My 9 Day Vacation in the Hospital!

Hey, everybody. Welcome to my very first Facebook Live. I've never done this before, so you're gonna have to bear with me a little bit as far as some of the technology is concerned. But I really feel like I need to engage more with all the people that have taken the why App and that are following the why Institute. We've had over 35,000 people discover their why, and I want to be able to stay in contact and. And help people move forward. Because discovering your why is really just the first part. Knowing your how, knowing your what, putting it all together so that you can make better decisions, so that you can get on the right career path, so that you can build your business, build your brand based on your why. And so I want to have some more of these Facebook lives to be able to help everybody move forward and give more information than just the WHY app. This episode, or the very first one, I'm going to talk to you about something that was kind of a little bit crazy in the last couple of weeks. About three weeks ago, I had a really crazy experience. I went to this event in Santa Fe called Zozobra. Zozobra is a big event. There was like 70,000 people there, and I went with about 15 people, was a friend's 45th birthday party. So we went to Zozobra, and essentially, it's like the Burning man type thing where people put their things for the last year that they haven't accomplished or they want to forget or they want to have removed from them, and so they burn them in this huge. A huge event. And so we were there and we had a great time. And the next morning after this event, I woke up with a terrible headache. And so I went down to the front desk of the hotel that I was staying at, which was the Hotel Santa Fe, and I asked them if they had any Advil or Tylenol or anything like that. And so they had some Advil. And I took a couple of advil. I took three Advil, 600 milligrams, little bit of water and empty stomach, just took a couple Advil, went to bed, didn't think anything of it. The rest of the day was pretty normal. The next day, I got up, went to the gym, worked out, probably ran four miles, but I wasn't feeling very good. And so when I came home, I told my wife, I said, you know, I just don't feel that good right now. And I went to the restroom, and everything came out black. Not that you really wanted to know that, but everything came out Black. And I was like, that's not right. And so I thought, maybe it's just one, you know, maybe it's just from something I ate. Let me just take it easy. So a couple hours later, same thing, went to the bathroom, same thing. And this time I started to get a little nauseous and I started to sweat a little bit and I felt really bad. And then I got sick and everything that came out was black and red. And so, not that you want all these details, but you need to know these details because that's not right. Obviously something isn't right. So I called my friend who's a gastroenterologist, and he said, you need to get to the er. So I went to the er, and when I went to the er, when, as soon as I went in, they said, so are you having any chest pains at all? And I said, well, you know, my neck is kind of sore and my shoulders hurt a little bit and maybe just a little bit right here. But that's probably just from getting sick. But I took a picture of when I got sick, and would you like to see it? So you know what I'm dealing with. Because everything came out black and red. And they said, oh, yes, I'd like to see that picture. So I showed them the picture. They said, okay, we'll get you taken care of. So I went back into the triage area and mistakenly they gave me aspirin. And I remember the nurse said, here, take these. And I said, well, what is that? And they said, well, that's aspirin. And I said, I don't think I need aspirin. And he said, just take the pills. And I said, I really don't think I need any aspirin. He said, just take them. So I took them, which was a big mistake. And then in the ER, they made me wait for about 12 hours. I sat out in the reception room for about four hours.

Few trips to the restroom that weren't good. Then I sat in the back in the ER until about 4:30 in the morning. At 4:30 in the morning, they moved me back to another room in the, in the hospital. And my vital signs started to really tank. My blood pressure got down to about 60 over 30. My hemoglobin level, which normally is about 16, was down to about 7.2. My heart rate was elevated and things were just getting worse and worse and worse. And I remember I asked the doctor, I said, what do you see there? What are you noticing? And the doctor said, well, I see that your vital signs are tanking. I can tell that you're bleeding internally and things aren't going very well because when we've looked at your stool samples, when you go to the restroom, it's not looking good. And I said, yeah, that's right. I said, what are we going to do about that? What has to happen for you guys to actually do something? And I said, well, we're waiting for the other doctors to get here. And I said, well, when are they going to get here? They said, about nine, and maybe we'll try to get him in here at about 9:45. And I said, you know, that's three more hours that I'm going to bleed. I don't have that much more blood left. And so I got up to go to the restroom, and since I wasn't in a private room, when I went into the restroom, I locked the door behind me. As soon as I locked the door, I fainted and I hit my face.

On the sink and I ended up knocking myself out. And I laid on that ground, laid on the tile in the bathroom for I don't know how long. I really have no idea how long I was there. But when I woke up, there was blood all over me, all over my face, all over my arms. I knew something wasn't obviously right. And I got up and I looked in the mirror and I had blood all over me. And I tried to wash some of the blood off, and then I reached over and I pushed, pushed the door open and I passed out again. And somebody found me. I don't know who it was, but somebody found me and they called a code blue. Code blue is where they cut all your clothes off and they put the paddles on you and they revive you. Well, I went through the code blue and then they rushed me up to emergency endoscopy. They intubated me and they tried to find the area where I was bleeding, and they couldn't get to it. So they put a little clamp in there to mark that area in case an internal.

In case a radiologist needed to come back and try to stop the bleeding. But luckily the bleeding stopped and they took me up to icu. And so here's a picture of me last week sitting in icu. Let's see if you can see this.

There you go. That was me last week having a great time in the icu. And so they did a CAT scan. They said, you know what? We need to find out if you're still bleeding. And so they went to do a CAT scan. I don't know if you've ever had a CAT scan before, but what they do is they put this contrast into your iv. So first they check to see if your IV is okay. And they kind of pressurized that area. And when they did that, it was very, very painful. And I said, you know, I didn't feel very good. I said, oh, I think you're fine. I think you're fine. I aspirated, and I got some blood, and I think we're still okay. And so they hooked me up to the contrast, and they put this contrast, the dye, into my blood, into my veins. And they did the CAT scan, and they found out that I wasn't bleeding anymore. But what else happened was that dye leaked out into my arm, and now my arm ballooned up, got about twice its normal size, and it got infected. And so now I ended up with all these blood clots in my arm. So I had blood clots in my arm. I had two superficial ones in my forearm, and I had a deep vein thrombosis in my bicep. Then I had bleeding or a lesion in my duodenum that had been bleeding. And now I have a blood infection. So the doctor comes in and says, well, we're not sure if the blood clots are growing, so we'll have to monitor you for a couple of days. But if we find out that they're growing, then we're going to have to treat that. A couple days went by, and they did another ultrasound and found out that I was bleeding. And I mean, sorry, that the blood clots were growing. And as they started to grow, they were growing towards my lungs. So the doctor came in and said, look, your blood clots are growing. We don't know if you've stopped bleeding and you have a blood infection. So if we treat the blood clots, you'll probably die from the bleeding. If we don't treat the blood clots, you'll probably die from the blood clots. I said, boy, those are not very good. That's not a very good thing to hear. And about that time, my phone rang in my hospital room. It was a friend of mine.

Who is a cardiologist. Name is Neal Shadoff. Dr. Neal Shadoff. And he said, hey, Gary, I was looking over your reports, and I see that I have some concerns about what they're planning on doing. And he said, I'm going to take over. And so Dr. Neal Shadoff took over my treatment, and he made sure that I was given the right medications at the Right time, and they did the right things for me. And what ended up happening is we had to just go for it. They hooked me up to an IV of heparin. I went to bed that night wondering if I was going to start bleeding. And I didn't have much Runway because my blood level was at 7.2. Full tank is 16. I was at 7.2. Luckily, I didn't bleed. The next morning when I woke up, they did an endoscopy again and found out the lesion was gone. Then they could treat my arm and treat me with antibiotics and blood thinners to make sure that the blood clots didn't get to my lungs. So that was a very, very scary nine days for me. I've never been in the hospital. I have never been sick. I've never had any health issues. But here I was in the hospital for nine days, and there had to be a better way. There just had to be a better way. All of you know that my why is to find a better way. So as I was sitting there in the hospital wondering, a, am I going to make it? B, what's going to happen to me? And C, what kind of treatment are they going to be able to do to actually solve these problems? I have, My mind was always focused on finding a better way. And so, interestingly, I kept notes of my time in the hospital, and I kept notes on the things that worked well, because that's how I think. And I also kept notes on the things that didn't work well. And I got to tell you, the worst part, the worst part for me of the whole nine days was having my blood drawn. That was horrible because I had an IV right here in my forearm. I had an IV in my hand on my right hand. I had an IV in my forearm on my left arm. So the only place they could draw blood was right here on my left arm. And it felt like I was having blood tron about every hour. I know it was only about four times a day, but four times a day for nine days. You know, it's like 36 times, so felt like 100 times. But they kept coming in and taking blood right here. And some of the phlebotomists were really, really good. They'd walk in and they'd say, sir, I'm here to take some blood. Would it be okay with you if I turn the lights on? And they were very gentle and very caring, but others were not. They'd come in like Kramer on Seinfeld. Bang, bang, knocking things over, making noise Waking me up, flipping the lights on. I'm here to take blood. And they'd come over and they'd put the tourniquet on, and they'd say, okay, ready? Big poke. And they would always say, big poke. And that annoyed me to. To no end. Why are you saying big poke when you're trying to get blood? You don't need to say that. So by the time those nine days were over, I had retrained all of the phlebotomists that were coming in to work with me, and I taught them exactly how I wanted the blood done. Because as a dentist, you know, I've probably given 200,000 shots, and I know how to do it well. I know how it can be done well, and I know how it can be done not very well. And so I trained these phlebotomists, or I taught them the right way to draw blood. So instead of saying big poke, where I would be stressed out and wondering how bad it was going to hurt, I would tell them to say, you might feel something kind of cold before they went to start drawing blood. And maybe I did feel something cold, but so what? Cold is not a big deal. So I trained them on how to find a better way to draw blood without causing so much trauma and drama for me. And that was just one of the things. So I've got a whole list that, believe me, I'm going to be going over with the CEO of the hospital, because there was a lot of things in my case that were not done very well, starting with giving me aspirin in the emergency room. But when you focus on your why, when you know your why and you see your why come to life even in the most stressful situations, you truly know that that is what you bring, and that's the gift that you have that you bring to this world. Now, yesterday. Yesterday. Yesterday I went to the phlebotomy school, and I got to spend time. So this was just two weeks ago that all this happened. But yesterday, I got to spend time with the graduating class of the next graduating class of the phlebotomy school, and I got to tell them about my experience, and I got to teach them and tell them how to have a better career when you turn drawing blood from something negative into something positive, by the way you go about drawing that blood. So I was able to show them a better way. So I took something that's not. Wasn't positive at all, found a better way, and found a way to bring that to the world. Now you can do the exact same thing. When you know your why, you know what you bring, you know what your gift is, and you know how you can have an impact in the world in a very positive way. So that's it for today's first ever live Facebook Live with myself, Dr. Gary Sanchez at the Y Institute. Thanks, everybody.