Armchair Anonymous: Wild Card VII

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Speaker 1 Whoa,

Speaker 1 welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Rothers.
I'm joined by Buck Rogers.

Speaker 2 Hi.

Speaker 1 Today is Wildcard.

Speaker 1 Dealer's choice, chef's kiss.

Speaker 1 Pick your poison. Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 Roll of Royal

Speaker 1 Casino Royale. Roll of the dice.
That's what Jess says all the time.

Speaker 2 Well, it was a thing we did at Mess Hall. You could roll the dice and they would bring you a drink and you wouldn't know what it was.

Speaker 1 I love that.

Speaker 1 They should do it more like a Russian roulette.

Speaker 1 You hold a toy pistol to your. No, I'm scared of guns.
I'm going to be honest with everyone. This one leaned very

Speaker 1 medical.

Speaker 3 Very.

Speaker 1 Very, very medical.

Speaker 1 And there's some intense ones. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think it's a skip. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think it's a skip. This one's a skip, everybody.
So skip it and we'll see you next week. Have a great day.
We'll see you next week. We'll see you next week for a different one.
I loved it, though.

Speaker 1 Yeah, me too. This was wild.
Remember the okay. They put the wild and wild card.

Speaker 1 All right, please enjoy wild card. Number seven.
Yep, we've done seven. Holy this is the seventh wild card.
I believe so, yes. Can't be right but i must be wrong lucky i enjoy seven

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Speaker 1 Hard times come and go.

Speaker 1 Good times, take them slow

Speaker 1 My life

Speaker 1 I had them both

Speaker 1 shining

Speaker 1 Hello, can you hear us?

Speaker 4 I can hear you. Can you hear me? Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 And we can see you too.

Speaker 1 We can see you. You're in a tent.
I'm in a tent/slash closet.

Speaker 4 I like to follow rules like Monica.

Speaker 2 I love that.

Speaker 1 I don't know how you guys do it. I just don't know how rules are followed.
Okay, so we're calling you Taylor. That's very promising.
And why did you pick Taylor as a code name?

Speaker 4 There's two reasons. One, my eight-year-old daughter loves Taylor Swift.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 You could have just said eight-year-old daughter, and we would have known the rest.

Speaker 2 Or 37-year-old daughter.

Speaker 1 Daughter, yeah, also true.

Speaker 4 And then my best friend growing up and I, that would be our code name.

Speaker 4 If we went to a restaurant and we didn't want to say our name, or if we met somebody who we didn't want to tell the truth to, we would use Taylor. It goes way back.

Speaker 1 So you do break the rules. No, you and I have honor and rules.

Speaker 1 Okay, so Taylor, you have a wild card story.

Speaker 4 Okay, I'm going to try and do this as best as possible and stick with the timeline.

Speaker 1 Can I tell you, you will not be in trouble if you don't stick to the timeline. Okay, just so you know, there's no threat of trouble.

Speaker 1 So, okay, now, yes, that's true.

Speaker 4 One Saturday in 2012, I was cleaning my stove. I cut my thumb on the metal piece of the burner.
I'm trying to push through like it's fine, but it just kept really hurting me.

Speaker 4 By Monday morning, my thumb was fairly swollen. I had to go to the doctor.
I was administered two shots. One is a T-DAP shot and the other one was a flu vaccine.

Speaker 4 After I saw the doctor, I went to another room. I was in there with a nurse and she got the T-DAP shot all fixed up, but she didn't know that I needed this other vaccine.

Speaker 4 So I saw her look at the paper, then realize, oh, she's getting another one. She came back in with the other syringe.
She administered both shots into my arm and I went about my day.

Speaker 4 By that night, I was feeling really off. So the next morning, I wake up and I have no energy whatsoever.
I push through my day at work and I'm just not feeling good at all.

Speaker 4 So I call my mom because she's my best friend. And I say, I think I need to go to the emergency room.
So she meets me at my house. She's helping me change out of my work clothes.

Speaker 4 And we noticed that my arm where I received the shots was just so swollen

Speaker 4 and getting like little red spots. So my mom's like, I wonder if it has to do with shots that you got.
So we go to the emergency room. They take me in fairly fast because I had such a bad fever.

Speaker 4 They give me all the good drugs and I'm still uncomfortable. And they tried to say, you know, I think you'll be okay.
I think it might just be allergic reaction. You should probably just go home.

Speaker 4 And I was like, no, I'm not going to go home. I stay the night.
And so that was Tuesday night. The next morning, the nurse comes in to check my temperature and do my vitals.

Speaker 4 And she puts the thermometer to my ear and she looks at it and she has this face. She took the cap off and put a new one in, put it in her ear to look to make sure she was reading it properly.

Speaker 4 So then she drops the thermometer and just walks out the door in a really big hurry. My mom's a nurse, she went over and grabbed the thermometer and she looked at it and showed me it was 105.8

Speaker 4 this is why i'm not feeling good i'm glad my symptoms are showing the pain i'm in they get three or four doctors in the room so they're like there has to be a pus pocket in your arm because my arm had grown so much bigger since just the day before a pee-pee a pus pocket i know i'm not sure how far i should go with it

Speaker 1 all the way

Speaker 4 so they pull out this needle and it is huge they put that in my arm three to five times and it was excruciating.

Speaker 1 And were they pulling out pus?

Speaker 4 No, there was no pus.

Speaker 1 They were looking for.

Speaker 4 They didn't find anything. And so they're all kind of like scratching their heads.
And we knew one of the doctors, he was like, we're going to do all the tests for you. So I went into the MRI.

Speaker 4 As soon as I get out of the MRI, there is already somebody waiting to bring me up to my room. My mom, my dad, and my best friend were waiting right by the door.

Speaker 4 I couldn't even hardly say hi because the pre-op guy came to get me.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck.

Speaker 4 So it's my mom, my dad, and I in pre-op. The doctor that we know came in and he was like, we read your MRI and it is glowing.
You have necrotizing fasciitis.

Speaker 1 Well, hold on. Necrotizing fasciitis?

Speaker 2 That means you're a fish.

Speaker 1 Is it dying to chronic flesh?

Speaker 4 It's flesh-eating bacteria.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. I've heard of this on the news.
I didn't think I'd ever meet anyone in real life. It's a streptis bacteria, isn't it?

Speaker 4 I think it is because they thought it was like an airborne disease. Luckily, it's not.
So I got like a really good room. All the nurses that were coming in, you know, it looked like E.T.

Speaker 2 Mercer.

Speaker 1 They were completely covered.

Speaker 2 I thought you got that from going in the pond.

Speaker 4 Every time people see my arm and ask me the story, because I'll tell anybody and they're like, oh my gosh, it's from the lake, isn't it?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, no, it's not.

Speaker 4 But now you're scaring me. I don't want to go in the lake now.

Speaker 1 In Georgia, you can't go in the pond or the lake.

Speaker 4 My mom, being the nurse, knew exactly what it was. And I'm looking at him and he's like, Well, it's flesh-eating bacteria.

Speaker 4 It was the scariest thing because just a few months before that, there was a report in the news where a lady in Florida had lost all of her limbs with it.

Speaker 4 And I read so many stories of this poor woman, and I just could not believe it.

Speaker 4 And then here I am in pre-op, ready to to go in because I have the same thing that this woman had okay and can I ask is the source of it your finger you cut or the shot it was the shot I sent Emma pictures I'm not sure if you want to jump ahead

Speaker 1 that whole pile the whole pile

Speaker 1 oh my lord

Speaker 1 oh

Speaker 1 god holy fuck America

Speaker 1 this is horrible guys you have to imagine this This is one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. Oh, my.
Oh, but you have a smile on your face.

Speaker 1 Guys, you need to know it is virtually a football taken out of her upper arm. So they went in there and they cut that area out to get to all the bacteria.

Speaker 4 Yeah. When the doctor came in to talk to us about it, he was like, we are so lucky we caught it because it was only in your flesh.
It did not. get to your muscle yet.

Speaker 1 Thank God.

Speaker 4 The next day, the pain was still so bad. As you saw, there's black foam in there.
It's called a wound back, and it helps heal. I won't go into detail.

Speaker 4 It's a very cool machine, but it's really gross if you see the whole contraption working. I couldn't handle the wound back because my arm was still really painful.

Speaker 1 You feel undermedicated throughout this whole story. I want to be there advocating.
You need a massive dilauded. You need some fentanyl.

Speaker 4 I was on dilauded, but my fever wasn't going down. And the pain medicine was probably helping, but it felt like I was burning from the inside out.

Speaker 1 Jesus.

Speaker 1 this is horrifying. I bet you felt like I did in Mexico City, but for days.
I think necrotic flesh is worse than what I felt.

Speaker 2 I know. I'm sorry to tell you.

Speaker 1 I don't think you can feel worse than I felt for those eight hours.

Speaker 2 Well, let's hope you don't get this. Don't go in any ponds.

Speaker 1 I'm going to live on a pond. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Those southern ponds and lakes.

Speaker 1 So, how long was the recovery?

Speaker 4 I was in the hospital for 10 days because of my symptoms and my fever.

Speaker 4 They were afraid that I was still going to either, one, lose my arm or two, it was gonna go to my heart because it was on my left side.

Speaker 4 Oh, I laugh now, but my boyfriend at the time looks at me and he's like, I can't come to the hospital room every day and see you. I have jobs lined up and then I have a workout routine.

Speaker 1 Oh, sure. He's gotta stay fit.

Speaker 2 At the time, is

Speaker 1 that guy sucks? Well, hold on.

Speaker 1 No, no, don't. I'm only gonna ask, were you 20 at the time? Was he like a 20-year-old dum-dum? No, we were 30.

Speaker 1 Oh, jeez, okay. Really bad.
That's rough.

Speaker 4 I was in the hospital for 10 days and then I had that wound back in for another three months.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 4 And it just slowly closes up and it has to heal from the inside out. Because if you have an infection, you can't just do stitches to cover it back up.

Speaker 2 So the needle.

Speaker 4 Yeah, the poor nurse, because I'm sure she didn't mean to do this.

Speaker 4 But in my heart, I feel like she got the T dap ready, looked at the paperwork and thought, oh, I got to to go get that other vaccine and then put the T dap syringe on the tray and then went to go get the other syringe with the vaccine in it and then came back and administered it in my arm when my arm got swollen you could actually see where the needle had gone in so it was like opening up I guess you could say it was starting to eat right there exactly so we think it just wasn't clean that maybe on the tray that's my guess because they did go through and do all the tests to make sure it wasn't the actual lot of those TDAPs.

Speaker 4 Nobody else in my area had contracted this. I was the lucky one in a million.

Speaker 1 Wowie, wow. Oh, Taylor.
Sometimes life is just insanely unfair. You didn't even like do anything wrong while you cut your finger.

Speaker 2 You picked a bad boyfriend.

Speaker 4 That's the good thing about this. It just showed me who was there for me and who I really should be spending my time with.

Speaker 4 It really makes you change your perspective on life.

Speaker 2 You're very positive. I like that.

Speaker 1 A lot of silver linings here. Boy, that fucking sucks.
I'm going to put that in the top five worst injuries I've ever seen. And I've seen like a guy's leg come completely off in a snowmobile accident.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think this is like the shark, the

Speaker 1 bear, whatever. The bear attack.
And this. Yeah.
These are the worst and the best. Should we have a banquet for like the most injured arm cherries? Oh, how fun.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you so much for the time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, thanks, Taylor. That's incredible.

Speaker 4 Thank you. You guys have a good day.

Speaker 1 All right, you too. Bye, Taylor.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. I'm sad that happened to her.
You can't even post that picture. No.
You'd get kicked off Instagram.

Speaker 2 They could have done an episode of Magic School Bus where they go into the wound in the bus.

Speaker 1 Explore it with like speed lunking tools. You could definitely rappel down into this gash.
Wow. Oh.
That sucks. I am never going out.
I hate when people get sick at the hospital.

Speaker 1 It's so fucking common. They say it's like the most dangerous, but there's so many bacterias, viruses.

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, superbugs.

Speaker 1 Hey, guys, how are you? Is this Brennan? It is. That's a great name.
I don't think I've ever met a Brennan. I'm the first, I guess.

Speaker 6 Sometimes it's spelled with an AN and not an E.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you've met other Brennans.

Speaker 6 Yes, but not in the same spelling.

Speaker 2 Are you at a school?

Speaker 1 I am actually at a school. Are you a teacher?

Speaker 6 I'm a student advocate at a high school.

Speaker 1 Oh, cool.

Speaker 6 I work at an alternate high school. I help kids who are in rehab, teen parents.

Speaker 1 The Aaron Weakley's at the world. He went to an alternative high school.
You could smoke cigarettes in class and stuff. It was real Lucy Goodwin.
Sometimes with the teachers.

Speaker 1 Okay, so Brennan, you have a wild card story.

Speaker 6 I do. So it was June of 2014.
We had just gotten married and our honeymoon was to Paradise Valley, Montana. We were going to go whitewater rafting on the Yellowstone.

Speaker 6 It was the second day we got there. It was kind of overcast, raining on and off.
It's June in Montana, so it's not super warm yet.

Speaker 6 There was a lot of runoff still, so the water levels were pretty high and it was cold.

Speaker 6 We showed up the outfitter thinking that we were going to to have like this big group of people to go river rafting with. And there were two other people and the guide.

Speaker 6 So, it was my wife, Nicole, myself, a guy named Billy, I'm going to say, and a guy named Jeff. Billy was probably in his late teens.
I don't know if he was quite an adult yet.

Speaker 6 And then Jeff was in his mid-50s.

Speaker 1 He was Billy's dad. He was Billy's uncle.

Speaker 6 Oh, which I kind of thought was weird at the time, but I mean, whatever.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you never know.

Speaker 6 So we showed up to this outfitter.

Speaker 6 The guide's like, hey, all you need is a life jacket and a wetsuit. Leave your keys, leave your phone.
He's like, oh, if you want the real experience, you need to leave your shoes. I'm just barefoot.

Speaker 6 I think everybody else was like, no, I'm wearing my shoes.

Speaker 1 I'm like, I want the real experience. I'm a river man.

Speaker 1 He was challenging your masculinity.

Speaker 6 He definitely was. On the way to the river drop, he starts explaining to us, there's only really two spots.
that you have to be concerned about.

Speaker 6 The first spot is a class four rapid at the very beginning. The second one is about a mile down that same river.
It's called a hydraulic hole or what people call a washing machine rapid.

Speaker 6 And what can happen with that is if you get sucked in, it's hard to get out. It just kind of recycles you.

Speaker 6 So we get to the drop-off area, get in the boat, and on both sides of this river are basically just cliffs. So one side of the river is the road we drove in on, the other side is like a service road.

Speaker 6 We're 20 miles from really anything. So there's Nicole and I are up front.
And behind Nicole is Jeff. And then behind me is Billy.

Speaker 6 The guide says, hey, when we get up to this rapid, this class four, you have to paddle super hard or there's a chance that you know the boat could flip.

Speaker 6 At this point, is when he's like, Oh, by the way, if you fall in, make sure you hold on to the raft. So we can kind of see this rapid coming up.

Speaker 6 He's like, All right, everybody needs to paddle as hard as they can. So we just dig in, dig in, dig in.
I remember looking back and seeing Billy, and he's frozen.

Speaker 6 He wasn't paddling, he wasn't doing anything.

Speaker 1 Sure, sure. Jesus, and it was scary.

Speaker 6 I remember the last thing I saw was my feet in the sky.

Speaker 1 Oh, your bare feet, my bare, hairy, hot ass feet.

Speaker 6 Then I just remember darkness and cold. The water was so cold.

Speaker 1 So the boat did a wheelie. It went straight up.
You just flipped on it.

Speaker 1 Oh, boy.

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Speaker 6 So all five of us were in the water. at this point.
The raft's upside down. And luckily, we had fallen in close enough to the raft where we could grab hold of it.
So everybody's still holding it.

Speaker 6 So there's me on one side with Billy, Jeff and Nicole on the other side, and the guides on the back.

Speaker 6 He says, hey, I got to hop on top of this because on the top of the raft, there's a rope that they can pull in case of a flip. So he's like, hey, I got to pull this raft back over.

Speaker 6 You guys need to let go for a second. So he counts one, two, three.
And on three, Billy lost his shit. He lets go and he jumps on top of me, like on my head, pushes me under the water.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 1 What? He's panicked like he's going to drown. So he's like trying to grab onto something.
This is why you don't rescue a drowning swimmer, by the way.

Speaker 6 Have you guys seen that scene in The Guardian when he elbows him?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the move is you got to knock the person out.

Speaker 6 I should have elbowed it, but he jumps on top of my ass and sends me and him downriver. It was enough force to push us away from the raft.
We are moving at a much faster pace than the raft.

Speaker 1 Did he get it over? Because that's its own challenge.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he actually was able to pull Jeff and Nicole back in.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 6 It's a crazy river. And I'm in and out, in and out, trying to catch my breath.
And all the while I go under, I come back up and I can hear like,

Speaker 6 and I finally hear a guide get to the left side, get to the left side washing machine. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 6 And in my head, I'm like, oh, God. Nicole's out there paddling.
The guy's paddling. All Jeff is doing at this point is just scream crying for Billy.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. He's like, how am I going to tell my brother I lost his son out on this river?

Speaker 6 This is a mess. So I start swimming as hard as I can.
I can just hear Billy screaming behind me. And I'm like, he's not even moving.

Speaker 6 He's sitting sitting there with his hands on his life jacket, just screaming bloody murder.

Speaker 1 Oh, fuck, Billy. Billy, yeah.

Speaker 6 Part of me was like, Do I do the selfish thing and just keep swimming and just let him go?

Speaker 1 Let's relieve you of some guilt. You're doing a quick analysis whether one of you can live or none of you can live.
I think that's the right math to be doing.

Speaker 2 I like didn't even think about Billy.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. Yeah,

Speaker 1 Billy's on his own.

Speaker 2 Billy's the reason you're in this situation.

Speaker 1 You kind of want Billy to be punished a little bit.

Speaker 1 That's diabolical.

Speaker 1 I know. I know.

Speaker 6 So I'm sitting in the river and I'm like, okay, I got to go back and get Billy.

Speaker 1 Wow, you're nice.

Speaker 6 On the river, the right side, as you go around, is where the washing machine rapid is.

Speaker 6 The reason he was telling us to get to the left is because if you got far enough to the left of the river, you would miss it. I go back and I grab him with my right arm by the life jacket.

Speaker 6 And he's just like flailing. He's not doing anything.
I'm trying to one-arm myself and him to the left side of the river. I was exhausted at this point, but my adrenaline was going.

Speaker 6 So I had enough strength to get to where I knew he was going to be okay. And I knew that if I didn't let him go, we were both going over.

Speaker 6 At that point, I was like, okay, I'm going to get to the shore. I think I pulled him enough.
I got to the side of the shore, got out and just like laid on a rock and then barely went over.

Speaker 1 Boom!

Speaker 6 And I didn't see him go into the rapids. Like, I couldn't see him at all, the way the river was.
And so I had no idea if I had helped him.

Speaker 6 But I do remember one specific moment of terror when I'm laying on this rock, just exhausted.

Speaker 6 I remember looking back and seeing my newly wedded wife and the guide and this screaming middle-aged man fly past me yeah

Speaker 6 how are they gonna come get me i'm in the wild by myself like what the hell am i gonna do so i am now laying on this rock in the middle of the yellowstone wilds basically with no shoes, no cell phone.

Speaker 6 All I have is my life jacket and my wetsuit.

Speaker 1 And you're in bear country. Oh, no.

Speaker 6 So we were driving through Yellowstone the day before and had seen some black bears. That's all that's in my mind.

Speaker 1 Like, oh, no. Yeah, what's next is the bears.

Speaker 1 You feel so validated, right? To just avoid the nature.

Speaker 2 Don't go there.

Speaker 1 Don't go to nature. Well, I don't anymore.
So

Speaker 6 there's the two cliffs on each side. I have to make a decision.
I'm like, all right, I'm going to climb up this cliff and go to the service road.

Speaker 6 And maybe that's where the company van can come get me. And I'll just kind of wait there.

Speaker 1 Because you're like, there's no way I'm getting back in the water. No, hell no.
Float down to meet them. Okay.

Speaker 6 That did cross my mind. Maybe I could walk along the river and they maybe have stopped, but I didn't know if they just kept going.
I don't know if Billy had just kept going.

Speaker 6 So I'm like, they could be miles down the river. Who knows how long it would take? So I start climbing this cliff basically barefoot.
My feet are bleeding. I get to the top and I kid you not.

Speaker 6 Do you know what goatheads are? No.

Speaker 6 They're like a thorn. They get like hard when they fall off and they're like really.
pokey and they get in bike tires and bike tires go fly all the time. There's a whole freaking field of them.

Speaker 6 So I take off my life jacket and and I try to strap it to my feet, thinking like maybe I could scooch across this field of go heads.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, that didn't work.

Speaker 6 So I basically just had to like walk across this nasty field.

Speaker 6 All the while they'd caught up to Billy. He had gotten out of the river, pulled the boat off.
The guide was like, hey, I'm going to go up and take Billy back to the van.

Speaker 6 He's not going to want to keep going. All of them were like, we don't want to go.
Nicole's like, I don't want to keep going. Like, where's my husband?

Speaker 1 Yeah. What the hell is going on?

Speaker 6 And he goes, well, I'm going to go up and drop Billy off and look for Brennan. He's gone for 30 minutes.
Comes back without Billy and tells Nicole, oh, I found Brennan.

Speaker 6 He's going to go back in the van. He doesn't want to keep going.

Speaker 2 So he lied?

Speaker 1 He lied.

Speaker 6 Told Nicole that I was okay and safe.

Speaker 1 Oh, my.

Speaker 1 Okay, hold on.

Speaker 1 Everyone's going to hate this and make an argument for him. Max, no.
Look, everyone's fucked at this point. Let's just say no one's day is going as planned.
So he's like, okay,

Speaker 1 I have this woman on board. Is it going to be easier for her to continue thinking her husband's safe?

Speaker 2 Why do they need to continue? Why can't they do what he did? I don't know that part.

Speaker 6 They can only pull the raft out at a certain point in the river because it's so heavy. And they remember the cliffs.

Speaker 6 So there was like a side path that they walked up, but it wasn't wide enough for the raft. So they had to finish the boat.

Speaker 2 Leave the fucking boat.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. It's a pretty expensive boat.

Speaker 2 The boat? Who gives a fuck? You get the people out.

Speaker 6 I mean, I agree. He comes back, tells Nicole that I'm safe, that I didn't want to finish.
I'm like, come on, man.

Speaker 1 I literally just got married to this woman. Please tell me how to have like some sort of weenie.

Speaker 6 He's like, hey, you got to finish the tour with us at that point. And it was probably like only another two hours or so.
So they get back in and the rest of the river is pretty calm for them.

Speaker 6 But all the while, I finally get to the road. But for some reason, I don't know if I got disoriented.
I started walking in the wrong direction.

Speaker 6 And now when I think back, I'm like, I was so stupid because I could have just looked at the river. So I take off the top of my wetsuit because now I'm just cold.

Speaker 6 So I'm half naked basically with just my life jacket in my hand.

Speaker 6 And I'm walking down the road for probably like 40 minutes or so and this prius starts coming down the road and i'm like i'm saved sweet they can like call somebody it's all good right there's a lot of tourists in yellowstone and i could not communicate with them they spoke an entirely different language sure sure sure they were on vacation and all they said was yellowstone with a question mark like yellowstone where's yellowstone they were looking for you to help them find old faithful also i'm bleeding

Speaker 6 so they turn around and leave and i'm like okay at least there's traffic on this road Right. So I keep walking.
I finally get to this like ranger shack.

Speaker 6 I put my life jacket on the ground and just kind of lay down. And it starts to rain.
All of a sudden, I just see the headlights and the van. So they had finally found me.

Speaker 6 And it was four hours or so later.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 6 Billy had run up to Nicole after all this and was like, oh my gosh, your husband saved my life. Thank you so much.
She's like, get away from me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 After all of this, we're back in the van and the guide was like, hey, how would you like to come work with us next summer? You can get certified and come work on the river with us.

Speaker 6 And I'm like, yeah, that sounds awesome. Let's do it.

Speaker 1 My wife is like, absolutely.

Speaker 1 You are not getting back on that boat. That guy is up and down.
He's like saying you're not qualified. You get your quitter.
Then he's offering you a job.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's really got to get his narrative straight.

Speaker 6 I wouldn't be surprised if their river rafting business is no longer around.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, Brennan.
Have you ever gone rafting again?

Speaker 6 No, I would, but the very next day we actually went hiking and ran into some brown bears. And my wife took off running, left me for dead again.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. This is awesome.
You barely made it.

Speaker 2 Honeymoon. It was great.

Speaker 1 You're still together, though.

Speaker 6 Yep, we're still together. She's actually here.

Speaker 1 Get her in here. Hi.
Hi. Can you hear us? Yes.
That sounds like a terrible honeymoon. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 I was like, I'm going to be a widow. And the guide was like, Brennan's not finishing.
And I'm like, I married a horrible person.

Speaker 2 I'm not following all the logistics of why he couldn't just bring you back up.

Speaker 5 I don't know either. Maybe he wanted to spend extra time with me or something.

Speaker 2 Yeah, maybe that was.

Speaker 1 Oh, he flipped it. He drove it straight into the jump, flipped it.

Speaker 1 He's like, I'll be alone with her in no time. Exactly.
Got to get rid of this uncle and madness.

Speaker 2 I'm going to say your husband is a wimp.

Speaker 1 He went back to Utah. He told me.
He's getting this annulled. Well, it's nice meeting both of you.
I'm sorry that was your honeymoon.

Speaker 6 No, it's all good. We're happily married.
So thanks for letting us tell our story, guys. All right.

Speaker 1 Take care. See ya.

Speaker 2 wow honeymoon honeymoon in hell my honeymoon is gonna be in a spa yeah yeah

Speaker 1 keep it nice and safe but you might fall in love with your masseur well you want a little risk that's the kind of risk i'm willing to take that's the kind of risk you'll take on you mean masseuse

Speaker 1 i said masseur

Speaker 1 i know i'm on monsoor and monsoor

Speaker 1 Hello!

Speaker 1 How are you all? Wonderful. Is this Elizabeth? This is.
Where are you at, Elizabeth?

Speaker 5 I'm in South Carolina.

Speaker 1 Oh, wonderful. Okay, so you have a wild card story.
So this could be anything. Could be a ghost story.
We don't know.

Speaker 5 Not a ghost story. When I was graduating college, I wanted to do something fun summer after.
And my professor reached out and was like, I'm going to climb Mount Kilimajaro over the summer.

Speaker 5 And I was like, oh, seems like a great opportunity. Something I would never do, honestly.
I love a shower at night, love to sleep in my bed.

Speaker 1 Like not a camping girl.

Speaker 5 But for some reason, I was like, this is great.

Speaker 5 this is exactly what i need i taken some classes with her she was great and she was like i'm taking students from my last institution we get there and she was like oh one more thing after we hike the next day i really like to go and get a massage oh and i was like oh that's awesome i can get on board with a massage now she's speaking your language we were just talking about spas monsoors we climbed the mountain honestly the climb itself wasn't awful how long did it take seven days up two days down so nine in total yuck no wonder you get get a massage after are you camping or are there lodges along the way no you're in a tent i don't know why i wanted to do this i would never do it again i mean i had a great experience and you're going pootie in the woods and stuff the whole line

Speaker 5 like when we were at camp they would set up these little tent porter potties but if you had to go on the hikes during the day you just had to find like a rock and hope that lion didn't leap out

Speaker 5 i brought toilet paper good friends no way but a lot of people really struggled with altitude and so their stomachs were super messed up and they were just having to find rocks and stuff and the higher you get the less rocks there are so less things to really hide behind and it was really more of just like a distance thing whenever you had to go i'm not doing this so that was interesting but the hike itself was great but the whole time i was really looking forward to the massage like at night when i was cold in my tent i was like this is gonna be worth it i'm gonna get this massage at the end or like when my shoulders or my feet were hurting i was like massage at the end So we finish and the next day, I wake up and I was like, today is the day.

Speaker 5 They didn't have one big place for everyone to go. So they dropped us off around Tanzania to get these massages in pairs of two.
And so I get dropped off in the strip mall.

Speaker 5 with the girl that I shared a tent with. It looks spa-like on the inside.
They did tell me not to expect a massage like I would get here, which I was like, that's fair. I am here for the experience.

Speaker 5 I do enjoy traveling. Whatever is going on there, I'm good for.
So I get into the room and I wait for the lady to leave, and she doesn't. And I was like, Okay, cool.
And she just starts undressing me.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow, she's undressing you.

Speaker 5 Wow, this is interesting, but again, going with it. And I turn around and she's like, Get on the table, face down, and it's just a table.

Speaker 1 And if you've gotten down,

Speaker 1 okay, but hold on. Have you gotten fully neutral?

Speaker 5 I was wearing leggings, so I wasn't wearing anything under the leggings. I was expecting some coverage, so there was just nothing there, just on a table.

Speaker 1 Oh, also, yeah, not comfy, so cold. Oh my god,

Speaker 5 I'm laying face down and I'm kind of taking in the room as she's getting things ready. And I'm looking at the walls because the lights didn't turn off either.
It's like bright lights.

Speaker 5 There was no real relaxing, no like music playing.

Speaker 1 Surgery room.

Speaker 5 And I'm noticing oil.

Speaker 1 all over the walls. Oh, okay.

Speaker 5 As I'm thinking, this is so weird. I hear like splurt and then all over my back there's oil.
Whatever you're thinking, triple it.

Speaker 1 And that's probably not much.

Speaker 5 And so I'm laying on my stomach and she's massaging my back and I'm trying to like really enjoy it. I'm kind of relaxing by the time we're done with being on my stomach and she's like, flip over.

Speaker 5 I flip over and I'm alarmed at how naked I am. The lights are all on and we make eye contact and she looks at my boobs and she goes,

Speaker 5 how old are you? I was like, 22. And she was like, little girl, I don't have big boobs.

Speaker 1 Wait, you made a pinching sign. Did she pinch your breasts?

Speaker 5 Yeah, she grabbed them. She said, very flat chested.

Speaker 2 Oh my god.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to recover from that.

Speaker 5 and she's like massaging my shoulders she finds her way back to my boobs and just continues there for like 10 or 15 minutes she likes that part maybe she thinks she'll make them bigger

Speaker 1 elizabeth what's your comfort level because again we've talked about this in previous massage episodes i could see myself succumbing to whatever i could lock into like i'm going with this you know where were you at mentally when she was on minute eight of your breast massage i was just kind of going with it i was like this is going to be funny when i meet up with my friend that I share this tent with.

Speaker 5 And I was like, we're going to laugh about this because I bet she's getting the same treatment. This is how it is here.

Speaker 5 And I was like, this is really uncomfortable for me personally, but we're not going to say anything. I don't want to offend this nice lady.

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Speaker 5 So, I mean, she's like playing with my nipples, the whole nine yards.

Speaker 5 She kept making eye contact with me every time I opened my eyes. Wow, this is a nightmare.
It became a lot. And so she continues to move down my body.
And I realize

Speaker 4 she's going down there.

Speaker 5 Finally, she said something. I was like, yeah, I was like, where are you going here?

Speaker 1 And she was pretty offended.

Speaker 5 I felt bad. She's like, well, where would you like to spend this extra time? And I was like, I guess my feet really hurt.
I was like, I'm going to get anything out of this.

Speaker 5 My feet were hurting that whole nine days on that mountain. So I'm going to need a little extra love there.

Speaker 1 I don't want to dwell on your assault, but I am curious. Was she going to try to finger you?

Speaker 5 I think she was going for happy ending.

Speaker 4 Yeah, right.

Speaker 5 At the time, that was where my mind was. I was just so confused.
Yeah. It went from, I'm just going to let this slide on my boobs.
So, like, this is a really weird situation.

Speaker 2 It went from this is cultural to now it's not.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is an erotic massage. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So he finishes up on my feet. She did a great job down there.

Speaker 1 We're wrapping things up.

Speaker 5 And she's like, would you like to go to the shower with me? And I was like, although my body is covered in all of this oil, I'm good. We're done.

Speaker 5 So I go to try to dress and she again wants to dress me. The leggings and the oil, it was the longest.

Speaker 1 This is worse than the high.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it is. It really was.

Speaker 1 And at any point were you going, oh, wow, my professor's a pervert. She likes a neurotic.

Speaker 2 No, but she didn't know about this place.

Speaker 1 Let's find out. I thought the boot part was normal.

Speaker 5 Honestly, I was just like, this is so weird. We're going to laugh about this.
I was just really trying to make this a funny situation, I guess. I don't know.
I didn't want to think about it too hard.

Speaker 5 She finally dresses dresses me. I used to wear like all these friendship bracelets.
She's trying to get those back on. And I finally was like, Let me just put them in my pocket.
So we get done.

Speaker 5 And I'm in the lobby. And I pay.
I meet up with my friend. And I was like, wow, that was like a really weird massage.
And she's like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 5 I was like, did they touch you? And she was like, touch me? Yeah, it was a massage.

Speaker 5 I was like, did they play with your boobs? And she was like, no.

Speaker 1 Oh, oh, no.

Speaker 1 Wait.

Speaker 5 She's like, I think that lady was trying to give you a happy ending massage. And I was like, oh, that was the first time that it clicked.

Speaker 1 Oh, my lord. She might have just been a fucking perv.
Did you talk to your professor about it?

Speaker 5 Yeah. She was like, you have the worst lug.

Speaker 2 So no one else had this. Wow.

Speaker 5 Just me.

Speaker 2 Oh, I would be so freaked out with the hands starting to crawl down.

Speaker 1 What would you have done on the breast part?

Speaker 2 I would have done the same thing. I would have thought the breast part was cultural, especially because they gave me the warning.

Speaker 5 I was just like, oh, this is just what they do because everything else, besides not having like a blanket or anything, was a very regular massage, a lot of extra oil, but just a regular massage, right?

Speaker 1 An excessive amount of oil.

Speaker 2 Wow, so weird.

Speaker 1 Oh, that was great, Elizabeth. Yeah,

Speaker 1 real twisty and turny.

Speaker 2 Massage stories was our first armchair anonymous.

Speaker 5 I know, and I missed the prompt.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what birthed the idea. I was getting a massage at a hotel, and I'd seen all these older men there on lovers' weekends with their wives.

Speaker 1 And I thought, all these guys are on Viagra and Cialis.

Speaker 1 Are they becoming erect in these massages? That's what it started as. Don't you remember? Yes, that's 100% what I started thinking.

Speaker 1 What are all these guys who are all bumped up on Cialis and Viagra for the weekend doing in these massages? Are they getting boners? I don't remember. You don't remember that part? I remember that.

Speaker 1 I kind of remember it.

Speaker 1 I think it's everyone but Monica remembers it.

Speaker 1 You just scrubbed it from your memory. Yeah, that's probably right.

Speaker 1 Oh, man.

Speaker 2 Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 So nice meeting you. All right.
Bye-bye.

Speaker 2 I wanted to tell her that she could go by Lilibet.

Speaker 1 Help me through.

Speaker 1 Help me with the math of that.

Speaker 2 The queen of England. Her name was Elizabeth.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Queen Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 And her husband and family called her Lilibet.

Speaker 1 Lilibet. We learned that on the crown?

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 1 Why'd I forget that part? Because I'm bad with names.

Speaker 1 Cassandra? Yes. Beautiful earring.
Very eye-catchy.

Speaker 8 Thank you. They are by an Indigenous artist named Joe Big Mountain.

Speaker 5 He did the quill work for Lily Gladstone's Oscar dress.

Speaker 1 No way. Amazing.
Where do you live?

Speaker 8 So I am currently located in Salt Lake City. Okay.

Speaker 1 And are you from Utah?

Speaker 8 No, born and raised Montana.

Speaker 1 We just talked to an arm cherry that's from Salt Lake and their story took place in Montana. Very simple.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you have a wildcard story.

Speaker 8 This takes place August 29th, 2001. I am 19 at the time, and I am supposed to be starting my freshman year of college in a week.

Speaker 8 I grew up in a rural town called Phillipsburg, Montana, and outside of town there was a sapphire mine. Summer job, I worked at the sapphire mine.
Two parts to it.

Speaker 8 You could, as a tourist, go pay for a five-gallon bucket of dirt and sift it down, or you could go up and dig your own dirt if you were more intense. And that's where I worked.

Speaker 8 Happened to be my last day on the job before I was done for this season.

Speaker 8 And at the beginning of the season for this particular fee dig site, a backhoe had gone in, created a pretty big trench, about 20, 25 feet wide. So these two walls that people could then dig into.

Speaker 8 Fast forward end of the season here, one of the walls got to be pretty tall. We're talking about eight to ten feet.
And a large overhang started to develop.

Speaker 8 I'm sitting out away from this wall, and I hear a crack. Everything goes black.
I am completely buried.

Speaker 1 Buried alive. Thick, heavy dirt.

Speaker 8 We're talking two to three tons just on me. No.

Speaker 1 Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 1 Are you by yourself?

Speaker 8 So there's customers up there.

Speaker 8 Sad part of this story is there was another customer, Rockhound from Idaho, loved to spend his vacation time at their digging stones, and he was further underneath, and he died on impact.

Speaker 1 Oh, my god, so this is a severe, crushing amount of weight.

Speaker 8 Huge. Imagine 10 feet tall, 15 feet long, just falling down.
It crashes down on me. I think, oh, this is going to be like an avalanche.
Let me try and get my hands up to my face, create an air pocket.

Speaker 8 I try and turn away, and everything goes black.

Speaker 8 I am

Speaker 8 not my body. I am immediately just in the universe having a conversation.
There is no sense of time. My body does not exist.
I have all the time in the world to decide whether I want to live or die.

Speaker 8 It was just this really comforting place to be. There was no panic.
There was just, oh, here's a decision I get to make.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 8 And so I'm having this conversation with the universe. Other people talk about white lights and life reviews and their near-death experiences.
I didn't get any of that.

Speaker 8 It was just me saying, yeah, I don't think I'm quite done yet. I've got some things I'd like to do.
There was one particular sentence that I said, which was, I haven't been a judge yet.

Speaker 8 At the time, I was political science pre-law. And the minute I said that sentence, I was back in my body.
And it was just like instantaneous. It felt like I was in that space for like 10, 15 minutes.

Speaker 8 In actuality, I was maybe a minute to a minute and a half. I can hear them saying my name.
I'm I'm aware what's happening. I'm aware I'm completely buried.

Speaker 1 And really quick, when you tried to move your hands up to your mouth to create that air pocket, could you move your body at all or you cemented in?

Speaker 8 Completely cemented in.

Speaker 1 This is the nightmare of all nightmares. If someone who's claustrophobic, I mean, you're having a hard time breathing, right?

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to spit some dirt out of my mouth.

Speaker 8 And one of the guys who'd been up there a lot that summer, so I'd gotten to know him really well, he sees this little bit of dirt move and he starts to uncover my face.

Speaker 8 My eyes are just caked with dirt, so I actually can't see anything. And I wear contacts.
I really can't see anything. They start to get my body uncovered.
In the meantime, this is 2001, rural Montana.

Speaker 8 There's no cell phone service. And our radios were not working.

Speaker 8 So one of the other customers jumped in their private vehicle and drove like the 15 minutes down the mountain back to the base to call 911 and say we need help.

Speaker 8 There's been a cave-in at the Sapphire mine and people are buried.

Speaker 1 Oh my god.

Speaker 8 As they're starting to get me uncovered and they get my torso uncovered first and free up my arms, they get this pretty big boulder off my chest.

Speaker 8 And when they removed that weight, blood started moving everywhere and I could tell that I was bleeding inside.

Speaker 8 I'm like spitting into my hand asking one of the other customers up there, hey, like, hey, what color is this? I need to know. And he's like, well, why do you need to know?

Speaker 8 And I'm like, well, I need to know if I'm spitting up blood yet. And that kind of cued them into like, oh, she might know other things that's wrong with her.
So I was like, yeah, my neck feels funny.

Speaker 8 My back feels funny. My pelvis feels funny.
These are the areas that I can tell are probably broken. They continue getting me.

Speaker 8 unburied and there was a boulder that fell next to my head so close that it pinned my hair down. It was so big they couldn't move it.
So they had to just cut my hair to get my head away from it.

Speaker 8 Took about an hour to dig me out. Volunteer ambulance shows up because that's what we have.
The closest hospital that I need to get to is over 90 minutes away.

Speaker 1 Are you optimistic during this or are you starting to get concerned you're going to run out of time?

Speaker 8 This very comforting conversation that I just had with the universe was, nope, here's my new contract. I'm going to live.
And so pretty calm about the whole thing.

Speaker 8 I get loaded up on volunteer ambulance, backboard neck brace.

Speaker 8 We're going down the mountain. I'm really starting to go into shock.
Emergency life support from Missoula had gotten the call. They rushed out to meet up with me.

Speaker 8 We do a transfer on the side of the road. They are working on me.
They realize I got pretty much no blood in me. They tried IVs in my feet, my neck, nothing was sticking.

Speaker 8 They put a big like stint into my left lung to get me some air. Finally, they load me up into that ambulance.
We take off again.

Speaker 8 About 15 minutes later, a helicopter finally makes it to us, transferred again on the side of the road.

Speaker 8 They're working on me again on the side of the road before they get me up in the air the whole time. Haven't lost consciousness.
Still there, still talking.

Speaker 8 Finally, we land at the hospital on top of the roof, and they get me out of the helicopter. I just see white coats everywhere and get me into the elevator.

Speaker 8 Those doors close, and it was this very conscious, all right, I'm out.

Speaker 8 I pass out I wake up in the emergency room to my mom and one of the nurses stitching up my hand so they did emergency chest tubes and gave me a little over four units of blood they stabilized me and then the next day they flew me out to Seattle Harborview because I was a trauma one and I needed massive teams of doctors my pelvis was broken in four different spots and my left SI joint was totally hinged open towards the back and then rolled back forward so they thought they were going to have to put a rod like in and out of my pelvis area to stabilize it.

Speaker 8 They told my parents I'd be out in Harborview for four to six weeks. So I flew out there August 30th, 2001, spent three days in the ICU, then got moved to my own room.

Speaker 8 About September 8th, they removed the chest tubes and we said, okay, we're going to discharge on September 10th.

Speaker 1 Not even two weeks.

Speaker 8 Yeah. The only way for me to get home comfortably was by air.
I was not going to do a 10-hour ambulance ride in my condition.

Speaker 8 So we chartered a flight to come to Seattle, pick me up, and fly me back to Montana. It's pretty late in the afternoon on September 10th.
My pulmonologist is like, eh, what's one more day?

Speaker 8 And my mom was like, we're getting home tonight. The flight is here.
The plane's here. We're leaving.
I don't care what time. So we land in Montana.

Speaker 8 It's still a little light out, but it's the sun's starting to set. And then I get to a rehab facility.
And then the next day, September 11th, an air traffic shuts down.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh. Wow.
Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Sim Simpson.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Mom's intuition.

Speaker 2 That's why you can't say what's one more day.

Speaker 8 So I started my freshman year of college in a neck brace, my left arm in a sling, a leg brace, and a wheelchair.

Speaker 8 I broke C7 and T1 at the spinous process, my third and fourth left rib, my left clavicle, both my lungs burst. My kidney and spleen bled out.
Major trauma to my left thigh.

Speaker 8 It's still numb to this day. Major trauma to my right knee, lots of broken teeth, fractures in my feet.
I was told I would never ski again. I walked at six weeks.
I skied at Christmas.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 That's amazing.

Speaker 2 And are you a judge?

Speaker 1 It's like you got hit by a train.

Speaker 8 Just about. I'm not a judge.
Random life events led me into social work, and I am a therapist. I I specialize in religious trauma.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 My goodness.

Speaker 1 Wow. Buried alive.
That's the worst.

Speaker 1 I'm going to have a nightmare tonight. Yeah.
You can count on it. Has the rest of the life been a joke? Like, well, I already been through the worst.
I got that out of the way.

Speaker 8 Honestly, it's interesting. I've never had any nightmares.
There's been no PTSD about that. It's my story.
I won't change it. What a story.

Speaker 1 What a story.

Speaker 1 Well, that delivered. Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 You're very welcome.

Speaker 8 Side note, as a therapist, both of you, thank you for all the work you guys do with mental health and Dax for being a vulnerable white man.

Speaker 1 That's really important to everyone. Thank you.
I like it.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Thank you so much.
Great meeting you. Take care.

Speaker 4 Bye.

Speaker 1 I'm starting to agree with you. I was against you, and now I don't ever want to leave the safety of my bedroom.
Yep.

Speaker 2 These were scaley.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they should have been called scaly cod. Twubble, twubble, twubble.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, life is.

Speaker 1 Life is a box of chocolates, as

Speaker 1 F. Gump said.
I'm glad you're safe. I have a lot of gratitude for our safety.
Me too. Lungs burst? How do your lungs burst carry on?

Speaker 2 Anyone listening, just knock on wood right about now.

Speaker 1 Give it a good knock, knock.

Speaker 2 And we'll see you next week. All right.

Speaker 1 Love you. Love you.

Speaker 1 Do you want to sing a tune or something? I'm going to do a theme song. Oh.

Speaker 1 Okay, great.

Speaker 1 We don't have a

Speaker 1 song for this new show, so here I go, go, go.

Speaker 1 We're going to ask some random questions. And with the help of Arm Cherry's, we'll get some suggestions

Speaker 1 on the flyer rhyme dish.

Speaker 1 On the flyer rhyme dish, enjoy.

Speaker 1 Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 1 Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry.com slash survey.

Speaker 9 Mom and dad, mom and mom, dad and dad, whatever, parents, are you about to spend five hours in the car with your beloved kids this holiday season?

Speaker 3 Driving to old granny's house?

Speaker 9 I'm setting the scene.

Speaker 3 I'm picturing screaming, fighting, back-to-back hours of the K-pop Demon Hunter soundtrack on repeat.

Speaker 9 Well, when your ears start to bleed, I have the perfect thing to keep you from rolling out of that moving vehicle.

Speaker 3 Something for the whole family. He's filled with laughs.
He's filled with rage. The OG Green Gronk give it up for me, James Austin Johnson, as the Grinch.

Speaker 3 And like any insufferable influencer these days, I'm bringing my crew of lesser talented friends along for the ride with A-list guests like Gronk, Mark Hamill, and the Jonas Brothers, whoever they are.

Speaker 3 There's a little bit of something for everyone.

Speaker 9 Listen to Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.