Kept Alive by a Machine

I’m sitting down with my father-in-law, Terry Krupp, a man who survived multiple heart attacks and then hit the moment most of us never truly imagine: left-side heart failure, a terrifying diagnosis, and a blunt choice from a heart-failure specialist. Surgery or hospice. Terry is alive today because of an LVAD, a left ventricular assist device, and he doesn’t treat that as a tragedy. He treats it like extra time he has to earn.

We trace the full arc that led here: small-town Michigan, older parents, Vietnam-era decisions, and a career that “unfolded” from music and electronics into electrical engineering, then into sales leadership and high-stress management. He talks candidly about what managing people taught him, how constant pressure can become normalized, and why setting boundaries matters more than most of us admit.

Then the story turns toward caregiving, grief, and survival. Terry shares what it was like to care for his wife Joanne as her cognitive decline became impossible to ignore, and why caregiver burnout is so dangerous. We also dig into the day-to-day reality of living with advanced heart failure technology: batteries, spare parts, sleeping plugged into the wall, and learning to accept what you can’t control while still choosing your outlook.

If you’re searching for real talk on LVAD life, heart failure recovery, caregiver stress, resilience, faith after crisis, and building community as you age, this one stays with you. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs hope, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway: what would you do differently if you knew you’d been given extra time?

Transcript

Why This Conversation Matters

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to today's episode of Unfolding with KK. This is a conversation that we don't get to have very often. I am sitting down to have a discussion with my father-in-law, who is quite literally kept alive by a machine. But instead of approaching life from uh the view of limitations, he has a totally renewed appreciation for like. And I'm excited to hear for you to hear what he has to say. Excited to sit down with you.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

I'm doing part of it because of curiosity of what this all is.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

And the other part of it is if there's any way that I can ever help you, of course I want to do that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Thank you. This is, you know, I I think we've we've talked about it in the car coming over here. And I've I talk about it with anyone that's willing to sit down and share their story with me. It's it it's a I it's it's a podcast that's a little selfish uh because it's me wanting to get clarity on people's stories. And um and I've been inspired by so many people taking the time to tell me their story, and I've learned it sitting across from them in dining room and kitchen room, uh, kitchen room, kitchen tables that, you know, it's what keeps me going.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

That's interesting. And you pretty much know all about me, if anybody knows.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Uh, I do. I do, but I want to get your, you know, I'm excited to sit down with you today for many reasons because I have known you for 25 years. You are my father-in-law, you are someone that I am very close to. And you have a really fascinating story. It's also a very rare moment, I think, to be able to sit down with somebody who has faced some of the things that you have faced. And I haven't I haven't heard, like, I haven't taken the time to ask you some of these things. So we're busy. We're busy. Um so I think it would be, I think our our past leaves clues as to how we approach things that come further in our chapter. So can you kind of like tell remind me and and tell anybody that's listening or watching, like, who are you? Like, where did where did you grow up? Tell me a little bit about about your about your childhood.

Small Town Roots And Family Gaps

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Well, I was born in southwestern Michigan and lived my entire first 18 or 19 or 20 years of my life there. Uh born to a poor family that I didn't know was poor. Yeah. Had no idea we were poor. Um went to a Catholic elementary school for the first eight years of my life. Uh and then a public high school after that, uh in a small town in Michigan of five thousand people. I mean, it's tiny. There was nothing there. There was no reason to stay there after school. Um, because there was nothing there. There were like two industries. Um we didn't even have a McDonald's till d a decade after I moved out of town. And um I couldn't wait to get out when I finally graduated from high school in 71.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

And you were a gift and a very big surprise to your parents. How old were was your mom and dad when you were born?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Mom was 40, dad was forty-five. I have one sister almost ten years older than me.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So when my mother was very ill near the end of her life, I asked her one day, I said, okay, mom, it's time to put the cards on the table.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

I was a mistake, wasn't I? She said no.

SPEAKER_03 4:09

No. You're not a mistake.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

She said, You're a big surprise.

SPEAKER_03 4:13

Yes. Did you ever um did you feel like that gap? Did you ever feel like you had parents that were a little bit older?

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Oh yeah. Absolutely. I felt starting with my sister. She when I was eight years old, she was gone. She went to college, got married right after college.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

So I was in a lot of ways like an only child.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Certainly.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

That ten years made a big difference. Um yeah, I knew my parents were older. They didn't do a lot of the things that my friends' parents did. And part of it was money, they didn't have money to do stuff, and part of it was just there there was an age difference, you know. Definitely knew that. In fact, it set in my mind the determination that I wanted to make sure I was as young as I could be when I started having children so that I could be young with them. France's mother and I got married at twenty f I was twenty-four. I think she's three years younger than me, I think. So she was twenty-one, I think. And that was in 77. And he was born in March of 79. And I honestly remember the moment of conception. I reeled, and I thought, what are we doing? Because we were in no position to have a baby, because we did everything backwards. And by that I mean we got married, uh, then we moved to Michigan. She worked and I worked, and I got myself back in school because I had gone to college right out of high school and had no idea why I was there.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

And my parents couldn't afford it, and I figured that out, and I just kind of quit doing it. But I knew I had to get back in. So um, yeah, when when she got pregnant with Brian, it was like, holy cow. And then we bought our first house, and then I graduated and got and then I got a job, and we got our second house, and then we moved all over the United States, mostly because I was l fortunate enough to be successful in my job. She was a nurse, so she could work anywhere we went, which is the great part about nursing, is they're still in demand. They can walk into a hospital and get a job like that if they got any kind of credentials at all. So, yeah, that was why I had my kids young, and because my parents were older, and I I mean, dad was 65 when I was 20. He retired. Yeah, he died at 75. I was 30, and he was gone. I told I had that discussion with Brian the other day. I said, geez, you know, he said something about, you know, glad you're my dad, stuff like that. And uh I said, I'm just glad I'm still around, and told him I was 30 when my dad left. You know, Brian is older and for at least a while longer still has me, you know.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Well, yeah, he's 17 year more years with you at le at least. Huge difference. So, all right, so you a little bit to

Vietnam Era Choices And The Draft

SPEAKER_03 7:32

unpack there. I want to just ask you a few questions. So I I learned something about you in the car today on the way over here. Um, you had aspirations of perhaps going into the military.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

No, I didn't know that. No. I know you're a big military buff.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Yeah, I am. Yes. Dad served like everybody my age. Their dads were in World War II or Korea around those times. Your grandfather was in Korea, I believe, right? Oh yeah, and and um Grandpa Allie and uh But was stationed in Alaska. Yeah, yeah, which kind of weird, but I love that man. But uh yeah, I felt that it was an honorable thing to do, and like I told you, my dad taught me out of it. Yes. I wanted to fly. I was captivated by airplanes. Turns out I wouldn't have been a very good pilot because I could not handle motion very well at all. But before I knew that, that's what I wanted to do. And my dad taught me out of it because of the Vietnam War. He said, hey, most of the POWs there are shot down pilots. Please don't do that. So I didn't. And uh, you know, in college, when I graduated from high school and went right to college, my sister and her husband taught me into it. And parents never tried to dissuade me, but I know they were thinking, how are we gonna pay for this?

SPEAKER_03 8:52

Yeah. Student loans did not exist then.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

No. Yeah. And uh, but it also got me a deferment because there was still a draft back then. Yes. Yes. The draft ended while I was in college. But for those that don't know, they used to draw a number associated with your birthday the year when you turned 18. Turned out I was in college then, and my number was very high. I don't remember what it was. It was well into the deep 200s, and they were no longer taking that deep for uh draft. But if you had a low number, you were automatically going to be drafted, and you were automatically gonna go 99% chance, go to Vietnam. So I avoided that uh that war, and I had mixed feelings about it. I felt like I should be there because it's the patriotic thing to do. America's at war, I should be there. But by the time I was old enough, it was winding down pretty quickly anyway. And then Nixon ended the draft and it never was an issue again.

SPEAKER_03 9:57

And then so somehow you get into um you have a degree in um you get into electrical.

From Garage Band To Power Sales

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Yeah. I when I was in Kalamazoo, which is where I went to college, uh I was a musician from high school. You know, garage band, way back in the dark age. Yeah, I've seen some fun. But it was a lot of fun. I had a regular band, a regular group of guys, and we played a lot. And in those days, we made for a garage band, we made a lot of money. And uh there was this store in Kalamazoo, I'll still remember to this day, was called the Sound Factory. And a friend of mine worked there, and I started going there, and there was a guy there who had a business upstairs. I was starting to manufacture what are called sound modification devices, they still exist today. He was way on the front end of it. Um, things that make your guitar primarily sound different. And I ended up helping him for a while. He ended up giving me a job, and um that's kind of how how I got into the electronics thing. I was building these things, I was the only builder for him. And uh that got me interested. But I wasn't, and one of my good buddies at that business was an electrical engineer, and that kind of pulled me towards that education, but I wasn't qualified. I was intelligent enough, but I didn't have all the background classes I had to take. By the time I finally got into it, we were married, we had Brian, and um I was working full-time and going to school, and their mom was working full-time. I was literally working midnights.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

And I wasn't, I didn't do well in school because I hadn't taken the required preparatory classes. So I never envisioned my career in that when I was in high school. So I stumbled through college. I really did, and I know that upset their mother. I would have been upset too, at me, because she's the consummate student, straight A's. When she was in school when we were married, she shut down everything but school. It was amazing how she could do that. I couldn't do it. And I don't say that to be negative, it's just the way it she is versus the way I was. And uh long story short, when I graduated, you know, they have the on-campus recruiters, and I wandered into one one day and interviewed, and they liked me because I wasn't a 22-year-old coming out of college, I was a 30-year-old. Yeah, he had some experience, and they really felt like that was valuable to them. I had no idea what that company did, and ended up working for them for 20 years. It took me all over the country, and uh uh it was all in all a fairly good experience. And the the funny side of the story is excuse me, when I left that company, they were in the process of being sold, and I didn't like what I saw coming. And then by the same token, I was in the process of a divorce, and the company wanted me to move to DC. I was managing, among many other offices, also the District of Columbia office. There was no way in the world I wanted to live in Washington, D.C. I'd already done all the big city stuff, and I was reaching the point in my life where I didn't want to do that anymore. So I left the company um and uh ended up working for another company, all this in sales and sales management. Here's the electrical engineer who was thinking microelectronics when I graduated, ended up working in the power industry all my life. And uh, it was a good experience. The second company I worked in 20 years for them and then retired here. They also wanted me to be a manager, and I said, no, thank you. I have the t-shirt. I just don't want those kind of troubles anymore because working with people can be difficult. And I had at one time I had 33 direct reports.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

Yeah. So you you get a degree in electrical engineering, and you go in, you think, oh, I'm gonna do electrical engineering and jokes on you. You get into sales.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Um electrical power system sales, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:27

And you get into sales and then management, and then managing, which is nothing like what you go to college for, which is what a lot of people find themselves in.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Absolutely right.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

One of those situations. Um, you know, we're we'll I will, I know we're gonna get in and talk about um the journey that you've had with your health, but managing people, what did it teach you about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 14:52

I think I really had to develop because you didn't get you don't get much training at managing people. Um, I think they made me a manager, my very first manager's job. I'm really not sure why. I think it's because they thought I was older and more mature and able to do it. Maybe I don't know. I was working in the out of the Detroit office, even though it was out in the suburbs, and uh came to me one day and said, you know, there's a guy that wants to interview you for a manager's job in Indianapolis. I had no idea that was coming. Ended up doing it, uh, which led to several other jobs. But uh yeah, that first job managing people was really difficult. People were already in place that had been there through previous managers. Yeah. So you're the new guy. Oh, yes. They're all looking at you like, what's this guy gonna be like? You know, is he gonna be a good guy?

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

And everyone's interpretation of a good boss is different.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Sure. It is very it is. Everyone has different needs. I think you learn that pretty much on the job.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

I don't think I got some manager's training, but it was more of the here's the HR stuff you have to do, here's the paperwork you have to do, here's the reports you have to do. Very little about how to successfully manage a group of people. Every group is different, every group has a different dynamic. I think it helped me a little bit that I'm maybe a little bit of a people person. You're extroverted. Uh yeah, I think that's just a little.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Just a tiny bit extroverted.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

Which I never used to be. I used to be a total introvert. That's what's that's so shocking to me to hear you and a change transpired. I really don't. I think maybe it was a defense mechanism when I left the eighth grade in Catholic school and had to enter the world of public school where most of my friends were. If that makes any sense, yeah, we should run in trial school. But it's a little different, I think, than the Catholic school was. But nonetheless, I I was lucky enough not to lose my friendships that were in public school. And I had a few friends in the Catholic school system too, but it felt very awkward going into the public school. I definitely felt out of place in ninth grade. Suddenly I was no longer taught by nuns. Suddenly the rules were totally different. And I think that's when I started becoming an extrovert. Might not have been to my uh my better, but it it happened regardless.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

It is interesting the survival skills that we that we're presented with. But and maybe, I don't know, maybe it also tapped into something because some of us, like the way I define introverted or extroverted is the way people make you feel. And so if I'm with a large group of people all day, my energy is depleted.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Because they're drawing another you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

But if I am like one-on-one is very is that's my comfort zone. And being probably a little being alone, I recharge. And like my mom, who is very extroverted like you, my mom is charged by people. And so it's it's interesting what charges us and what depletes us and how that goes on. I mean, in a sales role, yeah, I'm an introvert in a sales role. You are you're an extrovert. I'm one-on-one is my gift. And but a lots of people is is uh is a different, is it just a little bit of a different experience from me.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

I still say you don't give yourself enough credit, but I think you have a good realization of yourself. Well, yeah, you situations whether or not you can adapt is what makes you successful.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

You know, uh I just got lucky, you know. That's all I can say.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

It's interesting to me to hear you talk about your career. And so um it's interesting. I guess I thought yeah, I was gonna hear you say, I had like on my board, I wanted to go into management. I want you just it happened.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

It unfolded for me.

Moving For Work And Learning Leadership

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Indianapolis opened a door, and I said to my wife at the time, I said, have this opportunity. What do you think? In fact, I did that at every move we made because family is critical to me. It always has been, always will be.

SPEAKER_03 19:21

And you moved your family all over the country.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

I did. We were in Indiana not that long, and a vice president that I used to work for had been had been a sales vice president, was given a divisional vice president's job in a facility. And literally out of the clear blue sky, he called me up one day and said, Hey, I got a job for you in San Diego. Are you interested? At that time, I thought, wow, San Diego, what a beautiful place.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Um, and he told me about the opportunity and stuff. And so I went home and said, Hey, uh, got this other opportunity. The kids were very young then. And I said, you know, they want me to come to San Diego. I can say no. If I say no, like in a lot of companies, it's probably the end of your opportunity career. Yeah. If you say no to a major promotion, they're gonna say, okay, well, you know, that's not, it doesn't fit the corporate path, you know. So we ended up going to California. Um was a horrible, horrible career mistake. San Diego was spectacular. We loved living there. I remember with you being in real estate, maybe I've told you this story. We lived in Indianapolis in a beautiful home. It was a two-story colonial, four-bedroom, two and a half bath basement, typical Midwestern kind of house. We were the second owners. So it was relatively new. And it was in a subdivision, but it was on a one-acre lot, which was a big yard. We liked it a lot. When we went to California, I I went out there, every place we went, I would go by myself, start working there, try and get things settled, find a realtor, and then bring the family out, or the wife out at least, find a house and start our new life. And I told the realtor at the time, he said, What are you looking for? And I, you know, I had no idea. I knew what I was looking for, I had no idea what it was like in California. It cost you. I told him what I was looking for, and he goes, Well, for that kind of money, I'll never forget this. Sometimes people say things to you that you'll never forget. This is one of those. He said, Go to HH Gregg, which is a big appliance store, get four refrigerator boxes, and you can live under a bridge out here in California for that much money.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:42

And we spent an outrageous amount of money, but I had mortgage assistance, which was spectacular.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Which is very quickly, we had a beautiful home on a postage stamp four bedrooms, three baths, no basement because the basement. Aren't common in California. Literally, on a post-it stamp, I could cut the grass in 10 minutes. And but it was still very nice. And then I realized not long after that that the division that I had chosen to become a part of wasn't being scrubbed by the company. And here we are in California. Don't know anybody really to speak of. Don't have any connections, and my job is going away. And they paid to move us out there. They paid a fortune back in the day when companies moved executives all over the country.

SPEAKER_03 22:36

Yes, I've been on relocation teams.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

They they We had 100% mortgage assistance the first year, meaning our mortgage on our $165,000 home in Indianapolis was equal to our mortgage on our $365,000 home in San Diego. They paid the total delta. They paid to move us all the way out there. We were not a cheap move. And then within a year, it was like the division is going away. Another VP who I had known throughout the company called me up and goes, hey, ever been to this is where these phone calls are so weird. Have you ever been to Richmond? I said, gosh, no, I've been through it on my way to Florida, but I've never spent any time there. He goes, Well, I got a job for you there. I need to know. And in I forget what he said now, like 72 hours if you want the job or not. So I came here and uh went back home and said to my wife again, well, my job here is going away. She was already working in the hospital system out there again, thankfully. I said, We got to get out of here. I got this opportunity. What do you think? And she agreed, and we moved to Richmond. And we've all been here ever since. The kids, you know, basically this is their home. Even though they were born in Michigan, lived in Indiana, sure, lived in San Diego, now live here, you know. So life path that I never anticipated.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

Yeah, I I think so many of there's so many folks that think that we can just control, control, and it doesn't often end up like that. Um are sitting along different paths, different parts of their journey in places they never thought they would be. It's not always a bad thing, it's not always a good thing. It just it's different. So you've managed a lot of people, a lot of people. Direct 33.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Yeah. That was the most in three different, four different states.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

It's a lot, especially with them all being direct reports and lots of people under them. For sure. So as you I mean, I think I think what's so uh inspiring about your s about your story is um how many times life has thrown you a curveball and you've stood back up, stood back up, stood back up.

Caregiving Through Cognitive Decline

SPEAKER_03 25:07

And a biggie is Joanne. And um you navigated, so not only have you had a career that took you all over the country with a tremendous amount of stress and a lot of blessings too. Um, you were married to um, that's when I first met you, you were married to Joanne, uh, who I instantly connected with. And sitting here at 45, it's pretty surreal that we're talking about this. Um and in her mid-40s, she gets diagnosed with early onset.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

She never really actually got an official diagnosis. No doctor ever told us what it was what it was, but it was very clear what was beginning to happen. But yeah, she was in her early 40s, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:03

When she or what how old was she? Can you itch?

SPEAKER_01 26:08

It's it's getting gray to me now, but she was somewhere in her mid-40s, and I we just I noticed that suddenly she was disorganized and forgetting things.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

I specifically remember one.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Yes, she was very sharp.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

She was very sharp, and your dad was organizing a golf tournament out at Amelia. Yeah. And I went out there to help him. And she rode out with me, and then she wanted to go home. And I said, Well, just take my car and go home, and I'll get a ride home with your dad. Because he really needed the help. There was a lot going on. Yeah. And uh she said, I can't find the way home. And she got really nervous and really upset. And I went, What do you mean you can't find the way home? And then it kind of rolled from there.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

And did she start having seizures? Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Um, I took classes because I wanted to learn about this because nobody would really talk to me about it. The only information I got from doctors was, well, every journey is different, but they all end the same. And I didn't know what they meant by that at first. I had to ask him, what do you mean by that? And he goes, Well, everyone's progression through this disease is different. But no one ever said to you already gets out alive.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

But no one ever said she's got early onset.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Nobody ever said that. I kept her home as long as I could.

SPEAKER_03 27:52

You were a care you you tr you were in full caretaker mode.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

See, for it's the natural human thing to do, especially someone you love. The marriage vow says for better, for worse, sickness of health. Sickness of health.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

And I could not imagine doing anything else for her. Um it's been 17 years since she died.

SPEAKER_03 28:17

Just doesn't seem possible.

unknown 28:20

No.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

I remember um in your as you were being as you were a prov uh a caretaker yourself. Did your first had it heart attack happen?

SPEAKER_01 28:35

I mean before that. It was before that, right? But I had a couple while I was taking care of her. Yeah. Being a caregiver, and I don't say this to pat myself on the back, this applies to anybody.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

Is a brutal situation to be in. I have friends that are in that situation right now, and I've seen it take them down. I have a friend right now that's just beginning to go through that. I'm trying to coach him and counsel him and make sure that it doesn't take him down too, because it will.

SPEAKER_03 29:08

Absolutely. I've I've seen it, I've witnessed it with you, I've witnessed it with my grandmother. You know, it's it because it's all encompassing.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

It is. It takes everything you have.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

You were working full-time.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah. I got initially I got a um I didn't home service called Comfort Keeper. Yes. To come in and sit with her seven hours a day, five days a week, so that I could work because we still had to have an income. Yes. I was not old enough or in a financial position to retire.

SPEAKER_03 29:40

That's I think that's a part of your a part of the situation that is so hard to to really think about because you were y'all were so y young for this to happen.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yeah. That's where I think I learned, you know, a lot about myself. And I think I learned that um no matter how bad you think your situation is, you just gotta look around a little bit. You find people that have it worse than you.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

And it gives you a perspective that I've tried to carry with me through the rest of my life. Um, no matter how bad you think you got it, somebody is carrying a bigger cross than you're carrying. Someone said to me once, I don't recall who it was, it stuck with me. Everyone is carrying a cross. You don't really know how big their cross is unless you really know the person. And you can always find someone who has a bigger, heavier cross than you have. It's true.

Social Media Anger And Self Control

SPEAKER_03 30:45

Uh a lot of this this want to have these conversations with people around me is because I think that in our world, it's easy to say, it's easy to turn on the TV or or a podcast like we're doing, or you get on social media and everyone feels very divided, right? That's but but it's not but I I I what I hope people garner from all of this and what they gain is that we actually have more in common than we have in than we have in a difference. You just don't know what somebody is going through. So you need to have a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

And more attention than cohesion does.

SPEAKER_03 31:30

Yes, and that's it's well, I think all of us need to be aware that it is a vehicle to try and and get us to do certain things, but you can't buy into it because that's not that doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

She experienced social media in your 70s, trying to figure out it took me a long time to figure out that it was drawing out a lot of anger out of me, and I was getting in angry. And I had to back away from it and say, look, this is not doing anybody any good when I get in an online discussion with somebody I don't know about politics or religion or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

I've learned really to scale back my comments on almost everything. Now I hardly ever comment on anything, unless it's a friends post and it's not really controversial, then I'll comment on it. And there's a few people I can talk politics with. One of the dangers of my life is I'm a very passionate person. But passion can be dangerous.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Yes, and it can we can have blinders on and it can shut down people around us that we really love. Um, this is not a social media class, but I think a lot of people just don't recognize that. Um I mean, my best advice to people is to just say nothing. Don't like anything, don't love anything. You know, because everyone's watching, it's always documented, and maybe the those conversations are best had in person or just not at all.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

If you were to examine my posts on social media, principally Facebook, which it was it was first Facebook to me was just a place to find people I'd lost touch with. Well, that's really the big day. Yeah, I found so many people that worked for me that were friends that once in my life that you know life went this way and we just lost each other. Yeah. I loved that.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

That's its best use. Pardon me? That's the that's its best use.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Absolutely, and it was perfect for that. But then I got drawn into stuff. And if you were to look at my post in the last, well, since my heart failure, yeah, I think you would find that 99% of them are very positive. I make a conscious effort to post funny stuff, to post uplifting stuff, just because I don't want to post negative stuff anymore. I did initially, when I first got on, I got sucked in the political hole. Oh no. It was horrible stuff that I was posting.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

People get, I mean, people, it's it's I think, and that's another uh this is maybe yeah, this is not what this podcast is about. This is about your story, but this is part of your story. So I mean, look, I mean, at the end of the day, the cancel culture is a big problem. We can't cancel each other out just because we have a disagreement. We need to learn to have conversations and to just move. It's okay to disagree.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 34:21

It's say, okay, that's your belief, that's my belief. But you said something that I think is the perfect leeway and and to transition into um a big piece of of your story.

Heart Failure And The LVAD Ultimatum

SPEAKER_03 34:37

It's not what defines you by any stretch of the imagination. But you have faced death, which sounds really dramatic to say. But I was in that hospital room and I saw you and I saw somebody who was facing a decision that most of us will never have to make for ourselves. And you have lit, I mean, you are like a cat that has nine lives. You had you have thank thankfully, you have had, I don't know how many heart attacks.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

I think seven.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

It's unbelievable. Seven heart attacks, six, seven heart attacks.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

They became non-events to me.

SPEAKER_03 35:25

As your daughter-in-law and someone who lives with your son, they were certainly huge events. Um, but that's fair. That's a fair way to think about it. So you how many years has it been since my heart failed? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

November of twenty-two, so three and not quite a half years yet.

SPEAKER_03 35:49

So you have what would have killed most people.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

If I didn't have the surgery, the technology, and the people available when it happened, I would not be here.

SPEAKER_03 36:05

So to I know the story, but and correct me if I'm wrong, but from my recollection of that time, you were told, and you were you were very fortunate that you were a candidate for the LVAD.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:22

Which for those of you who are listening or watching, that is a heart pump for back lack of a better term. You are literally alive because of this machine.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

I am.

SPEAKER_03 36:35

Which is incredible to think about. We're sitting in the room with the machine that is keeping you alive.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 36:44

What was it like? Walk me back to that day where you were told by your doctors, it's this or that, sir.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

These are your decisions.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

I thought I was having another heart attack. And I know it sounds stupid, but it's like, okay, they're gonna, they're gonna put a stent in me, it's gonna open up an artery, and I'm gonna be fine again. And uh was having it was happening all day long. I was home alone. My wife was gone. Sure. She was shopping with her mother in an all-day shopping thing. It kept getting worse, and I kept thinking, this won't go away. And so eventually I called an ambulance on my own. And it turns out that she got home right when the ambulance pulled in the driveway, which must have terrified her. And they took me to St. Francis because it was the closest hospital for my cardiologist was, and went in through the ER. When you're a heart that fashion, you get top priority in an ER. That's the that's that's the folks who have gone to the ER and et cetera, the darn ER for three hours waiting to get seen.

SPEAKER_03 37:48

Not you.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

No, they take you right in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

And um Well, because time is everything.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Sorry? Time is everything. Oh, absolutely. And I remember she came back to the uh, she had left the examining room, she came back, she goes, they're gonna take you to St. Mary's from St. Francis. I said, Why? She goes, Well, that's every hospital system has their heart hospital. St. Mary's has to be the heart hospital for uh Bonsa Corps, mercy. So they plopped me in an ambulance and took me over to um St. Mary's, and then then it was made known to me that I was having left side heart failure, that the left side of my heart had just said, see you later, we're done, we can't do this anymore. My cardiologist never explained to me that that might be coming. In retrospect, I understood a lot now about what he was saying, but he never sat me down and said, By the way, this is not good, and this is not heading in a good direction, and this could happen. So I was taken aback. And the doctor that was primarily responsible for my health at St. Mary's, or the title she had, Chief of Heart Failure of all things. Yeah. And she scared that living bejesus out of me. She was a brilliant woman. She was not only an MD but a PhD. She uh was from Poland, a Polish American, and she was very intimidating. And she came into me and said, You need to have the surgery. If you don't have the surgery, we're gonna put you in hospice. This was mid-November. She said, You'll be her exact words were you will be dead by Christmas. I just give me a second. That scared the crap out of me. I wasn't ready to die. And so I said, Well, let's get on with the surgery. She goes, just a minute. You know, you first you have to qualify. And my first thought was money. I thought she means do you have enough money to have this surgery? Which by the way, the surgery in the hospital ended up costing three and a half million dollars. She said, Oh no, it has nothing to do with money. She said, You have to have a physical verse. We have to make sure that there's nothing else in your body that's already fatal. Cancer primarily. So I guess the world's best physical crap.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

Yeah, you did.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

And um they put me through the ringer. And the good news is I came out of it and they decided that I was a candidate for the surgery. I needed one other thing to get that surgery. I had that too.

SPEAKER_03 40:48

You did.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

So uh so we did the surgery, and I wasn't afraid of the surgery. I knew that if I didn't have it, I wasn't gonna be here. So it was a no-brainer. I didn't really even know exactly what it was. They gave me this great big book to study prior to the surgery. It was a notebook, honest to God, it was like a four-inch notebook. And they kept getting mad at me because I wasn't reading it. Well, first of all, I was very, very sick. You were extraordinary hours in bad shape. Yeah. They kept me alive because I went in the hospital prior to Thanksgiving. I was too sick to do the surgery. And then it came around that Thanksgiving was coming around, and they didn't want me in the OR on the Thanksgiving holiday. So it was the 26th of November. I went in on this. I think it was the 6th, so I was there almost three weeks before they did the surgery. And um I just wanted to get it over with. I wanted to get it done because they told me that would save my life. But the other thing she told me about that I will never forget the device that I wear now is a bridge to a transplant. The purpose of the device is to keep you alive until they can get a heart for you. But she said, But you don't get a transplant. And I said, why not? Now she's already made me mad because she told me she can't put me in hospice if I can't do surgery and stuff. She said, You're too old. I was 69 at the time. And I said, Wait, wait, what do you mean I'm too old? I felt 50. I didn't feel 69. That's when I began to feel my age. She goes, We're not going to invest the time, the technology, and the very rare heart into someone who's not going to live a lot longer.

SPEAKER_03 42:42

Okay. The startling truths that we're faced with.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

In retrospect, after the surgery was over, I don't know, a year after the surgery was over, I said, Oh, I couldn't go through it again. I I don't want to transform it. You know, they've cut me open, they've taken my heart out of my body, they have sewn a pump onto my left ventricle and tucked it back in and sewed me back up again. And uh open art surgery, they take your heart out of your body body completely and put in a new one. And I thought, I don't think I can make it. I I don't think I got what it takes. It really took a lot out of me. Really.

SPEAKER_03 43:23

I know it did. I I as an observer, it was obvious it did.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Everybody around me knows more about it than I do because I was so drugged up. It's weird the memories I have and the things I've forgotten. I remember your mom and dad said to me, uh, we came in to visit you. Do you remember? And I said, Uh-oh, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_03 43:43

I think that's a good thing that that you don't I don't remember my own daughter visiting me.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

I remember being mad because I I didn't think she'd come in. And she certainly was there. I have yes.

SPEAKER_03 43:54

Platori pepper. So you real so uh I I I do want to ask so some of these questions. So you're you're you're you're you're extremely sick, you're in the bed. Sick is an understatement. And you never were worrying about the actual procedure.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

No, I didn't really know what it was. I I just I knew that there was something there that could save me, and I just wanted to get it done. I remember when they took me for the most of my stay there, I was in the uh CICU cardiac intensive care unit. Yeah. Prior and after the surgery, they moved me into the cardiovascular intensive, so just were different cardiac care unit. But I remember when they moved me into there before the surgery, I was real happy because I was finally going to get this done. Because it kept dragging on and dragging on while they did all these tests and evaluations and whatnot. And you know, it's me trying to get me better so that I was in some sort of condition. So they could obscurity on me.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

And uh so I was really happy when I I remember being wheeled into the operating room, and I only saw my surgeon one time prior to that. That was when he came to my bedside for surgical evaluation with the doctor who told me I was gonna die if I didn't have the surgery. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

Mrs. Cheerful, Mrs. Good News.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

So I was waiting to see him, of course. I didn't see him in the OR. I remember being wheeled in somewhere along the line, they gave me a set of I don't remember it. And bright lights, tall ceiling, people up in the gallery watching the surgery. Uh everybody's very busy running around getting stuff. And uh next thing I knew, I woke up, I think it was like two or three days later, back in the CVICU, and I was a mess. I was intubated, which I didn't understand.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

And even though I knew about that stuff, I I couldn't talk because I had a big pipe down my throat. I remember Brian came in. I think it was my wife. Maybe it was you, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 46:08

I did not come in.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

I tried to talk to them and I couldn't talk. And I was trying the sign language of the deaf, which I used to know, and I couldn't move my hand, I couldn't do that. And then Brian got me something.

SPEAKER_03 46:24

He got you a whiteboard.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

So that I could I let me remember what I was trying to say. Who knows?

SPEAKER_03 46:30

I was so drugged up that You were out of your well, uh and you were out of your mind on pain meds and sedatives, I'm sure, to keep yourself where you were. Do you so for those of for those of of us who are not familiar with an LVAD, they they have a do they have a timestamp on them?

Daily Life On Batteries And Power

SPEAKER_01 46:56

How long will it last? I worried about that.

SPEAKER_03 47:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:01

Well, after the surgery I had to go back to, we'll call it clinic, to the office where the doctor was. Uh initially it's like every week, and then after you've been out a while, it's once a month and then once every two months. Now I'm at one four times a year, which is great. Um there was a poster in the clinic that I'd seen a dozen times, and one day I was waiting for the doctor to come in. And I read the poster and it said 50% of LVD patients live an extra five years.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

And I went, I remember hearing that.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

And so I asked him, I said, is that what I got to look forward to? It's just five years and I'm out of here. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, everybody said, In fact, one of the nurses I think told me, she goes, I have an LVN patient that's been with my patient for 15 years. So again, it's a it's a curved kind of thing, you know. And it scared me at first. I thought, well, five years and I'm checking out, you know, or maybe less. And then I got around to thinking, well, you know what? Whatever I get is extra time. It'll be or it'll be no different than you and me right now. You don't know how long you're gonna live.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

I don't know how long I'm gonna live. Um, friends of mine who uh work in the uh plumbing industry said, hey, it's a pump. Pumps work forever. It's while we're out. Literally, I've been told that.

SPEAKER_03 48:25

Um how has having the this experience, having an LVAD, changed the way that you view life?

SPEAKER_01 48:39

It definitely has. Uh, it's much more precious to me now. When you face it, and certainly I'm not alone in this. I mean, I face death and because of a heart failure. People face death with cancer, gunshot wounds, car accidents. But when you face it, uh, I think you maybe appreciate it more. You know, we tend to think that, okay, we all expect to live into our eighties now. You know, that's the kind of normal lifespan for a human being these days, somewhere in there. Um, we don't think about it very much. We just think we're gonna get there, realizing that average comes from a curve of people dying in infancy and people dying in their hundreds, you know. But I just decided that I'd been given a gift, a huge gift. And I remember I'm in a Catholic hospital, I'm a Catholic, a priest came in to see me one day that I really, really liked. And I had been searching for a way to get back involved in my faith in because I walked away from it. Not ashamed to say it, I don't like the fact that I did, but I did. And I I said to him, I said, I didn't know this man, didn't know him from Adam, first time he'd ever met me. And I said, Why am I still here?

SPEAKER_03 50:03

A question a lot of people ask themselves they're faced with that.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

I really thought, I don't deserve this. I haven't been a good boy. You know, um and he gave the answer I think any minister, any priest, any rabbi would give was it wasn't your time. Especially somebody you don't know. What are you gonna say to them? I think that's a standard answer for them. And and he's rather right, you know, everyone has a time, we don't know when it is. But then I said to him, uh, what do I do with the rest of my life? Again, this man did not know me from Adam. He said something that really grabbed me because I've been trying to do they said, make people happy.

SPEAKER_03 50:58

Just that simple.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

Weird answer.

SPEAKER_03 51:02

But really loaded.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Yeah. But I decided, um I was gonna do that. So that's kind of what I've been trying to do for the rest of my life. Forgive the tears. The the the normal part uh He also made me angry though, because I said to him he was a retired parish priest. He was a priest up in Ashland, I think St. Anne's, I think is a church up there near the hospital. I don't know that area very well, but uh I really like the guy a lot. Name is Father Christian Haydinger. And uh he's on staff at the chapel in St. Mary's. Uh but he's retired. And I told him, I said, and I'm really looking to find a way to get back into it again because I've fallen off the horse on the faith thing, and he goes, I don't have time for you. I'm retired. I can't help you. And I was really pissed. I'm pissed at a priest like his job in life is to save me, and he just got through telling me he didn't have time for me. I was angry, I was very angry. Very confused too.

SPEAKER_03 52:15

But so how did you reconcile that?

SPEAKER_01 52:21

Well, I go forward. I mean, first I started saying, okay, I'll find it on my own, I'll find a way, and in the meantime, I'm gonna stri I'm gonna try and make people happy because that made sense to me. And uh fast forward, I don't know, a couple of years, a friend of mine and I were having a conversation. This is so weird. And we came to the conclusion that we were both looking to get back into church again. I went to church with you and Brian and Andrews for a while and I loved it. And then you moved on me.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

I know it.

SPEAKER_01 53:07

And uh don't feel bad about that, but um it happened to be remembered it happened to be the church where Joanne was buried. Yes. The irony of freaky, freaky coincidence. But anyways, this friend of mine and I were talking, and and she said she wanted to get back into church again, too. She's a Southern Baptist, a typical Southern girl who I love to death. Northern Catholic Southern Baptist. What are we gonna do? So we decided over a glass of whiskey one night to just start going to local churches and find one that we both liked, and that's where we would go. And so we started randomly going to Powhatan churches. She would tick one, then I would take one. She would tick one and I would tick one. And after the church service, we'd get in parking lot and we'd be like, Well, what'd you think? Did you like the minister or the priest? Did you like the service? Did you like the message? Did you like the people?

SPEAKER_03 54:10

You were dating churches.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

It's amazing how different each church is a different culture. And we ended up at a Baptist church that I have driven by a thousand times, less than a quarter mile from my house.

SPEAKER_03 54:25

It's funny.

SPEAKER_01 54:26

And I'm suffering guilt from that, but I'm also enjoying the heck out of it.

SPEAKER_03 54:30

What makes you feel guilty?

SPEAKER_01 54:32

Well, raised in a Catholic church, it's very regimented and it's very I don't know what the right word is, imposing. I mean, technically I could be excommunicated.

SPEAKER_03 54:48

Oh yeah, I didn't. I was I was confirmed.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

But I didn't go to the Catholic Church in my hometown here in Virginia because unfortunately I knew too much about the priests. Now I had gotten sideways with the Catholic Church anyway and a lot of issues, but I could deal with that. But the priest there was one of those priests that you read about that, you know, should not be there. Sure. But the Catholic Church, because they can't get priests in America anymore, was doing everything to hang on to their existing priests, no matter what they did. And it ruined the church in a lot of ways. How Tan had one, and I won't go into details about it, but so I just didn't go there and didn't want to go there. And they finally got a new priest when this gentleman retired, and my friend and I went there one day, and she's very adamant, like, I'm not gonna be a damn Catholic, you know, and that was okay. I got it, because it's it's kind of like going to a synagogue for anybody else, it's very, very different. And uh but we went to one service, I made her go. Well, the new priest is from Ghana, and neither one of us could understand the man. He's a good man. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to throw shade on him, but his accent is so thick and so heavy, we both left and said, What did he say? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 56:11

Do you really believe that um it really matters what denomination church you're going to?

SPEAKER_01 56:19

No, I don't, but yet a part of me is still brainwashed, if that's the right word, by a lifetime of the case. I went to church every day of my life from first grade through ninth grade. Every day went to mass.

SPEAKER_03 56:33

Don't you think it I I'm of I'm of the belief that it's you could go to you could go to church every day of your life, but if you're not living your life, if you're not living your life right, you've canceled it out.

SPEAKER_01 56:47

Exactly right.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

So you found a you found a home in a place um of a real in a you you found a church, which is a ma which is a a wonderful thing. It's a great church. How are you making people happy?

SPEAKER_01 57:06

You know, mostly little ways. Uh, because the little ways turn into big ways. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 57:13

Um sitting here with an L VAD is making other people happy. I love that. Why not? Why not?

SPEAKER_01 57:24

Most people have no idea what this is. Most people look at me and they kind of see the bumps under my shirt. And most people are too polite to say, what is that? Every now and then somebody will get really bold and say, It happened to me yesterday morning. A guy said, What he literally said, what the hell is that under your shirt? And it took me a while to come up with an answer.

SPEAKER_03 57:48

Do you think he was worried that was like a a bomb?

SPEAKER_00 57:51

No, what it was. You can see, I mean, you can see all the balls. You can't hide this. No, you cannot.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

He just didn't know what it was. And he's one of those good old boys who's like, What's going on in there? Just roll the lump. It took me a long time, not that day, but prior to that, when I was asked that question, to find an answer for people. Now I just say, It's my heart. And they're like, What? And then I lift my shirt and I show them. And they're like, Oh my god, well, what is all that stuff? I said, It's what keeps me alive. I went to a memorial service for uh a husband of a friend of mine Sunday at Hardywood, where you used to have gatherings with your company.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

I did.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

And my uh dermatologist was there, and I love her. She's spectacular.

SPEAKER_03 58:36

You ought to love her. You're in there a lot too.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

I am. Well, we're getting better at that. She's done some ways to get me out of there. But uh I really I didn't like her at first. I really like her now. And I met her husband, who's also a physician. He was an ER physician who went on to buy a bunch of dock in the boxes. He's a businessman. But anyways, I have my backpack on because it has my spare parts in it.

SPEAKER_00 58:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:59

If something fails, I have spare parts in my bag. I get one out, I replace it, and I'm good to go. I depend on electricity to be alive.

SPEAKER_03 59:08

Yes, you do. Interesting that that's have you ever thought about that?

SPEAKER_01 59:12

What? Yeah. That's how it circles back. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:17

You might be an electrical engineer.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

But he looked at my uh, I can't wear very many clothes that hide this. So it's I just don't think about it anymore. I wear what I wear, and you can see the bumps, and some people ask and some people don't. But his wife said Terry has an L VAD, and he's a physician, so he knew what it was. But he saw my backpack and he goes, Is that it? I said, Dunno, it's right here. The backpack is just full of smear parts. I, you know, I explained it to him. I don't always pull up my shirt in public and say, look at this, but if I'm in a position where somebody could benefit from that, I'll show them. You know, it's it's something that is definitely a part of my life. I put this on in the morning. At night I take the batteries off, but the controller is still there, and I hook up to a wall unit um and put the batteries in a charger so they'll be charged in the event that I you literally sleep plugged up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:17

I got one, two, three, four sets of batteries. And they just I've just passed my three-year mark a few months ago, and so they replaced all my batteries. $12,000 for the batteries just for the keep me alive.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:33

It's it is an interesting thing to think about the full circle of it. It's a little bit ironic. It's a little bit it it is. I mean, obviously, um when I talk to you about it and what I see sitting across when I'm listening to you as your daughter-in-law, you've taken something that you could have just taken a totally different path with it. And is it too much to say that you now almost you almost live with it as a blessing?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

Oh, absolutely. Which is without this, I would not be here.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:15

Right. Obviously.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:16

What bigger blessing could you get than that?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:18

But it's also the way you've you've chosen your outlook because you don't have a negative outlook about it. You're not, woe is me, you're not I'm dying. It's I have a second chance.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:33

I think earlier we talked about the perspective thing. Yeah. When you look around and you for see other people, what they're going through, and you say, you know what, there's so many people that are worse off than I am. I have no right to be crying, whiny, moaning about this. I got it easy compared. I have a friend who's more just died. What day is today? Friday. Friday. Tuesday. And she got Parkinson's disease out of nowhere. And it progressed very rapidly. And her husband, who's one of my coffee buddies, one of the OGs I go to coffee with, has all kinds of medical issues.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:15

And he had to deal with being her caregiver, and she passed away very quickly. And I'm like, I'm still here. Look at that. They went through hell. I went through hell too, but I'm still here.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:27

I sat in uh after my surgery, I had trouble making hemoglobin. I don't know why. So my blood was all messed up, my blood work. And uh so I had to get iron infusions. You get them at the cancer center in St. Francis, you go over there, and it took me a couple of times to realize. I think I got four or five of them. I'm sitting there, you come in, they sit you in a padded lounge chair. They say, Mr. Crump, what would you like to drink today? We've got water, we've got orange juice, we've got soda. Mr. Crump, what would you like for a snack today? We've got pretzels, we've got chips, we've got peanuts, we've got cookies. And then, you know, they stick a needle in your arm and you sit there for an hour while this bag of iron, liquefied iron, drains in your arm, and then they say, Good job, thank you. We'll see you next time, and you go home. And it took me about two chips there to realize, wait a minute, I'm sitting here getting iron. Knife said these people are getting poison. They're trying to kill cancer.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:42

Maybe. Maybe your body wasn't making iron, so you could get that perspective.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:49

Maybe I heard the bell ring one day and I asked my nurses, I said, What was that? And everybody started clapping. She said, Somebody just took their last chemo treatment. I'm getting iron, they're getting poison. There's perspective for you right there. I can be sad. I can go, man, am I a lucky dog?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:10

Yeah, it's just a choice, right? It's a choice.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:13

We always choose what we're gonna be. Sometimes we don't realize it. And being depressed and being angry is the easy choice. It really is. I wasn't made a god for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:25

Well, understandably. So you start to question things.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:30

Until I realized that, you know, my friend Karen says nothing nothing is a coincidence, and you don't get anything that you can't handle. You just gotta do it, you gotta handle it. Right?

SPEAKER_03 1:04:45

When you look back, um hindsight's always 2020.

Stress Smoking And Hard Health Lessons

SPEAKER_03 1:04:50

We're always guilty of we always want to go back and but when you look back, do you think, you know, having a career like you did for any of us, those of us who are under tremendous amounts of stress, managing people, growing businesses, do you think that had any any uh impact on on your health?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:10

Absolutely. No question in my mind.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:13

What would you have done different?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:15

You know, I don't know the answer to that question because you are what you are, yeah. And A, recognizing it and then B changing your behavior, yeah, very hard to do. The worst thing I ever did to myself was I was a 50-year smoker. Stupidest thing you could do. And I started smoking because a girl I was dating was a smoker and I felt left out. How about that? And then I actually liked it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:43

Yeah, it's very addicting.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:46

Oh nicotine is a wicked master. Yes. Wicked master. Uh, but sure, I found a way to quit the hard way. Be in a hospital for three months and and almost die, and that will make you quit. But um uh there's also a history in my family. Yes. My sister has had open art surgery, my mother had open heart surgery. There's only four in my family, and three of us had open heart surgery.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:13

So do you think it's a collision of all three? Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:16

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:17

Family history.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:18

And I was intentional and I was hyper.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:22

Lots of stress.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:23

And then becoming a care. It wasn't just career stress, it was also stress of being a care stress, career stress.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

Yes. Self-imposed almost all of it. The day that I retired, I remember standing in the shower that morning. Yeah, like everybody else, I'd get up in the morning, I'd have my coffee, I'd take my shower, I'd get dressed, and I'd go out the door to work. And uh without fail, my shower would be the time I thought about, okay, what hammer is gonna fall on me today? The ones that I know about, the ones that I don't know are coming down around the corner. And uh every day. And uh when I retired, I remember just taking that shower that next day and went, I don't have to worry about that stuff anymore. There's no hammer. There's still gonna be stresses, but they aren't gonna be coming from work. I'm one of the few people I know that does not have my email on my phone, not because I get work emails anymore, but I used to be tied to my email. And now I don't want to be. I look at email when I look at email, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:25

And we're tied to now, I'm tied to email and text messages.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:29

But it's a very tight group of people that I text with.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:32

So it's a gr I mean for me, it's and it would have been the same for you in sales. It is it's a gift because it is a way to communicate with people that need my help.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:41

It's a gift, but it's also a chain. It's it's anchored with a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:44

Without boundaries, without boundaries, it becomes detrimental. So one last thing I want to ask

Future Plans Faith Community And Meaning

SPEAKER_03 1:07:51

you. So, you know, this is called unfolding because our life is always unfolding.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

It is.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:56

So, what's next for you? What's on the horizon? What are you working on? What are you doing? Do you have hope for the future?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:05

I do want to travel a little bit more, and traveling is very hard for me.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:11

Happy to hear you say that.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:12

Sorry?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:13

I'm happy to hear you say that.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:15

Well, my sister's very ill. I know. At 10 years older than me and being very ill, whatever time I have left with her is getting short, and we're very close.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:28

Yes, I know you were.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:29

Which is funny because growing up, we didn't have time to get close. Like I said, when I was eight, she was gone. Yeah, she's a lovely, lovely human being. She'd be married and you know, moved away. She's always been part of my life, but they moved all over the country too for the longest time. So we're close. Um, and their winter in Phoenix and their summer in Michigan. Not sure how much longer that's going to continue, but um, so I want to be able to go and see them and see other people and stuff. And uh uh my daughter actually just said to me, I don't know if she told you this or if I told you. Yeah, you told me in the car. That's right. That uh, you know, she called me up and said, Hey, let's go out west this summer. And I went, Okay. You know, I don't know if my sister will be there in the summertime because it's really hot in the summertime. But her son, my oldest grandson, has never been out west, and I didn't realize that because Anders has had the benefit of traveling an incredible amount in this country. Well, we just got back from being out west, you did, which is wonderful. Because I never left my home. I was never more than 40 miles from my home until I was 18 years old.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:38

It's not an uncommon story.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:40

No, it's not. But so I'm starting to get excited about maybe going out west with her family.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

What else do you want to do?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:49

You know, I just I don't have high aspirations or high expectations. I want to keep getting my life together.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:59

I have to get my it's really interesting hearing you say that because you're in your 70s, early 70s. And I think people have this illusion that like people have their life together, but it's always evolving.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:14

It is. Uh and it's like, let's let the I guess it's together whenever you think it's together. I don't think it's together. I am trying to get rid of things. Yeah. Because my children have told me that when I die, that there's gonna be dumpsters in my yard and everything. I don't need a dumpsters. And that just guts me, even though I won't be here. So I've gotten rid of a ton of guitars, a ton of other things that I liked that I know I won't be using anymore. And and I'm trying to pare down things from the previous relationship that ended where we ended up, uh, she happened to be a collector, I'm gonna be polite. Stuff still finding things.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:58

Yeah, things weigh you down.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:00

I'm trying to make it easy for when I pass on for my children to clean up behind me.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:07

What is Terry doing for himself? I am You're not materialistic.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:15

No, I am not. So I tell people, I don't want anything. There's nothing I want. Nothing. In fact, I'm getting rid of things uh rather than collecting things. I want to finish my journey so that when I die, I will go to heaven. That's what I want. And I believe, and I think that's where I'm I told one of the nurses in the hospital, the clinic where I go back to. I said, I'm not afraid to die. When this happened to me, I was scared to death of dying. I was not ready to die. I'm ready now. I don't want to die now. Yeah. But I'm ready. I feel like when I die now, I'm gonna go to heaven. And I look at it, uh don't let me forget to tell you one other cool part about it. I don't want to be one of these people, we call them Bible thumpers, who you you run into meta party and you're like, oh God. This person, you're like a Seventh-day Adventist or whatever, no offense to any listening, that they want to push religion upon you. I don't want to be that kind of person, but I want to be available to help people find what I threw away and ever just rediscovered. And I got a really important piece of news. My daughter, she's gonna shoot me for this, but she tends to drop bombs on me and texts. Instead of face to face, we'll have a texting conversation. In the middle of that, she'll drop a bomb and I'll look at it. Sometimes it slides right by and I'll go back and I'll read that and go, What? And she started going back to church. And I had asked her to go to church with me, and she didn't really have an interest. And I get it, and so I didn't push it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:14

Oh no, everyone's on their own journey.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:15

Absolutely. But I went to the pastor of the church that I'm going to, and I said, How do I work this? This is what I want, but it's a dangerous minefield, and I don't know how to do it. And he guided me a little bit, but I don't think I can take any responsibility for her decision to start going to church again.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:33

No, no, it's a very individual piece.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:36

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:36

And division. I mean division, I mean decision.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:39

That makes me really, really happy that she's doing that. And I she said, Will you go to church with me? And I said, Absolutely. You just say when and I'll go with you. I said, but there's a caveat to that. You gotta come with me too. Because I want her to meet my people and see what I've involved.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:56

She, God bless her, is my primary nurse now. Yes. Then I'm not lucky again. My daughter's a nurse whose specialty is cardiology. What the hell? That's amazing. She understands this, she teaches this, she knows all about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:15

The blessings all around.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:17

Oh my god. So that's really cool. And but now that I'm getting older and now that I'm alone, and don't you try and rob me because I got lots of guns and not at all. Look, she's oh, Daddy, you need to move in with me. I'm like, uh-uh. No way. We've had many discussions about that. And there's lots of reasons I don't want to do that. First of all, I do value my independence as long as I can be independent. I want to. You're doing great. I am so far, which is good. I mean, if I want to eat dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon, guess what I do? I eat dinner at 3 30 in the afternoon. Yeah. If I want to go do something.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:57

That moves you into the OG Club, which is the old God club.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:00

Exactly. I just do it. And uh I love my daughter with all my heart. Both my children and their spouses, you include, I'm so blessed. But um thank you. I said to her, I said, you don't realize what it's like when grandpa moves in with your family. Your family dynamic changes dramatically, you know. And I said, You don't want that? And and we're very different.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:25

She and I are That's what makes the world go round.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:28

That's true. But uh there are some minefields there that I that we have to tiptoe through. It's getting better. It's getting much better. But I said, I just don't want to live with you, no offense.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:41

I don't think anyone I mean look, at the end of the day you're an independent person.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:47

Stubbornly so.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:48

And I think that it's a it's a it's I mean, it's a b it is a it's a miracle that you're sitting that we're sitting in this room together.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:59

It is indeed.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:00

And you have gone through so much, but you keep fighting, and I think it's it's easy to look at the it's i I think you're you are a reminder when I talk to you that you have a choice. The glass is half full or it's half empty. And you get to just low and you just don't know it. You just don't know it. You just haven't looked direction. That's the way I try to look at it. Is there anything we didn't talk about that you're surprised or you wanted to say?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:31

There's I think there's three or four things that keep me going right now that it for me have helped a lot. Obviously, family.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:40

It's been critically important to me all my life. And I'm blessed. A lot of my friends, their children are far away. Mine are within Stone Sterrow, that's wonderful. And number two, I got a tremendous circle of friends. You do. And being an extrovert, um, friends are important to me. They're chosen, they're very carefully called into what I let into my world. And they're great people. And that was one thing that scared me about moving to my daughter's. Even though it's only 15 miles away, I would be taken out of my community away from my friends. It just wouldn't be as easy. I know 15 miles is like that's nothing. When you get to be an OG and you can't drive as much as you could, 15 miles seems like forever.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:24

Community is one of the biggest reasons that they are pointing towards longevity.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:28

Same thing with my church. I'm developing a community within their church. And right now it's very small, but I have a personal relationship with the pastor who's a great guy. And we sit in the same place every Sunday and we started to bond with these people that that sit around us. And that's also important to me, but ultimately you're right. You choose how you want to be to a certain extent. Some people can't choose their health. Things happen to people that they lived in a pristine life and they still get Parkinson's or cancer or whatever. Uh, but you still, if you're alive, you can in some points, at least the blessing I have, I can choose how to deal with it. There will come a day, I know, sometime when I can no longer be independent, when a lot of choices are taken away from me. I don't look forward to that day.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:19

No, I don't I don't either. And for myself, I don't look forward to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:25

When I was your age, I never thought about that. And as you get to the point where someone put it, there's more sand in the bottom of my hourglass than there is in the top, you start to think about those things. You're gonna hate. I hate reading about all the people that I love that are in the music business and a few in the entertainment business that are dead. And it's like, damn it, that's me coming up pretty soon. Uh, you know, uh, and I'm not a Hollywood star kind of person, but there are there are talented people that I really like, even though I don't really know them.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:01

It it timestamps where we are, it it tells us where we are in in the spectrum.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:06

That's why eternity is so important to me. I look at this journey that we're on in 80-ish years, give or take, you know, whatever it's gonna be. That's an average number, I think. And you look at that compared to eternity, and you look at the vastness of everything around us. There has to be an eternity. Maybe there isn't. If I'm wrong, I got nothing to lose. I'll lead a good life, I be good to people, I don't do anything bad, and if that's all that I get out of it, okay. But if I'm right, I get everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:47

That's not a bad trade. Doesn't sound like it to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:51

You know, I we can't really imagine eternity.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:54

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:54

But I can imagine, say, a hundred times our lifetime. And that's at least finite, and I can think about that. Um I'm definitely at the point where I want to consider what could happen after this and anything I can do to get myself there. And not the cool part about it is I don't do it w just because of that. I do it because it's the right thing to do, you know. But I'm no, uh, you know, I'm no better than anybody else. I I'm not spectacular. I'm just dealing with my circumstances the way I deal with them. I don't, you know, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:31

It's uh it I think that's not giving yourself the credit, but that's how we a lot of us live.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:38

I got some blessings. I don't need credit for that. I didn't have anything to do with it. They just you gotta recognize them sometimes. That's it. Maybe that's the difference, is that I recognize the blessings.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:48

Well, I appreciate you sitting down with me and talking about all of this. I know it's not um it's not a nor it's not a everyday conversation that you get to sit across from somebody that um has has faced I think the gravity of the health um crisis that you were in and who has come out on the other side, who is you know, has a renewed a renewed faith and has excitement over your next chapter. And I think that is that's an inspiring, inspiring story. And I appreciate you you being bold enough to sit down and chat with me on video.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:30

Uh because we do anything for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:33

Well, thank you. But it's not about me. It's about you and honoring your story, and hopefully someone will hear it and be inspired to choose to live their life in a different way, in a positive way.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:51

One final thought that I had that I Sure. Go ahead. One thing I wanted to do once I started healing and got back to being normal again was I asked at the clinic if I could be like an LVAD ambassador to people that were in the hospital either having just had the surgery or were about to have the surgery. The answer was no because of HIPAA laws. I can't know who's back there. I was in the ER one time, and the guy in the room right next to me was another LVAD patient, and we were not allowed to exchange any information or anything. It was kind of weird. HIPAA laws. But help people with this.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:31

Maybe you could start a a social media group. That wouldn't be hard to find.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:35

It would be interesting. I never really had that thought. Yeah, it's a great way to I think You teach me how to use new technology to do things.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:42

We heal through we heal through helping others.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:48

I certainly do.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:49

Yes, it's uh because then you have first you have experience. It's I think that's an inspiring thing. Maybe that could be part of your next chapter.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:58

Maybe so.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:58

Maybe so. Thank you. I love sitting down talking to you.