Armchair Anonymous: Near Death

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous, I'm Dan Shepard, I'm joined by Ms. Padman. There's no reason for us to even do this, no one can listen to this episode. Absolutely not, yeah, we got squirting blood at one point, we got a collapsing stream, we got a lot of stuff.

There's so, every story you cannot listen to. There is a story in here, that's the first one I've heard that rivaled the bear attack story we heard. Remember the bear attack? I know.

I told you I replayed it for the kids. Yeah. For me, this is more intense than bear attack. Right, for you, it's more intense.

I do urge you to re-listen to bear attack, you might have forgotten how gruesome it is. It is. Whoa, whoa, the bear attack. But yeah, this one's gnarly, absolutely don't listen to this one, it's not for you, or anyone you love or care about.

So, we'll be back next Friday with something that maybe will appeal to you. This, of course, the prompt was near death. What do you expect? I'm sorry, near death.

I know, I know, we asked for it. Yeah, near death. Please, don't enjoy it. Near death, and we'll speak to you next week.

All times, come and go. Good times, take them slow. My life, I had them go. But one thing, you gotta know, I'm gonna keep on shining.

All right, Brett. I'm scared already. Oh, this is great for six feet under. You'll probably have heard a lot of these.

Yeah. Hello, hello. Hi. Yeah, I know Rob since he was like 15.

Oh, wow. Are you guys in Chicago? Yes, sir. What?

Oh, you're coming over. How fun. You're a very valuable person very early on, so congratulations on getting a great team member, my man. Oh, believe me, we know it.

Wow, how fun is this? Yeah, that's exciting. I'm gonna get out of here so you guys can have some fun. All right, cheers.

Thank you. Wow, what a lucky brother-in-law to have. It's funny, I contacted him. I was trying to get tips for how to record.

I was like, well, I'm gonna go in my daughter's tent and put a bunch of blankets on top of it. Use my AirPods. He's like, no, no, no. Why don't you just come over to my house and we'll make you sound good.

Oh, wonderful. So you're out of your own environment right now? Yes, this is my brother-in-law's setup. Everything you see here is his artwork, his equipment.

So we can't make a lot of deductions based on your environment because you have nothing to do with that. That's right. But you seem to be wearing maybe a death metal shirt or something. Is that a band?

Yeah, if you want to be specific, black metal. Black metal. Oh, wow. Right, and he knows Rob, so I can do some math there.

So there's an alternative music scene going on in common. Are you black metal, Rob? Not black metal. Travis was in a band.

Travis was in a band. Was it black metal? Not black metal. Okay, white metal.

This is brown metal. There's that out there, too. Okay, so, Brent, you have in your death experience. Please walk us through your tragedy and trauma.

Sure. The year that this happened was also just a terrible year for me. So I have a condition called hydrocephalus. That's where I have extra fluid around the brain.

So they put in kind of a catheter. They call it a shunt. It goes in between the two ventricles of my brain. Robert Durst has one.

Oh, really? Yep. On his trial, you can see his shunt very clearly. Sometimes this thing works.

Sometimes it doesn't. So when I was 13, I kind of outgrew it. And then it started causing problems. So I had about three brain surgeries that year.

The event in question was kind of just the cherry on top. Also, I walked in ammonia that year. Oh, my God. Your poor parents.

Yeah, they must have been stressed in the mass for a year. At this point, they've seen enough. They're pretty huge. Oh, wow.

Okay, good for them. Because it started when I was four months old with the surgery. So they have thick skin. So we're going back to April 1994.

So I'm in junior high. We're still in April, the western suburbs of Chicago. So I'm trying to make friends, trying to bridge that gap between having a friend that I only see at school and say, hey, why don't you come out and hang out with me? We'll do whatever.

And so we were riding our bikes around. We found ourselves over by the grade school. And there were some tennis courts over there. Because it becomes relevant later.

These are like two tennis courts. They have a chain link fence around them. Divide in the middle with some brick with some benches in the middle. No one's over there.

We're riding around, popping wheelies. Being radical. Yeah, I'm riding around doing my thing. My friend will call him Frank because he doesn't come off too great in this story.

So I don't want to drag his name through the mud. He kind of goes into the other court. At some point, he gets off his bike. I'm trying to figure out what he's doing.

So I start riding over. And he's off his bike. And he's standing by the chain link fence door to the other court. And I'm thinking, okay, I'll just ride my bike through here really fast.

Zoom into the other court. Super cool. I'm gaining speed. I see him standing by there.

And he's trying to lap in. And I'm like, okay, whatever. And before I know it, he kind of gives the door a little push. And I think he's trying to spook me.

But I'm going too fast. So I hit the side of the door. Oh, God. You hit.

I'm imagining the blunt thin end. Yes. And then on that door is kind of a U-latch that keeps the door closed. I get up.

I'm hurt. I'm furious. Curse him to streak at him. Then he's like, Brett, your neck is bleeding.

Oh, my God. I'm like, what? I hear this gurgle. And then a lot of projectiles on my neck.

Like Monty Python and the Nike D. You know, shooting three-fourth in the air. This is April. It's a little cool outside.

So I'm wearing a jacket. We take my jacket off. We're wrapping around my neck. We're like, what do we do?

So there was a woman nearby. She was walking her dogs. She was kind of the home one in this situation. So she had me lay down on the bench.

She told my friend, go get his mom. And so this is 1993. Nobody has cell phones. It was probably two, three-minute bike ride.

Gets to the door. He tells my mom, Brett, cut his neck. Which, of course, can mean a thousand things. Sure.

She grabs a change of clothes for me. It's out the door. And I think he just kind of took off the way home. He must be out of this whole situation.

He's contemplating whether he's accomplished a murder at this point. In trouble or who knows. So I'm waiting with this woman who had her dogs. And she was very nice.

I don't remember too much about what we talked about. But she had brought her purse out. She's taking some tissues out. She's blotting my bloody neck hole with the tissues.

I kind of felt like maybe the bleeding had stopped. And there was an initial explosion of blood. My jacket's covered in blood. I'm covered in blood.

But I'm still conscious. And so to me, I kind of take this as a good sign. Once they realized I was kind of stable, they want to do x-rays to see what's the damage. Something I noticed while I was waiting for this x-ray.

Every time I breathe, I could hear like noise coming out of my neck. Oh my god. So not many people know. But your lungs kind of go all the way up almost to your collarbone.

So that ulex actually punctured my left lung. Oh my god. That was air coming out of my neck hole while I'm waiting to get this x-ray. You've got like a stoma now or a tracheotomy.

Yeah, I got a little T-shaped scar. And really quick, isn't it crazy that when those things happen, you don't feel them? Like when he told you your neck was bleeding, that's an update for you. You're not feeling any of that, right?

The only thing that hurt was my back probably because of a whiplash. Oh my god, the shock. I did have a few cracked ribs, but other than that, I was just annoyed because obviously the impact hurt. That was my only concern.

But then yeah, you hear that sound which is embedded in my brain. And then blood shootout, you realize back is fine. I got ziggurfish right here. Yes, yes.

So I spent maybe two, three days in the hospital. They had to put a chest tube in me to pump my lung back up. Do they sew your lung closed? Oh yeah, so they sewed it closed, but it had some like air that was trapped in there.

So they had to stick a tube in my side, which also helped rehabilitate it. That was quite difficult because anytime I sneezed or pop or something, there's that air blowing back into the chest tube. So it was quite uncomfortable. Probably missed a week at school.

So that gave Frank some time to get his story. Poor Frank. I feel bad. Everyone in school had already been used to me missing a week or two at a time because of my other surgeries.

He told everyone Brett was clumsy. He got into a biking accident. He had nothing to do with it. So some kids came up to me and were like, you fucking idiot.

What's the matter with you? You're not rad. How dare you? He did this to me.

And they're like, wait, what? So yeah, it was a rough year. My star was definitely falling. Whereas Frank's star continued to rise after this.

So shortly after this, his family had submitted a unrelated video to America's Funniest Home Videos. Oh my God. And one, no, he flew out to California. He was on TV.

Wow. Okay, this explains a little bit. He likes jokes and pranks and tricks and balls. That's what happened here.

It didn't go great. Bishanti wasn't recording it. But yeah, you're right. He's on a path already.

I try to make sure I say it's unrelated because sometimes if I tell that part, people think like, what? He recorded the accident and then put it on there. Was he involved in the prank that made it to air? It had nothing to do with him because his parents had submitted it.

It was some kids fighting during their winter program where they were singing and then they were getting each other's way. So they started pushing each other. Do you remember what they won? At the time, I thought the prize was like 10 grand.

Okay, so they were flush. Wow, my God. This was $19.93, so it was probably worth a little bit more. Yeah, $6, $7 million now.

Yeah, something like that. We weren't great friends after that, but we're stuck in the same classes, so we made the piece. But then, I think a year later, he moved away. Chase and stardom.

Did he ever apologize? He apologized initially when it happened. He was crying. He was like, Brett, I'm so sorry, but not any separate.

And maybe he just kind of felt awkward about it. Maybe he felt like, I already apologized for this. I think he did feel bad. Well, I guess your imagination at 13 runs wild with you.

Like, you're going to jail. You're getting sued to be responsible for this. He probably convinced himself for real that you did do it. He was in denial.

Yeah, he could have thought, he had plenty of time to get out of the way. Why didn't he move? What if at this point, you went and made an amends to him? It must have been so stressful for you.

In preparation for this, I did try to see if I could find him, but he has too kind of a name. Did he move to California? He could have. I have no idea where he went.

What if it was Ryan Gosling? That'd be really exciting. I could see it. And then he's always living in fear that the story will come out.

Wow, well, that is near death for sure. Brett, can I ask really quick, when you were the kid leaving nonstop for the surgeries, were you embarrassed by that? Or were kids compassionate? What was that experience?

I was embarrassed at first, but then I would get to science class, and then we would have a whole discussion about it. And I kind of did feel a little special. That's the best outcome. I didn't mind it.

And there was another time where two other kids were talking, and it was a boy and a girl, and I think they were talking about who the girl should date. And someone was like, oh, how about Brett? And she was like, isn't he dead? Oh, totally.

I kind of just overheard that. I was like, ooh, that's awkward. No, I'm alive. I'm still here.

There might have been a slight mention about what's going on. Because even after the brain surgery, I'd come back, half my head is shaved. So maybe some kids might have thought I had cancer or something like that. So there's a lot of rumors about what was going on.

I did feel a little like everyone's kind of paying attention to me. So it did have its positives, for sure. That's a good way of looking at it. Funny enough, I don't think many people have had that experience.

But I, too, I was at Costco one time, and the cashier was like, oh, I recognize you. What's your name? And I said, Dax. And she goes, yeah, I heard you were dead.

And I go, oh, how did I die? And she goes, oh, I didn't ask. And I found that to be the most offensive part of this whole exchange, because I don't care if you hate someone, so-and-so died. Your first question is how?

But not this gal. She was like, oh, he's dead? Next thing. Well, Brett, I'm glad you made it.

I was told at the time the laceration was maybe a few millimeters from my carotid artery, which it would have let out pretty quickly. So I'm very thankful I am where I am today. Isn't it funny we find a way that things are lucky when they're really unlucky? But it is lucky.

I mean, it is. But it's just really funny that it comes in the wrapping up a lot of this unlucky. Well, thank you so much for sharing. Thank you for listening.

My family's sick of this story, so I like having a new audience. All right, thank you, Brett. All right, thank you. Bye-bye.

Can I jump Daniels with him? We thought he was dead. You did. No, David did.

And then you looked it up. Not to be critical, but you think a lot of people are dead. It's kind of a comment that comes up. I think you've done it a few times.

I thought you had done that. But I do remember it was David that said, yeah. I think recently I did it. Yeah.

I think it's been a few, but that's okay. I guess if you want to comment about when I said people were dead, go ahead. Let me remind us. Someone was just asking me what my favorite episode we've done was, and I said Dog the Bounty Hunter, and then he said, didn't he pass?

I was like, oh, no. He didn't. No, yeah. You never know.

Life is very fragile. We're finding that out. All right, here's Hope. Hi, Hope.

Hi, guys. How are you? Are you in the medical field? I am.

I'm a physical therapist assistant. Oh, nice. That's Monica's favorite thing, PTs. I have a lot of PTs in my life.

You should join us. Maybe one day. Another life. You're going to have to get more adventurous to need a PT.

I don't want a PT. Knock on wood. Okay, we're knocking on wood. I wondered if y'all were knocking on wood a lot today with this prompt.

Yeah, we need to keep some close by. We've only listened to one, and I really don't know if we'll be able to carry on and do all four. I feel nervous. Yeah, it was pretty gory, and I had just eaten.

But we will push on. Okay, mine is not gory, but I think it'll stick with you. Oh, God. Okay, wonderful.

Where are you, Hope? Currently in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock, Texas. And are you from there?

Originally from Midland, which is where my story takes place. Okay. And also, where Woody Harrelson's from? And Matthew McConaughey's brother, I think, was there, too, for a bit.

Rooster. Oh, wow, we really know all the shit about Midland. You do. Now you're going to learn some more.

Okay, wonderful. What year was this? Okay, it was 21 years ago when I was 11. 2003.

Okay, so my dad had this really nice work car, a Crown Victoria. And we would take that car every weekend to go get it washed in preparation for my dad's week. Was he a salesman? He was an engineer, and he was a salesman in the oil and gas field.

So it had to be nice. And it was also now looking back time for my mom to be alone at the house. So my dad would load up my brother and I, who was six at the time, and we would head to the car wash. The car wash that we would go to was the standalone car wash.

I probably shouldn't say the name of the grocery store chain, but it's still very popular. So these standalone car washes were the kind where you would pull up to a little machine, put your cash in, and then your vehicle would then drive in and park. You wouldn't roll on a conveyor belt like you do with the ones now. You stay static while the car wash then moves around you and washes your vehicle.

These are very popular too at gas stations if they have a car wash. Yes, exactly. And this super center chain no longer has these car washes, and I don't know if it has to do with this story. Oh boy, okay.

Every week we did this very routine. We pull into the car wash. My dad parks. He's in the front seat driving.

Obviously, I'm right behind him in the back seat, and then my brother is to the right of me. And the car wash starts. The water starts to flow, spraying onto the hood, then onto the front windshield, and then onto the top of the car. When all of a sudden, we hear this loud creak, and then the roof of the vehicle caves in right in front of me.

Oh my god. Like in the snap of the fingers, or were you watching it buckle for a while? No, in a snap of the finger. It was like I was looking straight forward, and then all of a sudden I just saw tan, which was the interior of the car.

The headliner. What the fuck had happened? Exactly. So we didn't know.

All of a sudden, bubbles and water just start spraying in, because now all the glass from the car doors are broken, and the back windshield has shattered. Oh. So power wash spray. So keep in mind, it is this power wash water coming in through the sides now.

Oh my god. Oh my god. This is a nightmare. It's so loud, because now all the windows are broken.

I look over to my right to look at my brother. We're just in shock. He's okay. I look down at my legs, and they're okay.

So the roof had stopped about my chest height, but was about two to three inches in front of my face. Oh my god. You're in a tuna fish camp now. Yeah, looking back on this now, I think this might be where my claustrophobia began.

So it would be a good origin story for claustrophobia. Then I look forward again, and the first thought I have is my dad is dead. Sure, of course. I have no concept of time.

My dad said all in all, this was about five to ten minutes. Yeah, that's an eternity. Yeah, yes. Then I start to hear these loud pops and see flashes of light outside the doors and outside of the windows and sparks.

So there are live wires now hanging and landing on the water on the ground and popping. Oh, fuck me. I was old enough to know, oh my god, we're gonna get electrocuted. Your dad must be trying to decide if he should drive out of there, even though there's probably machinery stuck on the roof, and is that gonna tear the whole roof off?

Is that gonna hurt my kids? Do I move, or do we stick this out? Right. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I don't even know if I can move or even open this door, but we can't, because then we'll be electrocuted.

So it is at this point I remember hearing my dad's voice, and that's when I'm, okay, he's okay. And he's yelling, do not get out of the car. Do not get out of the car. Then suddenly I can hear the car wash power down.

We're no longer being sprayed in the face with bubbles and water. Oh my god. Then my dad somehow breaks open. my car door and he says grab your brother i grabbed my brother i don't remember any of us crying i think we were all just in shock and him saying move move move and we basically i skated on the soap and water out of the car wash and that's when i look back and see that these car washes had these massive pieces of machinery that would be on a track that would move forward and backward and it sprang water and soap down that had slipped off the track midway landing directly on top of our vehicle in between the front and the back seat oh my god wow again like if you just another story it's so unlucky but so lucky that the placement of the fall a little bit forward for dad a little moment later or if it had fallen at an angle could have killed multiple of us minimally some major concussions and some skull fractures i remember thinking because i was very obsessed with being on the news at the time that was very cool in midland texas and i thought oh my god i'm finally gonna be on the news yeah silver lining the news never came oh well we're kind of the news yeah we're a bit of the news 100 i was telling my husband that i said at least i get to tell this to dax and monica that feels really special you had to wait 21 years but the news is finally yeah i'm not usually very patient but this is worth the wait that happens and i'm not even sure who you called you call the police over that are you calling the tow truck like what the fuck does one do after this when you escape my dad said that he tried to call 911 while we were in the car he said that he couldn't hear so he couldn't tell him where we were so he hangs up somehow someone got in contact with the little gas station because those things are fully automated right there's no one working there yeah there's no humans waiting outside no one's drying off your vehicle at the end it just blows air on you i almost wish that the air cycle had happened just because that too would have been quite thrilling to be you know car with no windows those big bags blowing broken glass all over the place that's probably the biggest blessing of the whole occurrence is that they didn't whip up all that glass really and we had no scratches no injuries it was while my dad said from his perspective when it happened he immediately turned around to check on us and all he could see was our feet but that they were moving and so he thought okay they must be okay and was trying to yell to us and he said that finally we responded again hard to remember how long that took and what happens next do they buy you a new car do they give you money what happened i hope you're a billionaire i wish i was and i am angry that i'm not news didn't come and no cash payout none my dad said that they didn't call 911 so ems didn't come firefighters didn't come he said that it was very simple like hey sorry this happened can you give us your insurance through his work he said that by the next week he had a brand new crown victoria through his work nothing really happened that's insane i mean i guess probably their insurance reimbursed their insurance somehow whatever those i feel like you should get at least like a thousand dollar gift card to the large chain um you should be a billionaire especially knowing what a large chain is i agree with you can you sue now for something that happened so long ago no way well there's no proof okay now this is a weird question but it would cross my mind if i were your dad those are the cheaper option the more expensive you go where they rub the car down there's people there working it's a much bigger thing was he a little bit like oh that's what you get when you try to save two dollars i think i would have felt that way i think he had some self-blame for sure sure victim blaming after that it was only hand car washes so then it became we would wash the car with dad every sunday oh god so you lost double also your mom if you guys had all died because you guys like a car wash ugh i'm a mom now i can't imagine my husband taking my daughter so i can have just a few moments alone and then get a phone call hey can you pick us up the car wash fell on top of our car yeah all hell broke loose on this errand i hate to leverage this story to confirm my worldview but of course irresistible it proves my point it's like you worry about this thing oh you shouldn't ride motorcycles you shouldn't do this fucking god knows where your timely demise is coming from what don't go to the car wash that's not advice anyone's gonna give and i really don't go to the car wash anymore i don't blame you probably no one i think we just ended car wash in america that story it's over you're welcome wow well i'm glad you made it unscathed what an eventful experience how frequently you guys bring that story up not enough in my opinion it wasn't until my adulthood that i think i remembered it the aftermath was so tame that i kind of forgot right and then probably was in the middle of a car wash when i remembered oh my god i almost died in one of these yeah ptsd well that's quite a story how does anyone like that thank you hope you're welcome i do want to say before we go that i appreciate y'all show so much i've been listening since basically the very beginning this month specifically in june it's a tricky month for me because it's the anniversary of my mom's passing but each year something really beautiful and joyous happens and this is i don't know monica if my mom's persuading your dad in the simulation or not i'm happy with the sim i just hope she's willing to chat with my dad i'm sure she is well nice meeting you home and thank you so much yeah nice to meet you guys all right take care rob our burritos are ready let's see that i'll grab them hello hi steve can you hear us yes i can hear me yeah oh you're canadian no yes oh okay you threw an a in there didn't you did i hear an a you did can't tell you why are you married to a canadian i'm not sometimes people just say it okay where are you from yeah that's pretty far from canada now of course i live in monterey california oh you do that's an enviable location yes it is spectacular okay steve you have a near-death experience when you've made it because we're talking to you yeah that's the good news about these stories we do know everyone's made it unless we talk to a medium we talk someone beyond the grave set the scene for us what year is this where is it at this was in june in 2022 oh recent it was at the southern end of the monterey bay it was a sunny clear beautiful day no wind no waves no chops so i thought i'll go for an ocean swim i swam in the ocean for a dozen years and i'd retired a year and a half earlier in that year and a half of retirement i had organized my life around outdoor group activities i was running with the wednesday night longer runners and i was riding with the bella club and i was swimming with the kelp college well just incredibly gorgeous day i had to swim i went to the beach and unfortunately nobody else was there you usually get half a dozen people on a wednesday morning but this time i was the only one there so i got on my wetsuit and my hat and booties it's very cold water's 55 degrees got in the water and the beach is about 100 yards wide and as i started to swim out from the beach there's a jetty on the left sticks out about 75 yards i went out around that jetty and i went to the left and hugged the coast around lover's point now before you get too many ideas about lover's point his full name is lovers of jesus point oh wow not as romantic as i thought i just don't associate that with seafarers that's an interesting mashup i went about three quarters of a mile hugged in the coast the hallway then i turned around came swimming back no waves no chop and it's sunny you see all the kelp and the fish and all the seagrasses flowing back and forth and the seaside it's just gorgeous do you see seals out there ever you do seals sometimes like to swim under you which can be a little disconcerting you're swimming along and there's this gray shape that all of a sudden appears under you yeah because don't they hunt within the sea kelp they absolutely do and i came back around the point i'm heading towards the jetty when all of a sudden wham just out of nowhere i just got tossed up in the air and turns and i don't know what was going on i was plunged back into the water i look and i am arm's length from the enormous head of a great white shark no oh no no no the water is about 20 feet deep and the shark came from below and grabbed me and fully breached up into the air you've seen photos of a great white with a seal in its mouth yes but it's breaches out of the water that was me no oh my god i didn't know all that at the time there were people on the beach who saw it so some of this is reconstructed later but pull it back down under the water and then it spit me out what do you think of the wetsuit turns out great whites will oftentimes bite the prey and then back off and let it bleed it out oh my god you can imagine eight seals and sea lions and elephant seals these things have teeth and they have claws and they can fight back so oftentimes they'll let the thing bleed all i know for sure i was underwater maybe i don't know five feet i'm guessing i could see light so i knew which way was up fortunately i had air in my lungs probably because it lifted me into the air and i got a good breath i don't know and then it was right there arms length away from me the left side of its head i can't tell you how enormous this thing is i'm looking at that black eye you can see this white and gray body and its teeth from its lower jaw sticking up i can see it's bobbing its head back and forth as if it was deciding whether to bite me again or not really quick did you immediately recognize it as a great white or was it taking you a minute like is that a whale is out of this or do you immediately know what it was i instantly knew i'm a docent at the minory bay aquarium i show people hammerheads and seven gill sharks and all these things i knew it was a great one your mind goes very quickly at that moment you get to the point where you surrender you're like i'm gonna die this is it no i was calm i knew i was very badly hurt i didn't know exactly where it had bit me yet but looking at it i was thinking hey i taste of neoprene i'm wearing a white hat and goggles i'm not a seal i am not your food please don't bite me again and at that point i thought i'm gonna punch it oh yeah my fist didn't quite reach its lower jaw but when i snuck up my fingers i jabbed and hit its lower jaw tell me this now you work at the aquarium i had always heard you want to hit him on the nose you went lower jaw that's what i could reach if you had your druthers is the nose the right thing i don't know yeah there's some some there's a notion that that's the right thing what are these weird videos where they come up on the side of the boat and they rub their nose in a weird way and have you seen this it puts them in like suspended state for like 20 seconds they'll float back down and they kind of come to something with their nose there's so much stuff packing the end of that nose anyways you hit it in the jaw with your fingers i tried to take that although my injuries were such that probably i couldn't i don't know i think i kicked that and then it was just gone i don't remember it swimming away but i got myself up to the surface there was a security camera in the distance that captured this whole thing no way it captured the shark reaching and then 12 seconds later i come up and start yelling when i got to the surface i knew i was badly hurt i didn't know how bad and i sort of leaned back to try to get my legs up i thought don't let your legs hang down it'll just bite you again as i lifted my knees up i could see my left leg where there should have been wetsuit or skin it was just nothing but hamburger red oh my god and the water was red and i knew i was in horrible trouble i just swung a mile and a half there was absolutely no way i could swim the remaining 150 yards to the beach all i could do was yell for help and hope that they're brave kind skilled strangers that can hear me and are willing to come out and risk their lives and that's what happened i was really unlucky to be bitten by the shark and then some things happened that are just hard to believe i'm yelling help help this is loud okay you can actually hear it on that security camera i could hear the emotion in my voice i was not in terrible pain but i knew i'm not gonna make it i was yelling for help and i couldn't see anybody coming there was so much blood oh i thought i don't want to die like this that was awful yeah yeah yeah finally i looked to the right and saw a paddleboarder and i yelled some more and i looked again he was coming right at me and closer i thought okay i got a chance it turns out that there was a couple on an anniversary trip they lived three hours away in sacramento amy and paul they've done paddleboarding and they heard me and they started coming my way they were a couple hundred yards away he is a police officer a first responder no she is a nurse impossible luck on top of impossible terrible luck that's exactly right and they knew it was a shark they could tell from the way i was yelling if something was way wrong they were mentally preparing paul was thinking if it is a shark i'm gonna take the paddle and put it down his throat he's a first responder he does this for a living he said no question i was coming to save him and then is that that wasn't enough from the beach there's a group of school kids from kansas who were out here for a weekend it's called blue theology they were here to learn about the ocean and how to take care of it and there was a guy teaching the ocean appreciation this guy is a surfer a former lifeguard a surf rescue guy whoa and one of the dads of the kansas kids saw the shark and yelled to heath hey heath there's a guy out there you need you so heath the surf rescue guy he grabbed two surfboards stacked one on top of the other and paddled out to me oh my god jeez louise he imagined a health care professional a first responder and a surf safety guy with three people who heard me and they all came rushing to me and did they get you on top of one of these surfboards that must have been very hard paul the police officer got to me first and tried to get me on the board i don't remember this i was in and out of consciousness he could not get me on his board then keith put the second surfboard in the water for me they tried to get me on that board it didn't work and finally they said look you're gonna have to help and i remember i reached up with my arm and i helped pull myself up onto the board the injury was the shark's mouth bit me across my thighs and back across my lower abdomen because it's a u-shaped bite so it got me from the right side this big gouge just above my right knee and then across my left thigh and then there are teeth marks along my left hip and then a big scar across my belly looks like a c-section scar now but at the time it was filleted open its belly was just wide open it's like you've got 14 huge punctures is what you have right i mean that's how it does it the bottom teeth puncture and hold so across my backside are just a bunch of punct puncture marks but the top teeth cut so it's just all ripped oh my god they did get me onto the surfboard and i was lying face down on the surfboard and he was yelling grab my heel so with my left arm i grabbed his heel he was lying face down on his board and he starts paddling and pulling me in amy the nurse realized that i was going to fall off the board my legs didn't work my belly didn't work i was unconscious and she left the relative safety of her paddleboard and jumped into the water got half on the back of the board holding my legs on the board and the other half of her is in the water blood pouring off of me and she held my legs on the board and kicked while keith was paddling to get me to the shore meanwhile paul ever prepared the police officer he had his phone with him he pulled out his phone to 911 so is there an ambulance waiting when they get you to shore from the time i started yelling until the time you can see the ambulance on the street three minutes wow oh that feels impossible wow the city really prioritizes public health and so they have an ambulance stationed in the middle of the town happens to be six blocks from where i was there's a hospital five miles away but the taxpayers pay to keep the ambulance close so i gotta thank everybody but there's another step in between that's equally amazing they got me to the beach and of course i'm bleeding my left arm is all ripped up both thighs and my abdomen i need tourniquets on the beach vacationing independently we're two icu nurses and a doctor oh my god doctor from Detroit icu nurse from chansas icu nurse from north carolina what well i do have to put a little bit of a socioeconomic spin on this good place to get injured in monterey where professionals go on their vacation like this happens at uh where's beach or they don't know you might not have the same staff on him pretty good point wow wow so everyone just starts tourniqueting you up exactly right noelle we've chatted with her one of the icu nurses she got halfway in the water and sort of accepted the surfboard there were six or eight people around me as they rolled me over and she saw my leg and she thought well he's gonna lose the leg she looked at my face and saw that i was in my 60s and my face she said was gray she thought i would not make it yeah yeah and she thought even if you do make you're gonna be badly brain damaged from lack of blood to the brain and then she saw my wedding ring and she thought oh how terrible for the spouse yeah then they got me into the ambulance and drove the 28 miles to natividad trauma center i was on the operating room table with the surgeons ready to go scalpel in hand 59 minutes after the shark bite wow wow wow it's kind of crazy you lived that long i mean i just have you must have lost so much blood they start pumping blood into you immediately i'm not sure i do know the anesthesiologist the day after the surgery he stopped by my room and he said when i heard that the incoming trauma victim was a 62 year old shark bite victim with massive blood loss he said i didn't have a lot of hope for you but your heart and lungs responded like you were in your 20s and that's why you survived i had been doing all this outdoor group exercise yes that really helped of course if i hadn't been exercising i wouldn't have been how long was the recovery from that i was in the hospital for three weeks i was in the icu for only one day because the wounds although they were really bad they were quite repairable the surgery took about two hours they had to just stop the bleeding in my legs they looked all through my belly and amazingly it did not break through this cheese called the peritoneum that separates all the muscle and fat and whatnot from the internal organs so no internal organ damage there's a chip off of my left femur but no broken bones and amazingly it missed the big arteries to the leg according to the surgeon the big artery that runs down from your body into the leg the iliac artery he said it missed the artery by a millimeter like a 20th of an inch it's amazing the iliac this artery is literally touching the big nerve that goes down into the leg that you use for your quads that nerve is completely destroyed unusable my right quads don't work but the blood vessel that's touching it untouched and the surgeon said look if it had been a millimeter over you would have bled it up before you got to the beach right yeah oh my god the surgeon who's been a trauma emergency room surgeon for a dozen years said i'm the luckiest patient he's ever seen wow and would you ever swim in the ocean again no yeah good i'm so glad you say that i think a lot of you folks would be like no still love it i respect the shark no i'm back in i'm proud of you i'm glad you're staying away there's other places again yeah there you go wow story comparable to that we talked to a guy attacked by a grizzly and it's kind of on that level let me give you a sense of how big that shark is they figured this out by looking at the inter tooth distance and the expert says that the shark was 15 feet i googled that and it says that's probably 2 000 pounds no way i'm getting back in that water good yeah good let's stay out of there oh boy what a story that is gonna sit with everyone show up tonight during our slumber exactly wow i was afraid of that it's part of why i don't go back in the water every now and then i close my guys i do see a shark no see we're born with a fear of monsters and you actually got bit by a monster yeah you were attacked by a monster thank you for sharing that that was really harrowing you're welcome i do also want to say thank you to the blood donors in that two-hour operation i took 28 units of blood which in round numbers is twice what i hope we're lucky to have you yeah good attitude it's been two years and i'm mostly better i saw some nerve damage my legs so they're sort of prickly and i'm on medicine my right clods don't work at this point i had some surgery maybe it can come back don't know fingers crossed in the meantime i can walk pretty well and i can even ride a bicycle so i'm doing great okay wonderful well steve thanks so much yeah have a great rest of your day we appreciate you okay bye-bye oh my god holy was not expecting that no i was waiting for a rip current because he kept saying how calm it was it was almost like foreshadowing that's like the craziest story we've heard other than a grizzly bear because i think one like it kept coming at him oh yeah for me though shark attack never getting an ocean never never well there are areas they're not out oh i'm never you're not gonna chance it okay hello it twisted and now it's back oh my god oh yeah another person here okay can you hear me now yes are we coming through your headphones you are coming through my headphones okay then this is gonna work out beautifully back there she's the savior of the day okay hello sister what's the age gap between you two kate she's two and a half years older than me were you a social butterfly oh no i was well by our standards i was a social butterfly hard to know in the grand scheme of things i doubt it but i get by okay you guys are both homeschooled all of us i have seven siblings oh my goodness where'd you grow up houston texas well we saw the bucky sweatshirt so we had a texas clue oh yeah are you still in texas we're a little bit north of houston well kate what happened you had a near-death experience i did have a near-death experience last summer i don't know if you've ever gone through but like woodlands area there's a wakeboard cable park oh no kidding they've got a man-made lake and there's like six towers that go in a full circle around this lake big industrial cables connect these towers in the big circle and you start on this dock and there's a guy next to you he's controlling everything he gives you a rope and it's like three two one go and that cable grabs your rope and it pulls you off the dock you go from like zero to 20 miles per hour like that so i like to think it's harder than regular wakeboarding just because of the jump factor yeah and you're cruising around every time your rope switches towers it gives you another little jump so i was going every single week last summer because they had a deal for girls girls got like ten dollars rentals and everything oh wow what they're trying to make it like a single spot i spent the whole summer trying to get up and around this little lake because if you catch a toe you're falling off the dock you're eating shade you're eating water so i spent the whole summer just trying to get up on the board and finally i did but as you can imagine it's intense you're adding the board it switches towers it pulls you again and you just go around around around are you getting dizzy or is the lake big enough it's big enough you're like going in straight lines it's just turning every so often let's say you fall off the board you have to swim back there's this floating dock that goes around the whole thing you take your board off your feet you swim back to the dock you climb up there and you have to walk around back to where you started and so i was doing that i just started getting fairly good i was staying up on the board going around and i was like an ollie or something i tried to do some trick and i catch my toe edge i come off the board it's no big deal i've done it a million times this summer so i take the board off and i start to swim back to the dock so i can get back to where i started the guy behind me he came off his board too and i had no clue but if you come off your rope it keeps going all the way around the circle until it goes back to the start so he came off his board behind me and i go to swim back his handle comes in front of me so as i take a stroke to swim that handle grabs me by the neck oh you're in a noose now essentially i was hung by this cable going at 20 miles per hour over my head i'm shocked it didn't immediately break your neck your neck i'm shocked too what saved me probably was it got tangled in my helmet strap and it's pulling me this way and it jerks me but it spins me around and i make a 360 and then the rope lets go of me and it keeps going it spit you out if it hadn't spit me out there's no way i could have gotten out no you've been being drugged by the neck at 20 miles my friends joke about it too actually they're like imagine just it drying around the circle and then they're shaking away oh my god oh fuck it spit me out and then i was in shock for a second i'm like choking i'm spitting water i'm freaking out and i'm in the middle of this lake i stopped to swim to the side and there's another guy coming up and i'm like maybe he saw and then he just flies by me he didn't see anything and i look over to like the main tower they didn't see anything either oh my god it takes maybe five or so minutes to get to the side and as i'm swimming i'm like maybe i just overthought that maybe that wasn't a big deal uh-huh i'm up on that side dock and i'm just sitting there and i 100 convinced myself that it was an overreaction and everything's okay and so i grab my board and i walk back to the start of my friend who just got there and i'm very short i'm like you monica i'm 5'2 uh-huh and so he can't see my neck and i'm asking him hey josh did you see what just happened out there and he's like oh yeah your trick that was really good and i was like no look at my neck and tell me what you see and i look up for him and his face drops he's like oh my god what just happened because it was raw and it was bleeding and it was disgusting and so we went up to the people who ran this park and we asked them if they had a first aid kit because my neck was all the way open they were like well we've got stuff for bug bites okay all right let's start there so we go to josh's truck because he's got a first aid kit and then they come find me i'm like okay maybe they found something and they're like hey can you sign this waiver can we take a picture and can you do all this sign this before we breathe through all this oh no no no no they cannot present you with paperwork right while your neck is exposed i know but i found out this summer that part got closed permanently other people maybe had a similar i also hear rumors about a nasty divorce with the owners i don't know we can't go back so did they offer you anything they didn't even offer me a refund for that day they were like oh well the day's almost over oh my god this makes me think of the amusement park one where the girl's eyelid ripped off and they gave her a shirt with her name airbrushed on it that could have gone so badly did you ever do it again that same day my friend josh he was like we should just leave you're injured and i told him if i don't do it again today i'm never ever gonna do it again so i did get back out there that day and i watched for flying ropes oh my god i'm the same brand of stupid kate i rode after my big motorcycle accident i did more sessions mountain biking accident i'm like well i have the whole day passed and just rode with bloody legs the rest of the day i mean you paid for it already well you're mad at yourself you need to punish yourself somehow like you fucked up i can't believe i let that happen yes what's wrong with us do you have any scourge not really but i have a picture of it yes of course oh my god guys it's very serious it's the size of a banana it's under your chin and it's fucking purple and red and then you got a bunch of rope burn i got pretty beat up yeah you did and you kept riding tip my hat to you i think i'm glad this is shut down yeah this is a great operation there's one in waco that i keep telling my friends that we should go to and they're like you almost died last time you did that but in your mind you're like well now i don't know what to do though i crash and i look for ropes it's a completely different park i'm sure they run it very different oh i bet it's run like a navy ship the couple's probably happily married yes healthy relationship with the owners thanks for sharing that yeah thank you kate yeah thank you guys actually i heard on the podcast the other week that i share a birthday with your daughter december 19th yes yes yes yes yes terrible birthday no i love it oh good she loves hers too i guess that's in my own head everybody's already together yeah that's true yeah it gets mixed together with christmas but everybody's included that's a good point her birthday party's got a huge turnout there you go you're a very glass half full kind of gal yeah thank you very much aspirational it really is well great meeting you and we're delighted to have you thank you all right take care kate bye all right bye what a good time charlie kate was is there an equivalent to good time charlie for girls it doesn't have to be gendered charlie well charlie does go both ways doesn't it those were intense those were hard yeah they took it out it was a lot i'm scared six feet under what are you most afraid to do now go swimming well i'm already not doing that and you're not gonna be at a wakeboard park exactly so i guess i don't do much bike riding car wash yeah honestly that is the scariest one because it was so freak hated that but i also loved it yeah me too no one can listen to it but that's fine yeah no one will hear it but that's fine we'll put it out anyways all right i love you love you hope you don't knock on wood knock on wood all right good night do you want to sing a tune or something oh okay great we don't have a theme song for this new show so here i go go go we're gonna ask some random questions we'll get some suggestions on the flyer i dish on the flyer i dish enjoy