Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
From Bobsled Crashes to Brain Clarity: William Person’s Fight for CTE Healing and Access
The story starts with a crash—but not the kind you see on TV. Former Team USA bobsledder William Person maps the quiet damage of micro-concussions, relentless G-forces, and years of migraines, vertigo, and sensory overload that slowly stole his clarity. Then came one hour in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. He walked out seeing colors he didn’t know he’d lost—and for the first time in years, the world looked vivid, sharp, and possible.
We dig into what that means for athletes and veterans living with CTE symptoms and post-concussion syndrome, translating the science of oxygen, blood flow, and neuroplasticity into clear, practical language. William’s account doesn’t hide the complexity: relief that arrives in windows, rebounds that test resolve, and the discipline required to stack small gains into a life. Along the way, we confront the system that too often says “you’re fine” while athletes fade—legal settlements that offer monitoring without care, research that goes missing in action, and a culture that celebrates speed but ignores the bill it sends to the brain.
Out of the fog comes a plan: a nonprofit recovery center that delivers hyperbaric oxygen therapy alongside supportive tools—sleep and light hygiene, anti-inflammatory nutrition, autonomic regulation, vestibular work—free at the point of use. We talk cost barriers, smarter fundraising, and why placing a center in the Midwest can make access real for people who don’t have the means to chase treatment. If you care about brain health, athlete safety, veteran care, or just the kind of hope that proves itself with results, you’ll find a roadmap here—and a reason to act.
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Well, hello, and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today we've got a very special guest. His name's William Person, and he's a former nine-year team USA bobsled athlete whose career left him battling the devastating effects of CTE. At his lowest point, he could barely get up off the floor, lost in confusion, depression, and deteriorating brain. Hope came when he discovered hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which restored clarity in his thinking, color in his vision, and purpose in his life. Today, William's on a mission to raise awareness of brain damage in sports, the importance of protecting and healing the brain, and he's on a mission to open a nonprofit CTE recovery center to help athletes and veterans heal at no cost to them. Wow, what a story. William, welcome to the show. Oh man, thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00:I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I uh I've run into a lot of different guests, and a few athletes have been here and sharing their stories. And usually it's uh, you know, somehow involving an injury and how they've come around it. Um, I've got a little experience with hyperbaric oxygen battling with cancer, so I know the value that um it can bring to healing anything. You know, oxygen is uh it's a friend to all healthy cells and a foe to all sick cells, so it's uh it's a good thing. So welcome to the show. And uh why don't you tell us a little bit about your uh your journey here?
SPEAKER_00:Well, actually, before we start, what type of uh cancer you mind, Sarah?
SPEAKER_01:Oh no, not at all. I I I do many episodes on this. So about uh a year ago, I was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. I had a giant tumor sticking out of my neck, and I had a doctor tell me that, oh, well, you're so healthy that it's probably not cancer, which of course I wanted to hear. And so, you know, I believe in you know, your body can heal itself, and I'm I'm all holistic. And so I just said, all right, I'll keep going. And that was the fool's errand because uh the cancer was growing away. And uh I learned a lot, you know. My diet has been an instrumental part. I I do a lot of work with plant medicine and prayer meditation, and I've created an amazing um community of people that have brought all the right pieces to solve my problem. And and what I learned is cancer is so very unique to people that it's as unique as you and I are as humans. Yeah. And so all these people that come up with this, oh, everything, you know, this will cure everybody's cancer, you know, maybe there's some truth to it, maybe not. But the truth is everybody's gotta find their own answer to their problem. Because as you know, with brain injuries, I had a brain injury when I was 18 and I lost my taste of sense and smell for 10 years. And um it it came back. You know, neuroplasticity is a wonderful thing, and and uh my my my brain healed itself, but yeah, but meanwhile, not everybody's so fortunate, and there's lots of tools that can help everybody, and some tools are really good for most people, but you know, my knowledge has always been each of us has to find their way, and um, so I'm here to help, and so are you. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So did did your taste and smell come, excuse me, did it come back after hyperbaric oxygen or before that?
SPEAKER_01:No, the hyperbaric oxygen was part of the therapies that I do. So I'm working with a doctor that integrates Western standard of care along with holistic solutions. So when you deal with chemotherapy or radiation or or most of the the cancer therapies, they're all oxidative stress. And so what happens is the cancer cells don't like oxygen, they like uh an anaerobic environment. And so when you flood your body with oxygen, by whatever means it rejuvenates the healthy cells, feeds the mitochondria, does all the good things for providing good energy, and it attacks the cancer cells with oxygen of stress. So, in addition, I only really did the hyperbaric a couple of times due to cost. I I don't have one, and I didn't it was just too costly for me to use. But I use um I make ozonated glycerin um and I and I consume that. I do um food grade peroxide, I inhale that with a nebulizer. Oh um, I do sauna sweat lodge therapy. I mean, I do a lot of sweat lodge therapy, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah. That's funny you said that. Like you actually just told my whole story inside your story.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a great story, and to hear it as applied to different applications is powerful. And you know, our listeners are looking for uh not only answers of you know things that they've heard about, you know, it's always great to hear the one guy tell a story, right? But yeah, when another guy comes in and tells the same story with a different application, and you and I never met before today. So the fact that we're bringing our story from a different background, a different uh approach, a different target, and still finding these results. I think that's the kind of thing that really brings some power to the conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I found a hypergratic action by accident. Nice, yeah. Uh Joe Namath, he put some videos out, and uh in his in his videos, he said it reversed his CTE symptoms. Yeah, and I was so shocked, I'm like, you mean all these doctors who told me who were ignoring me? You know, nothing's wrong with me. Right. And so I didn't first of all, I didn't think it was gonna work. You know, everything else I tried and researched. That was the first thing. I didn't think it was gonna work. So, but when I tried it, I was in that stupid chamber for one stinking hour. Wow. And when I got out, so my glasses were slightly tinted because I'm really sensitive to lights, sounds, and smells now.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So when I came out of that chamber, I put my glasses on a few times and uh I took them off and then put them back on. And the salesman was the salesman asked me, he said, What's wrong? I said, I don't know. I don't think I've been seeing colors lately, but now everything's so bright. I didn't know I wasn't seeing colors. I said, Right, I don't think I need my glasses. He said, Oh, you're one of those. And I was like, Oh, he's gonna try to sell me. Here we go. Yeah, but no, he was right. Some people get that immediate relief. Some people need like 60 sessions and within like 30 days. Right, right, right. And so, but no, man, it cleared me. Wow. But I'll be honest, when I got home that night, everything was still good. When I laid down, I fell asleep on the couch at about uh seven o'clock at night. I mean, it was about seven. Okay, and I woke up at nine o'clock with a migraine. Oh, it was one, I was, and I thought I started thinking, oh my god, I did damage. Right. I did take double. Yeah, exactly. All right, before I say the next part, is your uh podcast PG13 or no?
SPEAKER_01:You're good. It's a podcast where we're uh we can go. I mean, I try not to get crazy, but we'll throw an F bomb out once in a while if we have to.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, just the symptoms. Like, for example, when I woke up with that migraine, I had to unthinkable, I had an erection with it. Okay, fair enough. And those are two things that don't go together. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't ever put those two things together. Yeah, nobody says, Let's go make love. I got a migraine, you know. Like using your hiding in the dark somewhere, like you don't want the browns you're touching you, or you don't want to smell anybody's just like you know, yeah, yeah, exactly. So when in that moment when it happened, I was thinking like, I was like, man, I did damage. But I said, wait, these two things are working at the same time, right? Maybe something good is happening.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta figure when when that's working right, that means your body has got energy to put to that. Yeah, and that means things are good, uh you know, generally now. But migraine, on the other hand, can be an indicator of all sorts of things, it can be a hormone imbalance.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I had them things since my first crash. Yeah, my grands have been with me since my my first woke-up crash. Wow. And uh yeah, they just never know when they're gonna show up, though. Like they just don't. They're just like peekaboo, and when they get to, you know, it's you don't sit down and just you know, try to hide. But on this particular day when when that kicked in, that was I woke up, it was I think it was about midnight or so. I went and climbed into bed. I woke up in the morning. That that concussion, I mean, I'm sorry, the that migraine was subsided, it was subsiding, going down. Okay, but the erection was still there. Oh, right. Yeah, that was like 11 hours, man. I was like, whoa, that's that's crazy. My cloudiness was gone for six days after that. Wow, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I said, okay, was this just a you know, maybe I just wanted this to work because then nothing else like this is a you doubted it to begin with, so it's not like a placebo effect where you're like, Yeah, I know this is gonna happen. You were like, I don't know if it's gonna happen or not.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so they allowed me to come back the following week. Uh I went toward the end of the week, it was starting to wear off. I could start feeling that little sensations I had. And then this time I came out of that one-hour chamber, yeah, it was clear for nine days. Like the cloudiness was gone. Uh man, it was just like I was just looking at this world, like it felt like everything was so vivid. Wow. And uh, for the first time in a in years, I realized I hadn't seen the beauty in anything in a long time.
SPEAKER_01:You know what's wild is I know people that have overcome addictions and opiate addictions will do a similar thing where over time, like you don't realize it, but you're not seeing colors anymore. And it doesn't happen immediately, just sort of another layer, another layer, a little faded, faded. And then when they get off of it, all of a sudden, like similar to like what you're saying, it's like, whoa, everything's all vibrant again. I I didn't realize I didn't see this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you know, and like for me, like the for me, like my first bobsnake crash was in 2002. Okay, it was about a month. We were racing a World Cup in Switzerland right before the uh 2002 Salt Lake City games, Olympic games came out. Like I had a really bad crash. Um, like I had vertical for like a week. Uh oh, vertigo is brutal. Oh my, I still get it. It shows up with the migraines, you never know which one's gonna show up. But yeah, but right now, it's as soon as if I use that chamber enough, like uh it's rare now. It's not all the time, but okay, it's like before I had just every day was miserable.
SPEAKER_01:But but you're talking about like when you're what you're talking about, like now, even any reduction in symptoms is unheard of with these injuries, you know, football injuries, all these, you know, any any sports injuries where your head gets repeatedly wrecked, there's nothing, they don't have anything they can do for it. No, and they'll they'll tell you that, you know, and so for you even finding you know some temporary relief would be miraculous, but you're talking about maintaining this.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I was a little jealous, I'll be honest, because um Joe Nangles had reversed his symptoms, he didn't have any more left. Yeah, yeah. I started doing research, and a lot of people saying that, yeah. And so for me, one time it got to the point the doctors don't say it. No, because you know what, that's part of the problem. Because um, um put this way I race for nine years. Okay. So think about between one and six trips down that track every day. It's like four or five days a week. Uh-huh. Sometime it was two, but sometimes it was six. You just never, you know. Right. Um, and I did that four or five months of the year for nine years. Okay. So that's literally a hundred. So every time we went down that track, now that I understand what the sport is, you get rattled around like crazy. Yeah, you're getting the micro concussions on. Right. If you don't crash, you're getting the micro concussions.
SPEAKER_01:Just like riding a dirt bike all the time over whipped deducers getting beat together.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So that damage was being done, and I'm I'm probably the best case scenario. I feel like if I had hundreds and hundreds of those micro concussions, and I had seven bobs that like just crashes, like you know, roll it. And uh, if I can come back, man, everybody has a good shot at that.
SPEAKER_01:I couldn't agree more. That's fantastic. So you did you ended up uh purchasing a hyperbaric chamber?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, I did. I have one in the back. That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01:I I I I was close about several years ago. Um, I was doing pretty well, and I was looking at setting up kind of I have a uh garden therapy center here. We have a uh nonprofit called Gardens of Hope. And I've got a two and a half acre botanical garden, and we do what we call therapeutic horticulture. So people come out here and whatever the modality of healing is, they come and do it in the nature. And yeah, the goal was to, in addition to the sauna, the sweat lodge, and all the other things we're doing, um have a hyperbaric chamber. And I got this close to buying one one time, and then things went sideways on me, and I never did it. But we're gonna have to fix that. We're gonna have to fix that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's still it's still in my in my target. Once I get to the other side of this, which I'm close to, um, I'm gonna get back to re-rebuilding that whole healing center again.
SPEAKER_00:Well, for me, like uh when I bought, um, like I was so afraid of the technology that I made sure I bought from a place that had a storefront. Okay. Because I was so afraid, like you do the homework on it. Like, first of all, do the homework on CTE. It's brutal. Like those guys are murdering people or killing themselves, like kids. And they all say the same thing. They were so such nice, sweet, gentle beings until they weren't. Yeah. Or they weren't acting in their they weren't acting the same. They were acting out of characters with XL. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:There's story after story. Yeah. It's not just from sports injuries, it's from any any traumatic head injury.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And that's what I found on my journey. Like, there was, like, I met a young lady, uh, well, she was probably in her 40s, and uh, she was about to go to the doctor, she was telling me about all these symptoms she had. I was like, wow, I said, Were you an athlete? Because you line up with what my teammates and myself were going through. She's like, No, I'm no sports. I said, and I asked her, I said, Well, this is a little personal, but did you uh I know you're divorced, like it did your husband ever hit you, or she's like, no. And then she's like, I never hit my head. And then and then eventually she said, Except one time I went snowboarding, I fell backwards with my son, and I was and my arms locked up like this. Aha. The reason why your doctors can't figure out what this is is probably is probably from folks' concussion. You didn't get it treated because back then they didn't treat any of us. Right. You know, my first World Cup crash was brutal. Like my my my buddy was knocked unconscious. Wow. He was my roommate, and so we went back, they sent us back to the hotel. I hit vertigo, and he has, you know, he's unconscious. Right. They told us to go back and make sure you watch each other so you don't go to sleep. Which one was supposed to watch who, you know. Right, right, exactly. I couldn't sit up without the room spinning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I tell people on that day, it's it's another funny story. Um, uh, you know who Prince Albert of Monaco is? Sure. Okay, he's the right draft bobsleds from Monaco. Okay. So right after my crash, he was standing there. He was with uh the old tennis, older tennis player, what was uh Anna Konakova. Okay, and uh race bar driver Michael Schumacher was there. All right, so I crashed, I'm sitting with the paramedics. Only time I've ever had paramedics helped me. Okay, and uh Prince Albert walks by and he winks at me, right? So I'm cloudy, I'm not thinking straight. And I and I live in LA, so I have a ton of gay friends. I even have a gay cousin. I actually just passed a few weeks ago, but you know, I'm always around gay people, it's not a big deal. Yeah, yeah. But so when he winked at me, I'm not thinking clearly. So I'm thinking, oh my god, Prince Albert's in love with me. And like I stopped isolating with him. I said, I better not isolate with him anymore. I don't want to leave them on or anything like that. Right, right. But and it took me like it's only been about a year that I realized thinking, thinking back, like that guy wasn't in love with me. I just crashed. I was trying, he just winked at me because in Europe they wink, they don't, you know. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's a whole different thing. Yeah. But when that brain is not thinking straight, it's like, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's wild, but what a what an experience. That's that's that's completely uh you got a wealth of experience there. That's unbelievable. So now you've got this hyperbaric chamber. I mean, you you went from you went you went hang on hang on one second. Sorry about that. Anyway, um you've got all these experiences of of injury and then and symptoms, and and you're you're starting to understand, you know, this is this is a thing, you know, what when when did it go from you're going through these traumas and experiencing these symptoms to whoa, I've got a thing, like I gotta deal with this.
SPEAKER_00:Well, um, I will say around 2012 I started 2012, maybe a little bit before 2012 I started seeing doctors. Okay. But I thought it was diabetes because I had this thing where I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. Wow. Um, I never drank coffee before, and I never drank Coca-Cola, I didn't drink soda. Okay, so I began to live off of that. So every night, yeah, every night before bed, I would put it on my nightstand. If I didn't have it there in the morning, I'm I'm not getting out of that bed until probably three o'clock the next day.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. Now, as an athlete, you probably had a pretty good diet, and we're living healthy as anything before that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that that's what it didn't make sense to me that we'll be disease. But I've seen people with low blood sugar before, and uh it looked just like it. That's the one thing about the head injuries. What I've learned, like um, a lot of times there's so so many misdiagnoses I've I've been watching.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh what it really is, is the head injuries that they never treated. It's the only injury you can ever have where they say, don't do anything.
SPEAKER_01:You know, your body can generate any symptom, you know, your brain is the control center, so it's telling everything what to do. Yeah. And so it can stimulate any kind of reaction that it sees fit. I don't know why it would do it, but when it things are misfiring, you know, it's an obvious, um, it's an obvious thing that could happen. You know, you can get hives, you can get uh uh go hypoglycemic, you hell, you could get a stroke. You I mean it with your buttons drink and boom. I mean, it's the control center. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, what no, I guess the biggest thing that catalysts that really kicked this off uh for me, when I started to understand more, uh, one of my teammates, uh, when I moved, when I left TSA, I moved uh back to uh Los Angeles. Before that, I was doing like football movies like Jerry Maguire, Any Given Sunday kind of stuff. Okay, but they put a I was a fast guy, so they put this uniform on me and I make Cuba look like he's a real football stuff like that. But it was just me running real fast, that's what it was. And American people bought it and he got an Oscar behind it. Nice so well, yeah, that's what I was doing, and um, but like, oh my gosh, I just glitched. Like, I had that thing where I'm talking in and I forgot we what your question was. And I just and uh yeah, I'm sorry, Kate. Do you remember what your question was?
SPEAKER_01:No, I was just saying, where did you when did you go from I've got all these symptoms to I've got all these symptoms? Oh, I remember same stuff every day. It's all right. My chemo brain does the same thing to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Between the two of us, we'll keep this thing rolling. Yeah, and so what it wants. So I was doing I was doing Hollywood before I was with Team USA. So when I finished, I moved to LA, I wanted to become a writer, write more. So I was doing that, and one of my teammates called me. He he wanted to be a writer, so he gave me, he would give me these ideas and I would tell him how to tweak it and make a good movie out of it, right? Uh-huh. And uh, I'm just now connecting these dots recently. So, what I thought was creative writing wasn't his mind was slipping. Oh. So the very last time he called me, he was speaking some gibberish or some weird language. I don't know what he was speaking. Wow. And uh, I couldn't, of course, I couldn't understand it. And um like eventually he got so frustrated, he hung up the phone. Wow. Now, my background is when I joined Team USA, I had just written the first ever independent living transitional housing program for youth. Okay. So it was new, and so the state opened me as a pilot program. I was a pilot, and so mental health was my background. My first job after college, my first job was uh I worked at this place, uh San Joaquin County Mental Health. It's the first mental health facility west of the Mississippi River. So everybody flocked there for the mental health issues. So I saw it from depression to schizophrenic, bipolar. We had the Kremlin insane come through from evaluation sometime, and even those people who were still floating around who had been lobotomized were still so I saw it all. So mental health is my background. Okay. So when he called me speaking that gibberish, I knew he needed help. And I was like, Yeah, yeah. I gotta help you, I gotta help him, I gotta help him. Every day I said that to myself, and then eventually uh I get a phone call, and uh probably went to his family's factory and he hung himself. Oh no, yeah, man, I I felt so responsible and guilty, and um, you know, and like I felt like I didn't do anything that I should have done. Uh and then, but when his autopsy came out, like he was in stage four CTE. Oh wow. Yeah, and when I was told he had the worst brain that anybody's ever seen, worst, so no football player brain could compare is what I was told. And uh so I really I finally kind of started to forgive myself because I knew that's nothing I could have done to put a help for him. Yeah, yeah. But the big thing was during that time when I was calling myself helping him, I needed help. Right. My bed was literally in my living room on the floor, wow mattress, and uh I was uh put it there because it was the middle distance between the bathroom and the kitchen. Okay. That's how I had to live for a while. And I don't know what I did all day. Like a TV wasn't on, radio wasn't on. I don't know what I did in the house all day. Like there's some there's some black spots in there somewhere.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, I bet.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and uh so when his autopsy came out, I kind of started connecting them dots. There's a few other things that happened. Okay, and I was able to like, oh my god, now this thing has a name. And as I start checking it with my older teammates, it's all the same crap, man.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. It's probably prevalent in, you know. You don't, you know, it's so funny when you when at first when I saw your bio and I see bobsledding, like I never equated bobsledding with injury. Like, you know, I you watch it on TV and they're going down this thing, it looks pretty cool, and but I've never done it. And you know, it's just like skiing or um or or snowboarding, you're bouncing and slapping around all the time. And uh, but but in the bobsled, it's even more because you're inside of a vehicle that's just racking back and forth, and it's it's uh it's crazy. Or you're laying on a on a sled, I guess. It's not really a vehicle, it's more of a glass of milk. Of a trajector of a of a uh of a I don't know, uh a projectile.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that that happens sometime, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right off the track. Yeah. Wow, wow, that's wild, wild. So I know I'm getting a little light on time, but I can stretch this a little longer. This is a great conversation. I don't want to nip it. Um, but I also want to get to a place where you've you've gone, you've gotten your diagnosis, you now realize that you've got a problem that needs to be solved. So let's take us from this point. Now you're you're in this place, you're you got your bed between the bathroom and the kitchen, you're you're realizing that more and more people have this problem. You realize you've got this problem. What's that next move?
SPEAKER_00:Honestly, I was praying for death. Wow. Because I was a counselor, I saw the devastation that that did to other families, and I couldn't take my own life. So I was I was bargaining with God every night. Please. Not another day. Not an you don't know, no, please, not another day. Wow. Uh yeah, I did that until I couldn't anymore. He wasn't listening. Yeah, he wasn't listening to me, man. Like that's not a good one. Yeah, and uh what happened with the the biggest kick was um my girlfriend, uh, she lived, she we had a place in LA. Okay, and I had just bought a uh a place in the Midwest in St. Louis, uh a lake house, a little small lake house. And uh and I bought that place because I was getting lost in my own neighborhood in in California, and I was I was afraid for myself. I knew it was a matter of time before the switch goes all the way off. Right. And I hadn't found hyperbreak oxygenia at the time. And so my girlfriend, she's a they have a loving family, like she's on the phone with her mom, and they're from New York, and they talk loud. Oh, yeah. And that noise was killing me. It was killing me. So I told her we might have to break up. Um I'm going back to the Lake House, I need a little peace, but we we need to think about what we're doing. So I was there, I found an article, came out called Fledhead, written by the New York Times, uh, Matthew Ferderman. He wrote that article, and it really diagnosed all my teammates of what all they went through, all the symptoms. But I literally read that article and I got on my knees and I thank God all the symptoms missed me. Wow. Sent that article to my girlfriend, she circled some stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And the first thing I saw was noise sensitivity. Right, right. And I went, oh, it was the very reason I was over there in the first place. Right. And I went down that list and I said, Oh my God. I checked everything except Parkinson's. Wow. Then this thing really had a name. And then I that's when I started trying to, you know, I found a class action to get medical and to get everybody some help. Uh, but also the number one reason was is they want to keep doing business as usual. But I'm like, you have to want a new generation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's the one thing I've told the judge is non-negotiable. Yeah. I'll fold on anything else, I'll weaken. But I'm not folding on that one.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. No, that's huge. I mean, you know, so many times we're driven by information we receive, but people aren't critical of that information and they're not really vetting the sources. And when the source of information is somebody that wants you to do the thing, well, they're likely to highlight the good stuff and and ignore some of the bad. And it's important, you know. I part of me is like, well, you know, buyer beware, but at the same point, you got children, you got youngsters going into high school, college that are that are, you know, building a dream based on something that they believe is true, and they don't have any idea about the inherent danger of it. And and and maybe there's maybe there are some answers to as far as preventative goes, with you know, safety equipment or better built tracks or sleds, or I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I don't have the answer, but they'd have to change the whole sport, change, take the turns out. It's those turns. Because, like, there's another part of that puzzle, like uh, there's only one other source of getting the same G forces that we pull, it's the fighter products who do the F-15s, right? Which doing this and they're doing the bank turns. Yeah, but they're not doing it as often as you guys are. Yeah, and supposedly we're pulling only five G's and they're pulling like nine or fifteen or somewhere in there. Yeah. Uh so one time they came out, we took them on the VIP ride. Okay. I did six rides that day. I took them down once, and when they got to the end, they were rattled. Wow. It made sense to me. Yeah. However, an article just came out uh by the once again New York Times last December. They have the exact same symptoms and issues as the Bob's letters.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:So, but if you go for look for that article right now, all the links, not of Work anymore. They scrubbed it. However, if you ever want to see it, I got I got a link that works directly. Yeah, yeah. Oh no, I'm interested in this, yeah, for sure. Yeah, so they have the same symptoms. And uh, matter of fact, they did an episode of us on us on HBO Real Sports when we first filed the case. And but if you go look for that episode, it's also been scrubbed. You can find every episode archived, but you won't find that one. Well they're doing a really good job of really trying to uh I don't know who it is. I I don't want to slander anybody.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh but they're doing a good job of trying to sweep this under the carpet. But it's it's not just the Americans, it's the Canadians, uh or some of the Jamaicans that spawn on in Europe. Uh, it was an Australian guy just jacked from an aneurysm. So every time I get a migraine, like that's the one thing out is on my heart out there, oh, it's not an aneurysm because it's such it's so extreme, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. And uh yeah. So what happened with the lawsuit?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I have receipts for everything that I tell you. Okay. My lawyers have teamed up with the lawyers from the Olympic team. Oh no. There is an offer on the table. I've been fighting since January. I'm the lead plaintiff, so I'm supposedly the only person who can accept or reject the offer, right? Okay. So they presented the offer. They will only evaluate athletes only. No treatment, no money to find your own treatment. Wow. That's what's on the table. My lawyers thought it was a good idea to send it through to the judge against my approval. I showed up and I've been representing the class myself personally. So now it's literally the last three quarterings, it's me versus this high-powered law firm and my lawyers. Wow. And so that's what I'm up against right now. Wow. Yeah, and I I matter of fact, uh, they're trying to make me think that I'm crazy. They said that this case was always only about medical monitoring. Wow. The last quartering, I produced the email they sent me. It said medical monitoring and care for life. I said there's no care at all in this thing that they're presenting. Yeah. So so far, I've wanted I asked for in the last three quarters, I prevailed so far. They haven't been able to close this case on us. Okay. But the truth is I need lawyers to take over. All right. We had Robert, Robert Shapiro. I got another one for you before we go. Robert Shapiro, I spoke to him, right? No way. Dream Team. Dream Team lawyer. Wow. And so I shared information with him. He said, I'll do an investigation. I'll see if I can help you. We made a few call phone calls to him. We emailed back and forth. He sends me an email. He says, Will, I fired your lead lawyer. I kept the counsel because I know them. And we're gonna get you guys the help you need. And I'm thinking, yes, finally. Um, 24 hours later, he sends me another email. Will, can't help you? What? Unless the judge sides with you and does not accept this offer. But he was moonwalking so quick, somebody got to him.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know who you got some heavy-handed somebody in the background there, man. That's where well, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I've been warned. I've been, trust me, my life has played out like the movie concussion that's happened. But they messed up. I was dying when I filed this case, so I didn't care. Like, right, what are you gonna do to me? Kill me quicker? Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:We we we got a lot in common. I fought a battle with the government, I don't have time to get into it either, but it was over medical cannabis and and you know, me providing medicine for people, and I stood my ground just like you, and I prevailed in the end, but you know, they it was a different thing because they they were going after me instead of me going after them. But yeah, uh, you know, it you you when you when you feel righteous about something and you know you can make a difference, you do what you gotta do. I I I wish I had a lawyer I could hand you, I'd I'd I'd uh send them off, but I'll put it in my mind, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah. Let's sort of fast forward to you've discovered this hyperbaric oxygen is uh is a miracle. And now you've decided you want to set up a uh a nonprofit, you want to make this available. Obviously, if you prevail in this court case, that's gonna open up all kinds of resources. But until that time, you're you're still moving forward.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the thing with the lawsuit, I I never asked for money for myself, so I won't get anything more than anyone else will get. Like that's you know right. So, like when I first filed a case, I told my lawyers the same thing. I said, take care of my guys and warn the new generation. Because I really thought I'd be dead the next. I I thought I had less than a year left. I didn't think I'd be here at the end of this case. Wow. So any money that comes, it'll be the I'll get the same everybody else. There might be a lead plaintiff fee or something like that, but I didn't request anything for myself because I I I was dying, man.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right. You're just trying to make a difference.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and so when um it's kind of like you get to that point where um like the threats and stuff was coming. Like the uh people were telling me this these people watching you, they don't want this information coming out. Wow. I got the emails that just showed me, like he said this is quotation, like this is not safe material in quotations. Wow. And uh, but you know, I I accept the challenge. I'm like, you know, yeah, yeah. I was like, they well, they well, they're gonna take me out. Like, guess what? I'm ready to go anyway. Like, I can't keep living like this. But once that chamber showed up, it was night and day. Wow, yeah. Night and day.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that I I this is layers, you know. We we we should probably have a second conversation and and go deeper into some of this stuff. I I don't feel like we're gonna be able to get everything I want to get through in one episode. And you know how people just don't have a attention span for the show. But I definitely want to sort of fast forward to your nonprofit and the work that you're wanting to do. And I most definitely want to have you come back on and do a second session here because we're we're really I had no idea there was so many layers to this, and uh I I I I'm I'm riveted. I I want to I want to hear more and and I want to help. So that's that's the idea.
SPEAKER_00:I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Um like with a nonprofit, I just want to offer to people the same thing that I received for free. I know I know the the loophole, like for example, once I once I did it, it was free. Now I needed this chamber and I couldn't afford it. As you hit it on earlier in your life, you said they were too expensive. Yeah. And so I I don't want to charge for this this service because people won't be able to afford it. It's too expensive, right? Right. You know, so I just want to offer it for free. So when my crowdfunding is set up only to get the uh equipment, I'm gonna relocate back to the Midwest. Okay. But over there, I can for what I can buy a building for, right? That'll be just be like 10 months of rent in LA. Oh, I get it. I I get it 100%. This is something I want to be around one of my days when I leave this earth. I want it to still be up and running. So nice, nice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, I love it. And uh, you know, I I I've been running a nonprofit. Well, I ran one for about 15 years, and I've got about three years into this other one, and I'm learning, learning about fundraising and grants and all sorts of different partnerships and things. So yeah, um, I I there are a lot of tools that are at your fingertips, but it's just like everything else. There's a whole layers of of of playbook to learn and and get it figured out. But you've got you've got exposure, you've got a background that gets people's attention more than mine. And I'll bet you you'll be able to partner up with a company or or uh some different groups that'll help make this thing happen quicker.
SPEAKER_00:As long as I can offer for free. That's the number one. Yeah, that's the be free. Yeah. Like I I put out a um, I know you got to go, but I put out a video. We had those mass shooting in uh New York.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:I put out a video that day, and I said, guys, this is the population is dangerous. We know about them, but there's another population that we have to help us, which is our soldiers. They come back with the same condition and they're now the best killers in the world. And if we don't address that, we know I said that on the courthouse steps after after I made the video. Yeah, and the next week was the military mass shooting in Minnesota, I believe. No, Idaho, then there was another one. Yeah, yeah. I in my video, I said there's gonna be a wave of them coming. Right. Starting the following week. Like, yeah, yeah. I probably gotta have anything with it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, my nonprofit, I offer all my services for free to veterans, and that's it's the same sort of idea. Yeah, it's it's yeah, these guys have put themselves in a place that's got them all messed up and nobody really seems to help. So I'm just like, well, you can come out to the garden and just hang out for a while, or you can, you know, receive anything that we offer free of charge. And that's just one of the things I love that.
SPEAKER_00:That's the same thing I want to do, man. We we align very close.
SPEAKER_01:I love it, I love it. Well, listen, uh William, I I most definitely want to schedule another session because there's so many more questions I have. Yeah. Um, but if you could wrap up your thoughts today into one message for the listeners, what would that be?
SPEAKER_00:Guys, check my story. I was in dementia. Everybody got a parent or grandparent who's gonna go through that. It brought me back two years ago. Look, look me up. Go to my I got a uh TikTok channel, one man with a chamber. There's days when I, if I go 30 days without treatment, I go backwards. I can barely talk. Um I can't remember anything. I I'm struggling, and and it brought me out of it. So that this thing is gonna help a lot of people. It's not just head injuries, but also there's so many untreated head injuries, what I want to say. And so this this place is so important, guys. Um, please just make a donation and share it, share the cause.
SPEAKER_01:Aside from your uh TikTok channel, any other links you want to share? And that's the one that I really have show notes too, so we can put the links up for you.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the TikTok one is my most important one because like I teach people how to live with this, and really, even with my like all because I was a counselor, I was able to kind of put things in place as I was going. Like you, a person who has CTE is not gonna benefit from what I say, it's gonna be the loved ones around them, just like I told you. Right. I was diagnosed by a piece of paper, and I said, no, thank you. It didn't approve of me. We can't see it on ourselves. We only your loved ones are gonna see it on you. Right, right. The loved ones that's who's important in this in this mission is the people around them. I love it. And we can't survive without them. Like I wouldn't have made it, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, William, like I said, we got so much more to talk about. I'm looking forward to scheduling another episode with you. I want to really thank you for coming aboard and sharing your story. I know that you're gonna be reaching a lot of people, and frankly, I want to help. So um, you know, let's uh let's call this the beginning of something that's gonna make a difference.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I appreciate that. Appreciate that. I'll come back anytime. Let me know when.
SPEAKER_01:I love it. Yeah, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine. I want to thank all of our listeners and supporters that make the show possible, and we will see you next time.
