This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening don't eat podcast.

You can't predict anything.

Oh um, you know, I even't want to talk about And you guys appreciate this because you you both garden we had, okay, I was growing pumpkins, okay, and I put the pumpkins I grew.

I was growing like in my garden closest to the road and started getting some like good head size pumpkins.

And one day I come out and one of them has been twisted off, clearly twisted off the vine and it's gone okay, And I'm like looking at like trying to figure out.

And I used to have, like we raised pat raccoons when I was a kid, and I know like what a raccoon is a capable of.

And I was like, could they really get because we got him, you know, and could they really get like a pumpkin off and then also get it away where I can't find it.

I come out the next day and my other pumpkin has been cut with a freaking knife.

Mhm.

So at this point, I know, like this is not you know, like I've seen raccoons do crazy stuff, but like real knives is not right, and I and I and I'm guilty, Like you know, you hear about police profiling.

I profile in my head who that is that's doing it, and I'm like, that is an adolescent male pumpkin snatcher.

And I even tell my neighbors I'm gonna catch him and I will cut his hands off.

So I'm out and I'm trying to bring up a trail cam right to get some to get a picture because ever molescent the pumpkin patch and I'm talking to neighbors about it, and I'm like being so slide that I don't want to my trail came out in the daylight, thinking that he's so such a sly burglar that he noticed.

Right, So it's getting dusk and the kind of thing about, you know, it's time to have the trail cam ready, and my phone rings.

Is the neighbor He's like, there's a little old lady out in your garden.

And by the time I get out there, she's gone.

But I go down the road and they tell me where she's had it, and I catch her down the road and I'm like, ma'am, ma'am, and it's dark out, you know, like you just in my garden, uh, stealing pumpkins.

Not me, honey, I really you're like you're telling me you weren't just over my house getting pumpkins.

Just walks off, but nothing to say to me about it.

Well, not long after that, the green beans start coming in and I opened my garage door and I just see some legs squirting across in front of the door at the doors rights up, and I followed down the road and she's walking on her all the big handful of big handful of green beans.

And then I don't even say it, because now I'm like, I'm not even say anything to her.

The other day I'm on the phone, not the other day.

A little while ago.

I'm on the phone.

I look out the window and now it's perfectly daylight, and she's out harvested carrots.

So I yelled down, and the kids are like they call it comfort thief lady.

And I yelled down, like she's out there right now, take carrots.

And someone yells out the door like, ma'am, we'd appreciate if you would just ask if you need some vegetables.

She looks up at the door, takes those carrots, throws him on the ground and walks off down the road.

No way, just blatant, wow, blatant, like like vegetable thievery.

I wonder she has like some some type of Alzheimer's and she thinks it's the patch.

Yes, she thinks it's the pea patch, and I yeah, I think she may wake up the morning be like why is there a green pumpkin in the kitchen?

But yeah, so so that's why I've been trying to teach.

I've been trying to instruct my kids.

I'll tell him, it's it's like you get in the hard stuff to explain, you know sometimes old people and I'm like really struggling for a way to put it, and this is not the best way to put it, but like sometimes old people will become more like they'll become like kids kind of just in some like bad stab It's sort of trying to explain it to a four year old and the seven year old was like, yeah, but kids don't get the walk around the middle of the night.

I'm okay, it's like a different kind of kid.

Yeah.

Um So, Eduardo Garcia, uh, how can you explain the electrical charge?

You were struck by like in an involved like whatever way is best to explain it.

Yeah, so what I know about it?

And you know you'll have to forgive me that too many people's amazement, I um, you know, my enthusiasm was really curbed to dig into too many of the details.

I think, Um, you know, two thousand eleven, I was suffered an electrical injury that nearly took my life, you know, October nine and October October two eleven, and I get, you know, to get to your question though, is that I was so immersed in survival for so long posts that that day that by the time I finally found my feet months down the road and twenty one surgeries later, I just didn't you know, maybe it's a like a cocktail mix of denial and then just uh, you know, lack of interest to go revisit that moment that I that I I just I wanted.

I didn't needed that many details about what it was.

But what I can't say is that it's back up and tell the story what happened.

So I was trying to start out with a tilting details.

So so, um, you can't cut me off.

I get too long winded because I like to.

I like to spin spin a story, but um, yeah, well the short of it is that I, you know, i'd been h I've been working in the yachting industry as a chef for ten years, and starting two thousand and ten, I had basically decided I was going to leave yachting um and try to get back to southwest Montana near the Bowsman area where I'm from, where I was raised, and I was gonna start a food brand, started a food company called Montana Max, which I did, and I was going to start filming a cooking show for television and I was going to call it Active Ingredients, and um, you know, so I had a I had a like a pilot for the show I had, you know, I was ripped by William Morrison Endeavor as talent had a production team at a Denver Citizen Pictures UM that was going to pitch this show, and the Food Network wanted first right of refusal, you know, to basically sign the show.

And uh, life was good.

Life was good.

No longer working on the yacht.

I was home in Montana, just finished it.

But you like working on the yachts though for for ten years, but you can only sleep in a bed half the size of this table for so long, you know, um, just traveling your ass.

Yeah, you know.

And I was thirty.

I wanted to have a family, and I wanted to move home, and and and just get back to a mountain, a western rocky mountain way of life.

You were thinking about having a family.

Yeah, I don't know that.

Yeah, at thirty, I didn't have a girl yet.

But you know, um, and and so I find myself home for two thousand eleven, I just left the yacht and I'm working hard on in Montana, mex with with with you know, my business partners and co founders and um.

Because your father's from Mexico.

Dad, Dad's from Mexico, from the Yucatan Cancun area.

You ever been down there many times here in February.

So he's from East Lads, which is that little island right off.

I know that island.

We're going out to a different island.

But yeah, well yeah, I spent a shipload of time down there.

Yeah.

So Dad is a fifth generation um lobster and shark fisherman and cheek lettle so like from his dad's side, what cheek a farmers, So they like basically no, it is low gum, but it's how it happens.

Yeah, machete cheek lay trees, so like like saping in Upper New England, they're bleeding trees for their gum.

Is there right, Yeah, totally, but I don't know.

Sometimes kind of surprised.

I'm glad I could bring it to this table, you know, real quick.

When I got out of school, when I got out of regular college, we are went down there number of times.

Sometimes we find the cancoon and go south and just sleep on sleep on the beaches.

Yeah.

Fish yeah, fish, bone, fish and all kinds of stuff.

That's that's kind of fell in love with that place.

Man, it's a long time.

But now we're talking about back in the late nineties.

Yeah, I know that's super pretty area.

You know that side note and nat realist and if we digressed too far, but um, that area the Yucatan Peninsula and what's now called sort of like the Riviera of the Yucatan Riviera.

Yeah, it's back in like the late sixties and the Mexican government was basically you know, throwing darts at a board and looking for their next Acapulco.

You know, that was kind of in its heyday, and they knew or just coming into it, and they knew, you know, like we maybe ten years out, what's the next destination place in Mexico, And so they chose can Kun and Cancun at the time was oil wells, oil wells and palm plantations for palm oil, right and uh and in fishing villages.

That was it, you know, I mean it was so remote that you know, my dad and I may have shared the story when when we cooked on did that meat Eater show like two years ago with you, but um, you know, my dad was so you know that they would have this life where they would live in the estuaries, the Mangrove estuaries of of that peninsula, and you know, there's no noise, there's no air traffic, there was no airport.

You could hear a fish jump, you know in the lagoon and know what fish it was.

It's just that was the lifestyle down there.

But um, anyway, that that's how Cancun became kind of MTV sen of frogs.

God, man, if I could go back to time and find whoever that guy had that idea, oh my gosh, and just not like do anything real bad to him, but just so some interrupted him at the moment he would have had the idea, Oh yeah, they, I mean they my dad, you know they they have deer down there they have called which are pheasant, like a pheasant of the um turkeys, whole thing.

But alright, so back in Montana anyway, back in Montana, getting after a food brand, UM, pitching a TV show, UM, had big plans, big plans.

Yeah, I mean basically I just left crazy successful yachting career a decade and I should have, you know, I just not should have.

I could have stuck with that, and that would have been a career, retired, you know, another ten years.

And um, look you can make money private scheffing.

Well you don't have any expenses because you're living on the boat and you have someone buying your Q tips and everything else, you know, Um, so you can put it all away and and friends you put it into whatever.

Um.

Anyway, So a longtime friend, this is how I got to this injury as a longtime friend asked if I would cater his wedding into September.

September in New Mexico.

I said, great, it's from Montana, and he wanted Elk on the menu.

So perfect.

I'll hunt, I'll hunt the elk.

I'll do get a beat tag in an a tag and I'll like, you know, bring down all the all the good steak meat I can and make a many here we go.

And I ended up having handed of course, you know, not getting an elk.

So I had to borrow it from all kinds of friends and family and got enough elk, pulled off the wedding, got home like the twenty nine September, and now I was like committed, I need to shoot.

I need a harvest to elk to pay all my buddies back their backstraps and whatever else.

And so there I was.

And so on the morning of October nine, I've been hunting hard looking for elk and m the opening day.

No, it's archery season still.

Yeah, So archery you know, goes to like the fourteenth usually, and so I'm in the talent archery the ruts like high gear.

It's amazing.

It's the time you want to be out in Montana, you know.

And uh, And that morning I had a herd bull nice six by with about thirty cows pass at I don't even know forty yards and the cows were bogging quick and the bull I kept couch or chirping, so I got that.

I at least got the bull to stop.

And I'm at full draw looking at this bowl, and I'm thinking, no, I borrowed a two year old cow off my buddy, and I'm gonna return a two year old cat like I'm gonna return to the same type of meat give or take, right, not a stringy herd bowl.

Most people in the right minds would not pass up a thirty yard quartering away broadside shot at a milk at a bull out right.

Um, So I let it go, and I it's like nine am.

Now I'm thinking, you know what, I'm gonna go to this other spot.

I'm gonna go down the road now.

And then so I parked my car at the trailhead and ended up three miles up kind of right where the stage foothills meets kind of high alpine dug for a timber and um, yeah, I came across what looked to me like a fifty gallon oil drum cut in half, you know, and um, inside it, I saw, um what I noticed was like some claws and black fur.

And this is in the middle of a tight drainage with tall grass and stage and you know if you yeah, okay, I gotta stop you.

Yeah, because I'm an introduced the thing.

Now there I realized I haven't had made this clear.

Um, I've seen this place because there's a new documentary are called Charge Yes, which is your life story framed around this freak injury, in your recovery from this freak injury.

Right, So I've seen this place because you visited a couple of times in the movie.

Yeah.

Yeah, Uh what what landownership is this?

Public land?

Public land?

That's I never understood.

Okay, so no, no, pick it back.

But I kept looking at it being like, so it's miles from the road from the trail, Yeah, it's three miles in.

This is good because we're getting back to the original question, which was was it so um public land?

Yeah, it's right on the Yellstone National Park border public land.

Um.

You know it's super hot spot for elk hunting, especially in the rut because you know, the tactic is the bugle amo out of the park, you know, getting across the line, super bear rich one.

So you know, um kind of your your head's turned.

Yeah, you know this is down in Beatty gulch and and anyone that's ever heard the word beatty gulch for southwest Montana Region three, you're like, oh, yeah, you know, every year there's someone some calling for a bear situation, and so my head is turned on.

So when I see this, um, this can two things I think of.

I'm thinking it's old mining so that the town of Old Rich an old mining camp.

So I grew up in that area.

Grew up in Corwood Springs like a mile down the road, so all of the hills around there littered with old mining debris sheep can ups.

So it's not uncommon to being the Racking Mountain West and see an old enameled bowl or an old cast iron stove or right, so yeah, man, like yeah crazy stuff or like heavy equipment that was obviously driven in but now the roads are gone and you kind of wonder, like how they got it in there, but you realize it's just right.

It's been collecting to brief a hundred fifty years.

And or a container for assault block for Kali's you know, And so that's what I think.

So I immediately think that's what it is.

And and then um, and then I see the claus and I'm and I'm I'm hunting.

You know, I have my gear on me, and I pulled out a knife basically just to pop a clar two off right, go home, Because there's a what looks to be an inverted barrel, an open top barrel coming out of the ground.

Yeah, and in the middle of nowhere like like corrugated sort of metal appearance.

No, that's what you see in the film because that's what they protected it with.

So think of just a rusty old oil drum bear and and to say dead bear.

So remember People Magazine didn't write about this, and they were like, and Garcia, I have a baby bear.

And then I had always hate mails like why would you stab a baby bear?

Like it may it sound like I killed this bund like I killed this bear.

So let's let's just make this.

Let's just make this really clear that this is the kind of story, this is the kind of start with enough complexity that I wouldn't let People Magazine even come kind of close to this.

You know, I believe I'm in many mistakes in the post aftermath of my injury, but um, stay out of the baby.

You're talking to some jack guys who never really as in a bear or a barrel in their Yeah, and he's not even writing anything down.

You're like, all right, where's your imagination going with this, mamory.

Remember what the barrel is again?

You know?

So it was it's actually this So when I say baby bear, now, this is good to know when I say it.

Now, I'm six years later, so I have all the facts now.

But at the moment, all I know is that there's you know, there's like basically four little two inch claws but in the damn barrel, inside this barrel, and there's and there's like a you know, a little mess of for, like a two pay you know, there's a scrap of for and a claw you know, sitting in his Like there's a hundred pound animal in this barrel.

It was was desated.

It was mummified, man, totally mummified.

Right.

So I'm like, I know the damn story, but I didn't know.

Yeah, and you never told me otherwise.

I just I guess you just jumped to the idea that it's a full on, it's dead freaking bear yesterday.

Yeah.

Well, and and here's this is this is an opportunity that I relish because most interviews like People magazine or whatever else.

You've got a sound bite, and and you don't have time.

No one wants to hear your description of what this bears.

They want to know how hard life's bend sense then, and what are you doing?

And all these things?

So yeah, so you know, I want to know about the bear.

Yeah, you're looking at like a handful of fur, some dry, twisted, sinewed skin and like a few claws.

So I pull a knife out of my right off my right hip.

I put it in my left hand, and you haven't touched it with your right You haven't touched it yet.

No, And I'm going in with both hands and just that's it.

Major major warmth on the back of my head, super high frequency orchestration going on in my in my mind, you know, within my brain sound and uh and then curtain craw, just black.

That's that's my memory of the injury.

It should have been just dead is dead.

Should have been just dead is dead.

Yeah, And if you all took a nap underneath the tree, you'd wake up and you see the sky and you see tree tops.

And that's my next memory, followed then by the sound of gravel under my feet.

So what happens, what we know, and no one else is with me.

So this is just what I can remember, is that I clearly woke up, my eyes opened, I got up.

I left all my stuff there.

I left my phone, I left my keys, I left everything, and I got up to my feet.

And then I wake up on this road, walking downhill, and I remember hearing my boots on gravel.

I remember hearing a western metal chirp, and I start to see the valley floor in front of me heaving and kind of coming into focus.

And it's at that point that I start putting back the peace, you know.

I start like, where am I?

What am I?

What am I doing?

And then I recall I'm hunting, or I was hunting today.

I recall I parked at Beaty Gulch.

I recall I saw this thing.

And then it just happens quick like, oh yeah, I reached out.

It was gonna take a claw.

God, I heard like a noise and heat, and and then I like, look, and I noticed that my left hand is just crutched up against my torso and my hand is super black, totally burnt, and I have um, you know, you can see sinew and bone and really kind of gnarly.

It looks like just a charred the handles holding the knife, it looks like a chart turkey foot.

The other hand just has sort of a black, you know, blowout scar on top of it, and otherwise it's not messed with.

And I realized, because you don't know what you're you had no idea that you had just scorched no chest down and burnt your All I can see is my two hands, you know.

And then I so then I then I get it.

I'm like, all right, I mean, I'm thirty years old.

I've heard enough stories out there in the world, like I got electrocuted.

I am walking to save my life right now, and um and and and and and as I so, then I take note of that, and then i'll and then I shift.

So I'm like, then I like fully present Lucid as Lucis I can be.

I'm like, I am wanting to save my life.

I am mortally wounded right now, like I am, I am headed for help.

I have and and I realized that in my right hand, I have bear spray out of its holster in my hand.

That's like a phenomenal thing.

Just like understand that I had in leaving the scene.

I had already like started going downhill to help, and I pulled bear spray out because somehow in my state of unconsciousness, remembered I'm in a bear rich environment.

So I have bear spray in my hand ready to go, and that's how I by myself.

I make a sling for my left hand out of the two elk calls at dangling around my neck and I started walking and I remember I hit the valley floor.

Two miles later, I see a buck antelope, which I remember seeing on the way up, you know, And so it's coming back to me, like, oh, I know where I'm at, and that you know, I ended up finding the cabin in the valley floor.

There's a guy working on his cabin, and um, he called the local.

What do you think when he saw you?

Because you were a meth that's how bad you were.

So I saw the footage that you guys had from that you're girl, you know, like I gotta show all this amazing footage of like just very disturbing footage of severely injured person.

But like what did the guy think when you showed up?

I gotta show you a whole blown out of your head.

I gotta show you the footage of the m T S check.

You know, I just said, looked like a Halloween story.

Um he called sat me down.

Um.

Paramedics showed up three of them at a gardener you know, and then they were like they knew they were moving to say this guy's life.

I got a back yup now because I'm still so curious about this source.

I know when the grand and the grand scheme things doesn't matter, but it have to know, okay, like what you had to later learn, like what was it?

Right?

Oh yeah, so here we go.

So I want to cover that before we keep moving along because I think I just I don't want people to get because it's just so strange.

Right.

So Malcolm Forbes, yea yeah, four five right.

Um.

I had a cabin up at the top of Beaty Gulch and they brought power to that cabman via the road when they dug the road and they buried a line.

At one point the road takes a big dog leg out and instead of rolling cable on that dog leg, they just shot straight up this little gully to the next switch back and has some kind of easement to do this on public land.

They must have and and it was back in the sixties.

And on the rollout, on the rollout when they're going up this drainage, they ran out of cable.

They brought in a new spool and they spliced it.

Instead of bearing the splice, they just put a can on it.

And at some point there was yeah, I just put a can on the two tails, right, and maybe as junction you know, basically was a junction box the Yeah, so this was feeding or actually feeding a Yeah, there was like there's likes going to a home.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

And the lid was secure.

That's important.

Everyone needs another lid was secured.

It had three locks on all three sides.

And um, you know, the welds for the tabs that had the holes through it to keep the lid attached to the container had started to become compromised over time.

And you know, and then now we get to a sort of like a place where via an n D A I think I'm allowed to continue to say that, Um, you know, the locks the tabs became compromised, and then one broke, and then another broke, and then maybe a bison rubbed its ass on it one day or sloughing snow down the hill started to move it over time, and then of course lid fell off and it just remained exposed, and it gathered dirt in grass and maybe a sage bush grew next to and I mean it just became engulfed in the drainage.

Got you know.

Yeah, one last question about this, is it your belief that the bear, I mean a bear got electrocuted in there?

Man?

You know, like, did the bear die because of that power?

Who knows?

I mean, it could have been dropped in there by something.

You might get.

Yeah, I probably did.

They probably died, probably bit into it or something.

I mean, I've heard so since then, I've you know, we've researched into similar bizarre instances.

And you know, a note to all you outdoorsmen out there that they're gonna listen to this is that if you come across a pile of dead animals in the middle of the woods, don't touch them, like, don't poke it with a knife.

You know, um that you know, it could be one animal that dug into a power source because there's vibration and frequency coming out of it, and they pick up on that or whatever, and that animal dies and another animal comes to feed on that animal and it dies, and you know that's definitely happened.

Are you familiar with libraria tar pits?

Yeah, look up listeners if you're just the cascading series of events that it kind of almost reminds me.

It reminds me that the librat tar fits because bret tarpets are these like places seen tarpets that would trap animals, and over the tens and tens of thousands of years, they trapped, you know, dozens of mammoths, hundreds of dire wolves, short faced bears, saber tooth cats, And when you look at all the stuff that's come out of there, uh, you're like, how could these like be that like, how could they have caught that much stuff?

But something I remember reading that one what they call one interaction per decade would account for it.

And what they described was a baby mammoth walks out, get stuck in the tar, A sabre tooth cat comes out, the scavenge, the carcass gets stuck in the tar, A bird lands the scavenge, the saber tooth get stuck on the tar, stretched out over tens and tens and tens of thousands of years.

You have this bizarre collection.

Well, we're gonna so there was there was an interaction going on.

Well, the power sorts the buck stops here for this scenario because I didn't die.

That was not added to the evolutionary tar pit of electrical injuries in the woods.

And uh and that's that that actually is.

There's a like kind of anecdotal side note here is that part of the film charged not even part of the sole purpose of this documentary and I and we'll probably get to this later, is to serve as some type of of beacon or educational or moving factor so that others, others do not befall the same type of scenario that I did.

You know, the movie, but the movie does weigh Sure, the movie does way more than that.

But it does make you aware of it does make you weary of the idea sort of my dismay and surprise about the accident.

I think UM helps explain this.

It does make you wear that, like you have the stuff in your head that you think can go wrong, and then there's the things that you never imagined, Oh, that you would never ever ever imagine.

I was I was, you know the time when when I reached out to take that cloth.

I was already a mile up the hill in my mind stocking and elk I was like cloth.

You know, it was supposed to be that quick.

And had I not had a knife in my left hand, most likely you know, it may have not Ben's app that day, that knife, so that that the the the electrical joel came through my left hand, which is what was this is a hand holding the knife and then entered into my body and exited in nine different places on my legs, on my torso, through my scalp, and then and then here on my other hand.

So this was an exit wound through my right hand, not an entrance wound.

Can you can you walk us through your injury?

Yeah, and then that when I get to the really trippy part, that like kind of bowils my mind as the cancer element is otherworldly.

But the injuries from the injury injury, so the electricity entered through the knife that became the conduit that created the arc or you know that, and that knife hit metal or just hit the bear.

No, I don't even think i'd made it.

I don't even think i'd made it down to the bear right, So that the can maybe it's twenty as tall, and I go leaning in and and I'm again, I don't know, but my belief is that I never even made it to the claw.

And at some point that metal in my hand, everything else is charged in this barrel right, and at some point that new metal caught, you know, became a conduit for an electrical jump that went into that knife and then came out through.

So it basically goes into my left hand comes out, my left elbow comes out, my left torso comes out, my left thigh comes out, my right groin comes out, my right elbow comes out, my right hand and comes out twice on my scalp, like nine not give it, take nine major exit wounds.

And what happened at your ribs exit wound?

Yeah?

Exit?

Would the size of a head?

Did the exit wound like you know, well the size of yeah?

No.

So the thing is, when when you look at the initial wounds site, it's it's fairly small.

It's like the size of a large honeydew melon.

But once the doctors started debreeding, which is removing the dead tissue from my body, where it's just like black, it grows twofold.

You know, they have to dig back to live you know, live live tissue, live bone.

So I had so I might, I mean that was probably that was one of my most extensive injuries was my left torso is um.

Basically I lost half of my pectoral all of my obliques on the left side, and uh for like two inch sections of rib.

It's like, right now, you know that's there's no ribs there.

I remember one of the Oh my god, Yeah, he's showing us the lack of he's demonstrated in my shirt.

We only got to your arm yet, But which is I have to imagine the main part of this to you, um, losing an arm.

Yeah, in the movie when the doctor says to you, he's talking about what the surgery they're gonna do just on the one wound on your rib cage, and your girlfriend's filming this interaction with your doctor and he's kind of giving you like a basic what to expect.

For instance, you'll never do a pull up again, like struck you Yeah, because you've always been like a fit I would say, like a fitness freak, but like you're a fitness guy.

Yeah, was athletic.

You can tell that that it is in the movie, you kind of see this moment where you're obviously like your whole life has changed anyways, but I see this moment where you're kind of like just that little detail makes you see I was like like wait, like a week in like and he's like, no, man, like for good, they'll never do a pull up again.

It was, and that's because they were taking my It's called a muscle, it's called a muscle flap.

So basically, with all that muscle being removed from my left torso your left of the very muscle is part of your armor.

It's part of your body's armor for the vitals you know as well.

It doesn't just serve as this mobility tool.

It's armor.

And and so with with bones being removed, with all this tissue being gone, um, the doctors have to find a way to cover that up and and and protect the side of the body again.

So you know, the latissimus is not a vital muscle to overall life like.

It is there for locomotion.

So they basically remove the latissmus.

That's that big muscle that runs from your shoulders down to your hip.

It's kind of shaped like a v, you know, and they removed it from my hip they brought out of my of.

They brought it out and then they flipped it and attached it over to my left torso right.

And so that's why I basically the alati.

If anyone doesn't pull up, you're using your shoulders and your arms and your core, which is mostly these huge latisimus Dorset muscles and so on.

The doctor's like, you won't ever, you know, you won't do a pull up again.

He was just speaking from learned experience that you're losing the majority of your pull power.

And well it was no, he wasn't.

You know.

Two years later I was at my prostiticians because damn, you're like a pull up.

Yeah, he throws a pull up bar up on the on the door and and you know, probably a cheater pull up, got my chin barely there, and you know, and I don't do pull I don't do pull ups anymore, just you know, because usually it's my my prosthetic.

It's the material that makes it my prosthetic that breaks, you know, because a hundred seventy pounds hanging on it.

But what's interesting to note is that for anyone that for anyone that goes through a major transformation, of their of their physical body in any which way, um is that the body is so is made, it is redundant.

It's like redundancy in place.

So if you lose one muscle there there is, the body's gonna find a way to have all the other mini muscles or underlying muscles that really are there to support those will start to grow and pull weight.

You know.

So right now when I'm hiking, so I'm missing a major chunk of my left quadr sep, a huge majority of the muscles on my left side, and I don't feel weaker on my left side.

Now six years later, when I'm hiking an elkout, I feel like fatigued, like anyone else does, you know, And but I think it's because, um, all the little muscles they fill in, they come back in, you know, they start working out more.

So walk us through how things went with your arm, um, like kind of how that decision making process you say in the movie, how you've decided to Yeah, yeah, this was it actually a decision.

Yeah it was.

It was a decision.

So, um, I think I had been in the hospital for six days at that point.

And if anyone's ever been in a like a high school locker room.

It stinks and it it kind of started to smell like that.

It started to smell like foot and just yeah, there was basically decay.

Is that they had debreeded the the most of my body, but with you know, I had asked it like I was basically begging with the world, and you know, I was like praying to people I've never prayed to before.

I was basically throwing every hail marry I could out at the universe, like, don't take my left hand, because could any could you guys imagine losing your left hand, Like how could you?

You know you can't you know, you don't know.

It's funny because it's like, uh, because of the nature um because sort of like how the last couple of wars that we've been involved and have played out with improvised explosive devices, we see more of it.

Oh my god, you out well.

I imagine people.

I imagine people see you and assume you're a soldier.

They're like, oh you you you were you lost your arm in Felujah.

Yeah, it's probably like well, it's it's usually you get like you get like the nod and maybe like the two fingered like like veteran.

I'm like, yeah, outdoors, so in that way, yeah, so in that way, No, I can't imagine losing my limb.

But there's so many guys in our that are roughly in our generation that they are dealing with that because of like they're becoming such a Yeah, and I don't see more common injury.

But just like we've had thirteen years of I mean, I can explos exposed these kind of explosions, it seemed to have a propensity to pull people's limbs off.

I can speak all day too as to how I've benefited by by by the mass influx of amputees coming back from the war, because the government obviously is gonna pour a ton of money into taking care of people when they come back, and so the government has been huge behind new technologies.

But in in regards to blue in my hand, basically the doctor said, look, we've removed the majority of the dead tissue and on your hand and there, and what you've got left is it is basically, um, you're gonna have to lose your pinkie and basically the like three out of the four top fingers and you'll be left with your pointer finger in your thumb in a hand that kind of runs down the middle of the back of your hand to your wrist.

So you'll be left with kind of like a like a pistol looking you know, hand and and and he's saying, guaranteed the pistols good working pistol.

Well, he's saying like he's saying, like you should you'll be able to have some movement in your pointer finger in your thumb, but you're losing all the rest of your fingers.

And he says, so you'll have you'll have a semi functional left hand.

Um, But he said, what concerns me is that we we believe that they're what you smell in the room is an infection in your hand and in your forarm.

And that is at the moment, from like the middle heart of my left form to my heart is less than eighteen inches and that isn't it is not going to take long for a bacteria to run up to your heart.

And our concern is great that um, that you've survived the electrical injury miraculously somehow, and yet we are highly we we are we there was a very high risk that the bacterial infection in your form could kill you.

If it gets your heart.

And it was like that was on a Sunday afternoon, and I'll never forget.

I just said, like, bring me to the table, take it off right now.

And they're like whoa, whoa, wa whoa the surgeons and at last we can do this is tomorrow, you know.

So I was ready to tell you the second they said the bacterial infection in your left hand could kill you.

I was like, then take it off, because you know, I, as you know, somehow survived the electrical injury itself.

I'm not screwing around with infections and other things.

You know.

It's the weird thing you just mentioned that.

Remember I remember striking me is um you talk about eighteen inch distance off your your arm.

Remember I had a pick line in one time, and when I went to have it removed and I was expect I was just kind of I don't know why I was expected, like giant hose.

Yeah.

When they pull it out, I'm like, you know that's saying like when you get hurt, people like, oh, it's a long way from your heart, because like, no, it's not a long way from your heart.

No.

They put a little line just like yeah, right there, you somehow think of it as being like sort of more isolated and protective as they pull out this little seven inch holes and like that's all that's all it takes to get from my arm to my heart.

I can feel where I'm missing ribs.

I can put my fingers under those ribs when I'm working hard, and I'm basically like an inch from my heart.

Yeah.

So when I go when I when I do high intensity sport, whether it's horseback riding or triathlon biking or snow billing or snowboarding, I wear a uh, it's basically my triathlon jersey, like a tight spandex jersey with vel grow and then a kind of like a kevlar plate that goes against that belt grow to protect against that hole in my chest right now, you against impact.

So so it's just big enough.

Your ribs aren't doing the job war well most of them are, but there's there's a hole in my rib cage size of a grape fruit.

And so the plate is like just over the size of a great fruit, so that if it gets hit, it's gonna spread weight to where the ribs are.

Yeah, and I've called off recreational events where I I forget it you know, I forget to bring my vest, and you know, and my girlfriend, now you know, she knows remind me like you're on horseback riding with ben Masters, bring your vest, you know, and if I forget it, I just won't go in ya.

So when you broke up from the surgery, and right, like, how what that feel like?

You know, um, six years later, it's kind of a let down.

But you know, I can only speak generally to what coming out of anesthesias feels like because I had twenty one surgeries.

Coming out of the surgery that removed my hand, you know, it was not significantly different than the agree that I had my ribs are moved on or my scalp surgery, but also your arms gone right.

But it's interesting so going into the surgery to remove my arm, I didn't really have an arm anyway.

I just had a bandage.

Club could feel it.

Yeah, I was.

I was loaded on on medicine.

I was totally maxed out on pain meds.

And you know, I was like really in this point of stage as I was like the first week, I was still in this super tentative to place where um, you know, I could live or die basically, and so coming out of surgery might to me, I didn't even get look at it.

For the first day or two.

It was still just this bandaged left side and then being just the you know, twisted individual that I am and a chef, you know.

The first time I saw it, I was like, oh, man, it looks like shank bone.

You know, I can see the marrow in there and I can see yeah, and it was like, you know, and that and that is honestly, honestly a lot of folks, believe you know, would would assume him rightfully, so that that it was super traumatic for me to like see my missing hand, you know, form with out of hand attach it for the first time.

But for me, I was I was fascinated by being able to see all of my muscle groups open and see bone and you know, and I'm met it out so I'm semi comfortable, and so for me it was it was actually it took my mind off of things to follow, follow the movements of the nurses and the team cleaning after you, and to have a chance to have the inside view of my body.

It was kind of cool.

Honestly looking back on it now, How how loose it were you for all this, I mean, considering the medications, right, there's there's an accumulative, accumulative effect of all that stuff.

I'm sure, yeah, I think, Um, I I was.

I was mostly present.

There's a lot I don't recall because of the cumulative effect of the fog as you want to call it.

But um, yeah, like just I mean just sort of like a probably a persistent sort of shock, yeah, and then being doped up and being doped up.

But you know, I, you know, I I remember we took you know, and I'm grateful too.

This is another thing.

It's too as I had a support team like no other.

You know, my ex girlfriend Jenny Jayne, who's my business partner, she flew back from the UK and uh and took photos and video the whole time we were in hospital.

I want to get to that because I don't understand that.

Yeah, and so you know, so for me, um, I was kind of felt like it was a busy time period.

You know.

It was like you know, you're going from one bandage dressing to PT to surgery too.

There wasn't a ton of downtime that I was awake for that we weren't doing something and and part of that I've always loved photography, so I have a lot of photos that are pretty intense.

You know that, um kind of helped take my mind off of things.

I was like, we were you know, yeah, it made made it kind of interesting in a sense.

Well I imagine too that it doesn't take many minutes or maybe you know, I don't know, maybe it's a couple of hours until the thought repeats itself of well, thank god, at least I'm here, and I'm thinking, oh, yeah, no, that's a that's it, that's it.

That is a good point.

And I, um, I actually don't think I got back to Steve's point to that either, which was how was it to wake up not have your hand?

And I think it was three weeks in where we're watching a movie and and Jen's probably in my hospital bed and I'm on her right side, she's on my left and we're watching a movie on the laptop and I'm never in this and this is the moment where I first remember having an emotional breakdown, and um, you know, with my left hand, I was kind of you know, you're sitting next to your honey at home, where are your hands?

You know?

One't you we don't answer that question.

But one of your hands is you know, probably on her on her knee or on her shoulder or on her hand.

You know, you're hanging out.

And so my hand, my left hand was on Jen's knee and We're watching a movie and at one point I go to give it a squeeze, and then I kind of look over and I realized that I'm my left hand is on her knee, and I'm hanging out with her, and yet there's an a left hand.

Yeah, and you know, I'm moving my muscles and I'm kind of like doing this, you know, and uh, and I just broke down because you know, of course my body still remembered a left hand, had been for thirty years.

And it took a year, you know, six months to a year for me to really come to terms psychologically with the fact that I don't have a left hand.

Like right now, I wearing a prosthetic cook And if I if I take this hook off in the second I just took that off, I now im unilateral.

I'm like one handed in my mind, whereas the second I put this hook back in, I'm bilateral again because I got I got two hands to do stuff.

With because the mind uh you know, the so for me, it was it was really like a few weeks in where I actually had a moment of loss for my limb, but not after the not right after the fact.

Yeah, those isn't a pretty impactful part of the movie.

Not the most impactful part of me, but a pretty impactful part of the movies.

Leaving the hospital, Yeah, because it season then like all of a sudden, Then once you're outside, it seems like you kind of are That's like one of the moments when you it sort of seems to hit you.

Yeah.

Also, now you've been to this like little sanctuary and all of ASO.

Now they're like, oh, you can go home now, And you're walking outside without your nursing staff, without the pharmacy next door, without your surgeons.

You basically you've been incubated.

You've been knocked down to this place where you are vulnerable and and being built up from the ground up again.

And then you walk outside and you're discharged, and all of a sudden, you gotta park your own car again and you gotta drive again.

And you know, of course I still had my family and everyone there, but um, you know, I mean in Jenny, you know, bless your heart, you know, take care of hours to un bandage me, get me in a shower, take me at a shower, and bandage me back up again, you know.

We I mean, wound care was still intensive.

It would take four hours to kind of just get me ready for the day.

So here's what I forgot to check in on.

How in the world, So you coincidentally at the same time happened to have testicular cancer that has spread up your spine and don't don't know about it, right, yeah, and they find it through all this other stuff.

So on top of that, you're in there doing like chemo.

So I hadn't done chemo yet, but so right, so when so that what the film, what you don't see in the film, and what you know, what's interesting to me is that in two thousand seven, I'm working on the yacht and I'm in Sancho Pe in the south of France, and I feel this pain in my growin, kind of like pulled muscle, and I remember just mentioning to the captain, I gotta go see a doctor, you know.

And I don't bitch about really anything high threshold for pain, and um, there's a doctor on board who's a guest at the time, and he's like, oh, we'll just have Dr So and so give you check check up, you know, like okay, doctor gives me a quick evail, kind of checks the boys out down there, and he's like, you know, how many hours a day?

You working like money for like months in a row.

And he says, tell the boss to give you a day off and take an anti inflammatory.

You're probably just working too hard and standing on your feet.

And that's what every young mid twenty male wants to hear.

You know that we don't want to go to the hospital or go get checked out.

We're invincible, looking for a reason to not take it undred percent we are.

And uh and so that was two thousand seven.

So fast forward to my injury in two thousand eleven and I come out of a surgery where because of one of my exit wounds basically being in my sack.

Okay, um, they removed my left testy and um.

And so I'm told this when I come out of surgery.

This this is kind of like this is like just a twisted fact of coming out of a surgery is you don't really know what happened in surgery until you wake up again and and you're getting told, oh, well we took this off, but we're able to keep this.

And you know, so you're getting of getting the shakedown of how it went because they're doing they're doing play by play.

Yeah, I mean they don't they don't know what they're getting into.

You sign a waiver every time you're going to surgery that basically said, I recognize that I may not live through this, and the hospitals are not you know, um, you know, legally bound by what may happen.

And then you obviously give some power of attorney so that if they need to make a game day call, someone can do that for you while you're on the table.

And so Jenny, you handed it over to your ex girlfriend, Yeah, because she was the one that was there every day.

She was like boom on my side, you know.

So it's like you make a call for you while you've got siblings, parents who who who were there.

But as my mom says, you know and my brother, you know, like they're can only be one captain of the ship.

And if Jen's going to be, if she's already been by this guy's side for five years, she's sleeping next to that bed every day.

And we were all in the peripheral every day here.

Everyone else was in Salt Lake too, but it was like Jen next to the bed.

So um, and she's able to make like end of life decisions for you and she and but and and to be fair, yes she was, but she's also you know, she's living with my family.

My family is in the room too, and then going home.

But you know, she's know, and on the I'm not suggesting that I would think that, like, oh, I shouldn't do this because she might pull a dirty drink.

And but just like it strikes me as it's it's unusual.

Well and because Steve's referred to Steve is referring to that she's my ex girlfriend.

Right, she's not my girl, but he has becoming kind of like we we end.

When the accident happened, she was an ex girlfriend.

Correct.

Yeah, she had just flown home to the UK, yeah a week before.

Um yeah yeah.

And so I come out of surgery and they're like, and the doctors say, this went well, that went well, this went well.

I couldn't save your left testical, you know.

Audio Rest in peace, buddy, and uh and in that moment, I recall that many years before I had had a pain in my you know, in in my in my in my sack, and you know, in some swelling, and I was kind of told to take an IVY prof and it never did anything about it.

So I just casually mentioned this to the nurse, who then mentions it to the surgeon.

And so like the first of a little red flag goes up, and the surgeon puts in an order that a tissue sample from the test that had been taken out a few hours before gets into the lab and that comes back positive for test acure cancer.

Oh man, really, so that's how that was found.

And you don't have roomed in the movie.

It's not room for that, and there's not room for that, and so that's but that's how it was.

We did, like a biopsy on an electrocuted test.

Yeah, so so and so then we biopsy the heck out of you know, like we we so then we the you know, there's a full blown attack on all of the CT scans that had already happened over the prior week or two, and they're looking now like what did we miss?

Is there something here that we're missing?

You know, and they see this mass that's on my left spine and my lower abdomen just above my groin, and it's immediately flagged as a second stage tumor coming up from the test to cool um cancerous make me physically like physically, we biopsy the heck out of that.

But in every biopsy test comes back negative.

Okay, But the thing with the biopsy is, imagine you have an apple and then you have a holo core biopsy needle.

How many times do you have to stick that apple to get full coverage?

About a million?

This is not gonna happen.

So we boobpously like six times, let's say, and they all come back negative, and all my tumor really in my blood work comes back negative.

But the doctors feel via what they can see an imagery that there is an and there, and so the YouTube you want to see Utah, the university has a Huntsman Cancer Clinic there, so they have a major oncology team.

So they have an oncologist on this now, and they basically decide that there is a room reason enough for concern that this is a second stage tumor um and that even though all of my readings are coming back negative.

They highly recommend that I go into a very aggressive round a chemotherapy to just make sure there's nothing in me anywhere.

Um and I and and I'm still in the middle of surgeries.

So now all of my surgeries.

You can't go into chemotherapy with open wounds.

So now they basically put surgical band aids on these wounds that are in recovery, like my scalp, you know, So they basically they take skin and they put it on my skull to close that up, and they put everything on hold so that I can go home to Bozeman and do three months of intense chemotherapy.

That's a that's another part of the movie.

Just something that you always here do a chemo therapy that hair falls off, but in the movie you're able to.

One day you realize it's loose, and someone's filming this and you're able to just kind of go and pull all of the hair off your head.

Yeah.

I started cheming.

I mean like I started chemo like late January, early Jeane, no, early early February, and I'm white tail shed hunting, and I started to notice, you know, like my hand going through my head while sweating and uh.

And when I say to white tail shed hunting, I'm like sick as a dog and chemotherapy.

So my goal is to get outside once a day for a hundred yards to maybe a rip flat river bottom walk with no weight on my back, just to be outside.

And I started noticing that my hands coming back with hair on it, you know.

And and um, yeah, I remember one day just kind of like messing with my hair, noting it.

And I was determined that I would be the one percent that whose hair doesn't fall out, because it happens like a few small percentage of people do not lose their hair and chemotherapy and uh and yeah.

And so when it did, um, yeah, I was at home and we felt you know, Jen and I just put a camera on a tripod and um and just yeah, I went after it as a very rab part in the film for a lot of people that are watching.

Um, I mean I've sat in a lot of screenings in theaters, and that's a very raw heart.

Cancers all over our society and there's almost no one out there that's not touched by cancer somehow through their family or friends or personally.

And seeing yeah, I don't think anyone's ever seen cancer patient pull their hair out, and so's it just it is, It's it's really arresting.

I think that's question.

Through all that, did they ever say, oh, yeah, we we did have a test result came back then positive on his scroll, but yeah, no on the testicle that was removed that was positive.

So none of the biopsies and none of the blood working to this date, knock on would somewhere.

Um, I go for a check up every six months and I'm still negative.

I still test, you know, like I'm clean, you know at the moment um, So I think, are you getting at So what's up with the masks?

Right?

What's up with the mass?

So?

Man, we we kept our eyeball on that for and we still do.

But we kept our eyeball on that heavy for two and a half years.

And my oncologist now in Boza, Montana feel is that.

And I was pushed heavily to have it removed, which is a very dicey surgery because it's right near your spine with some significant, um the significantly undesirable side effects that are unavoidable for that surgery, which I will spare listeners.

Um, and and I kind of just said, look, I I don't need to gamble here.

But unless you're telling me that this mass is gonna kill me, I don't want to have this removed.

You know, like I'm happy to just watch it, seriously watch it, but I don't want to go into the knife again and and deal with these you know, side effects and whatnot.

And so we didn't have it removed.

And um and the on college my oncollegies now believes it's an overactive limpho seal.

So it's basically it's a limp node and fill with some emphatic drainage.

And and we watch it every six months.

I get a CT scan and we watch it and it kind of hasn't really grown, and sometimes it will shrink or change shapes, and you know, just we're watching it.

So I feel like I got this little thing I get to keep tabs on.

Now here's a part of the movie I don't understand.

I don't think.

I don't feel like it goes adequately addressed.

And it wouldn't be because it's almost like fourth wall.

It's a fourth wall issue.

I'll explain that.

Um.

So when we'll say break in the fourth wall, it is kind of a production term where you imagine that you're filming a room.

Um, I'm telling you the listeners this not not EDWARDO.

But you're filming a room, right, and you can always see three room three walls of the room because the fourth walls is where the camera's sitting.

So in productions, say like to break the fourth wall is to sort of acknowledge the presence of of the fact that there's some level of artifice here and that this is being filmed.

Right, So watch the movie.

You're just sort of engrossed and all the stuff that's going on.

But let's say we break the fourth Wallman, how in the world, Why in the world, or how did it come up within days of this injury when you still don't even know if you're gonna live or die.

You guys that your your ex girlfriend comes and you guys come to a decision just to start filming it.

Mhm Like what was that conversation?

Yeah, um, great question.

And um, that's the that the result of filming hold on, I'm getting side check.

The reason why we have so much footage from the hospital in the moment is that we had just finished wrapping up filming.

Allen eleven this pilot for this TV show.

Right, So I already had a DSLR camera and a light kit and lenses and we knew how to use it and filming four K or whatever else.

And um, and and Jen is a creative.

So Jen actually was the original mind behind Hey, Ed, you should have this TV show?

And she storyboarded out and she taught herself, you know, how does the TV show happen?

And she you know, grew up put it on paper.

So she's a screenwriter also.

And so when she was flying over, she says that she had she told her best friend the UK when she was flying over.

You know, We've already been documenting Ed's life for two years for this TV show.

I'm going to keep documenting it.

You know, she coming to help.

You were coming to film you help.

She's coming to help.

She's coming out of love a because that was it just struck me as so I I actually couldn't like, um, it was so the to you what I had to work to break free from that question.

Yeah.

So and so so my friend Sam drove my truck down with our camera and the production team that I was working with.

Of course, I mean I had people business partners from everywhere and friends from everyonere flying in to see me.

I mean, this guy's like I'm almost dying, right.

So obviously the company M working with on this television show, they fly in and they brought a tripod and they brought like a small handheld light and things.

Um, because we're filming a TV show, and the TV show is not morphing all of a sudden into this hospital show.

But I think what we were thinking, or what Jen was thinking, was we need to document this, like and you know, we need to document this, and had we really publicized that to the hospital, we probably wouldn't have got permission.

So it was Jen with the handheld DSLR and just we're just filming this, so we have it.

We're filming because even at one point I think it nerves even why are you're filming all this?

Because I was I was filming on my phone and and um and Jen.

You know, part of Jen's reasoning too, is that so when I wake up and I'm missing a testicle and whatever else, you know, there's sort of when I come out of this this fog and this traumatic sort of place where I may not be fully present, that I would have I can go through hours of footage and see what the condition I was in, see how it could be like a coping mechanism.

That yeah, that that that's it, you know, said eventually, I don't want to get to like production talk here, but instead of go and get releases from all these people, right right.

So that's three years later, three years later, and I mean, that's its whole own fascinating story.

But um, you know, I it wasn't until two thousand and fourteen that the conversation really started to come around via friends that are in production and via gen and via family and you know, like how you should tell the story, you know, And I had no interest, had ero interests in telling the story.

Um.

And and it was actually the surgeon on call that saved my life, Dr Stephen Morris, who to me, he basically impressed upon me that um in fewer words, and I kind of took his words and extracted what I found.

What I thought he was trying to tell me was that I lose a lot of patients.

I lose a lot of people because they give up.

And this is three years post Okay, so my hair has grown in and I'm standing and I'm walking and I'm back to work and looking healthy, and and he's he's like, your your your your recovery at WARDO is phenomenal, the way you've recovered, and the fact that you are not sharing this with others is like selfish almost, like you know, you have a human obligation to society to help those around you, and you are sitting on a really really kind of high high high opportunities, this quality opportunity to help others by just saying, this is what recovery can look like if all these parts come together, which is not just about EDWARDO.

It's about if your if your community comes together, if if your family comes together, if if all the pieces come together.

You know, um, if the patient, you know, even if you're splinted, you know, even if you can't move is there's many times when I couldn't move my arms, I couldn't do anything but move my eyes.

But even as the patient of the patient resumes responsibility to bring in as much fire and stoke that so the nurse and operating team knows that patient is fighting.

We're fighting with that patient.

And I think that's what he was trying to task me and challenge me with it's like you should be helping others with this.

Well that that's what the the movie ultimately is about recovery and family and the people that you keep around you and how you maintain yourself in life under hardship.

We focus a lot here on on details of the injury, but that's just a small fraction of the movie, and it really becomes pretty heavily focused on the sort of a reevaluation of the relationship between you and your father, and also trying to make sense out of a really complex relationship with a woman that you are in love with and she's in love with you, and you go through some thing like this together but still there's this nagging sense that you're not together.

Yeah, it's it's touching the thing that struggling most.

And the movie moved me to tears because at the point I'm sure it does a lot of people.

Eduardo goes to high school to talk to some kids about um, just how to cope and and and be together and how to treat other human beings.

I think is maybe one way to putting it.

And you're saying that here, here I am now and this has happened to me that I have this kind of incredible story.

And and you go on TV and you've been on all kinds of news shows and morning shows talking about it, and it's like all about you, but you're saying, it's really not um about you, it's about other people.

And at the end of this talking kid comes the kids suffering, suffering bad and his brother has been injured by a firework and you like the way that you each new mm hmm was impactful, like what he's going through.

Yeah, when when one survivor looks at another survivor, you almost don't have to say a word.

It was amazing.

It's an amazing moment, like an amazing moment that that have captured to be captured on film.

You know, that school had been going through a major rash of suicides, like many in our country right now, and um, you know in our high school youth, um, which is something that I don't understand fully.

And so the high school asked if I would share my story and you know, how do you say?

And I stressed about that talk.

How do you how do you feel forty five minutes of conversation with two thousand high school students that you know, I have my niece and nephew were in that school, and I'm thinking, like, I mean, I love him the pieces and they love uncle, but you know, oftentimes they don't want to give me more in the second it's the most cynical age, no, And you know, and I and in high school was not my glamoury years.

You know then you know, I was getting kicked out of every school ever went to.

So you got, That's what I was equally impressed with the connection with the I can't remember if that was the next kid or the kid prior to the one that had the brother with the injury, but the other kid that just really related with you having like a rough upbringing and not rough upbringing, but just rough earlier years where you got into trouble and whatnot.

And you could tell he was probably sort of like probably not getting straight a's, having a rough go at it and just being able to relate it was good.

Was so we we did a We had a Q and A after It's the funniest thing.

As I released the assembly two thousand kids like talk was over, um, good night, you know, I'm out and uh, and I forgot that we had a Q and A, you know, like we had already just held hands and everything, and I forgot that we had a Q and A.

One of the student bodies that was running the assembly was like mr Garcia, Mr Garcia, the Q and A, and I grabbed the mic and I was like yo, and just yelled and arrested everyone in their tracks.

I was like, sit down, we're not done yet.

And I just told them, like, we're done.

And so we do a Q and A.

And think about this, like, high schools are really really really challenging time in any young adults life, and think about getting up on a mic and sharing anything with your entire student body.

And so it's like an auction, you know.

When as soon as I was like there's a mic here, we're gonna do a Q and A, I know there's some questions out in the room.

Who's gonna go first?

And it was like an auction.

I was just like looking for anyone to scratch their nose or flinch, and I was gonna call on them.

And so some kid flinches.

Not called on him, and he was brave enough to get all the way up all across the auditorium and get to the mic.

And his question was where can I eat your food?

You know, and uh, but it broke the ice.

It broke the ice, and all of a sudden, we have a line of kids and we did a thirty minute Q and A and we had to end the seconds.

That's all.

We ended the session with twenty kids still standing behind the mic.

Um.

But you know, and you know that talks.

So that's and that's what I'm doing.

That's my focus for two thousand and eighteen, and you know, in like onward for many years, is to bring my life experience via I'm so grateful, man, I'm so grateful that there's a film like this out there that takes my story and objectively puts it out there in a way that almost anybody from any walk of life, at any age can reflect upon their own lives with.

Yes, it's told through my story and it's told through my shitty day, but it raises um, it raises emotions, and it raises challenges that every single one of us experiences.

And no one's immune to grief and loss and you know, wrongdoings and forgiveness and love.

You know, we all we all experience that.

So um.

You know, I you know, I have great hopes.

I have super high hopes for this part of my life coming forward, you know, is to um, let this film be its own, its own thing, you know, and I didn't make the film.

We gotta go.

That's important time to stand for you know, everyone listening, is that I signed this sweet little piece of paper that's actually quite short, and it just called it's Life Life Story Rights Release.

And you know you have the opportunity to list an made by the director and producer Philip Philip bar b Yeah, so the director is Phil bar Boo who also U recently finished an award winning feature length documentary called Unbranded, which everyone should check out.

And um, but but you know, when you sign your life Story Rights away, you can list.

I don't want to talk about the fact that I had to testicular cancer.

I don't want to talk about that I'm from emigrant Montana, like, and I left it blank.

I didn't put anything down because for me, you know, I could have put I don't want to talk about the fact that I was a lying, cheating asshole to my ex girlfriend.

But um, for me, look, I'm looking for healing in this too, Like I need to get something out of this process, out of this film and beyond my interest in helping others by sharing what recovery looks like via my story.

I'm also still to this day right here with you guys, like I am still going through like the aftermath of a super traumatic event that I'm still trying to make like right in my mind.

That that's touched on well towards the end of the movie, like you're you're you're out of it, not not not of it mentally, but you you kind of your your future is sort of clear.

I'm starting to find like where my new purpose is going to be.

And and you're with your father, right, you know, and and it comes up, it comes up that like, yeah, that the it all this that all this optimism that you have and the sort of uplifting nature of this and the way you're spinning this to other people, not spinning the way, the portion of it that you're choosing to share with other people and the parts of it that you're picking out to have it be that this is what you want your legacy and story to be, Like that underneath it is there's a sadness that's there.

Yeah, and you your your father sees it and you admit to it, and you guys talk about it, and it's something that like I think it's it's an important part to bring up because you could look at someone and someone who's doing their best to put all this in a good light, just like the transparency, the acknowledgement of of your faults, how you want this to be, how you want people to discuss you and perceive you that when you see someone who's just kicking ass in dire circumstances, it's not that they're different than you are and they're just immune to feelings of self doubt and in me into feelings of depression.

It's because probably what's happening is that person is making a day to day conscious decision two to be like, there's the parts of this that I'm gonna be that I'm going to focus on and talk about, and there's the parts of this that I'm going to deal with internally, and that probably becomes a tremendous burden for someone and and and you and in all fairs, you kind of allow it to come out in the movie that yes, there is like a there's there's a sadness down in here that I'm not gonna deny.

But it's not going to be the part that I hold out to other people.

Well, it says, it's it's it's a part that I didn't even know, Like I'm moving a mile a minute.

Just my way of life, my way of my natural way of being is just to move forward quickly through things.

And I it wasn't until halfway through the six last six years of recovery that I started to hear from a gal I was dating, or from a friend, you know, like hey, you're kind of dick man, or hey, you know you you talk about being happy and positive all the time, but I don't think I see that, you know.

So I started to actually go to my closest friends and say, hey, you know, I would love to hear from you.

What do you see in me that's challenging to you?

What what in me is something I could get rid of and be better off without, you know?

And I started to assess, you know, this this gal I was dating, it was like, you talked about being happy, but you don't look so happy, man, you don't sound so happy.

And I started to think, like, really, am I not happy?

You know?

And and but was it an anger?

No?

You know, I think I think what I don't know if I do something that was already there was something that was laid over everything else because of the injury.

I think I think I hadn't done the emotional work like it was.

It was easy to figure out how to hike again.

It was easy to figure out how to get on a bike or fly fish relatives.

I'll do respect anyone out there who's trying to get back on the pony.

Right.

For me, the the coal's easiest part to get back into.

But the emotional part I was.

Honestly, this injury probably started pulling up emotional baggage from you know, somewhere earlier in life.

Also, it started pulling out everything, you know, not having a dad, from the age of two weeks old, through like all kinds of things.

So, you know, I think what the film teaches us through my story is that you know, every experience positive, hold on, just move positive or negative aside.

Let's not associate those words with an experience.

Every experience is a circumstance by which we can really make it what we want, right Like we have veterans.

We have veterans, and everyday people's coming through trauma and being wrapped in bubble rap when they come out of trauma, like, here's your meds, here's your help, here's your this almost being encouraged not to get strong again, whereas I kind of feel and please, this is all due respect to anyone going through tough stuff.

I'm just speaking about.

What I know is that I think we're forged by fire.

I think that if we survive something intense, by my mind, we should be stronger after that via the experience, via the learned sensorial, physical, chemical experience of all of it.

We should be just this stronger human being that now has experience with trauma.

So the next time we experience it, because we we are going to that.

It's a bitter sweet life we live.

So the next time it happens, we will if we've embraced it, if we've learned from it, if we've used it to make to to really add on to our experience in life.

I think that we will be able to address the next event in our life with just you know, as a more adaptable human being.

If we're not crutched by meds, if we're not clouded by meds, if we're not kind of brought back into society as oh, you're an amputee, let me give you a HARKing sticker for your review mirror.

Of course someone may really need that and they should use it.

Do you get where I'm going with?

So, you know, for me, I understand by me, it's like I just had to hear you say it because I can't.

I don't have anything comfarable.

No, it was like, well, it's like I was LK hunting three days ago, and um, you know, guy got a great bowl, buddy of mine, and we're less than a quarter mile from the truck.

But of course the last quarter mile is you know, down this steep, nasty hill with chopstick deadfall everywhere, and we're dragging this caped head out.

He's got the high and everything ways double what it should, you know, and we're dragging it out, and um my buddy calls for a break.

So we break and he's like man, he's like, he's like, man, we switched sides.

Man, my hand is killing me, Like my arm is killing me.

Like look over this guy, and I like, lift up my hook and my right hand.

I'm like, you're gonna call you're gonna say that to a guy we want hand?

Your hands killing you, you know, And so I think, look for me, this film was not made by me.

This was made by an objective team of talented storytellers.

Phil Baraboo and his whole team took three eighty six hours of footage and they brought that down to an eight hour assembly of selected imagery that they felt was strong, and then from that they brought it down to, you know, the two hour version, which was the first thing I got to see.

So I didn't even touch any of this until it was at two hours.

And now it's an eighty six minute film that is out there in the public, which just released two weeks ago, and I didn't make a single edit on it.

I didn't make one change to any of it, because for me, part of my healing is to say to the outside world, which is the director and his team, he knows the message I wanted.

He knows that I was really hell bent on it being this root like recovery tool for others and um and he kept that in mind.

But I was interested in seeing what does one else see in my story.

I don't want this to be EDWARDO on the mountaintop saying like this is me, everybody.

I wanted it to be those guys looking in and then pulling out through their life.

So and I think it's it's a beautiful film for that reason that it's it's this more general human peace.

You know, it's called Charged.

The Eduardo Darcias story just released.

That's insane too, you know, that's insane.

I'm flying on Delta back from New York City last week and someone I'm wearing the shirt and it says it says Charged, EDWARDO.

Garcia's story, and the guy checks me and he's like, welcome, you know, like, have a good fight, Mr Garcia.

What's what's the Charged?

And then I get to say, oh, this is documentary film.

I don't even have says about me.

I can say, oh, it's a killer documentary.

It's on Amazon iTunes and basically everywhere else that you download your films.

Go watch it.

That's all I get say, you know, which is surreal.

Yeah, I think everyone should check it out.

So that's where it's at Amazon, Amazon iTunes and all the other subscription based platforms that are out there for digital download.

Um and obviously you can go to charge film dot com, which is our website which has a lot of the you know, more of our bios and story um, and obviously about the film team.

Um, you know, and uh yeah, you know, we'll see, we'll see what's next the next time we have yann, I want to do an episode called Hunting with a Hook.

Let's do it.

And have you explained all that?

You mean, how I can still hide off and still you still skin out your bowl, hunt your rifle?

Hunt?

Well, this has better purchase than your hands on a slippery high, is my guest.

You just poke a hole, and you know how you have like a meat gaff, you know, but just have like meat gaff that's kind of like a meat gaff.

Just poke a little hole in the hide.

You can self arresting, you know, you get a knife on there, and you know, you know, you probably all for rest.

And then I point out to that you had a stainless steel anvil, Yeah, installed on there for crushing walnuts and flat and garlic and whatnot.

Yeah, well that that that actually came around because I busted a pot.

I slammed a hole through the bottom of my carbon fiber socket, which is basically the prosthesis, you know, shell that goes over my form.

I was pounding steaks with a ranching buddy fiberglass stakes for an electric pen.

I didn't touch the like yeah you know, so yeah, and you know, but the thing is that it's it's it's great to have a left hand back, which is my hook.

However, you know, we we can't.

We we cope, we figure it out, you know.

Um, I I wrap those little hot hand warmer pads to it because there's so much metal on this that this just sucks the cold in.

It gets cold.

Yeah.

Man, when I get when I you know, if I if I've been out all day and I It'll take hours for that form to warm up for sure.

Just feel it traveling up your arm.

Yeah.

Yeah, Before we I got one last question for you.

Before we started, we were talking about the rapidly evolving UM language we use, ah, you know, just in in uh terms of political correctness and other things, and just like how we describe people, what what sorts of things ring true and not true to you terms amputee handicap I mean yeah, I mean I think if someone some you know, if if if if I if I overheard or directly it was you know, in a conversation and being addressed as being handicapped, probably challenge whoever to push up contest or something like I don't know, but um if someone said like, hey, look at that handicap guy, yeah you know or oh you know.

But but then the same goes to there's like I think we need to curb our entusiasm for wanting to find fault in everything.

Like I think there needs to be a little bit more leniency to just just being organic.

Right, So so if someone you know says, oh, can I help you with that?

You're missing a hand, I'm not going to attack the person like, sure, hold the bag, you know, thanks.

You know, for sure, That's something that comes with me all the time because I think that if you if you spend your life hanging around younger people who are more involved in sort of the evolving cultural dialogue and cultural landscape, they have a sense of you know, they can tiptoe through the mind field of terms and ways we talk about things, and they're hip to like changes.

But then if I go back to where I grew up and I'm and I'm talking to someone, you know, one of my father's contemporaries who's in their eighties now, and they just kind of you know, spend their time fishing and living a real environment, and they'll and I know what their heart within their heart, and I know just from having a lifetime exposure to them, what kind of person they are, and they'll use language that would too many people betray another kind of person.

M But their adoption of it was so long ago that they felt that they were moving in the right direction and never heard otherwise.

Yeah, for you, listen, you know, I would encourage for me, I'm honestly unless unless I kind of I think I kind of just decided I was not gonna be moved by other people's interpretation of what they see, Like I mean, first of all, and that didn't start with my injury, but it was probably super crystallized with my injury.

But growing up a Mexican kid in a country town southwest Montana, you know, change my name from Eduardo to Edward Eddie just so I wouldn't get made fun of, you know, like so that prejudice, you know, you know I saw that early in life, you know.

And uh, and so for now, this for me is just a radical humility test.

It's just a it's just a radical introduction into just being a little bit more human.

You know, like Michael Frontie who always wears a hat, right, stay human, And I think that just means it needs to be room for organic occurrence to happen.

And of course some people are malicious and malintended, but not everybody.

I think we need to continue to give people the benefit of the doubt that they're just trying to react the way they naturally know.

And let's just hope they're open to being told like, hey, that kind of hurt me this way, but you know, like call a handicap person just Mr so and so instead of like that guy who's handicapped, you need help, you know, um.

And I would encourage everybody get get involved, you know, get involved in something that challenges you.

So I do a lot of work right now with the group called the Challenge Athletes Foundation at of San Diego, and that's the group that I'm sort of doing these triathlons and stuff with, and so that what they stand for.

They've been around for twenty years, nonprofit and they basically believe that through active sport, anybody can lead a healthier life.

And of course their focus is on on people with physical disabilities, whether it's congenital trauma, um or trauma based you know, and so you know, through being a part being you know, one of their athletes now and one of their spokespersons.

I also you know, fundraise for them.

So I'm an active part of that UM.

But what you know, what it does for me is it's it's it's fun and it makes me feel like I have a community you know of other amputees that I and non amputees just folks with.

You know, they were born with some type of you know, spin o bifida or whatever it may be.

UM, some type of physical challenge, right, and let me tell you what you want to be inspired and go to Challenge Athletes Foundation event and you get your ass handed to you in a swim by blind swimmer or a summer without legs and sure, you know, like you get smoked in the water by as summer with no legs and you're like blown away and you go up to the guy and you're like ship or the woman or whoever, and you shake their hand.

You're like, wow, you just crush that swim and you have They're like thanks, but I had no drag through the water, m you know.

So it's just like there's a humor right that they kind of they invite you into just smiling and laughing at the many different lenses that is being human today.

You don't have to have your legs, you know.

I should have one last question for you.

You've you've come out of this a transformed person and and a powerful, powerful person, and you're in touch with the symbolism of what happened to you and how you came out of it.

Do you ever think to yourself, m Um, if you go back to that day in October in two thousand eleven, if you once again had like grab your knife and reach out and touch the bear, would you touch the bearone?

I wouldn't change a thing.

I don't imagine you would.

Yeah, all right, man, thanks for joining us.

Check out the movie Charged, the Eduardo or Garcia's story