One Man With a Chamber — Battling CTE

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome everyone. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting, the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition, and by a grant from the state of Wisconsin's Dose of Reality Real Talks, reminding you that opioids are powerful drugs and that one pill can kill. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: William Person is a former nine year Team USA bobsled athlete whose career left him battling the devastating effects of CTE and, no, I'm not gonna try to pronounce it. At his lowest point, he could barely get up off the floor loss in confusion, depression and tense headaches, and in deteriorating brain. Hope came when he discovered hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which restored clarity in his thinking, color to his vision, and purpose to his life, which is what we're gonna talk about today.

Mike: Today, William is on a mission to raise awareness of brain damage in sports, the military, and other lifetime collisions, and share the importance of protecting and healing the brain. To realize this mission, he's launched a GoFundMe which will help raise funds to purchase a medical grade hyperbaric oxygen chamber to open a CTE recovery center where anyone battling CTE and brain injury symptoms can get treatment at absolutely no cost to them.

Mike: Welcome, William, and thanks for joining us.

William: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Mike: I'm so glad you're here. Let's talk about your career first, then we'll get into the CTE stuff. You originally, I think, ran track, right?

William: Yeah. That's how I went to college. Yeah.

Mike: What'd you run?

William: I was mainly a long jumper, but I ran 400, 200, 100.

William: I even ran some 800's in my day. So yeah track and field was my passion.

Mike: I can't imagine you enjoyed the 800 very much.

William: You know what, when I was younger I loved it. I f they said I had to run it, yeah. Okay. Not a big deal, but, no I didn't mind it at all.

Mike: How did you end up getting recruited then? I assume you got recruited to do the bobsled.

William: Yeah, I was trained at Brigham Young University at the time. I was on my last couple years of track. They had just opened like the first ever independent living transitional housing program. So the state of Utah opened me as a pilot program.

William: So I was doing different things and so I was training at BYU and some people told me, Hey, there's a tryout coming for the 2002 Winter Olympics you should try out. And I had about another year of track left in me, maybe. And I was like maybe I could pick a sponsor up for the last year if I go. 'Cause I knew NBC was covering it.

William: And when I went, the truth is I set a new record on a tryout. This driver who was there, who was responsible for helping them recruit, he put his arm around me. And he, with the, all these hot lights and cameras on me, NBC, he offered me 50 grand to race on his team for three months. And I was a businessman.

William: Like I said, I owned a treatment facility and it was doing fairly, very well actually. And I didn't need the money, but I was like extra 50 grand, man. I could, I was like, count that money collected. 'cause yeah, I race on this team and the irony is the first day at the bobsled track we get to the top of this mountain.

William: We unload the bobsled. I see one of my old collegiate teammates, Billy Schuffenhauer, he was like, man, I've been trying to call you where you been? I want you to come race under my team. So my driver, he panicked. He said, Hey, wait a minute buddy. Don't leave me. I'll get you more money. So I'm thinking I'm getting 50 grand plus a bonus.

William: And the truth was. I was asking my boy, how much are you making out here? He's making money. What do you mean it costs us money? I was like, you guys getting ripped off, man? What are you doing with your life? You gotta make better decisions, man. What do you, but I quickly found out this guy didn't have any sponsors.

William: He didn't have any money. And by the time I figured it out, I was in love with the sport. I won a medal within from the first tryout. It was a Wednesday. By the following Friday, I won the America's Cup medal. NBC ran the story and the rest was kind of history. It was fun, it was different.

William: And I always wanted to represent my country, and I had a chance to actually do it.

William: I never made the national team on the track and field side.

Mike: Awesome.

Mike: So did you do the two man, the four man?

William: Yeah. I'm the US four man national champion and my best finish in, at the Nationals in the US is silver medal in two man.

Mike: Yeah.

William: Yeah.

Mike: So for those that don't know how this goes, there's four of you in a sled, where were you?

William: Hopefully there's four of us in the sled. Sometimes the other guys don't make it. (laughs)

Mike: (laughs) Yeah, we've seen that.

William: Yeah. Many times, man, I've been lucky to never have that happen to me.

William: Yeah. I'm usually all the way in the back.

Mike: So you were the last one.

William: I'm usually the brake man. Get that glory spot, the brakeman. But it's really, we all push the hardest, we all push hard and even my driver's pushing hard, so there's no weak link. Hopefully you have no weak links in there.

William: We're all equally working as hard to make that sled move quick.

Mike: Yeah. T his leads us to where we're going. Describe a typical run down the track and how many rumbles and rattles and how that contributed to the CTE.

William: That's where it comes in at, I'm not quite sure because hopefully we were hoping that they would, when I start bringing the information out, they would actually get together and start talking about it. We can figure this out together. That's what the goal was, but it didn't quite work that way. So what I do know now is like sometime, if you ever seen a lake early in the morning? And it's smooth.

Mike: Yeah.

William: Like extremely smooth. Okay. That's how ice normally is on race day. The World Cup, World Championships, Olympics. But if you go to the lake in the afternoon, it has ripples in the water. And so when you have ripples on that ice and you run those runners across it, it's equivalent to shaken baby syndrome.

William: It's like your, it's this matter of fact, if your mouth is not closed tight, your teeth chatter it's just that. Yeah.

Mike: Were you wearing a mouth guard?

William: No I've never seen anybody wear a mouth guard before.

Mike: Really?

William: Yeah. And so you have that part of the, that you also have the extreme G-Forces that I know now were affecting us, which I had no idea before.

William: 'Cause they told us we only pulled four, but there are some reports that came out there, found spikes of 84.5. Actually no, we were pulling five Gs. I think we were pulling up, maximum was supposed to be five, but we're pulling 84.5, which is just, the space shuttle does three. I was told.

William: And fighter products do six.

Mike: Yeah.

William: What are we doing? 84? It just doesn't make sense.

Mike: So you're going down the track in essentially an aluminum or whatever, fiberglass convertible.

William: Yeah.

Mike: Four of you. And you're bouncing all over the place. So I would imagine little mini micro concussions and even though you're wearing a helmet, you're jostling around.

William: Yeah. That's what they say. But to be honest, like when I'm in that sled one of the things about being that brakeman, the guy sitting in front of me, my head is resting right in the middle of his back. And my goal for aerodynamic purposes and keep the sled from moving is I'm supposed to put my head so hard in his back and pull myself into it, that I leave a knot in the middle of his back at the end of that run. So hopefully I shouldn't be moving around too much in there and, but I've cracked a helmet by just going down the track because, just violent twist and turns. And I'm all the way in the back, so what's called the whip effect.

William: So I get the worst of the worst and that might be why I'm having as much problems as I'm having it might be because of that. I'm not sure.

Mike: Do you know how many runs you made over time?

William: I tried to do the math, but it's impossible. Like some days we did one, some days we did six, and one day we broke a record and did seven,

Mike: Yeah.

William: And so I'm doing that three to five days a week, four to five months of the year for, I did it for nine years. So that number, I have no idea how to really. I can put a best case and worst case scenario, but not quite sure, but it had to be in the hundreds.

Mike: Yeah. I think when people hear this, they're gonna think like football, they're gonna think helmet to helmet collisions and unconsciousness, but we're talking about repetition and bouncing over a period of time.

Mike: Even though I read an article that there are people who blacked out.

William: Oh yeah.

Mike: Lost consciousness on the slide?

William: Yeah. It happens all the time. And I won't say all the time, it happens sometime, like some people, you have people who come out, have never taken a trip down a track. They go down that track and they, some people just don't, they just go to sleep.

William: And then you have some people that people reportedly, that had a number two in their pants, put it that way.

Mike: Yeah.

William: It's just, it affects people in different ways.

Mike: If you're watching the NFL now, William, and if you see somebody take a hit up above, now they have an official who can pull the player off the field and they go into the blue tent and check 'em for concussion, whatever.

William: Yeah.

Mike: Did they ever have an official check you guys for concussions? Thinking, okay we need to make sure these guys are all right.

William: I've only been checked once that I remember. And I remember that because they came and grabbed me right as soon as we crashed. It was pretty bad crash. It was probably my worst crash.

William: Matter of fact, I'm wearing this today. It's, it was in St. Marie, Switzerland, and I saw this in the mall one day. So I had to have it, but this, now that I'm looking at it on camera with all the colors, I apologize. (laughs)

Mike: Oh no, it looks great. It looks great.

William: But yeah, my first crash was there and like I had vertigo and the guy, actually on that day was sitting in number three spot, and the guy sitting behind me was knocked unconscious.

William: And I remember we walked off the track and I remember the paramedics grabbing me. But I thought I was fine. Like I had everybody's helmets in my hand. I dunno, why are they grabbing me? So now I'm fighting these strangers off of touching me. I'm like, what are you doing?

William: But then I realized the colors were, everything was so bright. The lights. So I was concussed. I was gone. And. Yeah.

Mike: It clearly affected your thinking. I heard you tell a story about what was it? Prince Albert at a race in Switzerland where.

William: Oh, that was the place, yeah.

Mike: Yeah.

William: At that same moment. I'm sitting on the table, they doing evaluation on me. Prince Albert, he sat in with Anna Kournikova. Remember, I don't if you remember that tennis player.

Mike: Sure.

William: Michael Schumacher, race car driver. He has crazy mad fans. So you see them traveling through Europe. Oh, my, my God, man.

William: They have...

Mike: F1 are crazy fans, aren't they?

William: I've never seen anything like it in my life.

Mike: Yeah.

William: Yeah. So he walks closer to me and he winks at me and man I said, oh my God, I have a lot of gay, I live in L.A. I have a lot of gay friends. I grew up, had a gay cousin, not a big deal to me.

William: Used to it. But I was like, oh my God, Prince Albert's in love with me. I was like I just wanna isolate with him anymore. I don't wanna lead him on, that's what I did. From that day forward, I didn't isolate with Prince Albert anymore because I didn't wanna lead him on because I just clearly wasn't thinking straight.

William: It took, actually, it took me 15, 20 years before I realized wait a minute. I was concussed on that day. And in Europe they wink, they don't do the...

Mike: Were you disappointed then he wasn't coming onto you?

William: Maybe just a little bit, maybe. Nah, but no, he was a great guy.

William: Matter of fact, he was such so down to earth.

Mike: Yeah.

William: At my last World Championships, this was, we were in Italy, I think. Matter of fact, where the Olympics gonna be. We were in Cortina. He was there about to race. We're like, we are all waiting in this line to get some water.

William: And Prince Albert is he's waiting in line with us. He's, we said, Albert, we thought you were gone. What are you doing back? He said you the only guys that treat me like shit. That's why I came back, and we was like, yeah no. Get your ass to the back of the line.

Mike: That's great.

William: And so that, yeah, he was just a regular down to earth guy. Matter of fact, I didn't even know he was really royalty until probably after I left the sport, like I didn't understand the significance of who he really was, but, yeah.

Mike: You probably didn't realize this in the moment other than, you were seeing stars or the bright lights like you said. But talk about some of the symptoms then that occurred for you, that led you to, and how did you figure out that it was CTE that you were dealing with?

Mike: What were you experiencing?

William: Man, it was over years. There was a lot of symptoms that I didn't recognize him, just didn't recognize him. You want the early symptoms or you want the ones that were...

Mike: Start with the early ones and then move forward.

William: Early ones I would wake up and I wouldn't know where I was at, and so I'd panic a little bit, and so I'd jump up, turn the lights on, and I guess the way I always can tell the pictures on the wall let me know where I'm at.

William: I wouldn't say the pictures in Europe, it's kinda like them old Three Stooges and spooky movies where the eyes follow you and stuff.

Mike: Yeah.

William: That's what on the pictures on the walls in Europe. If I see white painted cinder brick, I know I'm at the Olympic Training Center and that's kinda how I wake up, turn the light on.

William: I say, okay, but I rationalize it. I tell myself, you know what I just travel so much. Have such a great life and represent my country. That's why I don't know where I'm at. And but the next one that got me it, man I just don't know how I missed it. But I hadn't seen my friends in a while, so I always kept a apartment in Salt Lake. And I went back hanging out with some friends and we went to go shoot pool and, my buddy sees a young lady come in, he said, Hey, buddy is that your ex-girlfriend over there. And I looked at her, I was like, no, she's pretty, but I don't know her. And she ran over and jumped in my arms and I caught her. And I'm like, Hey, wait a minute. But once again, as an athlete, I was rationalizing, oh, everybody loves athletes.

William: That's what my mind is telling me. But I'm not realizing, I'm not recognizing familiar faces. And my friends, I just didn't know. And, yeah, so those are the subtle signs. And I was still racing for three or four years after that with that damage already done and not understanding what was going on.

Mike: And nobody's checking on you with a physical saying are you experiencing any forgetfulness or?

William: No. Not at all. Matter of fact, I saw one of my drivers, we were at the training center getting ready for a race. And I saw him looking out the corner of his eye, like way over here, and his eyes got stuck and they started fluttering.

William: And I was like, Hey man, what's wrong? And he was like, I don't know, it's been going on for a minute. I said, oh man, that was weird. He said, yeah, I don't know what it is. And we never mentioned it ever again. We never even discussed it. We didn't go to a doctor. We just, yeah.

Mike: That's not untypical either, right William? For athletes, it's I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay.

William: Yeah. But now that I'm recognizing what the science really was.

Mike: Yes.

William: And now with education being out there, people would understand like, Hey, wait a minute, this is not, and that's why I keep talking and speaking up about this because it's subtle, it's invisible to most people.

William: 'Cause what I've noticed is that every athlete that I've seen with this condition, no one has been able to recognize it until things get way, way bad.

Mike: Yeah. I heard that you. It all came together when you were reading an article in the New York Times. I think the article was, what was it called?

Mike: Sled Head.

William: That's actually not the, that was part of it. Actually, when I read that article, I got on my knees and thanked God all the symptoms miss me. That's the irony of it. But the truth is I was starting to, I was in, I'm sure I was in dementia. 'Cause every day I wake up like I don't know the day and I know I don't know the day and I don't know the month.

William: So I had a routine before I go to bed at night. I put a thermos of coffee or a bottle of Coca-Cola or a Mountain Dew on my nightstand and eventually on the floor in the living room because eventually I left that bedroom and I stayed in the living room on the floor for a long time. But I would in the morning, grab that drink, get a little caffeine in me.

William: Then I'll be kinda awake. If I didn't have it I wasn't getting out the bed till three o'clock. And so I assumed this was diabetes. So for many years I was checking the doctors, Hey, can I get my insulin this year please? Let's get this thing out the way. And the truth was like they were right. I didn't have diabetes, but it felt like that.

William: So that's why I think a lot of people aren't really catching the signs 'cause it looks like a lot of stuff.

William: And I would wake up, get the caffeine in me. Then I had to figure out what the day is. So I had a little blue book, a little planner. And matter of fact, now I'm thinking, I said, why didn't I just look at my phone, but I had a little planner, had a system. I look at that blue planner pick out the day, okay, today's Monday, okay, now I gotta figure out what month we in. To me it's always January or August. So I was stuck in this loop for some reason, and I don't really understand why. I don't know. I just don't know why I've tried to rationalize it so many times.

Mike: Is that still occurring?

William: Yeah, I still have days like that. Matter of fact, it's actually one of the things that saves me now, because when I have to ask my girlfriend what the day is, I'll be like, oh, okay. I'm having some struggles today, so get back in the chamber. Yeah.

Mike: How did you come across the hyperbaric oxygen therapy?

William: Actually I left a little piece out. Let's, let me back up a little bit. This is how. I'm gonna show how people don't really recognize this thing. I knew I was in this dementia stage and one of the doctors told me it wasn't diabetes. I began to lose hope and I was starting to get lost in my own little neighborhood.

William: Like I'd been there for years. And so I found a lake house in the Midwest and it was really going to be my death house. Like I knew, 'cause I was praying for death every day. Like my teammates were already killing himself. Oh my God, I couldn't get outta here fast enough. And so I'm on the ground praying for death every day.

William: And my buddy probably called me. And like before I made Team USA, I had a I did a bunch of random weird things like if you see the movie Jerry McGuire. I'm one of the guys running up and down the field on the, I played five different characters, played with make Cuba look like he was a, real athlete, stuff like that.

Mike: You mean he wasn't?

William: Nah, man. We used to call him, we called him alligator arms because he knew we couldn't hit him and he still wouldn't catch that football. Sometimes he would, when he see the ball coming, he'd see us come, he know we can't hit him. We gonna get fired if we touch him.

Mike: Oh, I bet

William: He, he do this. (opens and closes fists twice) Man. He, but he would punish his himself. He'd be like, oh man, I knew I was going, I don't know why y'all scared me so bad I'm gonna stop. Eventually he started catching the ball and became a pretty good athlete out there. But yeah, so I was doing that stuff and so when I left the sport, one of my buddies called me.

William: He wanted to be a writer, so he would call me with these crazy ideas for stories for movies. And I had never seen any of it before. So I'm like, man, that's great. That's, yeah. Okay. And so periodically he'd called me and we go over it again and and but the last time he called me, he was speaking this weird gibberish.

William: And so what I know now is his mind was slipping.

Mike: Yeah.

William: That's why his story seemed so unique 'cause he wasn't in reality anymore. So he was speaking this weird gibberish. And because I used to own a treatment facility and I worked for many of them. That's my background. So I know he needed help and I told myself every day, I gotta get my buddy some help.

William: And the truth is, all I did was think about it. I might have spoke to somebody. I don't know if I did or didn't, but I was kinda isolated at that time. And eventually I got the word that he went to his family's factory and he hung himself. And so I just felt responsible. I felt guilty. I was ashamed. I was embarrassed.

William: And so after that happened, that is when I got the place in the Midwest, the little lake house. And so I had a young lady I was dating at the time, and so I would go back and forth. She would come see me, I come see her and one time in her house and how do I put this nice. She might watch this, so I gotta be careful what I say here.

Mike: Sure.

William: Her and her family, they talk on phone a lot. I got a very loving family. And I always say they were all born with microphones in their throat because they're so loud man, And that noise was killing me. And I was like, I gotta go back to the lake house, get some peace and quiet.

William: And I felt bad, cause I was like, who am I to tell somebody to be quiet in their own home? That's not what I, who I am. It's not what I should be doing. And so we talked about it. I said, maybe we need to break up and move on from each other. I don't know. So I'm at the lake house and that's when the article shows up. And so I read it, I get on my knees and I thank God all the symptoms missed me.

William: And then I send it to my girlfriend. She circled some stuff and sent it back. And the first thing that I recognized was noise sensitivity.

William: It's the reason why I was over there in the first place. And then I went, oh my goodness. And then I went down that list and I checked every box that I can remember except Parkinson's.

William: And then I went okay, now this thing has an name. This is not diabetes. I was wrong. And I'm thinking, oh my God, my teammates been killing themselves. Like now I wanna kill myself. I'm begging for death every day of my life for the last five years. And I still couldn't say, this is what it was, and so now I know what it is. And then at that time, Public's autopsy eventually came out and we found out he was in stage four. That's why he couldn't talk. And if you watch me, if I go about, a month without using that chamber. I go backwards that too. Like I can still talk, I can still communicate, but I can see words, but I can't pronounce them.

William: I sometimes struggle with putting sentences together. And then sometimes my speech will slur a little bit.

William: Actually I'm slurring just a little bit today. I'm a little bit off, a little bit today. I can tell. But yeah.

Mike: I saw some cryptic reference to Joe Namath in something I read.

William: Oh, absolutely.

Mike: Explain that.

William: Once I figured out what it really was, now I'm not looking at diabetes remedies and things like that. I'm looking at CTE remedies. And across my algorithm, one day, Joe Namath shows up. And it shows that he used hyperbaric oxygen to reverse his symptoms. So I tried every doggone thing that was there to try.

William: Every symptom. I've been addressing 'em for years. And so I didn't think it was gonna work. And recently I found a video of me making a recording in there at the first session, and it was so dark, man. It was like, wow. I don't know how I made it. But I'm in that chamber for one hour and when I get out it's like I was walking in 3D like the colors were so vivid.

William: And so when I went to grab my glasses, I took 'em on and put 'em off a few times and the salesman comes over and he is Hey buddy, what's wrong? I was like, I don't know. I don't think I need my glasses. And he's oh, you are one of those. And I was like, okay, I just bought this lake house. I don't have money for this 22,000 bucks for this chamber right here.

William: He's probably trying to sell me this chamber. That's what my brain is telling me. But he was actually right. Some people get like immediate relief and some people need 30 days of two sessions a day to get the same type of relief. And I happen to be the first. But also there's people who get permanent relief.

William: I don't get permanent relief yet. Like I, yeah. So that's my biggest dilemma with it.

Mike: I like the word yet. I like the word yet.

William: Yeah. This is the crazy part. Every so often I'll stop when I'm feeling really normalized for myself. For you you'd be like, oh my God, this is horrible.

William: But for me it's a pretty good day.

Mike: Yeah.

William: And I'll stop using it for a while to see where my progress is at.

William: And usually I'll get about a month. As long as I'm not stressed and dealing with other stuff like that, I get about a month and then I'll start going backwards and I have to make sure I'm back in the machine again.

William: Matter of fact, this is my machine right behind me. I have one in the home now.

Mike: So explain to me how long you spend in it, how often you're in it and what it does.

William: When I first started, I was so weak. So whenever I got in it, I'd be in there for 90 minutes. I'm usually, I was so weak.

William: I would just sleep during that time and I'd wake up, I set some alarms and I wake up when it's off, get out. I was doing one a day. Then once I start feeling better, I, because I'm not like Joe Namath had a team of doctors, right?

Mike: Yeah.

William: I don't have a team of doc, right. I'm one man with a chamber. All my social media says one man with a chamber.

William: So I try not to overdo it because I don't know what the long-term, if there are, there long-term damages. According to the statistics with these machines. Like I use a low power chamber or low pressure chamber. They said you could literally sleep in these things all day long, every day and not do damage.

William: And I don't know that to be a fact. So I still make sure I take breaks from it to make sure that everything is still good. And, but when I take those breaks, I start to pay for it again. And it is what it is. But I used to have a real bad attitude about it at one point. 'cause I was like, Joe Namath got permanent relief.

William: I watched these other guys with permanent relief. Why not me? And then I found this guy. He lived in the iron lung for 57 years, right? And only his head stuck out of that tube. He was 57 years in that tube. After that, I was like, I'm sorry. (laughs) No more complaining,

Mike: Gratitude.

William: So I really, I tried. Yeah, absolutely, man.

William: Nothing but gratitude. Yeah.

Mike: What did you try, William, that did not work?

William: The symptoms of this thing is you hear people with concussions, eventually you'll hear them say, oh, I can't focus. I think I have adult ADHD. You didn't have it in your teens. You didn't have it in your twenties, you didn't have it in your thirties.

William: It don't show up in your forties and fifties and sixties. You had it, something else is going on. So I started addressing that. I thought I had adult ADHD.

William: This was before I even realized CTE, I'm just addressing 'em as time went on. So that was the first one they did, check doctors. They said you could be, so get your Adderall.

William: All right. And then I those things, you gotta be careful. That will make you, whew. They'll make your anxiety worse if you're not careful.

William: They'll make your heart erratic. You gotta be very careful when you're trying that stuff. What else did I try? Oh, it'll tell you to keep your T levels up.

William: So I went to doctors to keep my T levels up. All that did was thicken my blood up and just made me even more muscular. Now it's but I still feel like crap was the point.

William: Now when I combine the T, the testosterone levels up with the hyperbaric, now I'm feeling much better.

William: But I haven't done those two together in quite a while. It's gets so expensive. Like I just couldn't keep paying that bill. 'Cause before I was a counselor, because now like I process too slow. I can't... i'm not playing with people's lives like that. I don't want to, it's not the right thing to do.

William: So now I do whatever I can just to make ends meet pretty much.

Mike: And you're reaching out, you're trying to help people. William, a couple of weeks ago I spoke to a group of veterans.

William: Oh my God, thank you.

Mike: Yeah it was part of what I do and everyone I talked to had some kind of something going on, right?

Mike: So many of them had been inside of tanks, around mortars, so they had a constant ringing of the ears or headaches or physical abnormalities and whatever. And they're just all like you were talking, just muddling along. And one of the goals you have is to make this available, not just to elite athletes, but to veterans, to anybody else, right?

Mike: Common folks.

William: Let me give you another piece of my background. When I left college, I was 23. I worked at [inaudible] County Mental Health Department. You guys should look it up, man. That's the first mental health facility west of the Mississippi River. So everybody with extreme behaviors went there to get help, right?

William: So that's where I cut my teeth at. So I had people with depression, bipolar, all the different levels of schizophrenia. We had the mentally, criminally insane there. Criminally insane come through from court. And then sometime we had the people who were still walking around with lobotomies in there.

William: So I saw everything. So that's one of the things that kinda helped me see the clearer picture when I began to clear up a little bit. One thing I noticed, I don't care if you had fell down one time and hit your head. It had a concussion. You probably have the same symptoms as the rest of us.

William: The housewives have been battered. They're now checking their brains upon death. They ton of CTE over there. We're looking at our veterans they call it PTSD, but when they checked their brains, they found out they have CTE. I just read one study. They checked 120 brains, and I think 85 of them came back with CTE.

William: And so we do know it's coming from the mortars and the explosions and the. That stuff that give you that pressure in the face. Things that make the brain wanna move, but the brain can't move. It's that pressure. The brain constricts it so it just, bounces in there. And so it's all the same symptoms.

William: And I was like, wow, if that machine woke me up and help me take some of this off of me. I think it'll benefit everybody. 'Cause like I said, I took six rides. I won almost six rides a day, many times for years. I'm probably the worst case scenario. Like nobody other than a boxer can probably have more damage than me.

William: Now that I understand what it is, I don't really know why I'm still standing. Like it's pretty bad stuff.

Mike: I'm glad you are, and we're gonna put the link to your podcast for the GoFundMe page 'cause you're trying to raise enough money to do it. But just for folks who don't understand how that goes, where does the money go for that?

Mike: Does it just sit there until you utilize, how does that go?

William: I'm gonna move quickly. There was some when I found help, I started letting the athletes around the world. It's a global problem. It's not just Americans.

Mike: Right.

William: I started letting athletes around the world know look, I know you're struggling.

William: This is what you have. Get into a hyperbaric chamber. And like in Canada, they said, we can't get 'em up here. I was like, what? I said I got my, I got the little lake house. It's, I'm not really there very often, but I could bring the machine and you guys can come here and treat with me. And so that's how this thing really started.

William: It was supposed to be a small scale thing, but then when I saw my veterans, like this part, I, I don't know if you know the numbers, but like in two, I'll give you. Three, three years that I really researched was 2020, 2021 and 2022. If you can go back as far as you want to, the numbers are all about the same.

William: That's how many veterans commit suicide every year.

William: But with this condition, most people self-medicate to feel better, 'cause the symptoms are awful. There's another 5,000 veterans who overdose every year. And even if they leave a suicide note, it does not count as a suicide. So to me that's 11,000 suicides per year for our veterans.

William: And so I know where I'm at, I know where my teammates are at. I know the inner workings 'cause I had to live it and I know what that machine did to shake some of that stuff off. 'Cause matter of fact, I... man, you gonna let me ramble 'cause I'm so passionate about this. I can go for days, so don't let me mess up with you.

Mike: No.

William: Go. Lemme take a breath. This is what I know. If it, if I had all the same symptoms. We all, I did a graph, we all had the same symptoms and so like I promise you, if you get in that chamber, you got one hour. For me I had one hour in that chamber and my life changed and I'm just hoping like, how many of them, 30,000 veterans who died that year, of those three years.

William: How many of we could have saved? Was it 10%? Was it a 100%? Because I don't think they could have been off any worse than I was. I just can't see it being possible. I just, yeah.

Mike: And when you talk about your sport in particular and the number of people you've talked to and the number of suicides from sledders, that's a pretty narrow group, right?

Mike: So the percentage is really high of people experiencing this, and you would think as we go forward, yeah, like you mentioned boxers, mixed martial arts folks, let alone football players, soccer players, I had a son who was a goalie and I lived in fear of all the head stuff.

William: That's the number one, that's the number one sport for CT right now is soccer.

Mike: Because of the headers and all of the, yeah exactly the jostling. Most people don't know that either. So how is it for you now day to day, like where are you at and what are you doing in addition to the chamber?

Mike: What are you doing? For yourself?

William: Nothing. It is taking me off every medication. Like I don't use any meds anymore. I'm just as long as I don't have... worst thing I use now is a little bit of coffee now. If I need to get moving in the morning. Like if I wasn't doing podcasts, talking to people like you, I wouldn't drink any coffee.

William: I just had to wake up naturally, organically, and that's when I feel better. But when I rush it and have to get up and put caffeine, I feel a little bit like I've been known it like a three month or four month podcast and just talking about it. So it's really, it's taken a toll on me as well.

William: So pretty soon I'll be kinda shutting this down a little bit. We've already kinda started, but yeah, but I'm okay, I still can't do my old jobs. Like I can't process fast enough.

William: If I have people that want to take their lives and things like that, like I, I shouldn't be the one over there talking to 'em today.

William: And I can't come up with the answer till tomorrow. That's not like how this is supposed to work, and so I really try to stay away from that arena and just try to live right now. And the number one thing is to be grateful. Like I came back and I have a voice. I have a voice again.

William: When you get to the point where you can't talk, like frustration comes out. Like the not being able to communicate. One day my girlfriend asked me to do something... like like she'll ask me something like I process slow. I might not really understand what she asked me until five hours later oh, yeah.

William: Okay, now I'll get it, you know, but it's just a, it's a horrible way to have your life be. But like I said, I'm not complaining. I'm very grateful to be back. Like we could have this conversation three, four years ago. Definitely. I was just man, I was a goner man, I just...

Mike: In a different place.

William: Yeah.

Mike: I'm glad you're speaking out, and I'm glad you're bringing light to it because the mental health aspect of this, and as you said earlier, the number of people who choose substances to try to cope with it, and then that becomes something else entirely. If this works the word needs to get out.

William: There's a ton of people doing it. I'm, I, trust me, I didn't create, matter of fact, this is how simple it is. When I came outta dementia, no doctor ever said I was in dementia. I know, but I don't know until I came out of it and I'm like, Hey, wait a minute. I was in dementia. I went back to the people who manufacture these things, who sell these things, and I thought I recreated the wheel.

William: I was like, I got some great information for you. And I went to him. I said, did you know like I was a dementia that brought me out and the guy went in this drawer and put out this piece of paper and popped it like this. (motions opening a piece of paper) There's so many people right now being, getting treatment for dementia and Alzheimer's in these machines.

Mike: Yeah.

William: If you have cancer, they'll put you in there. There was a coach right on ESPN, like a month ago who was in stage four melanoma, and he was about to die. The chemo wasn't working. They put him in hyperbarics. Now his numbers are normal. If you have a stroke, they'll tell you, 'cause the science behind it is it makes you believe you're nine feet minimum of nine feet underwater.

William: Which I have with the lower pressure chamber. And so your blood becomes more like a gas, and so gas blood can get through all the blockages and oxygenate and send blood everywhere it needs to go. And the main thing is, which I figured out where they're making a mistake at. Every injury... I was an athlete from 11 to 36, right?

William: I won my last national championship at 36. Wow. I turned 37 that summer. A lot of injuries over the years, hamstrings, whatever. So we all know you pull a hamstring or you get hit on the head or anything, you gonna get a knot. Sometimes somewhere fluid is gonna come to that area to protect it.

William: It's for protection for you. So we put ice on it for 72 hours. No, absolutely no heat before that. Otherwise you're gonna be sorry. Ice compression right. After that. You go rounds of electric stimulation, then they'll do ultrasound. Then some people do acupuncture and at that point you have, you're down to a mass, you got like a knot or something, some kinda scar tissues in that muscle and they have to get it out or that muscle's compromised, right?

William: So this is where it gets freaky. Usually a physical trainer, you see 'em coming out with the white rag or the white towel, and I'm thinking, oh God, here, not today, but that's for us to bite. Because she's gonna take that elbow like this. Oh, she's gonna put it right on that mass, and she's gonna dig in there and she's gonna break up all the scar tissue for you.

William: And so you see these grown folks at the Olympic trains, we all hopping around on the table like we, just squirming because it's brutal. Now for the concussion. Everybody's got a concussion. What's the treatment? There is none. The only treatment I ever got was they told me when, matter of fact, on that day when Prince Albert was there, they told me to go back to the hotel and don't go to sleep for the first few hours.

William: And they told me that. Matter of fact, the guy who was knocking unconscious was my roommate Tucker. They told us to watch each other. I can't sit up in the bed without the room spinning. And he was actually unconscious. So who was supposed to watch you? But that's the advice we all get, and so that I believe this thing here, remove that information from me.

William: And so it, it is quick guys. It's quick. It is. Matter of fact, people call me all the time, where can I buy one at? I was like, before you buy one, just go and use one that's in the community. Save your money. Just go and use one. See how the results are. Come to me, come up, look on, go to Google, type in HBOT, hyperbaric oxygen therapy near me.

William: They're in wellness centers, they're in chiropractic office, and they're in people's homes like mine. Try that first before you spend that money. Some people only need one treatment. You don't need to spend 20,000. If you need one treatment, it's gonna cost you 200.

William: That's it. Yeah, so I'm really just trying to show people and it worked for me. It worked for Joe Namath. It worked for a lot of people.

Mike: Yeah, I think it's great and I think it's great you're trying to give it back to.

Mike: William, i'm gonna let you go, but you...

William: Before you let me go, I gotta say one more thing.

Mike: Yeah, please.

William: This was, this is one disturbing. Go back and look at the mass shootings in America since 2012. There was a study out, 31% were done by our veterans coming back turning the guns on us. That's number one. Also, most of the shootings in America, a lot of 'em are CTE related, all the same stuff.

William: Your brain goes in the loop. My loop told me to die every day. Kill yourself. End this thing. Be done with it. I have some friends who told me, their brain tells them kill other people. Like they wanna kill other people. So it's a, which one do you have? Now our military come back. They're the best killers in the world now.

William: So we have to address those guys. This thing started off as just me helping my teammates, a few Olympic athletes around the world, but when I saw the real numbers, I'm like, wait a minute. Now we can't go anywhere without the threat of being in a mass shooting. There was one yesterday, one tomorrow.

William: Yeah. And I believe this is what's behind it, but no one's talking. The information is there. Look at where those people come from. They either they're athletes or they're veterans or they're, some of 'em you can look at, they were neither, but you could look in their eyes and you see their eyes rolling around, which means something happened to that head at one point in time.

Mike: Brain disease.

William: Yes.

Mike: Yeah.

William: Absolutely.

Mike: We're gonna put links to the William's socials and GoFundMe page. His socials are really interesting too. You'll really like those.

William: Oh, also we offer, we are officially not-for-profit. We are not-for-profit.

Mike: Excellent.

William: And I have turned down all private money.

William: There has no money coming in from private investors because I don't wanna pass that bill to our people. This is something that's gonna be for the people, by the people.

Mike: It's great,

William: No bills.

Mike: Thank you so much for taking time with us today. For those of you listening, watching we encourage you to be safe and if you're able to please help.

William: Yeah.