HemoLife Podcast
Welcome to the HemoLife Podcast, where we explore how to live an elite life while managing a bleeding disorder or other rare conditions. Dive into educational, entertaining content with stories of high achievers, expert advice on mental health, nutrition, and exercise, and the latest relevant news to elevate your mind, body, and soul.
HemoLife Podcast
Search and Rescue: A Bleeder's Adventure
Rick Linfors Ackerman defies conventional expectations. Living with Von Willebrand Disease Type 3 – one of the rarest and most severe forms of this bleeding disorder – Rick has built an extraordinary decade-long career as a search and rescue dog handler serving Minnesota law enforcement agencies.
From the moment of his birth when doctors noticed unusual bleeding from a minor cut, Rick's life has been shaped by the challenges of managing a condition that affects his body's ability to form blood clots. Yet rather than limiting his horizons, these challenges sparked a remarkable journey that led him from wearing a medieval-looking ankle brace for nine years to scaling mountains and rescuing lost hikers in treacherous wilderness conditions.
During our conversation, Rick shares heart-pounding stories from the field – including a dramatic rescue of a hypothermic woman lost overnight in dense forest and his first mission extraction from an aptly-named "Hell Hole" ravine. Through these experiences, we discover how his intimate knowledge of medical emergencies gives him a unique perspective in crisis situations. There's a poetic symmetry to Rick's life: the child who once faced a medical port failure in the backcountry now rescues others from similar wilderness perils.
We also explore exciting developments in bleeding disorder treatments, including the recent FDA approval of Q-Fitlia, a potential game-changer offering subcutaneous administration just once every two months. Rick offers valuable insights on building resilience when facing setbacks, emphasizing the importance of perspective-taking and self-awareness during difficult moments.
This episode illuminates how someone with a serious medical condition can find purpose through service to others. Whether you're navigating your own rare disorder or simply seeking inspiration to overcome life's obstacles, Rick's story demonstrates that our greatest challenges often become the foundation for our most meaningful contributions. Ready to discover how adversity can become a launching pad for extraordinary achievement? Listen now and prepare to see limitations in an entirely new light.
Thanks for tuning into the HemoLife Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs a spark of hope or encouragement. Follow us on Instagram @HemoLife_Podcast and YouTube for updates, guest highlights, and behind-the-scenes content. New episodes drop regularly—your story matters, and this is just the beginning.
Welcome to the Hemolife podcast your gateway to transformation and empowerment. Hosted by Elia Aguayo, we're diving deep into the world of rare disorders, unlocking the full spectrum of your potential. Each episode, join us as we connect with pioneers, wellness experts and true survivors. They're here to share powerful stories and invaluable insights, from mental resilience to physical health, community news to life-altering strategies. At Hemolife, we provide the tools you need to excel and inspire, prepare to elevate your life, learn, laugh and grow with us. Let's embark on this journey together.
Speaker 3:Hey guys, how's it going? Welcome to the Hemolife podcast. This is your host, la Aguayo, and we have a very special guest today. It's Rick Linfors Ackerman, from Minnesota. Rick has VWD, type three, and he's got 10 years experience working in the search and rescue field. So I cannot wait to deep dive into this conversation On today's episode.
Speaker 3:We're going to break it into segments, so the first segment is going to be the quote of the day. I really, really love quotes, so that's going to be my thing. You know who do I think of? I think of Joel Osteen. He starts every sermon off with a joke. I'm not really a funny guy Otherwise I would do the joke thing but quotes seem to be my thing, so I'm going to do that.
Speaker 3:And then, after the quote of the day, we're going to jump into community news, and that's going to be the Hemo Hub segment that we're going to start using. Talk about our upcoming events in the community, new breakthroughs in medical treatments, and also highlight some of the hemophilia warriors out there advocates, people who are doing some amazing things. I think it's really important to give those people their shout outs and let them know that they're being seen. And then Hemo News we're going to jump into the Hemo Mind segment and on today's HemoMind segment I really want to talk about resilience and dealing with setbacks.
Speaker 3:The final segment of the show is going to be the clouding conversations with Rick. We're going to deep dive a little bit more into his story from our conversation. He's got a lot of exciting things that he's gone through in his life and I'm sure there's been times of adversity that he's faced. I'm super curious on how he's overcome that and just how it was like growing up with VWD, and so this is going to be a very informative session for me as well, because I don't really know much about VWD.
Speaker 3:I think you're going to be the first person that I get to interview with it, and I'm really curious to see the contrast between what living with VWD is like compared to hemophilia. I'm going to go ahead and pass it to you, rick, and give our audience an introduction to yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so hello everyone. My name is Rick Lynn Ford-Zackerman. I live in the Minneapolis area, minnesota. By day work in manufacturing Moonlight as a volunteer search and rescue dog handler with the Minnesota Search and Rescue Dog Association, serving state of Minnesota law enforcement agencies with missing persons investigations. This month, april, it's 10 years since I got into this. I started out with a sheriff's office in Oregon as a volunteer in a mountain rescue when I was working a day job in television news and something that I never really thought I'd be able to do with a blood clotting disorder. It's been quite a ride A lot of great experiences, a lot of incredible people that I've met along the way, that I've learned a lot from and now diving into that, I'm sure we'll have a good time with this.
Speaker 3:Awesome and just out of curiosity, have you spent much time in the bleeding disorder community? Do you have a local chapter that you've ever been involved with or gone to any chapter events?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this has really been like a reconnection year for me. It hit me in the head earlier this year that I have not had like an in-person conversation with an adult with a blood clotting disorder since college. There was a girl in my marching band in college who had a Von Wilberts type one. And just by way of where I was living in Oregon and kind of move around with my work and volunteering and the craziness of COVID that I didn't really connect with the HTC up there in Portland I was living in Eugene, which is two hours south, and just going up there only for clinics and checkup. But coming back here recently got back involved with Hemophilia Foundation of Minnesota and Dakotas New executive director there, vicki Copland, who has got a lot of energy for the organization. I went to an event in February and set to go to another one in May. So this year is really just about kind of getting back to meeting people, learning from people in the bleeding disorders community after quite a bit of time just kind of disconnected from it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know I. I mean it's super important for me to be involved and I didn't really discover the community until my mid-20s. I really had no idea if there was. Others out me like that are going through the same situation. So when I did, it was just so cool it's, and you know you. Just you go to these events and it's like you don't, you don't, they just understand. You don't have to over explain, they just like connect Right, you already know them in a way because the experiences are going to be very well shared for a lot of what we go through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I want to start the show off with a quote of the day. I love quotes. You know, on my journey of just trying to build a stronger mindset, really found these empowering quotes, and I just think quotes are awesome. Daily affirmations have been such a huge help when I've been in dark times, and this quote in particular I don't know who that there could be a purpose to all this pain that I was going through and that really when you go through life you start to realize that you know you can't have an extraordinary life unless you're pushing through things, unless you're going through adversity, because it forces you to grow and that's kind of like the blessing and the curse of having a bleeding disorder. Is that it kind of the cards that you're dealt? It forces you to sink or fly. Are you gonna let it get to you or are you gonna thrive throughout that? What do you think, rick? You like that one?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think when bleeding sores and with the rare disease community, we go through what we go through and it's uncomfortable physically, mentally, psychologically. It's not easy. With that, I think, young people, especially with bleeding disorders, you can grow up pretty quickly and you look at life even differently. Through that, I think you gain a very different perspective. With chronic illness, with the cycle, the treatment, the repair that's involved and then getting back up the next day looking at it's involved and then you know, getting back up the next day looking at it again and again and again. Over that time a little bit of callusing that happens and you do see things differently. And you're right, I think, discomfort being kind of the entry, the entry fee, the door price.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You have to kind of take on something that either makes you nervous, puts you under some strain, and then that's part of the evolution that we all go through as part of getting older, and that's what leads us to better experiences.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that was one that I just really really enjoyed. The next segment for today is going to be called the Hemo Hub. It's the first introduction to the Hemo Hub and I just want to talk about some community news For me.
Speaker 3:Like, I just got back from Chefe and I was in San Diego and it was just incredible experience, just got to meet so many people. I've got a pretty big social media following and but it's like and I talk to these people individually but I never really get to see their face and it was just so awesome this past trip, people coming up to me, introducing themselves and being able to, you know, form a formal connection with them. During this this trip, I was able to do a live podcast, which which was really fun. I met a guy named Caleb and super intelligent guy. He, he, he wants to be a hematologist and I just think that's that's amazing. You know someone with hemophilia going into that field? Our next event that I'll be going to? You know someone with hemophilia going into that field? Our next event that I'll be going to is going to be the Hemophilia B Coalition and that's going to be in Orlando from April 10th through April 13th. Super excited about that. If anybody there is up for doing a podcast, I'd love to do one there. I'm sure we can rent out a space and do something there in between times when they're not running their normally scheduled programs.
Speaker 3:But yeah, and then the next thing that I kind of wanted your thoughts on, this one, rick the FDA just released Q-Fitlia. How would you pronounce that? We talked about it earlier. I'm seeing Q-Fitlia as well, so I'm going to stick with that. Q-fitlia Okay, and that's a new treatment for hemophilia A or B without inhibitors. There was just a new release of the subcutaneous injection medication for A or B with inhibitors, so I guess this is going to be the. As far as I know, this is the first one on the market for A and B. That's a subcutaneous injection and it says once every two months, based on testing. So how do you feel about all these new this?
Speaker 2:is.
Speaker 2:I was, uh, like the sub-q discussion.
Speaker 2:I remember being in a group setting when I was in high school with another group of leaders and maybe 15 years ago we were all kind of thinking wouldn't be cool if there was like an epi pen style injection that you could do, or if we had something that lasted a couple weeks or up to a month, and this is kind of a thing that we'd sort of been kind of dreaming about and on paper, I mean, one month of treatment is I think that's the first I've heard of something in the bleeding disorder space for an injectable at least lasting that long in the system.
Speaker 2:I think that opens up a lot of avenues for people who are. I mean, I think people can get fatigued at times from having to go through the cycle of constant treatment, worrying about pre-activity prophylaxis. But a one month lasting prophylactic treatment is that's, that's a big jump and it's I think it's the first time in a long time that we've had a novel treatment option, both in the delivery method and also the duration. So I'm excited to see what the notes are from HTC's activities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean with me it's always like how do I store this? I mean, I've got a mini fridge full of Factor. I'm sure a lot of us have got dedicated fridge space for this stuff but how does it store? Well, how does it travel that kind of thing? So how can we fit it into our lifestyles? And for people who are looking at this, the FDA has it on their website. But, yeah, talk to your HTC about it, See if it's viable for you and your lifestyle and see if there's some kind of testing available for it once it goes wider spread. But it's definitely a big jump from what we've had before.
Speaker 3:Right now, heme Libra is like the big big player in the field. You know, I think they have 90 of the market right now and that's. That's just for hemophilia a yeah, it's a subcutaneous injection. So I mean this, you know, looks like we're going to have another player in the game and I'm curious, though, a lot of people that are on heme libra.
Speaker 3:They also have to have like a backup medication, so I kind of I'm kind of curious on that yeah if you you know if it actually takes care of the bleeds whenever they happen, or is it just like preventative measures?
Speaker 2:we'll have to see what the results are for, if it's behaving better for, say, preventing joint bleeds, or if it's showing better efficacy and something like bruising nose bleeds etc. So you know, once the the white papers come out on it, we'll have to kind of just mull it over and see what we find, and I imagine the hematologist will come up with some other stuff when they take a look at it. But this is the month-long duration, that's. That's really something to think about, and you know what our daily routine is game changer.
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness, man, it just sounds like a dream come true really. I, you know, sometimes it's like if it's too good to be true, then yeah, you know, maybe, maybe it is, and who knows. I mean just what just happened with gene therapy. You know every that was like yeah god we have a cure now. I was like watching a podcast today and they're like no guys listen it's. It's really not a cure, it's, you know, it just kind of raises your factor levels, whatever I mentioned, massively expensive, I think, yeah, hemogenics at.
Speaker 2:Hemogenics at one point was the most expensive drug treatment on the planet for a little bit, and so there's always nuance to the developments that we get. So at the end of the day, it's going to be well. What is it going to cost me in terms of my out-of-pocket? What's going to cost me in terms of my routine? Is my body actually going to react well to this? So it's always going to be a slow roll with good news, I feel like. But with good news, I feel like. But this is definitely hopeful. Two kind of similar developments going for sub-Q treatments that are being tested or towards the end of their testing cycle for von Willebrands. So we'll see how those come out as well. Yeah, one is getting close to that final FDA stage. I think it's 839. And then the second one just started human trials. They're sub-Q and we'll see how long they last in the system once they're administered.
Speaker 3:Those are, yeah we're seeing good news around those so far, man, that's crazy, and I can't help but to think while we're talking. I don't know if have you ever seen the bad blood documentary uh, was this on the shoulders of giants? No, this one's a lot older and it's about the bad blood era, when a lot of people contracted HIV hepatitis C through through the you know blood transfusions.
Speaker 3:I personally was affected by hepatitis C, but not, luckily not the HIV aspect, but but just it has kind of makes you think, though. It's like are we going to? Could we possibly experience another terrible adverse event like that, where these new medications that are promising something like and all of a sudden it's like oh my god, now there's death or there's something, something crazy? You know, I don't know like, should you, should people be scared? Or as do you kind of just trust the, the studies?
Speaker 2:I think we've come a long way in terms of manufacturing of medications properly. As far as the documentaries go I saw On the Shoulders of Giants a long while ago when it first came out. I think, in terms of manufacturing and ensuring that heat treating is going to eliminate viral contamination, I think we're okay on that front. I think when we look at things as far as how something's going to react in the body, that's where we have to really try and digest the white papers and the FDA release as far as how something's going to react to the body, that's where we have to really try and digest the white papers and the excuse me the fda release as much as we can to, you know, take it on. And I think the sort of the pre-testing that's available now to see is kind of test your compatibility with new treatments is a lot better than it was before. So I I think we're. I think we're in a good place in terms of ensuring safety for people who are getting treatment with plasma products and blood transfusions, far better than we were in the 80s. I mean, yeah, oh, my gosh, what a. I mean that's a frightening time. I mean I'm fortunate to have been born in the 90s, when you know manufacturing standards have been revised and updated, yeah, but I think we can definitely be hopeful perhaps carefully hopeful about, you know the, just how well this is going to work, what the cost is going to be. But I think we're on the way up, yeah, on the shoulders of giants.
Speaker 2:I think it's free to watch. It's like 45 minutes. It's about the eighties, um and and kind of the, the efforts to change, uh sort of the structures that now govern drug manufacturing, and it's about people who have lost a lot, who either dodged the bullet when it came to Hep C and HIV infection but really ended up watching a lot of their friends suffer from it and also watching their friends make the difficult decision of whether or not they should even use Factor. So people who were worried about infection may have decided to forego treatment and and they now have long-term consequences because of that for years. So it's definitely a frightening but very critical part of understanding the history of bleeding disorders and the role that I think our advocates have had in making sure that healthcare is better in the United States. Just Google on the shortage of giants, hemophilia and that website will come up. It's about 45 minutes long. It's well done. There's great, great directing and editing, but it's a good watch.
Speaker 3:I've heard of it but I just never. I've never seen it, so I didn't. I didn't really know where to find it, but I I hear a lot of, I see a lot of things on social media, but yeah, that's interesting. I'll have to take a look at that one, and if you haven't seen Bad Blood, that's an emotional one.
Speaker 2:I'll look that up. Yeah, that's an emotional one.
Speaker 3:It'll make you proud proud to be a fellow warrior in the bleeding disorder community seeing what everyone else went through before us. It's a good perspective shift to make you really appreciate where we are today. I want to recognize certain people in the community. There's so many amazing advocates out there, people doing amazing things. Recognize certain people in the community. There's so many amazing advocates out there, people doing amazing things, and so for today, I met a really special person at HFA and his name is Tomorrow Mitchell. Tomorrow, mitchell just won the Michael Davin Community Service Award and we connected. He introduced himself to me and just had yeah, there we go, I need that sound effects board, you know, to get the clapping.
Speaker 2:Laugh track and laugh track yeah.
Speaker 3:But yeah. So I mean that's amazing and just like, as soon as I met him I could just tell man, this guy's got just such a an aura about him, you know, like a positivity like and just good energy. And I connected with him on IG His IG is, I'll spell it, t-a-m-a-r and he's amazing. He's really, really good and I was like holy cow. I was like I need to have you on the show and do a live performance. Like how cool would that be? That would blow up my show, if we can get a beat track going and go for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, shoot, that would be legit.
Speaker 3:Oh so, yeah, man, congratulations on that. Keep up your good the good work and hopefully we, you know we can connect again soon all right guys, the next segment? Yeah, absolutely the next segment. Yeah, absolutely the next segment. We're calling it the Hemo Minds segment. Today we're going to talk about having resilience and kind of dealing with setbacks. So, rick, have you ever gone through some setbacks in your life and what are some things that you do in order to overcome those setbacks in your life?
Speaker 2:I, I mean, um, on the topic of bleeding disorders, I've definitely had um incidents and bleeding where I've just, you know, had to stop what I'm doing. Not only stop what I'm doing, but also, you know, other people have been impacted. So it's it's kind of a broad thing. But you know, I've had to kind of halt things and recalibrate and retool. So, yeah, I have it. I don't know, pull one out of a hat, I mean one of the like the last holiday season I went back to oregon, my in-laws for christmas and just nosebleeds up the wazoo like I couldn't get a handle on it by pressure. But it's one of the few times recently where I've just gotten frustrated at like this is stupid. I like I'm, yeah, got a hand on my face for constant at a time. Yeah, I'm doing factor, but I like this to just be out of the picture and later on, you know, get back, go to an ent, uh, quick coterie, really up the prevention measures and that's well and well and good and we're, because we know how to deal with these things. But there's a point to where you kind of put your foot down. You're like, really, today, now, while I'm, while I'm out here, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I think when, when I've had these things kind of happen and I can get into more stories later but kind of have to separate yourself from the situation a little bit, you kind of have to get above it, to the 10 000 foot viewpoint and kind of like, okay, what's going on, where am I, who do I have around me and what do I have available? So you know, I'm, I'm here, do I have chronic factor? Yes, okay, now what? What's just the tasking that I have to accomplish? Just to kind of move the needle a little bit.
Speaker 2:So treatment, prevention, rest, rnr, whichever, and then also, like at this final point, like check on myself, like where am I right now and like how I feel about this, like am I? Yeah, like, because that's going to ultimately impact your ability to follow through on what you're assigning yourself, your ability to look at these things and also interacting with other people, because we don't do this alone at all so you're saying being aware of your thoughts, like taking time to say what am I thinking in my head, do you?
Speaker 3:I kind of feel like some people might not do that, like they might not actually take the time to sit back and be like what are the thoughts that are going through my head while I'm going through this. Are these thoughts healthy? Are these, are these thoughts serving me? So I mean, I think that's awesome. I mean that's, you know, being self-aware like that.
Speaker 2:I think when we, when we get into situations where we're challenged in, or if we are, I mean when we're bleeding it's just a nuisance to the nth degree, it's painful and it takes things out of us. I think we get the blinders on and we just solely focus on the minutiae of the medical side, the treatment end, where we don't really step back to say, okay, am I actually taking time to look at everything properly? Am I actually kind of separating myself a little bit to kind of look at the overhead but also look at me and how I'm feeling about this Cause? If you know, if we're not in the right headspace, we still we may not make the right decision going forward, we may miss something that could help us. So that separation, zoom, zoom all the way out and then zoom back in is what I find helpful.
Speaker 3:I'm really big on priming yourself for the day and I think some of the like what you were talking about a little bit there was gratitude. You know, hey, I have medication. You know I have the resources to take care of myself, to fix this problem. And you know when you prep, when you prep every single day and you write out your gratitude list, you know that's when these things happen. Like you said, they, you, you have a good perspective on it. One thing that I see people do a lot of times is when they have negative things happen to them, they ruminate on those negative thoughts. So you know, being self-aware of those and then just instead of ruminating on it like plan ahead for the next time, be as good, look at yourself, as you know a student in life, so plan ahead and say you know what, next time I'm going to do this differently.
Speaker 3:And another big thing for me is accepting failure. So we are going to fail, but accepting that failure that's going to be your key to success. And one of the analogies that I like to use as far as really getting comfortable with failure is Kobe Bryant, lebron James. They're known as one of the two best basketball players in the world and they are also on the top of the list in the NBA for the most missed shots ever. So I mean just think I mean they had to fail. They failed more than anyone, but we now look at them as the greatest. And I just think, for everyone who's listening, have to form a relationship with failure that you're okay with yeah, I think what was it wayne gretzky from hockey that had put out?
Speaker 2:you miss 100 of the shots that you don't take. Ultimately, you have to take that risk and, yeah, tumbling, uh. Failure, partial failure, plead failure, that's. That is inevitably going to be an outcome of anything that you take on. But you know what you do immediately afterwards zoom out, zoom back in, figure out what happened here. Now, what's the process? I have to take on differently, and then you know how am I doing after this? That's going to decide how you take the next steps.
Speaker 3:A lot of times, when we fail, I can say you go to the gym and all of a sudden, you know you, you, just you get off a track and then you're just like, well, screw it, I'm done. I'm done eating properly, I'm done drinking my water, I'm done taking my supplements. It's like just let it go, accept it and get back on track. So it's just back on track.
Speaker 3:I can't tell you how many times throughout my bodybuilding career, when I was getting ready to compete in shows, there's been a couple of days I string in a row where I failed, failed. And then when you're, when you have the pressure of getting ready to step on stage and show your body to everyone, those two days that you fail, it gets in your head and you're just like suck, I suck. And there's some someone else out there, they're not doing that, they're, they're, they're remaining discipline. And you know, and you, just you start to get down on yourself and start to that self-talk that's in your head. It just gets to you. So you have to stop that immediately. And then once and then, and then it just starts becoming a habit and then, anytime something in life happens to you, you just feel like nothing can bring me down, because I know every single time I can get right back up, because the way I talk to myself, the positivity, the words that I use at the time that I get myself to step back and get that perspective shift.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and with the discipline and all of it I mean coming back down to what we deal with as bleeders in the rare disease community it's you have to trust the process that you give yourself and it's it's not always going to work perfectly every time, but you have to trust what you're doing, how you're doing it and understand what works for you, so and and then stick with it. It's like for you getting ready for a show. That is not something that you do a couple weeks in advance, that's a year maybe of prep you have. You have your weightlifting part of it. You still have cardio involved it at some point. Some people don't hate the cardio part, but it's essential. Then nutrition like so much of it. It is nutrition and intake and water, and then you're dialing it to sort of a really pre-show 24 hours. Isn't that kind of a dehydration period immediately too? Yeah, I mean I would go stir crazy just doing that Actually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, being dehydrated is probably worse than not eating. I mean, it's crazy, it's wild.
Speaker 2:You have to, whether you're bodybuilding or any training that you're doing, but also the way you live your life with, and understanding what not just the the active part of it, but also what your rest and recovery looks like. I mean, you and me, bleeders like our, our recovery period has to be somewhat, a little bit more intensive than others to ensure that you know, because that we don't encounter the complications that could set us back farther joint bleeds, soft tissue, whichever, yeah, and those are the biggest that's even like you know you've got if you don't, you already have the diet and you could fail on the diet, you could fail on your cardio, your exercise, and then you've got the bleeds.
Speaker 3:And then all of a sudden you could be doing everything else Right and then all of a sudden I've got a bleed and I'm out for a week.
Speaker 3:And then just that mindset man I'm, I've been, I've been doing it for seven plus years and every single time it's hard, you know develop that process and hopefully throughout you know, all these episodes and stuff we're just going to, I like to, you know, break it down into small little topics and then you know people are listening, that maybe they can implement some of these thoughts, or at least it'll give them. You know, maybe they weren't taught any of these methods at all. They didn't. They didn't know. Man, maybe, maybe they're right. Maybe I should take some time to meditate and think about, like, what am I thinking about? I feel like we're so busy in today's age, whether you're on your phone 24, seven or you know doing something else. It's like when do you have time for your thoughts? And like, stop underestimating how important that is in your growth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it really starts with those like small steps of understanding where your headspace is and it's, it's and that is yeah. Journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. First step could be hey, where am I right now, in, where I want to be and what is you know? Even identify one thing you can do to move the needle a little bit. So maybe it's one thing in your, in your post-workout recovery, maybe it's one thing in your warmup, maybe it's one thing in your day job, but it applies universally to what you're doing.
Speaker 3:I like the 1% rule. I'm getting 1% better every single day.
Speaker 3:And you have to you really do have to break it down to a micro level and focus on one thing and like, like you said, what one thing could I do that could move the needle forward? You know, maybe you're stuck somewhere in your life and you need to come. In order to progress and get out of this hole that you're in, you need to develop a whole new skill set and you need to be able to sit down and identify that skill set and start making you know 1% better at that every single day. One thing that I think is so underestimated, too, is momentum. Like it's, it is so hard to do anything new for the first week or two weeks, but I can't.
Speaker 3:I can't tell you that. I mean, how many times I've experienced this weird energy on the inside. And it's momentum and all you have it. And all of a sudden you're just, it's just like you're going. You know you're going down on a rollercoaster ride. It just feels like nothing can stop you after a certain point and then, if you do one thing wrong, it kind of like you can start to feel that momentum going away and bad decision, bad decision, bad decision. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I got to get that momentum back somehow, you know. So don't underestimate that Not at all.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I want to jump into your story a little bit now to kind of finish the show off, and this is going to be our conversation.
Speaker 2:Give yeah so I was born in 1991. I was for the time I was a rare kind of day one diagnosis Funny story, which I you know. I'm told that when they were attaching monitors to me and something made a little cut on my head and it didn't heal properly and they said, oh, he's not clotting right now, we should run some tests. And I think, well, really not clotting right now, we should run some tests. And I think, well, really, were they putting monitors on me or did someone just get a little clumsy in the delivery room? I don't know, it would explain a few things. But nah, so yeah, just a cut that didn't heal up. And they said, well, we should run tests. And sure enough, it's Von Willebrand's type three and that had really been an unknown to my family at the time. So that had really been an unknown to my family at the time. So, in light of me getting Von Willebrands, the elders in the family kind of ran some testing and such and we identified some carriers in the family. Neil, me and my brother are the only type threes. So we've got that going for us. You got to be known for something. I suppose Early diagnosis for me and my parents early on had figured.
Speaker 2:You know this is, you know, serious. This is uncharted waters. You know they had grown up being very outdoorsy, both families constantly either traveling or canoeing or camping, and when they were in their college years they were backpacking and long distance canoe guides for a YMCA camp in northern Minnesota and they wanted me and my brother to be able to have the experiences that any other kid would have. And so we had an HCC and a hematologist at Children's Minnesota who agreed with that and they said, all right, it's not going to be the same, because there's a lot we have to do, there's a lot we have to take care of.
Speaker 2:You know, left ankle target joint growing up. So I had mobility issues. We what uh, two of the guys on our first podcast had exosim, which is like the, the Ironman kind of leg. Growing up I had a medieval version of that. It was a brace that was this tall, went all the way up to the knee, leather, plastic bound, two stains, two steel struts going into like a heel cup and I had to wear that for just about every day for quite close to nine years and that's like your primitive, medieval exosome yeah until I was in high school and trying to to do running for lacrosse and I thought, oh, this is just getting in the way.
Speaker 2:And then when I was going backpacking the heel cup would rub into my feet. I'd get these massive blisters and such it was like ah, this is, this is becoming a little, a little bit worse for wear. So got rid of that after nine years. But the point of that was to keep weight off the ankle, which it did, and help prevent re-injury. But now one of my calf muscles is really small because it never got that day to day. You in bodybuilding you know how hard calf muscles are to develop on purpose.
Speaker 3:It could be, but Well, my right ankle is locked, so I can't. I can't hit. Oh yeah, so I just Right Sorry. It was like a vulnerable topic for me. I get a little embarrassed when I talk about my calves.
Speaker 2:No, I, I. Every time I put on shorts I'm like, ah, we gotta, we gotta do something about this Calf raises alone isn't gonna, isn't gonna do this, so I can't tell you how many people have commented on my Instagram saying oh, look at his legs, look at his legs.
Speaker 3:I'm like man. You guys don't know me like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, calves are tough, I think for know, they wanted me and my brother to play sports, so tennis, literally growing up. And then I played lacrosse. In high school I learned how to ski and snowboard, taught snowboarding, yeah. So mid-2000s was when lacrosse kind of got big in Minnesota, so all the kids were playing hockey, really loved it because it was pretty similar tactically and so they could jump right into it and play it and I thought this was really neat. One of my good friends was playing it, so I gave it a crack and I really liked it. So I played defense and then goalie and we that's. That's one of the things where you know lacrosse balls are pretty heavy and they're shooting them at you at pretty high speed. So it's another thing. Where my hematologist goes it's like, okay, bru. So it's another thing. Where my hematologist goes it's like, okay, bruising risk. So we, you know, and that's part of the learning it's like, okay, how do we? How do we do this? How do we do the impact sports safely with stuff? So you know, do factor before games. You're doing full speed stuff. You know structure your prophylaxis closer to practices and work that way.
Speaker 2:And then in the summers I go backpacking, canoeing through the same ymca camp that my parents went through. Um, that was that's a, that was a family connection that I wanted to keep going and I really enjoyed it. Um, and it's through that that I kind of like experienced some of those setbacks that we talked about. Yeah, um, when I was uh 14, I was doing a trip in the boundary waters of minnesota. So there's this big chain of lakes that expands this top of Minnesota between there and Canada, and when we were crossing the land between lakes Portage, I stepped on it, stepped between some roots, wrong, blew out, the ankle fell down and my trail guide knew that we should probably do factor. I had a passport in one of my arms and when I put in the process for doing a passport for the viewers who haven't done a passport, you first started with saline to flush it, flush out the tube, then you do your factor and then you saline again and then some kind of lock to keep the the tube from. You know, getting it to kind of back flush and keep it clean. But when we mix the medicine and put the needle into the port and tried to push that first thing of saline in, it didn't go through, it just stopped and we're like this is not good, we're not able to. We're not at the point of injury where it's more problematic, I mean the ankle can. That can get better in a day or two. But now we have medical device failure. This is something that I had not experienced before.
Speaker 2:I was in uncharted waters for that, so that was, that was pretty big, and so my trail guide was pretty quick on his feet, pulled the map out. I said, okay, if we reroute, burn a couple of miles, this way we can get to a spot where I know there's going to be a payphone again or mid 2000. So cell service sat phones weren't ride spread. Then I know we can get to a payphone. I can call in, get the cam nurse out here. We can try to either fix you up If we to evacuate you, that's, you know we'll. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.
Speaker 2:And mentally it was tough because like, oh man, I've got this medical device is failing on me right now. I've never been here but also it's a bleed that I've got that's affecting what other people are doing, like other people have to change what they're doing to take care of me. So I was. That was not, that was not great, that was my. My trail guy was great. He kept me up and he's like dude, you know, things happen, we'll. We'll just fix you up. We'll take this one step at a time.
Speaker 2:So we get to the, the lake. That is a trailhead pay phone. They call it in and it happens that one of my cousins is the nurse at that camp for the for that two week cycle. She, she comes out and takes a look at it and and she's totally cool about it. She's like all right, you know you've been running with, you've been going with heavy packs against your shoulders. You know you've been bearing lightweight since you had the injury. Let's try like more saline, 10 milliliters since you've changed it. You know, stretch the arm out, try and clear the tube and let's, let's just try to push, get this through, figure it out.
Speaker 2:We didn't do any other stuff before that because I didn't want to waste factor in the field or waste needles and I couldn't really do like a port Passport. Needles are different from butterfly needles. You really can't reverse, engineer a vein with those things in a jiffy it's. At least I couldn't come up with it at the time. But so we, you know, just pull the arm out, you know, just pull the arm out. You know, try to relax it a bit more. She pushed 10 millimeters of saline through instantly. And we figured that because the packs that we were running, you know, between 40 and 60 pounds depending on the time of the trip and how much food you've gone through they didn't have like chest straps to spread the weight. So the strap had dug down my shoulder so much it pushed that catheter shut and it just kind of collapsed it. So it's like all right, now we can do factor, now we can. Now we have the choice like, do you want to evac? You want to keep keep going? Like I, I can, I can keep going like the ankle, like we'll take a rest day, elevate this. And like, do factor, this is great, let's keep going. So I was able to complete that trip and I was really happy that I was able to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the next year, backpacking in Yellowstone, just nosebleeds, constantly super dry summer air going through way more than a factor that I thought it was, and we were running low, so we had to reroute to pick up more supplies Again in the headspace of great. Now my bleeding disorder is affecting other people, like other the five guys in my group are rerouting their trip to have to take care of me. Now, on the tail end in the back of that evac we started smelling smoke. We realized like the last half mile there was probably a brush fire behind us so we would have had to like reroute anyways. That took a little bit of the sting out of it. Um, my parents ever, ever really quick the next day, aired a bunch of clotting factor over to us and a boatload of like peanut butter, m&ms and such. So like that's great backpacking. It's like yes, and so did that up the frequency of prophylaxis and finished out the trip and it's like, oh, so that was tough. The next year I did a longer canoe trip in Canada, no problems whatsoever. So that was like the release that I needed. Like, oh, it's great, just epic. But those two experiences gave me kind of like the background of like I know what it's like to have to have a medical emergency in the back country.
Speaker 2:And when I was working in television in Oregon I heard about Search and Rescue through one of their missions and at the time I thought Search and Rescue was done by police or firefighters who get on, just opt in for a special team. Turns out it's done by volunteers who know the way around the outdoors and sign up for this. I thought, all right, this is cool. You know, I'm fresh out of college, I just have my day job right now, but I knew my way around the wilderness. I knew my way around traveling in snow. I knew a little bit of climbing. So I signed up for the mountain rescue team. And, lo and behold, they accepted me. The mountain rescue team. And lo and behold, they accepted me. So I went through the search and rescue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for people who aren't familiar, a lot of most search and rescue, I think, in the U S is done by volunteers and out West Oregon, washington, idaho, colorado and Utah, california it's done by sheriff's offices. You train up a volunteer core. Either you're you have a special volunteer status or in some States you get like a special deputy status. In Oregon it's a special volunteer assignment, so they put you through like a formal academy to get your state certification for search and rescue. So it's eight weeks of land navigation, first aid, legal communications, evidence handling, man tracking, a whole bunch of skills. And so I went through that and like it's two nights a week of classroom sessions and then your saturday is a field training exercise and we had a great, great coordinators in that unit. Tim chase, jason bowman were the special deputies who ran the outfit and uh, they, they really prepared us well for, uh, what we'd encounter. And after the academy still continued constantly training and they were always bringing up new ways to uh better prepare for missions, run mock missions or bring in new things for us to train on. Yeah, so did that February of 15, and then, yeah, finished the Academy April of 15. So now it's been 10 years since I started doing this, 10 years of doing this. There's two missions that are ones that are cool to me.
Speaker 2:Search and Rescue, for the most part, is kind of uncinematic. You're bushwhacking, you're cold, you're wet, you're running assignments. It's definitely not anything that the movies would suggest it to be. Every now and then you get some epic assignments, but mine were almost run-of-the-mill. But when I got out of the academy we did a climbing training over Mount Bachelor, which is a big mountain in Oregon, a lot of skiing, but you can also train for glacier climbing. So we were training on that, learning how to use ice axes, anchors, snow travel, and so I was carpooling back with two members of the mountain rescue team.
Speaker 2:We were talking and one of them gets a page on a call out for a call out and at this point I'm past the search and rescue academy, so I have my ground SAR credentials all ready to go, but I still need to go through additional stuff to get operation like cleared for mountain rescue. And they said they looked at me like well, here you go. And like all right. And so she, a driver, picks up her phone. It was like all right. She turns, says anyone know where hell hole is? They're sending us to hell hole. Fantastic. Anyone know?
Speaker 3:where hell hole?
Speaker 2:is they're sending us to hell hole. Fantastic, this like lord of the rings. And then it's this uh, like uh kind of canyon uh ravine area in lane, county oregon. That it's, uh, it's I think that the geologic term is like a tension crack, but it's just rock-sided split and it's deep between 50 to 100 feet deep in some places. Um, yeah, it's brittle rock. You really don't want to be caught in there just because, uh, rock fall colder in there. Um, but the situation was that a teenager had been in there with some kind of outdoor group and I can't remember exactly how she did it, but she had a broken femur. So really serious leg injury definitely not something you want to have. In any case, it's incredibly. It's life-threatening because you can easily go into shock. There's bleeding risk, but she had broken her femur.
Speaker 2:We knew that firefighters were probably going to be running this mission at night. We're driving to this uh site staging area and we're passing these kind of janky trailer homes that have like homemade keep out signs on. It was like oh, this is, this is a tough neighborhood, but we get there. There's a ground star guy, grads maze, says all right, turn off your headlamp, we're gonna feel our way through because they're trying to get an army blackhawk in there to try and see if they can extract this person directly through a hoist. Drop a medic down, lift them up. We kind of hold down. We hear we can hear the radio chatter the blackhawk and they're looking at through night vision but the tree canopy is too thick and they can't make the extraction.
Speaker 2:So decisions called to to lift this person out using a rope system. We've got mountain rescue guys down there, we've got firefighters down there. They've packed this person up. They've administered some pain drugs. So that way it's a bearable lift, because breaking a femur is incredibly painful and I get tapped on my shoulder like Rick, you go help this guy, run this part of the rope system, do exactly as it says.
Speaker 2:I'm like all right, I'm not, like'm no, I'm in no position to question, but I'm I'm total greenhorn on this. And so we run, we run the system up. You can hear, kind of in the background, the rock fall from this. This uh feature just coming down around. These guys like, oh, this is, this is tough. But just by consistent like up, you know, pull the rope system and uh, reset, pull again, reset. People are hauling on lines. We get to the point and I get told to detach and start carrying the litter out with them and we're able to get this person down the trail over to an ambulance. They get to an airfield later where they can get medevaced to a hospital by helicopter and that was like my first time getting my toes in the water with this. It's like, wow, this is cool, exciting, a little chaotic, but this was awesome. Like the people that I worked with were excellent.
Speaker 2:They're like oh yeah, new guy, welcome to the job send a new guy in, yeah just not in the hellhole just just above it, like I was in no way at all qualified to go down there. But they're like, all right, what do we? It's situations like, all right, we have this guy here, what do we do with them? And then they like, all right, I'll help out behind on this system, we'll, we'll, we'll take it that way. And then, um, but yeah, I got home at probably three in the morning and I was like, where were you? Like, uh, you know, this is what we're doing. That was my first exposure and great, yeah, it sort of indoctrination into, you know, the people on the team and, uh, what we were doing, a couple years would go by. Um, do you know missing person searches? Uh, nothing, nothing terribly exciting for a little bit. A lot of, a lot of search and rescue stuff. You know, maybe you're on team number two and team eight makes the find and they do the evac on their own. Or the person is, you know, and well enough, where they can walk back to their own car. They're just lost. But my, my introduction to like dog handling work was um october of 17.
Speaker 2:For context, I was working a graveyard shift as a news producer, probably like five I get a general call out page for a woman who's gone missing while mushroom picking near a feature called cougar reservoir. They call cougaroir kind of colloquially because there is a mountain lion population there. The situation was she had gone missing the afternoon before they sent teams in overnight. She hadn't been located yet. So now the general call out was going. Usually what happens is you can send in a fast response team for some of these things. Try to get more volunteers in and then by Friday morning they were calling for anyone they could get from in our county and also extending to out of county teams. So people up north other sheriff's offices were getting requests for assistance.
Speaker 2:Went back home after work at seven in the morning, grabbed a bunch of coffee and put on my gear and went to the sheriff's office to hook up a command trailer and we drove over there. I got assigned. It was just me and another guy from a ground search team. Yeah, got our assignment, took a sheriff's car up to our dropping point and we started walking downhill in this really thick timber forest and it's probably like 40 degrees. It was raining pretty much the entire time.
Speaker 2:We knew that if we found this woman she was probably going to have hypothermia, be very cold. We knew she didn't have any equipment on her, she'd been just had her clothes, her shoes, and had separated from her group Mushroom picking in thick timber. If you get separated from your group because you're staring at the ground looking for things when you try to find people, your sound is not going to carry far. So she had been yelling for her group but they couldn't hear just because of how thick the forest is. Um, and she had ended up, you know, being missing overnight. We bushwhacked for, I think, a few hours through our assigned area and then we came up to a little bit of a top of the hill. We were constantly calling out for her name, um, and then, lo and behold, we call out and then we hear something very faint call back.
Speaker 2:I think it's a woman's sound. We stop again. We're like, okay, did you hear that? Yeah, I heard that. Uh, let's try again. And then we call it again. And then we hear call back, help. Like, okay, this is it radio in. Like this is team two? Uh, we have a response like due north of our last reported location, we're gonna check it out.
Speaker 2:And now we're kind of just barreling through the forest trying to stop and find we're stopping again to call make sure on the right path. And then we get close and I realize things like, oh, we got to make sure this person doesn't move. So now I'm like don't move, stay where you are. Um, we see her, we come up on her and we see her standing like, oh, holy mackerel, you're conscious. Like this is incredible, because it's it probably got into the 30s overnight, constant rain, the odds are tough. And like, wow, you are tough. Um, she had found a downed tree to lay under for the night and she had been sheltering. And, uh, she had a, like a work coat that had a fleece liner on it, so she was still able to have some insulation.
Speaker 2:So we we get to her. Uh, like, verify her name, like are you jane doe? Because you know, hopefully we're not looking for two missing people. And it's like yes, I'm this, like okay, fantastic, I radio it in and my I get like the call back from my commander. It's like in like okay, what are her vitals? Like kind of intrinsically telling me to settle down a little bit, like start going through the motions of vital signs position, gps, location, everything. So we sit her down, start getting her food, water.
Speaker 2:What's frightening about hypothermia is if you're hypothermic and you suddenly start moving really rapidly, the cold blood that's been in your limbs, your heart rate's going to drop as a survival mechanism. But the colder blood that's in your limbs is now cycling back to your vital organs and back out. So now you're cooling again so you don't want to move. Anyone who's been exposed to cold for that long, so she's really excited at first, then starts to drop back down again and like, oh, okay, so it's, it's still pretty urgent, even though we've located her.
Speaker 2:Um, another team comes up on us and I get over, I hear it over the radio, it's another, it's another ground star from our sheriff's office, but he's with a canine handler from up north, and I get the word like hey, we're probably 50 yards out, you're probably going to see the dog first, just let him run like all right, like I hadn't done a lot of cross training with the canine team at all.
Speaker 2:And then this, hear this crashing noise and like a jingle bell and this black lab just bolts out of the brush high and then back over to her handler, like oh, that was fast. And so they come in and the handler and another couple of ground star volunteers, they wrap our patient with it's it's called a hypothermia management kit, but really it's like a giant hand warmer that covers the entire torso. So now you're actively able to like seriously provide some warmth to someone, get her to dry clothes, start, you know, get her package a litter clear trail up to a forest road and then start walking her out. And then, uh, as we're doing this, like as we're getting her out, like I see the canine handler behind and his dog is just like having a blast, like I found the person get me my toy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is like, this is cool and so yeah that handler and I, as soon as we kind of got to the ambulance and we were just kind of walking back, uh kind of cooling off, I was able to talk to him about like hey, how'd you like get into this with your dog like this, it looks like you and your dog are just having a great time. It's like, yeah, this is what we do, this is our discipline. This is how long it took me in a train for certification and I kind of bookmarked that um as like, oh, I should give this a try if my you know, day job hours change from overnight to regular time and I can put more time to this. And um, that handler, uh, mark cooper writer. You know, when I started my first dog, we would meet again years later in another exercise. So I was able to like come back, shake his hand, be like hey, you're the one who got me into this. This has been excellent for me and my dog.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so years would pass by before I did certifiers. Another five years would pass by before I got onto a better hours of my day job in television. And then we got more missions. Covid definitely sidelined a lot of things for training. We were able to do canine training in small groups, so that worked out pretty well. But we also had our search and rescue group, did a lot of public health assignments, so helping the health department behind the scenes with management, the vaccine clinics. And then we had a terrible wildfire season in Oregon in 2020, where we were helping out at evacuation centers and also at checkpoints.
Speaker 3:People get back to their homes without yeah, so to do for the community, that's awesome yeah, it like it's.
Speaker 2:Uh, like I, I never thought I'd be able to kind of do that. Um, yeah, it's definitely not what I thought it was going to be, that's for sure. I I had heard about it, I think it's through.
Speaker 3:I think it's. Yeah, let's say I think it's really cool because growing up I wanted to find a way to give back to the world and the community and right after high school, all my buddies joined the army. Um, and I tried to. I tried to enlist and you know, because I I wasn't. I grew up, I wasn't a smart kid. I failed majority of my classes. I used hemophilia as my crutch for not doing things and yeah just missed, missed too much school.
Speaker 3:I just didn't even care. All I cared about growing up was sports. But so afterwards all my friends were the same as me.
Speaker 3:Right, you hang out with the same people just like you and they all, they all enlisted and went about their lives and I was the only one told nope, you can't do that. I think I always chase the sense of like, how do I, how do I feel like I'm worth anything to other people in the community? And what you're talking about right there, that's that seems like a viable option for for people. Yeah, medications getting better and better I mean that totally. That's a great way to give it back.
Speaker 2:I was kind of in the same boat as you. I grew up on like techno thrillers and Tom Clancy novels and I was kind of chasing the idea of that adventure growing up. And then adulthood, you know, 17 comes around. It's like, wow, I really can't do this with a bleeding disorder. So what am I going to do? Like I wanted to find that experience, especially because, just like you, I had friends who joined the military after college. Some of them went to PCs, some of them enlisted and went to afghanistan. Yeah, I was like, okay, these, these guys are, are, um, you know they're, they're answering what they feel is the, the right call of duty for them to answer. And then after then, search and rescue kind of just appeared in front of me like well, I, I kind of I owe it to the kid that I used to be, you know, who is in a medical emergency in the wilderness, to give this a shot to see if that's achievable.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome and yeah, that's cool that I mean it's reasonable amount of training time. You said eight weeks or so got you equipped or so to do it. I mean that's great If anyone's listening and they have hemophilia or bleeding disorder, and they went into the military. I would love to hear your experience on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I personally don't know anyone who has, but if I imagine there's a sort that could be are you just lying?
Speaker 3:could you just be like, nope, I'm good?
Speaker 2:yeah, I got nothing I imagine there are people who have probably had mild cases who figure out later in life, after you know however many joints or issues or whatever, that they have it. But yeah, I, I can't, can't think of anyone who's actually had to go into it I've never heard that story but yeah, sar has been been great between even the stuff like the, the behind the scenes disaster work and stuff.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was able to learn from a lot of really great people who were really committed to what they were doing. I've always been surrounded by people who were definitely answering like to a higher standard either that was for fitness or skill set, and they gave you some like in that team there were people to look up to and try to. You know, match up to or aspire more like aspire to meet that example that they set. So it was. It was a great environment to be in.
Speaker 3:Do you have like any story about like the craziest place you've ever had to infuse? You have to infuse in weird places weird places.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've infused like in the back country before, like you know, getting up at like 3 am before going mountain climbing, just like sitting up in a sleeping bag and just kind of like, kind of huddled, like all right, yeah, a little cold, you know, yeah, cold outside, let's make this vein pop up a little bit here. Come on, uh, and then like infuse like crack a dong, crack a dawn, trying to. You know, yeah, cold outside, let's make this vein pop up a little bit here. Come on and then like infuse like crack a dong, crack a dong, trying to, you know, stay warm and get my arm out for that at once. That's. That's probably. That's probably been the wildest place I've done. It was, you know, sitting in my sitting bag and exposed Jesus. Where else can I?
Speaker 3:think, and a vehicle I think might be the craziest, like kind of just like driving and just someone else driving and me trying to infuse.
Speaker 2:I've done it in a vehicle. I would be. I would make him pull over to the side of the road for getting the needle into it. I don't know if I could manage that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that concludes this episode and I just want to let everyone know we are one. Last time I checked we are one download away from a hundred downloads for the HEMA live podcast. The reels have been doing amazing. I mean we already have, we have thousands of views on the reels. One reel alone with jason sloniker. He's a basketball star in the hemophilia community, young kid. His reel alone, I mean it's probably almost a 10 000 already. I mean, no, really, yeah, it's awesome. His real, his real blew up and I was like, wow, that is that's crazy I enjoyed hearing from him on the the first episode we did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, basketball you haven't won. I can't jump. So I've never done basketball at all. You know that that's a for like a bleeding disorder perspective being able to do that because you can easily. You know we talk about our ankles all the time and using blown ankle but also basketball, you can easily catch an elbow in the face. You can. I don't know if anyone watched a recent uh minnesota timberwolves detroit pistons game, but you can get into a bit of a brawl on that too. So, yeah, basketball is uh definitely intense for anyone anyone playing it.
Speaker 3:I can't wait to interview him. I mean, I'm sure, at the level like when you're playing, at that level, there's gonna be, there's gonna be trash talk, and then there's gonna be elbows, deep shots, you know.
Speaker 1:So I'm excited about that yeah, but yeah, I just want to encourage everyone keep on listening, share it.
Speaker 3:I just started the youtube channel so I will be doing some editing of the videos of the podcast and we'll have all the episodes on youtube and then Apple. The links are in the bio for anyone to click on and they can listen to all the newest episodes. Every time we produce a new episode it shows the most recent one there for everyone to listen to. But I had so much response at HFA, it's just so encouraging to hear in person what it means for us to create a show and to share stories and experiences, so I'm looking forward to the future. Thanks a lot, Rick. I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Man happy to be here.
Speaker 3:You've definitely been in the TV business. You're too good. You're too good. I'm watching you and I'm like man the way you speak, the way you're good. I'm still with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't get too much airtime. I got a face for radio, as they say.
Speaker 3:You said that before. You actually do have a really good voice, though. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to the Hemo Life podcast. Today's episode hopefully inspired you and provided valuable insights to enhance your journey. Join us again to hear more incredible stories and expert advice from our community. Make sure to subscribe and stay connected with a group of extraordinary achievers and pioneers. On behalf of LA Aguayo and the entire Hemo Life team keep pushing forward, strive for excellence and remember you are the architect of your own destiny. Until next time, stay strong, stay inspired and continue on your path to an elite life.