Have you ever had like really rotten health? I mean, you've been so sick that you thought you were going to, you know, it was just all going to be over? I have. Yeah.
Let's talk about that a little bit. Hi, I'm Michael Gross. This is The Daily Grateful. And I've got to tell you something.
I'm overweight. I don't eat really good, but I never get sick. I mean, I just never got sick. I was always very healthy.
I would always be bop everywhere. I would be traipsing through the woods. I would be, you know, it's just the way I was. I'd raise five kids, chase after all of them.
You know, it was not a thing for me to be ill. I just didn't have time for it. I never was sick. Everything in my life, as far as health is concerned, was just going along swimmingly.
I, you know, medications are you on? Nothing. You know, I'm not on any medications. I just, you know, I never was.
I just, you know, I take Excedrin when I got a headache, that sort of thing. But that was it. I was on no regular everyday medication. As a matter of fact, I kept wanting to take vitamins and I could never get myself into the habit of taking vitamins.
You know, I remember when I was young, my mom says, oh, these are one-day vitamins. Bought at the store. You need to take these every day. It's okay.
Put them on, you know, set them on the shelf in the bathroom. Never took them. I didn't take them once, twice. But I guess I couldn't be sick because I couldn't make myself take pills every day because I would always forget.
So that was me until 2013. As a matter of fact, until December 1st, 2013, I was, you know, hanging out and I was doing all right. And my daughter called me. My daughter was at a place in downtown Clearwater at a meeting and she needed a ride home.
I said, I'm coming to get you. Now, downtown Clearwater from where I live is about a seven, eight, nine minute drive, especially at night. She called me at nine o'clock at night. There was just no traffic.
So I went to the bathroom before I left and I got my SUV and I'm driving on down and I'm right down to the downtown area of downtown Clearwater. And all of a sudden I had to pay. I mean, I just really had to go. And I hopped out of my SUV to walk in there and I looked down at my shorts and my shorts, which were khaki shorts, were red with blood, lots of blood.
And I looked at it and I panicked and I looked at the seat of my car and it had blood. I said, smell me right. And then all of a sudden I'm like in panic mode. I never panicked.
I was in absolute panic mode. So I ran over to where my daughter was, pulls up and she goes, oh, dad, I want you to come meet all these guys. I can't get in the car. And she hops in the car and she goes, you know, and she says, what's wrong?
And I looked down there and she goes, oh my God, I've got to go to the hospital. All I want to do is go home and take a shower. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go home and take a shower.
But she said, no, we're going to the hospital. So the hospital is only about four or five blocks away. And by the time I got to the hospital, I was in immense pain. I mean, the pain started up when I went to pick my daughter up.
And then all of a sudden I was just in horrible pain down there. And I just, you know, we get to the emergency room and I go in and everybody sees me and they said, have a seat, we'll get to you. And I'm like, oh, and I was like writhing in pain. And then I had to go to the bathroom.
I had to try to go to the bathroom. And one of the people there said, I'm going with you. And that person went with me and they said, no, this isn't going to work out. And they grabbed me and they took me right back.
Well, that started a interesting odyssey for me. That was the first time I'd ever been real sick. That was it. I mean, that was it.
I mean, I was real sick. I was real, real, real sick. As a matter of fact, they took me in and then I was in so much pain. They started pumping me full of morphine or something.
I don't even know what it was. But that just got me down to where I could breathe. And I have very little memory of what goes on. Here's the bottom line.
A urologist finally came to see me and he said, we, you know, did some scans of you. And you got a blockage, obviously. And there's a lot of blood. I said, yeah.
And he goes, and there's this big thingy down there near your kidney. We need to, we're going to have to operate on that. I said, yeah. And he goes, it's a mass.
I said, oh, that doesn't sound good. And they said, well, we're going to get you in. But we've got to operate right now on your bladder. You know, we've got to clean things out so you can go to the bathroom.
So we need to go in and do that. I said, okay. So they took me to surgery. I remember going to surgery.
And I remember when I was in the ER this whole time, you know, when I was doing all of this stuff. I met a bunch of nurses and a bunch of staff there. And, you know, I just recognized people. I didn't know their names, but I recognized them.
They would all smile and everything else. And I went into surgery. And then I woke up in a recovery room where a bunch of those people were. And they were looking at me.
I can read people real well. I'm really good at reading people. And it didn't look real good. They kept looking at their computers.
They kept looking at little pieces of paper. They kept looking at me. And the way they were looking at me was not really, you know, I'm just sitting there. And then I looked at my hand.
And my hand was twice as big as it was supposed to be. And they kept taking my blood pressure. And they weren't happy with my blood pressure. Turns out my blood pressure was exceedingly high.
And I remember hearing one of the people say, he's going to stroke out any second. And then all of a sudden, the doctor who had been there before came in. And they had done like ultrasounds. And he said, I think I punctured your bladder.
And I said, okay. He said, we're going to take you down to emergency surgery right now. And I'm going, okay. And then he got real close to my face.
He goes, what do you think is going to happen? I said, I don't know. He said, I don't think you're going to wake up from the surgery. Now, I pulled that to people before.
And they said, what? And I got to tell you, it didn't have that effect on me. The effect it had on me was all of a sudden, okay. If this is it, this is it.
I don't know why. But suddenly, I was at peace with it. I was just totally and completely at peace with it. And as they were rushing me down the hallway, I will never forget this.
I was so grateful for my life. I was so grateful for the fact that I had five children. I was so grateful for the fact that I had professionally been working in radio for all these years. I was so grateful that, you know, I had such a wonderful, you know, mom.
My mom was just the best mom in the world. I was just grateful about all of that stuff. And my mom had passed away at the end of 2005. This was 2013.
And I missed her. But I just had this feeling in my head. Mom's watching. Everything's good.
Everything's good. And the next thing you know, I woke up. And when I woke up, by the way, if you don't know, I've had three different wives. I've been married and divorced three times.
And when I woke up, all three of my wives were in the recovery room when I woke up. And I said, yep, he was right. I died. No, but no, I was awake.
And there they all were. They were all there together looking at me and talking to me. And I was really grateful for that. All of this total adversity had turned into being grateful.
And then they had to get me in shape. And they had to do another surgery. And so far, I've got two surgeries under my belt. But they had to get me rested up just a little bit so I could do the big surgery.
But before they could do the big surgery, they had to do another minor surgery. And then the very same day, later that day or that evening, I would have the big surgery. I don't remember a lot of this. I was on very heavy drugs.
But I remember being grateful for everything that was happening to me in the hospital. This was really strange. It improved my mental well-being. It really did.
It made me, it just, you know, I've got to say, being sick strengthened all of the bonds that I had with people. I knew who my friends were. And they were there. And I was so, you know, and I said, if I can get through this, I'm going to take care of myself more.
I'm going to do a better job of taking care of myself. And then I go in for those two surgeries. I don't remember the first one other than they said it was going to be the most painful thing you ever went through. I don't remember any of it.
It was a radiation type thing or, you know, something where they killed my kidney with radiation or something. I don't even know. You know, when you're on, you don't even know. And then I went in for the big one.
By the way, I hallucinated the whole time. I was in the hospital. I was hallucinating constantly. I was in four different hospitals in my mind.
Actually, I was once in a hospital underneath a dolphin tank at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. How's that? I've never been there. But I was underneath a dolphin tank in a special room.
This is all, you know, drugs do for you. And by the way, I don't like hallucinating. It's nothing that I would ever want to do again. And, you know, but I made it through.
They removed an 18-pound tumor and a kidney. And I came out of it. And it was a long recovery because I'd had four of the complete anesthesias in a five-day period. And it took longer to recover from that than anything else, I have to tell you.
But I was just so grateful that I lived. And I was so grateful that I had a second chance. And I was so grateful that, you know, everything was good. And here's a really strange thing.
When I was all done with all that, I still was on no medications. No medications whatsoever at all. Just go about your business. And they said, by the way, we need you to get scanned every five months to see if you're going to die.
And if somehow you make it to five years, you're going to live. I went and had one scan done. It drove me crazy. And I said, not doing this anymore.
I'm just going to live my life. And I made it past the five years. I'm like at the ten years now. And I'm doing fine.
And I'm grateful. And I'm just so thrilled that I got sick. And I developed all kinds of things. I developed coping skills.
I had all of these life priorities that were popping up that I really hadn't thought of before. You know, I was connecting with my friends on a new level. And I was much more compassionate than other people ever since then. The good deed every day rule that my son Zach and I have, it all came from that.
It all came from that. We'll see you tomorrow. We'll see you tomorrow.