Talk with Jared Muscat | Surfing Epilepsy the Sea – Wedo.ai

Talk with Jared Muscat | Surfing Epilepsy the Sea

by | Oct 14, 2021 | Wedotalks

From early childhood, Jared Muscat has always loved the ocean and surfing, but as a teenager he had his first epileptic seizure and was told to give up the sport he loves. Seizures can be triggered by stress, and Jared tells his inspiring story of coping with epilepsy, his surgery, managing stress, and how surfing has kept him centered. He once told his doctors “If you want me to be stress free, I can’t be salt free.”

Connect with Jared:
Instagram and Twitter: @jaredmuscat
​LinkedIn: Jared A Muscat
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The epilepsy foundation:
Epilepsy Impact
If you’re interested in stories from surfers, this talk with
Mike Mulkey might interest you!

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Thank you for joining us. This is a wedo talk with David Jaques. 

 David: “Hey everyone, welcome back to another wedo talk, I’m David, and continuing our theme of general physical and mental wellbeing, and I am delighted today to be joined by a special guest joining us from his home in Santa Barbara, California we have Jared Muscat. Jared, good morning, welcome, thanks for joining us.” 

 Jared:  “Hello David, it’s a beyond an honour, and I’m stoked to start talking about the importance of mental health and overall health in this modern day and age.” 

 David: “Now you & I know we are going to talk about a specific condition because on the face of it anybody looking at you would say Jared has a great life, he has a good job with a great company, he has a wife, a young son, lives in a beautiful place. Santa Barbara is one of the most beautiful places on the California coast. He has a great life, and there are some very good things going on in your life, but also there’s this kind of hidden little thing going on behind, because you’re also dealing with epilepsy, and you have dealt with epilepsy for much of your life, so, I want to get onto that subject, but first of all I’d like to talk about your first passion, because rather than talk about Jared with epilepsy, I’d like to talk about Jared the surfer, because looking at that backdrop there, we have your surfboards right behind you, and tell us a little bit about your early life, where you grew up, and how old were you when you first stepped foot on the surfboard. 

 Jared: “Yeah, I believe I was about eight years old the first time I stepped foot on the surfboard. Was born in San Francisco, we moved out to Rhode Island by the time I think I was two or three, but my mom’s from Orange County, and we would come back to Orange County every single summer, since the Summer 94, the El Nino summer, so it put me at about six.  

We’d go down to the beach all day every day, and I would just play in the shore break, fascinated at these beautiful waves and what people were doing on them. My mom had told me what surfing was, and she’d surfed in high school, but I hadn’t really been quite invited to the ocean, and on one day a man’s board, he lost his board it came to the beach. I very happily picked it up, took it out to him, he looked at me, looked at my mom offered to push me into a wave, and I’ll forever remember that wave, about as vividly as the best waves I’ve caught since watching the ocean beneath my feet, sand rise up and that that was that. I think I got my first board about a couple summers later and got a couple more now.” 

 David : “Yeah, I think I counted about 20 behind you which is pretty amazing.” 

 Jared: “Yeah, getting close.” 

 David: “So, surfing is obviously a huge thing in your life it’s, it’s a passion, it´s what motivates you, and purely by coincidence anybody that follows these talks will have seen back in December, which is about a month ago now, I did a talk with Mike Mulkey who was talking about finding balance in your life, and I always joke with mike because he is also a very passionate surfer, quite a bit older than you are, and one of the things I have often say to him is ´well the time you’re the most balanced is when you’re on a surfboard´, and he talked about how he too will go out to the ocean to get himself centred, find some inspiration, and in a very different way, but I can imagine that you know you almost now can’t remember life without surfing, is that a true statement?” 

 Jared: “Yeah, I’m going through some physical therapy I had pretty severe leg injury back in October, and I’m about four months since the last time I stood on a surfboard and have another four to five months since I get to do it again, and I’m not the best version of myself every single day, when I don’t have the opportunity to surf in a couple days or have surfed a couple days prior.  I’ve learned a lot about being a father all the times that epilepsy has kept me out of the water, about how to deal with it, but I definitely recognize the ocean as one of the most peaceful places for me to, to find my calm, to find consistent source of happiness and inspiration for being someone that contributes back to society into the earth.”  

 David: “That’s really important I think for everyone to have somewhere that they can find themselves and find their centre, for me its distance running. I’m a marathon runner, and you know I do my good thinking, my creative thinking when I go out running early in the morning, and I can block off everything else, and even those mornings that I wake up and feel, oh you know I have responsibilities, there’s a lot of things in life that are kind of getting me down, after that run, life doesn’t feel as bad, you probably feel the same way with surfing.” 

 Jared: “Oh yeah I do a lot of long-distance prone paddling as well so it’s somewhat similar to the marathon running, although when you say marathon running, my heart hurts, like running is not a skill I have. The way that your mind can think both deeply and without like a true focus or stress to it, and you can think about, just about anything and in two seconds if any stress rises, the ocean provides a wave, or you see a dolphin or you just get to see the beauty of mother nature and it pretty quickly puts context to the stresses of life. As you said at the very beginning, if you didn’t know I have epilepsy, or didn’t see the injury, you would just assume I live a great life. I have all those surfboards, I have a beautiful wife, who works in education and does a lot for the future of future generations. I have a great son, a great family, so yeah I live an incredible life and surfing helps me consistently provide that context to all the different challenges that I do face, we all face challenges, so.” 

 David: “Now when you were age 17, I think, life changed because that was the time that you had your first epileptic seizure so I’m assuming you, you didn’t know that this was a condition that you had it, it hadn’t actually surfaced before, but tell me a little bit about that first day that you had your first seizure, and you had your diagnosis what, do you remember of that day?” 

 Jared says: “Yeah, so that actually circles back to my time and my mom’s roots in Orange County, and how we would spend every summer there, had a great friend base there, all my, a lot of surfer friends, and one of my great friends, she’d been diagnosed with epilepsy in the spring break prior to that summer. So, it’s the summer of 07. She’d been diagnosed with epilepsy. I was on my way to college freshman orientation, and I was stopping by because she was in the middle of a video E.E.G (Electroencephalography) test where they hold you in the hospital for 72 hours, try to induce some seizures so they can study exactly where the seizures are produced. I’d woken up at four, driven seven hours from San Francisco in Orange County, went and surfed all day, hung out with friends, and then ran to Blockbuster and grabbed a bunch of DVD´s to help her stay up till 3 a.m., so that she could hopefully have a seizure for the doctors, got home at about 3 30 a.m., and at about 4 30 a.m., there was a bunch of E.M.T´s (Emergency Medical Team) surrounding me, the look on my mom’s face and, and my mom’s best friend who, we would stay at her house, I’ve never seen that fear on their face, I’d never seen it before.  I’ve definitely seen it since, also I was in a hospital, and within days that the diagnosis had come, and yeah it was a pretty quick and fast experience. I don’t remember it’s specifically the seizure, it’s more of a memory of the scene, when I woke up to the seizure, the family and friends with their hearts broken and the fear in their eyes of what they just seen me go through, and a tongue about the size of Texas with a lot of blood coming out of it, because of have how bad I’d bitten it.” 

 David: “Wow so, so yeah I can imagine how the actual experience is something that you probably don’t remember as much, but yeah the, the impact I think that that’s very poignant, so you got your, your diagnosis that you had epilepsy, and I think your doctor asked you a few questions about your lifestyle and what you do, and told you that surfing was out of your life forever, you know forget it, it’s gone. That must have been a huge blow how did you react when you were told that?” 

 Jared: “I was 17 and while I was a goody two shoes to an extent, I also I think every teenager has a certain little rebellion streak in them, and earlier in the conversation she told me I needed to learn a stress-free life because stress would be a seizure inducer, and I pretty immediately responded ´well if you want me to be stress-free, I can’t be salt-free´, and I looked over at my mother and my mother she acknowledged that. I know she was scared and you know through the decade plus afterwards there was a lot of fear that a mother had to go through, and I’ll forever be sad that my family has had to deal with what they’ve had to deal with watching my epilepsy battle and supporting it, but yeah I know what the ocean means to me, and I see nature as a certain type of medical help it’s not available for everyone with epilepsy, but I decided it was for me.”  

 David: “Good, so you continued to surf, and obviously you know you had the knowledge that there’s some risk there, there’s some danger if you had a seizure while you’re out at sea, it could be extremely dangerous, but you were willing to take the risk, because this is something you love to do. I’m sure you were taking at that point some medications and undergoing some treatment. What was the initial treatment that you underwent when you were first diagnosed.” 

 Jared: “Yeah, they ran me through a good amount of E.E.G´s, trying to see if there was any direct abnormality or anything they could find as the true root of the epilepsy, they decided that I’d broken my back a couple years prior, body surfing, slamming my head into the sand pretty good and had a really bad, concussion as well as a couple other concussions from sports in high school, and surfing so they thought that was likely the cause of it, and they gave me quite a bit of medication. I remember Keppra as the lead, and I forget there was one other medication I was on, and it was a really high dosage, and we didn’t know too much. I look back at that time my mom worked on studying it, and I did work to study it but I also, I was highly focused on my freshman year in college. I wanted to; I was always a healthy guy. I’d been a vegetarian, and cared about organic sourcing for my food, meditate and did yoga as part of my recovery from the from the back injury, so I took a bit of a combined holistic, and trying to keep my life in a balance.” 

 David: “And you’re also told not to drink alcohol.” 

 Jared: “Yes, the doctor told me, sorry freshman year college no beer, and I told her ´I told you earlier I’m a goody two shoes, I know that’s fine by me, I’ll just use that as the excuse to not look awkward when I leave a party and go surf in the morning´. She didn’t like that answer too much.” 

 David: “Well sometimes doctors don’t like the answers we give them, but you know it is our lives, and we have to take, you have to take some ownership, and take the advice but you also are responsible for your own actions. So, you did go to college, you did get your degree, you went to university of California San Diego. San Diego is another great city for surfing, it’s got some great beaches and some great waves, I know that, and then after a while in consultation with your doctors there was a decision to do a surgery. How did that conversation go and, and how did the decision come about to do a surgical procedure on you?” 

 Jared: “A lot of people who are new to battling epilepsy or who have gone through a difficult stage recently will reach out to me to ask how I came about the path to surgery, and I tell them, and I’ll tell you right now, I take a lot of responsibility for the amount of seizures I had to go through for the first seven or so years of my battle with epilepsy. I had a great doctor at UC San Diego, but I was not proactive in communicating with him, telling him about smaller seizures versus bigger seizures. I’d note when I had one, but I never provided a lot of detail. I didn’t ask for more tests, I wasn’t proactive. So, on the surface level, I was a very mild case of epilepsy, sometime in or early 2017, I had some horrible seizures that put me into the hospital over Thanksgiving Weekend. I was recently engaged, put my fiancé through heck and then some, I put my family through heck and then some, my friends and everyone, and it made me realize exactly how much more focused I needed to go about the battle, and so I reached out to my friends at the epilepsy foundation who I recently started working with, and asked them for some advice on a better route, and they suggested getting a second opinion going to a new doctor and that’s when I started going to Dr Anthony Escueta at UCLA. I’ll always remember my first two appointments with him, I think I said less than I ever said about epilepsy my entire life. The first appointment, my wife was with him, and he just asked her every single question about the details of my seizures, my personality differences, when new meds have been introduced to my life, all in detail and then the next appointment with my mom asking her about my life, and every single medical issue I’ve dealt with dating back to my birth, and so I was about two months into seeing him where he had an MRI that showed just this little bit of neurons that are pretty happy, right in my left focal temporal lobe, showed what’s called focal cortical dysplasia and it’s this little abnormality that I was born with, stroke of luck or bad luck whichever you choose to call it, and it meant that there’s just this little batch of neurons that would always be happy and sometimes medicine would come in and put them to sleep for a nice amount of time, and then after a while that medicine doesn’t have the strength to match them anymore, and that was the path, and then it was about six months or so of a lot of different tests to decide exactly how much of my brain to cut out, and that was fun, it was stressful as heck, but the amount of education myself and my family and my friends got, about my brain, but brains in general, it was really awesome in that sense looking back on it, it’s really easy to see the awesome, not as easy during it, but.” 

 David: “So, on the one hand your doctors are telling you to cut down on stress in your life, and yet here you are facing brain surgery which is probably one of the most stressful things that anybody could ever consider, so a little bit of a paradox there. So, you did have surgery. The surgery was successful, obviously there’s always a risk with neurosurgery it could leave you with some form of disabilities. I’m sure you went into it knowing those risks and went into it openly, and with full consent, but are you seizure-free now or is this still something that is possibly working out there for you?” 

 Jared: “Yeah, I’m running close to three years without a seizure. My last seizure was February 12th of 2018, so I’ll always remember that day it was exactly a month before the surgery. They did some cognitive tests, one of the tests I did was about an eight-hour day of going through different math equations, different vocabulary tests, memory tests, all sorts of stuff, and it was to figure out. It was just a beautiful process and how they’re able to map out the way my brain had decided to work, because of this batch of little neurons and exactly how much to cut out, and I actually ran across my health record the other day, they cut out like 1.25 cubic centimetres of brain, mostly the amygdala, right next to tiny part of the hippocampus, so it was they were trying to stay away from the area where memories held, and take away the fear factor. They do say there’s the chance they start again, and they might have to cut more out, but they went the safe route first.” 

 David: “I would imagine that with almost three years behind you of living a seizure-free life, that the hope that will remain is probably higher, I’m not a neuroscientist. I’m not medically qualified in any way, but intuitively that would seem to be the way so let’s talk a little about living with epilepsy and you know right now, if hopefully you are seizure-free and that you know you can just lead a normal life, and this won’t inflict on you anymore. But at the time that you were coming to terms with your condition and living with epilepsy I would imagine there was probably a stigma to it, you know you could have a seizure at any time. I’m sure your friends and family were very supportive, but did you ever deal with a situation in your life where either somebody didn’t know what to do, or outright discriminated against you because of your condition?” 

 Jared: “Yeah, there’s been and although I’ve dealt with those issues I, I’ll take the responsibility for not having been forward in education of the peers that I was surrounded by with when any of that happened. One example being a seizure I had at a friend’s car in the parking lot before going while we were just checking waves we didn’t plan on surfing it hit me out of nowhere and someone who was parked nearby called an ambulance and forced the ambulance on us and I couldn’t about for five to ten minutes after seizure it’s really hard to talk like you’re a normal human being, and by the standards of the EMT they had, they forced me to go to the ER, and then at the ER they can’t do anything, you just have to lay in an ER bedroom and wait for them to say ´okay you can get driven home now´, and you know it’s not the doctor’s fault, it’s not necessarily the EMT’s fault, it’s not necessarily the stranger who called on it, but it’s one of those moments where when you’re recovering from a seizure the last thing you want is any stress added to the moment, and so one thing I always tell anyone who’s newly diagnosed or who asks for any advice about it, I say educate anyone who you’re close with and the people you spend the most time with about your path after a seizure, tell them different things to look for in terms of when they might need to call an ambulance, and tell them the things to just try to count on or look for when you need to report it to your doctor, but tell them most of all first and foremost you don’t want to be a show you don’t want anything other than to get to a pillow and a glass of water when it’s all over and you might not even want to hear the word for another week so tell them to stay away from it. I did have an issue with a former employer who tried to force me to go sign an FMLA (Family & Medical Leave Act) at so that if I had seizure and said I, I couldn´t drive or didn´t want to be driven to work, I wanted to still work to keep stress low I was able to work about 10 minutes after seizure I’m back to normal but they wanted me to sign an FMLA to say that all right if I have a seizure I’m not working today and you don’t have to pay me today, and I stood against that because a seizure sucks it’s, it’s awful it feels like he ran a marathon got punched by Ali and friends but afterwards you want to come back to as much comfort as possible and you might have a headache for a day and a half and you might feel a little foggy but just being somewhat proactive or productive at least for me was it was a huge path back to feeling normal and confident and comfortable not having another seizure any time soon yeah” 

 David: “So, Jared, what I want to ask you now is uh some of the good work that you’ve done and you know you’re not the sort of person that just takes this condition and says you know this is up to me and clearly you do take responsibility for yourself, but you’ve been very good at spreading the word and you’ve done some work with the epilepsy foundation and a few years ago, you did a Facebook live I think broadcast when you went on a paddle journey tell us a little bit about that.” 

 Jared: “Yeah, so I work, I work at Patagonia um in social media marketing digital media marketing yeah so it was early 2016 and Facebook live had just started. One of my roles in on our team is to be the one who looks for the, the new opportunities the trends, the strategy that we’re going to build and my boss and I had been talking about Facebook live as an opportunity and as an outdoor company Facebook live means doing something in the outdoors and try to how, how are we going to do that what’s going to be interesting enough, and one morning I was on a paddle just by myself enjoying the beauty of the ocean and I’m thinking to myself about work about my battle with epilepsy just kind of a little bit about everything as we talked about earlier my version of marathon training, and I remember just having a moment it’s like Facebook live, on a paddle so everyone can see why I do this, for epilepsy so that it raises awareness, and I think my boss would like support this and tell me to go ahead and spend a day paddling for a good cause and, and for studying my job and got so excited I decided to turn around and get back to my car to write the email to the boss and make the proposal and, and always remember that section of the paddle where um just this pod of dolphins joined me and I I’ve seen dolphins often for, for a long time in my life and they’re my favourite animal they’re just incredibly graceful I don’t know who else has seen mighty ducks but they formed a ´V´ I had one dolphin in front of my board, two on each side just continuing out, and I kept thinking they might hit my board but they never came, they never did it and we just went all the way back a full half a mile or so, back to my car I tossed the idea to my boss, she accepted and said go do it tell us if you need help the office is going to be watching but let’s make something happen and it was a beautiful moment of an employer being supportive of epilepsy of the battle  that I deal with and finding the connection of context to the issue my outdoor passion and my battle so that was that I reached out to a couple friends who might be interested in paddling and, and they said dude how are you gonna raise the money who is it for you need to talk to a foundation I said oh yeah good call called the epilepsy foundation of los Angeles that’s known as end epilepsy on a whim great man Nathan Jones answered the phone call with full enthusiasm and said all right what day let me get up there can I rent a boat so I can follow with extra camera like just full-on enthusiasm and I’ve never had, I never had people just get excited to work about work on raising awareness for epilepsy other than personal support for me. It was beautiful. 17-mile Paddle, I hadn’t been paddling very long, I’ll forever remember about five miles in thinking, oh my goodness, and then enjoying how much it hurt all the way, all the way through and by the time I was paddling to the shore there was peers cheering me on, my phone had died so the Facebook live had cut off quite a while ago. By the time I got to my desk with wobbly legs and arms, and a pair of trunks the office was excited to see me, and it’ll forever be a memory of one of the, not I don’t like to think of it as an accomplishment, I like to think of it as a collaboration among many people um it’s just a beautiful moment.” 

 David: “Do you still do any work for the epilepsy foundation; is there, do you have any other projects in mind.” 

 Jared: “Yeah, we’ve done um I’ve done about one paddle a year since then, they were paddles as I was going through the, the process for brain surgery, and then awaiting my firstborn child, um they’re just shorter eight, eight-mile paddles with a couple buddies they did well um and then right before the pandemic we were actually working to get together a surf event a little competition and a surf lesson event over a weekend, and the pandemic has, has come, and put that plan to a halt, but we’re still talking about it. As soon as anyone reaches out about epilepsy, I’ll answer that call within a day at the longest I’ll forever feel indebted to the epilepsy foundation that helped me find the path towards surgery, and to my peers who don’t yet have the lifestyle I could now live the lifestyle of relative safety it doesn’t mean that I don’t think a seizure might 

Happen, it doesn’t mean I’m all of a sudden, a party animal I still live a very health-conscious lifestyle focused on making sure I keep away and he sees your opportunity and I want my peers to, to have that too I don’t want them to, to battle the way I once had to battle or their families to have to do the same.” 

 David: “And Patagonia has been great support by the sound of it, I mean I; I think of Patagonia as a great company, yes it represents the outdoors, it represents many of the things that I love have you talked to your employer obviously they know about your condition your underlying condition, how supportive has the company been outside of the you know giving you a day to go paddling, how supportive is the company been of you.” 

 Jared: “Just non-stop endless support from a peer level to the way HR (Human Resources) has been supportive when I was having to go through setting up, actually needing FMLA for the variety of tests I was going through like on that six-month road or so to brain surgery. I had at least two tests a month, some of them that would take multiple days, were up in Ventura my doctor is down at UCLA, so you know three and a half hours of commuting or so for each appointment and they’re, they’re very accepting and supportive throughout the process. We have a whole team of what we call brain buddies, other fellow employee’s colleagues who’ve had to have brain surgery now for epilepsy different, different issues but we all see each other regularly talk to each other, check in on each other. None of my peers at Patagonia had to see me go through a seizure, but if I ever reported one, I’d have people check in that I didn’t send an email to let them know I wasn’t coming in that day, for that I um that series I mentioned, that put me into the hospital over Thanksgiving Weekend. I had people reaching out offering me sick days, vacation days, whatever I needed to get back to full recovery mode, and when I said, hey I need like two days and then I’m back in there, and I want to get going I might need a little like support, but they said all right get in, let’s go we’re here for you we’re a team this is this is a family, and it and it’s true a business is business, but there’s a family atmosphere, and I can’t think of going through the battle I’ve went through another employer, not that any other employer wouldn’t do it that way, but I know the incredible benefits I’ve had.” 

 David: “Well as I think you know my uh particular journey has been with, with mental health, yours is a very different situation it’s a neurological condition um that uh you know is treatable in a different way, but there’s still somewhat of a stigma behind it, and there’s still a reticence among many people that don’t understand it, to avoid not really talk about it and I always say that you know with a physical condition um, I mean you mentioned earlier on you have a  physical injury right now which is not surfing related or not surfing induced, and you’re undergoing physical therapy, that’s you know an understandable thing you can talk about everybody understands it everybody relates to it, but somehow a mental health issue or you know a neurological issue like you’ve had to deal with, people a lot of the time they just don’t know what to do they don’t know they don’t understand it they don’t know how to react I don’t necessarily blame them but what is needed is, is a lot more education, and a lot more understanding of what these conditions are and, and how people can help.” 

 

Jared: “Yeah, and that’s an interesting you brought up an interesting thought in my head when, my the brace that I’m wearing on my knee right now isn’t too bad, but um I’ve been at one-point, I was wearing a brace that went from my ankle all the way up to my hip and I’d be walking through or hopping on crutches through the grocery store and I’d have at least three or four people are you okay can I help you oh did you get your MCL2 did you or is it the ACL and so yeah, there’s that immediate sympathy relation that happens when it’s physical, and I have a couple tattoos that say I have epilepsy or that mark epilepsy in one way shape or form but I definitely would not assume epilepsy out of the blue, and it’s that’s an interesting effort of how to know to reach out to one another, how to make sure that there´s a connection and, and what to talk to I know people who don’t have epilepsy who’ve wanted to reach out to me to ask about it, and it took me kind of provoking them into questions, so they felt comfortable to ask certain questions.” 

 David: “I think you know the, the, the best way along a journey to being able to support somebody is to understand, and so anybody that you know out there that is impacted by any kind of condition that you know about, find out about it there’s you know this wonderful thing called the internet, there’s masses of information out there, sometimes there’s misinformation, sometimes there’s too much information, but information is certainly out there that can help you understand what a condition is, what it’s about, and what the person might be dealing with, and that’s probably one of the best ways to help.  So, Jared I think that really concludes everything that uh I wanted to talk about, was there anything else you wanted to add, or anything that, that any thoughts you’d like to leave us with?” 

 Jared:  “Yeah, I, I think there’d be like just two quick thoughts one of them is anyone who’s battling epilepsy or anyone who has a loved one battling epilepsy always feel free to reach out to myself or to the greater epilepsy foundation there’s local chapters in most big cities throughout the united states they that they’re small little foundations they might be busy but they will reach out they have connections with local hospitals, they have a lot of great information there’s support groups for mothers for wives for husbands for brothers and sisters anyone who’s any family that’s dealing with epilepsy it’s a family battle, there’s the person that has to go through the seizures and they’re awful I don’t remember how scared I used to be from them because it’s been so long which almost makes me more scared of them than I ever was before yeah I had gotten to a point where I didn’t even get nervous about them I just said all right that’s another Wipeout, whatever so, which what we all need to do is we need to educate ourselves every family needs to educate themselves and the person who´s dealing with the issue however much let them try to lead, let  them tell you where their comfort level is with communication with talking to doctors helping encourage the communication but pressure and trying to control that’s not inducive to a to a good process forward, and the second note I would have is, is just let’s all always try to apply your context to the battle of your epilepsy there’s, I had horrible epilepsy I had to deal with seizures on a monthly to every six-month basis but I know of people who will never have the opportunity to have that out of a battle who had a way worse and definitely never have what I have and so, always feel free to, to, to reach to me, or to reach to those that that could, could use your help as well. We’re all in this together so, and I’m not a prophet. I’m not I don’t know everything that’s just how I approach my battle and your battle with epilepsy, and all with any mental health or neurological issue.” 

 David: “Okay well Jared I really want to thank you for your participation, your honesty, your openness, your candour, and talking about your journey in a very open way here with me today, and you you’re currently your job is you’re a social media content producer for Patagonia, you are clearly a very articulate person in the spoken word, but you’ve written some pretty amazing things as well and some of the blogs that you’ve written what I’d like to end with is some, what I think is some very inspiring words, and this is a quote from the time that you were approaching your brain surgery, and you were finding life very disorienting very overwhelming, and you even said that if anybody asked you the day of the week, you probably didn’t necessarily know. What time was your next appointment, you’d have to go and look it up because the overwhelming nature of everything you were going through, was really impacting your life. So, as you approached it, you use surfing to put into context where you’re really centred, and this is what you wrote ´Yet the one place all stayed well, all stayed calm, and the fear of the surgery never loomed, was in the ocean. Yes, my wife, my brother, my parents, and friends provide comfort and support in unexplainable depths, but the ocean provides a sanctuary. The ocean is the only place that the overwhelming road to surgery drifted further away than continents on the other side. Why? hard to explain, but I know it to be true. In the ocean I find my peace, I find my true self, and I’m reminded of my guiding principles´. Very inspiring words, and uh that’s what I´d like to leave with Today, and once again Jared thank you for joining us.” 

 Jared: “Thank you, David. It was, it was an honour, and I hope to talk with you further and uh I look forward to seeing the next interview you have, because I’ve watched them all, so.” 

 David: “Great so thanks everybody for watching if you enjoyed this Video, please feel free to leave your comments below. Subscribe to our channel, we update a new video weekly on YouTube, Spotify and SoundCloud, and until next time, be safe and be well.” 

 Jared: “Have a good one!” 

 David: “We upload a wedo talk every week so if you enjoyed this video please subscribe and leave your comments below. Thank you”