THE FIGHT I NEVER EXPECTED

THE FIGHT I NEVER EXPECTED

I’m sharing this story in hopes that it helps someone listen to their body, stop procrastinating, and realize how important health, relationships, and community truly are before it’s too late.

Three months ago, I went to New York City with my kids for the New York Rangers 100 year anniversary celebration. I was grateful to be included and reconnect with so many great people and memories. Just before all of this happened, I had the opportunity to speak to around 100 anesthesiologists and nurses about mindset, adversity, and perspective. At the time, I had no idea that only a short time later I would be in the hospital myself fighting through one of the biggest challenges of my life. 

Life can change fast. During the trip, I started feeling off physically, but honestly thought I was just exhausted or run down. Like many people, I tried to push through it and figured it would pass. When I got home, Cheryl could tell something was not right. She pushed me to go to the hospital and looking back now, Cheryl truly helped save my life along with Dr. T and the medical team. Doctors discovered a serious infection that turned into sepsis. Dr. T later told me that if I waited any longer, I may have only had a couple days left. 

The sepsis eventually spread to my mitral valve, which led to open heart surgery. Everything changed fast after that. I spent almost a month in the hospital. There were moments of fear, exhaustion, uncertainty, and times where I could barely communicate. I ended up losing over 30 pounds during the process. After leaving the hospital, I spent another month at home recovering with a midline in my arm for six weeks while continuing treatment and focusing on getting stronger again. People always talk about mental toughness. I would love to tell you I was mentally strong every second through all of this, but that would not be true. What I learned is that sometimes mindset is what keeps you fighting when the body feels exhausted. 

One of the biggest reasons I’m sharing this story is because I want to help wake people up so they do not make the same mistake I did. Too many people push through symptoms. Too many people procrastinate. Too many people think they will be fine and ignore signs that something may really be wrong. I almost waited too long. If something feels off, get checked out. Do not keep putting it off thinking it will just pass. Listen to the people around you who care about you. 

This experience also taught me there is nothing weak about leaning on others when life gets hard. Cheryl, my kids, my mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, Marty, my doctors, nurses, close friends, former teammates, and so many others carried me through one of the toughest times of my life. My teammates continuously checked in on me throughout the entire experience with support, encouragement, prayers, and messages that meant more than I could ever explain. 

Mark Messier said it best when he told me, “You dodged a bullet this time.” That really stayed with me. 

There are honestly too many people to thank individually, but this experience reminded me how important community and relationships really are when life gets hard. Dr. T, Dr. Michaels, Dr. Harley, and all the nurses were unbelievable. Their care and support during this fight meant everything to me. Now, three months later, I’m back doing a lot of conditioning and working hard to get myself back into a healthy lifestyle and better shape again. Step by step, I’m rebuilding my strength, gaining my weight back, and continuing to recover. 

After everything that happened, I feel more than fortunate to have a second chance at life.

Life threatening moments remove the noise. You stop worrying about small things. You become grateful for simple moments again. Being home. Quiet mornings. Coffee. Time with people you love. 

This experience changed my perspective on life, and maybe sharing it can help somebody else before it is too late. I’ll continue sharing stories, experiences, and conversations around mindset, adversity, gratitude, health, relationships, and what really matters in life. Sometimes the hardest moments teach us the most. Discover the limitless potential. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset App Podcast, where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment applications, healthy mindset course, meditation and goal setting technique for the athletes and workplace athletes. We're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Welcome back to another episode. And I mentioned in some of my social media posts that we're gonna learn through stories and teach through stories. So today I have a story for you. I really didn't plan on doing this story, and I don't like sharing too many stories about myself, but I thought it was important that I put this message out there to everybody. And uh not even that, I was told by even some of the uh one of the companies I work with here locally that it's important that I share this message, so I'm gonna do it. Um I I'm calling it the fight I never expected. And three months ago, I was invited to the New York Rangers uh hundredth anniversary um outing they had at Madison Square Garden, where we actually played, we're supposed to play in a game at Madison Square Garden. So the game was gonna be the alumni against the alumni. They had a lot of fans coming to it, which would have been a lot of fun. And um we were introduced. A lot of the 94 players were introduced uh the next night when they played the Boston Bruins. I was super excited. Uh, I was gonna have my better half Cheryl come and and uh as well as uh my kids. I was super excited. Well, Cheryl couldn't come, she had to watch our dog Puppins, and my kids were there, and uh it was gonna be a great experience, but it didn't quite work out uh the way I planned it. And it was uh really special to me just to be involved with the New York Rangers. Again, this is not a hockey story, and it's not a sports story at all, but I was very fortunate to be part of an amazing organization that's been around a hundred years, one of the original six, and I'm grateful that they even think about me and bringing me in. So um I had a like no idea that this was gonna that this was gonna happen at the time, uh, the way it did. So uh what happened was I was uh when I got into New York, I was not feeling so great. I thought maybe I had the cold or maybe it maybe the flu, and I I really wasn't sure. It was only a short trip, it was supposed to be a three-day trip. So at that time I'm thinking, okay, I'll I'll get through it. Well, that night I ended up having what is called the rigor. So I get to the hotel and I'm not feeling great. I told my kids I'm just gonna pass on going for dinner because I just don't feel that great. Then the next day we were supposed to play in that game at uh Madison Square Garden, which was on a Saturday. So I didn't think I was gonna be able to do that. So uh the way it turned out was we had that big snowstorm at the end of January, and they actually canceled the game because for emergency reasons, and they didn't have the trains or cabs or services going into New York City, so it was canceled. But uh they didn't cancel the um the next day with the the Boston Bruins um when they were in town and we were being introduced, so that that was not canceled. So what happened was I was actually uh just not feeling great. Even one of my former teammates, Stefan Mateau, said to me, My gosh, you look horrible. What's going on? I said, I don't know, maybe I caught a bug or food poisoning on the you know, before I got here, I'm really not sure what's going on, and I lost my appetite as well. So as I'm um I'm in New York and they cancel the game, and I'm in my room, I'm just really not not feeling well at all. And the next day, uh somehow I made it onto the ice. I was introduced, that was great. My kids were there, and I stayed for about two periods of the game, and I told my kids I have to go back to the uh to the hotel, and they were leaving the next day, and I was leaving the next day to go back to Charlotte. So now I go uh I go back to the hotel and I have the riggers again, so I'm shaking like a leaf. Just I've never had something like this, and I and I know I had a little bit of uh I felt I didn't have anything to take my, you know, make sure to see if I had a fever or not, but I I know I did. I was sweating, not feeling great, and not to get too graphic, but I did get sick and threw up, but I threw water up because I wasn't able to eat. Um made it to the airport the next uh day, uh got on the flight, and then I get picked up by Cheryl. Cheryl picks me up and she says, Oh my gosh, you look horrible. What's going on? I said, I feel absolutely terrible. I'm gonna go home and go to sleep. So I go home and um I'm I go right to bed and then I start shaking again. And Cheryl comes in the room and says, What is going on? I'm taking you to the hospital right now. I said, No, I'm not going. And this is a big part of what um I'm gonna share the story around. And I'm stubborn, and I and I've learned my lesson, and I and I started shaking like a leaf again, shaking, and she says, Oh my gosh, this is terrible. So, what happens is that um I sleep all day and I get up at like six o'clock. I think I got home at one o'clock. I slept to about six, got up, and then went back to sleep again at I don't know, six thirty at night, and start shaking again. So Cheryl comes in the room and she says, That's it, I'm gonna take you right now or call the ambulance. And even through the night, uh the same thing was going on. I was feeling terrible, looking terrible and shaking. And what did I do? Wasn't the smartest thing. I did nothing about it. I kept just figuring I have probably have the chills, I have the flu or something, but I'm gonna get over it. Well, as it turns out, the next day, I guess three strikes and you're out. She calls my doctor, and the doctor says, get to the hospital right away, which I go to the hospital that was close to me. Well, as I'm in the hospital, they're they're taking blood tests and they're doing different things, and three doctors walk in the room. So you never know that's good when all of a sudden you have three doctors that come into the room, and uh, there was some uh maybe a couple nurses, physicians, assistants, I'm not sure who it was, and they said, Um, we're gonna transport you ASAP by ambulance to the hospital, which is in uptown Charlotte, which is another 30 minutes away from where I was. And I said, Doc, is everything okay? And Cheryl just left. She was there, she was waiting on things, but she had to go home and let our dog out, then she was gonna come back. Well, I called her and I said, they're transporting me uptown. Uh so she says, What's going on? I said, I don't I don't know, I'm not sure. So within that blood test, they end up telling me I have sepsis and it's starting to spread throughout my body. It's uh it hit my spleen and it's starting to travel. And if anybody knows much about sepsis, it can kill you. So obviously, yes, you're probably saying, Why didn't you get to the hospital earlier? And I and I should have. There's no question about it. And uh, you know, the way it turned out is I'm just gonna fast forward the story, but I was in the hospital for a total of almost four weeks, and that was tough. Um, but the first uh week they kept putting me on antibiotics to fight the sepsis. But what was happening, it started spreading more. And then once I was in the other hospital, the infectious disease specialists came in and the uh they were great, Dr. Michaels and um Dr. Harley, and said, We're getting really worried about this because it's starting to spread, and your white blood cells aren't where they should be, and so forth and so on, and we're really gonna monitor this. We're starting to get really, really concerned about this. Well, about the next day, somebody else comes into the room and tells me that uh it has traveled towards my heart, and it's they can see through um through the CAT scans and through some of the other tests that I was doing, they could see where it is, and it's they're not sure, they weren't exactly sure how I got this, but they figured out it was an upper respiratory infection, and they said they have to do something immediately as it's traveling towards your heart because that could definitely kill you. So I'm getting a little nervous, and they could see it touch one of my valves, my mitro valve. So it hit my metro valve, and they had to obviously do something about it, so they told me they're gonna do open heart surgery. And the reason I'm telling the story was I wasn't gonna tell it. Um, thank God I'm here today to talk about it, but I wasn't gonna tell it, but I think we should learn from this, and I'm gonna share the mindset, the physical part, and some of the other parts of uh of what I believe in. And I'm so fortunate to have uh a partner in my life. Uh, you know, I don't know why I called her a partner, but uh my better half is is one in a million, and if it wasn't for her, I would not be here today. They told me that. There was no way I would have made it. But they ended up operating on me, doing open heart surgery. And I asked the doc, this Dr. T. Uh I I doctor, I love this guy, he was just amazing. Uh, he told me uh sometimes we can go through the side where the ribs are, but this time we have to go right up the middle because he's afraid there could be other stuff going on, which scared me. And as a mindset coach, and you know, even being a former professional athlete, they say, Oh, we're mentally tough. I was never so scared in all my life. Um, I was like, I had anxiety, I was like, wow, wait a sec. And I really thought that I wasn't gonna wake up and I wasn't ever gonna see my parents again, I wasn't gonna see uh Cheryl again, I wasn't ever gonna see my kids again. And uh I had a real hard time with it. I said, wait a sec. This is this is crazy, and I didn't want to do too much research on it because that would have scared me. All of a sudden, you start doing chat GPT and and looking up sepsis and what it could do. I I had a pretty good idea just by talking to the nurses and the doctors in a lot of the cases of uh one nurse told me a little bit too much uh that I didn't really want to know. But but what it could do. You could lose your limbs, you could uh you could die, and a lot of people don't survive it, depending on when when they catch it. And if this in my case, they didn't catch we could have caught it earlier if I wouldn't have been so bullheaded and I went to the hospital, but um it had it traveled, it traveled up to uh to where I needed um a new valve. And I thought I was never gonna see Cheryl again. It was so sad, I was so like empty inside, like, and that's negativity, somebody might say. But when you're really in that moment, how do you deal with that mindset of okay, uh, you're gonna be okay? I it it wasn't working for me. I was trying to do meditations, which I'm really big into meditations, and I was doing box breathing. I tried everything. In fact, it got worse because I was supposed to have the surgery like the following day, but they came in at midnight and I was all prepared for it. It's like preparing for a game. Uh, you're preparing like you are as an athlete, or you're or you work in corporate America and you're preparing for maybe uh, you know, a big meeting that you're gonna have, or or something, uh merger and acquisition, or something's gonna happen with your company, or it could be anything, and you're all prepared. They tell you last minute that I'm sorry, we are not gonna operate on you um tomorrow. We're gonna have we're gonna wait uh another day for for whatever reason. So that just I couldn't even believe that. So mentally, that just drained me because I was all prepared. I said, okay, I gotta get up, they're gonna bring me down at five in the morning. Now this is midnight, and it was really uh, I don't think I could use the word torture, but it was I felt it was torturous to me. It was it was awful. Um and you start becoming more grateful of things in life at that point, like you're thinking, oh my gosh, and you know, what if I don't, you know, after this surgery, I don't wake up and I don't see Cheryl, and uh I don't ever get to see my kids again. And the the one thing I did learn, and my biggest takeaway, someone asked me, what was your biggest takeaway on all of this? And it was the people that were calling me. I don't have enough time right now to mention the messages and the outreach and the family and friends, my mother, uh, my father, my brother, my sister, uh, my my uncle, I mean, Cheryl, every minute, sacrificing her whole life to make sure that I was gonna get through this. It was like being on a team, you know, and Marc Messier said it best. I had great support from him and other teammates, Adam Graves, Glenn Healy. I'd I'm I can't even say it. We don't have enough time to go through it all. But uh, Marc Messier says you you could never win alone. You can never win a championship alone, you can never win a Stanley Cup. He's won six of them. Uh he's one of my heroes in life. I always tell him that when I'm with him. I just said that to him in New York, that you've always been my hero in life. And he's just such a great person. And that to me is the part of like I call it community. Doesn't mean they're in your backyard community, but community of friends, community of people that that really care. Uh, my friend Brian here, um uh Marty. Marty was my coach. I grew up with Marty Quarters in Michigan. He called me every day, messaged me every day, uh, making sure that I was okay. And Marty and I don't talk every day now. I mean, we live in two opposite parts of the country. And it was just so nice to have a team of real good people. Of course, my family, like I mentioned it, not to be redundant, but my kids were they were so worried and messaging me. And uh, my biggest fear was not being around because it, you know, the sepsis was was traveling, and my biggest fear was how they would feel or how Cheryl would feel leaving the hospital and me not waking up. And you start coming up with all of these thoughts, and somebody said, Well, you're a former professional athlete, you could handle this. And I said, You know what? It's not as easy as just saying it. When they used someone said to me, and I don't even like the word they use, uh using the word dog, but it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight. And the dog, somebody said, a friend of mine uh uh grew up on a farm in Canada, former hockey player, and you know what? To me, it was nothing to do with this at this point. So I just want you know, others, you know, to understand that if you're going through it or the physical part of it is tough because you feel terrible. You can you can't even keep your eyes open. You're you're you're lethargic, you're you're exhausted, you're you have nothing left, you don't have any energy, you don't have nothing, you can't even text people. People were texting you, you don't have the energy to do it. You want to sleep, you feel terrible, and physically, you're physically drained. You feel you know, uh especially um when you have sepsis or different things going through your body, you have nothing left. It it's really hard to explain. Well, this was uh yesterday was the anniversary, and this is gonna be out on uh Thursday here, and the anniversary was three months will be um May 17th. So that's my my anniversary with with this, and uh from the bottom of my heart, I can't even thank like Dr. T and the nurses and um you know Dr. Michaels, Dr. Harley, and everybody that helped because it took a team of people to to help me, and I would not be here without those people, and especially Cheryl, because she was here every minute, and her whole life revolved around that. She put her business on you know on hold. And uh, you know, one thing I feel I feel guilty because she was in corporate America for so many years, and she wanted to retire uh from corporate America, not retire from life. She's a dietitian, has a a great practice. Um, but she wanted to get away from the stress. Well, I definitely stressed her out with this one. I definitely uh put the uh stress on her. I mean, I I told her I owe her my life, and and the doctors did tell me um, you know, you were two days away from having it be really bad, and if that sepsis would have grown, it may have not. This this may not have worked out too well. And I I I want to bring this up too. So the the procrastination part is the part which for me I'm I'm mad at myself. Uh just because I procrastinated, I didn't I didn't go to the the hospital when I was supposed to. And uh, and we even take shortcuts. We try to take shortcuts in life. And the one thing that I tried to do was I asked the doc, uh, Dr. T, what if I don't, what if I don't get my, you know, what if you don't do the open heart surgery? What what happens? And at that time, actually a couple days, they could see it, that it was right on on that's why I needed my mitral valve replaced, because they could see it, I guess, in the CAT scan, or they they saw it, they knew where it where it was traveling to. And he says, You'll be dead in uh directly, right? He goes, You will not be here in nine months because I had flew it around um my heart area, and there was just other things happening at the same time that I would not have been around. Um, and that was tough. That was a tough journey. So, what I want to relay the message to if anybody um has something going on, and uh I had a friend he told me that he's not he's putting off his colonoscopy. And I said, wait a sec, you need your colonoscopy. And I'm not a doctor here, but people know you you need to be checked out, you need your physicals. You know, I have a health, I call it healthy mindset, and the coach me wasn't too healthy, wasn't thinking straight. And I'm coming out to tell you, you need to get checked. We're not invincible, we're really not, and we think we are. Oh, nothing could happen to us. I I could not wait to see my kids. Uh, did I miss the game? Yeah, that would have been fine to play in a game, it's not the biggest deal. And they introduced me, and I tell everybody, you know what? I was that kid that grew up in Detroit, uh, and my dream was to play one game in the NHL. Um like sometimes I had to pinch myself. What a you know, what was I doing there? And that's great, that like, but your life is your lifestyle, and you have to manage that. And uh I went all the way to New York thinking that okay, this is gonna be something special, and it and it um it was, I'm so fortunate, but at the same time, it uh you know, my life didn't know at the time that my life was on the line because I obviously had sepsis uh probably a day or two in New York, and then coming home, that was probably another couple days that that I that I wasted. So um there's so many people that I just want to thank, and I try to do it earlier. And one thing you could tell with this, I did not script this podcast. I usually script all my podcasts. I look at it, I say, this is what we're gonna talk about. I I don't think I had to do this one because I lived it. And the way things are going now, now fast forward a little bit. I spent the four weeks in the hospital, just about four weeks. Then when you're home, you can't do much. I had I had a walker because you know they open your chest. They literally, and then they surgeons can tell you, then they pretty much tie it back together. You can't lean on a bed, you can't do anything. So I slept pretty much in a chair, and I was able to walk like for five minutes at a time around my house. So that was the uh that was going into the second month, and then I finally was able to go outside and walk a little bit, and I felt Um I felt I don't know what a 90-year-old feels, but I felt like I was 90 years old. I felt like I had I could I I struggled. Well, fast forward now I'm actually uh and I had someone come to the house because you had to get what is called like there's the the pick line and then they have to I still had to be on antibiotics another six weeks and had to get that taken care of uh as well. But then I had you know a nurse come to the house, and then the third month now I've been going to cardiac rehab, I'm doing the treadmill, I'm doing the bike, I'm doing the elliptical, and I can't do my upper body for a little bit, but I feel uh I feel great. But I just hope um that I can get this message out to you that you have that mindset of of doing something right away without procrastinating. Uh, and also if you aren't feeling good, I'm fortunate because I I'm with a dietitian, but you properly fuel your body, you you eat well. The only uh one of the negative things I had is I was anemic from from all of this. And um, by being anemic, I don't eat a lot of red meat. I was able to once a week, uh, my dietitian here, Cheryl, says, okay, you're gonna have uh you we're gonna have steak or you can have a burger. And I generally eat really clean and eat well, but uh, you know, that was the the one thing I did is is that. But I but I knew I had to take care of it because if I said, Oh, I'm anemic, it's no big deal. What's gonna happen? It's gonna, it's things are gonna get worse. So um I hope I'm hitting uh home here. Uh initially I didn't put anything in Facebook. I wasn't publicly gonna talk about this, but after one of my clients said, you know, why don't you share your story? And I did, and uh, I can't thank the people enough again without repeating everybody's name. I can't thank everybody for the support. And it's so important that either you you might have one person in your life that could help, but it's always good to have somebody just to bounce things off of. Sometimes it's not about having 10 friends, it's about having one really good friend or two really good friends, but it's not always about having just an abundance of people. And the reason I'm saying that because you really learn quick. One thing I learned is you could you really learn who cares about you probably a little bit more or who's reaching out, who's thinking of you, and you do, and people could say, well, that could be a sensitive topic because people are busy. And I understand that, but I really knew who my friends were in the world, and I really knew you know the people that care about me. And I, you know, I know uh my friend Eddie Olchuk, he's been through a lot with cancer, and he's he was, I mean, in between the Kentucky Derby, just before they're ready to go off, he's messaging me, and it's it's good because we need that support. We really need a support team around us. And I again I've sound I've said this probably eight times during this podcast. I can't thank everybody, and I can't thank Cheryl. Uh, she saved my life. So I wanted to get this out. Um, you know, that's what I learned through this experience. It's just not gratitude um in life. Because someone asked me, what are you grateful for? Yeah, I'm grateful for you know, for uh, you know, I'm grateful for you know people I'm around, I'm grateful for a lot of things. But then when you really have that gratitude for people, I think that's important too. And and and that's what it's come down to uh for for me. So uh again, unscripted here. This is something that I want to get out. And uh if anybody is suffering from anything, please go see somebody ASAP.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast with your host, Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcast. That helps others find the show, and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program, or to get in touch with Mike, please visit our website, Healthymindsetapp.com. Thanks again for listening. And we hope you'll join us again in the next episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Until then, be well.