the bed. So it did make me a better person and it was a lesson that I don't think I could have gotten in any other way. I don't. I'm not angry, I'm not resentful. It was a powerful life lesson and it led me to write this book and to be on your podcast today.

Speaker 1: 29:24

Excuse me, sorry about that. Yes, for sure. That is definitely a journey for it to go through to get. That gets us to this point. You talked a little bit about faith in there and in the white light aspect and seeing this woman in a white robe. How was faith for you prior to this incident and it is today? How is that involved in your life and what kind of impact does it have for you?

Speaker 3: 29:49

so both my parents went to church every sunday. They were very religious, so I was brought up with that as a background. It, as with most people in their 20s and 30s, my life got busy doing other things and it wasn't as as something that I had at the front of my thought process every day, but it was there deep inside and it had become a part of my formation and I didn't realize I had it until I needed it and when I was on the ventilator needed it. And when I was on the ventilator I prayed every prayer I could think of. I promised God anything if I would live. There's an old saying there are no atheists in foxholes. I would add to that there are no atheists in ICUs either. Yeah, primal will to live is very strong and my faith, I think, helped me and in the book I talk about.

Speaker 3: 30:54

When I was in rehabilitation hospital, one of my closest friends and his wife came to visit me. They brought some books to read and a bag, and in the bag was a candle. And they said this is a candle from Notre Dame, from the Grotto replica Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes and it was at that moment that I realized that it wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't a dream that really the students at Notre Dame were asked to say the rosary for me. That wasn't a hallucination. It wasn't a dream that really the students in Notre Dame were asked to say the rosary for me, to pray, for me to pray that I would recover. And when they told me that, when I was in the ICU and my wife called, everybody told them that I was sick. They called their two daughters who were students in Notre Dame and they had all the students in Notre Dame pray for me at the grotto to Our Lady of Lords the replica. And I realized I never went to Lords but I'd been to Notre Dame and been to that grotto on several occasions.

Speaker 3: 32:03

Took my son to when I was looking at prospective colleges. I spent a weekend there and that's what it was. It was the replica to Our Lady of Lords. What I saw was Our Lady of Lords. The prayers of those students and my family and my friends were heard. I cannot give you a scientific explanation of how that happened. It can only be understood in faith and I think if you have faith it'll resonate. If you don't, it won't. But my faith is stronger than ever before and it's very powerful. I realize not all prayers are answered but those prayers were answered?

Speaker 1: 32:53

Yeah, absolutely, and it's so interesting to speak with you about this. It's one of the few topics that we touch on on the show, and the reason why I was excited to talk to you about this is that, for many of the men that I work with anyways, faith, especially, isn't something that necessarily is in their lives, and the other part of it is that we tend to struggle with trying to work ourselves out of situations that we're into. And your story has so many lessons for us to learn, and one of the ones that I'd like to talk a little bit on now is the. You know the relationships of the loved ones. You've talked about your wife and you know your children. How is that through this whole journey? How did that contribute to your recovery? And if you're speaking to somebody, or speaking to me right now, and I was in a difficult position what advice would you give me, supporting someone who's going through that type of journey?

Speaker 3: 33:50

I would say have your loved ones visit you in the ICU and to talk to you. Even if you're unresponsive as I was, they probably can hear you. They're sedated but they have awareness and they'll remember those conversations. It'll give them strength. It'll help them to stay sane. And staying sane with a prolonged intensive care unit admission is not easy. There's a medical term called ICU psychosis. That when people are in the intensive care for a long time on ventilators, the sensory deprivation, not knowing whether it's day or night or not, having people visit you is. You're unmoored, you have nothing to hold on to. You don't know whether it's day or night, what day of the week it is, what hour of the day it is. Having someone you love talk to you, to hold your hand is powerful. It gives you the strength to go on. But going on doesn't seem possible on doesn't seem possible.

Speaker 1: 35:12

That is so interesting because I always wondered that and having when my father was at the end of his life and after breaking his hip and then getting pneumonia and being in the hospital wondering could he hear us, and so now I know that he did.

Speaker 1: 35:21

He did, and it's really powerful. So I appreciate you letting us know that's really key for us to recognize that, while we may feel helpless, the opportunity to be there, to be of support, is profoundly powerful for the person who is in need of it, and so this really experience also put you in a position where you had to become vulnerable and live with being vulnerable, especially through the recovery aspect of it, because you weren't the same person that you were before that. So talk to us a little bit about how balancing vulnerability and strength during this transition time now with rebuilding your life, what that was like as well, and what lessons did you learn from that experience?

Speaker 3: 36:04

experience it was a very hard experience, as I said it is. It took about 11 plus days to come off the ventilator and to breathe. My breathing was still labored. I was on a full mask that went from my forehead into my chin. My voice was very hoarse and the tube rubbing against my vocal cords so I really couldn't be heard. With the mask on I couldn't use my hands.

Speaker 3: 36:43

When I went to rehabilitation I was able to come off the mask. It was on oxygen through the nose, but I still couldn't use my hands or even swallow. Everything had to be done for me. I couldn't even scratch my nose. I couldn't wiggle my fingers. I couldn't change myself. I couldn't wash myself. I couldn't go to the toilet myself.

Speaker 3: 37:07

Very basic things, basic skills of life you learn as a child. I was a full-grown adult. I couldn't do any of it. It was extremely humbling and extremely disorienting. It took a long time to gain those skills back.

Speaker 3: 37:29

As I said, my first victory was learning how to swallow, but I still had to be spoon-fed. I couldn't lift up a fork or a spoon. I couldn't wash myself. After a week or so they got me up in a lift and stripped me in a wheelchair into the shower just showered me off. I couldn't wash myself, I couldn't dry myself.

Speaker 3: 37:53

It was embarrassing, but it was really beyond that. I just realized I knew I needed help and I had to accept the help. Resisting it was futile and foolish. So I was grateful for the help and I got past the embarrassment and the sense of loss and just focused on what I had control of, which wasn't much. I had control of my mind, my thoughts, and I forced myself to think positively, not to dwell on the past, not to dwell on the current situation, but the future. As Admiral Stockdale said and Viktor Frankl said, those who could look to the future, those are the ones that survived Auschwitz, those are the ones that survived being prisoners of war in Vietnam during Vietnam. And I just channeled those thoughts and the days went by slowly and I had to just force myself to think positively and it worked. I just fell back on the lessons my father taught me yeah during the depression never quit if you, if you fall, get up.

Speaker 3: 39:28

The people who don't make it are those who quit, never quit. And I just kept telling myself that over and over again. Even though I didn't see a way forward or see a path, I knew that if I somehow found the strength to each hour, each day, to move forward, that I would someday overcome what's happening to me.

Speaker 1: 39:55

Absolutely. It's just one step at a time, it's one foot in front of the other, it's one moment, one moment after moment, and that's how we start to rebuild our lives, from the point when we feel there might be a point of no return. And so I just want to say thank you, michael, for being on the show today, and I don't know if we had an opportunity to touch on everything, but if there was one thing you would want our listeners to take away from today's conversation, what would that be?

Speaker 3: 40:32

When I went back to seeing patients, I realized that the simplest advice I could give to whatever the patient had whether it was heart failure, they needed a bypass, whatever it was acknowledge the facts as they are. If you can't acknowledge the facts, you can't move forward. Accept the facts as they are. Anger and denial don't help you. And the third is adapt. Find a way to move forward. I made that my website, wwwacknowledgeadaptcom, and I think you know if your readers are interested in the book. It's not a long book. I purposely made it brief enough that it's not a huge read but it's Physician Heal, thyself Nearly Dead, and the Journey Back to Health by Michael Hesham. It's a powerful book. It has a lot of the lessons I talked about. I footnoted it heavily. If people want to do additional reading, they can do that to read Stockdale, to read Frankel, to read Hillebrand, to read some of the authors that gave me inspiration in my recovery.

Speaker 1: 41:43

Outstanding. I just want to say once again you so much. You had such a powerful story that you shared with us today and it's truly a story that offers us hope and inspiration for those of us who are struggling with our own challenges in life and men are interested in getting hold of you we've already talked about. They can find you at acknowledge accept adaptcom. Are you offering any programs or anything else that they might be interested in speaking with you about?

Speaker 3: 42:09

They can email me and reach out to me and I'll get back to them. I post my podcasts on my website and I write a blog and try to put in messages of hope of how you overcome what seems to be impossible, whether it's illness, death, divorce, losing your job. As my father said, never quit If you knock down, pick yourself up and move forward, and I think those words of wisdom got me through the impossible and they work.

Speaker 1: 42:54

Amen, brother, Amen. I'm going to make sure that information is in today's show notes as well as wherever else you are on social media. So, folks, you have an opportunity to get a hold of you and also a link for your book Physician Heal Thyself. It's an outstanding read. It'll give us opportunity to really learn and grow as men. So once again, Michael, thank you so much for being on the show. We appreciate it having you on.

Speaker 3: 43:15

Thank you very much, alan Nice, to be a guest on your show.

Speaker 2: 43:27

Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the Awakened man at theawakendmannet and start forging a new destiny today.