EP 162

Joe: It’s been long overdue, but at long last I’m interviewing bill Monroe, the stroke cast. We talk about who ,we talk nerd, we talk unity, we talk podcasting and we talk Bill’s recovery. Stay tuned for a fun interview with a fellow brain injury survivor podcaster, a fellow neuro. If you will.

Welcome to the neuro nerds. It has been really long overdue. I’ve been wanting to do this for a hot minute, but I don’t know if you guys know this or not. I have a brain injury. I have a very special guest with me today, the man, the myth, the legend, the podcaster, the superstar, the rock star.

If you could only see his hair Bill Monroe, what’s going on, bill.

Bill: Hey, Joe thanks for having me. I’m thrilled to be here. Hey rumor, is this true? You had a brain injury.

Joe: It’s crazy now. I haven’t said it in maybe the last four minutes, but for those of you who don’t know, I have a brain injury. So bill is the host of stroke cat.

Huge fan of your podcast. It’s really, it’s informative. It’s genuine. It’s professional. All things. I am not. No. I’m pretty genuine for the most part professional I’m working at it. I’m working on it. Bill, thank you for being on the podcast. I’ve been a big fan of what you do for forever and I’ve been a big fan of yours forever.

So I’m happy we can actually, sit down and chat. I will ask you first and foremost, bill, how are you part of this community?

Bill: I broke my basal ganglia almost years ago.

I know. So it was basically. June 3rd, 2017 was a Saturday morning and I woke up at about 7:20 AM. And if I’m getting up at seven 20 in the morning on a Saturday, something is terribly wrong.

Joe: Unbelievable. Exactly. So wait, seven 20 on a Saturday morning, they still make that’s still a thing that exists.

Bill: Apparently. I think you have to have a brain injury to see it, or maybe it causes brain injuries. I don’t know. But yeah, I woke up I was 46 years old at that time. And my left arm felt funny. It felt a little weird. I figured I, I must’ve slept on it wrong and injured myself in my sleep because as I said, I’m, I was in my forties.

And that’s the thing that happens when you’re in your forties is you hurt yourself, sleeping or sneezing or sadly, so true. It’s a, it’s amazing. You just acquire these ailments.

Joe: Oh, my God like Joe, why are you limping? Oh, I yawn like 20 minutes ago. I don’t know how to have them when I’m limping.

Bill: I’m out. Bring me my palette of Tylenol.

Joe: So you woke up now, was there a headache attached to the strange

Bill: feeling? No, there was no headache or anything. I just woke up. I felt I had to use the bathroom. Got up and just figured I, my arm had fallen asleep and it would probably come back in a few moments, made my way to the bathroom and started limping took care of business and realized I was having more and more trouble balancing as my leg was just progressively going offline.

Looked at myself in the mirror and saw that half of my face was not where it was supposed to be. And at you, have you had the truth? I had the class, it was classic fast signs just classic, straight up. I remember while I was going through that I had this flashback to this YouTube video that had made the rounds a few years before about a newscast.

Who started just speaking jibberish on the air and collapsed while doing a remote report. And everybody, I thought she had a stroke on the air. I looked it up. It turns out, she says it was a migraine, but regardless, I was like, okay, this is. This is not good. Made it back to the bedroom, woke up my girlfriend.

I basically sat on the foot of the bed and banged on her leg with my good arm and was like can you understand what I’m saying? I was, so I still had English language, but I was slurring, which is a little. Tough to identify at first because when I’m tired or if I’ve been enjoying the some of the grains in liquified form my native New York accent tends to come out a little bit more.

And of course, just talking about it, it’ll make it come out even further. But I woke her up she looked at me, she had that worried look on her face. I was like, I think I need an ambulance and she called 9 1, 1 ambulance got there and I spent the next month living at a Swedish medical center throughout the course of the day.

What was amazing. They got me into the ambulance got me into the hospital. They paused briefly to slap an ID bracelet on my wrist and to stick like 50 different Ivy needles in my arms. And then just shoved me straight into the CT scan. Then into an IMR, a private emergency room cubicle, and then a few hours later MRI they did that they FA and and yeah, they had the woman come in to do the ultrasound of my heart to check and see if I had a had a hole in my heart, a PFO and where they inject air into your blood vessels.

And I remember talking to her about that and I’m like, Whenever I see any, a spy show on TV. This is how they murder people.

Joe: It’s how they kill people. What did I do to you that you’re injecting air into my

Bill: body, explained it to me. It’s yeah, we’re only doing a few bubbles here. They always do it wrong on TV. You have to inject the entire syringe. So I’m like, oh, that’s good to know.

Joe: She’s yeah. When I murder people, I inject the entire syringe. That is so uncomfortable to me, w what’s uncomfortable about that to me is I’ve seen those movies and I would have that same fear. The fact that the nurse is we’re only going to put a couple of bubbles.

How many bubbles to keep me from dying. The fact that there’s okay. I’m going to inject you with five. If I put six in you’re going to die immediately. It’s too close. It’s you know that Hey, what is it though? The puffer fish, the sushi. The sushi that like, if you cut it the wrong way, you’ll die.

But if you don’t, it’s delicious. I don’t know if I want to take that chance.

Bill: Exactly. And really hope you didn’t offend somebody before yet before you go there.

Joe: Yeah, it’s one thing. That’s okay. So there’s two people that you don’t necessarily want to mess with before they’re doing something.

Number one would be a server before you get your food at a restaurant. Just be kind. If you want to be a Dick, maybe afterwards, also always be kind to your doctors, your nurses be the kindest person, because they’re literally taking care of your life and stuff. Exactly. It’s a little

Bill: advice for me to, you always be nice to the people who can get you painkillers.

Joe: That guy on the corner. I’m always nice to that guy. So what was the reason for your stroke? Did they find out, please say

Bill: sure. Oh, okay.

Joe: Before you even finished that, I am so uncomfortable right now. Okay. So thankfully now I don’t know if it’s thankfully it’s, but for me, thankfully, I know 100% why I had my shoes.

It was high blood pressure. Basically. I didn’t take care of myself a hundred percent best idiots fault, right? Through no fault of anybody. Else’s it was my fault that I almost died. I know that. And I’m very comforted in the fact that it was all me. Okay. So many of us out there don’t know why it’s a puzzle.

And to be honest, it didn’t happen to me. It still drives me crazy. It drives me crazy to not know. I’m one of those people that if I think long enough about aliens, I know there’s someone out there that knows that they’re here. And it will literally drive me mad. I’ll be like Jim Carrey in that movie.

What is it? 23, whatever movie that was.

Bill: I think that’s every movie

Joe: where he’s just going crazy. I will be that person if I think about it long enough. So the fact that you’re pretty sure. Makes me pretty sure that I’m going to fixate on this at some point and go mad.

Bill: I’ll tell you, I, it makes some sense.

And actually this was something I was diving into more obviously, when it happened and a lot of times, figuring out a stroke, it’s a process of a woman. It’s really what it is. My stroke was an ischemic stroke. It was a thrombus, meaning that it was a clot that formed in place, as opposed to an embolism.

An embolism is a clot that forms someplace else in the body and then travels to do its damage. So I had a clot form in my right middle cerebral artery, feeding the basal gangs. And what it was probably caused by. My stroke was in 2017. This goes back to about 2014 where I started ha I didn’t historically I’ve always had low blood pressure.

My family is. Been very low blood pressure people. Apparently when I, after I was born, the nurse was in the ho was trying to take my mother’s pulse. And she was like, I know you’re alive. I’m talking to you, but I don’t, I can’t find a pulse. It was like that, but what happened was, oh, I was actually in Jersey my mother’s place for the holidays and I started having those.

Every other day, I was having a massive surprise nosebleed that would last for a half hour until I could get it under control. And I eventually made it back to Seattle. And after one of these, one night I took my blood pressure and it was like two 10 over one 60. I was like, oh, that’s probably not a great.

So I agree.

Joe: It’s not too bad. I remember I will die, but

Bill: high blood pressure here, but but yeah, when you mentioned that your blood pressure, it turns out you have no problems getting an appointment at the doctor’s office for the next day. So they got me on meds. We started just looking at some diet stuff, got my blood pressure down.

So for six months before my stroke, my blood pressure was normal. It was under the one 20 over. Yeah. But because I had such high blood pressure for a couple of years. It damaged the arteries. It just wore out those arteries and caused damage. They didn’t have the flexibility to deal with it. And it just set me up for damage from a clot later on.

It’s like those, people can smoke for decades. They stopped smoking five years later, they get lung cancer. Cause they already did the damage and

Joe: It wasn’t the stopping of smoking that gave you the cancer. It was the fact that you smoke.

Bill: It’s not a case of, maybe I should have kept my blood pressure high so that if a platforms there was enough pressure to just push the clot out of the way.

But then that’s on paper,

Joe: On paper. It makes sense. But in reality, what would that happen to me? The high blood pressure and my brain basically exploded. So that is wild. Now let me ask you a question. When you had high blood pressure, did you suffer from headaches? Nope.

Nope. That was my biggest issue with the high blood pressure. Like I was under the assumption that my migraines came from. It just runs in my family now as somebody who never went to the doctor, it just runs in my family means I don’t know what it is. And I guess it’s just a thing. As an adult now I was an adult then, but I’m like an actual adult.

Now I go to the doctor, I ask questions, runs in the family, means it stems from something. So we should probably figure that out. It turns out my entire family on checked high blood pressure. So the cycle broke with me where I’m like yeah, no we gotta get this.

Bill: Was it just a blood vessel itself that ruptured, or did you have an aneurysm on that blood vessel that

Joe: ruptured right basal ganglia.

That’s what I was no, no animals. It was just, the blood pressure was like uncomfortably high. That’s. When you mentioned your blood pressure, I was like, exactly. And it was years and years of that high blood pressure, meaning that vessel. And finally it was like, all right, I’m done with this.

And it just it ruptured crazy thing is why I asked about migraines is cause my migraine was so sad veer that went, I know the second that the blood vessel ruptured and for a few seconds I felt relief and it felt good. Until my brain started filling with blood. And then I slowly started to deteriorate as a human.

Bill: Yeah. It’s amazing how that happens. I talked to earlier this year I interviewed a woman named Carmen Delapaz, who is a, she’s a, she’s an HGTV personality. She had a show on the Oprah Winfrey network. She’s done shows in Spanish as well as English, really fascinating lady. And she, the last 10 years had migraine.

Every and severe migraines, she just thought it was dehydration. It turns out she actually had several aneurysms and the migraines were literally the pressure of those aneurysms, squeezing against other things in her brain until they exploded and she survived.

Joe: Okay. So here is the thing, guys, everybody out there.

Pain is not normal. Now I say that and it’s yeah, of course that, no, you have no idea how many people live through a certain amount of pain. I did it my entire life. I suffered from debilitating migraines for my entire adult life. And I was just like, yeah, this is just what life is now. That’s not supposed to be a thing.

If you are suffering from such pain, please get the, to the doctor, let a doctor figure it out. Now I know there’s a lot of fear in going to doctors because I had that. I had that irrational fear about going to a doctor. I, the fear, just like a lot of other people. Now, if we say it out loud, it sounds really.

I’m afraid. They’re going to tell me something’s wrong. Yeah. Okay. So we’re just going to live in ignorance pool. One of these plates is poison. I’m just going to eat them. Cause I don’t want somebody to tell me that it’s poison. No, you’re gonna eat it. You’re gonna die. Let’s ask questions. Let’s figure out what’s wrong.

Let’s live our lives like responsible.

So

Bill: many people not doing this. That’s the reason we’re in the middle. We’re still in the middle of the COVID pending. Yes.

Joe: Yes. It’s so wild that, okay. So I heard something today about that, not to get like too preachy with COVID, but you guys,

Bill: you know what totally cause if you survive, it COVID causes

Joe: it’s what’s crazy. The thing that was just, it, not only that it caused. So many long-term issues.

People said, oh my God, the fatigue the neuro issues that we have because of our strokes, normies are having because of COVID. So what’s wild is, it was just as Pru.

People are like, I have a very intelligence, acquaintance. And she was like I’m not going to get it because I don’t want to be, I want to have kids one day and I’m like you can still have kids. There’s no issues. There’s no science behind whatever it is that you’re fearing. And they’re like everybody’s coming out now, all the science.

And now here’s the thing, bill. I would much rather get my information from the CDC. Scientists science and reputable sources then. Hey, my cousin’s friend. Yeah. Yeah. That’s who I’m getting information from. I it’s, I did my research. Ran double blind controlled studies with tens of thousands of participants costing millions of dollars.

Bill: You did that research. I’d love to see your published results.

Joe: What’s crazy is. And I think it’s a misconception about the actual the vaccine itself. So that same person had these people were vaccinated and they’re getting COVID that tells me that the vaccine doesn’t work.

Okay. I understand that. So the here’s the misconception is the vaccine is to prevent you from getting COVID. That’s not what the vaccine was created for. The reality is the vaccine was created to make sure that people don’t get severely sick and don’t die. And if we look at the numbers, 99.5% of the people who have passed away from COVID.

Are people who are unvaccinated. That’s not a random number.

Exactly. We have this perception about a lot of things that everything has to be binary in reality, everything is on a spectrum and yeah, the vaccine is not just because the vaccine doesn’t stop you from getting the virus 100% of the time.

Doesn’t mean it’s failure. If it stops it, 99% of the time. That’s great. If you add a mask on top of that will now your gut, even more protection. If you add distancing on top of that, you’ve got more protection. If the people around you are wearing masks, you’ve got more protection. Each of these things is a layer that decreases your chances of getting COVID that decreases your chances of dying from COVID.

And perhaps more importantly, decreases your chances of infecting and killing somebody else. With COVID someone

else sat being selfish. It’s not just about you. So all of these things are layers of armor. And I look at it as COVID is like fallout four. And when I go out into the wasteland, I don’t just wear a helmet.

I wear a helmet and I wear armor and we’re armed guards and we’re shin guards. Cause I want to be, we’re protecting

Bill: the enterprise. Doesn’t just have sheets. It has shields. It has bulkheads. It has folks who can go ahead and repair things as they collapse. It has emergency energy defenses that you can apply inside the ship.

Each thing is one more step to keep the crew alive. Functional in the event that, and the rest of it is breached. It’s not a binary. Yes, no fail, whatever.

Joe: Do you want to know what else it has? It has a cloaking device. If you want to avoid people altogether. I don’t want it. I don’t. I want to avoid this.

Cool. Stay home. Do what bill and I do have our groceries delivered and this is our clock. We all want to, we don’t want to even attempt to get into these battles with this virus over protecting ourselves. So yeah it’s wild people are I S I say it all the time. People are headline readers, people read the headlines and then they’re, conditioned just to read the parts of the story that really reinforce what they believe.

I am one of those weirdos that I actually do my research. Yeah. I like to feel that I’m right in the things that I feel and believe. So I’ll research things to make sure that I’m correct. And then I’ll verify it with something else, so when it comes to stuff like this, it’s okay this side says it’s poison.

And then this side says it’s a miracle cure. So I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the middle. So let me, we do research on both sides, right? And then you do, what’s comfortable with you, but

Bill: besides idea, At some point, we’ve come to the conclusion that both sides are of equal value and that you have to listen to both sides.

You don’t have to listen to both sides when somebody is denying the Holocaust, you don’t, those people don’t have the same credibility. They don’t deserve the time to listen to them. You don’t have to listen. Yeah.

Joe: I’m going to listen to Obi wan Kenobi. I’m going to listen to . I am going to listen to princess Leia.

I’m gonna to Han solo and Luke Skywalker. Do you want to know what I’m probably not going to listen to Jabba the Hutt? Probably not gonna listen to Darth Maul. I’m probably not going to listen to emperor balanced team. Sorry. It’s probably not going

Bill: to be an absolute

Joe: I love that. This is just, this is why I appreciate you. That literally just made my entire pandemic. That line right there. Brilliant. Look I’m super thankful that you made it past this. Now. Recovery is not an easy thing. You suffered physical deficits from that. Now did you suffer any cognitive deficits?

Bill: Fairly limited? Especially with the first couple of weeks, I was dealing with a lot of emotional ability and emotional ability is of course, where you just start crying or laughing inappropriately. And what’s really interesting about it is that well, yeah, sometimes it can be just a really subtle trigger, like a touching commercial.

Can I have you balling. The other thing that would happen. And this was especially while I was going through my PT was that I could do something that caused physical exertion. It was just hard work and I would just start crying and I wasn’t sad or anything. I didn’t feel the emotional sadness that goes along with that balling, but it was just a thing.

That happens and that, I know Joe you’ve talked about in your experience. It’s something that happens to a lot of us. That we just have to live with. So I had to deal with that. I’ve had to deal with neuro fatigue, although that has that’s gotten better. It’s gotten better over the last couple of years.

But so I’ve had to deal with that. And I don’t know, some you could have, I don’t know about this for sure, but it’s entirely possible. My effect has been flattened and I don’t experience some of the same emotional swings I might. Yeah. Before the stroke, but that hasn’t necessarily interfere with me.

You know what, the other thing that’s happening to a weird little cognitive quirk is I think my attention has been impacted in a way. That I tend to more glance over things rather than doing some in-depth reading of like webpage. If there’s too much stuff presented at me and in the hospital, this was the one of the weirdest things every day, the afternoon, before we would have to go ahead and fill out our menu card for what we wanted the next day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the late night snack and, filling out this form.

It was a really easy form and it made me just unreasonably angry to be filling this out. And I have, no, I was angry at the time was like, I don’t know why this is making me so angry to do this, but it was

Joe: the emotional regulation was all off. I’m sure I suffered from emotion regulation my first like year or so.

It got significantly better. If not, I’m pretty sure my girlfriend will stab me in the face by now. She came close. I’ve mentioned it a few times. It was the first couple of months being home and we’re having a conversation. I didn’t want to have the conversation. I did not like what was being said. And while she’s talking to me, I literally just looked her dead in her eyes and I turned around.

I walked away and that was the first time in my life that I was, I think I might die. That’s the stroke. Isn’t going to take me. So what’s going to happen turning my back on my half black half Puerto Rican girlfriend. That’s something you just don’t do. But it got better. I remember you say, so you said in the hospital, filling out like what you want for breakfast, what you want for lunch, Nick?

I ain’t get a late night snack anyways. I do remember it was literally, it was just checking because I couldn’t really write, I had a lot of issues with my right hand. It was just checking, oh, I want this just reading the three or four items. It would exhaust my brain to the point where I would fall asleep while checking off boxes, not even writing down the words, checking off boxes, I’d be dozing off because it was so exhausting on my brain to w to check boxes.

I, for those of you out there who have never had a brain injury, that’s how exhausting it is after a brain. Literally reading of the first couple of months being home, I would read two sentences that I would have to take a two, three hours. I’ve gotten much better since, but it’s just, it’s like a, it’s like running a marathon, reading a paragraph would be like running a few miles.

Bill: Yeah. You’re exhausted. Your brain is swollen at that point. I it’s traumatized. And it’s just trying to just get whatever other energy you can to process this stuff. And I remember I was sitting, laying there in the emergency room that first day thinking I guess I’m going to be here for. A week or so ended up being a month.

Of course, I guess I’ll I’ll get a lot of reading done. Oh, yeah, that was a

pretty much. I had to put all the rest of my life on hold. Great. I’ll have all these books I can meet. I’m only going to be doing rehab three hours a day, like a 21 other hours a day.

Joe: I, yeah, that’s 21 hours.

Bill: And that was about as productive as I got that. And th this reality show about making knives forged in fire.

I think it was called. And then and then in the evening, some evenings, I got to catch wonder woman from the 1970s, Linda Carter in syndication. And I remember this one episode where the plot was that they were on this island of these neo-Nazis, who were cloning Hitler and reviving him.

And they started with this house sample. Fully grown Adolf Hitler to lead them.

Joe: See Warner brothers. That should be the plat of wonder woman three. Take. You heard it here. Make it. I honestly, I don’t remember. Almost anything from my hospital visit because just my memory was so bad. That’s my biggest deficit is memory loss.

I just don’t remember a whole hell of a lot. Like short-term, it’s, it is the worst. I’m no longer like Dory really, I used to be like the dog from up road, be in the middle mobile conversation and be like, oh, squirrel. And then I would forget everything that was happening. I’m much better now, but it’s still frustrating that I know my brain doesn’t work the same way, but I’ve adapted and I have a job.

I think I’ve adapted and adjusted to my new brain, like you’ve adapted and adjusted to your new body because that must have been a huge transition

Bill: was a, is definitely a transition. Now, fortunately I was never an athlete. I was never really super in touch with my body per se. I could say that I, when I left the hospital with hemiparesis, No very limited leg.

You do no. Use the hand. I probably somebody wanted to hire me to be on their softball team. Probably wouldn’t have been that much worse after the stroke than I would have been before the stroke. Really, the old joke, the best, my best position on the softball field was playing left out.

But so that’s the good thing is that it didn’t interfere with the core of what I was doing. Cause I was always. Career wise, I’ve always been, I’ve been a corporate trainer and a brand advocate, and that’s what I’ve done for the better part of several decades, teaching people to use technology.

And I could still do that. I could still speak when I got I had the stroke, I already had a podcast about public speaking and none of the core stuff that I was really passionate about was significantly impacted other than walking around.

Joe: That’s a great thing that transition a podcasting.

How, at what point were you like, okay, I need to get this story out because for a lot of us, it’s very difficult to get, to save these things, to share them, to even say it out loud, let alone, share them with the worlds. At what point were you like I have to get this out and I have to share this with others.

Bill: I actually started doing that. Basically in the hospital and right afterwards. When I was in the hospital, I was already making a point of sharing details on Facebook every day to try and keep people connected, let them know what’s going on. And very early on, I realized after about a week, look, people are great.

My friends and the community, they were incredibly supportive. It was one. But I know that after a week you can get pity, empathy. Yeah. We’ll call it some pity and that’s okay. It’s okay to get pity. It’s okay to celebrate that. After about a week, people are out of that. They’re not done with that. And maybe this is just to, for lack of a better term, a capitalist driven or whatever, but I wanted to make sure that I was providing value in my life.

So that may have meant either sharing, definitely sharing what I was going through and what I need to share, but also can I provide some entertainment? Can I provide a laugh? Can I provide some knowledge? Can I help people learn about this stuff? And once I was back home, I continued to do that.

Let’s start focusing on I’m not just going to talk about. The difficulty I have in some of the pain in my shoulder. Let’s actually talk about what shoulder subluxation is. And for those who haven’t had the paralysis, that’s basically when you’re no longer have full use of your arm, it starts to fall out of the socket because gravity and because the shoulder is the single worst joint in the human body, there is no bone connection there.

It’s just held with muscles. And tendons. And when the muscles turn off, eventually the tendons just stretch and it falls out and it can be really painful and it makes it that much harder to recover because even if he gets the muscles back, you can’t really move it. I used to describe it as going through rehab was like heating work orders, where you’ve got an organization, you’ve got one one group, which is trying to work on something and get it done and do the repair.

Whereas the other group has. We’re not using this stuff in the store room. Let’s just get rid of this arm. We don’t need it. And it’s a great way to distract. So that’s what I was doing. I was at, was talking about AFib, talking about the monitor I had taped to me and just other stuff like that.

And I eventually thought, you know what? People might start getting bored with it. I shouldn’t just always subject my friends and then if I’m not making an interesting, then I have to worry about, am I getting, are they going to feel guilty if they’re not paying attention anymore? It’s okay, so we’re going through this.

So make sure I’m providing value and make sure I’m entertaining. And then I thought, you know what, I’m doing all this. How else can I provide? Can I share with this bigger world, I started looking for podcasts because I was already a podcaster and I been listening to podcasts. 2006 and big fan. So I started looking, I need to learn more about what I’m going through.

And when that happened, that summer of 2017, there were probably a couple of others, but I found two, I found just two, one was enabled me, which is a show out of Australia. The Australian government has done some from this American perspective, a lot of incredible outreach about stroke care and. Yeah, just rally and friends, not a bad place to live with a stroke if you’re going to have to live with a stroke.

And the other one was called the slow road to better, which comes from the stroke comeback center in Vienna, Virginia. And that’s just a little bit different because everyone on the show. It’s a quasi weekly panel discussion. They all have aphasia. And so it’s folks who are just broad stroke or TBI working through their aphasia and producing audio content.

And if you think about what’s involved with aphasia, losing your language a bit, losing access to your language, losing your ability to speak. And these people came at it and they do it. And they’re doing this. And it’s amazing. And over, over the years that I’ve been listening to the show, I can hear people get better.

Two, three years later, they’re getting better. But so I found those two shows and I was realized there’s not really a show out there that meets my needs. So let me go ahead and start the show that I wish existed when I had that stroke. So I did it February, 2018, struck guests.

Joe: The thing is I did the same thing. I started looking for, a stroke cast and it was difficult because everything that I had found. I didn’t follow up with a lot of them. Bill park, everything was horrible. Everything was terrible. Now I’m not saying having a stroke is fantastic. Having a brain injury is the most difficult thing I have ever done in life.

Like coming back from that, dealing with it on day-to-day. It’s and I joke about this and I think I mean it’s so bad that I would, you know how they say it’s it’s so bad. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s so bad. I would absolutely wish this on my worst. Yeah. It’s your worst enemy.

Of course you want to wish that though? So I just, I was feeling sad. I was feeling isolated. I was feeling broken. I was feeling alone and I just wanted that understanding of somebody who’s gone through what I went through and every single person I found, whether it be in a support group, whether it be in a pod.

Anywhere. It was just so unforgivingly negative. And I was just like, I can’t go down this road. So I wanted something a little bit brighter. And when I found my co-host, when I found Lauren at a party randomly, thank God. I was just like, wow, this is what I want. This is what I’ve wanted for over a year.

This is what I wanted. And this is what I want. So the community, this is what I think the community is missing. Now it’s weird to say we don’t talk about the positive side of that. I got to tell you, bill ended up, it ended up itself. It’s a very hard sell.

Exactly. The reality of the fact is.

You guys seem like you’re having okay. Can you help me be part of this? Like the reality is we survived it. We made it right now, as I say this a million times and I really hope it resonates with a lot of us out there. As difficult and as crazy and as miserable as life can be, sometimes we’re here to experience it and that in and of itself is beautiful.

It really is. And that’s, what’s great about life and time. Yeah, it’s crazy right now. You want to know that. In a minute, it could be amazing, right? They, it really can be from one day to the next, from one minute to the next things can change. So let’s stay on this ride. And what did we build? Did we make it back to be angry and upset?

No, I think we made it back to really enjoy this second chance of life that we have. Cause that’s what we had you and I, we have a second chance to do this. There’s so much joy that. Get in listening to your podcasts because you really enjoy putting on your podcasts, which like you can’t. There’s one thing I’ve said forever, my significant other yeah.

Is an artist. And in her field, there’s a lot of people who like fake spontaneity that, oh, I’m going to do this. And it’s going to seem like it’s no fake spontaneity looks like fake spontaneity. It’s you can bake being genuine to a certain. But if you’re truly genuine, if you truly love what you’re doing, it’s going to show, and it shows what you built and I’ve always been drawn to that.

And I’ve always appreciated.

Bill: How about things like neuro fatigue and this second chance and recognizing, here I am now I’m 50 years old. I figure I’ve only got another 150 years to live on this planet or so I don’t have time. For the nonsense. I don’t have time, do you, have you ever think about when you fake something and you try and come up with false energy and things, think about how much energy that takes that’s tiring.

I don’t have that kind of energy to fake having all the high energy. It’s just not worth that time. I can just, let me just this, this stuff we’re doing these people, I am getting to talk to amazing people. People I never would have met, whether they’re going to be other survivors from around the world entrepreneurs from around the world, I’m talking a research site.

I’m just emailing research scientists. I find on the internet, the people who were doing these studies and saying, Hey, you want to. And they’re saying yes. What I always say the stroke club is full of cool kids. It’s just the dues really.

Joe: Yes seriously. It really does. But you and I were the new rockstar.

Bill: It’s amazing. And it’s weird. And yeah, and I think the other thing that’s helped out too, with what we’re doing and seeing this whole community build up around it. Around this stuff is the last 10 years. Societaly, we’ve just seen this huge gross of growth of social media and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, and seeing folks with disabilities.

Have an opportunity to coalesce around these things, to let their voices be heard in a way that the voices of the disabled have been marginalized for decades or centuries or shoved off to the side. And so many people in this community, in the stroke community and the chronic illness community in the trauma community.

Where we don’t have to be quiet. We have a channel to be able to share what we want to say, to let our views be known or heard, or with whatever method we are able to talk or communicate and spread, whatever the word is and where we’re not going to allow that not to happen.

Joe: We are all part of this very strange, very weird dysfunctional brain injured family, and I love all of the people that I’ve met.

If I had an opportunity, I’ve been asked several times, if you go back and change, this would, I wouldn’t, my stroke saved my life and I wouldn’t have. Become this version of myself, which is the version of myself that I think I was always, truly meant to be. And I wouldn’t have met some amazing people like bill, and everybody in our community, everybody, it’s just, it’s such a beautiful community.

I love it so much. I do have to ask you this one thing, you asked me this question on your podcast and I will ask it.

Bill: Who’s your dot number? My doctor is still number nine. That would be Eccleston Eggleston. He only got one. I also really enjoy really enjoy what’s that Matt Smith was very good.

And I really appreciate what Matt Smith had. Some of the most amazing speeches in the show. Just, and he did some incredible things. The longest the, Matt Smith was the longest doctor cause he was the doctor for 1200 years or so. Kapali was an amazing doctor as well. I really liked Capaldi.

I really liked his energy Eggleston. What I really liked that he brought the doctor was he never seemed quite bright as hell. He could easily pass for human, but just the mannerisms and just, there was always just something slightly off about him, slightly alien, which really made it that much more powerful.

And his self-doubt, he’s the one who is dealing with the trauma of the time more. He’s the one who, throughout that entire season, as far as he knows he has killed. Every Dalek and every time Lord in existence, and he’s the that’s that weighs on him. And he is living with that burden. And what is he doing with it?

He is trying to save people. He is trying to help humanity, and that is incredibly powerful. And he does it with, these moments of pure joy. The scene at the end of the, there was the two-parter you may folks who’ve seen it, maybe know it as the two parter, which featured the kids in the gas masks, where the gas masks were actually part of their phases, super creepy, but the end of it, and he’s got this line where just this once, just this one time, everybody lives and you see that pure joy in it.

And the other one that really came out at me as I was, I don’t remember as I was going through that as I was in the hospital this first couple of days, there was also something really powerful about crying and experiencing those emotions and trying to feel them. And I kept coming back to his final scene with rose.

Where he’s and it’s basically just in video and he’s talking to rose and he’s and rose, you were fantastic. And you know what so was I, and it’s that’s closure on his character was just something of pure beauty. And seeing him come through his trauma and his, what is going to happen in the next chapter of his.

And that’s why I really love the work that, those storylines of the ninth doctor,

Joe: you did say that there was something alien about him. I know what that alien is. The dark elf and him it’s the worst MCU movie as in him. That’s what he has. It was a disservice to him as a character because I still love Malik hit the dark elf. I just wish I did more with it. It’s funny. I remember as soon as I finished the episode, I did a on trow cast and I was like, he asked me what my doctor was.

And I was like, I think he was talking about doctor who, and I immediately went to Dr. Strange. Cause that was my dude at the time I did mostly because of, there was this scene where like he was re rewriting his name over and over. And I was doing the same occupational therapy because of my hand.

I was like, that’s my dude.

Bill: I heard about Dr. Strange. I was like, oh, I should circle back to Dr. Lee. No, wait a minute. That is an excellent answer. And that is a great story. And I can see that connection and that makes perfect sense. And that’s why one of the things I have to, just as an interviewer, one of the things that’s reminder to me is the importance of shutting up because you’ll get the best stories.

When I just let my guests talk and let them go and directions I never expected. And you see where it happens and you see these insights. So I’ll send out a list of questions ahead of time. I know where I’m going. I have a plan for every episode and half the time that plane goes right out the window, because I just want to listen.

I want to be quiet. I want to see what they’re going to say. And then I want to engage with that.

Joe: This is what I love about what you do, you and I do completely different things, but we also do the exact same thing. I’m not a fan of even us. I was like, Hey bill, what are you doing tonight? Do you want to record?

That’s how this came to be. We are literally just spit balling that’s. This is what we do. I love. The genuine nature of a casual conversation. I love the fact that in my head, we’re sitting at a bar sharing a beer in my head. We’re sitting at a cafe and we have an espresso and we’re just having a conversation about life.

That’s how I see these conversations is I don’t love reading off a piece of paper. Cause then I just feel like it’s almost that fake spontaneity. It’s almost that it’s a little, sometimes it can be disingenuous. It can’t at least. I love these flowy conversations. And even with you, you’re like, yeah, let it, I set out questions, but then it just turns into what it turns into.

And that’s what I loved. I remember you sent questions. I’m like, oh, okay. And then our conversation was just this. It was just a conversation and it was beautiful. And this is what I love about this way of connecting with one another. And it also in connecting with the. Because I’d like to think that if we were at a cafe or at a bar, that there would be some people like listening in to I love these dudes.

Bill: I don’t think either of us is very quiet.

Joe: No. If anything, we are very boisterous. I’ve been told I should break. Keep it down a little bit. I, as soon as I’m done here, I have a conversation with police and she’s Jesus. And I’m like, what happened? She’s you’re just like, you’re still podcasting.

Bill: I was like, oh yeah. Oh, I got to bring it down. Exactly. Th the other thing you mentioned that we have very, we ended up with very different approaches where our shows. I think that’s one of the things that’s really interesting. If anybody wants to explore that more, go ahead and listen to the conversation that I had with Ellis Sophia versus Joe’s conversation with Allah or the conversation I had with Karen Sullivan Joe’s or the conversation or our meany conversations, or, these conversations or even with the Stromeyer these conversations, they’re all very different, but they’re both stroke related.

Interviews. And if you want to see an and they just go in completely different ways, neither is less genuine, or I think, but you get different aspects of the people that you’re talking about or talking with. And that’s, what’s so fascinating about this. It’s a

preference thing too. Look, there are some people who are like the DCEU is significantly better than Marvel.

But that’s their preference, like you want your heroes to be a little bit more bloody and have no, that’s fine. You want no continuity? You want no continuity. That’s cool. But what I’m saying is, and so this is, it’s funny. You say that I have a very dear friend of mine Briony my friend Bri in in New York.

And I was making it, I would say I was choosing, oh, I was listening to a podcast. I was like, was it the neuro nerds podcast? And she was like, oh no, I don’t listen to podcasts. I was like, I was almost offended. I was like, wait, what do you mean? Cause I didn’t think, I didn’t even think about it. I was like, wait, you don’t listen to my podcast.

She was like, no, you’re too much energy. And I was like, oh, I get it. I’m very. Yeah, animated and that’s not for everybody. And I understand that I’m not going to fault people for being like, yeah, Joe, you’re a little bit too much. Nice. You’re a little bit too high sprung high-strung for me, and that’s just my personality.

So as long as they go ahead and download it, it still helps our stats. Yeah,

Joe: exactly. Play it in the background. Hey, you want to know your neighbor? Just play me, put me on blast. But look it’s like music. There’s no one music that’s perfect. There’s like different genres. There’s different songs.

That’s what all of us that, that podcast about our brain injuries. This is, we all have our own flavor, and even though we interview a lot of the same people, we do a lot of the same things. It’s completely. Different look, it’s a guitar, it’s a drum. It’s a bass and it’s a vocal. Yeah, there’s that’s the same root that’s the same, formula, but heavy metal is completely different than rock.

Rock is different than R and B, R, and B is different than pop, but they still have guitar, drums, bass vocal, it’s your preference. And I

Bill: love sharing all those different instruments and it’s going to sound completely. Completely ha

Joe: have you heard Prince’s darling, Nikki. And have you heard the foo fighters version of darling Nikki?

Completely different. I love that the fact that we’re able to do this and share and advocate for our community, show people out there that you’re not alone, because you’re not share information and you are incredible about sharing such valuable information with the community.

Bill. I’ve always been a big fan of yours. I’ve been a big fan of your podcast. I just think the world of you and your fellow. Your fellow dude, and you do it with magnificent hair guys. I cannot stress enough. I compliment Lawrence here constantly. Lauren, you have some competition. Bill’s hair is magnificence.

Just one point that out you’re like four you’re like

Bill: I’m like at the beginning of the last Avengers movie

Joe: playing fortnight and your real near is your microphone. Bill. I truly appreciate you. I honestly, I appreciate everything that you do for the community. I’ve been like sincerely, I’ve been a huge fan of yours has been a huge fan of your podcast and I’ve always looked up to what you do, and I’m just so thankful that we’ve connected. I’m so thankful that we’ve become friends on this wild journey. I got sick. Absolutely. We gotta do this again. This can’t be a one-off this is just fun. I’m really excited. We got to do this in

Bill: person. At some point I got to once, once we get rid of some of these spiky vibe, we gotta, I gotta make it down to silk Al again,

Joe: I have a cousin. And he works with a guy who says that, no, man, come on guys. Let’s listen to scientists. You don’t take your car into the mechanic. And he was like, oh, so this is what’s wrong with it really? My mailman said you don’t do that. You listen to the county cause he does. So definitely listened to Bill’s podcast.

The stroke cast. I got to tell you, start from jump, start from the beginning, run all the way through every single episode is very. And if you want to know how to peel a banana with one hand, there you go. And bill on social media, you are, where can they find you on social media?

Bill: On Instagram? I am Bill’s underscore stroke cast.

You can find me on Twitter where I am currently bill, or you can just go to stroke, cast.com and you’ll find me. Over there as well. Struck fast backed com boom,

Joe: definitely reach out to bill. Definitely listen to the show cast. You can reach out to Lauren at Lauren L Manzano on Instagram. I miss that tiny ass kicking rockstar so much.

You can reach out to me at Joseph rocks on all the socials. You can reach out to us the neuron. At everywhere at the neuro nerds everywhere

I was searching at everywhere. I couldn’t find you guys. And I’m that awkward, strange doctor who Dr. Number nine. Number nine note this, oh, no, not this neural nerd. These neuro nerds are out. Awesome. So much fun. I love that.