July 31, 2025 • 33 mins
You’re lying on the ground, your body completely paralyzed. You can hear voices around you, footsteps moving closer, then away. You’re fully aware of everything, but you can’t speak, can’t move, can’t signal that you’re there. You are trapped inside your own body, and you know your life is hanging by a thread, yet you have no way of letting anyone know you need urgent help. Minutes feel like hours. And what if the people who do find you believe you’ve brought this on yourself?
This was the sudden nightmare Ian McGann lived through when he suffered a catastrophic brain stem stroke, one so rare and severe that he was given only a 5% chance of survival. His body shut down, but his mind never did. What followed was a harrowing journey—delayed medical treatment shaped by stigma, moments of despair and defiance, and ultimately, a recovery that defied every odd stacked against him.
Ian shares what shaped his survival and the new purpose he’s carrying forward. It’s a raw, unflinching conversation about life, loss, and second chances that will stay with you long after you listen.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
When I looked up, the world started to spin.
It was like nothing I had ever
experienced in my life.
Imagine being fully conscious. You're aware of every word,
every sound, but you're utterly
unable to move or speak. You're trapped
(00:24):
within your own body. You know you're experiencing a
stroke, yet you can't call for help.
This was Ian McGann's reality on May 27, 2023,
when he suffered a catastrophic brain stem stroke, one
so rare and severe he was given only a 5% chance of
(00:45):
survival. I am so stinking grateful to be
alive. I am grateful that I have a voice
to share this experience. But this isn't just
a story about beating the odds. It's a story about resilience. Raw truth,
love, bias, healing. I am on the ground
in such a dirty, inhumane
(01:08):
state and this person is worried about
how dirty her hands are going to get.
Before the stroke, Ian's life was full. He
had a thriving general contracting company. He led in innovation at
Siemens. He was a thrill seeker, a nature lover, a builder of ideas and
experiences. But then, in an instant, everything
(01:31):
changed. What followed was a journey few of us can
imagine, but included delays in medical treatment due to
cannabis stigma, a harrowing fight to live, and a recovery that defied medical
logic. My apologies to your listeners. If something
this graphic stirs some stuff up, it's the truth of what
happened. For, you know, my story. This is a story about
(01:54):
profound transformation and it forces us to ask big questions
about how we treat people, how we heal, and what really
matters.
Hi, it's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter that Matters, presented by
rbc. If you can please subscribe to the podcast and
ratings and reviews, well, they're always welcome and they're always appreciated.
(02:19):
Ian McGann, welcome to Chatter that Matters. Thank you, Tony.
That was an awesome introduction. I
painted a picture of life before your stroke and I would say you were firing
at all cylinders, both career wise and just this appetite for life. So
share with us a little bit about Ian before that
moment that changed everything. Well, I remember that person fondly.
(02:41):
I had been very successful in
residential contracting and construction. It was the American
dream. And I sold the company for a profit to
a top competitor. And I went to work in
commercial construction, doing pre
construction for hospitals, labs, clean rooms.
(03:03):
How was the change from being your own boss and an entrepreneur to
now clearly having influence? Because you're bringing experience to the
job, but authority has been given to someone else. It was something that needed to
happen. At the time things got wacky after Covid it was just
another iteration of construction for me.
I am super type A. I go after what I
(03:27):
want. I work really, really hard for it. I don't take no
as an option and failure is not it. It's not an option
even though it happens sometimes. And you know the outdoor activities,
you know, snowboarding, sailing, fly fishing. In an article I
read that you were in, you talked about how it helped shape your
worldviews. It made you realize that the planet was
(03:49):
precious. Interested in the sort of the philosophical
observations you had with some of these thrill seeking sports Post
stroke the first. Iteration of Ian Avid fly fisherman.
I've hit some of the top places in the continental US
and some tropical locations. Snowboarding, Jackson
Hole, Vermont, Colorado. Just a
(04:12):
go getter. So any of my spare time
revolved around nature
also trying to get endorphins going and in
adrenaline. And with all of those experiences I
had a lot of chances to become very present,
silent if you will, and observe the way
(04:34):
reality operates on its own. The way fish move, the
way birds fly, the way predator and prey
have this creation and surrender cycle and
how, how things are connected. I developed a really deep
understanding and love for Mother Nature
before the stroke. And I'm fortunate about that because
(04:57):
I brought that into my recovery. Take me to May 27,
2023 where I tried to set up what it must be like
to be you inside the body. But just let us sort of
step inside your mind as this is unfolding. It was an awesome
day. It was a Saturday Memorial Day
weekend and we were kind of the old
(05:20):
boring 40 year old couple just doing things around the house
and laying low and I was running errands and I came
back and my wife was gardening out front and we ended up calling it
a night around 9 o'. Clock. That's kind of where things changed.
I used medical cannabis and just smoked a bowl and my wife
was going to bed. I was going to meet her in bed. I wanted to
(05:43):
actually head outside to the driveway where I live. I have
a really good night sky. When I looked up,
the world started to spin. It
was like nothing I had ever
experienced in my life. Imagine everything
in your visual perception is
(06:05):
spinning around you rapidly 360 degrees and
you have to try and navigate. You know, you have
this quick awareness where it's like, oh shit, I
need help. I have to kind of navigate back into the
house. And the thing that I'm thinking of is man,
tell my wife and she's going to save me.
(06:28):
Full disclosure. A few weeks before I had a
premonition and I told my wife, this is going to happen.
I don't know when, but you're going to have to save my life. She
kind of said, you know, you're scaring me, but
okay, I'll be here. That's the kind of bond we have.
It's deep. I managed to get in the house, walk down the
(06:51):
hallway to Kaitlin, and I remember I grabbed the lime
Lacroix seltzer out of the fridge because I wanted to
be able to have a drink while I was having the stroke, I guess. I
don't know. I remember dragging my
right side of my body against the whole wall,
thinking, this is so odd. I know that I'm walking
(07:13):
upright, but it feels like I'm touching the
wall. I got into the master bedroom. I said to Caitlin,
I need help. And as soon as I pronounced the P and
help, I collapsed into the bed. At this time, my eyes
started to close rapidly. Flutter. The
muscles in my body started to contract. At the time,
(07:36):
from my perception, it probably looked something close
to a seizure. Caitlin's on my shoulder and she's going, what are you
doing? What are you doing? And you're scaring me. And she didn't get it at
first. I hear her and I'm thinking, come on, hon, this is
the time to realize it. She starts Googling. She says out loud, tony,
oh, gosh, what's going on? I'm going to Google this. You're wasting seconds,
(07:58):
Caitlin. You're wasting seconds. So I'm sitting there thinking, how do
I get her to call 91 1? I
voluntarily shake my body so much that I like,
fall. I fall onto the floor. And it's in an attempt
to show Caitlyn how serious it is when this happens.
She goes, oh, shit, I'm calling 91 1. Good, I'm safe.
(08:20):
I start to projectile vomit. I'm trying
to crawl out of the bedroom. I get into this
threshold of the. Of the master bedroom. That's when my body
released everything. I defecated
uncontrollably. I projectile vomited
uncontrollably. It was everywhere. I urinated
(08:41):
and I was beginning to aspirate on the
vomit. My apologies to your listeners. If something
this graphic stir some stuff up. It's the truth
of what happened. For, you know, my story. This
is kind of where it took. Left turn. So 911
says, hi, it's 91 1. How can we help? My husband's having a
(09:03):
stroke. I need help. Did he take anything?
Are you kidding? Me. This is going to happen right now.
Yeah, he smoked some pot and he took Aclonopin.
He's prescribed them for anxiety.
The vibe on the phone call
totally changes. 911
(09:26):
instructs her to turn me onto my side to
get me to stop choking. That's the immediate problem.
She's holding the black lab back. Jacob, our dog,
who's trying to eat the vomit that has onions and chocolate in
it, both poisonous to the dog. It's like perfect world.
Then 911 nonchalantly goes, EMS is on their
(09:48):
way. Good luck. First, the
fire company. I am all for equality. I
am 200 pounds. I am heavy. Was absolute
dead weight. They sent two females, they were not able to
lift me at all. They missed the house twice.
So they get there as soon as the
(10:11):
smell of the cannabis hit their noses. I believe
they had a pre recorded bias of what was
actually going on. They very nonchalantly walked through
the house, asked some very leading questions. Didn't really
attend to me too fast. It was very
lackadaisical. It was wild. I'm still defecating,
(10:33):
I'm still vomiting. The EMT
backs up, stops and goes, ew.
I don't even want to deal with this tonight. I
didn't even bring a change of clothes to work tonight. I guess if I have
to take a shower, it's not the end of the world. I'm looking
into her eyes and she's speaking into
(10:55):
my soul. They had to call for backup. Two
males. This male walks into my house in front
of my wife. You sure he's not doing opiates in the bathroom?
Sure there's not heroin here? We don't live in
a property that meets this, you know,
criteria of the situation. Yeah, I mean, you're in a neighborhood that
(11:17):
they should be dealing with your stroke, not judging you for, you know, having
biases. Because they might have been in a certain neighborhood many times and seen a
certain thing. They put me in the ambulance and I'm thinking, I am so pissed
at these individuals for the way they're treating me, treating me. And they don't think
that I'm hearing anything. And they don't realize the trauma
that they're laying down in my subconscious, in my
(11:40):
conscious, in my ego, all the stuff. And I could, Tony, get
this. I could feel that I was about to lose my bowels
again. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to shit all over your
ambulance for the way you're treating me. And I'm sorry if I'm
laughing, but they freaking deserve this crap. And they got in
the front of the ambulance, I'm in the back dying.
(12:02):
They got in the front. The hospitals has about 10
minutes, lights and sirens, meaning the ambulance speeding with the lights and
sirens on, getting all the green lights. They'll be there in 10 minutes.
They took an hour and 20 minutes to get me
from my bedroom to the emergency room.
Seconds matter with strokes, you know, they matter with heart
(12:25):
attacks. They matter with everything. They almost crash
the ambulance as they are going around this corner.
They get up on two wheels and I start to fly off the gurney
in the back. The woman in the, in the shotgun seat and
ambulance turns around and I hear, go, you're right back there,
buddy. So we got to the hospital
(12:47):
and they teed it up. 40 year old
intoxicated male. The people at Chester county, they
ran with it and they stuck me in the hallway. Initially, what
they didn't know, the part of my brain that the stroke was having
the biggest impact on was affecting my body temperature
control. And I was in a state of
(13:09):
extreme cold. It was very, very
painful. I am completely aware and
cognizant. However, nobody can understand me.
The best way I can describe it is like a mom and
a toddler. Do you know I want a toddler speaking?
Strangers can never understand them, but the mom's always like, now
(13:31):
he's saying he wants to go to the bathroom, now he's saying he wants to
go to bed. That's kind of what Caitlyn and I, my wife had, but she
wasn't with me. I knew that her
voice and advocacy was going to save
me. She gets to the hospital, they wouldn't let her back Tony
because we have different last names. We made an agreement that
(13:52):
she could keep it when we got married. The irony of this is
because they didn't let her in. She went to sit in the waiting
room and she sat down next to a waiting
room table and there are pamphlets and it
says, stroke, question mark, act fast, time is of
the essence. And she's like, is this a sick
(14:14):
joke? She was able to gain access and she came
back, she said it was a very gnarly scene. She
ran to the nurse's station. Are you going to treat
him for the stroke that he's having? We
are treating him very, very arrogantly. And she
asked if they were going to clean him up. They went and got
(14:36):
a stack of towels. If you would like him cleaned up,
you can do it yourself. She came back to the room with the
towels, attempting to restore some
humility. Let's say that Caitlyn's getting to the point
where it's just not even working. I think we're like 2 hours and 20
minutes or 3 hours into it. And she calls my
(14:58):
sister, who's a physician, guides Caitlyn to put her onto
speakerphone and walk up to the nurse's station and
starts very firmly saying, you guys are completely effing
this up. My brother's having a stroke and you're treating
him like an animal. Oh. The blood alcohol came
back and it was.00. The
(15:19):
doctor said, we still think it's probably the
cannabis. Wow. Really? They were 100% sticking with the
intoxication. I didn't know this, Tony. I
didn't know this. But it is super simple to check
for a stroke. There's an acronym BE, FAST
Balance. EyeSight, facial drooping, your arm,
(15:41):
speech, time to call 911.
Some of those simple things can detect a stroke
literally right away. None of this stuff
was done for me. That was the point
over the next 30 minutes where the
backup person who was supposed to review
(16:02):
the imaging came back around and said, there may be something
in the scan. They started to change their tune. You
felt everybody's asshole pucker, like, oh. And there started
to become this. This real urgency. So they decide to
fly the helicopter from the city to Chester county
to pick me up. They did a transfer of care. It was
(16:25):
completely different. They saw
me as an injured human. It must
have felt so different. I'm telling you, it touched my heart.
I was holding onto this cliff and my
fingers were slipping with each milestone. And then I got
someone who was like, we got you. So what happens when
(16:47):
you get to UPenn? The doors fly open, rolling me in
from the helipad, and it's that
aha moment. I'm going from dark into light.
Eight to 10 doctors putting monitoring stuff on
me. And there's this doctor turns to me in the elevator
and he says, ian, we're going to do a procedure, and
(17:09):
we consider it life savings. Okay? And I
managed to get out. Yes. I woke up to a new reality.
You weren't through the woods. I mean, what I understand you were given a 5%
chance of survival. Was that the operation or after the operation? We
were trying to put some context around the type of stroke
that, that I had. The survival rating
(17:33):
is like 85 to 95%, something like that. And
the 5 to 10% that are left are in a vegetative
state or severely limited. I want that to land
the magnitude of surviving,
surviving with that type of treatment and then c
surviving with that type of treatment and only half of
(17:56):
my body was affected. That's still pretty good in my eyes.
When we return, Ian and I focus on his recovery
and how losing something he thought was a true strength while it
unearthed an even more powerful tool as recovery.
(18:19):
Hi, this is Tony Chapman, host of the radio show and podcast Chatter that
Matters. Did you know that only one in five youth with a mental
health illness can get access to the care they need? Well,
a big shout out to the RBC foundation and RBC Future Launch
for supporting over 150 youth mental health
organizations and in doing so, they help youth and their families get
(18:41):
the care they need and deserve.
Before this event in my life, I did
not openly talk about cannabis use. There's
health benefits, recreational, all types. I didn't talk about
it. Doctors are now prescribing on the front
(19:03):
end for certain things, collecting tax money, you
know, all types of stuff. And on the back end, when
the shit hits the fan, we're judging the same individuals for
doesn't make sense. Joining me today is Ian
McGatt, a stroke survivor who learns more about
life through his recovery that maybe the life he
(19:26):
once took for granted.
You defied all odds. I mean, it's not that it's ever going
to be fully recovered, but you know, you talk about physical,
occupational, speech, what was the next
30 days? And was there? I mean, as optimistic as you are and saying, well,
I still had half my body working. There had to be times where you're going,
(19:47):
I didn't deserve this. This is a gauntlet nobody wants to run.
I did everything. I said yes to every way
possible to recover and I said yes with
150% go get it attitude.
Thank you to my wife, thank you to my family,
thank you to the community and my
(20:10):
friends. I had an amazing support
system. I didn't do this alone. I was
able to focus on the job at
hand and that's recovery. I
was lucky enough to get a bed at
a facility called Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital.
(20:33):
I was committed to
walking out of that place on my own Accord.
On May 28, I could not move the
entire right side. There wasn't even a flicker of
the muscle twitching when I would send the signal from my brain.
Seven to ten days later, I'm telling the staff that
(20:56):
I'm going to walk out of this place on June 23rd.
They're looking at me like, nah, you had a massive stroke. That's not going to
happen. And I'm like, no doctors. You don't know who I
am. I laid it down, Tony. I had them stand me
up, take me to the wheelchair, into the bathroom. I would stand in
front of that mirror, look at myself straight
(21:18):
in the eyes, literally hack my subconscious and
tell myself, this is how it's going to be the best
part, Tony. I shot, I recorded the whole thing on
my phone. I want to do a movie one day because the story is just
wild. They put me in this Robocop suit that's
like specifically measured for the. Your height,
(21:40):
your weight, the length of your leg, the length of your
calf, the length of your thigh. And it literally
assists you in walking to the anatomically
correct step so that your body and your muscles
can remember what it's like. Bryn
Mawr was so special, they have adopted
(22:02):
Reiki. You know, the healing energy.
And I would get that as much as they offered it. And I'm telling you,
that stuff works. They had a greenhouse, Tony. They
would wheel me into this greenhouse and I could feel
the healing energy that I was receiving from the
plants. I began to walk again on my own accord
(22:25):
with a nasty limp. They tried to give me crutches.
And me, oh man, I'm type A. You can't. If
I'm telling you I'm going to do something without assistance,
I'm going to do it. I had this very intuitive connection.
I knew that if I put shoes on and
did the rehabilitation with shoes, it
(22:48):
would take longer for my body to remember how
to use the specific muscles. I can't explain it, I just
freaking knew it. So I said, I'm not doing any of
this rehab with shoes on. That's not the way it works
around here. And I'm like, nope, bare feet. How do
babies learn to walk? And they're like, what? I'm like, how do babies learn to
(23:10):
walk? I said, they, they do it barefoot. That's how I'm going to do
it in 2.0. The information I was allowing
myself to be open to allowed my
feet and the muscles to re
navigate balance and everything without the support of the shoes and
do it in a very quick time period. You
(23:32):
describe it as before the stroke, now looking
back was almost like a. A parachute was slowing you down.
And after it you felt like you were
released. It was almost like there was a gift that was
inside what was near a near death experience. Talk to me a bit
about that. Losing my ego. For a period
(23:54):
of four months, I was allowed to live
in the soul based self,
heart based soul without the
veil of the Ego. So I had a
perspective that was strictly soul based
without any input from other
(24:17):
belief structures. And that is what I refer
to as the cutting of the parachute or the cord. I. I got to
see the truth. My ego did come back. Four
months to the day. I had a lot of stuff to deal with. I'm
very fortunate I had those four months of freedom. I
believe that it checked two boxes. It allowed me to
(24:39):
focus on the recovery without experiencing the
mega, mega trauma that I received the night of the stroke. Now,
I still felt sadness, I still felt grief, I still
felt everything. However, I wasn't tethered to the trauma
just yet. When the ego came back, so did the
trauma. And that pushed me into like a different phase of
(25:01):
recovery. But when I talk about the parachute
being caught, something that was holding me back, it was all
of those belief structures that tell us we're not capable of
healing ourselves, doing certain things, the beliefs
that aren't true, that are taught to us. You know, you talk about
(25:21):
the trauma and how important it is, and even you said it earlier,
it takes a village to heal and the people that supported you.
You give so much credit to Caitlin. How's she doing through all of this?
Because she married one individual, had to
save another, saw another one going. As you said, your
ego disappeared. And then as it all comes roaring back, I mean, to
(25:44):
me that must be a bit of being married to almost a roller
coaster. She's my rock. And you're
absolutely right, she's got trauma from a totally different
perspective. And she is one strong cookie,
really good at utilizing her coping mechanisms.
We are both no strangers to mental health and
(26:06):
therapy, openly and vulnerably.
I'm an advocate for working on yourself. Even
before this event, I was
a big advocate of talk therapy,
working through, you know, one's issues in order to better themselves
and better their relationships with others.
(26:29):
I credit that awareness that we had and that
willingness beforehand helped us
navigate this. And you talk about rebuilding a
new version of yourself. You have to be thinking, this came onto
me suddenly so it could, you know, is this Russian roulette that the bullet's going
to get back in the chamber? You're dealing with trauma, trying to build
(26:51):
a better, you better relationship. How does that all manifest into
who Ian McGann's going to be going forward? I'll tell you, it's a one and
done. They put the cause of the stroke onto a
right vertebral artery dissection, meaning the
artery in my neck burst at the time and it
threw a clot that traveled up the artery into the base of the
(27:13):
brain stem. Freak type situation. Good.
That's great. So I did a lot of work on this down in Florida at
a rehabilitation center called the Refuge.
I went there for PTSD and medical trauma. First three weeks
I did work on grief and
mourning the loss of the previous
(27:35):
iteration of myself. I also tried to leave the
Refuge with a vision of what I would
be going forward. Life's a little different. Top
priority for me is body
maintenance, keeping up recovery maintenance.
It's really weird how the body responds after a stroke.
(27:57):
I'm like, it's a miracle. What with the odds and
the stats and all the stuff. However, I have to maintain what
I've gotten back and where I've, I've gotten to.
That's yoga daily, that's a walk daily, healthy
eating, maps when necessary. You know, this is
not type A, Ian. In the first iteration,
(28:20):
this is a totally different way. I would have always put those
things kind of to the side when I was really, go, go, go.
This is a little different. I focus on that first and when we
check that box clearly, then I'm able to turn my attention to
some other stuff. I'm still navigating that, but
I am moving forward with things
(28:43):
that make my heart sing. I have picked up
this love for sailing. All things wellness.
Three days before the stroke, I had an idea
for a, a world changing app.
I've begun to look for people to help me with that.
I am advocating for stroke identification,
(29:07):
cannabis stigma bias, mental health,
intertwining mental health with TBIs and stroke
recovery. Also to the
recovery community, people who utilize
cannabis need to be included. They have things
to heal as well. The stigma revolving around cannabis
(29:27):
is because, you know, due to the narratives that people are sharing,
there are people who use it responsibly and they need to
take care of trauma from, you know, combat, they need
to take care of trauma from sexual assault, they
need to take care of religious trauma. They need to, you
know, heal some ptsd. And I want
(29:50):
them to be allowed into the community
where recovery takes place. You know, Ian, I always end
my show with my three takeaways. And I think there's one word
that came alive in so many different ways, and it was the word
observe. And it was even before the stroke where when you talked about the things
you love to do outdoors, you also said, and
(30:13):
it taught me to observe mother nature. You know, how fish
moved, how birds flew, how predator and
prey connected. And I thought that was really interesting because I think a lot of
times we go through life chasing our passions. We don't stop and
look around and see the world that's unfolding with it.
The second one is how you were open to
(30:34):
alternative medicines, and you credit that with the fact that for four months
your ego was put in check. But how open you were to
it, how willing you were to accept
that the beauty of mother nature and plants could actually be
part of the healing process. And I think for all of us, because we tend
to dismiss things, it's just great
(30:56):
advice. And then the final thing is your willingness to
continue to change and find a way forward. What
began in the hospital saying, I will walk out of there and looking in the
mirror and even to today, and then
deciding that part of that journey is to carry a torch to remove some of
the stigma around cannabis, to bring mental health as part of
(31:18):
the practice of healing, to be an advocate for stroke
victims. I think it's just a testament for, you know, you might be this
old soul that's been put on a planet and we won't know
for years, but there might be a reason that you had that
stroke, not only in terms of becoming a better you that
you've talked about, but maybe doing your part to make this a better
(31:40):
planet. So I really appreciate you joining me on Chatter that
Matters and I'd love to have Caitlin join me on the show
because I think it's important that we also talk. From the person that
has to deal with almost losing somebody they love to the
price they pay to try to reclaim that love, I think would be a
very interesting show as well. You, name nailed it. I got a torch to
(32:02):
carry. I am creating positive global change
in 2.0.
Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting chatter that Matters.
It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.
When I looked up, the world started to spin.
It was like nothing I had ever
experienced in my life.
Imagine being fully conscious. You're aware of every word,
every sound, but you're utterly
unable to move or speak. You're trapped
(00:24):
within your own body. You know you're experiencing a
stroke, yet you can't call for help.
This was Ian McGann's reality on May 27, 2023,
when he suffered a catastrophic brain stem stroke, one
so rare and severe he was given only a 5% chance of
(00:45):
survival. I am so stinking grateful to be
alive. I am grateful that I have a voice
to share this experience. But this isn't just
a story about beating the odds. It's a story about resilience. Raw truth,
love, bias, healing. I am on the ground
in such a dirty, inhumane
(01:08):
state and this person is worried about
how dirty her hands are going to get.
Before the stroke, Ian's life was full. He
had a thriving general contracting company. He led in innovation at
Siemens. He was a thrill seeker, a nature lover, a builder of ideas and
experiences. But then, in an instant, everything
(01:31):
changed. What followed was a journey few of us can
imagine, but included delays in medical treatment due to
cannabis stigma, a harrowing fight to live, and a recovery that defied medical
logic. My apologies to your listeners. If something
this graphic stirs some stuff up, it's the truth of what
happened. For, you know, my story. This is a story about
(01:54):
profound transformation and it forces us to ask big questions
about how we treat people, how we heal, and what really
matters.
Hi, it's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter that Matters, presented by
rbc. If you can please subscribe to the podcast and
ratings and reviews, well, they're always welcome and they're always appreciated.
(02:19):
Ian McGann, welcome to Chatter that Matters. Thank you, Tony.
That was an awesome introduction. I
painted a picture of life before your stroke and I would say you were firing
at all cylinders, both career wise and just this appetite for life. So
share with us a little bit about Ian before that
moment that changed everything. Well, I remember that person fondly.
(02:41):
I had been very successful in
residential contracting and construction. It was the American
dream. And I sold the company for a profit to
a top competitor. And I went to work in
commercial construction, doing pre
construction for hospitals, labs, clean rooms.
(03:03):
How was the change from being your own boss and an entrepreneur to
now clearly having influence? Because you're bringing experience to the
job, but authority has been given to someone else. It was something that needed to
happen. At the time things got wacky after Covid it was just
another iteration of construction for me.
I am super type A. I go after what I
(03:27):
want. I work really, really hard for it. I don't take no
as an option and failure is not it. It's not an option
even though it happens sometimes. And you know the outdoor activities,
you know, snowboarding, sailing, fly fishing. In an article I
read that you were in, you talked about how it helped shape your
worldviews. It made you realize that the planet was
(03:49):
precious. Interested in the sort of the philosophical
observations you had with some of these thrill seeking sports Post
stroke the first. Iteration of Ian Avid fly fisherman.
I've hit some of the top places in the continental US
and some tropical locations. Snowboarding, Jackson
Hole, Vermont, Colorado. Just a
(04:12):
go getter. So any of my spare time
revolved around nature
also trying to get endorphins going and in
adrenaline. And with all of those experiences I
had a lot of chances to become very present,
silent if you will, and observe the way
(04:34):
reality operates on its own. The way fish move, the
way birds fly, the way predator and prey
have this creation and surrender cycle and
how, how things are connected. I developed a really deep
understanding and love for Mother Nature
before the stroke. And I'm fortunate about that because
(04:57):
I brought that into my recovery. Take me to May 27,
2023 where I tried to set up what it must be like
to be you inside the body. But just let us sort of
step inside your mind as this is unfolding. It was an awesome
day. It was a Saturday Memorial Day
weekend and we were kind of the old
(05:20):
boring 40 year old couple just doing things around the house
and laying low and I was running errands and I came
back and my wife was gardening out front and we ended up calling it
a night around 9 o'. Clock. That's kind of where things changed.
I used medical cannabis and just smoked a bowl and my wife
was going to bed. I was going to meet her in bed. I wanted to
(05:43):
actually head outside to the driveway where I live. I have
a really good night sky. When I looked up,
the world started to spin. It
was like nothing I had ever
experienced in my life. Imagine everything
in your visual perception is
(06:05):
spinning around you rapidly 360 degrees and
you have to try and navigate. You know, you have
this quick awareness where it's like, oh shit, I
need help. I have to kind of navigate back into the
house. And the thing that I'm thinking of is man,
tell my wife and she's going to save me.
(06:28):
Full disclosure. A few weeks before I had a
premonition and I told my wife, this is going to happen.
I don't know when, but you're going to have to save my life. She
kind of said, you know, you're scaring me, but
okay, I'll be here. That's the kind of bond we have.
It's deep. I managed to get in the house, walk down the
(06:51):
hallway to Kaitlin, and I remember I grabbed the lime
Lacroix seltzer out of the fridge because I wanted to
be able to have a drink while I was having the stroke, I guess. I
don't know. I remember dragging my
right side of my body against the whole wall,
thinking, this is so odd. I know that I'm walking
(07:13):
upright, but it feels like I'm touching the
wall. I got into the master bedroom. I said to Caitlin,
I need help. And as soon as I pronounced the P and
help, I collapsed into the bed. At this time, my eyes
started to close rapidly. Flutter. The
muscles in my body started to contract. At the time,
(07:36):
from my perception, it probably looked something close
to a seizure. Caitlin's on my shoulder and she's going, what are you
doing? What are you doing? And you're scaring me. And she didn't get it at
first. I hear her and I'm thinking, come on, hon, this is
the time to realize it. She starts Googling. She says out loud, tony,
oh, gosh, what's going on? I'm going to Google this. You're wasting seconds,
(07:58):
Caitlin. You're wasting seconds. So I'm sitting there thinking, how do
I get her to call 91 1? I
voluntarily shake my body so much that I like,
fall. I fall onto the floor. And it's in an attempt
to show Caitlyn how serious it is when this happens.
She goes, oh, shit, I'm calling 91 1. Good, I'm safe.
(08:20):
I start to projectile vomit. I'm trying
to crawl out of the bedroom. I get into this
threshold of the. Of the master bedroom. That's when my body
released everything. I defecated
uncontrollably. I projectile vomited
uncontrollably. It was everywhere. I urinated
(08:41):
and I was beginning to aspirate on the
vomit. My apologies to your listeners. If something
this graphic stir some stuff up. It's the truth
of what happened. For, you know, my story. This
is kind of where it took. Left turn. So 911
says, hi, it's 91 1. How can we help? My husband's having a
(09:03):
stroke. I need help. Did he take anything?
Are you kidding? Me. This is going to happen right now.
Yeah, he smoked some pot and he took Aclonopin.
He's prescribed them for anxiety.
The vibe on the phone call
totally changes. 911
(09:26):
instructs her to turn me onto my side to
get me to stop choking. That's the immediate problem.
She's holding the black lab back. Jacob, our dog,
who's trying to eat the vomit that has onions and chocolate in
it, both poisonous to the dog. It's like perfect world.
Then 911 nonchalantly goes, EMS is on their
(09:48):
way. Good luck. First, the
fire company. I am all for equality. I
am 200 pounds. I am heavy. Was absolute
dead weight. They sent two females, they were not able to
lift me at all. They missed the house twice.
So they get there as soon as the
(10:11):
smell of the cannabis hit their noses. I believe
they had a pre recorded bias of what was
actually going on. They very nonchalantly walked through
the house, asked some very leading questions. Didn't really
attend to me too fast. It was very
lackadaisical. It was wild. I'm still defecating,
(10:33):
I'm still vomiting. The EMT
backs up, stops and goes, ew.
I don't even want to deal with this tonight. I
didn't even bring a change of clothes to work tonight. I guess if I have
to take a shower, it's not the end of the world. I'm looking
into her eyes and she's speaking into
(10:55):
my soul. They had to call for backup. Two
males. This male walks into my house in front
of my wife. You sure he's not doing opiates in the bathroom?
Sure there's not heroin here? We don't live in
a property that meets this, you know,
criteria of the situation. Yeah, I mean, you're in a neighborhood that
(11:17):
they should be dealing with your stroke, not judging you for, you know, having
biases. Because they might have been in a certain neighborhood many times and seen a
certain thing. They put me in the ambulance and I'm thinking, I am so pissed
at these individuals for the way they're treating me, treating me. And they don't think
that I'm hearing anything. And they don't realize the trauma
that they're laying down in my subconscious, in my
(11:40):
conscious, in my ego, all the stuff. And I could, Tony, get
this. I could feel that I was about to lose my bowels
again. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to shit all over your
ambulance for the way you're treating me. And I'm sorry if I'm
laughing, but they freaking deserve this crap. And they got in
the front of the ambulance, I'm in the back dying.
(12:02):
They got in the front. The hospitals has about 10
minutes, lights and sirens, meaning the ambulance speeding with the lights and
sirens on, getting all the green lights. They'll be there in 10 minutes.
They took an hour and 20 minutes to get me
from my bedroom to the emergency room.
Seconds matter with strokes, you know, they matter with heart
(12:25):
attacks. They matter with everything. They almost crash
the ambulance as they are going around this corner.
They get up on two wheels and I start to fly off the gurney
in the back. The woman in the, in the shotgun seat and
ambulance turns around and I hear, go, you're right back there,
buddy. So we got to the hospital
(12:47):
and they teed it up. 40 year old
intoxicated male. The people at Chester county, they
ran with it and they stuck me in the hallway. Initially, what
they didn't know, the part of my brain that the stroke was having
the biggest impact on was affecting my body temperature
control. And I was in a state of
(13:09):
extreme cold. It was very, very
painful. I am completely aware and
cognizant. However, nobody can understand me.
The best way I can describe it is like a mom and
a toddler. Do you know I want a toddler speaking?
Strangers can never understand them, but the mom's always like, now
(13:31):
he's saying he wants to go to the bathroom, now he's saying he wants to
go to bed. That's kind of what Caitlyn and I, my wife had, but she
wasn't with me. I knew that her
voice and advocacy was going to save
me. She gets to the hospital, they wouldn't let her back Tony
because we have different last names. We made an agreement that
(13:52):
she could keep it when we got married. The irony of this is
because they didn't let her in. She went to sit in the waiting
room and she sat down next to a waiting
room table and there are pamphlets and it
says, stroke, question mark, act fast, time is of
the essence. And she's like, is this a sick
(14:14):
joke? She was able to gain access and she came
back, she said it was a very gnarly scene. She
ran to the nurse's station. Are you going to treat
him for the stroke that he's having? We
are treating him very, very arrogantly. And she
asked if they were going to clean him up. They went and got
(14:36):
a stack of towels. If you would like him cleaned up,
you can do it yourself. She came back to the room with the
towels, attempting to restore some
humility. Let's say that Caitlyn's getting to the point
where it's just not even working. I think we're like 2 hours and 20
minutes or 3 hours into it. And she calls my
(14:58):
sister, who's a physician, guides Caitlyn to put her onto
speakerphone and walk up to the nurse's station and
starts very firmly saying, you guys are completely effing
this up. My brother's having a stroke and you're treating
him like an animal. Oh. The blood alcohol came
back and it was.00. The
(15:19):
doctor said, we still think it's probably the
cannabis. Wow. Really? They were 100% sticking with the
intoxication. I didn't know this, Tony. I
didn't know this. But it is super simple to check
for a stroke. There's an acronym BE, FAST
Balance. EyeSight, facial drooping, your arm,
(15:41):
speech, time to call 911.
Some of those simple things can detect a stroke
literally right away. None of this stuff
was done for me. That was the point
over the next 30 minutes where the
backup person who was supposed to review
(16:02):
the imaging came back around and said, there may be something
in the scan. They started to change their tune. You
felt everybody's asshole pucker, like, oh. And there started
to become this. This real urgency. So they decide to
fly the helicopter from the city to Chester county
to pick me up. They did a transfer of care. It was
(16:25):
completely different. They saw
me as an injured human. It must
have felt so different. I'm telling you, it touched my heart.
I was holding onto this cliff and my
fingers were slipping with each milestone. And then I got
someone who was like, we got you. So what happens when
(16:47):
you get to UPenn? The doors fly open, rolling me in
from the helipad, and it's that
aha moment. I'm going from dark into light.
Eight to 10 doctors putting monitoring stuff on
me. And there's this doctor turns to me in the elevator
and he says, ian, we're going to do a procedure, and
(17:09):
we consider it life savings. Okay? And I
managed to get out. Yes. I woke up to a new reality.
You weren't through the woods. I mean, what I understand you were given a 5%
chance of survival. Was that the operation or after the operation? We
were trying to put some context around the type of stroke
that, that I had. The survival rating
(17:33):
is like 85 to 95%, something like that. And
the 5 to 10% that are left are in a vegetative
state or severely limited. I want that to land
the magnitude of surviving,
surviving with that type of treatment and then c
surviving with that type of treatment and only half of
(17:56):
my body was affected. That's still pretty good in my eyes.
When we return, Ian and I focus on his recovery
and how losing something he thought was a true strength while it
unearthed an even more powerful tool as recovery.
(18:19):
Hi, this is Tony Chapman, host of the radio show and podcast Chatter that
Matters. Did you know that only one in five youth with a mental
health illness can get access to the care they need? Well,
a big shout out to the RBC foundation and RBC Future Launch
for supporting over 150 youth mental health
organizations and in doing so, they help youth and their families get
(18:41):
the care they need and deserve.
Before this event in my life, I did
not openly talk about cannabis use. There's
health benefits, recreational, all types. I didn't talk about
it. Doctors are now prescribing on the front
(19:03):
end for certain things, collecting tax money, you
know, all types of stuff. And on the back end, when
the shit hits the fan, we're judging the same individuals for
doesn't make sense. Joining me today is Ian
McGatt, a stroke survivor who learns more about
life through his recovery that maybe the life he
(19:26):
once took for granted.
You defied all odds. I mean, it's not that it's ever going
to be fully recovered, but you know, you talk about physical,
occupational, speech, what was the next
30 days? And was there? I mean, as optimistic as you are and saying, well,
I still had half my body working. There had to be times where you're going,
(19:47):
I didn't deserve this. This is a gauntlet nobody wants to run.
I did everything. I said yes to every way
possible to recover and I said yes with
150% go get it attitude.
Thank you to my wife, thank you to my family,
thank you to the community and my
(20:10):
friends. I had an amazing support
system. I didn't do this alone. I was
able to focus on the job at
hand and that's recovery. I
was lucky enough to get a bed at
a facility called Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital.
(20:33):
I was committed to
walking out of that place on my own Accord.
On May 28, I could not move the
entire right side. There wasn't even a flicker of
the muscle twitching when I would send the signal from my brain.
Seven to ten days later, I'm telling the staff that
(20:56):
I'm going to walk out of this place on June 23rd.
They're looking at me like, nah, you had a massive stroke. That's not going to
happen. And I'm like, no doctors. You don't know who I
am. I laid it down, Tony. I had them stand me
up, take me to the wheelchair, into the bathroom. I would stand in
front of that mirror, look at myself straight
(21:18):
in the eyes, literally hack my subconscious and
tell myself, this is how it's going to be the best
part, Tony. I shot, I recorded the whole thing on
my phone. I want to do a movie one day because the story is just
wild. They put me in this Robocop suit that's
like specifically measured for the. Your height,
(21:40):
your weight, the length of your leg, the length of your
calf, the length of your thigh. And it literally
assists you in walking to the anatomically
correct step so that your body and your muscles
can remember what it's like. Bryn
Mawr was so special, they have adopted
(22:02):
Reiki. You know, the healing energy.
And I would get that as much as they offered it. And I'm telling you,
that stuff works. They had a greenhouse, Tony. They
would wheel me into this greenhouse and I could feel
the healing energy that I was receiving from the
plants. I began to walk again on my own accord
(22:25):
with a nasty limp. They tried to give me crutches.
And me, oh man, I'm type A. You can't. If
I'm telling you I'm going to do something without assistance,
I'm going to do it. I had this very intuitive connection.
I knew that if I put shoes on and
did the rehabilitation with shoes, it
(22:48):
would take longer for my body to remember how
to use the specific muscles. I can't explain it, I just
freaking knew it. So I said, I'm not doing any of
this rehab with shoes on. That's not the way it works
around here. And I'm like, nope, bare feet. How do
babies learn to walk? And they're like, what? I'm like, how do babies learn to
(23:10):
walk? I said, they, they do it barefoot. That's how I'm going to do
it in 2.0. The information I was allowing
myself to be open to allowed my
feet and the muscles to re
navigate balance and everything without the support of the shoes and
do it in a very quick time period. You
(23:32):
describe it as before the stroke, now looking
back was almost like a. A parachute was slowing you down.
And after it you felt like you were
released. It was almost like there was a gift that was
inside what was near a near death experience. Talk to me a bit
about that. Losing my ego. For a period
(23:54):
of four months, I was allowed to live
in the soul based self,
heart based soul without the
veil of the Ego. So I had a
perspective that was strictly soul based
without any input from other
(24:17):
belief structures. And that is what I refer
to as the cutting of the parachute or the cord. I. I got to
see the truth. My ego did come back. Four
months to the day. I had a lot of stuff to deal with. I'm
very fortunate I had those four months of freedom. I
believe that it checked two boxes. It allowed me to
(24:39):
focus on the recovery without experiencing the
mega, mega trauma that I received the night of the stroke. Now,
I still felt sadness, I still felt grief, I still
felt everything. However, I wasn't tethered to the trauma
just yet. When the ego came back, so did the
trauma. And that pushed me into like a different phase of
(25:01):
recovery. But when I talk about the parachute
being caught, something that was holding me back, it was all
of those belief structures that tell us we're not capable of
healing ourselves, doing certain things, the beliefs
that aren't true, that are taught to us. You know, you talk about
(25:21):
the trauma and how important it is, and even you said it earlier,
it takes a village to heal and the people that supported you.
You give so much credit to Caitlin. How's she doing through all of this?
Because she married one individual, had to
save another, saw another one going. As you said, your
ego disappeared. And then as it all comes roaring back, I mean, to
(25:44):
me that must be a bit of being married to almost a roller
coaster. She's my rock. And you're
absolutely right, she's got trauma from a totally different
perspective. And she is one strong cookie,
really good at utilizing her coping mechanisms.
We are both no strangers to mental health and
(26:06):
therapy, openly and vulnerably.
I'm an advocate for working on yourself. Even
before this event, I was
a big advocate of talk therapy,
working through, you know, one's issues in order to better themselves
and better their relationships with others.
(26:29):
I credit that awareness that we had and that
willingness beforehand helped us
navigate this. And you talk about rebuilding a
new version of yourself. You have to be thinking, this came onto
me suddenly so it could, you know, is this Russian roulette that the bullet's going
to get back in the chamber? You're dealing with trauma, trying to build
(26:51):
a better, you better relationship. How does that all manifest into
who Ian McGann's going to be going forward? I'll tell you, it's a one and
done. They put the cause of the stroke onto a
right vertebral artery dissection, meaning the
artery in my neck burst at the time and it
threw a clot that traveled up the artery into the base of the
(27:13):
brain stem. Freak type situation. Good.
That's great. So I did a lot of work on this down in Florida at
a rehabilitation center called the Refuge.
I went there for PTSD and medical trauma. First three weeks
I did work on grief and
mourning the loss of the previous
(27:35):
iteration of myself. I also tried to leave the
Refuge with a vision of what I would
be going forward. Life's a little different. Top
priority for me is body
maintenance, keeping up recovery maintenance.
It's really weird how the body responds after a stroke.
(27:57):
I'm like, it's a miracle. What with the odds and
the stats and all the stuff. However, I have to maintain what
I've gotten back and where I've, I've gotten to.
That's yoga daily, that's a walk daily, healthy
eating, maps when necessary. You know, this is
not type A, Ian. In the first iteration,
(28:20):
this is a totally different way. I would have always put those
things kind of to the side when I was really, go, go, go.
This is a little different. I focus on that first and when we
check that box clearly, then I'm able to turn my attention to
some other stuff. I'm still navigating that, but
I am moving forward with things
(28:43):
that make my heart sing. I have picked up
this love for sailing. All things wellness.
Three days before the stroke, I had an idea
for a, a world changing app.
I've begun to look for people to help me with that.
I am advocating for stroke identification,
(29:07):
cannabis stigma bias, mental health,
intertwining mental health with TBIs and stroke
recovery. Also to the
recovery community, people who utilize
cannabis need to be included. They have things
to heal as well. The stigma revolving around cannabis
(29:27):
is because, you know, due to the narratives that people are sharing,
there are people who use it responsibly and they need to
take care of trauma from, you know, combat, they need
to take care of trauma from sexual assault, they
need to take care of religious trauma. They need to, you
know, heal some ptsd. And I want
(29:50):
them to be allowed into the community
where recovery takes place. You know, Ian, I always end
my show with my three takeaways. And I think there's one word
that came alive in so many different ways, and it was the word
observe. And it was even before the stroke where when you talked about the things
you love to do outdoors, you also said, and
(30:13):
it taught me to observe mother nature. You know, how fish
moved, how birds flew, how predator and
prey connected. And I thought that was really interesting because I think a lot of
times we go through life chasing our passions. We don't stop and
look around and see the world that's unfolding with it.
The second one is how you were open to
(30:34):
alternative medicines, and you credit that with the fact that for four months
your ego was put in check. But how open you were to
it, how willing you were to accept
that the beauty of mother nature and plants could actually be
part of the healing process. And I think for all of us, because we tend
to dismiss things, it's just great
(30:56):
advice. And then the final thing is your willingness to
continue to change and find a way forward. What
began in the hospital saying, I will walk out of there and looking in the
mirror and even to today, and then
deciding that part of that journey is to carry a torch to remove some of
the stigma around cannabis, to bring mental health as part of
(31:18):
the practice of healing, to be an advocate for stroke
victims. I think it's just a testament for, you know, you might be this
old soul that's been put on a planet and we won't know
for years, but there might be a reason that you had that
stroke, not only in terms of becoming a better you that
you've talked about, but maybe doing your part to make this a better
(31:40):
planet. So I really appreciate you joining me on Chatter that
Matters and I'd love to have Caitlin join me on the show
because I think it's important that we also talk. From the person that
has to deal with almost losing somebody they love to the
price they pay to try to reclaim that love, I think would be a
very interesting show as well. You, name nailed it. I got a torch to
(32:02):
carry. I am creating positive global change
in 2.0.
Once again, a special thanks to RBC for supporting chatter that Matters.
It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.
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