90 - David Butters: It’s Like Putting Five Bucks in the Tank

Join nurse and Delaware and Spokane, Washington native Honored Guest David Butters as he talks about moving around a lot (and visiting 46 countries and counting), being open-minded, going to college with his “head screwed on right,” inspirational Navy nurses, getting turned around after getting kicked out of his house, the PICU being the Navy SEALs of nursing, his philosophy of guardrails, and more!

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Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Feeding Our Young podcast. I am your host, Eric Miller. If you're wondering why my voice is so incredibly masculine, it's because I am overcompensating for the fact that I've got an incredible man in studio today. I already asked his permission to share this, but I'm like, dude, I'm just telling you all right now. I'm balancing myself out. I'm that male postpartum nurse who've already well established that. I've got a man who just reeks charisma and machismo through the screen. So I'm really excited to have him in studio today. The one, the only, the myth, man, the legend, David Butters. How the heck are you, David? Hello. I'm doing great. How are you? We're gonna do the whole episode like this. So I have questions for you. man, no, I'm doing great. Glad to have you here. So glad you came aboard. I'm gonna start with one of our absolute traditional questions. Your last name's Butters. You got an affinity for South Park? Anything like that? yeah, you know, and we didn't talk about this, but there is another famous movie character that is often overlooked. I think because the character Butters is so monumental, but Chris Rock plays Detective Butters in Lethal Weapon. And great character, dates Danny Glover's daughter, nobody ever brings it up. Wow, excellent reference. this is it. Okay, the whole first episode's gonna be about entertainment and the second episode will actually be about nursing. This'll be great. No, all right David, so let's just hit up with some traditional questions. Let's lead off with that very first one which is what are three words you would use to describe nursing school that we'll talk about later? Yeah, in order, frustrating, humbling, and then inspiring. Outstanding. That's my fourth word for that. Outstanding. There we are. Okay, so. No, with that, the secondary of our standard opening questions, and I lobbed this to him right before we started recording. so it might have caused a little bit of a delay. What are your three favorite songs in life right now? Yeah, after a little bit of thought, I think I'm have to go with a little bit of a shot in the dark. The first one, a band called Black Flag, song called Fix Me. And I'm actually really excited. I'm gonna go to Black Flag in Seattle on the 6th of January, and I've never seen them before. It's gonna be monumental in my life. And then... Oui. Pennywise is another sort of punk band. They have a song called Bro Hymn and it's about suicide awareness and I recommend that song to anybody on this podcast. The other two songs not so much but Pennywise, Bro Hymn absolutely fantastic. It's about brotherhood and suicide awareness and it's great. And then the last one I think I have to do Liquid Swords by the Genius GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan. ho, ho, ho, ho, nice drop. I love it. We were discussing beforehand too. says, man, I swear, it comes out. I'm gonna do my best not to. I'm like, by this point, we've had a couple of explicit episodes. Who cares? So we'll see what happens. This is, we're navigating new waters. Let's see if any F-bombs squeak out. Who knows? So let's just jump into it, David. You have a very intriguing story on how you got into nursing. If you don't mind opening up that for us and letting us know, like, where did you attend all that? Yeah, so I went to WSU but it was kind of a long road to get there and I think, mean, it might be jumping around a little bit but I think it's best to start off with where I was born and then kind of quickly zip over there because I was born in Delaware and never been back there, which I really need to go. been, you know, I've vacationed to quite a bit of places and I still haven't been to the East Coast yet but. My parents moved quite a bit throughout our growing up lives and so when I moved to Spokane I started in ninth grade and it was my eighth school and so We sort of just jumped around and never really Grew our roots in any place But when so when people asked me where I'm from I just say Spokane because that's that's kind of where I was the longest even though it was just through high school, but Starting from from here. I have always had an affinity for WSU and I ended up joining the military and I did some distance learning. I got my first degree from University of Maryland in psychology. Came back home after the military and I did about five quarters at Eastern to convert that to a Washington State degree. And then I was lucky enough to get in at WSU at the Riverfront campus. And I got my, my bachelor's in nursing from there in 2021. Go Cougs! Yeah. from Delaware, Moved every so often. You're talking about kind of that's a family influence, family situation. Why'd you move? Military Brad? that where we're going straight stereotypical here? Yeah, my dad's it was mainly my dad working. He then actually dropped out of medical school, but always stayed sort of in the medical business. So his first big job was for DuPont. And then following on from that from Kodak and they did x-ray films and then moved on from there into sort of I think tissues would be the best way to put it. He did some things with bone marrow transplant coordination and then worked his way all way up to what brought us to Spokane was before Vitalant bought it there was the Inland Northwest Blood Center and my dad was the executive director of that coordinating all the blood and tissue like harvesting the tissues and then coordinating with the transplant teams and then the recipients and sort of doing all of that. And so I think it was just kind of him moving through the corporate ladder, but we just bounced around into different things. And that's what brought us all the way here. So you moved a lot. You went a lot of places. Have you traveled outside the country at all during all that traveling? Yeah, so I had the fortune of after a pretty horrible de-station and a bunch of deployments, I was kind of offered my pick of the litter and... on the phone with the guy with my detailer I sort of thought well this guy is a sucker so I named off five places I said Spain, Italy, Germany, know Sicily and Greece or something like that and the guy offered me Italy so my wife and I packed up and we moved and I worked at a hospital in Italy for four years while we were there I yeah it was pretty pretty rough I gotta say HAHAHAHA But we ended up seeing about 20 countries while we were there and then that put the bug of travel in us. And we've tried as best we can to leave the country twice a year every year since then. And I was doing a little about you board the other day and decided to count up all the places we've been in. It's 46 countries we've been to so far. That's insane. And based on something you and I talked about, you have a higher number than that when it comes to your love of music. Is that correct? HAHAHAHA A lot of people always ask how we afford to do all of it and it's just where all of our money goes. I drive a 2010 hybrid escape that I bought for cash eight years ago and I don't have a car payment. Yeah, and it's working just fine. It still gets 27 miles a gallon and it takes me to all of our concerts. My wife and I did the little budget and we went to 56 shows last year. I'm not sure where we are this year because the year's not over yet. count it up and I bet we got pretty close to that. my goodness, that is absolutely outstanding. So you guys really just, it sounds like she's very much a kindred spirit as far as the like, let's just go, let's have some fun, let's go see this, let's go hear that. 100%. Yeah, and it was all across the gamut. I mean, we went to country shows, we went to Taylor Swift, we went to the world's largest punk music festival, we went to rap shows, we went to electronic music, we sort of went to country, if I didn't say that already, but we went to literally everything. Would you consider yourself then very open-minded? It sounds like you're a very open-minded individual, and if so, how does that play a part in your little nursing career here? Yeah, I mean, I think I aspire to be open-minded at least, and I think that... travel is a big part of that. I think that just politically and spiritually and everything, think travel is important. And the more people you meet, the more ideas you're exposed to. it sort of gives you the more good ideas that you get from all around the world. It gives you a little bit of a resistance to bad ideas, I think. And so when you meet different people of different cultures and different behaviors and all that stuff, it kind of builds an acceptance in you and then a tolerance. and kind of helps you. I I think that travel, I'm jumping around here, but I think that travel is one of the things that made me a good nurse. know, like having experienced all sorts of different people and appreciated all sorts of different cultures and everything already prior to being a nurse. I sort of had that already in my toolbox and allowed me to care better for people that might not be exactly the same as me. That's awesome. And I mean, you have your built-in best friend with your wife of how many years? 15 years this year, yeah, we celebrated our 15th anniversary this year. Congrats, that's no small feat, especially in this day and age. Yeah. Any children at all? Talk to us about your family or your aspiring family and you can go both directions with that. Anyone that you are producing or have produced and family that's, you know, north of you in the generational count. Yeah, so we are our family as of now is is three cats and two dogs and then we have a sister-in-law living with us with another cat so actually up to four but We are expecting our first child coming up here in in March and we're very excited Yeah, March 9th technically And this baby's gonna be born into a traveling family. You're prepared, right? That's the plan. Yeah, and in sharing March 9th, the birthday with the early 2000s rapper Chingy. So, it's the only person on the list that I recognized. Well, and I'm sure maybe you'll have a way of screwing that up for you, just absolutely doing what they want to do and you'll have to come up with a... Hopefully you've got some other lists around that date just so you're prepared, Yeah. So, let's talk about nursing. think this thing is supposed to be about nursing, so we'll just pull right into that there. So nursing school, kind of that interesting progression there as far as you described. What did you love most about nursing school? mean, just talk to us about your experience at Wazoo, about Eastern, all of that. so I really enjoyed going to Eastern, so I have this interesting situation where I went to a bunch of schools and then have... Degrees from schools I've never been to and I went to schools and don't have degrees from them. So I'm trying to collect all of them around here. So I went to my first school, University of Maryland. They call it UMUC. It's the University of Maryland University College, which has always sort of reminded me of the American Dodgeball Association of America. It's sort of a redundant name. But they have... distance learning campuses, which was pretty cool. So when I was stationed overseas, they had actual University of Maryland. professors come and teach classes. So my degree is actually from the University of Maryland, so go Terrapins and all that stuff. But I've never been there. So I've never been to the campus. I've never seen what it looks like. It's just sort of interesting. then moving back here, moving home, I went to Eastern. I got into a couple of schools and then we just realized that it wasn't sort of financially feasible to move all around again after coming back from 10 years of the military. I got an apartment in Liberty Lake and they had a straight shot commuter bus from the park and ride there that went all the way to Cheney and I went to Eastern and I sort of fell in love with the school pretty quick. It's a very It's a very school ish sort of school if that makes sense, know cobblestone walkways brick buildings people everywhere They really get you really get the the college experience. And so I very much enjoyed my time there I met some people and that was my first sort of realization that I was getting old. I went there when I was 30 and there was a language I didn't understand and there was a fashion I didn't understand and it sort of took me a minute to figure out where I fit in. I really enjoyed my time there. Yeah, that's awesome. That's fantastic. I mean, I'm listening to you and I'm going, okay, as much as we're different in many ways, going back and getting my degree, you know, at 30 years old, it was kind of, you know, very similar, even though it was community college. So, you know, we had quite a wide swath of experiences and life backgrounds, et cetera, et cetera. But it still was just like, okay, I've kind of piddled around and the other stuff I've done prior to this, now it's time to get serious and to become an adult, I guess. Yeah, and you're the only one there that feels that way. Everybody else is partying and all that. I thought it was great that I had some... I had some Greek house people approach me and try to get me to sign up to do like Russian all that stuff. I'm 30 years old man. And somebody, one of them kind of got all macho with me and said like, are you, are you not man enough for it or something like that? And I was like, what are you talking about? He goes, the hazing or this or that. So I did 10 years in the military, bro. Like whatever you got in store. Like I could, I'll teach you lessons. And they kind of left me alone after that. I got stories that can scare you right out of Greek life. Stop. my gosh. That's hilarious. Well then, so why nursing? Was it? on right, which was nice. Yes, and that's important thing. mean, you know what mean? You were able to, you're already married, you know what I mean? Like you've lived a lot of life at that point. And just saying, no, I'm here to focus on this at this time. So why nursing? Was it always nursing? Did you look at other programs? Like what inspired you, David Butters, to become David Butters RN? so the quick answer is I have lot of mentors in the Navy that were nurses that sort of inspired me to start looking at a nursing. I really didn't have much of an idea of what nurses did. And that was mainly because of the nurses in the Navy. They do so many things. It was so impressive to me that we had nurses that were the commanders of entire units and we had nurses that, you sort of did like a medical assistant job, know, so everywhere from entry level all the way to command level positions were all filled by nurses. They did patient care, we had nurse practitioners doing mid-level provider jobs that worked directly with PAs and providers themselves. we had them, you know, I don't know. There was so many specialties and so many bases covered by nurses. It just was, it was so inspiring. to me that there was pretty much anything you wanted to do, like nurses did it. there was one point where we kind of did a procedure and there was no physicians in the room. And it was just a nurse practitioner, a PA, a couple of us enlisted corpsmen. And I realized that But it was like at that moment in that room, realized how wide the scale of nursing can be. And that sort of led me towards nurse practitioner. And that, that. back then was sort of a dream. I didn't really know what even a nurse practitioner was or where it came from. And then I sort of started leading towards PAs. So what I did in the Navy, was a Navy corpsman. And so for the majority of my career, did combat medicine for the Marine Corps, but for a little bit of it, I worked at a hospital and did family practice care. But after the Vietnam War, Navy corpsmen came back with all of this incredible experience and no license. to do anything. And so the position of physician's assistant was actually created for them. They had these quick licensure programs, I forget how long they were, I think something like six months, and they'd go through these quick licensure programs to be able to be a physician's assistant. Obviously over the last 50 years, that's changed a lot. Now they have degree requirements and it's a master's program and they have all those things, but Originally, I was pointed towards physicians assisted just because of the cultural ties to the job that I did in the military until I met nurse practitioners and I met DNPs and I saw them have an impact on patients lives and I saw them have an impact on military culture and military medicine and that sort of is what planted that little seed in me to look into nursing and then started doing my University of Maryland classes to get prerequisites done. you that's incredible. exactly. And I think a lot of it for me is luck, know, to back up a little bit too. You we moved around a lot, but then my dad got sick and my parents split up and we had kind of a rough go after that and I ended up kind of getting kicked out of my house and I lived on my own for quite a while and I was working and kind of... I don't know if they'll hear this, I think that I'm sure he's okay that I mention this, but in the nursing community, know, Teresa Bowden is sort of a celebrity, but. Her husband Chuck was my track coach and Chuck Bowden is sort of the reason why I graduated high school. He kept me running track. He kept me doing sports. And I think that was sort of in proxy to keep me going to school. And even though I was living on my own, living out of my car, you know, getting in trouble, Chuck kind of kept me going. I ended up graduating and then he supported my decision to join the military. And it was weird. I was doing kind of like an anti- authoritarian thing, know, growing up and being undisciplined and all that. And then I joined the military, which seemed, you know, counterproductive to my to my current views in life. But It really shaped me up. I mean, I blame a lot of my success on the military and sort of pointing me in a direction and mainly giving me the experiences to meet all these people and be influenced by them. I've had so many mentors and so many people, just impressive, impressive people in the military that I wouldn't have met if I didn't sort of follow this path. And then, wow, I can't believe I haven't mentioned this yet, but the GI Bill was immensely helpful for me, you know, being able to finish school and not be riddled with debt. I can't imagine having to do it all on my own, especially being in my 30s and having a home and having all of that stuff, like it would have been a massive, massive struggle. I mean it was anyways, jeez nursing school is brutal, but having to, you know, manage a job on the side and all that stuff, the GI goal is immensely helpful. It's a- it's a whole- there's a whole pie here, yeah. honored guest to talk about that and how important it has been an instrumental in your career and the other gentleman's career. It's just, it's grateful for the government in that regards as far as like being able to provide an opportunity for people who, like you said, like you're already living life, like you've already got these bills, you've already got all that stuff. to give you the opportunity to just open that door to what it is you want to accomplish. I think that's amazing. Yeah, I'm not going to say that it would have been impossible for me to do it, but being already of age and with the house and the bills, like we already said, it would have been much, much more difficult. I mean, I still did work. My wife and I both got jobs at actually at a bar in the valley. This might not be a surprise to some people listening, but yeah. And then during nursing school, I bought the bar. So and I still own it so quick plug Anybody whoo, you know what? I'm going to okay. Okay full disclosure I'm gonna make a feeding our young podcast discount and if anybody comes in and mentions the podcast we'll have we'll have a discount there already is a nurse nursing students and nurses and all that you get a 20 % off discount on Monday forever for always Veterans too, but I'm gonna make I'm gonna make a feeding our young podcast Discount and we're going to put that in that's going to happen Our first discount! Woohoo! Now it would help to know though where this, you said Spokane Valley, which bar is it? Yeah, absolutely. So it's called Steady Flow Growler House. It's in the valley just off of Sullivan. It's for any. Yeah. fly on in. It's worth it. Incredible, incredible drink, incredible food, incredible culture. Just come and mention Feeding Our Young. Get your discount. It probably won't cover the cost of the plane tickets, but it's okay. It's still worth it. Outstanding. yeah, anyone local, anyone nearby, come visit his bar. What was the name of that bar again for everybody? Yeah, Steady Flow Growler House, Spokane Valley, right up Sullivan I can't wait that's gonna be a date spot for my wife and I that's how that's happening. Alright so with that I do the audience a disservice if we didn't talk about what the heck are you doing now? Are you a nurse practitioner? No, yeah. So there's a little, little hiccup in that story. So I had the, ever since I got into medicine, I sort of have had the unfortunate side effect of just loving everything I've done, which, you know, clinicals was a doozy for me, just seeing something new every day, always loving it. But, I kind of just bounced around until I got the PICU and then that became my fixation. I absolutely love everything about it. And I was on kind of a path. I got out of nursing school. I got my first job on 6-South which for the uninitiated at secret heart is the acute care cardiac floor that is transplant capable. So we got to do heart transplants and we got to do vads and we got to do all kinds of really, really sick ICU step down sort of care. And it was, during COVID and everything, was a meat grinder of bedside nursing, you know. And I learned a lot, and really great people, really great mentors, all of that. I actually started a master's program in nurse education there and was basically trying to build a marketable resume to get back to the PICU. then, Unfortunately for them, but very fortunately for me, they were sort of a staffing crisis. And so I snuck in a little bit early. Yeah. So I, yeah. And, after about a year and a half on that, cardiac floor, I dropped my, I think fourth application to the PICU and, that one, that one got me an interview. And so I finally got in there and I've spent, the rest of my time since then. just trying to basically get good at that job. You know, I finished my orientation and then, did the way there's training that you have to do for the whole first year. And, I just recently got heart trained and I'm still working on scheduling some orientation shifts for that. And got CRT trained, just get, you know, there's so many devices and there's so many therapies and treatments that we can do and they all have extra certifications. I've just been working on getting all those done and Now applied for my certification. So I'll be doing my CCRN pediatric certification here coming up in the spring. Just checking all the boxes. I- you equated it to something military related before we started recording. What was that? Yeah, so I make this joke and it's sort of like the Navy SEALs of nursing. I mean, by no means am I saying that we're Navy SEALs. But if you think about the military and everything, the PICU kind of is like the top tier as far as... barriers to entry and like specialized skills and all of that. It really is pretty up there, I think, I'm, which is why I'm so immensely proud to be a part of it and working so hard to be good at it. But the adult ICU has a couple things, you know, actually they have quite a few things that we don't do in the pediatric population. You know, they do bloompoms and impellas and all kinds of cool stuff, but to take critical care, you know, acutely sick, medicine, but then also have to apply that to the pediatric population, the neonatal and pediatric population, you know, all the way from injury at birth to your 18th birthday, and then having that level of medicine be applied to that widely range and specific population is just, it's, it's, it's a lot. And that's also what drives me towards it. It's challenging and it's interesting. And it really is just, The best job I've ever had. Yeah, amazing. Hats off to you, man, because, whew, that is not for me and it's not for everybody. And that's the thing, we need people who love that and it sounds like you're very passionate about it. Yeah, I like to describe it. This is a little analogy that I came up with, you know, working at the bar, people say, know, like, how do you do that? And so I think the PICU is, it's like, it's like a fuel meter on your car. so anytime something bad happens, you know, and it does, you know, not everything is a positive outcome, unfortunately, but anytime something really stressful digs at you, you know, it burns a little bit of fuel, but Every time you do some good and every time you help the kid and every time you make the world a little bit of a better place, it's like topping off. It's like putting five bucks in the tank. And that happens so often. I mean, the tank's always full, brother. You know, that's what I like to say. So, mean, bad stuff happens, but I think overwhelmingly the good outweighs the bad. And that's what kind of keeps us going. Mm, I love that analogy. Just putting five bucks in the tank. I think right there you just came up with your own title episode, or episode title, yeah, congratulations. My job's easy, I just listen to you, that's what I gotta do. So you talk about having excellent mentors back on 6-South et cetera, et cetera, and how that helps. What would you like to talk about as far as that goes? Because my understanding is now you kind of precept as well, having been in the PICU. quote unquote, as long as you have. talk to us about precepting and your philosophy of guardrails. Yeah, so I kind of came up with this. I'm sure somebody else has also, but I've sort of realized, you know, in the military and things like that, we've had bad processes and good processes. And I've sort of articulated that into this idea that, you know, we are sort of just amalgamations of all the people that have influenced us over time. And that's as people, as nurses, as adults, you know, We just, we, we experience all these things throughout our lives and then we, pick through the little bits that we like and we put them together to be, you know, who we want to be as people and as nurses and all of that. so, realizing that everybody is going to have a positive and probably also negative experience with precepting and learning and teaching and all of that stuff. You know, I've, I've tried to come up with the most positive way to influence people in sort of an outcome driven. in outcome driven way. So I think about where I want, I would want that person to be. And it's a coworker, you know, like, like we, we take these people coming in, that have worked so hard to get into nursing school, then through nursing school. And just as a practical student, for example, or, even a new orienty, a lot of people see precepting as, as or being a preceptor as being a barrier to entry. Like it's their job to keep people out. And then whoever makes it through is somehow worthy of being there or something. And to me, I don't think that that creates positive environments for people to thrive. If you want to have the most capable coworkers around you, then you want them to have a thriving educational experience. so, thinking about where you want them to be building people into being good is a much better scenario than just demolishing everyone that tries to come towards you. And that's, I think that's so, you know, it's the whole, it's the whole eating your young idea. it just made no sense to me. Like. None of us are immortal. None of us are going to sit in a job, you know, for a thousand years. We have to be replaced. And don't you want the people to to replace you, to be the most capable, experienced, healthy people possible? So if that's what we want, then why don't we build them? Why don't we feed them with information and create the best possible coworkers that we can who then want to work with you when they're done. And so I've, I sort of, and all of this, like I said, all of, none of this is my idea. This is just an amalgamation of ideas that I got from other people. And I won't mention their names, but they know who they are. I had, I had some preceptors that, that were really hard on me and it's what I needed. You know, it worked very, very well for me because coming out of the military, I had a lot of misplaced confidence and I needed someone to sort of, shape me up and it worked very, very well for me. And. you know, lot of the, a lot of the mentors and preceptors that I had like are the types of people. And I mean, this is a compliment to them that I would not have been friends with in high school, different colored gel pens on different colored notebook papers on different colored note cards. You know, like I was that kind of person, but I had influence from those people as an adult. And I, picked little bits from them and all of that made me a better person. And then they sort of created this environment that I was allowed to flourish in. And it gave me this idea that I like to call the guardrails where being a preceptor should be like a safety net. know, in, your medication guidelines, you know, programming something into the pump. It's called your guard rails. It gives you an area to work within. gives you a bottom limit and an upper limit. And then you can use your nurse direction to sort of move around inside of those guard rails. And I took that idea in teaching. And I think that allowing a student or a preceptor or an orientee room to move, and then you being their guard rails of safety allows them to do what practicum should be, transitioning to practice. They should be converting from a student into a nurse, and they need to be able to have the room to move in order to have that growth and to make those changes in their life. If they only have to follow this rigid algorithm of how they should behave all the time, then they're never gonna figure out what works for them, but providing them an environment where they can sort of bumble around. I'm not saying make mistakes, you know, but kind of run into the wall every now and then. Let's them figure out what works for them and what doesn't. And then you are always there to sort of pick them up and be their safety guardrails and rant over. But it's a good rant. That's not a rant. That's a you know what I mean? I may do a call it a rant a soapbox man You almost make me want to go to the PICU just to come under your tutelage, but no No what you say is extremely important, and you're right That's the whole crux of this whole thing that you know trying to stop eating our young you know and I love that you also brought up the fact that for you This method whatever that method was worked for you. Whereas it may not work for the next nurse or the southern nurse and trying to, I think as being a preceptor, trying to figure out how, that's one of the first questions I ask my new hires, practicum students, et cetera, is how do you learn best? Help me to help, help me to help you, help me to help you. So man, absolutely amazing. I hate, I hate ending this in any way, shape, or form. I want more time with you, but as you and I have talked about, I get to go to the dentist soon. So. Because of that, we're going to bring this to a close here. We had some technical difficulties in the middle. Some of y'all may not even be able to tell the difference between the audio recording. But man, David and I got to just stare into each other's eyes while we waited for the last percent of his first half of this episode to upload. It was really dumb. That being said, it all uploaded. It all sounds good. The final product, hopefully you didn't even tell until I just mentioned it. David, you talked about three words that you use to describe nursing school and in that I think lies in a discussion of challenge too. So, enlighten us, brother. Yeah. So I believe I said frustrating, humbling, inspiring. And, and, and I mentioned it specifically in that order because that's how it happened. so leaving, leaving the military, you know, I had, I had the realization far later than I would have liked that. A lot of people don't choose their jobs in the military. I specifically chose exactly the job that I did. I went into the Marine Corps office and I told her I wanted to be a medic. Lo and behold, there is not medicine in the Marine Corps. And then Staff Sergeant Foster, I still remember that guy's name, grabbed me by the ear and drug me into the Navy office and told them exactly what I needed to do. so, yeah, not a lot of people know this, but the Marine Corps is actually a department of the Navy. The Navy handles a lot of stuff for them, for example, logistics and medicine. So the Marine Corps doesn't have ships. So they ride on Navy ships. Marine actually stands for my ass rides in Navy equipment, just in case anybody was wondering. So, or muscles are required, intelligence, not essential. That too. they, with that, they don't have medicine. And so the Navy, you join the Navy, go to the school called Corps School. You become a member of the medical Corps. which gives you basic apprentice level hospital knowledge. And then from there, you have a choice to go either blue or green. So you go blue, go to the hospital, you go to a ship, or you have a choice to go greenside, which is what I did. And then you go to the Marine Corps and I graduated from a school called FMSS. It's now called FMTB Field Medical Training Battalion. And then you show up to a unit. And so I went to an infantry unit. Anyway, so. Through all of this, I was motivated to learn medicine. And so I volunteered for every school I could and get every skill that I had. The thing about the military is that there's no certification. So your medical license is sort of just what you can get away with. if you sewed somebody's arms on the wrong side of their body, but you could justify it, you could probably get away with it. But with that, I was able to do an insane amount of physical skills. You know, I have criked a human being. I've done finger thoracostomies. I've done all kinds of nonsense. I carried narcotics in the desert with guns and you know, like it's, it's wild what you can get away with. And now having a much higher knowledge base, I realized how much I didn't know then and it's humbled me a lot, but that created a lot of frustration when I went to nursing school and I had done. thousands of injections and hundreds of IVs and not being able to do one and It was a lack of understanding on my part of like why I was having to be held back which led into being humbled with this imposter syndrome of wow, I there is so much I don't know and I Figured nursing school was going to be a breeze for me and man was I wrong and it humbled me quickly, you know? And that led into an inspiring feeling, you know? That's that last word, where seeing all there is to learn was so inspiring and seeing all the people around me who excelled far beyond what I could do when I went into there, you know, with such confidence. there was, you know, my classmates that were just brilliant. brilliant, brilliant people. And then getting into nursing and just meeting, you know, all of these highly, highly skilled, highly, highly confident nurses was just so, so inspiring on who I wanted to be once I finished. And, and that, and I mean, that was the pick you once I got that, that seed planted, I just did everything I could to get back there. And, and yeah, it's, it's been a journey. Yeah, I just am so inspiring. Man, we might have to just do this will be maybe the first time where you have a two part episode that we just record another time. I want to hear more military stories. I want to hear more PICU stories. But I feel like the kids and and that population of our area is better off for the fact that you're in there. So I am just honored to talk with you and honored that you have been able to that you wanted to take up that mantle, but also be that you are serving it. in it within, like just with the largest heart, but also like, I mean, just the dogmatic, like I am coming after the best of, like you are the one of the poster children, I feel like, for like chasing your true potential. You know what I mean? And knowing what you want. And once you knew what you want, man, you are going after it. And so I can't thank you enough for that. Yeah, it's been fun talking about it. So with that, I mean, you've already given us a lot to think about, a lot to talk about. With that, if you had only one piece of advice you could give to nursing students and or your peers, like you just open it up, what would those pieces of advice be and why? So in the military, we have duty stations and you go to a duty station and you work there for a little bit and then you have to move. And one of the things that I always saw people do is they went to one place and they would sort of program into their head that that's what the entire military was like. know, they would go somewhere and have kind of a bad experience and then they would just get. sort of tattooed on their forehead, like I have to leave immediately. And one of the pieces of advice that I always gave them was it's a big place. There's so many things to do. and so same thing with nursing. Nursing has so many possibilities. It's absolutely endless. So if you are going through school or if you're going through your prereqs or if you're, you know, in your clinicals and you just haven't found like the right thing yet. I would say just keep going like wherever you are right now is not what all of nursing is it is it is such a large place or even if you are a nurse and you're just not feeling where you're at there are so many things to do and there's so many people out there that are just so inspiring and just To keep pushing and keep looking and and you'll find your spot. I'm telling you. I think everyone will agree that through their nursing through their nursing like timeline they eventually found something and they just knew like at that point they're like that's what I'm gonna do and and you know for me it was the pick you and I found it pretty quickly and I'm very fortunate for that but you'll find your thing and just keep pushing and keep working and you'll get there and and you don't have to stay there if you like something for a while you don't like it just move on there's so many things to do go travel go get a new specialty go get a new degree go get a new school it's never never ending in nursing and it's absolutely amazing Possibilities limitless. Man, I can't thank you enough. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for bringing the wisdom. Thank you for telling us your story. I am serious, man. Let's come back and do a second episode at some point down the line here. Sometimes it's hard to get the stars to align, myself and somebody else in our schedule and all the things we do. But man, when it happens, it's just magic. I love it, man. You have an amazing rest of your day. Yeah, yeah it has. And that's why I'm saying we're gonna do this again and we'll have like a part two of David Butters and we'll get into a little more of our likes and interests and also some more stories from you, So to be clear to the listening audience, we're not doing this second episode right now. He's not gonna have a double episode situation at this moment, but he's gonna have a split double episode. I mean, I'm assuming, I didn't even ask. I'm just telling David what he's doing. David, is that all right with you? Let's do it. Part, part deux Part deux Hot shots, part deux Anyway, all right, enough with the cultural references. David, have a great day, yeah, who is gonna understand that reference in this audience? gonna say right now, we're gonna say right now, cultureize, that's a word, we're gonna make it up, cultureize yourself right now. Go rent, watch, hot shots, part deux and hot shots. he has his grandmother's eyes. Anyway, that's all I gotta say. I'll talk to you later, man. Have a good day. me too.