Danny Covey-Overcoming Eight Heart Surgeries and Still Here

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Welcome, everyone in the United States, Canada, and around the world to another episode of It's a Wrap with Wrap, the podcast of overcomers and useful information to better our daily lives and mental spirit. I am your host, Ron Rappaport. I would like to take a moment to thank all of our listeners, viewers, supporters, and sponsors for helping to make this podcast such a success.

The podcast is being heard on all major platforms and the podcast website itsarapwithwrap.com where you can find all the episodes, previews of future episodes and great products and services offered from our sponsors. The podcast can also be viewed on our YouTube channel It's A Wrap With Wrap, the podcast uncut. My guest today is Danny Covey from Embrun, Ontario, Canada. Danny is the author of Star Tissue, his memoir of hope and the perseverance in hardships.

He is also a creative renaissance man who fills his time as a graphic designer, illustrator, marketer, art instructor, and a video producer. Despite having a good sense of humor, things have not always been easy for Danny. Danny has faced many trials throughout his life. Danny has survived eight heart operations, four of which were open-heart surgeries, which have left pronounced physical and psychological scar tissue on his body and in his mind.

He nearly died on the operating table three times and was repeatedly told that he would never be able to excel physically.

Danny is with us today to tell his miracle story, a story he is thankful to be able to share today and inspire us not to be the victim of our circumstances, but the victor of our story. Welcome, Danny, to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me on, Ron. It's very good to be here. Okay. It's great to have you. Let's start at the beginning. Can you tell us about your family dynamics growing up and your schooling and that?

Absolutely. I like to say it this way. I was not the kid on the playground that got picked last for team sports, I was the kid that wasn't even on the field. I was the kid that stayed back in class because from a very young age, I could never participate in sports. I joked that I never knew my gym teacher, but I heard he was a really nice guy. Now, I know starting at age 10 and a month, 10 and a half months old, going up to age eight, you were having issues. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah. So my story really starts with my parents. And I started just probably eight, nine months old, and I just started going unconscious and flopping over. And the first time this happened, my parents rushed me to the hospital. I was revived. They weren't sure what had happened. Maybe I had choked on something. But this pattern repeated itself and it happened again and again and again. And my parents took me to different specialists, different cardiologists.

I had seen 10 different doctors and the 11th one put a stethoscope in his ears and he listened to my chest. And at 11 months old, he said, your son has a trill and there's something wrong with his heart. So I had a heart catheterization at 11 months old, and it was determined that I had severe problems with my aortic valve and with my mitral valve.

And at that point, it was an emergency flight across the country to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, where at 18 months old, I had my first open heart surgery. And I understand at one and a half years old, you only weighed 14 pounds. Yeah, I had actually lost weight. And the surgery was, at the time, this would have been 1978. The surgery was experimental. So the surgeons didn't even really want to talk about my odds of survival.

They were just going to do the surgery and, you know, hope beyond hope that somehow it would, it would work. And I don't want to spoil it for your viewers and listeners, but I made it. Well, we are so thankful you did. And in 1978 in April, that was the, your first open heart surgery, correct? That's correct. Okay. So things continue, shall we say, normally after that period. And at age eight, you travel from, I might be mispronouncing, is it Regina?

Regina, Saskatchewan, yes. Right. You travel from there to Saskatoon for a routine catheterization prior to your expected growth spurt. Can you tell us about that time? Yeah. So life was kind of humming along. My childhood was going great. I call it my Hasbro childhood because life was fairly normal for several years. I had this catheterization more as a preventative measure. The doctors and cardiologists thought it would be a good idea just to have my heart checked out.

And when my parents entered the room after the procedure, one look at the doctor and they knew something was wrong. And what that catheterization, that routine catheterization had discovered was that my aortic valve was constricting and it was blocked.

And that at eight years old, I would be needing another open heart surgery. Wow. Okay. That's a lot to go through. Can you tell us the effects of a sick child, what the effects are on the families? Yeah, I wrote about it quite a bit and there's some I left out, but I think the statistics for parents that have children with severe health issues, there's almost a 90% divorce rate among the parents. That's astounding. It is. It was very difficult.

And with my siblings, because I had health issues, I got special treatment. I was not, I didn't get in trouble as much as they did. And definitely there was friction between my older brothers and I, because, you know, Danny, the youngest brother could do no wrong. And then when he did, he never got in trouble for it. So there was definitely friction as a parent. Now I see it differently.

My, my parents really were in crisis and you know, they, they were just glad that I was there and trying their best to get through what was a very difficult and dark season. I will just say this between 1985 and 1990, I had five heart surgeries in five years. So that was a very challenging time for our family. Yeah, that's a lot, obviously.

How does an eight-year-old grapple with looking death squarely in the face? Tell us about your belief system. This was a, so I grew up with scars on my body. Right. And I had no memory of how they got there. I was told how they got there. or I heard the stories that a parent might tell a six-year-old, hey, this is how you got these scars.

But Ron, no doubt about it, when I was eight and I was facing surgery, this was the first time for me that I was experiencing it and I understood what was going on. And it did challenge my beliefs because what does an eight-year-old understand about life and death?

And that's what I wrestled with at that age. and so I did think very seriously about these things and I was challenged my I should probably say full disclosure my dad was a pastor and so very quickly whatever our family's beliefs were I had to decide is this something I'm going to choose for myself is this something hypothetical or is this something that I'm going to embrace as my own and that was the challenge as much as an eight-year-old could understand these things.

Now, you stated that you were at peace when faced with serious surgery. Can you explain why to us? I I've likened it to a hurricane. It does tremendous damage. But as you get closer, I just found once I was in the eye of the storm and you're in the center of it, that the closer I got to that center, the more calm or peace I had. And the reason I believe for that is I've always assumed number one, that there is a God.

And number two, I've assumed that whatever I face in life, there is a purpose for it. Have that belief. I think what I went through would have been very difficult. Whether or not I was right, I believed God was with me. And number two, I believed that all these surgeries I was facing, there had to be a reason for it. And that gave me, though I didn't like it, that did give me some peace in just knowing this is beyond my control, but there is a reason for it.

Yeah, I have faced those situations just like you. And I agree with you wholeheartedly. Same concept. You have to have faith. You know God's with you. And as you face it, you just put it in his hands. There's nothing you can do. You can't control what's going on around you. So you just have to do that. And I've faced those situations a couple times, and it was just amazing. You're just peaceful. Well, I've used this analogy too. If I got a bill for $3,000, I'd be wringing my hands. I'd be angry.

I'd be saying, well, okay, how am I going to pay this? I've got to move this fund over here. because that's within my grasp. If I got a bill for $3 million, I'd go to bed and I wouldn't worry about it because it's so beyond what I can handle, beyond what I'm capable of fixing, that the disagree where you just have to let it go. And I've found with the things that I've faced, the smaller the problem, the more I tend to stress about it because I perceive it's in my control.

If it's a huge problem that I have no control over, I actually find those easier to let go of. Right. And what you said before, I always liken to the fact, instead of asking, why is it happening to me? Ask yourself, why is it happening for me? Yes. When you take that approach, it just softens everything up.

100%. Yeah. Now, talk to us about the collateral damage from the surgeries you faced. What was the collateral damage from all that? Yeah. So it's been interesting. When I had that surgery at eight years old, the surgery went well, I recovered from it. But two things happened with that surgery. There was the tainted blood scandal in Canada at the time. And several patients in the hospital contracted HIV because of tainted blood, on the same ward that I was on.

So in the years subsequent to that, I had to be tested for AIDS just to make sure that I wasn't a carrier of that. And then with that surgery as well, I suffered a mini stroke at eight years old and I lost some of my short-term memory. So I've never been a fan of math since that because my multiplication table, which I had learned, I had to relearn. Things like ice skating that we do up in Canada. I forgot how to do that. So I had to relearn it.

So there was this gap in my memory of probably several months that I just had to fill and then get back into normal life. Has your memory come back since then? Oh, that's a loaded question. Because a few surgeries later, I faced another challenge that really has affected me more so in that way. All right. We'll talk about that. Now, in 1986, you moved to Bellevue, Ontario, and in 1989 to Ottawa. Yes. So you're 14 years old. You needed an aortic valve replacement.

Now, you chose a mechanical type, correct? Correct. And surgery was set for October 1990. Did you ever feel at that time like taking a victim mentality about all these heart issues you were having? Yes, I did.

Like I'd mentioned, between 1985 and 1990, I'd had five surgeries in five years.

After that surgery at eight years old the the surgery basically bought me a little bit of time in 1988 they did a ballooning procedure that bought me another year i had another catheterization and that revealed you're going to need surgery and so that surgery at 19 in 1990 that was a huge one because for much of my childhood i felt like there was this storm cloud just hovering over me and you know you'd you'd have surgery and you'd

see a little bit of sun peeking through the clouds but there were more clouds in the distance and that surgery in 1990 i was 14 years old, 1990 was the year that terminator 2 came out and that's significant because that movie was about cyborgs well i had this mechanical valve put in my heart and now i was becoming a cyborg i had plastic parts that ticked like a watch. And to my, to my young brain, this was the coolest thing ever.

This was kind of the silver lining of everything bad that was happening. Can you tell us a little bit about that operation? I mean, at that time, it was a big, it was a big thing. This was a huge operation. They were going to repair the four chambers of my heart. They were going to scrape away previous scar tissue. My aortic valve was going to be removed and they were going to put in a mechanical valve. The challenge was because I was growing, should they put in a child-sized valve?

Should they put in an adult valve and hope that I grow into it? So they chose an adult valve. They put it in, but that surgery was very touch and go. I almost died because once the surgery had been completed, I had internal bleeding that just would not stop. and there was talk that they might have to open me back up to get the bleeding to subside. Fortunately, I stabilized, the bleeding stopped.

And Ron, I would really say at 14 years old with that surgery and recovering from that surgery, this was the first time in my life where the storm clouds were gone, I was healing, and I could actually do things that other kids took for granted for years. It was a real turning point. Well, that's wonderful. What are your thoughts on worry and fear? We all worry and fear. However, they change nothing. There's a quote I love about worry.

Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere. And I find, you know, you can tell somebody not to worry, but it's something that they really have to adopt for themselves. And one thing that going through this many surgeries has taught me, you will never get a satisfactory answer to the why me question. Whatever you're facing, why did this happen to me? Why did I have these surgeries? I will never know.

What I can get answers to, and again, this assumes that there's purpose in what we go through, I can say, what is this teaching me?

So with every surgery yes i've had that initial thought why did this have to happen but then i thought i'll never know but i can say okay what can i learn in this surgery what can have been some very hard lessons but very very powerful lessons that have helped me along the way that now some 26 30 years later now i'm seeing here's why these things happen It answers that question for sure. Any tips for people out there pertaining to visiting people in the hospital?

You were in the hospital so many times, and I'm sure you had a ton of visitors, family, friends, et cetera. For people out there listening to this, can you give us any tips about that? I absolutely can. Keep your visits short. Don't go in for an hour. Go in for 10 minutes. Carry the conversation and then leave. I've had some people visit and they were there over an hour. And finally, at one point, I just said, you're welcome to stay. I need to take a nap.

Because there's, there's a measure where you get the heck out of here. Yeah. You're trying to be nice, but there's a measure where when you're sick, your world gets very small. You don't care about work. Don't care about your family. It's about managing pain in that moment and surviving in that moment. Yeah. So when somebody comes, it's encouraging to see them. It's encouraging to have them there, but get in, say your piece and then get out.

My wife, she stayed with me a lot in the hospital, but it was just, she would bring a book. She wouldn't even talk. I didn't have to carry the conversation. She was just there as kind of a circulatory blanket for me. Yeah. She was there for support. Yeah.

Understandable. Now, after the third surgery you are okay until age 18 now you go on a quest for a black belt in martial arts can you talk about that yeah i mean being a guy who said all these apparitions and here you are you know in martial arts that's the the irony is not lost on me i remember as a kid from a hospital bed watching Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan and being completely captivated because they were they were magical like what they could do with

their body was incredible but there was always we can never do that. It was completely beyond me. Well, when I had that surgery at 14, suddenly my health drastically improved. Suddenly I could do little things like I could actually run. I could be physical. And there's a reason why I believe I gravitated to martial arts, having agency, where I've been vulnerable for so much of my life, and now I'm going to take that vulnerability and do something proactive to protect myself.

So against my doctor's wishes against my parents better judgment i begged and pleaded i said could i could i train i won't do tournaments i won't do full contact fighting but could i just learn could i just start and it was a lot of arm twisting and very reluctant yeses but i would say it's important, whatever you do, you have to risk responsibly.

Everything we do has inherent risk to it. And I looked at the risks associated with this and I said, if I'm careful how I train, I think I can actually make my heart stronger over time. And the irony now is that when I started getting into martial arts, my cardiologist was shaking his head and I was showing him video eclipse. Like this is what it is. They thought it was cage fighting. I said, it's not cage fighting.

It's training. But as a result of doing that over time, responsibly, it's actually made my heart stronger. You know, that's interesting because I guess what you're saying is the family, the doctors, they're looking out for you, but they're actually putting you in a wall. Yeah. You're surrounding you with a wall, wall, floor walls, and you want to, you want to live. You want to get back to somewhat normalcy, right?

Exactly. And what they're doing is they're doing the right thing in their mind, but I hear where you're coming from. You got to knock those walls down or else you're, you're always going to be, you know, like Danny, you know, it's icy outside. Maybe you better stay home. Exactly. I mean, it probably life would have been like that. I would imagine. And it's no different than what anyone else does. Can you run 10 miles?

You don't know until you try and you, you, you conk out at mile eight and you realize there's my limit. And so for me, it was, it was the same thing. I'm going to really push my limits and just see where are they.

And I think whether it's me or anyone else, you will be absolutely astounded at where your limits are if you just actually try stepping out of that comfort zone right now along the way i understand you had a mishap a pharmacy mishap with coumadin yes which is a blood thinner can you tell us about that. Yeah. So I was in my mid to late 30s. I was doing martial arts and I was doing it responsibly. But I noticed I had a lot of bruises all over my body.

And initially, I attributed those bruises to just overtraining. Well, a couple of days later, I counted and I had 17 bruises.

And I thought, that's really odd. Well, then I was taking my medication and noticed that the colors were wrong and the long story short the pharmacy had mislabeled the dosage and that for over a month i had been taking a double dose of blood thinner which essentially meant my water was or my blood was so watered down yeah that the least little thing caused bruising oh sure so that mishap triggered a series of events where my cardiologist said stop everything you're doing.

Get to the hospital we'll get you some vitamin k shots we'll regulate your blood and then it triggered a number of testing well let's check you know let's do an ecg let's do a ct scan and all that testing reveal unbeknownst to me that my aortic arch had drastically enlarged, and was at risk of bursting so that we're talking about an aneurysm we are 100 talking about an aneurysm. Okay. And so that seemingly fluke mistake actually uncovered a huge problem.

Yeah. And this is why I say you don't always know why things happen, but man, I can see if I had not had that happen, I would have been testing for another belt and that aortic would have burst. Yeah. And it would have come as a shock to everybody. Yeah. It would have been over. Yeah. Wow.

So that was the first surgery you had after 26 years of good health. Is that correct? 26 years. And I remember, I would say this with medicine, no news is good news. Yeah. So I got a call saying, okay, you're a cardiologist in three months. And two days later, they called back to say, we need you to come in. And I hung up the phone and I looked and I said, this is not good news.

And sure enough, they said, you need surgery and we're going to have to repair the arch and what was really neat is they were going to replace the mechanical valve that had been put in years before and I was supposed to get one solid plastic piece that would have been the Cadillac of heart replacement technology. Now, I understand when you had that I think it was an eight-hour surgery, wasn't it? You went nine minutes with no blood or oxygen. Is that correct? That's correct.

So I remember it. As we got closer to the surgery date, my wife and I slept all night. We got up early that morning, went to the hospital. I was calm. I was joking with the anesthesiologists. But when I was put to sleep and they opened me up, at some point, and they can't say exactly when, my aorta had ruptured. Okay. And so that procedure turned into an emergency operation to save my life. And it meant that for nine minutes, no blood, no oxygen, going to my brain, going to my body.

And it was a literal fight to save my life.

And I know people throw around the word miracle a lot, But humanly speaking, I should not be sitting here having this conversation with you. Yeah. Well, we're glad you are around for sure. That's just unbelievable. Nine minutes with no blood or oxygen. That's, yeah. Tell us about your concept of suffering, because I think you went through a lot of suffering with all these operations. What's your concept of suffering? for people out there. So...

Two things. The first thing that comes to my mind is there's a quote by Richard Paul Evans that says, usually life's greatest gifts come wrapped in adversity. And so I kind of alluded to it earlier. What has helped me struggle and accept the suffering that I've faced is just assuming or acting like there's a purpose for it. There's a reason for it. Okay. That's not just accidental. That it's not just, you know, this person over here has life so great. I've got it so terrible.

But there's a reason why things are different. And I've just accepted, maybe it's a coping mechanism, but I've just accepted whatever difficulties have come into my life, there's a reason for them. And there's something that I will learn from this that will help me grow. And this really hit me when I was challenged to write a book. And my book, Scar Tissue, really came about when I came across a quote.

And the quote is, one day you will tell your story of how you've overcome what you're going through now, and it will become part of someone else's survival guide. Yeah, I've heard that quote. So that epitomized everything that I've gone through in the past. If I can survive it and thrive from it, then that means there's going to be somebody in my life 10 years from now or 20 years from now that needs to hear how I got through it. Right.

I love that because you're an advocate, whether you know it or not. You're an advocate and you're helping people and people can take this. They're listening to this. There's got to be people out there listening to this that are having their issues. And I think they can take solace in what you're saying. I think so. And it was interesting. A friend of mine was getting married and he wanted me to meet one of his groomsmen.

And this poor guy, Ron, he'd been through cancer. He had had eye surgery, knee surgery.

He had been through so many things. And my friend thought if the two of us can get talking, maybe we have similar backgrounds. But it was actually one of the hardest conversations I had because this guy was bitter. I didn't deserve to have this happen. I don't know why this is happening to me. I, you know, could have been, should have been someone else. And I'm looking at, you know, the things that I've gone through and saying, well, man, I feel like there's a reason I go through this.

There's a reason why all these difficult things can allow me to help others. And just in the past month, I've talked to other people that are going through heart surgery that have been through heart surgery, whose families are going through it, and they are looking at me saying, you are the first person that understands this. That's why you go through suffering. Absolutely. What do you say to people who tend to ask recovering patients if they're back to normal?

How do you answer that? Because I get that a lot all the time. You don't go back to normal the pandemics kind of you know hijack that term new normal but i say when you go through something difficult you will have a better than normal meaning i'm not the same guy i was eight years ago i have deeply changed i've become more thoughtful and pensive i've had different challenges.

Since that surgery, I forget things. As you know, I find multitasking very difficult, but I know there's a rhyme and reason for it. I know if I can navigate these challenges well, it'll help someone else. So I've just chosen to look at whatever we face, whatever I face. And this is something you have to decide for yourself. You can't tell somebody, hey, just change your attitude and everything will be better. They have to adopt that no matter what they face, they're not a victim.

You may be victimized, but it's up to you whether you choose to be a victim. Yeah, I totally agree. And hopefully somebody in that negative situation can listen to you and say, you know what, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. You know, that light bulb may go off. So let's hope so. Talk to us about POCD, post-operative cognitive disorder, and can it resolve? So this was the silent challenge that I was faced with that I didn't even know.

I'd had my last surgery. I was recovering just fine as far as I was concerned. When I started going off my pain medications and I'm starting to get some of my full cognition back, that's when I realized I'm forgetting things or I'll ask my wife to explain something And I don't understand what she's saying. I can't process it. And it got really acute when I would go walking around my neighborhood. And in the first few weeks after surgery, I got lost in my own neighborhood.

I've lived here for 10 years. And I got lost. Or I would drive to work and I'd be driving down the wrong road. And where am I? How did I get here? And initially, that was very alarming to me. I would get frustrated. I cannot tell you how many times I've lost my keys or if I leave the house, my wife knows I'll come back in three times. I forgot this. I forgot that.

And that initially that's very frustrating. But what I've tried to do now is just instead of letting it ruin my day, just say, well, I forgot. There it is. This is part of my better than normal. How am I going to handle this? And just accept it and then be thankful. Hey, yes, I lost my keys, but I can still drive and my functions are all there. So I, it's just trying to find a little tiny things that you can still be grateful for. I'm thankful that despite these challenges, I can still work.

I can still do podcasts. I can still write. Yeah. So it's just the small things to be grateful for. But that was one that was very challenging and just completely left field. Now, you also, I believe, went through a period of survivor's guilt. Can you talk to us about this and what conclusions did you arrive at? Yeah, especially when I was in high school and deciding what to do for college, I just felt this tremendous pull to medicine.

Almost like I'd been saved so many times in difficult surgeries that I almost owed it back to become a doctor. And from a story point of view, heart patient becomes doctor and saves lives. I just thought, well, I need to give back in some way. And there have been other patients that I've known along the way that you pray for them, you hope for them, and they pass away. And there were a number of people in my life that fought cancer, they fought heart surgery, and they passed away.

And that just created this huge guilt that why did they die? Why did I live? It doesn't make sense. They didn't deserve that. There's nothing special about me that I deserve to live. So I really wrestled with that. And there's a word in the Old Testament that talks about life being vanity or life being meaningless. And the Hebrew word is hevel, which means unknowable, an enigma. So it's not just that it's meaningless. It's just we cannot know the meaning of things.

And when I started wrestling with that, I don't know why. I won't get an satisfactory answer to that why question. But I had a good friend of mine say to me, you're here simply because God is not done with you yet. And if I, and when I accepted that it's nothing to do with me, it's everything to do with, okay, if that's true, then I got work to do. Yeah. And the other thing that hit me is some of those people that I've come alongside and sat by their bed and they passed away.

I've come to realize my job or my role was not to save them, but maybe it was to give them comfort or maybe it was to give them help or hope in the struggles that they face. And what's wrong with that? Nothing. Nothing. So it's, it's taken me a long time to kind of think through and work through it. But I think the answer to survival's guilt is give people hope who are suffering because you can. It's that simple. Yeah.

What have eight heart surgeries taught you? Don't give up. Number one, it's taught me, how can I say this? I think having faith is can sometimes look like stubbornness meaning i believed that i was going to get healed and get better so that meant i was very rigid and stubborn about doing the things that would help me do that that means that i've learned that many people will be your cheerleaders and they'll encourage you to play it safe because they're rightly concerned about you.

But you have to push safely. My dad, I had received my brown belt, which is one belt away from black. And he says, that's good enough. You've had all these surgeries. You should just take it easy now. And I said, dad, I'm almost there. And this may sound strange, Ron, but I've tried to look at life in terms of story. So if your life was a story and you're facing a particular challenge and you're writing this, what would you want that character to do?

Would you want them to give up when things got difficult? Succeed, succeed. Exactly. So we read these stories. Antagonists. But then when it comes to us, well, I'm going to play it safe. I don't want to rock the boat. When I think about my life in terms of a story that changes it because no, no, it's going to be difficult, but do the hard work, put in the time, invest it, visit that person who needs encouragement because that's a good story. Absolutely.

Couldn't have said it better. Now, I am sure this is kind of an interesting question for you. I'm sure people ask you, since you've had so many of these surgeries? Have you had any near-death experiences? And how do you answer these questions? Because I'm sure that must have came up. It has come up. And I feel like if anybody should have had one, I should have. I haven't in the classic sense of the term. I've read up a lot about NDEs and near-death experiences.

The closest I had was a surgery where the anesthesiologist, as I understand it, they regulate how unconscious you are. Yeah. And during one of my surgeries, I could hear the surgeons talking and I could feel picking at my chest. It wasn't painful, but I remembered that. And at the time they said, no, no, no, that's impossible. Well, I've read up on it since.

I wouldn't say that's a near-death experience but i'll i'll keep you posted if that changes but i i to date no but i thought man if anybody should have had one i should have one, i should have a great story didn't rise above and look down on them or none of that stuff not yet but hopefully hopefully no more surgeries hopefully you won't no more surgeries yeah what was the spark that made you write scar tissue and what do you hope the reader takes away from reading the book,

which was a great book, by the way.

Oh, thank you. It's actually a sad story, but a friend of mine, he and his wife lost a baby and, And he, he's an artist and he wanted to write a children's book and just the book was basically a way for him to process his grief. So he asked me, he said, can you and I go for a walk? And I just want to bounce some ideas off of you for my book. So we went to this beautiful forest near my house. We walked for about two hours towards the end of our walk.

He turned to me and he asked me, he said, would you ever write a book? And I said, no, I'm not. But number one, I'm too young. And I just said, well, what would I have to say? But I think we don't get ideas. Ideas get us. They grab us. And that idea of his words, would you ever write a book? They kind of caught me. And they stuck with me. So sometime later, I said, well, I'm just going to jot down some notes.

And I had about 12 pages of notes after a couple hours. And then I got, I started to realize, well, maybe I do have something to say. And at that point I got really excited and then I got terrified. And usually for me, when something scares me, that's kind of the nudge that tells me you need to do this, this, whatever, this is scaring you. This is outside your comfort zone and you need to do it. And so it kind of hit me. You need to write a book.

And I didn't know the first thing about writing a book, but I spent months just organizing what it would look like, how it would flow. And then January, 2021, I started writing and I spent most of the year. I work full time and keep busy with my family. So I wrote when I had time and the book just came together.

And there were so many times along the way, it just seemed like an impossibility trying to find a publisher, trying to find an editor, and then so many challenges along the way, but I am thrilled that this book has not only been printed, but now it's in its second edition and it's reaching people and it's making a difference. You know, I never like to interject myself into these podcasts because it's not about me, it's about you, but that's kind of how this podcast was formulated.

I was doing, and I still do, advocacy work for male breast cancer happens.org. And I told the director, I said, you know, we, we have to stop preaching to the choir. We have to get out there and tell people who don't know anything about this. So let's go on some podcasts. So we started going on podcasts all over the world, you know, England, New Zealand, Australia, U S Canada. And somebody said to me, well, you have a somewhat decent voice.

Why don't, why don't you start a podcast of your own? And I said, no, come on. You know, just like you said with the book, you know, now I wouldn't want to do that. And then I thought about it and I said, well, maybe I should give it a shot. So I bought a microphone, I bought a headsets and yeah, That's how I started, just like you did. I didn't know the first thing about this at all, but I gave it a shot, and here we are. So the idea had you. Yeah, exactly, just like you said.

You also co-authored a book titled Remarkable People, Volume 1. Can you just tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so Remarkable People is a podcast that my friend started.

And years ago he asked me to be on it and ron i had no idea what i was going to say i i winged it i i feel like i did a terrible job however he thought it was adequate enough that he cobbled together a book where he took different significant guests from his show and he had each of us write a chapter on a different area of our quote-unquote expertise or things that we had lived through. And so I contributed a chapter about perspective.

And the angle that I focused in on is, is the glass half full or is it half empty? And we get so fixated on that when really we've got a glass of water and we can be thankful for the water. And that was just the angle that I came at. But his book did well and it was exciting.

It was the first time I'd ever written And this was, I was actually writing my own story at the time. So this was a nice little detour for a few weeks. Sure. Yeah. That's cool. Danny, for those out there in the audience struggling with overcoming their issues, what advice do you have for them? Do not give up. Do not give up. And do not give up.

I don't I don't believe in you know just being positive for the sake of positive, I would say if you're really struggling and you're hearing this as much as you want to ask it don't ask why what I would say instead is start asking what, I'm going through this horrible disease I'm going through this horrible breakup up my finances are ruined my heart is bad what can i learn in this and there was there was something i read that really impacted me so 2017 was the year

i had open heart surgery and nearly died, but i if i had to write something about that year it's not i had surgery i almost died and it was a terrible year. Is you summarize what you've learned from the difficult circumstance, not summarize the difficult circumstance. So for me, 2017 was the year I learned to value my health. 2017 was the year I learned my suffering is not just about me. And I think that's a huge part of it too. Whatever somebody is facing that's hearing this.

You are in pain, your world is small, It's about you in the moment and it hurts, but someday there will be somebody else in that exact same spot and you will be able to come alongside them, put your arm around them and say, I understand and I'm here and I can help. And that's probably as simple as I can say it. Very well said. Danny, how can people contact you and where is your book, Scar Tissue, available?

So my website it's dannycovey.com that's d-a-n-n-y c-o-v-e-y.com my book is available through my website or if you visit amazon.com.ca my book is there i'm very easy to find on social media i have a monthly newsletter that i put out that people can subscribe to if they wish so just if you're on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram just type in my name and you'll see my little head poking up and there I am okay so just at Donnie Colby okay yeah.

Danny, I want to thank you for being a guest on the podcast, sharing your story, and your deepest thoughts on life issues that we discussed. I wish you and your family good health. And I know you are a walker. And I'm a walker as well. I used to be a runner, but I'm not anymore. And I hope one day to take a walk with you. I would absolutely love that. I was up in Quebec a couple months ago. So hopefully we'll get, we'll get up to Toronto or Ontario where, where you are.

Anyway, I do, like I said, want to, want to wish you, you and the, and the family all the best and God bless you. And thanks again for being on.

Thank you Ron so much. It was awesome. Comments and suggestions for the podcast. You can email me at it's a wrap with rapid gmail.com. Our website is it's a wrap with rap.com. Our Facebook group, we have about 2,000 people in it. It's a wrap with wrap. Instagram is at itsarapwithwrappodcast, and we're on X at wrapper, W-R-A-P-P-E-R-1-3-0. All the episodes are on the YouTube channel. It's a wrap with wrap, the podcast uncut.

I want to thank everyone for listening or viewing. Please stay safe out there. And for now, it's a wrap.