Jason Redman:

Hey this is Jason Overcome Redman. Thanks for tuning in to the Overcome and Conquer Show. If you love this show, we want you to do us a huge favor. Go to iTunes, subscribe, leave that five star review, leave a comment, and most importantly, share with your friends because sharing is caring.

Ray:

Everybody wants to be on top of the mountain. The problem nowadays is people want to get dropped off at the top of the hill and walk down.

Jason Redman:

It’s that I-overcome mindset that makes all the difference.

Ray:

See the way we’re taught is you’re going to claw, you’re going to scratch, you’re going to bite, you’re going to dig, you’re going to do whatever it takes to get to the top of that mountain.

Jason Redman:

That unequivocally is how I have managed to keep myself moving forward and finding success.

Speaker 4:

Two SEALs, one mission. The Overcome and Conquer Show.

Jason Redman:

Welcome back to the Overcome and Conquer Show. Man, we have been on a run, Ray. We have had some amazing guests lately and today is no different.

Ray:

Yeah, no shit. Today is no different. We’ve got a tough motherfucker on board. I’m looking at him right now. I don’t want to give…

Jason Redman:

I notice you’re giving him the shifty eye. I’m a little uncomfortable.

Ray:

It’s rare that we have a guest that comes on here that literally, if he really wanted to, not that he would, but he would call you a pussy for what happened to you. But-

Jason Redman:

It is true. There aren’t a whole lot of people that can claim they’ve been through more than I have and he has. He is a friend and our paths actually crossed in the combat zone, indirectly, so we’ll talk a little more about that later but as we allude to, he is another teammate, another SEAL.

Ray:

Three SEALs, one mission.

Jason Redman:

Yeah, Man. Nothing better than getting a bunch of team guys together in a small room.

Ray:

That’s right.

Jason Redman:

Tight quarters, tight butt, oh sorry.

 Mike D.:

Where’s the keg?

Jason Redman:

Yeah. I know really.

Ray:

You know, but we do have to address the elephant in the room even though his beard looks magnificent. He’s got no top hair, but it still works for him. You actually make that shit look good.

Jason Redman:

Hey, He had top hair back in the day.

Ray:

Back in the day I know.

Jason Redman:

I’ve seen pictures actually he was… That picture of you with the 60 and the sunset in the background, you’re a sexy beast.

 Mike D.:

Yeah, you show me your age, when you know what an M60 is.

Jason Redman:

Yeah well I am…

Ray:

I was a 60 gunner. God bless. Yeah.

Jason Redman:

Back then you had the flowing locks. You had the SEAL hair.

 Mike D.:

I did. I was the guy that was always told, “Hey, go get a haircut and bring all your buddies with you.”

Ray:

Yeah, and you’re the guy that didn’t and then now God’s punishing you. Sorry.

 Mike D.:

It started in the middle there, but-

Ray:

So funny.

Jason Redman:

All right, well listen, we are going to dive right in the show because there’s going to be a lot of what we want to talk about with our guest. So without further ado, what I’d like to do is introduce our guest. So our guest served 21 years as a United States Navy SEAL retiring as a senior chief petty officer. He did a lot of amazing work. Deployments, both pre 9/11 and post 9/11 working throughout Iraq. They were cracking skulls and I was there during that same time frame and we were taking the fight to the enemy. And I’m not even going to get into what happened to him. On one fateful night, that started at the beginning of our deployment. It was actually the turnover op. He had a mission that forever changed his life and literally set him on a whole new path and also set the standard for, I don’t even know how any other way to say this, for bad-ass motherfucker.

 Mike D.:

Yeah.

Jason Redman:

So, we will discuss that in a little bit, but it ended his operational career. He went on to take care of special operations Wounded Warriors, working as a special operation command Wounded Warrior advocate, taking care of our guys, and finally moved on from that and is now getting out and speaking and spreading the word about leadership and resiliency, which is his word of the day. And I tell you what, he lives it up. He speaks on behalf of the Navy SEAL Foundation. Many other nonprofit organizations. He is a member of Eagle Rise Speakers Bureau. And he is a friend and absolute amazing guy. He also has a new book that’ll be coming out. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it will be coming out in the spring?

 Mike D.:

In the spring.

Ray:

Bad motherfuckers is what it should be called [crosstalk 00:04:24].

Jason Redman:

Yeah, and he also is on a personal push I think from a lot of us wounded guys to be the best version of ourselves. Especially after we’ve been all jacked up. So he’s a health and wellness expert and moving on to find the highest levels himself. It is my honor to introduce the legendary Senior Chief Douglas Mike Day. What’s up brother?

 Mike D.:

And you’re making me blush.

Jason Redman:

Hey I do that? Story of my life. So I make Ray blush all the time.

 Mike D.:

And Chris should be here. I humbly submit myself with all my faults for a case study. I’m definitely not a person that is got to wake up everyday and try to provide advice.

Ray:

I love it.

Jason Redman:

Hey man, we all got flaws. I know I got mine. The great thing about flaws we learned the most from them. And I think that’s what makes us better. Except for Ray. Ray’s shaking his head, he has no flaws.

Ray:

I didn’t say a word, shit, I’m being recorded.

Jason Redman:

You’re giving the… exactly that. I had nodded and everyone’s going to see that I had nodded on the cameras. [crosstalk 00:05:30] So rule for the team guys You know you were good at the stories we tell.

Ray:

You cannot hide.

 Mike D.:

It could be edited.

Jason Redman:

So, but Hey, let’s jump in. The word of the day is resiliency. I cannot think of anyone who knows that word better than Mike Day. I sit humbly next to you, that’s for sure. So-

Ray:

I had to look this up three times because every time I pulled the fucking word up, there was a picture of him and there was no definition. So without further ado, resiliency; the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, semi-colon, toughness. So Mike, without further ado, what does resiliency mean to you?

 Mike D.:

Resiliency is to me, the ability to bounce back from a good kick in the nuts. And it’s a good thing to take those because you don’t know when things are good if you don’t have that.

Ray:

Jesus. Yeah.

 Mike D.:

We all have thresholds. Some people can deal with a lot more than you’ll physically and psychologically, which I think are actually interchangeable. So if you physically push yourself, I think that actually transfers over into psychological resiliency. And I mean that’s… No one’s going to get out of this place without getting a couple of kicks in the balls.

Ray:

So the question is, your story is amazing. We’re going to talk about it, but ladies and gentlemen, like I said, and again, I don’t like calling another man a motherfucker, but with this you have to. This motherfucker has been through… I don’t know anybody else that’s been through what he has and survived. I mean, yeah, Jason at Baker’s does and I get it. You’ve been shot at Baker’s dozen time. Whatever your big pussy. I had the shingles once. I had the shingles.

 Mike D.:

Me too. That hurt.

Ray:

That fucking hurt, but-

 Mike D.:

It did hurt. Not worse than a gunshot wound.

Ray:

Well, see I don’t know, but thank you. Thank you for making me sound somewhat like a bitch.

 Mike D.:

If it doesn’t hit a bone.

Ray:

Thank you. But let’s get into the story. I mean, Jake, you have to get into this because I’m the only guy in the room that pretty much-

Jason Redman:

All right I’m going to give you guys in a sentence that [crosstalk 00:07:40].

 Mike D.:

[crosstalk 00:07:38] than it was, it was a turnover op. And we had some of your guys-

Jason Redman:

I want to tell people this sentence though because this is an amazing sentence or this amazing paragraph. As part of your bio on the Eagle Rise Speakers website. It says, “On what would be his final combat mission as a Navy SEAL, Mike was shot,” ready for this? “27 times at close range and absorbed a grenade blast. Despite being severely wounded, Mike managed to neutralize four enemy combatants, secure two prisoners, rescue six women and children, and evacuated himself to an awaiting helicopter.” And in fine print it says cured cancer, parted the Red Sea. But seriously man, that is amazing. And it was. It was our turnover op. Mike team had come in and I’ll admit I wasn’t even in country yet. It was the very first op. So, we had some of our guys on that mission and Mike was out there leading his guys as he did. And they stepped into a shit storm. So-

 Mike D.:

That was the worst gun fight we got into the whole deployment. I felt bad for you guys.

Jason Redman:

I’m going to turn it over to you.

 Mike D.:

For you guys. I can’t imagine [crosstalk 00:08:52].

Jason Redman:

Well you guys stirred the hornet’s nest for us-

 Mike D.:

I know we did.

Jason Redman:

Because we went back. As a matter of fact what’s amazing, is where you were wounded. I was only about 200 yards from the building that you were in-

 Mike D.:

That’s amazing I didn’t know that.

Jason Redman:

Mm-hmm (affirmative), That same place that we went back into every single time we went in there, we got into a firefight over the rest of our deployment. So-

 Mike D.:

That wasn’t a very good… very trafficable area.

Jason Redman:

It definitely was not a place say you went into and thought “someday this is going to be a great vacation spot.”

 Mike D.:

No. A matter of fact yeah, first time we actioned this target, we got IEDed and we couldn’t get it. So we had to come back three nights later in a helicopter.

Jason Redman:

Yeah. Well, that road that led into that area was like IED alley so-

Jason Redman:

It was terrible.

Jason Redman:

So, talk about that night, because I guarantee there are people out there that read that paragraph and they’re like, “Wait, what?” 27 times. We didn’t say two plus seven. 27 times.

Ray:

And Mike if you don’t mind me saying this, Mike’s story story’s amazing. And to to go through that level of impact and not only survive but to do the things you did afterwards is absolutely incredible. Your story was actually represented in the movie Act of Valor.

 Mike D.:

Yeah.

Jason Redman:

So that scene is actually… The individual that gets shot multiple times, that scene was actually created based on what happened to you. So walk everybody through what happened that night.

 Mike D.:

Well actually, I accidentally got invited to that. I was working at the Care Coalition, I was at Walter Reed. And those guys were there with Oakley and they were having a premiere of that movie. And they invited me to it.

Jason Redman:

Nice.

 Mike D.:

And that was completely accidental. I think Dancun, Austin was in the hospital at this point. So I went to it and after the movie they asked me what I thought about their depiction of my scene. And I was like “Actually you should’ve talked to me, I’d have made it a lot better.” Because it’s definitely not accurate. It’s been depicted in a couple of books and I guess in mine it’ll actually be accurate.

Jason Redman:

Amen to that.

 Mike D.:

But I mean, my citation’s not even accurate so-

Jason Redman:

Well.

Ray:

And I actually think it was… Most things in Hollywood are Hollywooded up to make it sexier. I think this is the one case in point where they actually, Hollywooded it down.

 Mike D.:

Oh, quite honestly I actually questioned my recollection of it because it’s so crazy.

Ray:

Really.

Jason Redman:

Well, let’s get into it.

Ray:

Let’s get into it.

Jason Redman:

Yeah, give us your recollection of that night and really, I mean, Ray is right. You look in the dictionary under resiliency. I mean it is an amazing story. So jump in brother.

 Mike D.:

I guess I thank my father for being so resilient because the SEAL teams were pretty easy. And we’ll get into that. And it’s also in the book, maybe. Old is definitely in the book and we’ll get into it tonight. But for me the SEAL teams were pretty easy. This was an event that luckily I wasn’t… I mean I consider the injuries you received way worse than when I got. And I took 16 to the body and 11 to the body armor. I had two bones that got hit. Everything else was soft tissue, which is, it’s crazy.

Jason Redman:

Yeah. I mean through and throughs are… I will admit I met some guys that had through and throughs and I was a little jealous. So-

Ray:

And a through and through is a bullet that just passes through soft tissues.

Jason Redman:

Brett Moefani, yeah he just took two right to the leg.

 Mike D.:

[crosstalk 00:12:19] Soft tissue.I have bullet holes that I have trouble finding because they look not much more… and it’s an AK round, that looks like a cigarette burn.

Ray:

Jesus.

 Mike D.:

That’s hard to find. So the op that we are on, this was now okay to say that was shooting down helicopters. They dumped four helicopters out of the sky, killed everybody. So that’s why we’re going after these guys.

 Mike D.:

Initial attempt to go after them, we get IEDed on the way in. And a little irony there, the rear vehicle got hit, which is kind of weird for a rear vehicle to get hit because, it had to be a pressure plate. And Clark Schwedler who was killed three days later on the same target set, his vehicle got hit. He was on a turret. So we weren’t able to action the target that night. Came back and we were like, we were just talking about it earlier. That place was just a mess. Well I’m not driving back in there. I’m not driving back into that place.

Jason Redman:

It was a hornet’s nest.

 Mike D.:

I mean we literally on that op, we spent probably 45 minutes trying to figure another way out and it was just worse to go any other way than the way we came in. So we just had to drive really fast to where we just got IEDed. Yeah, it was pretty, pretty scary.

Jason Redman:

Yeah.

 Mike D.:

A Couple other funny things happen there, but we ain’t thought about that. I had to coke somebody forward a little bit. So we came back three nights later did a HILO onsite a few kilometer patrol into the target? Breach team goes up. They breached the door and it’s what we call a short room. There’s no access to the rest of the house. And I’m the guy that’s holding everybody back in case we have to blow something up. We call that the minimum safe distance guy. And when I heard short room, I was already on another point of entry. So, I breached that door. I just kicked it open, opened up into a small foyer and I stacked on one of the door, two doors in there that were pretty close together. One from our perspective, one on the left wall and one on the far wall. Set up so that if you open one door you could see from one corner of the room all the way through both corners, both rooms.

 Mike D.:

So Clark was actually on the breach team. So it was kind of amazing that he made his way around everybody else to be the number one guy go in that room. But he saw me, he saw me stacked on the door to the left and he saw me waiting for somebody to pick up the other threat and he was the one that did it. He was on the breach team, jumped around the train because the train didn’t split in there. I mean it was Iraquis, that’s what we had trained them to do. Things happen different than what you expect most of the time. You just got to manage it.

 Mike D.:

So he gets in there, they see what they’re supposed to do. The train splits. We do a simultaneous room entry and as soon as I enter the room, there’s four guys in there. Two of them have AK 47s, one of them has an M4 and one of them has a pistol. The M4 and the pistol are weapons that they recovered from a previous ambush on an army unit. So that’s why they had our weapon systems. They also had a helmet with night vision goggles, the dude’s LBE with his name on it. I mean, they had all these guys gear. It was later returned to that unit after I departed. After I was man of act. So as soon as I entered that room, I don’t know who opened up, but at least the automatic weapons did, the M4 and the two AKs. I just started getting hit. And I entered that room, off-safe, finger on the trigger and they still beat me.

Ray:

Damn.

 Mike D.:

So I lost my rifle, which I had to ask somebody four months after this event where my rifle was and they told me it was hanging around my neck. And later in this event, I had actually got up and walked around the house with this rifle bag in between my knees and didn’t even realize it. So I lost my rifle and I transitioned to my pistol as I was falling forward. And I put, I don’t know, five or six rounds in the guy down the left floor and landed right next to him.

 Mike D.:

I landed on my left side and we were up underneath the window. Hit the ground and I continued to shoot around a room. There was a dude that had pulled a pin on a grenade. He was trying to run out of the room onto the train out in the hallway. I shot him in the head. He dropped to his knees and he was forward of me, but he blew up and the grenade blast still knocked me out. But I don’t know why it didn’t knock the other two guys out, but it knocked me out and when I woke, a whole bunch of stuff happened behind me.

 Mike D.:

My number two guy and my number three guy were Iraqis, Scouts that we had trained. Number two guy got shot in chest, knocked out of the room. The number three guy got killed in the doorway. He was just got dumped the doorway and around from the room that I was in, pass through both doorways and hit Clark Schweller in the back of the neck, and he fell into a seated position with his rucksack holding him up. I Came and found him later.

 Mike D.:

Still unconscious at this point, guys tried to get in the room. They figured that there was two guys still with AK shooting through both of the doorways. That it didn’t make sense to go in there. They asked for status in the house, I was unconscious. Luckily there was three Iraqi Scouts, our guys not on comms, people in the house, they didn’t hear it so they got stuck in the back of the house. They couldn’t come through those doorways again, and I was left in the house. The whole patrol left the house. They were going to use an aircraft to blow up the blow up the target. That was the plan.

Jason Redman:

Okay, Mike, can I, dude, I hate to interrupt you, but I guarantee there’s a whole lot of people out there that don’t understand the reason why those guys would’ve done that and been like, how the hell they’d that if they knew you were still alive.

 Mike D.:

Oh, I mean they didn’t know I was still alive. They didn’t have a full head count. And that’s a now another thing that we’ve come a lot more sophisticated at and we just don’t drop bombs and shoot stuff, unless we have a full head count. So that’s why they weren’t able to do it. The aircraft was completely prepped. They were trying to get a head count. They didn’t know Clark was in the house. They didn’t know I was in the house. We had one scout that was dead. That’s the only one I think they probably knew. And then the three Scouts that had gotten in the back of the house that couldn’t get out.

 Mike D.:

So I mean we don’t drop bombs unless you’ve got a full head count. But I mean that was the plan. But they came up with that plan and as they were departing the target, I woke up, I still had the pistol in my hand. I woke up and saw two guys standing across the room with AK47s inside 10, 12 feet and they were shooting over top of me through a window. Luckily only one of our guys got hit from that part of the engagement. And I reengaged both of those guys. I do have some kind of unexplainables, I got shot twice in the butt and I have two holes in my back, had shattered my scapula that don’t line up with holes in the body armor. So it appears that when I was unconscious from the grenade blast, someone came over, jammed the pistol on my body armor, cranked off a couple rounds and then shot me in the hips a couple times.

Ray:

He shot you in the hips just so share some giggles. Fuck, I don’t mean to laugh.

 Mike D.:

I mean one of the funniest thing that happened to me last year, is that bullet that I accidentally found through another procedure actually traveled over my hip, through all my organs, through my muscle tissue and then landed up in my body, my beer gut. And I had some friends cut it out. So-

Jason Redman:

I saw that video.

Ray:

Yeah the leg-

 Mike D.:

This thing right here.

Jason Redman:

Yeah baby.

 Mike D.:

I got shot in the butt with this.

Jason Redman:

For those of you if you, you’ll have to watch the video, but he’s showing the bullet he’s wearing around his neck.

 Mike D.:

The video will come out sometime but it’ll probably be a good YouTube one.

Jason Redman:

Yeah.

Ray:

So wait a minute, time out, time out. So you’re just at a party. I mean the drinks are flowing I mean, because I know you like, I’m saying you said-

 Mike D.:

No I was at work. I had some medic friends cut it out.

Ray:

Okay. Because the way he made it sound is like, three team guys are sitting in a fucking party, have a few drinks and you’re like, Hey bro, cut this fucking bullet out of me.

Jason Redman:

With a plastic dinner knife.

Ray:

Yeah. I mean your heart is fucking dead.

 Mike D.:

No, it does happen, I mean you got [crosstalk 00:21:26].

Ray:

Dude you were taking it. I was like dude, I know this motherfucker is hard, but Holy shit.

 Mike D.:

How many times have I seen a medic show up on a weekend because someone needs stitches?

Ray:

Oh yeah. Fucking I-

 Mike D.:

I’ve had SEAL corpsman put stitches in my kids.

Ray:

Penicillin, I’ve had it all. That’s a whole other, yeah.

Jason Redman:

Navy doctor had to go to the ER.

 Mike D.:

Yeah, just call your 18 Delta.

Ray:

Six pack of beer. John Cummings did that for me once, he was our medic.

 Mike D.:

It’s good to have friends that know stuff.

Jason Redman:

Yeah.

Ray:

Wow.

Jason Redman:

All right, so you wake up-

 Mike D.:

So I went off on that tangent. So yeah, I wake up.

Jason Redman:

No. No.It’s all good.

Ray:

No we love it. We love it. Holy shit.

 Mike D.:

I just need to be redirected.

Jason Redman:

This asshole shot you in the ass. So you realize that then?

 Mike D.:

The only place I didn’t get shot was my head. They get some grenade frag up their but… So I wake up and these two dudes with AKs are shooting over top of me from inside of 12 feet, 10 to 12 feet over top of me through the window. And I’m not going to lie. My first thought was, “Maybe I could play possum and wait till they’re done and get out of here.” And that lasted for a microsecond before I started shooting at them. And I don’t know when they realized I was shooting at them, but I ran that magazine dry. And I did a magazine change, and they were shooting at me at some point in there, I can’t tell you where it started, before or after magazine change, but I actually had a round hit the foot of the magazine. It blew the hand grips off of this pistol. I cleared the malfunction and killed those two dudes. I’m not going to say who manufactures that weapon because I’m looking for product placement for him.

Ray:

I got it. Hey.

Jason Redman:

Yeah, I was going to say –

Ray:

To tell you, I was getting ready to say something, but yeah-

Jason Redman:

And I know you’re listening out there. [crosstalk 00:23:20]

Ray:

You better be listening because that’s a six figure fucking sponsorship there [crosstalk 00:23:26].

 Mike D.:

They know who I am. I’ve talked to them about it.

Ray:

Get off the pot.

Jason Redman:

Yeah.

Ray:

Wow. So-

 Mike D.:

Well that and the body armor did some crazy stuff, man, that it wasn’t supposed to. So 3M, the space is available.

Ray:

Let’s do it. I love it. Little promo plug there. Come on sponsors. Get you off your ass and let’s do this. We were talking about that at shot show man. I was like, “How the fuck can you not be,” and I know who you’re talking about, “Sponsored by these people here.”

 Mike D.:

I’m trying.

Ray:

Dude. Guys.

Jason Redman:

It’s coming.

Ray:

Yeah. Your time is coming when this book comes out and [inaudible 00:23:59] get it they’re going to hear and hear and your story, I mean, it’s fucking legit.

Jason Redman:

So finish it. Yeah because I mean it’s not even quite done yet. So you…

 Mike D.:

Where was I again?

Jason Redman:

You’re changing magazines while you’re getting shot up.

 Mike D.:

Oh yes [crosstalk 00:24:15].

Ray:

Right before you operate on yourself. Keep going it’s an amazing story.

Jason Redman:

And cured cancer.

 Mike D.:

The fact that that pistol took around to the foot of the magazine and just… That the handgrip shattered. I could feel the springs through my gloves in that weapon. So I got that done, got rid of those two guys and I got up on my hands and knees and I asked for status in the house. And one of the Iraqi Scouts, they got stuck in the back room came up and it was luckily one of our first.

Jason Redman:

Hang on Mike.

 Mike D.:

He was one of the first dudes. Remember, I told you earlier that we got 50 guys when we got over there to make our little quasi-SOF and Ambar and Volusia and we’ve got 50 guys to start off with. And we’d told them to do 10 pushups and 40 of them quit. So this guy that came in here, he was like, and his English was 10 times better than any of my Arabic or Farsi and but he came in and gave me a total HUTS report but they call something else now.

Jason Redman:

Yeah. Well that’s impressive because I got to tell you, I worked with those guys and most of them were horrible.

 Mike D.:

If you kept your thumb on them, and they trusted you, they did all right.

Jason Redman:

Some were good but some were not.

Ray:

He just pulled out of a What’s-your-slant too. God bless you. I love it. I love it dude.

 Mike D.:

Hey, well that’s another funny thing too. The irony of, I don’t want to say too much, but we changed things in the community because of what happened to me and now I am teaching it. I am teaching what got me hurt, which is, it’s pretty awesome.

Ray:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:26:01] So who better to teach it than you. I think that’s great.

Jason Redman:

Yeah saving lives, lessons learnt.

Ray:

So wow, it’s amazing.

Jason Redman:

I Mean all our hardest lessons are learned in blood and blood. We change the way we’re doing things off mine too. And it just sucks but so-

 Mike D.:

Everything always comes full circle.

Jason Redman:

So 27 rounds. I mean, just kind of go over some of the injuries because it’s incredible right now for the average person-

 Mike D.:

Oh let me go back, I actually remembered where I left, that dude came in and gave me the slant, the HUTS report for you old guys.

Jason Redman:

But you started to say you got up and started moving around. I want people to understand the extent of your injuries.

 Mike D.:

I did. I got up, he told me what I had. He told me that Clark was dead, that we had a dead Iraqi scout. He, me we had two detainees in the back. I mean he told me all this and I told him, “Hey, watch that front door. Don’t let anybody come through that front door.” And I got up and I found Clark and I had to quiet down the women and children because they were sitting like right next to him. They were in another room. If you read my citation it says that if they weren’t in my room, they’d all be dead if they were in that room.

 Mike D.:

So I got them quiet. I got deeper in the house. I found two other Scouts, they had two detainees. I checked the flex cuffs, brought one out to watch the women and children. Tried to make comms, discovered that my radio was just destroyed and I had to take Clark’s radio off of him. I reconnect it to my stuff and called the guys back up, de-conflicted the front door that came back in, re-cleared the whole house.

Jason Redman:

Tell everybody what your words were when you came across the radio because I think that’s-

 Mike D.:

Across the radio?

Jason Redman:

Yeah, when you first called them.

 Mike D.:

Oh I-

Jason Redman:

What I was told when I got the-

 Mike D.:

I told them that… I gave them the slant. I said don’t come through the front door. The guy’s going to kill you. Yeah. I said call me before you come to the front door because someone will shoot you in the face. And then I said-

Jason Redman:

And then I heard you said, “Come and get me they are all dead.”

 Mike D.:

Well I remember saying, “Hurry up because I’m having trouble breathing.” Out of all those injuries. The only, the two when they came in and asked me what hurt, because I didn’t really know what was wrong with me at this point. I wasn’t doing self-aid. My pelvis hurt really bad and I had a lot of trouble breathing and they tried to treat for a sucking chest wound. Could never get the reclusive dressing on, but luckily it wasn’t a sucking chest wound.

Jason Redman:

And just for people out there that don’t understand when it’s sucking chest wound is, when a bullet goes through your lung, your lung actually is pressurized. When a bullet goes through and it collapses and then every breath you take starts to put pressure. More and more pressure.

 Mike D.:

You drown.

Jason Redman:

What’s that?

 Mike D.:

You drown in your blood.

Jason Redman:

So that’s what a sucking chest wound is and it’ll kill you quickly so-

 Mike D.:

I got too long. I know dudes with… I had a buds instructor that only had one lung and used to run us in the dirt. You only need one.

Ray:

Yeah, you only need the one lung. He’s fine. Holy shit.

Jason Redman:

Suck it up, Mary.

 Mike D.:

Yeah. So the guys get back in and then I hear a two Mike’s to medevac and somebody says, “Pick Mike up.” And I was like, “No, you ain’t touching me.” They didn’t realize I’d been up walking around. It wasn’t because I was trying to play macho is because they had already been rolling me around and actually hurting me more.

Jason Redman:

That’s actually why I got up too, because it hurt when my team leader started dragging me.

 Mike D.:

I was like, Don’t touch me. I’ll let you know if I need you to pick me.

Ray:

You’re making it worse. I just got shot 27 times.

 Mike D.:

I didn’t know that. But I’ve walked out there with who I think is probably the best SEAL, we can’t say his name, because he’s still in active duty, that I’ve ever met. And I told him, if I need your help, I’ll throw my hand over your shoulder. And it was a freshly plowed field and I had to throw my hand over his shoulder to help me and my thumb that was hanging on by a thread. He reached up and almost nicked my thumb off. So we get to the helicopter, fly out, Chris J, he was one of your boys.

Jason Redman:

Yeah, he took a round too.

 Mike D.:

Yeah, he got shot in the arm.

Jason Redman:

Through the window.

 Mike D.:

Through the window.

Jason Redman:

Yeah. Yep.

 Mike D.:

And I knew he was a medic and I thought he was flying with me because he was a medic. I didn’t even know he had been shot and he had a tourniquet on his arm because I was out of it. I was in shock. I can’t believe I was cognizant enough to get up and walk around that house and do what I was supposed to do in the house. But that medical doctor on that bird cut all my clothes off. And when we landed. I was butt naked except for my boots. And I watched those two guys try to open that Israeli litter and they couldn’t do it because Chris had a tourniquet on his arm, was all jacked up. And Golf cart pulled up and I jumped off the helicopter naked and ran over to the golf cart-

Ray:

I don’t mean to laugh, I’m sorry, it’s just It’s fucking awesome.

Jason Redman:

I’m just picturing this because dude, you had to have been bloody from head to toe.

 Mike D.:

No. I remember thinking there wasn’t that much blood. and I don’t know if it was, well, you know Bob, he gets into all this scientific stuff. He was like, “Maybe you didn’t bleed that much because it was so close and it just cauterized everything.”

Jason Redman:

What’s that?

 Mike D.:

I don’t know.

Jason Redman:

Was that a fart?

Ray:

Oh shit.Yeah.

Jason Redman:

Absolutely. Same guys, you put them in one room and this is what starts to happen.

Ray:

When I get excited I fart. That was me. Usually I’m pissing in a bottle, but that’s too disrespectful. You’re talking but [inaudible 00:32:02]

 Mike D.:

So when your hands are under the table, you pissing in the bottle?

Ray:

Usually I am.

Jason Redman:

We have another episode we hear it in the background this is awesome.

Ray:

This story’s amazing. I couldn’t hold it anymore. I’m sorry.

 Mike D.:

Where was I again?

Jason Redman:

They were bringing you in.

 Mike D.:

Oh yeah. They took me from the Golf cart brings me over to throw me on a gurney and there was two times when I realized I was kind of jacked up. The first time was when the guys came back in and I saw their eyes. You know how scared people look at you like they gave you that look, like “You’re really fucked up.” Yeah, I saw that in their eyes. I was like, “Hey, thanks a lot guys.” And then when I was on that gurney and we came from the dark air field into the light of the hospital and there was like seven or eight people there, they started rolling me around and they literally started calling out all the gunshot wounds. And so from the ground up, I had one on my left thigh that went clean through my left thigh. That was a through and through. I had one that went through my scrotum, separated my vas deferens. That was a through and through.

Ray:

He laughs.

Jason Redman:

Yeah I mean you guys need to understand, I’m just dumbfounded. That’s the word. So the bullet went directly through his scrotum passed in between his testicles and you were okay. I mean, that’s amazing, although we will-

 Mike D.:

I did not have underwear on, so…

Jason Redman:

Yeah, and let’s get into when you finally made it to Bethesda, because of the injury-

Ray:

Here we go.

Jason Redman:

When a bullet goes through supersonic it creates a-

 Mike D.:

It caused as much trouble as I did.

Jason Redman:

That and know I don’t know about that man you were a legend and when I got there. There were times there was still talking about you when I arrived. There’d be nurses and everybody would come up to me and be like, “Do you know Mike Day?”

Ray:

“Don’t be a pain in the ass like was.”

Jason Redman:

So it made his balls swell up to the size of like cantaloupe.

 Mike D.:

It was a pretty good size.

Ray:

Breathtaking.

 Mike D.:

And I showed them that everybody.

Jason Redman:

Everyone like the nurses would come and be like, “Oh my God, Mike Day showed his balls to the secretary of the Navy, showed it to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Ray:

Often so

 Mike D.:

Don’t remember those words. But you know, I met Gary Sinise there and I remember him walking in and a lot of people say it is, they ask you like “where’d you get shot?” And I think they’re asking lie a geographical location.

Jason Redman:

And you’d tell him right-

 Mike D.:

I’m like, right here.

Jason Redman:

That’s awesome. Well Mike’s always had an amazing… You’re funny man. You got that dry sense of humor and your story-

 Mike D.:

I grow on you like a fungus.

Jason Redman:

Yeah, but people love you or hate you and I love you man. You and I, years later we did a climb of Mount Rainier. Several Wounded Warriors and other wounded SEAL, Mike and I and a wounded corpsman. And we summited Mount Rainier together and we were doing an interview when we were training. And Mike does his interview first and then I’m getting ready to do mine and they’re rolling the camera at this time.

 Mike D.:

And it was just a fly by for me.

Jason Redman:

Yeah, and Mike’s like walking behind the reporters. The reporter asked, “so how did you get on this climb?” And Mike without missing a beat like goes “Because he got shot in the fucking face.” And the reporter like freezes.

 Mike D.:

I don’t think I said that though-

Jason Redman:

That’s exactly what you said, man-

 Mike D.:

I don’t recall that.

Jason Redman:

And it is on video. Oh my God, but that reporter froze. He did not know what to say. I mean, Oh my God, I laughed so hard.

 Mike D.:

That’s always been like when I was at the Care Coalition and I’m sure you had to deal with it too. One of the more bothersome things of guys that have like disfiguring injuries is people asking them “Well what happened?” And I remember this, this one more side dude though I used to hang out with say “I’m tired of people asking me about my leg.” He was, he was gnarled up pretty bad, it got blown up pretty good. And I was like, “Well, just tell him something really heinous that makes them not want to talk to you.” And he would tell him stuff like, “I kicked his dog so hard that it broke my leg and they had to have it cut.” But you know, that fixed them for him.

Jason Redman:

I feel it-

Ray:

I’d run with the giant balls thing for as long as I could. Personally, I’d be like-

 Mike D.:

I mean I was told by my better half that the swelling was going down I needed to stop showing everybody. They weren’t as impressive anymore. She got me to quit.

Jason Redman:

Yeah. It’s amazing how quickly you can get people stop asking questions if you tell them something super awkward and uncomfortable. Like after I got Car-mowed.

 Mike D.:

People are pretty awkward. They already say dumb as shit because they already feel-

Jason Redman:

Yeah, people would ask me, “Why do you have a service dog?” And I got tired of telling them… So finally I started saying, “Yeah he helps me go to the bathroom. My urinary tract and my penis was shot off so he squeezes my prostate to help me go to the bathroom with his jaws.”

 Mike D.:

He sticks his nose in my butt and makes me pee-

Ray:

That’s a good one.

Jason Redman:

And people would be like, “Oh my God.” They would look at me and then they would look away.

 Mike D.:

I love it.

Jason Redman:

I could see them like thinking about it and then they’d like look down.It was so good.

 Mike D.:

So he’s a prostate dog.

Jason Redman:

Yeah, Well listen.

 Mike D.:

I really want to mess with someone, I want to mess with the telemarketers too. That’s fun.

Jason Redman:

But listen, you had like me, several years of surgeries to kind of finish up-

 Mike D.:

Oh, not like you, just a few.

Jason Redman:

And you went on to help other warriors. Well, I mean you had some hard recovery both from the physical wounds and the invisible wounds of war. So I mean, what you went through was amazing and now you are starting to get out there and more and more to tell this incredible story and to be able to share, I mean, you’ve got 21 years as a shield, senior enlisted leader, combat leader, and you’re out there sharing this message about resiliency. You know what-

 Mike D.:

I mean it was kind of a lesson I learned too. I was a, I was doing a fundraiser and I was sitting in the parking lot of What was it, 99 FM? It was a Tommy and Rumble, not Rumble anymore. And I heard some dude talking about PTSD on the radio and people were calling in and saying, “Hey, you kind of like, make it all right for me to talk about it when I hear somebody else.” So it is good to hear that somebody, somebody’s gone through an experience that they’re not ashamed about, that they’re okay to talk about.

 Mike D.:

But honestly, I think one of the best gifts I got from being shot up so much other than the decent benefits, you Get some free college and stuff, but as long as that trade-

Ray:

Wow. Got shot 27 times but I got some free shit.

 Mike D.:

What I would say is pretty good, I don’t have to prove myself to anybody anymore.

Ray:

No shit.

Jason Redman:

Yeah.

 Mike D.:

I don’t have to play that, size everybody up and prove that I’m more masculine than anybody else.

Jason Redman:

Well, and I think it’s-

 Mike D.:

And I have the ability to show vulnerabilities, which I’m going to in my book. And I think it’s pretty important.

Jason Redman:

So let’s talk about that because I think you’re going to help a lot of people. I mean your word is resiliency and everybody is hungry to be more resilient and Holy hell, we need more resilience.

 Mike D.:

We do.

Jason Redman:

You know, my new book is about that also. I mean, we’ve got to build this resilient mindset and you have the ability to do it on so many different levels from the incredible physical wounds you overcame, the mental, the invisible wounds. And for you as a very high level SEAL to be able to get out there and tell other people, “Hey, it’s okay, you can overcome this.” So what is that message of your book? What led you to write the book and you talk about, you wanted to set the record straight.

Ray:

Because some people didn’t it, right?

 Mike D.:

Well, nobody, nobody actually has it right. You’re the only one that actually asked me. If they-

Jason Redman:

Yeah I wrote to you and said, “Hey man, I want to tell this story if you’re okay with it.”

 Mike D.:

And I was a terrible mess at that point. Yeah so resiliency, I mean we, we train to it. We only can be as resilient as we allow ourselves to be and we can only be what we tell ourselves to be. And I don’t want to put it in that, in that sense. Actually I humbly present myself with all my faults as an example so that you can take out of it what you want. I definitely cannot be the person that wakes up every day on a podcast or something like that to give advice. I don’t think about of that caliber of a person.

 Mike D.:

So just the example of my mistakes and of what I’ve, what I’ve experienced is just what I want to show. So you are what you train yourself to be. I was what I trained myself to be. My father was a very hard person. SEAL teams were very, very easy for me. This event where I got all shot up was more harmful to the people around me than it was to me. Did not bother me. I literally did not have PTSD from this. I’ve had PTSD from an event that now and maybe later I’ll talk about it. I’m just not ready to talk about that yet.

 Mike D.:

But I did not have clinical PTSD. No, I got out of the SEAL teams and I was a Wounded Warrior. I have to they get advocate for seven years. I believe I was a better social worker and Wounded Warrior advocate than I was a SEAL. And I was a naysayer on a lot of the healthcare that I saw people going through. And there was a lot of stuff that that I saw come out early on that I was like, “Hey, it looks like a placebo to me,” but don’t all the sugar pills you can down that person’s throat. Because if it works it works. It doesn’t matter what it is. And, and then I had my own medical problems and I probably dealt with probably 350 to 400 people when I was at the Care Coalition for that seven years.

 Mike D.:

Everything from the more heinous combat injuries to ALS and cancer. And it was definitely probably one of the more profound experience, definitely in a more profound period of my life, that seven years than any other part of my life. Because when I got to accidentally experience what I got to accidentally discover and for me, I think from, from a layman’s point of view, all health is going to be generated from the gut. And I will be having a benevolent organization where I will promote this and try to help teach this is kind of coming out right now with a lot of doctors. You know, we’re looking at gut health and how it affects brain health. I mean, to me it’s just so much common sense that I almost feel like we’re just lulled out of believing what we were doing to ourselves.

 Mike D.:

We’re just propagandized into believing that, “Everything you’re doing is not that bad,” but it causes all kinds of problems. And I saw a lot of psychological issues with people that I ran through med boards and I believe that was probably caused… And they got a diagnosis that’s going to stick with them forever. They’re just supposed to take the medications forever. And all I’m saying on this is, “Hey, give me six to eight months, I’ll fix your stomach and maybe we can get rid of the trigger that caused that predisposition of a genetic malfunction that happened.” It’s not going to earn anything. All I want to do is, put some probiotics in you and make you eat the right stuff.

 Mike D.:

You know, I actually went in pocket my myself and it’s a shame this stuff, this should be healthcare. Everything in healthcare right now is you go there when you’re sick and the doctor tells you sick and now you take this medication and then you take the medication that has symptom, tell the doctor you got the symptom and you take the next medication for the symptom. It’s just, “Oh, why don’t you start from scratch, get everything cleaned up, get the body working with all the…” I mean all we are is batteries. We can’t function without the proper chemicals, minerals, vitamins.

 Mike D.:

There’s a way to get the optimum human performance and that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be an Olympic athlete. It just means optimum human performance for your set. But if you’re set is to sit around and tell your and tell yourself that you’re not good enough and all you do is watch TV and you know you eat bad food. I mean we know the bad stuff we do for ourselves [inaudible 00:45:14]. And you got to have that, have some personal responsibility. I mean you don’t get to a bad state. I didn’t get to a bad state overnight. It took a period of time. My worst state in my life to where I was pretty desperate and yeah, we’ll call it hopeless, was about a two year process, till I was able to turn it around and it was through gut health.

 Mike D.:

I’ve been shot in the stomach, had a colostomy bag. I had no good flora in my stomach. It was that simple. My treatment was to take probiotics and have a diet and over a period of probably four to six months, it was a complete turnaround. I had to quit that job at the Care Coalition because it was just so overwhelming to wake up and work with so many people having their worst days of their lives. Well like the first four years was pretty good for me. Probably pretty healing without me even recognizing it, stomping out Mount Ranier. I mean, I was given my excuse in that job to take people to go do stuff that I wanted to do. So it was like, I was taking dudes on like 500-mile bike rides. Took all these dudes from team two. There was like eight of them, that purple hearts, that had been on bikes and we went on a 500-mile bike ride with Ride 2 Recovery and worked with those guys. It’s a different name now.

Jason Redman:

Bob Newman, was he one of the-

 Mike D.:

Bob Newman, he works a lot with… Actually USO owns that little bike club now.

Jason Redman:

Yeah, he was doing some stuff with them, but yeah, now Bob’s running it.

 Mike D.:

But Ride 2 Recovery is now, it’s another organization and they still do those challenges like five to seven challenges a year, like 500-mile bike rides. They’re awesome.

Jason Redman:

So, what’s amazing though, man, is this journey you’ve been on from a SEAL and even from a hard childhood to a SEAL. And we didn’t even really get into that. I would love to sit here and interview more, but we could be here for hours. But this journey to these man egregious injuries and just this, night and then that path of recovery both physically and mentally to now where you are understanding so many things about the human condition from mental health, from all the Wounded Warriors that you worked with and saw from your own journey to nutrition. You’re really big now on that. And especially in this day and age, so many people need to be more educated. I mean it’s a sad state of affairs. I know, I see it that we have made it easy and normal just to eat as unhealthy as possible because it’s, for whatever reason, it’s so much cheaper to eat crap-

 Mike D.:

It is.

Jason Redman:

Than it is to eat healthy food.

 Mike D.:

And it’s a travesty. The inner city kids and I mean it’s not getting the nutrition at the earliest ages of development that are the most important. I mean healthcare should not be reactive.

Jason Redman:

Absolutely, it should be proactive.

 Mike D.:

I mean there’s looking at in soft trying to do these tests where they look at your urine, your fecal matter and your blood to actually diagnose you and to individually prescribed a certain diet in a way to take care of it. My daughter was having issues that really looked like a thyroid issue and it was a parasite. So H. pylori, which is very common and I wonder how many people in this country have been symptomatic of a thyroid issue, get treated for a thyroid issue and all they had to do was stop eating sugar for 30 days. That’s it, that’s all you had to do.

Jason Redman:

So well listen brother, I mean, yeah, we could be on here forever. You are out there now you are speaking, you are telling your amazing story, you’re teaching leadership and teamwork and resiliency and your new book is going to come out in the spring so people can really dig deep into that to learn more. So they can find you at eaglerisespeakers.com, you are represented by Eagle Rise Speakers. So yeah man, I’m speechless. I mean you and I have… our journeys were pretty close together, you know-

 Mike D.:

Couple of months behind.

Jason Redman:

Mad respect for you. Yeah watched you go through the hard times and I’m glad to see you’re on the other side bro and giving back to others.

 Mike D.:

Well, for me it’s always constant improvement. There’s always room for improvement, right?

Jason Redman:

Always.

 Mike D.:

Kill more of this ego and I can prove more.

Ray:

Yeah. I don’t have much guys. I’m just listening. It’s rare you get me without talking. I got nothing.

Jason Redman:

You’re leaking no gas here.

Ray:

Between the two of you been shot like 50 fucking times and I’m sitting here bitching about having what? The shingles. So I got nothing. I’m being serious, I’ve nothing but respect.

 Mike D.:

I did have shingles and it was actually more painful than the gunshot wounds to the body.

Ray:

So you hear that, I’ve taken more pain than you Redman.

 Mike D.:

The ones through the body armor, yeah those were actually worse. I mean, two bones got hit. My left thumb and my right scapula got shattered, so…

Ray:

I love the fact that you just here and you’re pushing. Listen guys, you need to… Again, this is no plug for me. You need to hire this guy. You need to come listen to his story because I’m telling you, if you’re sitting in the same room as him, it is humbling.

Jason Redman:

Yeah.

Ray:

I mean literally, I’m a beta here today.

Jason Redman:

Producer Ryan’s nodding his head like- “Oh no, I’m speechless.”

Ray:

Yeah.

Jason Redman:

It is a speechless story and I tell you what you, if you’re looking for resiliency, man, we all find it by finding those individuals. I mean, I’m blessed to have an amazing story. All of us go through hard times, but-

 Mike D.:

You’ve got to practice it, right? You’ve got to practice it just like anything else.

Jason Redman:

Like your story is incredible. So, listen, look him up, eaglerisespeakers.com, Mike Day find him, his books are going to be coming out in the spring. You need to go buy it. You need to pre-order it. We need to make it a best seller. And there is a specific weapons company, you know who you are-

Ray:

You know who you are. Stop being a-

 Mike D.:

I’ll see them this week, so hopefully there’s someone there I can talk.

Ray:

We order you, I order you, Ray Cash Care orders you. Orders you.

Jason Redman:

Mike, I’m going to give you the final word. I’m going to let you wrap it up on what resiliency means to you. You’ve been through an incredible journey, man, and I’m sure your view of resiliency is much different now than it was. So closing the show, how would you tell others out there to be more resilient?

 Mike D.:

I think you have to have personal responsibility in being able to be objective about yourself and realize that if I had to be more resilient than I actually had to put effort into it. And luckily through my, I’d say my unfortunate series of events in my life, I was actually given a lot of chances and trials that I probably wouldn’t have picked to go through.

Jason Redman:

You wouldn’t have picked getting shot 27 times.

Ray:

I can’t nobody volunteers for that.

 Mike D.:

But kind of my mantra is, everything always works out for me, just not the way I expected to. And that takes a lot of patients. There’s been times where, I mean, come on now, let’s get through this part because you can’t expect to get through life without having some kind of hard times and hopefully it’s not going to be that bad. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen somebody go through something, then people from the outside say, “I can’t believe that you’re going through this. I don’t think I could do it myself.” That person that’s doing it probably said the same damn thing. And I mean, you got to do what you got to do and you’re only going to do what you tell yourself to do. And I’ve even quit. Quinting’s not forever. I’ve quit for a period of time or gotten lazy, however you want to describe it. Get your five minutes bitching and done and do what you’re going to do.

Jason Redman:

Get back on it.

 Mike D.:

Yeah, or not. Or not.

Jason Redman:

No we got to drive forward, man, you’re driving forward now. I mean we all have those moments where you’re mentally weak but it’s never too late to get back on it and that’s what resiliency is about, so. All right guys, man, this is an amazing show. Once again, you want to find Mike Day, eaglerisespeakers.com. Are you on social media now?

 Mike D.:

Yeah I am but I don’t-

Ray:

You’re on Instagram, but you don’t do anything, I’ve written you lie 20 times.

 Mike D.:

I don’t know. You did?

Ray:

Yeah, you didn’t-

 Mike D.:

I don’t have anything professional or anything going on right now.

Jason Redman:

Okay, well eaglerisespeakers.com is the way to find Mike and he’s going to be out there. Amazing guy, so show brother, thank you for coming on.

 Mike D.:

Thank you fellas. Honored.

Jason Redman:

So all right guys, this is the Overcome and Conquer Show. I am Jason Overcome Redmond and I am Ray Cash Care and we are out.

Speaker 4:

Thanks for listening to the Overcome and Conquer Show. Tune in next time and please remember to subscribe on iTunes. Please visit, overcomeandconquer.com.

Ray:

Hey, this is Ray Cash Care. Thanks for listening to the Overcome and Conquer Show. If you love the show, we want you to do us a huge favor. Go to iTunes, subscribe, leave a five star message, leave a comment and share with your friends. Boom.