Eleven years, seventy some surgeries, and you've built and lost your business twice.

You've built and lost a family twice, You've built and lost homes twice, all because as a volunteer you went in a burning house because a man was worried about his wife.

Definitely, I would definitely change some things if I could, But at the end of the day, I still do it again because that's what we love, what we do.

It's just part of it, you know.

I've been in one hundred burning buildings and never thought anything would happen.

Welcome to an army of normal folks.

I'm Bill Courtney.

I'm a normal guy.

I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach in inner city Memphis.

And somehow that last part led to an oscar for a film about one of my teams.

That film's called Undefeated.

I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks, US just you and me deciding hey, maybe I can help.

That's what Pat Hardison.

The voice you just heard has done.

Pat was a volunteer firefighter who almost paid the ultimate sacrifice.

He lost all of what we think of a face and a house fire.

His eyes, ears, nose, lips, they were all gone.

He was unrecognizable as he faalt to survive for years, and his physical, mental, and spiritual survival story has powerful lessons that all of us in an army can benefit from.

I can't wait for you to meet Pat right after these brief messages from our and her sponsors.

Pat Hartison, Welcome to an army of normal folks.

Hey doing good.

I really thought about more maybe about you, than any guests I've had about how to introduce you everybody.

Pat is a.

Former volunteer firefighter who wrote a compelling book called Facing the Fire, The True Story of a Firefighter, a face transplant, and the fight to keep living.

So I guess I've introduced you there.

Pat.

Everybody is from Senatobia, Mississippi, which, for those are not in this part of the world, Senatobia is in North Mississippi, probably twenty thirty minutes south of Memphis.

When you think of North Mississippi from this area of the world, you've got Olive branch, and you got a Horn Lake, and then you go down a little farther you got Hernando, and then over a little bit you got Senatobia.

But that whole area is really considered kind of the North Mississippi area of a community, and that's where Pat's from.

I think he grew up in a little place called Strayhorn is own said Straighthorn.

Pat is an interesting guy, and obviously we're going to get into it, but I got to tell you, if Hell in the afterlife is literally burning, then the gentleman sitting across from me is a human being that has faced the closest thing to Hell and is still living on earth.

You don't want to go there?

What's that happening?

And you do not want to go there, I promise you.

So we'll tell that story.

First, tell us about your father.

What did you do for a living?

He worked for a good year a tire company, shout it out, you know, changing tires and all, and worked his way on up.

And when we moved to Senatobian and eighty nine and ninety, he had become regional manager over several states, several stores and need to take.

So I mean, by all rights, a blue collar country guy who worked hard, did well and moved, but he struggled with alcohol.

Well, it didn't start until in eighty nine or ninety I think it was eighty nine.

We moved to Senatobia and we lived there, and he had been on the road for about two years at that time, and me and my brother and my sister was older.

She was she's two years older than me.

My brother and I was just turned fifteen.

Brothers fourteen when we moved to Senatobia and lived there for about a year, and then my dad came to us.

I was almost seventeen at this time, and told us he's, look, I'm couldn't get off the road.

I want to buy the dudear store here in town, and I want you all to work with me, and we won't make it a family business.

And of course, you know then you didn't whatever your parents said, you did it.

That's right, you know.

It wasn't no questioned about it.

You know.

When we got out of school, he said, you get out of school, then I could get out on the work program.

So we got out at twelve every day and we'd go to work and change tires, change all and he gave us our running money in a vehicle to drive, and that was our pay, and you know, it was it was some good times.

But I never knew my dad to drink.

He would never let me even go to people's houses that drank because he didn't want to be around it.

And you know, like I said, I really idolized my dad.

And after we bought that tires that were working, and in the afternoons, I started noticing that he had started drinking, and it really it really let me down.

I was like, man, all the stuff he's taught us over the years, and now he's he's doing what he told us we shouldn't be doing.

This time I'm seventeen, eighteen years old, you know, and it's it was, it was, it was different.

I saw a side of him that I didn't that I didn't know was there.

That was his way of dealing with And now that I'm fifty two years of those teacher one that I understand everybody deals with things different, and you know, I don't hold it ignition.

It was just his way of dealing with all the stuff that he had been through.

Tell me about who you were introduced into high school that actually got you interested in fire fighting because on the one hand, you're working in this family business.

You got this dad who you love and idolize.

We're all dealing with trauma in different ways, and your dad struggles with that.

But I think it was someone in high school who kind of is one.

Of my teachers, mister Ronney Warren.

He was I think he taught us industrial arts back there is what it was called.

And he was teaching us and wind up my high school sweetheart and stuff.

You know, we wind up getting married, and we were going to church and at first Baptist church one Sunday he had came up to me.

And I worked right there in town, you know, and I never really even thought about being a thim and he came up to me and said, how would you like to go on a man?

You know, I didn't think.

I said, I don't think nothing about it.

But another buddy of man, Neil Couplan, they talked to him too, and we talked to each other and say, yeah, let's we'll give it a shot.

So we went down there and started training and doing everything that's how I do and thought about.

He came up to me in the church and asked me to be.

A volunteer Alex forgive me, I can't remember.

But the people up in New York, the volunteer fire.

People, Wells Crowther, Yeah, yeah, if you're to the man in the red bandana story before Pat this guy who saved twelve people inside the World Trade Center, but he was a volunteer firefighter, four year old kid.

Through some of the stories we've told, we've talked to a couple of people who've been in volunteer firefighting and it's almost like you gain a new family.

I learned the volunteer firefighter thing is not just you know, get a call in your work, run to the volunteer station, jump out a fire truck and go.

It's important.

And something else I've learned, which is interesting, is far more of our firefighters in the United States, or volunteer firefighters that are when you live in a place like Memphis and you have all the fire fire stations and the fire trucks and the dedicated fire department who that's their full time job, you kind of grow into the sense that that's just the way firefighting is.

What the truth is like, Seventy percent of the nation's firefighters are guys who work in Tirestal.

And it's changed so much.

Now we're actually I'm actually back at the department now.

We're putting together a committee trying to get volunteers because volunteers or down nationwide across the board.

Nobody has trying to do it anymore.

And it's so important to communities that's small, like Senatobia and the outlying areas that people should be volunteers to help the community.

But it's down everywhere, from New York to Mississippi.

It's it's all the way down.

It needs to be because it it needs to be brought back and people do that because it's so much more than just sishy.

It's a big brotherhood.

It's going down to the station and training and having a meal with your buddies, or one of your buddies breaking down in another stand on vacation and they call you and you go run to them and help him.

That's where we need to be with the volunteers.

It needs to be like an organization that it once was again.

So you found more than just a way to volunteer your time.

Oh yeah, it was a passion after in the early stages of it, just the beginning of it, and I realized that I loved it.

I did a lot of deer hunting back then, and I worked a lot because I had a wife and baby that when I first started, and then shortly thereafter I had a new wife and I went to three babies.

I was working a lot when it was a way to get away from everything else and go down there and hang out with a good group of guys and train and just you know, like I said, have a meal with them, and go down and drink coffee in the morning and find out what's going on with every in just it was just a big fellowship, brotherhood.

It was awesome.

So how's it work.

You're you're at this point, you're running and owning a tire store right right, and you got business and customers and everything else.

And if at one forty five or ten am or three in that in the afternoon, you're working, that's your business and somebody gives you a call that yeah.

You were a little patter and back then, you know, the tone dropping the radio and they tell you what it was.

And I couldn't go all the time because I was working, you know, But nine percent of the time I had some good employees that worked for me so I could leave and actually one of the guys that worked for me and I would run the business when I wasn't there.

He is actually a paid fireman now and he probably getting close to retirement in the next five or six years.

But the point is, all of these people all over country that are volunteer firefighter, they.

Have they give up.

They give up a lot.

At two o'clock in the morning, when it's ten degrees that the tone drops.

Then they get up and go.

And so in senatobia, you're not making just fires.

You're making oh you're making medical calls, you're making rescues, you're making fires.

It's so much more than that.

And it's you know, these guys basically getting nothing.

They get paid nothing, not even for their gas, not for the time.

And it's people.

They're so undervalue, it's unreal.

They have to be well trained.

It's not just hey, that sounds fun, give me a call if you need help on a.

Fire, as you guys are.

It's so much deeper than that.

I mean, it's just like with everybody's homeowners insurance.

In the communities around here, you don't have a good volunteer base or active reserve base what they want to call it.

Now, then your insurance ratings are going to go up because there's no way that these departments like Sinatoba can handle everything by themselves.

They need other help.

And even the outlying areas in the other counties.

In Take County, there's full side of other depart It's there on each end of the county and they're struggling with volunteers.

Now they need that help.

And you know, people don't understand.

They don't want to help, but when they get their cancelation noticed from the homeowners entrance because they don't, the thier rating went up to a ten and most interesance companies won't take it.

Reason.

I know that happened to me, and people need you know, they can understand that they can make a difference so they can help.

And now a few messages from our general sponsors.

But first I wanted to share an awesome update that in January and February we're launching the first six local chapters of an Army of Normal Folks.

If you happen to live in one of these communities and you'd be interested in being a part of it, email Alex and he'll connect you to their leaders.

The cities are Memphis, Oxford, Mississippi, Hoti Toddy, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Wichita, and Clinton, New York.

If you be interested in leading a local chapter from your community, will hopefully be launching more this spring or summer.

Please reach out to Alex about that too his email Army at normal folks dot us.

We'll be right back.

So you've got your family, you've got your babies, you've got your thriving business.

You're giving back to your community, You're involved.

I think in your church.

You're really living in American dream and you're a normal guy.

I mean, just a normal guy with a family.

I mean, I'm sure your business is doing well.

I've read where you just built a pretty new house and you had a boat.

You are rich, but you are living a good lot of dip.

I mean I was young.

We had just bought the business, and had just bought a new home, my dream home that I knew that I would die on that hill, that I never would never would have sold it.

And then it was just everything was seemed to be lined up, and you know, at least I thought anyway.

And at the end of the day September the fifth, when everything fell apart, it all meant nothing.

Before we get to that, there's an interesting story about a woman who sat down at your business one day and tried to say an insurance policy.

You did everything you could.

To get rid of her, did and finally told her she wouldn't leave.

And I finally told her, I said, look, I'm gonna sign a check.

It's twelve dollars a month.

I was going to sign this check.

I'm you know, just to get rid of her.

Was what was she selling?

She was selling accidental insurance just in case, you know, it had an accident.

You know, I never thought it was definitely I look back now, she got cent here in there that day.

There's no way around it that because I had paid eighty four dollars on that premium when I got hurt.

The point is you're young, You're going.

Who thinks about it?

At twenty seven years old?

Who thinks about getting hurt like that?

You know?

You know back then, you know, there wasn't social media, there wasn't all this other stuff.

You were just basically we barely had cell phones out.

You know that many years and different times.

So there's your life, that's who you are, that's where you come from.

Yeah, you're volunteering in the fire department.

You're living the best version of your life.

You got your family, you got your tire story, you got everything.

Chase this woman out of your office with a twelve dollars check to leave you alone.

You bought the cheapest policy you could buy just to get her to shut up.

And one day there's a call tell us about that day.

The morning, everything.

Well, that morning, like every other want I went down to the firehouse.

It was in September, so my business was kind of slow that time of the year.

Went down and drank coffee, and we had four pay guys working at that time, and I told a couple of us, look, I'll get us out of the house to day.

We need to do something, get us, you know, I never wanted anybody to lose a house or something like that.

Didn't get us a grasp by or something we'd go doof off with.

And I went back down there.

At lunch, I went to Coleman's and had a fish plate for lunch or something like that that day, and then I left and at like three point thirty the tones rout.

We weren't that visit that day, so I jumped into I mean, I'm two or three blocks away from the station.

So I jumped in my truck, went down to the station, and I guess this was on that day.

That that late in the afternoon.

Some of the other guys are already there, and my extual brother in law was sitting in the front seat of the suburban and I told him, I said, you get out.

You don't need to be going.

I made captain by this time, I said, you stay here and I'll go with him.

Make sure all these guys are okay.

So we had two or three young guys and they just got on the department and I said, I'll just go with them.

And Chief jumped in the driver's seat and I was in a pasture's seat, and we had three guys in the back, and somebody else would bring an engine to us.

And we've gotten the call.

Actually we were in Sinatobia.

Well, we got a call to go to Love which is in Desota County, to a mutual aid because Hernando was on three other house fires at that time.

I had three other calls at that time.

So we get we'd get in the truck and by this time it takes you know, sixteen minutes, twenty minutes to get up there.

We get there and towards smoke coming out of the roof, and we get our air packs on and go in.

We check everything, look at everything, and.

Let me ask something.

You say you got your air packs on.

I assume that means you're covered in that hand looking fire outfit, your helmet, air pack, and you go in.

Forget this day for just a second.

In general, the vast majority of us have never walked into a burning building willingly, and very few have been in a burning building and run out of it.

What does inside of a burning building look like?

What do you feel?

And what do you see?

You don't You can't see much at all because it totally full of smoke.

You get down on we.

Have a fight on your helmet or something.

Yeah, we would like some help and stuff, but you still doesn't do good and smoke, you still can't see.

You just kind of crawl around, and we crawled around every single room looking for anything in there.

And well, not that day.

Just in general, you know, when you're in a burning structure, so you.

How long it's been burning, because it's all going to be different, because if you get really just just starting to burn it hadn't filled up with smoke yet, and if they hadn't closed the windows, and yet it's it's all different.

If the windows are open, it's going to read more and put off more smoke and more heat.

It's just everyone, every every there's no situation, it's going to be the exact same.

But getting on your hands and knees and crawling around, you're trying to get below the smoke so you can at least see a little Wait, you see better below you get do flames.

They usually cover the roof, pend on what the fire started.

Nothing, He's gonna run off the wall and hit the roof and run across the roof because there's nothing in the middle of the room want to run on.

So oftentimes you know the fires above you, but you see smoke, but you don't necessarily see flames in the walls yet.

Yeah, depends on how much auction is getting, but they are.

They're just all different.

Yeah, And you just have to understand the nature of fire.

Are you dragging a line with you or we did?

We had a line the first time we went in, and that's how we followed it back out.

So you guys, get on your packs.

You go on that one the house looking it, you know, looking every room, and nothing was in there.

So we came back out of the house and there was a call in the driveway.

But and there was a guy that came running up to us and he jumping up and down just he said, my wife's in the house.

She's in the house.

I said, she's not in the house.

We checked every room and she's not in the house.

He said, I'm telling you her car is here.

She's in the house.

So I guess my better judgment.

I told you guys to change my airpack out and me and Matt went back in the house and we couldn't get in the way we went because it was really really burning.

So how long had the house been burning by now.

No idea, Probably forty minutes this time, but it's burning.

It's burning.

So two guys went in the garage door and we go in the window on the north end of the house.

They didn't know we're in there, so we go in trying to find the lady, which she wasn't there.

I was right the first time.

And when we got in there to that bedroom in there, it's when everything basically kind of fell apart was I could see the fire rolling above us, and we were staying below it.

And then all of a sudden, the people, the two guys are in there.

They didn't know we were.

And I didn't even know this until they wrote the book, because nobody ever told me, which it doesn't make any difference.

It was still me.

I went in the house on my own.

It's nobody slopped.

But I never knew that that that they were pushing the fire towards us, and until a buddy of mine with water.

Yeah, so they were on the other end of the house pushing and putting it out, putting it out, but it was putting the literally walking into it or falling into it.

Didn't know that.

You could see flames kind of boiling in the ceiling.

A baby, yeah, and we were under those.

But we didn't know this either.

This was a trailer house that somebody had built a other house.

Over, so you didn't even know the streight.

We didn't know what the two roof lines in it, so it was running in between the roof lines.

And then when it got so heavy with all the water they were pushing under the roof collapse and when the roof collapsed.

I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and I could see because when it did, I had to stand up because it was on top of me, and I could see my helmet melting, and I just had to grab the shingle.

Well, you could see the helmet on your head melting.

I could see it just dripping, and the shingles off the roof were only it was really hot, so I had to just I couldn't see nothing.

I couldn't I couldn't see, you know.

All I did, I said, hold my breath to get out to that one.

I could see a window, and I held my breath and got the stuff off of me to get to the window.

Night I just threw my body out the window and they dragged me out of the house.

Where was the guy you were with?

He was behind me, but I don't know.

I guess when the roof fell on me, it separated us and it he panicked.

He was he panicked and ran.

Yeah, And it's not just all I mean, nobody misitated done in that situation.

When you were in there and the flames were a bove, you were you afraid?

Did you sit and bottom?

We've done a thousand times really mean, every time you go into a burning building, it's going to be burning around you.

I never, I never was scared of stuff like that, and still not scared of it.

I mean, it is what it is.

I'd go back to sis like today if they would let me.

I don't know, maybe you get used to it, but I think anybody listened to me, and anybody listen to this would think that's frightening as.

He Well, any anybody's a side slighter, that's they're going to think that for sure.

I mean, that's what you're doing.

And things were so different now.

You know, back then we didn't have thermal imaging cameras.

If we'd had cameras back then, thermal imaging, I don't ever have to go in the house because we could look through everything that saw she wasn't in there.

You know, there's so much more technology today than it was in two thousand and one.

When I got hurt and you weren't in there to put the fire out.

You literally basically on the ground.

That was all.

And I look back now and think, man, it was so stupid, because if she'd have been in there, she wouldn't have been alive because it had been burning so long.

Nobody can withstand all that smoke and all that heat.

I should have struck to my guns if I had to do it over.

Of course I changed things and do it do it different.

But at the end of the day, what if I'd have been around what is sheld have been in there and I could have heard.

So when you get out the window, I assume and gosh, I don't want to be no.

I mean I'm slowly burning this town.

I mean my turnouts are burning.

What my turnouts are on fire?

My gear your gear, And they get me literally and they lay me down on the ground and just wet me down, just you know, put water all of me and get down and uh, buddy, man lays down and I just told him I was look, man, you make sure my wife gets took care of.

I's all I want.

You thought you were done?

Yeah, well, I mean I didn't know how bad it was.

For sure, none of us knew how bad it was because you know, your body keeps burning like two weeks after the fire.

What by the time your skin and stuff steadily steadily burning for up to two weeks after the initial burn.

It's I guess, just the way your skin is dying off and you have to go through once you once you get in the hospital, you have to go through all this for two weeks.

You're getting like they call it debreeding where you're going there and they take a wire brush and kind of scrub you down and get all the dead skin off of you.

So you thought you were dead, Well, I didn't think.

I never thought I was going to die.

I mean, I just didn't realize how bad it was.

I never thought I was going to die like that, even with all of it, I never thought I was going to die.

I mean, it's you know, And at the end of the day, I did it is what it is.

We'll be right back, all right.

So I assume you go to the burn unit.

Yeah, I get.

I'm on the ground and they can't land the helicopter there, so they put me down once to drive me down the road a little piece, and I get in the helicopter and I'm in the helicopter and I'm still alert.

I'm talking.

I was wondering if you ever lost consciousness.

Never lost consciousness.

And one of the nurses on the on the helicopter, Paula, she was talking to me and she which I didn't know her then, but over the years I got to know her, and she has talked to him.

Asked me about my kids, you know, and I have three kids, and she asked me about their birthdays and I told her and she uh, she said, I'm writing it down because there ain't no way this is right.

There's no way he can be telling us all this stuff.

He's talking out of his head.

And if mand me something mad, I said, what, I know my kids names and birthdays.

And they were going to introbate me into the helicopter and I told him, I said, look, you can't do that, eight lunchs late today.

If you do that, I'm going to throw up all over this helicopter.

And we're all packed in here as it is because there's three of us in there.

And she said, okay, we'll wait till we get to the to the MED to intubate you, and we get ready we start landing.

For everybody, listen, the MED is the reason the level one trauma center in the mid South.

So we get ready to land at Reagional one and she told me, she said, a right, there's gonna be a lot of people doing a lot of things as soon as we land, and I said okay, And I mean as soon as we land open that door and it looked like a few six inches of around, they ran it down my throat and all of a sudden, here come lunch everywhere.

You tried to tell I told him it was everywhere, and then I was out.

I mean I was in and out of it.

After that, Were you in pain?

I don't remember.

I mean, I'm sure it was, but by this time they had pump me full of morphine and everything else, so I don't remember about the pain because they give you different medications to make you forget about a lot of stuff.

When you look back on that now, is it nightmares to you?

When I was in the hospital, I had a lot of nightmares because when I got to the med Once I got in there, everything was either swollen or they bandaged me all up, so I couldn't see anything.

I was in a strange place with a bunch of strange people.

All I knew was voices.

I didn't know anybody's face.

I couldn't see.

I didn't know what the building looked like.

I didn't know, you know, a lot of different things I didn't.

I couldn't tell what it was.

You know, I could tell when people came to visit me and they would talk to me.

I could tell by that voice who they were, but I couldn't see them.

They bandaged over your eyes.

Yeah, they vanded the whole a hit.

Everything burned off eye lids and all.

They had to do that to protect my eyes.

I was in there sixty three days, you know, doing all these surgeries.

They put this stuff called integral, which is like a sharp cartilage.

After all the debreeding and all the other stuff they started, they put that base down and then when it turned like a peachy color, that's when you know what it'd taken to your skin.

And then they go in do the skin grass.

They take the skin off my thighs and put it on my head, and that's of course.

Skin is like a piece of gum.

You stretch a piece of gum out on the table.

After it's gonna shrink back up the skin the same way it was shrinked back up.

So they had to go in cut it, redo it, redo it, redo it.

And that's why there were so many surgeries.

Because I went from me and a normal dad coming home with my kids every day to in the hospital I got to come home after sixty three days.

I was home for about two weeks.

That's when surgery started.

Every every two weeks.

Three weeks I was in the hospital, come home, two three weeks back in the hospital.

Just that was my new life.

Did you ever want to give up?

Of course it would have been easy.

Well, that would have been easy.

I mean, it's quinting is the easy part.

But my kids, I couldn't.

When'd you get to see your kids first time.

They came to the hospital, two of them did.

My oldest daughter didn't come, but uh, Dalton, my son, and my youngest daughter came and they came to singing at the hospital and Dalton jumped up my lap.

He never never sayd him.

But my daughter she would have to do.

And she was scared of death.

And when I came home, she was scared of that.

She had to go stay at her grandmother's house because she couldn't she couldn't sleep, she'd scream.

I don't think you guys have described yet, like how did your face look like at the time, And then Chrissy's round never saw you initially.

I don't.

I never I couldn't tell because I couldn't see her reaction.

She made a comment that that's not you, right.

Yeah, well she did to the to the doctor's and stuff that I don't remember it.

She wrote that in the book.

What's going on between your Ears at this time?

I don't remember.

You really don't.

I really don't.

I mean, it was just trying to stay alive and get through each day.

That's all you do, no matter what you're stationing.

Everybody does thing.

I mean, I'm sitting here listening to tell the story.

You're a straight shooter.

You can tell oh good, and I need sugar.

Go well, you say, of course, But I sit across from a lot of people, and some people shape things and some people are just very straight, and you're just very straight.

And I appreciate some people do, but I also my heart breaks for you.

It was terrible.

I mean you're saying it very matter of factly and very straightforwardly.

And while I appreciate it wasn't encouraging toughness, I also don't want it lost that your life was shattered.

Oh it was terrible.

It was like I said, it was every day getting up and facing that day.

You didn't plan for tomorrow.

It was every There was gonna be something I had to do to get through that day.

One day at a time, I tell you, one day at a time, that's what it was.

One day at a time.

That was it.

You never knew what it was gonna bring.

But once I could get to talk to people, like the kids on my socien's battle baseball team, I got to coach it, and there was some kids that just couldn't handle it.

They would run off, run away with most of the kids they got to know me, Patton.

That was all it was.

Once I could talk to them, they looked past all the scholars and everything and it was okay.

And that's just what you had to do.

You had to get through each today the best you could.

Just so everybody could follow onto you.

You had lost your ears, your lips, your eyes, your nose, your eyebrows.

Everything everything that had burned off, and they were in the process of rebuilding so and they could have never given me what I wanted.

And the doctors knew that.

They were just trying to get me to a point to look better.

And the mad doctor Wallace and doctor Fleming and doctor Hickerson, and of them they were the best in the business around here.

I'll tell anybody, if you get in the burn that's that that group right there would that's the best of the best.

But they couldn't just they couldn't get me what I wanted.

It was not it wasn't possible.

Which was your face back To be clear, Literally your body was burned up.

I mean it was like ninety three percent of your body or so.

I just got run from the ships from the neck up.

I mean the restaurant body was covered.

I mean so well, I thought your your gear was on fire.

It was, but it protected me.

Yeah, they got me out, but it was your deck opot burnt my gear on my back.

I got a big patch on my back that but it healed on its own.

Didn't have to have any surgery, but it was it burned through pretty good.

All right, So surgeries, have surgeries, have surgeries.

But you got a business.

Oh at this time that it didn't matter.

I mean I had, and I had to sell the house that he just bought.

I had to sell it.

My dad went back to the business, but this time he is heavily alcoholic, and he went back up there and tried to run it.

But it wasn't anyway, it was we had to shut it down clothes.

He actually wind up selling it to a friend of mine.

This was in I guess two thousand and three, maybe two thousand and two or three, that.

He had sold it.

So that insurance policy bought helped.

It helped the first few years when I was in the hospital a lot.

You know, the next several years I could have more outpacing surgeries because I was so sick of hospitals.

It wasn't even about the money.

I just wanted to go at be at home.

Actually, I went back to work in the fall of two thousand and four and business was great.

But by this time, you know, I'm very dependent on paint pills.

I was, I was.

I would I would use those to get through reach today where it wasn't.

I wouldn't care people's thought.

I wouldn't care what people said.

I could take a handful of paint pills and just it would brush off the edge.

So I didn't care.

And back at work.

In the first year, you know, we did over one million dollars in business, and I was like, man, this is great, this is great.

And then two thousand inside we had another good decent year.

It wasn't as good as the first one.

So in two thousand and five, we started building a new house and we were going to build it to sell.

So I put every all my money that we had.

I put everything into that house and it a praise for about five hundred thousand dollars back then, and it was you know, I'd only owed like two twenty on it, payments worth like three grand a month, and businesses starting to get slow, and I'm spending money on paying pills and trying to get kids in private school and vehicles.

And because I had lost everything, I had to start building back.

So I'm just going to lose everything again because I couldn't pay for it.

This time, lost everything again, wound up the house.

Even with all the equity in it.

It didn't sell because that's when we're in the two thousand and sixty seven where the c so nobody bought the house, and h it got bad, and that's when I really had to start.

I had to h it was.

It was bad because this time I had lost everything.

My family had had moved out when we moved out of the house at the country club or brought the woods.

My family had moved in with their my wife's mother and I moved in with my dad and mother.

And that's as hard as it was anyway for us breaking up like that.

And then my dad's an alcoholic and I'm a pain pill head, so they didn't work out good.

By this time, the money's gone.

In two thousand and eight, I'm at my eye doctor's appointment and he right, he's writing prescriptions out for something and I see a prescription paths.

He walked out of the room and picked it up.

How stupid that was for me.

A little look back, and I'm just saidn't.

And so I started writing my own prescriptions and that we know how that ended.

That was terrible.

So I got caught doing that, and uh, they sent me to rehab and I stayed there and got back and after about a thirty day jail stay and then the rehab for another thirty days.

I had had a lot to thick, so my head's clear at this time, and I started having more surgery, so I'm back taking medicine again.

I had to because I did two or three surgeries with nothing and it was just paint was unbearable.

I couldn't take it, so they sent me to a psychiatrist.

This is the third psychiatrist i've seen, and he's a doctor here in Memphis who was he probably did, but now he was old then.

But he he medicated me something crazy.

He wasn't a good dog.

He actually went to prison for overscribing medication to patient and stuff.

In two thousand and nine or ten.

I had gone to see him for the last time and he had me all messed up.

So I went I went to my eye doctor.

We had had more I had had more surgeries and my vision was like twenty two hundred.

It couldn't drive anymore, depending on my mother for everything.

I went to my eye doctor.

Kept he told me, said that there's just not much more we can do that.

You're you don't have eyelids at blink and your eyes were open all the time, so they dry out and you're you're going to go blind if we can't figure out something.

Neighbor Clay More, he was with me that day and he said he drove me to the doctor and he had talked to doctor Slimming and he said, you know, what do you think about a faith transplant.

Doctor Fleming said, I don't know much about that.

It's all still too near right now.

So we had left and I had to come back to doctor Fleming and I asked him again, I said, do what do you I'm serious thinking about this faith transplant?

He said, Man, he said, I'm not sold on the pet.

He I just don't know.

And that concludes Part one of our conversation with Pat Hardison, and you don't want to miss part two.

It's now available to listen to.

Together.

Guys, we can change this country, but we'll start with you.

I'll see in part two