1. Background and Backstory of My Life, My Stroke and Motivation for This Show

Everybody, good afternoon. Good evening. Good day. Hope you're doing well. My name is Will Schmierer. And welcome back to the first episode of the lovable survivor podcast. podcast, I just released episode one. This is now the first official episode of the new podcast that is the lovable survivor. And again, my name is Will Schmierer. And I am a stroke survivor, living with multiple sclerosis, which is hard to say when you have MS. And you don't say it that often. I just like I said, dropped episode zero a little bit of an introduction, this one is going to be a little bit more in depth on my background, really to set the table and lay the foundation for this podcast. So you get to know a little bit more about who I am. I'm sure that will come out in every episode as a brain injury and stroke survivor. You know, there are tidbits that I forget sometimes even with notes. And there are details that are missing sometimes. So yeah, this is I'm excited. This is a new direction for my podcasting. Previously, I did a show, which is still archived on iTunes, and Spotify. And I may bring it back at some point, if we get off the rails too many times on this show, but this is sorry, but their iPhones are trying to connect to the computer. And yeah. So again, this, this show is kind of a more focused continuation or sidetracking. Again, I did the La Jolla podcast for 36 episodes, I learned a lot about what I want to do, what direction I want to go. It was great for getting into podcasting and kind of learning about different things and the different niches and you know, again, last three years. Since my stroke, I've learned quite a bit. And it's clear that I think I'm pretty good at a lot of things. But you know, the, there's just a lot that comes along with surviving a stroke. Living with Ms. Having a family being a father of three, a husband, I'm not initially ever the direction I thought my life would go in. But that's kind of where I'm at. And I think there are lots of people that I can help. In fact, just last night, I was doing some research for the podcast, and this is going to be a podcast, it may at some point be a video podcast or have a video component to it. I may kind of I really want to get into YouTube, I think it will be beneficial for stroke survivors just as much as this podcast. Some people prefer audio only some people prefer video, I think there's a room for both. What I think is great is that unforgettable for me is that there are not a lot of stroke survivors with either a YouTube channel or a podcast. So I think I am a survivor who has a little bit of technical knowledge and can help other survivors. You know, and that's the goal because what I read last night was an interesting set that one of four people in the US at least will at some point probably have some variation of a stroke and may not be a full blown stroke. But yeah, that was surprising. And then even more surprising, I think really caught me off guard was that only one in two people so 50% of people only 50% people ever receive treatment of any kind for a stroke which is shocking. I gotta be honest, really caught me off guard last night I did not realize go I mean, I knew how fortunate I was personally because I had health insurance I had some support from family just you know trying to try to get me to where I needed to be. I was pretty adamant about getting help once I had the stroke but yeah anyways this for This episode is going to be a little bit of background, a lot of context just again, setting the table. For those that don't know my story, you know, I'll fill in the details, like I said, as we go along. I'm going to try to give you the bullet points today. Long story short, I had a stroke in December, December 23 of 2019. While in the hospital, I had been admitted for high blood pressure. They actually found that I had afib, I was supposed to have the AFib procedure where they shock your heart back into rhythm. Unfortunately, kind of in like a two day window from the time I got admitted to the time they were going to do that procedure. I had a stroke while in the hospital, it went undiagnosed. Initially. They thought I was too young, they thought it was impossible. My wife called it out. I kind of brushed it off. I think the doctors brushed it off. Long story short, I had the shock in the hospital. Unfortunately, you know, I later found out that you are things that, you know, they can do, but I think I was so big at the time, they could not safely determined if I had actually had the stroke. So they did not run any of the some of the different procedures they can do to kind of curtail some of the issues. But yeah, I had the stroke. I went in to a facility here in Jacksonville, Florida, called Brooks rehab, one of the best facilities in the country. Very lucky to have moved here a couple of months before. got in there got to work pretty quickly. I was in an inpatient for 3030 days, January of 2020. I came home for about a week watch the Super Bowl woke up the next morning, talking funny thought I had a second stroke. Turns out after another month in the hospital downtown. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, no family history, no background of having MS in the family. You know, it's possible it was it. They don't really know why. Or how it was brought about. But yeah, so now I am living with MS. I did go back to rehab a second time because I was left paralyzed on my right side from the stroke. When I went home got diagnosed with MS. was short term paralyzed on the left hand side. So it was a big hot mess. The first quarter of 2020. And that's all before COVID. So yeah, I've been through some things, I am pretty well into my recovery, I think yeah, I think honestly, I've been saying I've been 85% for a long time, um, you know, that might just be me thinking I can keep getting better and keep doing more to get better. And that's probably true. That's a lot of this podcast is about, you know, the last three years and the steps I've taken to change my life, the things that I sort of wish I knew in the beginning the road to recovery, rebuilding your life after stroke. There are always new innovations coming along the treatments. Yeah, it's just really interesting. And I think, you know, I basically am creating this because I felt really kind of alone. In the evening I've had family support on. Like I said, I have a wife and three kids. I have two sisters, my parents passed away, unfortunately, the year before my stroke. That's a whole other story that we could talk about at some point. I am an open book, but I'm trying to keep this pretty specific to stroke and things that can help but yeah, I think that certainly played a part. Don't think it directly contributed to the stroke, but it's certainly the stress. I think of losing my parents the way I did, it did not help. And again, I've talked about that at length on my other podcast, and I'm sure we'll talk about it here. But that is a certainly a factor that played into things. So yeah, I was born, I guess I guess we kind of happen now that you know that I have had a stroke. So I am a stroke survivor. At 40 years old. I have three kids and a wife. And I also am living with MS. So yeah, let's go back to kind of the early days born in New York, raised in New Jersey. I also lived on Long Island briefly. So New York, New York City, Queens, Brooklyn, Long Island to New Jersey spent most of my youth in New Jersey growing up there. Jersey gets a bad rap, but it's played a pivotal role in a lot of ways in my life. sort of the chip on your shoulder the fighting, you know from behind. There's a lot to it. But yeah, I have nothing but fond memories of growing up on the Jersey Shore. You know, across from Manhattan I went there a lot with my father who worked there. And my whole family, my mother, my sisters. Because they both worked in New York, my mother was a financial iOS on Wall Street in the 80s. She then stayed home to raise us children. I think she started staying home once my youngest sister was born. So right around the 90s My mom became a full time stay at home mom at that point, did a lot of charitable stuff. My father worked in the city as an institutional trader. I think he probably did some other forms of trading. Throughout that time, I think he owned his own firm at one point. Unfortunately, you know, they both passed so I don't know the full details there. But uh, yeah, he was in, worked on Wall Street worked in the markets. Mother, again, was very early in the stock market for women. Definitely glass sailing situation. And yeah, so she played a big, big role and had a lot of influence on me and my family. And sort of my father, great people. Everybody who knew them love them would say my dad was a little bit more of a lovable, lovable one than my mother. My mother was very much like her parents. rough around the edges tough, tough as nails but also, you know, harder gold. Just a little more, she kept things a little closer to the best. Yeah, she was amazing woman. And, yeah, I miss them deeply. So yeah, grew up in Jersey, got a shiny brochure for the University of Miami. When I was in high school, I applied there on a whim, I wound up getting a scholarship, which I took, and I said Peace to New Jersey. Ironically, only person in the family without a super advanced degree, no graduate school. But I did go to school for architecture at Miami, a five year program bachelor's, which is the equivalent of a master's it just doesn't get to idle. So there's that? Um, yeah, Miami's a great place. Great, great, great tool, great environment, loved it. Have nothing but fond memories about Miami and going to school there. I think the world of the school and the programs and I just learned a lot about myself and the world. And it's very different from Jersey. As you'll probably hear me say millions of times on this podcast, I'm very east coast biased. I'm actually East super east coast. I don't even like going west. So by 95, which for those that don't know, is sort of the mean connector from the top of Maine all the way down the east coast to Miami. And so yeah, just rides kind of the the very east coasters. It depends on what state you're in and where but it's, it's pretty much a slice of the east coast at the furthest east. Depending on what part you're or what state on the East Coast you're in. It's basically a two mile wide sliver of the entire east coast so I'm very biased. I have no problem saying it. It's just how I grew up. And yeah, I'm just a big fan of the East Coast is very densely populated. It's a lot of things but it's it's kind of important to the story only because it is a big driver in my life. Yeah, and then so During college I obviously actually going back to high school I got into sports but I was also into friends and I took an active role in friends because my sister went to high school with me. So I did very little in terms of homework in high school. I basically copied my sister most of high school, which got me the scholarship to college and I mean I joke about that now it's obviously I did the work. I just didn't you know Homework. Homework wasn't my jam. So I spent a lot of time at social life. A good friends got into you know, I'm a millennial, so I think I was at the tail end of smoke cigarettes and drink heavy drinking. It was just kind of where we were up. It was kind of the Dawn of the internet, so it was around. And it was popular, it was gaining traction, obviously. But I went to school in an area where, you know, I guess I was kind of that last generation still to have really like riding bikes. And yeah, we were not behind computers, the iPads didn't exist. So not all my friends even had computers at that time. So we were still very much, you know, the group of friends getting into trouble riding bikes around town, hanging out doing stupid shit, you know, that got into drinking and smoking, even though we were playing sports lead to, you know, for me, it was my stroke capita at age 37. And before then I had not complained about it. But after my stroke, it came clean about a lot of things. And alcoholism was something that was a part of my life for a while. I don't think in the traditional traditional sense, I was more of a what I call a functional alcoholic, I did not do it to you know, I wasn't drinking, like hurt anybody. You know, I was married with a child, and we obviously had more children. Um, yeah, it's just one of those guys that like drinking, and I got into it a little too heavy. And then as I got older, I was like, I was just have a couple beers. And that turned into a couple more beers. And it really just spiraled out of control. But yeah, instead of figuring a way out of it, again, it wasn't like out of control, it didn't seem out of control to feel out of control at the time looking back, obviously, it was but it always seemed manageable. We had young kids, you know, I took care of them with my wife, my kids are a little bit older new. Now I don't drink at all, the stroke worrying about swiped out any any any. The last time I had a cigarette or a beer was pre stroke in 2019. And I have no desire to I basically have retired from drinking and smoking. That's mildly funny. But yeah, I think once you have a stroke, you just realize that those are not important things in your life anymore. And I was able to kind of step away from them completely without any issue. And for that, I'm very fortunate, I feel very grateful. In that regard, I would rather just kind of quit those things in my life prior to them. You know, I don't think they caused the stroke or the MS directly, but I certainly don't think they helped. You know, in the last couple of years, I've really kind of taken a step back and looked at these things and gotten to the root of what I was doing. And, you know, I've done a lot of physical therapy, but I've done a lot, a lot of emotional therapy, whether that's with therapists or kind of just on my own doing the work. Because it can all be overwhelming when you when you have a stroke at any age, but um, especially when you're younger, it's very confusing, I think because, you know, you ask a lot of questions like, Why me why this age, a lot of the resources out there are not geared towards somebody who might be younger, who might be trying to get back on track with either their life or career. You know, that's all been part of the interesting story. And they've gotten those these things we'll talk about, but I've gotten to entrepreneurship, again. I've had some ups and downs there, but I feel like it works best for me with my schedule and with my recovery. It certainly would be easier to just collect a check, but I just, you know, I was in a previous career that I didn't love. Again, I am sort of a elder millennial at this point. So I did go to University of Miami for architecture I got into the field. Right after college, I worked in real estate, and then went back to Miami. A couple years after I graduated to go work in architecture, then the housing market crash happened. So it's it's it's been a lot of pivots. It's been interesting to navigate. Which is funny because that's kind of the direction I take in this podcast. It's like how to navigate Stroke, stroke recovery and brain injury because are these a stroke is a brain injury, but I think it's kind of broadened a little bit. You know, this podcast is for anybody. You don't have to even be a brain injury survivor. But I think when you go through a brain injury, major life event There are certain things that people don't realize whether it's the individual or the people around them, the caretakers, the family. Life is different. In most cases, neurological, neurological things, things you don't expect things you don't think are part of the problem or not problem, but just part of the the event that you've had. It's just very different. I think one of the things that I struggle with, for me personally, and I'm sure a lot of folks out there struggle with this is that there are great doctors and physical therapists and speech therapists, and mostly everybody in the medical professional professions are very helpful. I've only had one or two very weird experiences with lots of doctor's appointments over the last couple of years since my stroke. So yeah, the majority are insanely helpful, certainly wanting to help them and have answers, they may not have been through it. So they don't exactly know. But they've seen a lot of things. And it's all helpful information. But sometimes you need just so something a little different. And that, again, is kind of the purpose of this podcast, it's to share the things that I've gone through the kind of things that have worked for me, the things that I've dug into, because I think sometimes you just need a spark. For me, I just needed some tough love sometimes. Like I said, it can be really tricky to kind of rebuild your life after stroke. Physically, mentally, emotionally, family, like you name it, that just, it's a lot. And I think that's one of the hard things about stroke, especially if you're, you know, what I would consider living kind of, I don't wanna say easy, breezy, but like, you know, life where you didn't have to think about things like if you once you hit like, for me, when I had my stroke, I was paralyzed on the right side of my body. So I had to relearn to walk to talk to right, my handwriting is getting better, but it is still not great. And it can be frustrating at times, because, you know, I remember exactly how things were right up until the day they weren't the same. And that is that is a big, big thing that I think gets overlooked by both doctors and individuals. It's gonna take your time. I mean, it takes time to wrap your head around it. I think I'm three years into my stroke recovery. And I'm just now starting the podcast and just now feel ready to share and talk with other survivors and share what I've learned last three years, has taken me a while. Last year was a big year for me, it was year two, and I just knew that I could get further but I just didn't know what to do or how to navigate or, and I'm still not sure I know how but you know, I'm starting to ask those questions and get to that place where you know, there is good enough for certain things. And there's certain things that I just I good enough isn't good enough for me. And I don't know how to get there. But I have to ask myself questions. I do a lot of experimenting with myself, because I'm not a doctor. That's one of the other things is like I don't want to say that I'm not a doctor a million times on this podcast. I mean, I'm going to say it probably a billion times, but I'm just sharing my advice. I'm just sharing what's worked for me things that I wish I looked into sooner. Things that you know, never crossed my mind. Like last year breathing was a big thing. I learned how to properly breathe. I'm not doing a great job on this episode right now because my size is dark. But I know if I slow down, take a deep breath is such a vague and unhelpful thing because yeah, that's a whole thing. We could do a separate episode on breathing, but um, that probably will at some point, but uh, yeah, just a lot of things that I've learned. For myself, and, um, you know, it's great for me, but like, I just want to share them. It serves no purpose for me to do all this work on myself. I keep it to myself. If it doesn't work for you, you know, I'm sorry. But I guarantee you something that I'm gonna share will work for you. You can gain something from all these episodes of the podcast, I assure you because I've gone through a lot. I I'm insanely intense about it because you know, I'm kind of at that weird age where I'm not super young because there's certainly people in their teens and 20s Unfortunately that have suffered a stroke. It seems like the majority are from from accidents, but like anything else in life, anybody can have a stroke for any reason at any time and it could be something, it could be a hole in the heart, it could be just a plethora of reasons. Not everybody is an alcoholic and out of shape and suffering from afib. And a former smoker. I mean, I mean, those don't help. And those are a lot of things that were wrong with me. So it seems easy to point to my mistakes. But there are also tons of people that drink and smoke cigarettes and never have a stroke. So there's that too. And that, again, I have no family history of stroke in the family, to my knowledge, none of them s. So it's kind of like, where did that come from? How did these things develop? And I'm sure there are things that I did not do that were helpful in those situations, but it's not really guessing. guessing at this point. And the truth is, you know, part of this podcast, like I said, is about the recovery, how to navigate. How to think about things, you know, if you want to go from good enough to unstoppable you have to put in the work. It's it's, it's not that simple. But it is that simple. It just takes it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort. And it takes like, I think looking back now it's like, okay, I could have done this a little sooner. I wish I knew this was somebody would have shared X, Y, and Z. Again, I had amazing therapists, amazing doctors, they gave me a ton of research. But a lot of the stuff out there is very medical, and it's very sort of group grouped together. So like, you know what they say, if you're a survivor, you probably heard this a million times every show is different that gets so fucking annoying is so old, so quick. However, it is absolutely true. And I think the disconnect is trying to figure out what things work for you. How do you figure out where to go first, what like for me, it was pretty clear, stop drinking, stop smoking, cool, done, that was done from day one. Listen to doctors, get all my kind of health things in order, at least get the information then determine where I needed to go. Once I started getting these health things in order, you know, thanking whoever you believe in whatever you believe in just being very fortunate lucky to be alive and survive. I was very grateful for that. You know. And I think that, you know, this, this kind of leads us into the next episode where I'm gonna talk about us stroke specifically, and then just kind of any major life event dealing with the overwhelm. Because I think, obviously can be overwhelming. There are lots of things to figure out the early days and lots of people telling you lots of things. And I think, you know, I don't know if I can be super helpful to your situation. But I think there are things that I could share that certainly can get you thinking in the very early days, if you're early in your your recovery, honestly, things that you know, again, going back are things I wish I knew sooner. You know, maybe even things that are you bit had a stroke years ago, and maybe there are things that you haven't realized. So that's yeah. There's that. And yeah, I think I love this format. I love the ability to help people, I do think I may go into video at some point. Whether it's videos, or this podcast, when I record or separate YouTube videos that can be helpful. It really depends on where things go. But again, that is kind of where I ended up episode one here that gives you a good amount of background on me. I'm an open book, happy to answer questions. I'm sure a lot of things I've said today will come up again, and I will give more details as as they're necessary or asked about or acquired. He could definitely give me a follow on Twitter, Twitter, LinkedIn are probably the two biggest platforms for me, you know, we'll see. I'm going to try to get back into tictac at some point want to get into YouTube. And yeah, I think we're just about wrapped up for Episode one and that kind of background foundational things and we'll we'll talk about a lot more I'm sure you'll hear my kids in the background. You'll hear my wife in the background. And yeah, we'll we'll be on this journey together. And, you know, if you've just kind of had an event I know it sounds easier now. Easier said than done. But yeah, hopefully you're able to get the help you need and just, you know, take it one day at a time. That's the best advice I can give to anybody is it is a process people say annoying stuff, but over time you start to realize, okay, that's good, you know, but I need to focus on things that work for me and for you. You. And if it works for me, it may work for you. Um, but yeah, that's all kind of the context. And when the, I guess the last thing I'll say is, yeah, I mean, it's all hard. But, uh, just so you know, if you've listened this far, I appreciate it. And, you know, I'm basically a big giant scientific experiment for myself. One of my companies that I'm trying to open up and build here is a community for survivors, because I found there are not many, or not many good ones, our message boards and things like that, but survivor science is going to be sort of the hub. And this podcast of of, you know, where ideas and conversations happen and, you know, we'll build it out as this progresses. But yeah, the goal is to help other other folks who have been through a major life event, a stroke, TBI, anything really the brain, you know, there are a lot survivor is a broad word. There are lots of things people survived, but I think it is sort of bring through survivor neurological events, major life events that really cause setbacks, and how do you overcome those? Again, how have you navigate those? There is no playbook for this stuff. So that's it for this first episode.