DOD297: The Dead Speak! Somehow, Tom Returned

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Tom: The show I used to be on. I'm Tom Perry. I'm joined as well, not so much joined as is replaced by, stand, stood in for. I'm not here. I'm on the beaches of Tahiti, cashing checks like a motherfucker and watching these bitches do the work Here's Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hey!

0:00:50 Eli: You, Tom! Tom recorded that from, I believe, a hospital, but yes.

0:00:50 Thomas: Ah, so nice, hospital bed, yes, he did,

0:00:57 Eli: We are very, very grateful that he did that. Tom is still in the hospital.

0:00:57 Thomas: Oh good times, yeah. It was his last dying breath that, by the way, yeah.

0:01:03 Eli: It was his last dying breath was to do that bit. To call us bitches, just like we always wanted. Last request always, he always wanted it to be on

0:01:08 Thomas: It a C-plus, just like you, you wouldn't want to go out on a C-plus, B-minus, you know oh dead. Okay.

0:01:18 Eli: Good old, fine. Um, but yeah, Tom is still uh According to Thomas, I want to say this because I, I, I want to be very clear, I don't think Thomas is lying. I think Thomas misremembered that Tom said he wanted us to tell what's going on with him. Um, We're going to talk about what's going on with him today, right?

0:01:38 Thomas: What? Yeah, but we also, uh, we got some, some messages from Tom himself, so. So I really talked about on the show. Eli's just made jokes. Tom is in the hospital and not one of the good ones. Not one of good stays, like when you're in the Hospital. Yeah, not not not in the hotel where you're like, oh, that's great. You know, it's going to be fantastic. It's a it's a rough one. It's going on. I had asked Tom actually, by now it's been, I guess, a week or whatever or more. I asked him if he wanted to drop a note for the listeners, you know, drop a voice memo. I suggested also he could do the intro for us. So that was that. I appreciate it, Tom. Thanks, because Eli's just so bad at it. So, you Know, I had even Tom From the hospital bed, you know, it's just, it's really, really much better now. So, we're going to hear Tom from beyond the grave, you know, from, he had

0:01:54 Eli: In the good hospital he's in a shitty hospital he is in jail, yeah. It's true I am his final

0:02:30 Thomas: Some updates for us and it's Even better because I think I, I think he sent another one when he was heavily drugged.

0:02:30 Eli: Words his last missive, nice.

0:02:40 Thomas: So Tom's this all down for this. We're want to have a Tom update. We want to talk about I also want to talk about like, you yeah, I mean, my knee hurts lately, you know, and I just want to like kind of gripe about that. No, no, this is This has been, well, this news was actually pretty scary for me. It, this is a scary one, and a lot of stuff I've been thinking about, you, somebody really close to you is like going through something like this. And so I thought we could, you, play Tom's messages, we could roast him, we could have fun, and then we could talk a little bit about, you, if Eli, if you're having any, any, any thoughts about Tom at all. And if not, I'll just talk and you can roast.

0:02:39 Eli: What's going on, what's with us, yeah. I have a slight kind of, sure, shoulder thing going to yeah.

0:03:18 Eli: Yeah, and I'll just roast and then we'll, that's why we're not, see the fucking business as usual. But wait, but wait, Thomas, before we listen to Tom's moving voicemail confessional, uh, the truth behind it all. Do you know the only thing worse than Tom's current medical predicament? Why?

0:03:20 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The show must continue.

0:03:35 Thomas: Nothing.

0:03:36 Eli: It's the auto ads, my friend, it's the auto adds, and you can get rid of those from your podcasting experience over at patreon.com/dearolddads, where for as little as a dollar you'll get an extra commercial-free, not an extra one, I mean, you do get a bonus episode, but you get a commercial-free store parenting with it, you get it, you know what I'm talking about.

0:03:55 Eli: Tom, come back, fuck, I suck at this, do this also. Get off of your hotel, stop screaming and do this thing. Patreon, if you want to see all that, check it out over at patreon.com/dearolddads, rip into it all.

0:03:54 Thomas: Tom, can you do the time? Can you also do this part of Eli's job?

0:04:10 Thomas: We've got a patron goal to, uh, save Tom's life, so if we don't hit it, you know, this is what it is. But, uh, we hit that patron goal, we might save Tom. Boy.

0:04:26 Thomas: So we've, is the first one, just see how good. I don't know how many drugs he was on in this one, but this is the first one I got for him. And yeah.

0:04:32 Eli: Fine. Now how many drugs he

0:04:33 Thomas: Yeah. OK, here's Tom.

0:04:35 Tom: Everybody, this is my "What I Did Over My Summer Vacation" voice essay. So obviously I've not been on the podcast, I don't know when I'll be back on the podcast, but I want to give everybody kind of a heads up and let you know what's been going on over here. So this last week, I thought I had a little flare-up in my back. I've had back problems down the lumbar spine before. I had surgery on it in 2019. I thought it was just having a flare up, but it turned out not to be so much of a flare-up. I woke up, tried to make my way to the bathroom, made my way instead to the ground, and needed to get an ambulance, and then very excitingly, once I was in the ER, they took some pictures, as they'll want to do, some MRIs, and everybody was kind of bored, you know, another day at the ER. No big deal. Take some pictures. Throw some pain meds in this old fucker. Let's move him on. Treat him and street him, but as soon as they took the pictures, everybody got real animated and excited, and long

0:05:34 Tom: Story short, I've got a problem in my lumbar spine that hurts, and the pain is what's been keeping me in the hospital right now. Just, I gotta get under control until I have surgery on it. That surgery is some basic bitch Ugg boots, pumpkin spice latte kind of stuff, not a big deal. I'll be just fine from it. The surgeon can do it, it's not anything that exciting but

0:05:34 Thomas: That's never good.

0:05:50 Thomas: Famous last words. Jesus. He was not fine, everybody.

0:05:57 Eli: Was not fine, by the way, everybody. Yeah, there's

0:05:59 Tom: We also discovered that I have a tumor in my thoracic spine, and that got everybody real excited. I had a friend of mine who's a doctor in the ER, and, uh, and he saw my pictures on the MRI, and he started calling his friends that are neurosurgeons and waking them up in the middle of the night. And I guess this is going to go to something called the tumor board, which is where they all get together and look at tumors, I guess, until they're bored. They're going to figure out in the next couple of days exactly what their status is and what I've got and what I'm dealing with.

Some of the prognosis is just fine. Some of it is less fine. I don't know which one I'm going to end up with until, well, I'm recording this on Monday, so I won't know what I'm gonna end up until, you know, I guess I'll get more information Tuesday afternoon. I still don't exactly know everything, but I'm in good spirits. I'm doing fine. I'm okay, but they're managing it for me. I can't sit, stand, or walk, but as long as I don't do those things, I feel great, and I'll return to the show just

0:06:27 Eli: Definitely some drugs involved at this point, all

0:06:28 Thomas: Yeah, he didn't.

0:07:00 Eli: Right.

0:07:00 Tom: As soon as I can. I hope to be home. Um, today's Monday, I'm hoping to be home sometime around Thursday, and my first surgery is on Wednesday, and I'm very much hoping I never have to have another surgery again, I hope this tumor in my spine can just fucking sit there, and do nothing, and I can just outwork it, that's my plan, anyway, uh, my love to all of you guys, uh thank you to Thomas and Eli for holding the fort down, and uh, when I know more, I'll tell you guys more, I've got a lot of crazy stories that I can't wait to share with you guys from this experience, it's been fucking wild,

0:07:32 Thomas: Tom. Poor, sweet Tom.

0:07:34 Eli: Was a week ago, as of this recording. Um, have you listened to the second one? Okay.

0:07:35 Thomas: Yeah, that was a week ago. Haven't listened to the second one. The second one, I think, might just be drugs. That is the one where I am not. He does not remember doing it.

0:07:43 Eli: It might just be drugs. Okay.

0:07:45 Thomas: And it is short, so it might just be whatever, but then he sent a longer one today with, with more updates, but three, but one's, one's a short one. Um,

0:07:46 Eli: So there's three, all let's hear drugs, then let's let three come through, and then we can update folks on what drugged Tom doesn't fill them in on. Yeah.

0:08:02 Thomas: It's really something to hear that eternal optimism in, uh, Tom's voice, you know. That was like getting a voicemail from building one being like, "I don't think anything else is gonna happen today day, but we should be, we should be good, you know. Gosh.

0:08:11 Eli: Fucking plane hit the fucking other building. Fuck those guys yeah It's fine, it's all the way over there on the other side of the street.

0:08:20 Thomas: Poor Tom. Okay, you're right, we should let him in his words update, but here's one that may just be drugs, we'll see. I didn't even ask for this one, by the way, I

0:08:27 Tom: So a lot of people ask me, when are you coming back to work, you lazy fucker? When are you getting back in front of the microphone, you son of a bitch? And the answer right now is, hopefully very soon. So I just had, yesterday, I just had surgery on my low back that went in. They did a little roto -ruder action around the foraminal space that was all scarred up and screwed up and herniated and had bone poking in it and everything. Thing, so they fixed all that stuff, uh, hopefully over the next few weeks I'll start to feel a lot better. I woke up, I feel better than I did going in. I still have a good amount of pain with things like standing and walking, a lot less pain just all the time than I had before, so I'll take it.

I'll do what I can get for right now, and then uh I've got this tumor with my thoracic spine. I think I mentioned in my last recording, we don't know what it is yet, but we're gonna figure it out. It's not an emergency to figure it out. I've got some weeks, so I've gotta get some new surgeons and new people lined up that can take a look at it. The folks over here said we weren't 100% sure what it was, so they want more pictures and more time to wait and look at, so we're just gonna try to figure out what the hell that is. I'll come back to being in front of the microphone just as soon as I can, as soon as I'm comfortable really sitting

0:09:15 Eli: His heart monitor in the background everybody yeah

0:09:51 Tom: Fixed position for an hour, hour and a half, and I'm back on mic, and I've got some funny stories from this hospital stay. It's been a trip. Alright.

0:10:00 Thomas: He might have forgotten he sent the first one and then did this again. No.

0:10:03 Eli: Can I also say we haven't gotten any of these funny stories. We have gotten just sort of a parade of horribles. So I'm every time he mentions that he's mentioned it twice now. I'm like, where's my fucking fun? Where are my little jolly little outlets?

0:10:08 Thomas: He's saving him

0:10:19 Eli: So that's, that's something that you guys have gotten that we haven't. Oh,

0:10:19 Thomas: But I mean, I kind of want to actually pause here, if you don't mind, because, like, know you heard Tom say like he's he's got a tumor in his spine, and uh that's never fun to hear about, and it's been scary. And so just that message was on Thursday, as you just heard, and he had the surgery to try to fix the unbelievable pain part of his back on Wednesday. Um, he thought in the first voicemail you heard he thought he was gonna have news on the tumor on Tuesday, but as you heard, like, they just can't decide what it is or something.

And so I just, man, I imagine what Tom's going through and Tom's family, where it's like, you you know, there's a tumor but no one can tell you for sure what it it is or what it's going to do or what it's gonna take, and just feel so bad for him, like you with that uncertainty. And Tom is handling this in his Tom way that he always does, where he's still like he's till you he's still in good spirits, and think I would uh you would you would have cashed out, right, Eli? You

0:11:21 Eli: Yeah, I might have cashed out from being tertiary to this situation. I Sometimes think about just cashing in my chips, just being near this situation's a little too sad. Yeah, 100%. It's also worth pointing out, and like this is something I don't know if we'll get to talk about it with Tom because he'll probably be dead, but if he's assuming He's not, um, thing that has struck me about Tom in these moments is just like he is constantly solution-minded, right? There's never been a moment, even when he's been in a tremendous amount of pain, and it's weird that he's not mentioned it to you because we knew the pain was happening during all of these voicemails.

0:11:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:11:53 Eli: And for you, podcast listener, he's like, we're going to get it fixed. We're goingto get it. He sounds like a contractor you would hire again, except he's talking about his failing spinal cord, right.

0:11:58 Thomas: Get her dead. Yeah God.

0:12:05 Eli: He's like, no, no. I understand that these supports aren't quite working the way we said they would. But don't worry. We're going to lay some cement on my spine. It's going to be great.

0:12:12 Thomas: So true. Tom strikes me now. Pain tolerances are different for people, obviously, and it's all, like, it's all relative, you know, like, I don't know how much pain someone else is feeling or what it feels like to them, and you can never really know, but one thing's for sure, like, Tom obviously has a pretty high pain tolerance because he's Tom and he's living, uh just gestures broadly at the Tom, and he's, this lower back thing is so bad that it's, you know, it's, it's challenging even the likes of Tom to a degree that's like, man, that luck demon, that luck daemon, holy shit, that, Eli, you thought that you had it, but, uh, turns out it lay dormant in order to plot its revenge

0:12:30 Eli: Yeah. Well, I think he jumped over to me for a week because it's the candy baby situation. Right? There's a candy, you don't give the baby the candy. It doesn't cry when you take it away. I think it worked on me for for couple of wrecked cars and then went right back to Tommy. It was like this guy bitches right away.

0:12:52 Thomas: Oh Then just today, uh, he sent us a nice long update. We may fast forward through it because, like, you know, it's fucking Tom, who cares, but can I put this on 2x speed? No, he sent us a big update. I haven't heard this. I'm, I'm excited to hear the news. Well, I shouldn't say that. Cut that, edit that. I am eager to hear the news, uh, but knowing, and knowing his luck demon, I wonder if the luck demon could leave us a voice message of, like, what's gonna, you know, like, what his plans are, what's going to happen. Are

0:13:18 Eli: Because we're bored.

0:13:39 Eli: Let's find out.

0:13:40 Tom: So I want to give everybody an update. This is actually kind of funny because I had to go back and re-listen to the voicemails that I made for this before because I literally can't remember anything, and then Thomas asked me, hey, would you be willing to record a little update, a little something of, I was more than happy to do so on my shitty recording basically, um, said, yeah, sure, I'll record something, went back and listened because I couldn't remember anything, and then by the time I listened to that and then got another notification on my phone, I literally forgot that I was supposed to do this because the goddamn drugs they have me on, uh, have turned me into a goldfish.

Every time I swim around the little plastic castle, I see it again for the first time. So, recorded that last update, I think immediately, I think the day after surgery, um, I was a little more optimistic in my, uh, than I probably should have been, so I'm going to be a little bit more honest. I came out of that surgery, I hurt like hell, um, didn't hurt as bad, um, it hurt bent, um, could lay down in bed without, uh, unacceptable amount of pain, I could sit up reclined in bed without an unacceptable amount of pain, and those are really my two options, um, and PT exercises of walking, you know, 50 yards down the hallway, up three stairs, in and out of a fake car, um

0:14:58 Thomas: They have a fake car. It was

0:15:00 Tom: It hurt, it hurt pretty bad. Funny because, you know, here it's like, well, if you can do it, but sort of like, I have to remind myself, maybe, you know, inform other people that there's There's a big difference between what I can do if I grit my teeth and what is probably wise or safe to do. So can and should, I think, are concepts that I'm getting used to as being different things right now. And that's hard. That's a tough pill for me to swallow. I came home from surgery, not doing great, hurting pretty bad, asleep. Woke up the next day and was in just, I mean, it was a nine out of ten pain. I, I had a very, very tough time, you know, I was shaking, my teeth were shattering, I couldn't really form the proper thought Oh, I was crying.

0:15:45 Thomas: 11 out of 10, everybody What Does he think 10 is what Does

0:15:46 Eli: Yeah. Dead.

0:15:53 Tom: I was a wreck. I was an absolute wreck. I thought I could gut it out. I was told to expect pain and that this would be a non-linear process, that this is a revision, that the nerve that has been, uh, released in this is going to have some time where it's inflamed or it's aggravated, but I, I couldn't get any position that was acceptable. Everything laying down in bed was too much, sitting unacceptable, reclining unacceptable, the standing, I could get one or two steps with a walker before it was just, I mean, unbelievably excruciating. So about 2:30, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I called it and was like, I've got to go back to the hospital, and Finnegan was kind enough to drive me.

And even that was a whole thing. I had to use walker to get to the stairs, which from my bedroom to the stairs is 10 feet. It's 10 feet, those are really hard, 10 feet, and it's six steps down to the landing, which I had them position a chair on the landing because I had a stop and take a break on the branding before I could get down the next six steps, and he put a chair at the bottom, those next six steps, and then I had to make it out from the stairs out to his car, um, I focused on that car and those steps, which was probably 35, 40 feet, like it was like it wasn't distance at the end of an ultra marathon and I just needed to get those last few steps in.

When I tell you that I was hurting, I don't mean that it hurt a little, um, I mean, like, I was struggling to think about how I get this next step in and not, like, scream in front of my family, so it was really bad, it was so bad, laughing about it, but no part of it was funny at all. So they brought me into the emergency room, and I'm very grateful, because I am lucky enough to know a lot of people, just to kind of take that for granted, I think, a little bit.

So, they got me back very quickly into a room, um, God, I can't even tell you, I was so afraid that I was going to be sitting in that goddamn emergency room for hours, but, and I couldn't sit, I was in a wheelchair and sitting was just unreal, um, started to shake and cry a little bit in the emergency room because I was scared, uh, that I was going to have to sit for, like, hours and I didn't know how I was gonna to make my body sit, um, just, I, it's a pain that I would hesitate to describe to you, um

0:15:53 Thomas: She actually think 10th So

0:15:53 Eli: Explode. Yeah.

0:18:16 Thomas: Seven, I'm

0:18:17 Tom: I moved back very quickly and put me in a bed, which was a much better position for me to be in, and then I'm in the emergency room and the door opens up and in walks a friend, someone that I know, I've known this woman for seven or eight years, and she's a nurse, and I forgot she worked, and I saw her and I burst into tears when I saw her, because I'll tell you, when you are, I don't speak for anybody else, for me, when I was hurting like that, um, it, it kind of strips away all the veneer, that you're just as vulnerable as you can be and there's nothing between you and whatever your emotions are.

Sometimes those emotions are just incredible gratitude and love for the people that are just taking care of you, the people, Thomas and Eli, who've stepped in without a second thought, yeah It's still there right at the top, and without a certain thought, a word to just fill in for you and to just make sure that financially you're cared for, which matters so much, and It's just, it's there's no hesitation to it, so sometimes it's this incredible love and gratitude and And, you know, and it's just right there at the surface, and there's nothing between you and it. And then sometimes it is this incredible fear that, like, this is it now. This is just what you have now. You're just, you're just fucked. And I hope to God I'm not just fucked, um, am afraid that I'm just fucked. I don't think I am.

I just kind of refuse to believe that I am, this is not acceptable. So they admitted me very, very quickly. They put me on a lot of, uh, painkillers, much stronger painkiller than I've ever been on, um, pretty much let me have whatever I want whenever I press the oh shit button. Um, I pressed, I tried to be safe about it, and they always keep you safe about it. I'm scared of opiates, so, but I wasn't, uh, I wasn't hesitating with that button when it, it was necessary. And I had a really tough, tough, tough 24 hours. They gave me a bunch of steroids. The steroids seem, excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna let that out, fuck it, a

0:20:37 Eli: Rude.

0:20:38 Tom: Little bit of hiccups, knock on wood, from my wife The steroids seemed to have helped a lot. So I just had a meeting with my surgeon a few minutes ago, and hopefully the problem was just that I went home too early. The nerve, uh, is freed up. Like, you can see it on the MRI, the nerve is freed up. Uh, there doesn't appear to be anything touching that nerve, but that nerve is just incredibly inflamed. Uh, there's just an enormous amount of inflammation from it being so smashed, um, for a handful of days. But it's a revision surgery, so it was a damaged nerve to start with.

Um, I had problems with it years ago and four years, so, you know, we said that that's because it's responding to the steroids. I'm, I'm probably having a, a strong inflammation reaction. That's my best case scenario. Worst case scenario is gotta go back in and fix it. Uh, know what that fix would look like. Relatively minor, could be significantly less minor. Um, the more you go in and fuck with stuff, the less desirable sometimes the outcomes are, like fusion at L5S1, which is where I have a problem, is no small surgery with some consequences I'd like to avoid.

But if they came in right now and said that's the solution to the problem, lay on my belly and let them do it with a kitchen knife. I don't care. I just need to get this done. So as I record this, I think that it's Monday. Yeah, it's a Monday. 10, 15 in the morning.

And I'm achy for sure, but the pain's acceptable, and I was supposed to expect a non-linear recovery. Right now I can stand up for about between a minute and two minutes. I time everything. I track everything. I

0:20:40 Thomas: Tired of working with this unprofessional Of course.

0:20:42 Eli: I

0:22:31 Thomas: He does, yeah.

0:22:31 Tom: Have Claude actually helping me with a tracker, so I track and time everything so I can stay for about a minute or two minutes anything after that, and the pain gets too severe and I have to sit down. The pain, though, now is starting to go away more swiftly after I sit than it was yesterday. Again, I'm hoping that it's hysteria. I'm hope he's right. I'm hopin' it's an inflammation that we can get under control and that progress will return and I'll be back to my normal self in a month or two. That's what I'm supposed to expect. In about six weeks, if this isn't significantly better, we'll have to do something else.

So that's, that's the marker, this needs to get significantly better in six weeks. So I'm a little scared right now because I don't have a life like this. I can sit in some pain, I can't do anything else. So I can't stand or walk or be of use and value to anybody, their lives. I can't function around my household. I can't drive a car. I can't run an errand. I can't do dishes. I canN'T help with laundry. I can't do anything, and that's very hard to think about. Just got to get better, just got to be better. And then, uh, I've got a tumor. I know I mentioned this before, and I think I just kind of elided over it. Um, I don't know much about it. So I have a tumor inside my spinal cord in my thoracic spine, and it's about the size of a roll of dimes. It's not tiny.

0:22:37 Eli: Hope people are really shitty about the AI for this. Wow.

0:22:39 Thomas: Tommy really shouldn't be an actual

0:24:13 Tom: Nobody is certain yet what, what it is. So everybody got together, they got real excited when they saw it on the MRI. It got everybody's attention. Um, quick, real, real quick, and not small. Um, and we're not sure what it, so it could be nothing but bullshit. It could be one of those old dog lumps that has been there for a long time, and it's just gross, and it's a weird thing about my body that's not causing any problems. That's the best case scenario.

Worst case scenarios could be cancer. There are other worst case scenarios that are bad too. There's really only two good case scenarios. It could be something that I'm going to mispronounce like an appendomoma, appendiooma, pendipendima, I don't know, something like that. And that if it doesn't grow, then we can ignore it. I love that option. There is a possibility also that it's not a tumor at all that some kind of illusion or a demyelinating process. There's some good scenarios there, some less good scenarios there. Then there are multiple other tumor types that are bad and would be bad. And those are all frightening prospects because I'm trying to understand that if we operate on the spinal cord, because the tumor is inside the spinal cord, that there will be, um, deficits, legs

0:25:04 Thomas: Roll of dimes. Oh

0:25:34 Tom: And below the waist, and I don't know what that means either, so can't think too much about that. Um, Hayley has been wonderful in finding, uh, the absolute best, best of the best. Um, so we're gonna get, uh, I'm not letting Joe Local Guy touch my fucking spinal cord. So if anybody touches my spinal cord, it's gonna be the GOAT of spinal cords, and Hayley has been Johnny on the spot and has found that person, and we're gonna work as soon as I get home to get an appointment that person, because I sure like some answers there, good or bad.

I need to know what it is. This voicemail ended up being 15 minutes long. I was hoping for five minutes, so I'm sorry, it's, it's way over long. Um, sincere love and affection for Thomas and Eli. I love you guys. I'm so grateful to you both. I have a lot of really funny stories, I promise, but I want to share them with you guys and we can all laugh at me a little bit together. And thank you to all of the listeners, of course, all of you guys. Daily, I'm grateful for you. Daily. Never far from my thoughts.

0:26:24 Eli: Yeah, so you say.

0:26:26 Thomas: Boy.

0:26:37 Thomas: Yeah, that's, uh, holy shit, a roll of dimes. That seems too big for a tumor. How?

0:26:44 Eli: Yeah, I think maybe one or two dimes would be acceptable. Acceptable, like, I would say he was just being a whiner, but a roll of dimes seems excessive. It seems very Tom. Can I say, like, I've got to have the biggest tumor. Yeah.

0:26:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:56 Thomas: Overachieving. Yeah, exactly. They'll have them up on the record board, like, biggest tumor kind of thing. Oh. It sure makes you to be grateful about a lot of things. I mean, I do any of that for your therapy and stuff? I know they sold that to me as like one of the better evidence based, you for depression.

0:27:01 Eli: Yeah. So

0:27:14 Thomas: It's just like that.

0:27:14 Eli: I've I have at various times kept a gratitude journal, um, lot of really, really good science on, uh, gratitude journals, but you need a you need need a guided one. So really funny thing is, like, journaling is really terrible for ruminative mental illness. Um, and so you kind of need, like, a journal buddy, because if you try to keep a gratitude journal and you just raw dog it, you'll often write a rumination journal, which is awful for OCD and depression. So, uh, I don't have OCD, but I have depression. And every time I've kept a journal, it has made my depression worse. Have I not read? I feel like I've read some of my journal on air. I have it. I have my first journal.

0:27:18 Thomas: A good idea.

0:27:40 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:27:58 Thomas: Gosh, I don't

0:27:59 Eli: I'm trying to talk into the mic at the same time, but I have the journal from when I was eight years old in my home. It's And so funny because I'm so funny

0:27:59 Thomas: Think so. Oh, wow. Funny, funny, or funny like this Tom situation. Situation, yeah.

0:28:11 Eli: Like the Tom situation. Yeah, it's a real it's a hoot and a holler, let me tell you.

0:28:13 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. But it really makes you, you know, like, um, thinking about that, it's like there's so many things to be grateful for, and it's like every, every time something like this happens, I'm just reminded, like, man, I'm such a fucking miserable asshole, like, just be, can't, can't we all, like, shouldn't we all just be so happy all the time that we're not, not Tom.

0:28:36 Eli: We're not Tom.

0:28:39 Thomas: Shouldn't we be? I mean, that's true normally, but like, especially now. No. Yeah. It's just like, why how, is that? Why is it so hard for humans to like do that? You know, it's like so easy. It's something I've definitely been working on. I'm really conscious of it because I'm so sad that, you know, my kids are growing up so much that every day I'm just like gosh, try to just feel, you feel like how happy this is, feel how fun this is.

But it's, it's, it's so tough. You know, it's, it're definitely things like this really, really remind you of that, though. Like, probably a lot more in your life, you know, listener, that you could be grateful for. There's more in my life I could be thankful for, because you never fucking know when one day, like, Tom was just going about his Tom life, which, I mean, OK, bad example. It's Tom. But like, imagine another person just going about their normal life, like, then all of a sudden you're in the hospital for one thing, and they find another thing, and it's like overnight you, your whole life could be upside down and, and, um, I

0:29:24 Eli: Yeah, right.

0:29:34 Thomas: It's been really, it's been really interesting, and it's been really sad, it's been really scary, and, uh, I'm just really glad that, um, sent those so that the listeners could hear. It's kind of weird to, like, not be talking about what Tom was going through, especially because, I mean, we don't, we don't have, have any idea when he could be back, you, I thought it would be a good idea to actually kind of just get it all out there, because what are we going to just keep, pretending he's being late while he is being lazy.

Let's, let's admit he's been lazy sack shit, but is that going to be our excuse for like months? You know, how long can we keep this up? That's what's going on with Tom and we will give you any more news as soon as we can. The meantime, we're We're going to, you know, we're going to find guests. We're gonna do Lydia Sodes. We're to do, you Thomas and Eli Sodes probably. We'll find ways and maybe Tom will get lucky and he'll be back home soon.

You never know. It does seem like the nerve, you know. They're saying it has that path and it has the room, like maybe it's just the swelling and maybe it is something that'll go down. But holy moly, that sounds just awful. But

0:30:46 Eli: Well, we are so grateful for all of you. Many of you have sent really lovely words to Tom via the email or the Patreon page or over on the Cogdiss email. I know know that Tom can read the Patreon comments. Don't know if he does, but obviously whenever there's a nice thing, we'll make sure that he sees that and send along your love. And we are wishing him well. We are checking in on him often. Am keeping him amused by saying just truly the worst, most offensive things one could say to a person at a time like this. So don't you worry. Don't you worry that he only has people treating him well I am also in his life And he hasn't blocked me So don't you worried about that We'll keep you all in the loop And hopefully you'll hear from Tom Again very soon Before we go do you call it when the drummer is upset That the rest of the band is playing too slow A tempo tantrum you

0:31:55 Thomas: Oh

0:32:00 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email thedads at dearolddads .com or better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle and the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues, LLC, copyright 2022, all rights reserved.

0:32:40 Eli: Don't know if we'll get to talk about it with Tom because he'll probably be dead but