Capable Dads Podcast: Daniel Hight
More Than Our Story founder Daniel Hight talks on the Capable Dads Podcast about his journey battling his health challenges, recovering, and parenting.
More Than Our Story
Mark Black
In this special audio interview, Mark Black shares his remarkable story of resilience, becoming the first person in history to run a marathon with someone else’s heart and lungs. He embraced his adversity and transformed it to his advantage, sharing his message worldwide as a keynote speaker and codifying it in his book The Resilience Roadmap.
Highlights
I was born with a congenital heart defect. So, I have had health challenges my entire life. I think my parents are probably largely responsible for the mindset and [my] drive to make something out of a challenge.
I realized the path that I would take as an adult about a year and a half, two years post-transplant. I was starting to get invitations to speak at local rotary clubs, service clubs, and schools... to share my story.
I was doing that with no aspiration to do [it] professionally, just trying to share what I had learned from my experience. I spoke at a local high school graduation, and one of the parents came up to me and asked me how he could book me to speak at his company.
I went home that night and began to ask, "How do I do this?" Slowly but surely, over the course of a couple of years, I turned that into a career that's now taken me to thirty-something states, every province, and a couple of countries around the world.
On his transplant:
I was aware that the transplant had happened and that I was still alive... I was very conscious of this strong rhythmic heartbeat in my chest that did not belong to me. It was the first real awareness that someone else's heart and lungs are now in my body working... It was this realization that now there's potential for things to be different for me to be able to do things I couldn't do before.
It was still a huge road ahead in terms of recovery and potential obstacles, but the potential for health in your reality was there, and that was pretty exciting.
The first big goal, oddly enough, was to run a marathon, which is a strange first goal because I should have had some smaller ones along the way.
I sat up in bed and wondered if now that I can breathe, and my heart beats normally, if I could run again. Then I thought, I wonder if I could run a marathon.
I went to mandatory rehab, and on the last day, I forced myself to jog on the treadmill for a couple of minutes. I remember the physiotherapist telling me that it was probably not a good idea; it was probably going to be painful. And she was right. But it showed me that that was possible.
I left rehab with that in mind and started the process of asking myself, "Can I run a 5K?" "Can I run a 10K?" "Can I run a half marathon?" It took two and a half years, but I eventually got there.
When I had my heart and lung transplant in 2002, the doctors said, you've got about a 50/50 shot to live five years with this transplant... Once it was over and things were going fairly smoothly, [the] next big risk [was] long-term. The medications to prevent rejection of these organs take a toll on your liver and your kidneys... [and] they leave you at high risk for many infections that because your [immune] system doesn't work properly... and if those two things don't get you, then you're at high risk for cancer and kidney failure.
Over the last three years, my kidney function has slowly declined. Three months ago, doctors said you're at the end stage now. We’re gonna have to put you on dialysis and potentially give you a kidney transplant down the road... So far, so good. The biggest challenge for me is [I'm a] healthy, active person. We have three kids. I travel a lot for work. So it's really about the scheduling of things more than anything else. Dialysis for me is four hours a day, three days a week.
[My] teaching certainly comes from my lived experience, but it turns out that it's buried out in science [from] 2000-year-old stoic wisdom... Just like we go to the gym and train our muscles by straining and stretching and essentially breaking our muscles... And I think psychologically, we do the same thing. If we can push ourselves, create a little bit of discomfort, and stretch ourselves a little bit. We have those moments of stress and strain, but then we recover, and in so doing, we realize that thing that was challenging didn't break me. It was uncomfortable. It was difficult. But I'm still here. Now, I've learned something, and I'm probably better equipped to deal with the next challenge that I face.
You're going to face challenges no matter what, but I invite you to do it proactively in ways that you choose... To build the capacity within yourself and the confidence to know that when you have to face the other stuff, you're ready because nobody's life is free from that.
On why he chose to write a book:
I've been speaking about the concepts for a couple of years... I wanted something to leave behind. My main work is to travel and speak at a conference or an event where I'm going to get maybe 75 minutes with a group, and then I'm going to hang out afterward and chat with people... I know from my own experience that you can light a spark in someone... [but you] can't create long-term behavioral change in a couple of hours. So, I wanted to give people tools to sustain any change they wanted to make... It was a way to continue the conversation.
On when he first acknowledged his situation:
I was sitting in a hospital room in Toronto, 1400 kilometers from home, with my dad, my mom, and my brothers... I am in a mental state space of anger, resentment, fear... I'm just mad, and I'm still refusing to admit to myself that this situation is as bad as it is, and probably over a couple of weeks, the reality set in that I'm not leaving this place either until I get a transplant or until I die.
On his agency over the situation:
The statistics of me having a successful transplant were very close to zero. As positive and optimistic as I tried to be, I couldn't shake the reality that this was probably not going to happen. That was probably the biggest thing to overcome: to figure out a way to live in a space between accepting that it may never happen and also hoping that it would.
On his acceptance of the situation:
During that time, I was often in that gap, back and forth... trying to make sense of it and trying to hope that it was a bad dream or something. And then, in a couple of months, I finally settled into the hospital, into the reality of, look, this is my new normal, this is my new reality. I hope that one day I get a transplant and get out of here, but if I don't, I need to make peace with that and use whatever time I have.
On aspiring to run a marathon:
I'm really lucky. The main cardiologist who was following me was an adventurer by spirit. So I asked her, "I'm thinking about running a marathon. Is there any reason why I can't do that?" And she said, "No, your heart works fine. You're [only] limited by your own endurance and strength." So that gave me the green light to say, "Okay, well, let's see if I can do this." As anybody who's trained for their first marathon will tell you, there are lots of moments where you say, I don't know if I can do this, but, ultimately, I was able to.
On why he chose to run a marathon:
I think it was mostly because that, in my mind, represented the hardest thing a human person could do physically... Keeping in mind three weeks before the transplant, I couldn't walk a flight of stairs without getting out of breath. So, to run a marathon is the ultimate opposite end of that spectrum. So that seemed logical. If I can do that, I can do anything.
On assessing his goal:
It's an analogy for any hard thing that we do. It could be giving birth to a child; it could be starting a company. It could be getting through a divorce, anything. It builds confidence in you that other things simply can't. You can look back on those things later and say, "If I can do that, then I can do this." I think that's the value of doing hard things. It builds the confidence, the capacity within us to say; I'm the same person that did that thing, except now I'm probably stronger, smarter, and have more resources than I did before... I think that's really a gift that we need to give ourselves more often.
We can leverage a challenge and change it into growth. The whole idea of post-traumatic growth is that it doesn't need to be something we just survive, that we just tread water until things get better, but that we actually use the challenges we face to become better.
When I'm speaking to healthcare, it gets deeply personal because speaking to nurses primarily, sometimes doctors and physiotherapists. What I realized working with those groups is that as much as they want the content, and I try and give them [that], I stand there [as] a physical representation of their success. I am alive because of what they do... I am the product of medical intervention at many points in my life, and so I think there's just this mutual respect that we have for each other, and my admiration for them, and then their ability to see their work in me, creates a really special experience.
Each healthy human being has the opportunity to save a dozen lives and improve 30 or 40 lives through tissue donation. So, I think of it as a resource... You wouldn't throw away something valuable... My invitation is just that you think about it ahead of time and have a conversation with your family so they know what you want.
On starting The Transplant Trot:
As I got into this transplant journey and realized the dismal donor rates, how few people are ever eligible to be a donor, how many people are waiting, and how many people die on the waiting list, and then to have been fortunate enough to get my transplant, I felt like I needed to do something to help the people who were still waiting. So I started giving presentations about it... and I'm already starting to run... [so I thought] maybe we could do a run... I called it a "trot" because we were walking and running. It wasn't about the athletic part of it. I remember the first one there were a couple dozen people... it was very informal... Then we got The Running Room involved, and [they] helped us to get it to other cities and provinces. Then the Canadian Transplant Association, which is a group that promotes organ and tissue donation across the country, picked it up and started to partner with it... It's still growing, which is really, really exciting. The Running Room and the partnerships with the Canadian Transplant Association helped us take fundraising to a whole other level.
In my work with schools, [it] was clear to me [from] the number of conversations I was having with young people who were talking about dealing with depression and all kinds of mental health challenges... So this amazing organization called Atlantic Wellness provides free counseling and professional counseling for youth in our region because the waiting lists can be incredibly long. They said, let's cut out the middleman and figure out a way to give professional counseling to young people.
On the role of speakers:
You could argue that they think that we're just window dressing...I show up for an hour at an event. I'm in, and I'm out, and what difference does that make? My hope and my experience has been that it often takes an outside perspective... When you're the outsider, you have the ability to see things in a way that the other people can't see... and you also have permission to say some things that maybe the people who are there all the time don't have permission to say, or are afraid to say... So, I'm able to come in and give people a point of view and a perspective that maybe others don't have or that others are not able to share. That's, I think, the biggest value that a speaker can give.
Resilience is not bouncing back, and it's the analogy that is commonly given. I think it's destructive in that it sets people up for failure because it insinuates that we can return to our fictional past that was ideal... It's not about bouncing back it's about growing through. It's about not just returning to some status quo but actually leveraging what we've been through into post-traumatic growth, that there were better versions of ourselves, not in spite of, but because of what we've been through.
On what advice he would you give to people facing adversity:
I would ask yourself, "How can I use this? What do I have? What can I learn? And to also give yourself permission to have bad days." It's [not] about being positive all the time or pretending like everything is great when it's not. Acknowledge the pain and acknowledge it's a challenge. But then say, "How can I use this in a proactive, constructive way?" Because when we give purpose to our pain, it allows us to endure it much more easily.
On what he hopes people take away from this interview:
Hope. Encouragement. Confidence. I think we don't give ourselves enough credit. I think anybody listening to this has already been through some stuff in their life. People come up to me and say, "I've been through this thing. It's nothing like what you went through." And I say, no, it's not about comparison. We all have different experiences. We also have different tools to cope with those experiences. But you have been through some stuff, and that means that you've learned some things, and you've probably built some resilience muscle. Keep building it, keep making it stronger. The time to put the emergency kit in the car is not the day after the emergency, it's the day before. So build the tools now, so that when you need them, they're going to be there.
MarkBlack.ca
Learn about Mark’s story, his programs and coaching.
The Resilience Roadmap
In THE RESILIENCE ROADMAP: 7 Guideposts for charting your course in a chaotic world, Mark Black reveals a framework for developing and employing resilience in every area of your life.
It’s impossible to anticipate a solution for every possible problem we encounter. Instead, we must build our confidence and capacity to handle setbacks and crises. If you constantly feel stuck in the chaos of life and lack the lessons and skills to turn failure into resilience, this book is for you.
The Transplant Trot
Canadian Transplant Association’s series of 5-10K walk/runs across Canada. Celebrating life after transplant & awareness about Organ & Tissue Donation
Daniel
Daniel is an extremely curious person, a wealth of random knowledge and facts. Extremely passionate about a vast array of interests ranging from health to history, science to athletics, everything culinary and the list goes on. Trust us, you would want to be on his team for Trivial Pursuit.
Daniel is also years into his battle with brain cancer. He experienced a seizure while on a Zoom call at work in late 2020 and quite literally, his life changed within minutes. After his operation he started to talk about his story but had always known it was more than just him. From then, More Than Our Story became a PROJECT that has evolved into the starting point it is today.
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