Paul Taylor, Welcome back to the You project, my friend.
Know that we're recording. Thank you for having me.
Yes, I did nearly get caught. Well, I did no nearly. Court.
I was about to introduce show everyone, and there's this little thing that you've got to do. I mean, look, I'm no technical giant, but apparently you've got to press the button that says record before you start talking on a podcast. Usually Melissa or Tiff or someone who's smarter and better than me does that. But stupidly they gave me the control today. But fuckingly fuck we're under way, we're recording. It's been an interesting time of late on
Planet Taylor. You and I have had a bit of a chat, like we've chatted on the phone a bit, but even I don't know all the story. So yeah, tell us what's been going on for you.
Well, on Monday, the twentieth of January, I had urban heart surgery to correct day at birth defect what's called congenital heart defect. And I'm very lucky actually, And I think the first lesson here is you've got to be proactive about your health. And fortunately for me, I play soccer with a cardiologist and one day I was sitting with him and I said, hey, ma, I want to get the full mot that's a actually that's a British term. That's where you get your car all a big lunch.
I said, what so you know, and he said, look, come and see me. We'll do the lot. So did everything, basically, did the stress test of cardiac MRI, all of that, and he came back and he, you know, talks about the plumbing, the electrics and one other thing. Can't remember, but anyway, he was going like, your heart's could ship you very fit. However, you have a bicuspid aortic valve rather than a tri cuspid aortic valve, and we need
to do a little bit of investigation. So what that means is that the aorta that's the main artery, and so your left centrical pumps blood through that artery to the rest of the body in the valve, a one way valve that's supposed to have three leaves, a tricuspid mine had two leaves. And what happens over time is it doesn't shock properly, so as the heart pumps the blood out, some of it regurgitates back in right, So they had to do some further investigation and find that
I had significant regurgitation. So this was that you need to get this done and now now did you but soon? And I went, let's just do it straight away?
So when when did you?
All?
Right?
So the operation was January twenty? When did you get this information?
I got the information about a year earlier. That's when we first noticed someone was wrong. I would have done the operation quicker, but I went and checked my health insurance and I was covered for a lot of stuff, but not aortic valve, not heart valve surgery, and it would have cost me probably fifty grand, right, so I had to upgrade my thing and in weigh it for a year. Look, the reality is there's probably, all in all,
maybe a six month delay, which was fine. But by the time I ended up getting in my actually surgeon say to me, your regurgitation level was over fifty percent, right, which means that I was working on half capacity basically, Yeah, and what symptoms?
What symptoms did you have a year ago? And what symptoms did you have prior?
Right? So a year ago I had no symptoms whatsoever because my regurgitation was significant but not horrendous. Look, I reflecting back and probably you know, my fitness had gone. I was playing soccer, and last year, because Kira was playing, I was playing over thirty fives, right, and I'm fifty three now. But because Kira started playing on a Sunday, I then stopped playing in the and a me and of mine who was coaching another team, said hey, how about you come over and play for us on a
Saturday because I know you're free. We got a lot of young boys, but they need a couple of old heads, so me and a tyrone went and played for them. So that was open the inch, right, So it was quite interesting playing against the eighteen year olds. But on reflection, you know what, I really noticed my speed was just gone, and that's the first thing to go. But actually I think the heart had a fur bit to do with that on reflection, but I didn't really start to notice
overtly any symptoms. I'm proved probably November and I'm thinking, oh yeah, I'm starting to notice my exercise capacity in December and I'm thinking maybe this is psychosomatic. But certainly January, whenever I came back from the UK and was going again the CrossFit, I was.
Way down, like way dying, and he said, the surgeon said to me, yeah, your regurgitation was over fifty percent. Once your regurgitation hit sixty percent or so, you start to develop heart failure.
Right.
I'm not cardiologist, but I'm thinking of block with a congenital heart dayfection.
Probably not be sprinting on a soccer field year olds.
So, and it's really interesting because there's a bit of a trade off. Right. So the first thing I wanted to do, I actually, let's reflect back, and you know, some stuff that that I sort of learned was you got to be careful what you pay attention to, because what you pay attention to creates your narrative and your
belief systems. Right. And as whenever my correologist told me that I had to have open heart chargery, I remember going out and getting into the car, and I sat into the car and the words of Seneca, the stoic philosopher came to me. I pity the man who has not faced adversity, because he has not faced an opponent, and nobody, not even him, knows what he is capable of. Right. So I went straight home and I wrote on my bathroom mirror worthy opponent, Right, because histoics talk about finding
a worthy opponent to challenge and test you. And I wrote beside it my training program that I was going to do to really get myself on tiptop ship. The other thing that came to mind, I've got a good a guy called reg Ex, Lieutenant colonel Special Forces for Australia. He was a very, very senior guy in the First Iraq War. He was the first Australian to go into quit and I remember having a conversation with him and saying, man,
how did you feel? And he said, look, there was clearly a bit of anxiety going to warris Is, but the overwhelming emotion was this perverse sense of excitement because this is what I trained for. And as I was driving home that just came into my head and it just went, this is what I've trained for, and so
I've chose to view it as a challenge. And that's why I'm saying, you got to be careful what you pay attention to, because as you know, I'm doing my paid steel and resilience and particularly something called heartiness and listened to a lot of Stoic philosophy over the years, so straight away, because of all of that input into
my brain. My first instinctual reaction was, this is a challenge and I need to lean into it, and I need to embrace my worthy opponent, right, and all sorts of negativity that come into your head, because obviously there is some negative stuff that comes into your head. And the fucking woul is me the whole victim mentality, and
I just nipped that in the button. Then the other thing that came to mind straight away was that Carl's idea from Japanese psychology of arigamama, with things as they are, what needs to be done.
Yeah, on a level, it's like stimulus response, right, So there's the thing that happens, and then there's what you do about the things that happen. So here's what I know now based on what I know now, what am I going to do now?
Right? It's kind of you know.
It's exactly that. And so from you know, looking at that negative and you've got to do a bit of a risk assessment, right, So so I think again, in my background in helicopters, we always did a thorough risk assessment, and I remember from my time in that you know, what's the likelihood of it happening and what's the impact. So I did all the research, you know, we decided to do something called the Ross procedure. I went and
saw the surgeon. So he give me the options. Right, one was mechanical valve and you'd be on warfare and blood tinners for the rest of your life. I'm like, nah's The other one is a tavvy, which is where they just go through the thigh and they have this fucking awesome, this little sort of balloon thing that goes right up to your aota and they inflate at the valve and it pushes your own out of the way,
and there's this like false valve. But he said, look, you're not going to be able to exercise at maximum capacity if you get a tavvy. And the issue is they only last for about ten years. And you can have a tavvy on the tavy on the tavy and that's you. So if you want to live more than thirty years at tavy's not your thing. And then he talked about the Ross procedure, which is is quite a rare one, but he is now the preferred one for
people my age, which is more complicated. What they do is they cut out your u minary valve, which doesn't do a lot of work. Right, that's my surgeon said to me. It's under about five millimeters of mercury pressure. You know, your blood pressure one twenty over early, and that's what your aorta is under your pomonary valves under bugger all. So he says, what we do is we harvest that because it's your valve and it hasn't worked
very hard, and we put that into your aorta. We cut out your aortic valve, we put your own pulmonary one in there, and then we put a donor valve into your pulmonary. He says, it's a harder, more complex operation, quite a longer recovery, but a much better prognosis in terms of long term. So I'm like, that's the one I want. And I went and researched everything to do
with it. Obviously, then research the death rates less than one percent, and I thought, well, that's really reasonably good, and for somebody who's fit, I guess it would be about one in a thousand risk, which is pretty bloody low. Right, I'll take the risks, But when you're actually feaced with that, like if you were going walking out the house and they went, Craig, there's a one assize chance you're going to die today. It starts to sort of change your mentality a little bit, right.
Yeah, I'll be doing door dash and over rates to my house.
Yeah. But so it's like, well, okay, so what do I need to do? Right, You've got to sort out all our first chat to Carly, you know, I had a life insurance policy, had the conversation with Carly about you know, what I'd like to be done with the kids, all of that sort of stuff. And then, you know, the hardest thing in all of this was then filming some videos for my kids just in case. That was
definitely the hardest thing of all of it. But I think the other the real lessons for me was, you know, you've got to embrace this stuff as a challenge, right, and embrace it and focus on what you can control. And the other thing I did a shit heap of research. I've gone to see my surgeon, I'm both my cardiologists and they say, look, you need to take six weeks
off work, like six weeks get away. And started looking into it and it said, like everybody's fucked for six weeks and I looked into it, about ninety five percent of people they end up anemic right because of your Yeah, a lot of people are low aren't going in because of the heart issue. But then you lose a shit heap of blood, right, and they have to thin your blood.
So they operation's pretty frigging amazing what they do. So they cut your chest open with a saw, fries it open, and then they clamp your heart and they bypass it, right, so all the blood gets bypassed from your heart so as they can work on it, and then they thin it and it goes through like a false lung that oxygen nets it, and then they bring it back in on the other side so as it goes around your body, right,
which is fregging amazing stuff. But what end up is you lose for a bit of blood and they have to thin your blood, so you end up with bugger all iron. Right, So part of my thing was I need to get my iron up right, and I'm so glad I did. Right. So my hemoglobin levels which are supposed to be one thirty to I think one seventy or something like that host operation. Five days post operation, they were down at about ninety then and then about ten days ago they were about one hundred and seven. Wow,
So I'm glad that I did that stuff. I also did some research and found that there was a pro prebiotic that you could take, which I had the order from the UK, that massively improved your gastro intestinal function, because that's another reason, because your guts are just screwed because you know, they carpet bomb your gut microbiome, and
obviously there's a lot of stress. So I took that pre and when I was in hospital and I restored my bilefunction within two or three days, and were they were shocked?
Actually, yeah, So you know, who would have thought you and I'd be chatting about your pooing on a podcast and who would have thought that I'd be proud of you for backing one out so quickly. Well done. All right, So just to give our listeners context as we record this, it's the twelfth, So my calculations are it's twenty two to twenty three days since the operation.
Correct.
Clearly you're not having six weeks off work because I know you've already had enough. I'm meant to say this, you've already traveled and me doing work right, and it's not like that yesterday. That was a bit ago.
So what was their kind of projected recovery for you? And how have you compared, like how has it actually worked out? Like what are you right now?
So my sergeant and my cardiologis book said you got to take six weeks off work, right, and then they give you this book and it's like after four weeks you can hang washing out, don't lift anything other than one to two kilos for I can't remember it was six or twelve weeks, right, I've already done a light weight training session, but it was twelve weeks before you know, return to full function. But and they said six weeks before you can go back to work maybe light office
studis if you're lucky after four weeks. And I'm just looking at that going now, and.
So we're three weeks now, we're three weeks.
So day seventeen, I flew to Sydney, got a tree into the to the central coast, ran a to our workshop, and then came back home in a day. So that was I hope. I sat, it's not listening to this, but I think.
You just boy, did you warranty?
But I you know that was my target because that that boxshot had been booked in penalties, like do we need to cancel this? And I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not cancel it because that's my target. And so I was incrementally going, here's what I need to do on the gateway right fourteen days. I need to be doing this. On the Monday, I need to be able to record a twenty minute podcast, and then I need to be doing I need to do on the Wednesday. I was
showing Tuesday two days before. I need to be doing up around ten thousand steps and so I did that and then I took an easy day on the Wednesday, traveled up. I also made it again. You know, I'm sitting I'm sitting to get to the airport out of a driver and I'm sitting in the plane. I'm sitting on the tree in it's you know, it's travel. Still a bit tiring, But I got a hotel room because I had two and a half hours. So I got a hotel room and had a sleep and that that
really helped. So I did the workshop and was fine and then came home. I was tired because I didn't get home till half eleven, I think it was, and I was pretty figure tired, and I earned my bed that day, and then the next day I had a real rest day. But then Saturday I felt great. Right. So, but I have also been I've been more invested in my recovery than I think probably anybody would be. Right. I've got a red light panel. I was doing red and near infra red light therapy every single day. I
was doing saunas. I started off just with five minutes because it's good for your cardiovascular system. I was also taking a Holypus supplements Klinac, which is has been clinically proven to combat inflammation and oxidut of stress. So I knew I got my seareactive protein measured right. They don't
measure in the hospital because it's off the church. So she reactive protein for the listeners is a level of inflammation in the body, and my whole history was it's less than one, and they like it to be less than five. It's above five, you're in trouble, you're inflamed. Mine was fifty seven last Saturday, right, So I knew that my body was just a really low iron, really low hemoglobin inflamed like crazy, Like my resting heart rate
had gone from the mid forties to high eighties. So I know, I'm just in, you know, a sympathetic state. Your body's just fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, and so it needed all the help that it could get, you know, as well as the glinac. I was taking circumen, which is anti inflammatory. I was taking fish oil. I'm taking beef liver, which is best source of iron with vitamin C. I'm taking zinc. I'm taking vitamin D, I'm taking B vitamins.
And then I actually been working with an integrative doctor and I went and got an infusion and IV of gluedocione. It's called a Meers cocktail, so glued tocione high, those vitamin C, B vitamins, zinc, and magnesium, and after that I felt fucking amazing.
Tell me about through this journey cognitive function. How's your Brian going? How was your Brian going in the first week?
Then I never had any issue like I was in the I was in the in the hospital.
I've got a video that says otherwise, oh.
Really, Ah, that was that was under the influence of a fair bit of morphine, but within by so I got out of ICU I mean I was reasonably like Monday night, I hardly remember Carly was there, oscar was there, and I might woke up and Tuesday I'm like.
Were they there? And then I talked to the surgeon. Did he do the ross procedure or not? Because you know, there was still he had to check the geometry when he went in there, so you know, Tuesday it was like, yes we were there, and yes you did get the ross procedure right. So but then I see my cognitive function was fine, and I was doing some work on my PhD in hospital because I'm doing a lot of sitting around. But I had an interesting experience in hospital.
You know, I've always said hospitals are dangerous places. I don't like them. I don't think they're optimal for recovery. And that was certainly the case. So I got out of icee. You I think it was here the Tuesday night of Wednesday morning. I got put in a room on Wednesday and had a fur bit of sleep on Wednesday, but did a fur bit of walking. I did I think about twelve hundred and fifty steps, which was reasonably good. Thursday, I was feeling quite good. I did over three thousand steps,
and I'm thinking, actually, I'm doing quite well. I mean, the breathing was really hard, but then thirsty nights. I had a fucking night from hell. Right, So I was in this room where the rcon was super large. Right, So there's a bit of a bit of context to this. And as you know, a lot of listeners don't know. When I was in the military, I went through combat survival of Resistance to interrogation training, which was ten days
of pretty hard core stuff. You know, they don't give you any food for ten days, they thrash the life out of you, and then for five days you get hunted by a hunter force in them and you think it's all over. You're introduced to the shock of capture. And then we spent twelve hours and hoo did in this room in stress positions which are fucking evil, with white noise at the volume you'd hear music in a nightclub, right, and that ever since then, kitchen fans, bathroom fans, ceiling fans,
I fucking hate them. I hate them with a passion, like if there's a fire, I walk into a room and I feel a bit edgy. And then I realized the fans on the kitchen fan, I turn it off. I'm like, ah. And the only ongoing argument that we have is the ceiling fan in the bedroom because Carlie loves it and I detest it. So she would go to bed early put the ceiling fan on, and then I come to bed and I turn it off because
I just can't sleep with a ceiling fan. And this thing was so loud, and I was laning there on thirsty and I'm I'm a side sleeper and you can't sleep on your side when you've had your chest cut open, right, So by thirsty, I'm starting to get like massive paying all the way up my back and neck and stuff like that. But then I'm lying trying to sleep in Thirstay night, and that fan get in my head big time,
and I I'm actually, I looked at my sleep. I got not one minute of sleep on Thursday night, and I was lying there and it just it fucking really got in my head. And I'm like half the time I'm back in that room in fucking stress positions. I think the peeing in.
The back and you know, it all amplified and wow, it's trauma, it's trauma, it's literal trauma.
Yeah, look, I mean, Carli says, that's PTSD. I think it does a disservice to people who have reaped real PTSD, but it's I would describe it as very unpleasant memories. And it took it back there, right. Some people might be listening to this going do this fucking PTSD, but you know, not outread just stuff. But it really it just fucking warned me up like a spring. And Carli in on the Friday and she's like, Jesus, I've never seen you like this. And she actually said to me,
You've got to channel your siege. And she thought I was going to bite her head off, and I went, oh, fuck it, right, because my gremlin is running the show. So for those who are not familiar with this me and call, you have this concept of siege in gremlin gremlins, that negative thing in your head, all the negative self talk, blah blah blah, everything that's negative, and siege is your best version of you. And she actually joted me out of that because I was. I was, I was in
a ship state on Friday. I was going to check myself out and all sorts of stuff. I'm like, I got to get out of here. I have to get out of here, and she's just like, pull your fucking head in and be your siege. So they ended up and I went and saw them and said, can we move? Can we move rooms? And they moved me to another room which was a shit a little better and that
was really helpful. But then and on Saturday, the plan was that I was going to get home on Saturday, and then the cardiologists came to see me and he said, look, I don't like your home because he said, look, you've had a little bit of VT ventricular attack acardia, and which is normal, and you know it's only a problem
if you hit thirty seconds. Mine were two seconds. There was just a couple of little things, he said, But your rejection fraction, because they did an echo, was only about forty percent right, and they like.
Mind people, what just explinds people? Rejection fraction?
Yeah, so that's when you when your ventricle contracts, like how much of the blood actually gets out and around your body. And mine was at forty a typical one. Most people walk around fifty to seventy percent, right, and they like it postop to get to sixty. So they said, look, you'r's a bit low. It's understandable because you've had the
Ross procedure, which is more traumatic. But given the those two things, he said, I want to put you on this drug ammy of their own right that will just kill off those little taki cardias and just give you the best chance of recovery and you can go home tomorrow. And I rather stupidly and didn't ask what you should ask on every medication, What are the side effects? What are all the side effects? High often those side effects?
And if there's bad side effects, is there any alternative treatment? Right? So I got a dose of the drug Sorday afternoon or Saturday evening, and then on Sunday another one. And I woke up Sunday and I was feeling shit harsh, so I'm like, fuck, I've gone backwards here, and then Cardi was was there, her and Oscar visiting me, and then they left and I hardly get out of bed, and I thought I need to get up and move
because they tell you need to move. And there was this walk that I was doing lots of down to the fish tank back down and I was kind of doing and laps, so I thought I'll just walk there. I walk slowly and I was walking. I was really struggling to walk, and my breathing was labored. And I got to the fish tank and I sat down and I'm like, fuck, I'm I'm screwed. And this this guy
walked past me and he went, are you okay? And I went, nah, I'm not okay, and he said, okay, let me go and get a chair, and he got a chair, and that's when I twigged this, this is the drug. It's just wipe man. And I told him he was obviously a senior medical guy, and I just went, I'm not taking that tug again. And he brought me back and he said to the nurse, call, call the cardiologist, stop that medication, and let's get him in the bay. I'd get him monitored. And then it really hit me.
It so this drug on me, on their own is a sympathetic nervous system suppressant. But I had a bad reaction to it. It dropped my heart rate low, dropped my blood pressure, and I was being monitored and my breathing fuck. I was struggling to breathe. And I was lying in bed Saturday night and I was frigging her or something. I think this was. It was herrndous and I was in pain. I could hardly breathe, and I was trying to move and then get up, and it was fucking so people, and I'm just like, you just
got to get through this. She just got to breathe. They came and they did an EKG on me at four in the morning, and the nurse was like, ooh, this has changed. And then I'm just trying to just say and get through the morning, doing all my breath work, trying to control it. And then I managed to get some sleep and I woke up and I thought I actually started to feel a bit better. And she came in. My heart rate had gone back up, my blood pressure gone back up. She checked my EKG and she said, oh,
you're back to normal. Man. So then the cardiologist came in and he said, look, sorry, that clearly didn't work out as planned. He said, the good news is that your VT's all gone. And he said the bad news is you've obviously had a reaction to that drug. So you're not going home today because we need to observe you. And I went, incorrect, I'm going home.
She did, Can I just can I pause you?
Yeah?
In the middle of the night because the first night you had no sleep. All the second night so you had zero minutes sleep. And then when you're when the shit hit the fan and you got to the fish tank.
And you're rooted in the and then you were in agony and you couldn't breathe. And did you at any moment think is this it?
No? No, I didn't because I knew I was being monitored. I knew I was having a reaction to the drug. I'd looked the drug up at that stage on a drug data piece. I knew that it peaked three to seven hours afterwards. But then I started reading the fucking side effects. Twenty percent of neurological issues, twenty percent of pulmonary issues, seventy percent of people who are on it long term have to come off it because of the side effects. Right now, it's normally used for people with
life threatening arrhythmias. But you know, he decided to use it on me. I've heard a cardiologist said he used a sledge hammer to crack a knot. But you know, it is what it is. I get the reasons that he did it, and I didn't give many shit. I was just like and he was apologetic. I just went, I'm done, I'm out of here, because I looked at my sleep as well. I had in five days, I had a total vie at our sleep track of my sleep, and I'm.
Like, that's that's going to kill you without mesurgery.
Well, that's exactly my thing. I'm massively sleep deprived. I cannot fucking sleep in this hospital. They've give me sleeping tablets didn't work. I'm like, I've got insomnia. I've got industrial insomnia here that is massively driving inflammaus in an oxyd of stress in my body. I know all the negative effects of sleep. The food is shit in this place. It is so low protein. You know protein as you know you need more protein when you're sick. I ordered
steak and it was about fifty grams of steak. And then the next night I ordered pron linguini. I thought I'd get some seafood. There was two fucking prawns on it. There would have been about five grams of protein in the main meal. I'm like, and the ox there's no fresh air in this place. I'm not outside in nature, you know. If I go home, I'm out looking at the water. I mean in a great environment, I can release all of my back and all of that stuff.
I'll get sleep. So I'm just like, I'm out of here. I'm like, you guys have lost the right to be in control of my recovery. That was my view, and my surgeon didn't take it too well. We had a bit of a robust conversation, so we said, and I just said to him and he had his run and I said, you done and he said yeah, and I said, I'm out of here.
Yeah, you said, thanks for your feedback.
So I was.
My man had a heart attack and he's a diabetic, and he was I don't know, three or four days post top open art surgery and I'm in standing next to him and one of the catering staff brings a snack and the snack is scones and cream and jam.
For an taribatic fucking love it.
And I'm like, who's I'm like, oh, he can't eat that. She's like why, I go, well, he's a diabetic. It says it right there. And she's like, oh, well, I just bring what they tell me to bring. I'm like, well take that away. My man's like, shut the funk up. So Cartie was bringing in my food.
Lucky enough, there was a Vietnamese across the road, so she was bringing me in a protein cheek both I hope, collagen and berries and all of that stuff. And then I was getting my food from the Vietnamese. I was getting far from across the road and stuff like that. So I didn't eat in the hospital again from I think Thursday or Friday. But I was just like, and you know, some people go Jesus, that was irresponsible. But
I knew I was out of the woods. I knew I was out of the woods, and I knew I had to get out of there for my sanity and for my recovery as well.
If ten out of ten is you when you're normal and healthy and fit and strong and robust like two years ago, you with no symptoms, just healthy, that's you. Ten out of ten? What do you reckon you are at the minute as we record, look.
I'd say I'm probably a five, right, so normal function, talking, walking, moving around. When I get up, I'm got to be a little bit careful because my blood pressure, I had to stop my blood pressure medication, so they put me on three different heads, aspiring blood pressure medication and SGL two inhibitor the strengthen my heart and the blood pressure. I've been taking my blood pressure four times a day and it was getting really really low, so I've stopped that.
So I've just got to be worry if I spring up. But you know, normal function, I can walk around and go up and down the stairs and go out for a walk. But you know, I'm doing half four walks every morning. Going up a hill is really interesting. Right. I hit one hundred and three beats a minute and I'm in zone three, right, zone three, zone four. I'm breathing, starting to breathe really heavy. That used to be one hundred and twenty two beats a minute just when I
was doing that. So but that I think is a combination of my ejection fractions still not there, and my hemic globein and iron are really low. Right, So if you've got low iron and low heemic globe in, anybody who's in namic notes you've got fucking no energy and also in the cold, and that's a low hemoglobin thing as well.
Right, But do you know I have anicious tsunamia? Did you know that? No?
I didn't, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, yeah, I have to jet myself with a twelve.
Right, okay, yeah, because I'm taking too. Yeah, geez, anybody's got any maya, I feel them, I really do. But I've got that combined with low ejection fraction. So and look, the great thing you know for me was going and doing that workshop. I did another workshop yesterday, and I reckon, I was probably ninety five percent on yesterday. Wow, so that was pretty good. I reckon, I was probably eighty percent eighty five last week, and I did a very
light resistance training. Sess. I'm just I'm curling nine kilo dumbbells when I used to be doing eighteen. I'm doing twenty four kilos on the tricep push dump. But I'm just like, my body needs stimulation. I reckon, I've lost between two and two and a half keels a muscle.
Yeah, you'll get tell me about your your wounds, tell me about that big bloody slice and dice down there. Oh god, wow, well you know you've just made my primo. Thank you. So that looks to me like that is fuck twenty centimeters is that?
Yeah? Yeah?
Definitely definitely, maybe more maybe so we're looking at like an eight nine ten inch scar. Everyone Wow.
And then you see those two little things down there, yeah, wow, where they had tubes. So they have tubes and your dreamage tubes about as thick as your finger. And then on the I think it was on the Friday or maybe the Saturday, they pulled the tubes out.
Yeah I bet that, I bet you, mother fucker.
And there was a boat four or five inches of tube and are so they're pulling and it just keeps coming. It was like, that's smarted, I can tell you. And now, of course the second one hurt twice as much as the first one did.
Well, you got Marcus really.
You know, it's like fuck, be a Stoic, lean into it and then like fox stoicism this.
I think there might have been an f ball that sneaked out for sure.
Did you have any did you have any philosophical moments.
Like why yes, so so pre so. You know, I'm a fan of the Stoics. I'm a fan of Memento Mary. I've got a tattoo on me. You know that's Marcus really is you know, it was all the Stoics. Remember death, Remember that you are mortal. So I've always I've always been very aware of my mortality and very grateful every day that I'm alive. But what I did deliberately was meditated on my death, and I actually think it's a
really good exercise for people. I thought a lot about, not from a morose perspective, but just like, well, if this was to be it, you know, how would you feel? And my reflection, I think was I would be really content with the life that I had, but changed with a huge bit of sadness that I would not get to see my kids grow up and that I wouldn't
get to enjoy my retirement with Carly. And I think the third bit of sadness for me would be that my parents would have to bury one of their children, because that is now my major goal in life is not to bury one of my children. Right. But when I reflected on it, I thought, fucking hell, I've had a good life, and I've had an action field. I've
crammed a shitload in right. I had a pretty good upbringing that also prepared me for the world, you know, being brought up as an Irish Catholic and a Protestant neighborhood. I think that helped them. In university, I absolutely loved it. I did a shit heap of travel. I joined the military. I had a wonderful time in the military, but also saw quite a lot of stuff and it prepared me really well. You know, I've visited over sixty countries. I've
explored consciousness in numerous different ways. I've done you know, shit poison. I've had toad poison. I've had shamanic rituals and deep in the Amazon jungle with this Italian guy thousand kilometers from the nearest road, no sat phones. Like, I've done some really cool shit in my life. But you know, just reflecting on it, it's like, well, if I do get on the other side, well, I do differently.
Last time on my phone, right, even though well probably not my phone, I'm not that big of my phone, but last time watching news and sport, that's probably my weakness. I think the other thing that would that I was a bit rueful of if it had been all over, was that got so close to my PhD but didn't do it right. And I was actually trying to get it submitted before just so I might get a posthumous PhD.
That's hilarious, but that's that's crossed my mind.
If I die before I finished this, I'll be pissed off.
But the other thing was, you know, if if my time is up, I get to see I get to go on life's last great adventure and find out is there another side? And more? All the fucking Holy Joe's, have they just wasted their lives because there's fuck all on the other you know? What is it like? So I think that's philosophically and I actually think coming out of this, everybody should meditate on their death and actually go, fuck, if I was today tomorrow, what would I really regret?
And if I did get a second chance, what would I do differently? I think that's importantly do that.
I think it's a really I mean, it is people. Obviously, people are scared. We're scared at times, and it's uncomfortable and it's not you know. I did an episode about three weeks ago called in the Proximity of Death and I call her my second mom.
She calls she called me her fifth kid, because she's got four daughters and me and our families grew up intertwined with each other. She was very much my second mom. I was always at their house, four sisters, four pseudo sisters, and she passed away about three or four days after Christmas, and our families spend every Christmas Day together. And I left the barbecue or the Christmas lunch and I went to hospital and sat with her for an hour and it was just, without trying to be weird, but it
was so fucking profound. And I'm like, I'm sitting with this person that I love, that this is it. This is the last conversation, this is the last hour that I will spend with her. And she knew that and I knew that, and yeah, it's like, oh, this, like everything else melts away like nothing.
And I know this sounds cliche. I don't mean it too, but truly all that I couldn't fucking I couldn't get enough of her, I couldn't get enough of It's like that hour went really quick but really slow. And I can remember that hour more vividly than maybe any other
hour I've had in the last decade. Right, Yeah, And it's just oh, and it's funny how certain I don't know situations or events or whatever, environments or can just give you a level of perspective that you seemingly can't have unless you're in.
That Yes, that's right, you know, imagine if you could have that like in that Like towards the end, I was I was about to go, and her name's Ray, and she goes, you know how much I love you?
And I'm like, well that was it. I was fucked right.
I'm like, I'm I'm out, and I go like a sun does dismissively. Yeah, I know, like yeah, I know, like a fucking alpha male moron. And then she grabs my hand with her skinny, little cancer ridden body and and makes me look at her and then says it again. And then that was it because I knew that would never happen again, you know, and she knew that, and she wanted to make sure that I left knowing that. And what was interesting was I feel fucking she was more.
Worried about me. She wasn't worried about herself at all. She wanted to sue me, at peace with it. She wanted me to be okay. And I came out of there going, fuck, I've got so much to evolve.
And learn, And you know, I felt like I wish I could be a bit like her, you know, so interesting, so interesting.
Yeah, I really don't you know, that experience of really thinking about your death. I think everybody should do it and really think deeply about it, right, and think about then through that lands. Where are you spending your time? Right? You know, how much of your time is spent fucking doom scrawling? How much of your time is spent doing a shit job you don't want to do, or particularly around your your free time? Right? Are you using your free time in an optimal manner or close to an
optimal manner? Right?
And even turning up the volume on things that really don't matter? And you like, this is a one out of an issue. I'm making it a nine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you go.
This is not a nine, you fucking idiot. This is maybe not even a one.
Yes, but your get like whatever's got your attention's got your mind, has got your body, has got you. Like you are literally creating an emotional and psychological prison for yourself.
Like there isn't a problem, but you're inventing one. We're so good at that, absolutely, you.
Know, just plucking a problem from mid air.
He tell my listeners about you and your stuff? How can they find you? And I know we're doing a co share, but for my audience, how can they find you and follow you? When by your book. He has written a fucking brilliant book, Thank you.
And my book is called Death by Comfort and my second book I'm just about to start once I get my PhD submitted, but we'll keep that one on the wraps. My podcast is the Paul Taylor Podcast and website is Paul Taylor dot bisbeei z.
Perfect, perfect, Well mate, it's been good. In the words of the greats, I'm glad you're not dead.
That's it. Glad to be on the other side.
I'm glad you're not dead. And yeah, we'll chat again.
Thanks buddy, cheers, good to see you.