The mental health crisis that lead to med school: Dr Carlton Irving

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk said B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Greetings and welcome. I'm Hamish Williams and you're listening to
the podcast version of The Nutters Club, a radio show
about mental health broadcast weekly on Newstalok seed B. Each
week we have conversations with people about their experiences of
how they learned to live with their own mental health
and the help that it might help you with your own.

(00:42):
The show is broadcast live on Sunday nights on Newstalok
said B right across New Zealand and around the world.
This week we were joined by doctor Carlton Irving. Doctor
Irving's path was far from conventional. As a high school dropout,
he faced significant barriers, but found his way into the
ambulance service, where he worked tirelessly to save lives. After

(01:07):
years of witnessing for and lost, including the deaths of
many young patients, this led to a mental health crisis
for himself in the stark reality that.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
He needed to enact change.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Let us know what you think as well as what
you learned from our chat on any of our social
media platforms. Just search for the Nutters Club in Ze.
Let's get into this week's episode, Carleton, Look, tell us
a little bit about yourself. Where were you born, where'd
you grow up?

Speaker 3 (01:34):
I was born in a Portucky and a Portugi hospital
when we still had a hospital there. Grew up a
few places. We're talking about this before. So moved a
lot when we were kids. Born in a Portucky in
the seventies. In the eighties, time has got a bit lean,
and we moved around a lot as a family. Lived
in Katikuzzi, lived in Nauni, Hunger Sunny Nook, and then

(01:55):
eventually ended up in the Birkdale Beach Haven Valley area.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
So tell me about this moving around. I mean, was
it you and a parent, parents, where their brothers, sisters.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Me, my mum, my dad, and my older sister. Yeah,
so neither of my parents had a trade or went
to university, and they sort of looked for work and
we moved to sort of go where there was work.
And yeah, it was I wouldn't say we had a
terrible childhood, but we wasn't sort of, you know, particularly

(02:28):
wealth or anything like that. But it was pretty good,
like getting to see different places, changing schools a lot.
When you're kids. Not fun for anybody, But yeah, we
lived some interesting places. I lived in aum All in
the eighties, sort of when it was probably bit edgier
than it is these days, and around that kind of area,
and we lived there for a little while, and we

(02:51):
lived next door to a bit of a rough crowd.
And when I was six, I remember we got like
a new bike. My parents saved a year and got
my sister and I had these new bikes for Christmas,
and about two or three days later they got stolen,
which is just crushing. And then one of my neighbors
attacked another with a chain sort in front of me,
and my parents are like, yeah, it's probably time we

(03:13):
move house. So we moved from Theater. It was a
bit of a kind of a hairy kind of place
to live back then. But yeah, it's sort of a
recurring theme. Actually, you know something that wasn't too bad,
but where we lived in and Burkedale, we seem to
have a lot of armed to finness call outs in
this in this little street. I don't name it because

(03:34):
I don't want to bring people's poverty values down, but
that's very kind of you. Yeah, it was. It was
quite rough. And that way, like it was a really
lovely everyone knew each other in the street, but just
kind of bad stuff seemed to happen and sometimes things
could just spike up right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was
funny like that.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
But and what did you how did that make you
feel as a kid, You know, like you sort of
you're in these neighborhoods. It sounds to me like, you know,
you got out there, you were active on the bike,
but then all of a sudden these things could just
come out of nowhere. What was what was your memories
of that as a kid? Were you were you scared,
were you intrigued? Or what was your response?

Speaker 3 (04:11):
I think you, strangely, you just normalize what's going on
around you. You know, you don't. It's not until I
was probably older and reflected on that, I was like, gosh,
that was a bit that I remember being down about
getting my bike stolen and the sort of yearning about
this person getting attacked fair enough. But outside of that, no,
like yeah, I think I think it's just one of

(04:33):
those things that you don't know that there's other places
that are different. I suppose you know, you only know
where you are and you don't sort of think too
much of it. You're just like, oh, yeah, that's happening.
So then tell me about where you ended up in
high school. Yeah, so I wanted to be like a
doctor or a dentist or something like that. I knew

(04:53):
I wanted to care for people when I was a kid.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Why why that? Why not go and be you know,
like get into finance or become a real estate agent,
you know, you know where the bad streets are.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, Well, was growing up. My mum struggled a bit
with alcohol and was really lucky that my grandfather came
to live with us after my grandmother passed. He just
came and stayed with us and lived with us, and
so he was a really hard working guy. I'd been

(05:24):
a engineer his whole life, and he'd sort of always
told him talk to me about like purpose and doing
things for good's sake, and it's just this pretty beautiful
man that really cared about other human beings and being
of service to others. And it's something that I'd always
sort of reflected, Oh yeah, just had that sense that

(05:45):
that was what was right to do. And so I thought, oh, yeah,
that's probably the direction I want to take with my life.
And so you asked about high school, and so I
thought I'd go to a good high school because I
figured that was what you need to do to go
to medical school or something like that. So I applied
out of area and managed to get into Tugopono Grammar,

(06:06):
which was quite a way from from where it was.
You had to take like two or three buses to
get there. So this is when you were still in Birkdale.
Yeah you're still living there, okay, so two three buses
every morning, yeah, to get across there. So I think
it took like an hour or something to get you
got in, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I are getting there,
and it's quite shocking, I think, being Mary and having

(06:32):
lived in neighborhoods that were largely Mary and Pacific, you know,
and then going to an area that there weren't very
many of us at all at that school, it was
sort of the first time I was like, well, you know,
this is quite a different experience.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
And because for those who don't know, you know, take
a poona Grammar. You know, all the Devenport kids go
there on yeah you know, and if you don't know, listeners,
Devenport's are pretty swish, not particularly Mary suburb of Auckland.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
No, no, no, that's a fair observation. So it was
quite a Yeah, I don't know, it's just sort of
never foutsird a place and I think never really been
so cognizant of my skin color and the culture I
came from until I got there, and people felt like
empowered to be derogatory towards.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Mary, and so people were racist towards you.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, yeah, how did that make you feel? Was it
the first time you?

Speaker 2 (07:27):
I mean, was that the first time you'd encountered it overtly?

Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah? I mean, like, you know, there's a security guard
that to follow you around the supermarket or whatever, and
just the occasional not nice human but yeah, no, not
sort of so overt I guess, probably because just you
wentn't really around people that were going to drag you
down for something like that. So it was a bit
a bit challenging. And I was learning Marty. I sort

(07:56):
of took a real interest in speaking today Marty, because
my grandfather had learned he was a park our man.
He's fascinating, you aren't, and he'd learned to speak todayl
Mardy and become a minister of the Mardi Church because
he fell in love with my grandma and he spoke
beautiful to ol Mahdy and so it started learning from him,
and I thought I continued to learn today Marty. When
I was at high school and I had this beautiful

(08:19):
Marty teacher who came from a Portuguese name. It's Mona
ui Ardinger. Nice, just really loved Who's just this really
beautiful man. Just kind of felt like home, all safe,
kind of a character and whenever I felt a bit
overwhelmed other spaces and just go and chill out and
hang out in the Marty room with them. And back
then when we had forms, I was in fifth form

(08:41):
and I came back after lunch one day and was
there with one of my other classmates, Joy, and he
clapsed out of his chair and it had a really
massive stroke. And sadly he died not long after that.
And this is a sort of in that penn ultimate
time at high school, you know, and you're getting ready

(09:02):
to do his school see and then on to whatever
else comes after that, and I just yeah, I just
really lost interest in school when he died. It just
it didn't feel like a safe space, this kind of
little I don't know, safe pocket of the place that
I could go and just be mildy and feel safe
and it would be okay. It was sort of gone

(09:23):
with him going. So yeah, I bombed school, see, and
then just left school and that was sort of the
end of what I was going to do there, so
I thought. And obviously life changed after that. But yeah, yeah,
high school didn't go so great.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
You know that teacher you're today, o, teacher who you
obviously had an immense amount of respect for, checked out,
you know, and had had the stroke and so you know,
you checked out a high school effectively too, right, Yeah,
so where did you go next? You know, how old
are you?

Speaker 3 (09:58):
What? Fifteen?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Sixteen? At this point sixteen?

Speaker 3 (10:00):
I just did a bunch of whatever I could get
my hands on, kind of jobs, just drifting. Really. My
dad was doing volunteer firefighting then and he did it
for I don't know, twenty thirty years something like that,
and my grandfather and my uncle had done volunteer firefighting
two and so I must have been sixteen, I think,

(10:23):
and I sort of did these I just did what
if a job I could sort of do because didn't
have you know, didn't have education from the university, didn't
have a great high school record either, so you know,
I sort of just kind of grinding along. And to
be fair, I didn't really know how university was going
to work out, because we went flushed and I didn't

(10:45):
see my parents being able to fund my way through
university anyways. So anyway, outside I just had office jobs
and did it a work and like a factory and
did some other stuff. Nothing that really kind of grabbed me.
But I started doing some volunteer fire stuff because that
whole well, find a way to serve, right, I find
a way to do some good. And I think I

(11:07):
was sixteen when I joined the Birkenhead Volunteer Fibergate. Must
have been sixteen seventeen or whatever. It was the youngest
age you could join was and that was pretty cool.
I was doing that with my dad and doing that.
You know, I hadn't really sort of thought it well,
I hadn't thought it through. It does what it says

(11:28):
on the box, you know. We went to like some
fatal car accidents and stuff, and I remember seeing, like,
you know, I was maybe sixteen seventeen, this guy were
cutting out of a car that had died and thinking, geez,
it's just like that you know that things can come
to an end. And I wasn't too sure how'd feel
about it when I went there and kind of went

(11:50):
through that, and I thought, oh, yeah, I feel okay.
I think I could do something in this kind of space.
So did that. For a few years, thought about doing
maybe the fire service as a career, but it didn't
really grab me in the first thing that I got
sort of really really into as a career was music,
because that was kind of plan b Right, I'm just

(12:12):
going to be a rock star. I'm going to be
a musician.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, I mean fair enough.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
You know, when when life gives you lemons, just just
become a rock star. Wow? You know, you bet things
up in your head. It all seems so possible when
you're young, and.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
You know, I just wasn't you just rock into the
office is there at Warner Brothers and start playing in
the lobby and the rest takes either of itself, right?

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yeah? And so I started a little practice space and
recording studio and played in a bunch of bands and
just loved it, just really loved playing music and sort.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Of any band names that any any older for Shieronnado's
out there might recognize.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Yeah, probably not, but like that, you know, I just
really loved playing music. And while I was doing that,
I had done karate for a long time when I
was younger, and I started training initially with a guy
called Stephen Kendle Jones who's done a number of different

(13:06):
martial arts, and was really lucky that he let me
come and train every day. And then so would I
just train, so play music nightgun, teach karate and train
and karate and taekwondo and his dojo every day, and
it just really gave me the sense of discipline and
focus around getting stuff done and also how to learn.

(13:27):
There's this process that he explained about how to learn things,
and it's you know, in karate you learn these things
called carter, which are like set patterns of movements that
you do one movement in the next movement, in the
next movement, and in my brain, I'm like, I just
want to know what the sequence is. And it always
stopped you to go, no, no, you need to perfect each
move before we move to the next one, because it's

(13:49):
only by perfecting that bit that the whole thing will work.
You don't need to worry about five steps. He'd just
do the one you're doing to your best of your ability.
When you've mastered that move to the next. But the
just practice, practice, practice, and you sort of start to
learn that success builds on success builds on success. You know,
just perfect one little thing of the time, and sooner
or later the whole thing comes together and it's awesome.

(14:11):
But if you kind of try to learn it all
as one big chunk, it just turns into a mess.
So it's my point. My point is that if you
break it down into these sort of pieces that you
can make your way through, you can teach yourself just
about anything, right, So this is really wonderful double dividend
of sort of getting really fit and learning this martial art,

(14:32):
but at the same time actually really nailing that how
do I learn? How does my brain learn? And it's
something that I think we overlook often in life as
learning in itself, as a skill that we need to
focus on, because once you've developed that, you can go
from a high school dropout to whatever.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
It's probably what I'd say, I love that way of
how you're describing how we learn and the idea that
it was done in a way that worked for you.
You know that I think the idea that if you
don't learn how to learn at high school then you're
never going to do anything with your life is probably
about the worst sty patement that you could ever hear.
I mean, I've talked about this on the show before.

(15:12):
You know, if you don't get school stuffic at maths,
you'll never get a job in life. Right, So every
I didn't, I got a job, you know, but everyone, everyone,
right needs at least one teacher to believe in them
in life to be able to get that momentum. And
it sounds like for you it was your karate teacher.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, I think so. Obviously I had that good experience
with mister Arder earlier.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Mister we didn't get his name, actually, mister Ardunger.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Okay, yeah, yeah, mister Arder.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
So where where did this take you? Then? You know,
now that you know you're kind of renewed your your
sense of learning, you know, what was it that? Now?
Given choice, what did you want to learn?

Speaker 3 (15:54):
I hadn't landed on that. And I was playing in
this band. We decided we're going to go away. We're
playing a few gags out of town, and we decided
to have a barbecue. Little Shoal Bay before we hit
it away. Agree, you know, I'm not gonna drink anything.
She's gonna hang out quiet, barbecue, chill out. Spent some
time together and the guitarist and my friend Luke. He

(16:16):
was doing like flips off the swings down here. It's
a beautiful spot that's sort under the harbor bridge, and
he landed really funny and just located his leg at
the hurt like fractured as as the tambulance sort of
and the joint in this league was at this weird angle.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
I was really serious.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yeah, it was pretty pretty terrible. Poor guy. And anyway,
we'd call an ambulance because we're like, oh, we can't
move him, he's too much pain and a lot. What
do we do? We called an ambulance and this ambulance
came and packed him up and we put him into
into the ambulance. We're heading to hospital, and he's like, bro,
come with me and you. So we belonged to hospital

(16:54):
and got chatting to this paramedic and the ambulance at
the time, and she was explaining to me that they
had this program where you could apply and they teach
you on the job how to do the job, and
I was like, you have to get a university or
anything like that, and she's said, no, no, no, you
just apply and they'll teach you how to do this job.

(17:14):
And so this is just my own view, but I
feel although so we lean into our fuckerpupper. Wherever we've
come from, we've all voyaged here, right, And I feel like,
innately as a Martian, probably as key with is we're
kind of wayfinders to have got where we are, and
I think sometimes you find the way, and sometimes the

(17:36):
way finds you. And it was just one of those
moments where I was like, oh, so I can apply
for this job. They'll train me to do this. I've
already done some emergency service work. I know that, you know,
this is something that I feel resilient enough for myself
to do. And I thought, oh yeah, And so I
wasn't going to be going away touring because poor Luke
was banged up in a hospital then for a few

(17:58):
months with this league, and I thought, oh well, I'll
get it a nudge and apply, And so I applied
for a job with the ambulance service because they, weirdly
we're hiring. When I decided this is what I wanted
to do, so of course this weird, just this weird
coalescence of things, and so I applied and went and

(18:18):
did this interview process day and they offered me a job,
and then I went and started working for them not
too long after that, and so I sort of started
onto this journey as a working in the ambulance service
with starting off with the first aid certificate is sort
of a a system that carries the bags and you
go into a bit of a course still in a

(18:39):
little bit more, and you apply that and do your best.
And it's sort of that exact same process of learning
things a step at a time and just taking the
time to really try to master that but you're doing
and then add the nextpert to it, and add the
next but to it. And so yeah, I'd sort of
found my way, through no fault of my own, into

(19:02):
this ambulance service work, which no one really talked to
me about, and it's just not something that'd ever been
on my radar before.

Speaker 2 (19:09):
But nothing happens until somebody takes action, right, and and
there you were. You were curious, you asked questions, and
then step by step, just like karate, you actually started
taking that journey to see where it would take you.
So to look, tell us you ended up working for
Saint John's. I did, yeah, and ultimately we did that.

(19:29):
We did that to take you to in the organization.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
So started off in Pitt Street when I very first
started in the central city in Auckland. And I'll share
this with you like it. There's different ways that people
learn to cope with the sort of work. You know,
some people get a black sense of humor. Some people
become quite cynical. And I sort of saw that. I

(19:54):
saw these people that were cynical and a bit too cool,
and the first sort of I guess I had this
this first little stint when I first finished training as
a three upsets sort of the extra set of hands
until you're ready to go through mentoring and then you'd
have to start. When I was sort of going through

(20:16):
this mentoring period with someone who was just really cynical,
and remember packing up a patient and she'd hurt herself
and and just demented, and they sort of were cracking jokes,
this my mentor and this this other paramedic that was
worth those sort of cracking jokes and sort of making
light of the situation and I'm just like, man, that's

(20:37):
just not that's not the kind of person I want
to be. And I remember they were, oh, you know,
don't you find it funny? And it was one of
those moments we had to decide what kind of person
am I going to be? Am I going to try
to fit in? Like, nah, man, this isn't for me?
And I was like, nah, I don't find that shit funny.
But yeah, and I remember being a bit awkward after that. Well,

(20:58):
I had to finish this mentoring because I'd sort of decided, no,
I'm going to take a moral standard it where I'm
at with this. But that reassured me and myself that
I know where the line is with this stuff. And
then I worked with my first first block out. I
worked with this really incredible paramedic called Darryl, and he'd

(21:19):
been a paramedic for like, I don't know, man, And
this was probably horse drawn when Darryl started.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Darryl had seen it all. He genuine had a I
had this auto. Daryl hadn't seen it. It wasn't worth
knowing about exactly. Handlebar mustache.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
It's just like perfect, perfect, I can see it. It's
just it's like stick with me, young fellow, You'll be
all good. And we had this shift, this this shift
that probably I'll never forget it. Our first job together
was it was a murder suicide that we went to,

(21:54):
and it was it was pretty pretty raw, you know,
it'd sort of went in. We had to go and
check and see that these these people were deceased, and
we sort of went through all of that and it
was all just there's something when you go to a
violent death that the ears almost sucked out of the space.

(22:18):
And I can't explain that. There's just this weird sense
that things are unsettled in that space and you feel
it and in a way that I can't articulate it
every well, but it's a really uncomfortable sort of space
to be it. And you sort of get out and
I don't always wash my hands and throw some water
over here. You just sort of got to get that
stuff off you. And so him, can I get back

(22:40):
into the ambulance And he's like, are you orga mate?
You know, have you seen a dead person before? Yeah?
And I'm all good and wanted to talk. He's really
beautiful guy. He's sort of gruff, but he you know,
if you talk about your feelings and stuff. You know,
it's all good. I'm like, you're good, and I se him, Oh,
thank god, he's okay, and so he goes, well, now
what's going to happen is they're going to stand us down.
Am I going to go and you know, have a

(23:02):
bit of a debrief, make sure we're all okay, and
then we'll get back to it. I'm like, yeah, that
sounds cool, man, and he's like radio. We get back
into the ambulance and there's a hanging like I don't know,
two k's away from us, and we're definitely the nearest
unit to go to this this hanging. So Pylon him

(23:22):
and I bolt off to this this hanging and this
woman she was dead. She's dead, but the thing was her.
She had like a five or six year old boy
that was trying to lift her up by her legs.
Her husband's on the phone and talking to the one
on one caller, and yeah, I don't know, just the

(23:48):
sort of instinct that sort of scoped this little guy
up and took him inside to sort of sit the
dad and took his mum. And we can't do anything
about it. But anyway, getting this block with Darryl, and
he just genuinely kid he didn't. He's like, are you okay?
You know that might repeat? You I dars, we can

(24:09):
talk about it, da da da. And I was like,
oh yeah, yeah, okay, mate. And the weird thing was
that didn't repeat on me, that scene that I just
shared with you, for probably, I don't know, two or
three months. I didn't think about it again, and I
couldn't stop thinking about it and reaching out to him, saying, man,
you know this has been going on, sweetheirs. Mate. He's
a big yann about it, genuinely, like, just showed me

(24:32):
that you don't have to let it harden you. You know,
he'd done it forever and he'd never let it harden him.
He's still really cared not only about the patience he
was seeing, but the people he was with. And I
just thought that was if I'm going to be someone,
that's the kind of some one I want to be.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
When we experience traumatic things and Kyle'll bring you in
here for a moment, you know, when we have those
traumatic experiences in our life, and you know, let's be honest,
seeing multiple dead bodies in one evening, I think that
we can fairly assume that that counts as being traumatic. Yeah,
why Kyle, is it so important to be able to

(25:10):
have someone to talk about it? And why does it
not you know, as talking about it immediately not always
the way because you said it was about two or
three months before you actually brought this up with Daryl Roight.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, I love Darryl.

Speaker 4 (25:21):
Darryl's great. We all need it, Darryl, because Darryl nailed it.
Because actually, one of the things that we know and
we lent this actually from the response to nine to eleven,
is it the worst thing you can do when someone's
gone through something that we might define as traumatic is
sit them down and have them talk about it a
lot immediately, because what that actually does is it reinforces
the experience of the trauma. We want, you know, the
best response of someone's really distressed after something awful is

(25:44):
a nice warm blanket and a cup of tea actually
and let them do what they need to do naturally.
And so it's not you know, as you described to Carlton,
it's not that unusual for it to show up a
few months later. But again, what's really lovely about what
you talked about, is it actually what we need to
do at that moment is what feels counterinstinctive, which is
actually lean into being able to at that moment when
it comes up to then be able to talk about

(26:06):
and process and feel it. Can do that with someone
who can actually listen genuinely and compassionately, whether it be
a mate or a professional, then we can process the memory. Yeah,
and it just naturally will happen if we can do that.
When we fight it.

Speaker 5 (26:22):
That's when we get ourselves into trouble.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Well, I think it's also good to be able to
have people that you trust to be able to speak to.
And I haven't met him, but a man with a
handlebar mustache and who called Daryl and the way you've
described him, I trust that man with my life, I reckon.
So look tell us then you know you completed your
mentoring with Saint John's.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Yeah, I did, And then I went to South Auckland.
I still lived on the North Short at the time,
and I was trucking my way over to South Auckland.
And when I started in the ambulance service, we had
a I don't know, very very few of us that
were mardy op Pacific Island. Maybe ten of us across

(27:04):
maybe a thousand odd people in the area. And I
went to work in South Auckland, and I was sort
of going in and out of these houses all the time,
and a couple of things sort of struck me there.
You'd go to the same sort of houses in the
same areas, and you'd pick kids up who were sack
and unwell and chest infections and things, and you'd take

(27:25):
them to hospital. And really quickly it dawned on me, like,
these kids don't just need any biotocks, they actually need
to not be in a cold damn house, or four
of them on the floor on a mattress without proper
winter clothes or heating in the house, or and you know,
I mean, I wouldn't say I came from a privileged background,
but I hadn't been to exposed to sort of being

(27:49):
in some of those houses and just seeing how people
are living, well, let's call it what it is, poverty,
right absolutely, you know, and people living in cars and
garages and things, and it's tough, and it was tough saying,
you know, you just wanted to sort of take these
these little people home with you. Just just heartbreaking. And
so it's going through there and one of the things

(28:10):
when I was working out there, because you know, I
can speak a bit of our language, and I learned
to speak a little bit of Cook Island just to
be polite to them. And I found that I could
kind of finagle conversations together with some of our Pacific people,
but a lot of the people in the neighbood I
was working and spoke someone, So I started trying to

(28:32):
learn basic conversational someone and so I could go into
just understand a little bit about their culture and going
to you know, you know, it's just a very simple
basic conversational some wan to show that I cared about
them as people, and it just unlocked this whole different
way of interacting with the family, with anga and with

(28:55):
the patients and communicating with them in a way that
felt safe to them. And it kind of dawned on
me that, ah, this is probably what it's like for
like Mary family or other groups when it's not someone
like me that goes in and talks to them. And
so I thought, should we start teaching our paramedics and

(29:16):
ambulance officers how to interact with people from Maori Pacific cultures.
So it developed like cultural safety training with some other
friends to actually take the ambulance service on this journey
of like we should learn how to do this because
it's the right thing to do. It was an interesting
time because you know you're going to make these decisions.

(29:37):
You go, I'm going to say we need to be
culturally safe in the practice we're doing because it's the
right thing to do.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
You're going to meet pushback when you say the right
thing to do, though. I mean there's two ways that
you could look at that. You can say, well, look,
you know, we're just trying to be you know, culturally sensitive.
But when you were saying about how it would unlock something,
I mean, ultimately, did it allow you to do your
job as a paramedic better? Because people were like, oh
this this person has made a genuine connection.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
With me, absolutely absolutely, And.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
What does that look like? You know, when you you
go into a sum on family time and you're able
to you know, speak a bit of the language, have
an understanding of it from a paramedics point of view,
what would it allow you to do more effectively that
you had you had you just gone in there and
been like, good evening, fellow citizens, how are you I
believe you might have a medical emergency. What did it

(30:27):
allow you to do in that role more effectively by
actually applying that cultural understanding, I.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
Mean, other than the obvious communication barriers that you sort
of bring down, you build trust faster, you know, like,
and I think that in that clinical relationship, trust is fundamental,
and people don't feel safe, they're not going to trust you,
like and so it's really fun, you know, in any

(30:57):
sense that people don't feel safe to tell you about
what's going on and to be open, we're missing the point.
And so that's probably you know, that's what I'd say.
It unlocks it, which we all travel at the speed
of trust. Hey, and those those journeys, why would you
not do what helps facilitate that better? And so that
was why we we sort of introduced that. And obviously

(31:21):
when you start saying, hey, you should do this, you
should do that because it's safe. But I've always done
it this way? Why am I learning about this? Why
is it so important to learn about that particular culture?
Da da da day?

Speaker 2 (31:32):
You get all those time? I get it, you know,
I mean being from south of the White Teki River,
you know, the moment that you identify that somebody else
is from a targo, you talk in a different way,
and people from a tiger will will know what that is.
And you know, and you start having a laugh about
this place or that place, and you know, oh do
you know, so where did you go?

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Where did you grow up? You know? It's that yeah,
it's that one hundred. It sounds to me that you
took this.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Continuous curiosity and learning. You know, I just think that's
it's marvelous in terms of being a paramedic in all honesty,
and I've seen paramedics in action. It's a hard enough
gig let alone going home being like, well, you know what,
I've had a hell of a time and an incredible night,

(32:21):
and terms of how many different bodily fluids you might
have to clean off, you know, your uniform at the
end of the day. And now I'm going to go
to language school because I think that might help me
do my job more effectively. When you were making those challenges,
and I'm sure you got pushback in some way, shape
or form, but ultimately did people listen to you?

Speaker 3 (32:45):
I think we can spend a lot of time focusing
on the five percent that don't want to hear, and
then there's going to be the thirty percent that I'll
just pack it up like that. Where I've in my
journey learned is to focus your energy on the people
that are in the middle, and they just want to understand.
They don't want to shut it out and shut it
down from the start. They don't get it right from

(33:07):
the bat. There's people who somewhere around that and they're like,
I'm not entirely closed, I'm not entirely convinced. Taught me
about why we want to do this, And that's where
I've always focused my energy because I've got a positionality
around this, because I've got a lived experience and I've
got a view that this is why I think we
should do it. They've got a lived experience in a

(33:27):
positionality where they're like, well, I'm not convinced, and you
have to find a way. What would convince you? What
are the things that you'd need to understand that this
is going to help? And so you have to think
and what are the things if we agree about what
would help that you need to do this. Because if
I'm forcing it on, you're not going to do it.
But if I'm listening to you, we're designing this thing together,

(33:49):
so it works. It becomes a different proposition and it
stops being about me and it starts being about we.
So that's how I started off with probably the the
inertia of I've got the answer that we're doing this,
and that passed people off, and I was okay with
that because I was a bit of a zealot, bit
of a fire rain of younger, like, no, you guys

(34:09):
are going to learn how do this because it's the
right thing to What I learned is that this is
this important opportunity to just listen and try to understand
that we've all got a different way of seeing the
same problem. And when we listen to one another, we
start understanding all the perspectives that come into that, so
we have a better understanding of the problem together to

(34:30):
solve it. So it took time. It took a lot
of time. It took a lot of years for us
to get where we got to an ambulance service, and
we went from being a very monocultural approach to things.
So now even ambulances have bilingual signage. Beautiful too, who
on the side of them, you know, like it's become
part of the culture. It's just become part of the culture.

(34:52):
And I wouldn't take soul credit for that. I put
a lot of effort and heart into it, but there's
really wonderful people that worked alongside me to get that done. Well,
I think you said it best just before you said it.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
So it's not about me, it's about we. Yeah, you
don't ever do these kind of things on your own.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
We know it.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Here is why it's called another club, not the Nutter.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yeah yeah, well said Hayle.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Yeah yeah, thank you. So then you know this, this
is an incredible mark to be involved with, you know,
like a wonderful part of the evolution of you know,
let's be honest, a much respected and critical service.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
Definitely.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
So you're running Saint John's now for how long?

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Hello? No? Okay, sorry, I thought you were the head.
I'm vine okay.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
So then what was your journey in continuing with the paramedics?

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Where did that go? So then I decided I wanted
to I'd become a paramedic and sort of upskilled and
at that time the next step was to become an
advanced paramedic. And I should say because I tended to
poke my head up and call out what I didn't
agree with I've picked up on that. Yeah, when you
do that, like not to dissuade a listener from doing that,

(36:02):
there's always going to be a repercussion and you've got
to be willing to take it. So despite passing assessments
to I'm a paramedic, many times I got held back
for attitude and various other reasons, until finally, you know,
they just said, like, he's past the examin enough times,
we'll just let him do it. And then I became
a paramedic and I was like, right, I'll become advanced paramedic.

(36:23):
And so I trained to do that. I decided I needed.
I got told when I was training to be an
advanced paramedic, I could be intimidating at times to people.
And I'm a recently selfly spoken person. I'm not tall,
I'm not a big guy by any stretch of the imagination,
and I reumor thinking, gosh, like, how could anyone be

(36:46):
intimidated by me? But I had to re reflect about that,
and I sort of tried to be orried. I struggled
to see it, but you know, yeah, but I sort
of thought, Oh, who do I intimidate? How am I intimidating? Oh,
you know you you're too intense about what you're doing.
And junior staff find that a bit because I've really

(37:08):
focus on trying to do things to the best of
my ability. And I was like, oh, okay. So I
took a gig as an educator. So I worked in
educated teaching other people to be paramedics. And I moved
to and I did clinical work there. And when I
was there, the earthquake happened in christ Church and they

(37:28):
were seeing people down that say, hey, this is going
to deployments down to christ Church to help down there,
and I thought, oh, I'm happy to help, but I
don't want to feel like a disaster tourist. I'm not
saying anyone that went down to help as it's just
this is just my val It wasn't right for you,
didn't set didn't sit with me. I was like, look,
if you want me to transfer down, I'll transfer down
and I'll help and I'll just stay because I figured
people are going to need to sort their houses out

(37:49):
in their lives that have been affected by I don't
have any ties, and to be fair, in the background,
the relationship I was going to fallen apart and it
was not I wasn't having I wasn't having a great time.
And PROT back up on that a bit later on,
but I decided that, you know, I'll go down to help,

(38:11):
and so I didn't transfer down and I worked after
the earthquake in christ Church and when I got down there,
just qualified as an advanced paramedic. And I got down
there and the only job they had was doing driving
a transfer ambulance taking people from the broken christ Church
hospital across to Princess Margaret because a lot of people
don't rewards to the decommissioned hospital. And at the time,

(38:34):
through a number of circumstances, I was the only advanced
paramedic on my shift. So I was driving patient transfer
ambulance and not like a response street, not an ambulance,
just literally fearing people from one place and another. Was
the only advanced paramedic. And every day someone would come on,
they're looking at the ambulance. I mean, the guys working
with them. They'd be like, don't you feel like ridiculous

(38:57):
being put on the transfer ambulance as an advanced paramedic?
Aren't you like a shame to that? Isn't that? How
do you feel about that? I was like, I came
down to help and it didn't come down here for
another reason. And to help. This is how they want
me to help Fie my mate not only need to
take me down. So I was doing this transfer embulance,
and when I wasn't doing that or it would do
some study or teach the person I was working with

(39:18):
about different concepts and stuff. Well, we'd polish the ambulance,
we'd like the cleanest ambulance. And christ were because like
I just had to fill the time, you know. And
the area boss came down to the I don't know why.
He came down to the hospital and he went past
and he saw me and my crewmate cleaning this transfer embulance,
which just make sure it's ment and and he's like, gosh,
you really take pride on what you're doing, don't you know.

(39:40):
I was like, yeah, you know, these people had a
pretty rough run. The least we can do is make
it as nice as we can for them, you know,
going from here to And he's like, you've been on
this for a few months now, hey, And I was
like yep. And he's like, have you talked to anyone
about you being doing this? I was like no, And
so why not, I explained, I just came to help,
and he's like, oh, we need a rapid response paramedic

(40:01):
on your shift. Can you apply? And I was like, oh, yeah, okay,
and so applied and became the rapid response pairent medic
and on that shift, as I said, it was the
only advanced paramedic on the shift at that particular time.
And it went from sort of zero to two hundred
really quickly in the sort of sponse. Gee, I was

(40:21):
just back to back to back all day people who
are very, very sick.

Speaker 5 (40:25):
So those are the ones that sort of turn up first,
and the real serious imasions.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
That's the one. Yeah. Yeah, So you're kind of the
first on scene. Or if a crew goes to someone
and they're really really sick, you're kind of calling the cavalry.
So you make a lot of calls about we're going
to do that. So we're going to do that, and
the buck stops with you, I suppose. And it had
been in for probably I don't know ten odd years
by this point of time, it just under ten years,

(40:51):
probably twenty twelve maybe just fish good amount of time,
but good amoun of time. Yeah, And like I said,
you know, The thing with these jobs is you start
to gather ghosts. You know, there's the jobs you just
can't leave behind that you just accumulate the time. You
don't think about it because you're fighting it, because you

(41:12):
don't know, Hey, I need to actually go and talk someone,
need to be okay. And these there a stigma, maybe
self imposed. We just didn't talk about that kind of
stuff with one another, and so the wheels were coming
off the cardinaltle bit, I think at that point in time,
because it was just going through back to back and
I go too much detail. But I had a lot

(41:33):
of young people die. Like everyone has different sorts of
jobs that they attract through their career. I had a
lot of children and a lot of young people just
through my career, and I had to resuscitate a young
person who had made a poor decision and I just
couldn't shake it after that, and I thought, oh, this

(41:53):
is good and it's sort of fall in love with
someone who wasn't from New Zealand. When I was in
christ Church and they just weren't dealing with the quakes
that didn't come from a country of quakes, and they
worked through the quakes in the hospital and just really
need to get out, and so we sort of talked
it through and I was like, I think a change
is as good as a break, and so I transferred
from christ Church to Nelson to work on the risky

(42:15):
helicopter there. Oh yep, yep. And it always like the
sort of I wanted to make sure I was at
a point where I had mastered the craft enough that
because that has already been the pinnacle of the job.
A working risky helicopters had always been seen as sort
of the pinnacle of right of paramedicine because because you're
literally flying in yeah yeah, And I could have probably
done it a little bit sooner than that, and I've

(42:37):
done some time on helicopters before that.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
But it's around Nelson are what are are you just
picking up people who've busted the leg on the evil passman.

Speaker 3 (42:44):
Or you kind of cover the top third of the
South Island, so it's not so it's also people that
are too far away and they need the little response jeep,
but they're too They're too far away for someone to go.
So someone's very very slick, very unwell in that area,
you're going to go, gotcha? And I wanted to go
to Nelson, particularly because my favorite aunt, my dad's sister, Ann,

(43:08):
had gone missing on the heavy track and they never
found her. And when I was seven or eight, I
just adored her and I kind of felt that I
know what our family went through when shouldn't get found.
So I had the surreal affinity to sort of being
someone that would go and find people that had gone
missing there. So I was like, yeap, this just feels
like it's a nice alignment of these things coming together

(43:31):
and we're there and quakes and then the personal's worth.
We moved to Nelson not long after I moved to
alsonth big Siddon quake, which was not good for them,
and subsequently after that the kit could a quake and
our relationship was over at that point, not just because

(43:52):
of that, but it didn't help. But I remember getting
to that point and life probably had its lowest. My
ex wife and we had a child together and this
relationship and buys up and she moved back to Ireland
and I just sort of that was when the wheels
really came off the cart for me, I think at

(44:14):
that point. And it was at that point I sort
of had to hit this point of reflection where you're like, yep,
I'm on ever alive when I'm trying to save someone
else's life. The rest of the time, I'm just kind
of walking around with ghosts. You know, you'd go to
a party, you'd go and sit with people and they're
talking about whatever they're talking about, and you just can't

(44:34):
engage with them because they're interested in things that are
just so far out of the world that you're living in.
I do want to talk about the weather or whatever.
And you're like, man, I tried to save a kid yesterday.
Do you want to hear about that? Like you know
that we got's going office politics or whatever.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
And you're like, oh, I've had a tough week, I
tell you what. And it's somebody. Somebody has been going
and taking my yogat out of the fridge. It's got
hamush ridden very clearly on it, three days in the row.
And you were like, yeah, I just had to try
and like resustinate someone and it didn't work out and
they died. And I'm like, right, so a little different
to the yoga exactly.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Or I just told them I can understand my dad
that their child's dead, or you know, it's gnaw you.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
That, you know, like people would would make such a
big you know, like you know, you'd sit there and Hamish,
you know, winging on about as yoga. It seemed like
such a big deal to Hamish. But at the meantime
you're trying to grapple with literal life and death.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
Was it like that? I don't think it annoyed me.
It's just it became harder and harder to relate, right,
and you start sort of carrying around this you just
feel like a ghost who's walking. Like there's this pace
of your life that takes over. It just takes over
what you're doing. And because it's got such purpose and

(45:48):
it's great to have purpose. But you know, we work
ninety six hour rosters. Then so you so you work
four twenty four hour shifts in a row, and then
you had four twenty four hour shifts. So half your
life does it work waiting for the page to go
and you to jump on the helicopter or the response
jeep and go half your life you're ten minutes from
an airport, and it's so that there's not enough decompression

(46:12):
times probably part of it. And the other part is
that because the sheer nature of the high intensity, you
just you're not getting a good break. Your poor brain
can only handle so much.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
So outside of making social occasions unrelatable, when it came
to small talk with people like me, what else one
of the impacts was it having on your life?

Speaker 3 (46:35):
I started getting physically really unwell like mentally, guys are
saying mentally like the threads were incredibly thun I think
that socially, I can't put too high a stress on that,
because it's really if you can't engage socially with people,
you can't share, you can't offload, you can't learn, you

(46:56):
can't connect. And I remember when I started on the job,
like so many people were divorced in their relationships that
all split up, and it was sort of the exception
to the rules, the ones that survived. I didn't understand
it until I've gone through it sadly a few times.
And you start getting into really unhealthy behaviors with relationships

(47:17):
and other things just to try to feel something. You
feel quite emotionally numb, and I think it's just you.
You probably find coping mechanisms, different sorts of coping mechanisms,
whatever they are, that probably help you get through that
immediate moment, but in the long term, stop helping you,

(47:37):
because it's one of these things you actually have to
learn how to lock after your brain. You've got to
go and learn how to file that information. And physically
I lost heaps of weight. I mean through this, I
had really bad stomach issues. Even time I ate, I
felt like I was eating broken glass and turned out
I ended up having I was sort of gets strita.

(47:59):
So it was not a lot of fun. And I
should say I don't drink, I don't eat meat.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
You're a healthy man.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
I'm a healthy boring guy, like very bored.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Hey, look, if there's anything that the last that the
last bit of time with you has improved to me
is boring is not the words that I would use.
But okay, I get it. Okay, So you needed to
change something. I think it's interesting, isn't it? Because you
had set a goal for yourself. You wanted to do
the biggest and the best, and to be honest, you know,

(48:31):
being a flyboy advanced paramedic was at one third of
the top of the South Island that you were covering,
I mean, and your personal reasons for wanting to do that.
Having lost a family member on the heafy track. In
so many ways, this sounds like a dream come true
for Carlton. You know you've done it. You're there, You're

(48:53):
in the moment that you know you've got your purpose.
The beeper goes there, I go, you know, one one
step away from being a superhero, you know, you know,
I mean literally the flying, the saving lives, the overcoming everything,
these are these are major, major things that you're able
to achieve. So what was it, you know, apart from

(49:16):
you know that some of the some of the the
streams extremes that you were you were exposed to, and
also to that not being able to relate with people
the physical, the physical you know, outcomes on your own body.
You had to make a change.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Yeah, I think, you know, we're sort of on the
way down where where we've sort of left off. But
you know, I hadn't hadn't managed to find the floor
at that point. And when you get into the habit
of like right purpose up, you know, I'm just going
to work my way through this. You do more work,

(49:53):
you find other projects, You just keep going and trying
to find other sources of meaning. But I was going
through really tough time and the relationship had sort of
gone splat. And then I through this sort of short
phase where first time I went to a car accident,

(50:16):
we had a new pilot with us, and it was
a head on collision and a young nursing student was
terribly injured, and so it was the driver of this
other vehicle, and at the scene people were implying it
was this other driver's fault. You've got no idea, there's
no way you can tell these things. You just need

(50:37):
to help people. You're not there to judge. And they're
both critically unwell, and he had collapsed long and I
needed to come and decompress his chest or he was
going to die pretty quickly. And she had a really
horrible head injury needed to get taken across to Wellington.
So there's only me there and some sort of first

(50:58):
daidas and various other people on my right. I'm going
to quickly sort this guy's chess out and we'll get
another helicopter to come and take him because he's pretty
crock and paralyzed and intubate this so give us some
medications to manage the airwave this young girl and fly
her to Wellington and treated him first. Then I treated
her and took her across to Wellington unbannownst to me,

(51:20):
this pilot knew this young girl's parents and he gave
them my phone number while I was in the hospital
dropping this beautiful young girl off who she didn't make
it at a hospital and so get back and then
I have this distraught mother on the phone to me,

(51:42):
ask me explain myself why didn't look after a daughter first?
X y Z. You know, the daughter died and when
she had a chance to calm down, she bring and
apologized and invited me and the crew to this young
girl's memorial service, which is something I'd ever done before
since it's go to that. But you know, I'm a

(52:05):
dad and it was the that was over my the
span of my career. By this point, you know, I'd
lost I don't know tens of kids. I don't want
to think about how many, but a lot, you know,
I'd lost a lot of kids and young people at
this point, and told a lot of pearance that child
died and one of the hardest things I could imagine

(52:26):
you could even do. Yeah, yes, it's not something I'd
like to do again, but I remember sitting there and
it's just we left this and I thought, man, I
don't know if I can deal with anymore kids. I
just I don't know that I can. I don't know
my soul can take any more of this. And then

(52:51):
we Not long after that, I went to a young
person that passed away as well, and oddly I had
like a iPod, like it was out of context, I
suppose because they've gone out of fashion, but he had
like one. I was iPod minis. He was listening to
some music and I put the hit on. I just

(53:12):
I don't know why, it's just saying. I was like, wheer,
I was listening to you. Every time I hear the song,
I see this beautiful young boy's face. I just that's
one of those things that and I was like, oh,
I know. I could feel that things been going too good.
I'm like, you're not doing too good here, man. And
I'd booked a holiday. I was like, I actually needed

(53:33):
to take a break to go and see my kids
an island. I just need to have a bit of
time out for what I'm doing. And got called to
this job and we flew out to it. It was
a four drive that rolled and these two young people
were rejected out of the back of this thing, and
they were both lying on the road, both very very unwell.

(53:54):
And we flew in and landed, and it's it's almost
like slow motion. And the weirdest thing is getting into
the helicopter and pulling the door shut and something my
head said, this is the last time I'm going to
fly in this helicopter. I just I don't know why.
I was just like, this is the last time. Maybe
it's because I had all this other stuff going on.
I just was like, I don't want to do this.

(54:14):
But I clicked the door shut and just somethinking I'm
not going to do that again. And so he flew
out get up to this scene and we're flying over
here and we see this car that's rolled and these
kids are on the road, and there's people running around
but purposeless. There's lots of people on the ground. They're
moving purpose There's a thing you learn a like when
people are moving in a purposeless way, it's bad. It

(54:36):
so is it shock. I just think that they're just
doing something for the sake of doing something, because they
don't know what they're doing. Yeah. Yeah, So you land,
you land down at the scene yep. We land down
and there's a young boy with a terrible he's got
a brain injury. And there's a young girl who's got
a number of injuries, including a brain injury. And we've
only got one ventilator on the helicopter, and we're going

(54:58):
to have to maintain the area where you're going to
have to you know, give them medications, paralyze them and
intubate them and fly one of them to Wellington, which
is the nearest neurosutreie. And so there's this thing in
paramidicin called triage. You've only got so many resources. You
can only save who you can save, and you you
just can't save everybody. You've got to make the best

(55:18):
decision with the resources you've got, who's going to stand
the best chance. And so here I am, I'm like, right,
this young boy's got this, this and this. Okay, I've
got this, and this young girl's got this, this and that.
And I was like, right, totally objectively, even if I
do all the right things, she's probably going to die.

(55:42):
He's got a chance. So literally was just about to
walk over and say to them, look, we're going to
triage this young girl and we'll just make it comfortable
and I'm going to go and try and save this
young guy. And her mum showed up at the scene
and walk travers that's my daughter. Got to save my
daughter sort of thing. Changed my mind and tried and

(56:03):
failed to save this young girl. And it sent this
young boy off to the hospital and the ambulance and
we are good but not excellent, you know, like he
didn't have the things he needed. We needed to get
him across. He's going to go to this other hospital,
but he needed to get across the cook straight and

(56:24):
lost time, you know, ended up a coma for months.
And I just made a decision purely on emotion, not
on what the right thing at the time was, because
I was going through this the stuff, and I just thought, man,
this has got to stop. And what made it worse
was so I flew back, flew back to the base

(56:45):
shower and get cleaned up because you know, blood and
body fluids loaded me in. I thought, I rang up
and rang it up and say look, and I knew
I was the only helicoptermedic. No one can come and
cover me. At the time, I said, look, I'm not
available for the next half and now I need to
go to a shower, I get cleaned up, and I
just actually need to just decompress for it. That was
pretty hifty to Colms, and we hit a new manager

(57:07):
at the time. He was like, no, you've got to
come and cover lunch breaks. People need to go on
a lunch break. And I was like, dude, I'm not
in a state to come and cover lunch breaks. So
I just had a bad warning. And he's like, well,
either available for everything, available for nothing, because you see
you're an available for helicopter jobs. And I was like, okay,
I'm available for nothing. And he said you need to
come in tomorrow for a disciplinary hearing for bad attitude.

(57:29):
And went this process with this guy because he knew
he didn't really know what his up to. And it
was this really horrible experience with this manager ahead at
the time. Didn't ask me I was feeling, didn't ask
me what was going on, and it just really compounded
on what had been happening, and that was probably the

(57:54):
bottom of for me. And I did try to take
my life at that point, and by the graves of God,
it went terribly wrong. And I'm still here touch wood.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
But can I just say yeah, ever so grateful that
it did go wrong.

Speaker 3 (58:13):
Oh, as am I? As am I and very much so.
Like I sort of was lying there and thinking, you
know what, like you're better than this. Just got to
think it is a way through this. You have to
learn the skills to navigate what this looks like. And

(58:34):
it wasn't until that point that I was like, oh,
I actually get some help here. I am years and
years and years of helping other people and not actually
at any point any of those warning signs that have
been burning away probably for years in the background, relationships
falling over, not being able to socially engage with people,
like all stomach clapping out, didn't go hmm, Matt, maybe

(58:58):
I should just go and talk to somebody about this.
And the thing is as it already said. It had
already done that in the past with Daryl when it started,
so I'd actually seen that there was a way you
can navigate through these hardbits. But in all the kind
of processes that I've gone through, and the chasing how
to do this that and the other thing, but you know,

(59:19):
you lose sight of what's so common the obvious isn't
the obvious when you're in the middle of it, right
at all, you had the answer in front of you,
but it was so intense that really, you know, and
it's terrible that it got to the way that it did.
But ultimately it was that really basic thing, which is
what you needed. So, you know, a failed suicide attempt,
you needed to do something different. Yeah, So when you

(59:43):
managed to come to decide what that was, where did
that take you? Okay, So I'll start with something that's
probably important in this I used the EAP thing and
I went to a counselor. That's the first thing. I
went went to this counselor gold Start, gold Start. But
it was terrible. I just be frank, it was awful.

(01:00:05):
It was just not the right person for me. They
wanted to talk about a whole bunch of stuff that
had nothing to do with what I was going through.
And I was just like, I don't I just don't
connect with this person. And I was, ah, this is
a waste of time. And I was really lucky at
the time that I had a friend wit name, but
he had been through a similar thing and he's like,

(01:00:25):
come over, and I hadn't sort of made it public
that I was going through some stuff. But he could
just tell he's just late lot, you can't come over
and when I haven't sat down with him and saying that, look,
what you need to do is you need to interview
the person the first time you're going that you interview
the person that you're seeking to help you, like a
job interview. Can you help me? Have you dealt with this?
Have you dealt with that? Tell me what you think

(01:00:47):
about this? And so you get a sense of is
this person going to be able to connect with me
about the stuff that I need to connect with someone
and actually give me the tools to make my way
through this. And I was like, oh, this is like
game changer because you go and I don't know you're
going and you start talking about your feelings and you
don't where it's going to go. Whereas he was like,
this is how you do it, and it worked for me.
I mean, and there I was like, Okay, you dealt

(01:01:08):
with this, have you dealt with that? How would you
deal with this? Da? Da da? And this person I
was like, you know, have you worked in emergency services
or military or no? Having it all? But I have
helped people that I've done the xy Z and this
is what I've done to help them, and this is
the types of things I like to do. I like
to focus on this stuff. And I went all right,
gold And what she sort of taught me about like

(01:01:33):
treating my brain like a filing cabinet. She's like, you
just got files everywhere, and I'm like, yeah, I do.
You know. She's like, tell me what's going on? You know,
any quiet time that I have, I just get these
intrusive thoughts. I start seeing things that I've gone through.
You know, these parents' faces look and crushed at me
because you didn't save the kid or whatever. You know,

(01:01:54):
the sort of NonStop, revolving cycle of horror reels of
just stuff that I've had to live through because you know,
like paramedics or police or we're just people. You know,
you don't put on a uniform and not feel anything.
You go and you get traumatized seeing this stuff. It's
not normal to see someone die, like on a daily basis.

(01:02:14):
It's not and it's okay that it's not normal, but
you have to find ways to healthily proceed.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
It has an effect.

Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
You're basically living in a particularly doing the high end
stuff of the helicopter and the urgent response, you're basically
living in a war zone when everybody else is living
a normal life.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Yeah, and you're just on all the time. And I
mean everyone's got a different threshold, you know. And so
so I went through this counseling thing, and I thought,
I need to do something that's a bit out of
the norm. Go and do something. Just sort of think
about how I'm gonna look after myself and sort of

(01:02:52):
went through all these things and got help, started to
get it a bit better. And as I was getting better,
I thought, I really need to think about long term
what I want to do. What am I to do
with my life. I love helping people, love caring about people.
Thought maybe I could consider doing medical school. So talk
to medical school at the time, and I was like, oh,

(01:03:14):
what's the story. And I was like, you know, I've
done a degree, done an undergraduate degree in health science,
post grade deployment health science, masters and health practice and
the other university.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
And just so people would listening understand, how old are you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
At this point thirty eight when I was thinking about this,
thirty eight?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Yeah, right, because most people when they go to med school,
they're what nineteen twenty, Yeah, so you're thirty eight. I
just wanted to put Yeah, yeah, you focus on that.
So anyway, you go and have a chat and it's good.
You were curious again you d it asked.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
Yeah. I was like, oh, what's the story? You know,
do you get any recognition of prior inning? No? No, lease,
you all couldn't messy otago. You're going to do health
science of health science first year and do a full
six year program. And I was like, all right, if
I got Australia, it's four years stay here at Sex
And I was like, yeah, but I don't really want
to move to Australia. And I was like, fair enough,
and it just seems like outrageous And anyway, I was like, well,

(01:04:10):
you can't change things from the outside. This is the
thing that I've have learnt through through my life, as
you can't to be fair.

Speaker 5 (01:04:16):
There's a reasonable overlap between being an advanced paramedic and
a doctor too, isn't there to be fair there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
With some stuff that this translatable? Yeah, yeah, there's the
same asn't. But yeah, so look, you started showing some
interest in meet school. Yeah at thirty eight, which you know,
I don't. I think we can clearly say that's not
the norm.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
No, and I don't even know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
I mean, is that what a medical school wants? Do
they want? I mean, I'm just asking the question, do
they want thirty eight year olds coming and being doctors?
Well I didn't say no, so right, So what happened?

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
Something? So I thought I should do this. This is
we're a bridging time. I've gone through scheme of therapy.
I've had this incredible psychotherapist, and stuff's going okay again.
You know, stuff's going much better because I've learned these
steps and I'm being you know, pretty judicious about following

(01:05:07):
them and looking out my mental health and talking when
I need to talk. But I'm cognizant that, you know,
I'm one or two bad jobs away from getting back
to their place. And I just think, sure, there's got
to be more to life than this. And I luckily
a great relationship at this point in my time, and

(01:05:31):
I've been renovating this old house with when our wife
would just finished building and renovating this old villains our
dream house, and I'm like, I think I want to
do medicine and she's like, oh yeah, okay, and she's like,
so what would that mean? We just started a family
at this point, and I was like, so, I mean
me quitting my job. She's like right, and us selling

(01:05:54):
the house and moving to Dined And she's like, what now,
And I was like, yeah, so we're going to have
to go down there, and and I kind of locked
at and I said, you know, looking.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
So this is from Nelson from now so it's like, hey, babe,
you know all those sunshine hours that we love around here.
You'll be like, yeah, this is not so much a
thing where we're here.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
And she's and I said, you know, and the other
thing is when you have forty year only eligible for
two years of student allowance or anything like that, not
that you could cover the bills with it, and then
you're on your own. So I was and I'm going
to have to work full times or at least close
to full time for a couple of these years to
get through. And she's like, okay, right, so why just

(01:06:39):
explain to me why you want to do this. And
I was like, well, I think people like me have
got things. We've got skills, we've got the ability to
contribute in this space, and I think it'd be great
to think to try and build a pathway to see
that what you've brought in is of value and try
to disrupt it so people aren't doing a big long six.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
So did that did that get her across the line?
Or did you did you need to take her for
dinner and bring some flowers home?

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
And you know, was there? Like?

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
How smoothly did this go? Is what I'm trying to understand,
because otherwise if she just said years, she is definitely
the most understanding wife I have ever heard of.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
Look, she's married to me, so she has to be anyway,
that's like put it out like you guys are get
in the contracted version, there's a lot of other stuffing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Yeah, yeah, well time I get it because we're running
out of time actually, but okay, so she said, ye.

Speaker 3 (01:07:26):
Yes, So I'm in a contract that overseas that some
work in the Islands and various other places which are amazing.
But we saved everything we could and down we went
to Dideden. And while I was in d Eden, I
worked full time to make my way through the six
years of mid school.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
What kind a job to you do?

Speaker 3 (01:07:45):
Well? I started off was working on helicopter and wasn't
at work, wasn't wasn't it mid school, I gotcha. Okay, Yeah,
we introduced regulation for paramedicine while I was at mid school,
and I was appointed to the initial council and was
in a moral chairs, so I set up regulation. That
took up a lot of time because when we introduced

(01:08:07):
regulation for our profession, we didn't want to do cultural
safety as a side piece. Told you the journey we've
gone to this point. We wanted to embit it right
at the center of everything that we did. So we
had to rewrite a whole lot of stuff and become
a cop puper malori regulator. So we thought the best
way to be a treaty partner, let's just make it
a coup malori regulator. So we went through a big

(01:08:27):
process to do that for paramedis and when we introduced it,
so I was doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
So you still really hit like one foot in the
paramedics and then and then you know you're doing doing
the medical training and so look we're a few how
many how many hours a week were you talking?

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
Then? You know, seventy plus and you managed to keep
this up going right through mid school. I had to.
It wasn't any other way through it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
So look, where are you at with the studies. You graduated, Yeah,
I've graduated year.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Yeah? How long ago did you graduate last year? CONGRATULATIONSX?
Yeah yeah, no, I finished last year.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Took me through that moment, because when you walk across
the stage to accept a degree, it can be quite
a quite a moment, and from everything that you've been
through then to walk across that stage and be able
to be called and I've been saving us to actually
say this on the show tonight, to be able to
be called, you know, doctor Irving, How did that feel

(01:09:22):
on that moment?

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
Good? But I think it's a team sport, you know,
like it wasn't me crossing the stage. It was us.
It was me and all the people that came along
with me. I couldn't have done it without them. You know,
I couldn't have done it without my wife, my family,
my kids. You know, like it's this what's good for
you and what's good to do. We're talking about this earlier,
and you know, if it's just about you, sooner or

(01:09:50):
lad that you run out of gas, but if it's
about something more, you can just get through it. And
like getting through medicine, you know, through medicine was about
I did a whole bunch of stuff while I was
in medicine. But we'll be here all not talking about that,
and people can google me. But we did a lot
of really cool stuff on the way through medicine to
try and think about how medicine is delivered and taught.

(01:10:14):
And now I'm helping with that process of how do
we recognize people like me that want to become doctors
and helping Cutter University so we can do four year
programs for doctors, you know, for paramedics or nurses or
others that want to come in to become doctors. One
thing I would say is I did a whole bunch
of work while I was at paramedic around interventions at

(01:10:36):
home to try and reduce avoidable emissions like falls, referrals,
mental health connections, smoking cessation, childhood vaccination, that kind of stuff.
Because we were in and out of people's houses, so
we would see unmet need. We wanted to be able
to connect them up to it. It's a master's project
on it, and I'm in just some meetings about us
doing this as a community and the place I was working,

(01:10:56):
and they keep getting out, So who's the doctor that's
involved in this project? There isn't a doctor. And I
remember some was one meeting this person was looked at
me like, oh gosh, don't you work on the helicopter.
I was like, yeah, I do. And they had this
moment like, oh gosh, the dog can talk. We better
get some gran ups, so we better get some doctors
to look at this. And I heard that enough times

(01:11:18):
on different things, and I just thought, you know, I
was like, no, what I'm talking about my university qualification
when a professional background has nothing to do with doing
the right thing. But I got passed off enough that
I was like, yep, I'm going to go and become
a doctor. And so here we are.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
When you say people like me, what do you mean come.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
People that've got a vision about what needs to happen
and maybe aren't called doctor. Those voices are just valid,
you know, Like we have this, We've had a medical
hegemony for a really long time. And doctors know best.
They don't they know the best from this position. But
if you're thinking about, like if you're a business, ask

(01:12:08):
the customer, right, I want to build the best car.
I do focus groups and find out what does a
customer want from a car? Why aren't we doing that
with our consumers and far noo about what's best for
you when we're designing healthcare systems.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Working backwards from the outcome that you want to say,
what I've picked up from your story is that you've
always really valued the people who've come into your life.
You know, even when you're talking about, you know, receiving
a degree, it's gratitude for the people around you. And
it seems to me that that's something which just extends out.
What are your hopes then that you want to do
now that you've Now that you've got the you've got

(01:12:43):
the qualifications, now that you're a doctor, people can't exclude
you from the room. That the fact that dog can talk,
that's a great that's a great line.

Speaker 5 (01:12:52):
I enjoy it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
I like that a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
But now that you know you've got that, I get
the feeling that in terms of that purpose piece, what
would you like to do with it?

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Really interested in how we make our system recognize experience
of others. As I said, it's really interested in that
sort of postgraduate space to create a pathway so we
can train more doctors, but more importantly, we can train
more doctors where they're needed. I very interested in rural health.
Having worked on the helicopter and coming from a portagure originally,

(01:13:25):
I think that when we look at that part of
the community that's getting poor health outcomes, we only train
and set locations like Auckland, Wellington and christ And these
are long programs. You know, six years at med school
and then two years of doing your house officer years.
That's eight years that someone might leave a rural area.

(01:13:46):
It's almost a decade and they're going to have a boyfriend, girlfriend, cat, dog,
flat whatever. They're going to have a whole social network
by that time. And I'm very lucky you disconnected from
where they started. It's really interesting how do we change
that model to start actually training who we need, where
we need for what we need them for. And the
other part of that, I suppose that I'd prefer and too,
is thinking about how to do that in a way

(01:14:07):
that makes it more fun, financially sustainable, and fear for
people to go in and do it because the current
structure we've got, if you've got the financial wherewithal, you
can become a doctor, right because it's just about learning
to learn and doing the work. And as a high
school dropout that got through med school. I can say
that it's a lot of work, but it's not specifically hard.

(01:14:28):
If you master each piece as you go, you're good.
What it is is can you afford six years six
years of no income, well almost no income. You get
a little bit in your final year, But can you
survive that financially because what we see is that a
lot of people can't. I became a paramedic because I
could earn money while I learned, because I couldn't have

(01:14:51):
afforded to go to university. So I spent a lot
of time in my career continuing and building even while
you learn pathways in that profession. How do we think
about that type of approach in medicine so we can
get people from underserved communities. The thing I'd probably share
about this because I told you about how I got
really touched by seeing those kids and poverty, right, And

(01:15:12):
this is something that I talk away, is that those
things can touch you and harden you, right, and you
can turn There's people that can be touched by it,
hardened and turn away and not be affected by it.
It's not my problem. I'm just not that guy. I
can't see that and not go We need to do
something and keep going until you figure out what it is.

(01:15:33):
If you look at empirical evidence health outcomes, twenty percent
is access and quality of healthcare. The other eighty percent
is socioeconomic status, physical environment, and health behaviors. We know
that elements of our communities are rural Pacific ar Mardi
communities are getting poor health outcomes, not alone, but they're

(01:15:55):
getting them right. And you know, what's the indiventional step?
What's the solution. The solution is you build the health
workforce from those communities because in one false where it
will improve health behaviors, they'll earn more money, so you'll
the socio economic setus and you'll improve physical environmentcause they're
not going to have to live in that statehouse that's
cold and damp, no heeding it two o'clock in the

(01:16:18):
morning in the middle of winter. So that's where I
intend to spend the rest of my life is thinking
about how do we get involved in that indiventional step
so we can pull these people through. Kristen texted in here,
Thanks Kristin. Kristen just says, I'm listening to a wonderful
wise man who cares so much. You are awesome, and
I think that that's a very good summary of what

(01:16:40):
we're talking about here tonight. And yeah, I think you
know that the economic access that you're talking it effects
all parts of the medical journey, right, you know, from
training to access to mental health and ultimately you know,
by making that the barrier.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
You know for people, are we not all poorer for it?
So look in terms of where you're going to go
to next, these are these are some of the things
that you want to you want to address. I'm an
attack So what you're going to become a politician?

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
Now?

Speaker 3 (01:17:12):
You know? Is it vote for Carlson?

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
Are we announcing something here tonight? We definitely know. No,
I think And it's not that I had a particular
antibodies to the political spectrum, but they're only working in
three year cycles, right, three years? Yeh, what I'm talking
about it's going to take us ten, fifteen, twenty, and
you've just got to keep going at it and it
shouldn't stop either, No, definitely not. And I think that

(01:17:35):
these things aren't to do with any particular side of
the political spectrum. Just about as a society, what do
we want New Zealand to look like?

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
But do you know what and what you're talking about here?

Speaker 3 (01:17:45):
Now?

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Carl It sounds to me like I'm back with you
and the karate teacher. I'm just doing the next step
for the next step, for the next step, and perfect
that one before i move on to the next one.
And it sounds to me like you're just going to
keep going.

Speaker 3 (01:17:59):
Definitely, that's what we're all here for, isn't it. Oh?
I think so.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
Look, this has been an absolutely unpressed in to show
because normally, at some point I would have been asking
people for their calls and their texts, and yet I
haven't tonight. And the reason why is because, and I
hope the audience agrees, I've just been completely compelling in
your story. Most importantly, it needed to be told, it

(01:18:24):
needed to be heard. And I've just got another text
that's come in that says, I'm supposed to be asleep
as I'm starting work for glad. I'm not what a
segment smashing glass ceilings and rocking the boat. Congrats on
all you've achieved and thanks for sharing.

Speaker 3 (01:18:44):
Cheers, Chris.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
So really I just wanted to say, you know, Carlton Irving,
doctor Carlton Irving, thank you, Thank you for being here,
thank you for sharing the story, and thank you for
everything that you have done for others. But thank you
also for realizing that you needed to do stuff for yourself,
because otherwise you wouldn't be much bloody good to us

(01:19:07):
at all.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
Share.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):
The world is a much better place.

Speaker 3 (01:19:13):
With you in it. Thanks for being here.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
That's it for this episode of The Nutters Club. Thanks
to doctor Carlton Irving for sharing his story with us.
If you liked what you heard and think it might
help someone out there, then please share this episode on
your own channels or family and friends. And if you
ever want to be part of the show, well give
us a call.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Or a text.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
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(01:19:55):
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