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The Mental Toll of Firefighter Injuries · Firefighter Nation Podcast

• FFN 20261105 Mental Health Monthly: Right, one of the biggest things and I talk about this in my presentation that I do is the loss of identity. I know before the injury happened, I was so eaten up with the job, which I loved it, I still do, that it's all I knew. And then overnight, like gone. Danda Grice and Chris Mussel. Dreamseat service ready recliners, beds, and furniture are built tough for hardworking firefighters. Visit firehousefurniture.com and upgrade your station today. All right, here we are again. my name's Dan DeGrice, my co-host Chris Musle. Welcome to Mental Health Monthly. Chris, how are you doing? Dan, it's good. The it's fall weather, football season. Better than summer. Hook There you go. Yeah, of course. Am I doing it right? Hook Of course. Yeah. What are we? Four and Yeah, number one in the nation. Are the whoa. boy. boy. You're not wearing anything Texas. You're wearing all white. Yeah, big well, white's a Texas color. Orange and white. Okay. All right. Big game coming up though. Texas, Oklahoma. boy. Yeah. All right. How about you? Big rivalry, right? huge rivalry. Yeah. How about those bears? Come on, man. Yeah. With the backup, huh? The backup and the backup. Yeah. And then we put both of them on play number one and down one. what a great story. So for everybody that listen in, welcome. Thanks for being here. Chris and I really enjoy having conversations about really wellness. And today what we're going to do is tie in injuries and mental wellness. And Maybe even the word mental health. I mean our title is really mental health monthly. And what goes into it? What what we what Chris and I had talked about before this show was that we typically talk about grief and loss in a sense that we we lose a firefighter to a line of duty death, a job related illness, or suicide. And what we really want to do today is talk about you know, what are people carrying from an injury standpoint? And I don't know if Chris and I were just talking before the show. I said, what do you think how many s injuries do you think there are in a given year in the firing EMS world? Well, I'll just say this is NFPA keeps that data. So so does OSHA. Sometimes it doesn't absolutely align. But Chris's response was thousands, and and if you don't know, you don't know. And so he didn't say, well, hundred thousand or tens of thousands or whatever. But I always understood it to be around forty five thousand. Well, we looked it up and it last year was fifty three thousand five hundred and seventy five. And let that sink in for a second. Like, what the heck? Is as I mentioned to Chris. That if you are going for a promotion, if you don't mention a word safety, whether it be in the firehouse, outside the firehouse, on the fire ground, en route to it, three times, you you're you're not gonna pass the oral interview. What does safety mean? And we know it's important, especially if you're studying to to to get promoted, because you're not just focusing on yourself, you're focusing on your company. And again, everybody knows Chris, you've been in the military, so it's all for one, one for all. And how do you the higher you go up, the more weight and how to protect protect your men and women, your your team, your squad or whatever your platoon, the higher you go up. What what's your thoughts? And I and I got some questions for you, but what what are your What are your first thoughts? I think first the number was a little surprising. I figured it would be high. I didn't know it'd be that high. And then of course the higher up you go, the food chain, whatever you want to call it, the more responsibility. It's real easy when you only have to worry about yourself. But when you have four guys, eight guys, twelve guys, an entire, you know, whatever battalion, platoon, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. There's the There's lot that weighs into that. Yeah. And let's be honest, too. Of the 53,000, they always say strains and sprains are the number one. But you've had injuries. I've had injuries. I've had surgeries. And the we could get we'll get into hey, do you let the department know about that? A lot of times we push through that. And sometimes we have pushed through that. Where it hasn't benefited us because if it, as we know, right, if it's not documented, it didn't happen. Right. And now everybody says you gotta document stuff. But once you document it, you can't go back on it. And you gotta go forward with it. And depending on the people above you and letting you make a decision on, you know, as a strain. Let's just use a strain, for example. Can you work through it, even though it's documented? Or they're like, nope, you're going to medical. And now it's kind of out of your hands. And what's the effect of that? So from a mental health standpoint, well, I got a side job. And if I'm on layup or on medical, I can't do that side job. Hey, I'm not going to be with my squad or team or company. they're gonna look at me as weak. And I could go on and on and on, right? All the different thoughts that about not being with your and from a protective factor, we wanna stay with them. So when people like think of an injury, I don't think they originally think of mental health, but I know for myself, I do because I know that there's been so Once where I tore my knee, where I had to go on medical, and once I had back surgery and I did it over a five-day period over what we call a daily day, and I didn't lay up, which I know from you, from being a nurse and a flight magnet, you'd be like, Dan, really? Yeah. But I did not want to get caught up in medical. And you hear the horror stories of people that are like, Okay, we're gonna do rehab for you before we do surgery and now you do six months of rehab but doesn't get better. Now you got six months to have the surgery and then you don't get it done in time. So we're gonna let you off the job. How does that mess up with your head? So all all that stuff. We're gonna talk about some of that. But actually with Chris you had a catastrophic injury that you are still living with that didn't take your career away But significantly affected it and your mental health. And I'm not gonna say that in a negative standpoint, but every day you live with that. 100%. yeah, let's just call it what it is. So I had a pretty substantial back surgery with a pretty substantial recovery time. And come on, so tell me substantial. You got two rod two or three or eighteen rods in your back. Yeah, so I got artificial artificial discs in my lower back. I spent months in a wheelchair. I was in the rehab, inpatient for a month, wheelchair for months, and then migrated to a walker and then back to walking on my own, did all the rehab and there's really two parts to it. I get cleared to come back to work and I wasn't back to work a few shifts, maybe a few tours, and wind up having a knee or injury and had a knee surgery right after that. well. And so yeah, it was quite the journey. and to your point, the back injury I always tell people, and if you've had a back injury, a significant back injury, you live in this community, you understand it's the gift that keeps on giving. Mm-hmm. I think the difference is my mentality behind it now versus when it happened. And when you talk about injuries and what does that look like? And and so when I when I say substantial injury, something that's gonna take you out of the job for more than a couple of shifts, right? One of the biggest things, and I talk about this in my presentation that I do, is the loss of identity. Right. I know when the before the injury happened, I was so eaten up with the job, which I loved it. I still do. that it's all I knew. And then overnight, like gone. Right. For a a a year ish. And so there's that mental challenges that you're you're talking about, right? That disruption and The badge become in the whole identity and how much time on a given day would that occupy your thought process? All day. Yeah. And that's a thing that a person that is injury free doesn't comprehend. Yeah. And most would be like, just put it out of your head. How many times did you say that to yourself? Right. And whether it's like listen, whether you knew your crew was on duty, and I was a company officer at the time. Whether you knew your crew was on duty. Whether I was driving to rehab and I just saw a rig going down the street, not even lights and sirens, it was just like you ever been driving somewhere and you don't notice it, but then when you're not part of it, mm-hmm, you notice it constantly. yeah. It was that. and even though I was doing rehab multiple times a day, it still wasn't enough to like distract me. And I had a wife and I had kids and all the things like the role was interrupted. and I talk about this, roles can be interrupted, but your character can't. Except I didn't have the mental fortitude to understand what my character was like. Well, from a physical injury, that's what you're focused on. That what that's what medical's focused on, that's what the surgeon or whomever is focused on. But out of curiosity, and and and I don't want to lead you, but I am. How many people during that period said, beside not just how you're doing, because it could be construed as how you physically doing, but it also could be mean mental, but ask that poignant question is how how how much of this time has affected your thought process and mental health? Nobody. I mean, people asked how you were doing, and what I would say is Shortly the the honeymoon phase of the surgery, right? the days right after, the first few days right after, and maybe through the inpatient rehab portion, people would reach out and check on you. And then after that, like a couple months in, like, you know, it was only your inner circle that was checking on you. Like everyone's life was back to status quo, which I understand. But yeah, we've talked about this before, right? Like no one's How are you doing? I'm good. My back's feeling better. No, not that. Yeah. How you doing up here? Yeah. So it's interesting because we thought about that. So again, coming from Chicago, we had let's just say five thousand active members and EMS personnel. And we had a pretty hefty injury rate, let's just say. what they didn't do, and I and when I ran our internal EAP program, what they didn't do Well well, I did it for a union, but we also had a department one. What they didn't do is exactly that. Didn't check in on people and say, Hey, what's your thoughts about not being at work? Hey, what's your thoughts about not being with your crew? What about, hey, maybe you didn't get a promotion because you're laid up? Maybe you didn't get to take a test because you're laid up or on medical. I don't know. Everybody has different rules. So I I looked at my team and I said, Listen, let's Let's have this conversation with all the people on medical. Well, take take a guess at how many people we had on medical in any one time. Twenty five. Yeah, about a hundred, let's say. A hundred anywhere between eighty and a hundred and fifty. Mm-hmm. That's a lot of people, right? And so but i if you f I don't know, five thousand due to math on that, is that you know, whatever. People are did the math really quick and I I I can't. But so I said let's let's call them. So I asked somebody to do some research and say, Hey, how do we get their numbers? And I was told in a behind the scenes basically that we couldn't get that information because of confidentiality. Or like, my gosh. So again, we're resourceful. So I had somebody get that for us. And we, you know, the old adage of what's the old thing about ask for forgiveness. rather than permission. Yeah. So we did it and then somebody found out and said you can't do that anymore. And I'm like, these are our people. Everybody has everybody's number. Right. We don't need to know the injury. I don't need to know what they're laid up for. I just need to know that they're laid up. That's not a breach of confidentiality. And if they don't want to talk, they don't want to answer the phone. But they would not let us They would not share that information with us, nor would they call to check on their mental health. Which is crazy, because if you were to call them, chances are you wouldn't be able to get them off the phone because Man, it's a con it's a connection back to the job, right? In the beginning, the feedback that we and I didn't call everybody, I had my team do it. The feedback from our team was exactly that. They were like, my gosh, you care. Yeah. And then the feeling that my team got calling them was like, hey, I felt like it did something. And yeah, even though that they're on the mend, just the f companionship was so huge. The benefit of that. Little wins. I'm hoping people out there do that, but my department would not allow that because of confidentiality. Yeah. Little wins, right? It's a little hanging fruit. That's what we call it. Again, we talk about line of duty deaths, we talk about suicides and it man, it's it's it's a very depressing aspect. It's it's really the what I would say to people out there, I'd ask you what you're carrying. Not, you know, from extra pounds, but really what are you carrying in in your noggin from your own injury or injuries, how you are able to perform. Do you feel adequate enough? I mean, let's be honest. I I remember throwing up a 38-foot ladder by myself. And I'm not I'm not trying to brag. People can do that. Those things were heavy. Now they went from, you know, two fly to one flight or lighter, all different types of mechanics. But in academy, you're taught to do that with four people. Well, what happens when you don't have four people? What happens when you don't have three people? So fast forward now 30 years, can I throw that up? I'm gonna say yes, but man, I'll I'm gonna take a beating. I'm gonna take a beating. But I also have a back I had a back surgery, I have s shoulder issues, and I had knee issues, which is to be expected. I'm sixty-two, and there's a lot of people with that. Every day when I get up, I wonder if my sciatica is acting up again. Because I had a laminectomy about ten years ago when I was active. It helped, but it didn't cure it. And I'm not here to just share about myself, but again, we started with you. You have in my opinion, had a severe injury that could go south at any one time. But you maintained mission focus and stayed on the job. I did with lesser injury. And there's people which strains and injuries and so forth that go to work every single day. let's let's take a look ask you and and from an educational standpoint I had to look this up Where do you think the most so let's just say the most injuries come from fire ground operations. Out of that fifty almost four thousand last year, thirty percent came from fire ground injuries. I would have thought it'd be more. I that doesn't surprise me. No, but I I would have thought it thought it was more. Where'd where do you think the rest of the injuries come from? I would say Probably EMS calls for sure. I would put EMS calls up there. Okay. And maybe training. But I would I would definitely put EMS calls. Yeah, so eleven thousand from non fire ground duties on duty. they don't n necessarily say EMS, but I agree ten thousand from training and then almost ten thousand from non fire emergency. So maybe that would be it. And then there's another six thousand in transit. And I'm not trying to be critical of anything, but if I was an administrator on the job, I'd be like, Why is that happening? Right. Why can't we get that number down? And then what's the totality of that, not only for the individual, but for the company officer that witnesses that or didn't like door slam in or not hit and killed on a on a roadway, but that does happen, as we know, but an injury from a vehicle going by or slip and fall. those types of things that we know happen, but that's an extra or th that's f almost forty thousand injuries that have a a totality on work, a pr the person and the company and the department from a workload and a mental health standpoint, in my opinion. Yeah, that's what's crazy is One injury, one person getting injured doesn't just affect that one person. It affects the whole organization. And so when you start thinking of downstream impacts, it affects you, it affects your crew. If they like you, I guess, right? I'm kidding. Were you saying me or or Yeah. It it affects your staffing, it affects your department operations. Like that's a it's a It can be it can it can carry a pretty big impact. I'm no one special, but if I'm a company officer and I get injured and I'm out for a year and who's gonna fill that role? Right? Maybe my department doesn't have, you know, swing officers or whatever you call things like that. I mean, there's just so many impacts that it can have. And just to clarify, th that information I had was from twenty twenty four. so it's probably higher. Well, again, it always takes time to aggregate that information. but just to be clear that that came from twenty twenty four. Ready to take your training to the next level? FDIC International is where the fire service comes together to learn, connect, and prepare for the challenges of today and tomorrow. Join us April twelfth through seventeen in Indianapolis for a week of hands-on training. Classroom sessions led by fire service experts and access to the latest products and innovations in the exhibit hall. Whether you're looking to sharpen your skills, discover new solutions, or bring valuable insights back to your department, FDIC delivers an experience unlike any other. Register today at FDIC.com/slash podcast. So I'll just say for me, so for for again, for my own mental health, I knew. So when I had bad sciatica and I went to the doc and they said, you have a pinched nerve. we, you know, you got medication, which I'm like, I don't want to take it because I really like that shit. Sorry, I shouldn't say that. That's totally okay. you know, I I get afraid of, you know, well, let's be honest, getting dependent on it. and we know it only masks the pain. It doesn't fix the pain. So you could injure yourself even more. I wanted to go to work. So I pushed through it for many years. And a doc' even said, he goes, How long has it been going on? I said, about three years. He's like, dude, why did you wait so long? I don't have to explain it because everybody here listens knows, right? Because you don't want to show the weakness. You don't want to leave the job. You think you can work through it like many other injuries. I didn't know the severity of it. I didn't know the long-term effect of it. And They basically said that you're not getting blood flow and and the messaging, so that nerve will die. So thankfully when they did do a laminectomy, he said it pinkened up, but it'll take a long time for it to start to fe your your leg not to be numb, 'cause it went all the way down to my toe. And I'm not the only one that had this. And I'm like, why didn't I do this sooner? so I got about eighty percent of the feeling back. Twenty percent, not so much. And that's what I gotta live with. So every day I live with that, going, Well, why didn't I do that? So the next time that I ran into somebody as an officer or a chief, and somebody came to me and said, Hey, I have an oui, and I'm trying to be flippant about it. Well, number one, I'd be like, First, what do you want to do about it? Why are you telling me that? Because usually if you're coming to tell me, you want my opinion. And I always said, if you don't document it, it didn't happen. Not from me, but from the upper echelon. And number two, you don't want to be like me with a deficit of say twenty percent the rest of your life. That's how I would do it. I'd be like, you gotta do this and you gotta do that. That that's not me. You know that. I would say, do you want to live pain free potentially, or do you want to live with pain the rest of your life? Hundred percent. I think there's one thing that I wanna mention. So you mentioned all the reasons as why people don't report it on the official official right? you mentioned a lot of really good reasons, but and I know it's different throughout different parts of the country, but there's one other reason that I think is a problem that you don't see people reporting this stuff, and it's because the dam system is broken when it comes to Whatever your workers' comp is or things like that. Right. I know where I live in Texas. I mean It's quite it it's you could have a whole series of shows on that system and how messed up it can be. So tell me when you say it's so so give me a give us an example. Well, you said it earlier, right? Like a guy gets injured and everything about this injury and symptomology tells you this guy needs an MRI. But they're like, hey, we're gonna send you to PT for six months. Yeah. I just spent a few days with a lot of guys and we were talking about injuries on the job and stuff like this. And some of the horror stories you've heard about these guys being sent to PT, having to do it. And then it's like after weeks and months of that not working, they finally get the MRI and they're like, my God, you need surgery tomorrow. We're clearing our calendars. If you look at Fort Worth, Texas, was it Caleb Halverson, firefighter that was injured in the collapse? It he couldn't get what he actually needed. This was on the job, like a collapse structure on top of him. Could not get what he needed until politicians got involved. Wow. And so I think that depending on wherever you are in the country, we talk about the struggle of the injury and the loss of identity and all those things. But then also think of the mental challenges dealing with broken systems like that brings on top of it, right? Yeah. And I we're not gonna necessarily get into it, but that's where organizational betrayal. Yeah. Right. comes in and Yeah. So not to change the derail it on that, because we literally could do a whole episode about that. No, but overall all these things that happen, it's it's not just you know, PTSD and depression and and anxiety and not to lessen that at all. Yeah. But what we wanted to do in this discussion here is share how all like all these injuries f almost fifty five thousand injuries in twenty twenty four and however many and that's every single year when I started looking at it back in let's say two thousand and five it's always been above yeah yeah easy with the smirk dude and and yeah no I I thought you'd say back in nineteen eighty six I wasn't smart enough to look at that stuff, but that's I came on in eighty nine. I didn't know that that number, nor did I care. Yeah. You know, that wasn't gonna happen to me. I was you know, seven foot tall and bulletproof, just like everybody that comes on until you get dropped to your knees with an injury. Yeah. And you know what else is interesting? it's not the point of the conversation, but I've been thinking about this this whole show. How many of those injuries are beside besides my jacket? I mean my pullover? Yeah, we could get to that in a second. That's okay. Yeah. How many of those injuries are like preventable from the standpoint of did I work out? Did I take care of myself? Did I have the strength? Did I have the endurance? Right. I'm I'm counting on my hands outside the screen. You can't see it. Yeah. Should I should I have done that? Should I have been there? Should I have trained on that? Good. Yeah, even just physical ability. Right? I'm not on the job anymore. You're not on the job anymore. But I got up and I went to the gym and swam this morning. Right? Like, you know, are, you know, did you get injured because it was inevit inevitable and it was gonna happen, or did you were you injury prone because we didn't take care of ourselves? I just thought it's interesting. And I'm sure you could think of people throughout your own career that were injured and you're like, Well, yeah, he probably that probably could have been prevented, or she or took care of and we've all been guilty of it, right? Like you work out really hard and then you kind of slack off and then you but I just thought that was I feel like that fifty four, fifty five thousand number probably could be decreased. Well, my gosh. With not a lot of effort. It it it really is staggering because I didn't look at that number I came in with the idea and we for all of you listening or whoever's listening, Chris and I had a discussion about that and I said I didn't know the actual number. In the past it used to be in the forties. I I it's just staggering that it it's gone up like twenty percent in into the fifties. Yeah. And and that's gotta be a weight for all the training directors, all the officers. And and if it's not intentional to could 'Cause it is in the in the f fire and EMS world, it's cyclical. all of a sudden you see somebody that doesn't throw a ladder well. So now let's train let's train on ladders. Yeah. Or you s have a high rise incident and it didn't go well. So let's talk about communication. It typically has been reactionary instead of intentional, even though I think training directors are doing better at putting stuff together, but eighty percent of them is EMS side. Yeah. So let's talk about real quick. When you have a significant injury, that's gonna sideline you for a significant amount of time, right? Let's say more than a month, couple months, whatever. You know, you struggle with that, but you know the five stages of grief. You go through the five stages of grief with that too, just in a different, in a different manner. Right. So as as some might think, man, I got injured. I'm gonna be off at home and that's cool. I don't have to go to work and do whatever I want and wake up whenever I want. And and it's cool for a little bit until it's not, right? And so you go through the denial the denial, this is not a big deal, I'll be back in a week. Right. The anger of, you know, this is fair, unfair. I don't deserve this, you know, because of the loss of identity, the loss of the rule. Your whole environment's completely changed. The bargaining, which we've talked about, right? Like, well, what if I just push through the pain or push? We've all done that. We've all done that. I I I mean, I used to joke, I still joke to this day, like with my buddies, because you know, one of the mottos of the Marine Corps was like, pain is weakness leaving the body. And my therapist roll my physical therapist, she rolls her eyes every time I say that because she's like, That's not. What it meant, the way you're interpreting it. Just go harder. Yeah, but it works for us Marines. Right. And then there's the depression pre piece, right? Like I'm useless, my crew doesn't need me, blah, blah, blah. And then right when you when you change your mindset and you change your mentality and right, you change it to more of an acceptance, like it's here, it's happening. I can't stop it. I can't change it. I'm gonna accept it. It's temporary. I'm gonna build a plan and we're gonna get through it. Sounds cheesy, but the science behind it really isn't to have the mental shift that you need to persevere through it. That's a great explanation. And people probably don't equate injury with the grieving process, but we are, because it's a loss of something, whether it be for a period of time or an extended period of time. And and here's the other thing that we want to offer people too. Is that that grieving process, that injury, that loss of whatever affects you, but not only you. What else does it affect? It affects relationships and especially the relationships at home when your spouse says, Hey, when are you gonna get off your butt and go to work? Or how can I help you? And for our personalities where like I'm fine, I'll take care of it myself. And then that creates distance between you and the person that you love. 100%. And listen, here's the reality of it. So this is some of the stuff that from from my presentation because I I think it works is and some of it obviously comes from your own reading and and you'll recognize this this quote Tailored from a book a little bit, into my own words, but the body and mind are not separate systems. Physical pain is psychological pain and recoveries both. And that couldn't that couldn't be more true. And so so not only does that physical pain the physical pain affects you, the psychological pain affects you, but the way that you choose to control that situation can affect all those people around you, like you're talking about. They might not feel the physical pain that you're feeling, but listen, if you're a a hot mess and you are like nobody wants to be around Dan deGrice, right? My own wife's like, I'm gonna sleep in the other room because I don't wanna be around this grumpy whatever. Mm-hmm. Like that that's psychological problems that it's creating for you, it's creating for them. So it's all tied together. I I couldn't agree with you more and When I think of pain, I think o of pain as an equalizer. It really brings pe whether it be physical or emotional and andor the synergistic effect of both. So if people don't recognize that, acknowledge it and try to work through it, th that's a long term struggle. It is. And people that want to learn more about it. So I just reached back to grab it. I don't know if I can do it in the camera here, but I know you've I know you've read it and several others have read it, but I mean things we're talking about right here comes right out of this book, right? You got it. yeah, so and what I think about is from a quality of life. So I I'll just from a personal standpoint, I I w I woke up this morning, thankfully. And almost gotcha. I almost felt almost gotcha. God bless. Don't say that to me. talked to my wife and I and she's like, How you doing? And I and I said, You know what? It pretty darn good while I slept seven or eight hours. I don't necessarily feel like I slept seven or eight hours. But in gosh, I can't even tell you in my third-year career if I ever slept. seven or eight hours straight, unless I was completely exhausted. And I and I said, my I think my body is changing a little bit, where I I for being retired seven years, I I once or twice I got to seven or eight hours, but it not consistently. And I think right now I've I've done like three days in a row. And I'm like, my is my body healing? Have I relearned how to stay asleep? And I'm not trying to get in the sleep thing. What I'm what I'm talking about is from a physical and a mental health aspect, you have to have sleep to repair. You know, we we talk about working out, we talk about swimming, eating right. You gotta have sleep to repair your brain and so forth, because I have, excuse me, a bit of brain fog throughout my career, whether it be from all the stuff I inhaled or COVID or from the COVID shots, I don't know. All I know is I got brain fog. sometimes it's better than others. And when I sleep through the night, it's better, but it's not great. I I don't wake up like completely refreshed, but I'm also 62. So from a long term effect of injury, not not a scar Or you can't see it in my my noggin. A lot of us live with that. And the only thing I could think of is I walk, I drink a lot of water, and I try to sleep. So while we're talking about slips, trips, and falls, there's also the cumulative effect of what we've put our body physically through throughout our career line. And most of us that have retired and you you're now semi-retired. You're retired from the fire service for a year. almost December. Mm-hmm. Yeah. we start going through some changes and some favorable and some unfavorable. And that all affects our our mental wellness, our mental health and our personality. And that then in turn affects our relationship with others. Because I know if my wife if I didn't feel good every day, Or if I was in pain and my wife asked me how how I was doing, I'd be like, Stop asking me that. And it would create a division. So with people with chronic pain and chronic injury, I'm wondering again, I'm not telling you that this is the that what's happened with you, but I don't know if we correlate that injury with how it affects our relationships and then ultimately our mental health or mental health and our relationships. How about you? Yeah. boy. It it's a it's a big question. When I first dealt with my injuries and things like that, hundred percent it affected my mental health, my relationships, relationships with my wife, relationships with my child, relationships with friends, colleagues, all the things. However, the reason I chuckled is because I like I was mentioning to you before the show, like I have to have another MRI next week. Now it doesn't. Now it doesn't. But I have put a lot of, as time, effort, energy into my own mental health that you get to choose that journey. You get to choose if it affects you or not. And really the question is simple. It's like, how bad do you want it? How bad do you want a successful marriage, a successful life, successful friends? and you've heard me say this before, and some people might not like it, and and that's okay. But are you and it took me a long time to realize this. are you gonna be the victim or the warrior? You you can't change the physical injury. It's there. It's not like, here's a magical pill, take it and the injury's gone. It's there. Right? And maybe it goes away and you never deal with it again, or maybe it's a chronic injury where it's the gift that keeps on giving. And so how are you going to, you know, every day's a new day, right? And so. Are gonna have a bad day every day for the rest of your life? Are you gonna have a bad day here and there? And it really just comes down to to you. And it's and listen, like when we talk when I talk to myself about this, which sounds weird, but it's me versus me up here. It's me versus me. And so I'm the only person I have to contend with to get through and make it out the other side. That doesn't mean I won't bring in help with going to see the counselor or talking to people like you or my inner circle or or my boundaries or my therapies of going to walk, hang out with my wife, run, swim, read a book, whatever that is. It's not just one little thing, but at the end of the day it's you versus you. I was just on a another golf excuse me, another golf trip, if you noticed. I went to the F D NY Almost got you again. Yeah, mine's in the s mine's in the mill, right? My shirt. Well, y you gotta you gotta show up, man. You don't you don't get a participation prize for not showing up. But the F D NY guys in Myrtle Beach, Jeff Cool, John Walters, number of other guys, I apologize for not remembering everybody's name, that this thing's been going on for long time, way before nine eleven, and they took it over. We had Not we I was there for the first time and gosh, three hundred and fifty, four hundred and fifty, maybe five hundred. They had four courses. so wearing this in in honor of all the people we lost, not only just at nine eleven across the fire and EMS world. they do a tremendous job. All those guys are injured. John Walters, if you know him, he's he's a character. He'll he'll say that their group is called the Misfit Mountain because they all the the toys is a Misfit Mountain and they all have some sort of injury that they're living with. And those are the guys that actually I that that not just me and you, but I think of them and all the other people that are living each day with some injury and trying to keep their head above water physically and mentally. You mentioned about the the the difficult thing is I was talking we we just had a competition. twenty four Chicago firefighters against twenty four New York firefighters that came out to go to the pres presidents cup. So we played and one of the guys when we were putting, he goes, Yeah, it's not hitting the ball, it's not walking the course, it's not whatever. It it it the toughest thing in in golf and and plus everything else is the he said four inches, but I think I got a wider head, you know, the the space between your two ears mentally. That's it. And that's why we're talking about injuries and mental health or ment and and mental wellness of how do you You can't expect to go through a career ca remember in Academy a guy came in and he was burnt. And that's not the only injury. That's a catastrophic injury. He lost a a a couple of fingers and he got burned over twenty percent of his body. But my first thought was that's not gonna happen to me. Same thing with injuries. You say that enough times and then when it happens, you're like, crap, that is me. but you have to be intentional as you just said. For anybody that's out there, it's it it's it it it it it's not a a monthly thing, it's not a yearly thing, it's a daily thing that I know for me when I wake up in the morning, I l there there's several different things from a wellness standpoint. I look I look to see my wife, I I try to see if she's willing to hug me because I didn't always do that before. We'd kiss her goodbye, but now I try to have that physical touch. make sure that we try to go for a walk together. I just had I had knee surgery and and I had complications, but I'm I'm ninety-five percent. So I'll I'll focus on the ninety-five percent good as opposed to the five percent bad. In the beginning, I focused on the bad and not the good. And and that's what I do. How about how about you? for sure. In the beginning it was the five percent bad and I don't remember Looking back, especially the days after my surgery or month few short the first few months after I don't remember the good. Like, I mean, even the guys like coming over to visit, I didn't see that as good. I saw I saw that as feel sorry for you, like pity party, right? now I look at the ninety-five percent good. Right. you've heard that no easy day. I th that's bullshit, right? there's easy days and then there are hard days, but you get to decide that. so we've had John, you mentioned John earlier. We've had John on the show. Yeah. On the podcast. John's great. Look at his I mean, going through what he went through, right? And then really listening to his challenges in the hospital and his recovery and stuff like that. I mean That guy has the greatest outlook. I mean, I don't know that I've ever seen him like mad or angry or not smiling or busting someone's chops or you know. And so what I would say is, and I wouldn't even put myself near in the same category as him and some of the others, but look at some of these guys that have been through some hard times physically, struggled through it, look at him now and listen because obviously the recipes. Working like you're saying, like we're saying. Well, cool. For those of you that follow us along, we we hope we don't come across as the last thing that we want to do is come across as my gosh, you're in the fire service, you're screwed. That that is not the case. Never. People I think in society look at fire and police and EMS or not as much say dispatch, but I include all responders in a sense, and they all of a sudden look at it and go, gosh, you're gonna be, you're gonna get PTSD, you're gonna, you're gonna get divorced, you're all that stuff. that is going to happen, but it doesn't have to happen if we have more of a focus on mental wellness that includes physical wellness throughout your career, starting from the academy. And I think that. You if you look at Firefighter Nation, if you look at Stephanie White, you look at people that I have seen out there, they want to and they don't want to keep mental and physical health separate in silos. They want to bring it together. I couldn't agree more. and that's why partly we're having this conversation. Chris and I have discussed this for the eight or ten years that we've known each other, but really haven't done a podcast on it. So we want to lead, you know, somebody might come in. into this and go, well, why are they talking about 55,000 injuries? Well it's all interconnected. If you don't feel good, you don't necessarily think well. And if you don't think well, you don't act well. And if you don't act well, it's affecting your relationship. And then forget about the grieving process, what is what is so true, which you brought up. if you don't act well now you're trying to make up with your s significant other in your in your family, which Chris and I have done gone back to wherever we are in our little cubby hole and go, well, that was dumb. And I'm and I'm laughing because every day that Chris knows me when we talk, I'm like, I don't think I screwed up yesterday. Right. I don't think. Same. Think's a big yeah, big word, big word, think. I th listen, we always talk about fire service, greatest job in the world, and I love it, you love it. I'm still connected to it through obviously Firefighter Nation and some USAR stuff, and then obviously my what I do now for a living. Best EMS, I could say it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What I th I think what we try to do is we try to normalize the Things that could, right? The guy that's like, that'll never happen to me. Well, that's probably the guy it's gonna happen to, right? is that being egotistic? Is it being arrogant? Is it being a misunderstanding? And so we're not sitting here saying everyone's gonna get PTSD, everyone's gonna get a career ending injury, divorce, alcoholic, all those things. We just try to put the awareness factors out there because even though it's the greatest job in the world, it's a hard job. It's a very hard job physically, mentally, emotionally. It's a hard job. And we've talked about that before. So all we try to do is just bring a little light to it, a little awareness to it, and give you little tips and tricks that you could hang up listening to this show and put it into play right there. And it's gonna make you one percent better. Yeah, and I would like to say that the conversation is out there, it's not everywhere. Correct. It's it's not in every department, it's not in every firehouse, it's not in every home. But to encourage you to do that, because i one, it's the right thing to do, and two, for many of you too, that have been in the career line, I have two sons now that surprisingly one is in the career and the other one's trying to get in a career. And have to have conversations with them about making the long run, kind of like the White Sox in the in the playoffs. You like that? Yeah. I yeah. I mean it come on, Cubs and White Sox were in there. Cubs got blasted, but we got we got the White Sox in the playoffs and the Bears I think we're three and one, so look out. Things are looking up. Things are looking up. Yeah. I don't have to go around going hook I've between the Rangers and the Cowboys, I've had to fall back on college football getting us somewhere. Go with David Rhodes and go with Georgia. Number two, I think, of the nation, right? Yep. Yep. Number two. I can't wait to see the Bulldogs and and the the what did we call the The Longhorns. The Longhorns. yeah. Fight it out. But hey, for all of you out there that joined us, thank you. we appreciate it. and from Crystal Lake, Illinois. till next time, Chris. See you later. Good talk.