My Story: Steve Smelski

Steve Smelski: 00:00:03

My name is Steve Smelski welcome today to hope through grief.

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Thank you for joining us today.

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We're going to go into Jordan's and mine and my wife.

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Shelley's story a little bit and talk about some of the background.

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In the meantime, I'd like to introduce you to cohost Marshall Adler.

Marshall Adler: 00:00:23

Thank you so much, Steve.

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I'm glad that, uh, we are going to get an opportunity today to have you tell

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us about your journey with the loss of Jordan and your wonderful wife Shelley.

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So what I'd like to do is if you could please tell us about Jordan, I think

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that'd be the best place to start.

Steve Smelski: 00:00:47

Okay.

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Jordan is Shelly's and mine only child.

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He passed away when he was 11 and a half.

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He had graduated fifth grade was getting ready to go into middle school.

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After some of vacation, Jordan was a 100%, 100 mile an hour boy from

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the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep, he was all go.

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He was all in on everything he did.

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Jordan liked to go first.

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He always liked to win.

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He was actually very talented, uh, artistically, he, his paintings

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and colorings were very vivid.

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Uh, he was actually a very good writer.

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We didn't realize how good until we went back and read some of the things

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that he had written, uh, after his passing, he was pretty good in school.

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I think he got the good grades for us, for him.

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He could take it or leave it.

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But, um, he knew that made us proud of him.

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So he tried really hard on the grade side.

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Sports-wise he was, he was pretty athletic.

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He played soccer for seven or eight years.

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He played baseball for a couple of years.

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Um, he also played some flag football.

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Um, Besides being a hundred miles an hour, an all boy, Jordan really

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wasn't scared of much outside of maybe spiders and snakes and alligators.

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He, um, he was the catcher on the baseball team because he was the

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only one in the team that wasn't afraid to get hit by the ball.

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On the soccer team, he was the goalie because he would lay right out.

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He'd take one off his head to keep it from going in the goal.

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He just, he had no fear, which as a parent, it scared us many, many times.

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He loved to swim.

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He learned to swim before he was two.

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Uh, he started taking swimming lessons about a year and a half.

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And within six months he was off on his own with no floaters in the pool.

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We were a little concerned with all the drownings in Florida and want

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to make sure he knew how to swim.

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He loved swimming.

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We, uh, we lived on a lake and we wanted to make sure that he

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was able to swim if he needed to.

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But we also asked him not to go in to the water.

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He loved his friends.

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He loved playing games with them.

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He'd laugh and talk with them all the time.

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He was always trying to tell a joke to make you laugh.

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Uh, sometimes he'd say it too many times and we'd have to say,

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okay, Jordan, that is not funny.

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You're going to forget a different joke, but he, um, He loved

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going on vacations with us.

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He loved hanging out with us.

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We went and he was actually very well-traveled.

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We, uh, call ourselves the three Amigos.

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And when we took off and we traveled to a different country and, um, he

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was very passionate about his video games and playing with his friends

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and spending time with his cousins.

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And he, uh, he always had a good time and you'd hear the kids laughing.

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And Jordan was in the middle of, because he's trying to make everybody

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laugh, but, um, he was all boy and he was all ours and, um, he could be a

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challenge, but, um, Shelly and I were both in sales and Jordan would try to

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sell you on all his ideas and wishes.

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His fifth grade teacher, Ms.

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Charlton told Jordan he should go into sales because he'd be a good one.

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He'd always have an angle on something he'd always try and talk

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you into doing something his way.

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But, um, actually we really miss him.

Marshall Adler: 00:04:48

What happened on your vacation in June, 2014?

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That was the summer after he graduated fifth

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grade from Wilson elementary.

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And we were trying to determine where to go.

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We usually took one very nice vacation over the summer when he was off from

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school and we had a couple of things fall through and we asked him if he wanted

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to go back to Costa Rica, because we had been there in 2011 when he was eight.

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And he said, yes, he loved, uh, riding the horses.

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He loved holding the Toucans.

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So he was all in.

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So we scheduled a vacation, ended up staying at the same resorts

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that we did the first time.

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And didn't really give it a thought.

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We weren't really concerned.

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First time we checked into everything, we were really concerned.

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First time we'd ever been there and we had such a great trip

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and the people were so friendly.

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We weren't really concerned when we left and went down in 2014, we ended up staying

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now where there nine days, eight nights, and we stayed at two different resorts.

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We did a lot of different things.

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We did a lot of hiking.

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We did horseback riding, but we only swam one day.

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And Jordan and I spent the afternoon in the pool for six or seven

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hours going down a water slide.

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And the resort was near a volcano and it had hot spring water

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and probably half of the pools.

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Well, the pool with a water slide was filled the hot spring water.

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So it was like 96 degrees.

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And he, I spent the whole afternoon, he, he wore me out and five or six other

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people, he just kept going down the slide, but you couldn't go down the slide

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without having all the water splash up in your face and go up your nose.

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And he and I had a great day.

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In fact, as a father and son, I might've been one of the

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best days we ever had together.

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It was just he and I in the pool for the whole afternoon.

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And, um, I think we got there at noon and we left the little

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bit after six, went back, took a shower and met Shelly at the room.

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And we, we went out to dinner at their five star restaurant there at the resort.

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And, um, he ended up having a headache the next day, but we left

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that resort one in the San Jose.

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It didn't feel as good the next day.

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And we flew back on Friday.

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So we swam on Tuesday and flew back to Orlando on Friday.

Marshall Adler: 00:07:21

What happened after you got back to Orlando?

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We flew into Orlando.

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I think we, we spent three hours in customs because there was a thunder and

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lightening storm right after we landed and they couldn't unload the luggage.

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So we waited an awful long time and he kept complaining about a headache.

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Uh, hadn't gone away since we swam.

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And I thought maybe he twisted his neck or pinched a nerve in

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his back from going down the slide with all the stunts he was doing.

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We ended up picking up, take out.

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Um, he woke up the next morning.

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He seemed a little better.

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He ended up playing his games all morning.

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He asked us if he could have his best friend Jaden over to play games with them.

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And we said, ah, you're not feeling that good.

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We just got back.

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We'd been out of the country.

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It's a good day to rest up.

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You'll have a chance to play with him all summer long.

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So.

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He, um, play it up until about noon and by one o'clock he was laying

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on his bed and complaining that his, his neck was getting stiff.

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He still had a headache and you just didn't feel good.

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As soon as he said, he didn't want to play games.

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We knew something was up because if he had a chance to play,

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he'd just sit there and play.

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We ended up having dinner that night, watched a movie, Shelley put him to bed.

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And about 1130 Saturday night, he, he started vomiting and

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he was up all night long.

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And Shelly woke me up part way through the night I got up and saved

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rather than the rest of the morning.

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And she goes, I'm concerned.

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He's you just getting sick?

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And he can't stop.

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And we said, if he's like that in the morning, we'll take them

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to the emergency room, especially since we've been out of country.

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So she came in to check in the morning and he was still vomiting.

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He'd been up like every 20 or 30 minutes.

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And, uh, neither one of us got much sleep.

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We got ready and took him to the emergency room.

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Um, talk to the doctor.

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We told him we'd been out of country.

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And, uh, he asked, you know, where you around farms are around animals.

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And we said, yeah, we've been around all of that.

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We'd gone horseback riding.

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We'd also gone swimming at the pool and he'd had the

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headache after we were swimming.

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So they said, well, the stiff neck leads us to think that it's probably meningitis.

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So we'd like to do a CT scan.

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And the only way we'll know for sure is do a lumbar puncture and check

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the CSF fluid from the spinal column.

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So gave him the okay to do both.

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Both of them came back good to CSF fluid was clear.

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His CT scan came back fine.

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There was no issues.

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And, um, they said, we're going to transfer him down to the

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children's hospital and we'll go ahead and admit him down there.

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So they transferred him via ambulance and put them in a regular room.

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He had a tough night.

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He doesn't feel that good, uh, the next day, other than not being able to keep

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anything down, they had him on medication.

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So he wasn't, wasn't getting sick anymore, but they wouldn't let

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him have any fluids or any food.

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He really wanted to have a drink, of a Coke.

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And they were like, no, you can't drink anything.

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But he and I, how we, I laid on his bed.

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And we talked about the vacation, different things that we're going

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to do for the summer, maybe where the next vacation was going to be.

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And it seemed like he was going to be just fine when they checked him in, they

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said it's viral meningitis and you'll take them home in three to five days.

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And by the next day it was like, yeah.

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Okay.

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This is awesome.

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We'll be here for a couple of days and we'll go home.

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Well, Monday night he started hallucinating and Shelly and I laid on

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his bed on top of him because after the first half hour, he was seeing things

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on the ceiling, seeing things on the bed, and then his body started shaking.

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He couldn't keep his arms or his legs still.

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And they had a couple of IVs and.

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And so we ended up laying on top of him for three to three and a half hours.

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Cause we couldn't get the nurse to bring a doctor in and his pupil's dilated.

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It was just like you go to the eye doctor and have a test, huge pupils.

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and he was looking really weird and he was saying things that didn't make sense.

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And then as the three and a half hours went on, he said less and less.

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And at the end he was just shaking uncontrollably on the

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bed with us on top of him.

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And he didn't know who we were he didn't recognize us.

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He didn't know where he was.

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So they finally brought the ICU team in and just as they came in the door, he

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had a seizure and he rolled over on his side and they wheeled him down to ICU.

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They got him stable and they said, okay, we've got them stable.

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He's going to be okay.

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It's going to be two to three weeks.

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And then the next night it got even worse.

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They were worried about the swelling in the cranium.

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And they were worried the brain who pushed down on the brainstem,

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which would kill Jordan.

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So we gave him approval to have a neurosurgeon drill, a little hole

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in the top of his skull for a drain.

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And in that CSF sample, they saw the movement of the amoeba

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and they reached out to the CDC.

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They had a special drug that they've been using in the last few cases.

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And they put it on a flight to Orlando.

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Jordan didn't make it until the drug got there.

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He passed away at 6:35, Wednesday morning, seven and a half days after we swim.

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And, um, I think the flight from the CDC from Atlanta arrived about

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eight and he passed away at 6:35 AM.

Marshall Adler: 00:13:36

How did you deal with your grief, seeing your son.

Marshall Adler: 00:13:42

Go through this.

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Like, I I'll just interject that when Matt passed away, he was 3000

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miles away and we got a call from the medical examiner, which was something

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I'll never forget, which was its own horrible way to learn about the passing.

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But you were there watching this happen.

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I mean, how did you deal with your grief after this?

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The morning, he passed away.

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They had told us to try and get some sleep.

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Cause we'd been up straight for pretty much three days and they woke us up early.

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I think we've got an hour, hour and a half sleep.

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And they said, look, we can't keep his vitals high enough to

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save him until the drug gets here.

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We need you to make a decision whether you want us to manually

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resuscitate him until the drug routes.

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And we hadn't had much sleep and they're asking us to make that decision.

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And so Shelly called her a couple of her family members.

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I call my parents, my mom was a nurse and labor and delivery.

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And, um, she said, Steven, we, we can't tell you what to do with that decision.

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You guys have to make that.

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And Shelly got the same answer.

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So we asked the doctor, if it was your son, would you do it?

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And he said, no.

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During the process of the last 24 hours, Jordan's left lung had

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collapsed because of the intubation that it was, uh, as an adult.

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Intubate Bayshore machine.

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And it was too much pressure and it collapsed his left lung.

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So we knew we were going to have some lung issues and pneumonia issues

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and the thought of them pressing on his chest until the drug got here.

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We just, we said, no.

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So we called our family members and said, you need to come right away.

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And within 30 minutes we had eight of our family members and friends there.

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And.

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I was on Jordan's left side right side with his right hand show is on his left.

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And she asked everybody in the room.

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Does anybody disagree with the decision we're making to let them go?

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If, if you disagree, please say so right now.

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And nobody said a word.

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So they took him off of the respirator and we waited maybe two minutes and he

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stopped breathing and I checked his heart and he was gone and we held his hands

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for a few minutes and gave him a hug and we let everybody else have a turn.

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And, uh, within 20 minutes we were ready to go out of the room.

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We didn't want to be there.

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So we went next door, got our things and we left by the time the doctor

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came back, I guess we looked around and you guys were already gone.

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We're like, we just couldn't stay there.

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So we went home, we had a bunch of people at the house.

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And even though your mind saw it, your heart won't let it be true.

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We, um, we were in shock for the funeral service actually were probably

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about 10 days, but we did a second service in New York and we would just

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come out of shock and it was awful.

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We, we thought we'd made a mistake flying up.

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We didn't want to be around people.

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We didn't want to go out of the house.

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We didn't, um, we didn't want to do much at all.

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We just couldn't believe he was gone.

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And it just, it just seems so surreal that we had just been through that week after

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the best vacation we'd ever had together.

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And it happens so quick.

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You don't really have time to let it sink in.

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We didn't know he wasn't gonna make it until they woke us

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up in the morning he died.

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Cause we were still thinking the drug was going to save him.

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The CEO of our company called us that night in ICU and offered up his plane

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to fly in any drug or any doctor that we needed and reached out to

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Stanford University to get a doctor from there and touch with our doctor.

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And as it turned out, nothing would have changed the outcome, the, um,

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the initial diagnosis, um, based on what Jordan died from is fatal.

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They don't have time to go back and make a change until things don't make sense.

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It's too late.

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There's no way to save the patient.

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So we had family stay with us for a couple of weeks.

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And then all of a sudden, you wake up one day and they're gone and you're in the

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house and it's so quiet without Jordan.

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And you're thinking that I can't stay here.

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This is horrible.

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And yet you don't want to go outside.

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You don't want people to talk to you.

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You don't want them to run into you.

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We had a lot of phone calls and a lot of text messages.

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Sometimes it was four or five days before it could call him back.

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It was, I guess we were in denial for a while because it seemed

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like the first four or five months that we were at the house.

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Every time the front doorbell rang, we thought it was Jordan and

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we'd run to the door and then you go, that's not going to happen.

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He's gone.

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So we, um, decided that we need to get some help.

Steve Smelski: 00:19:37

And we went to see a counselor for almost four months.

Steve Smelski: 00:19:44

And we didn't feel like we were getting any better.

Steve Smelski: 00:19:47

We ended up meeting one of the pastors from one of the nearby churches and he

Steve Smelski: 00:19:52

told us about a grief program, his church.

Steve Smelski: 00:19:54

And we signed up because we knew were in trouble and we weren't right away.

Steve Smelski: 00:19:59

We came in, in the middle of the program and from the videos

Steve Smelski: 00:20:05

and stuff, it seemed to help.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:06

So we signed back up when they started up after the first of the year.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:11

And we were still struggling.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:14

I mean, every day was a struggle and it seemed like for the first two weeks,

Steve Smelski: 00:20:19

Shelly and I were on the same page when she was having a bad time, I knew it.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:24

I would go to her and same with, I was having a bad moment.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:27

She come after the first two weeks, it was completely different.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:31

We had no idea that men and women grieve differently.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:35

We had no idea that everybody has a different journey of grief.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:39

And at first we're like, okay, what's wrong with us?

Steve Smelski: 00:20:42

Why are, why aren't we feeling the same thing?

Steve Smelski: 00:20:46

So we started through the program and we, um, made some progress.

Steve Smelski: 00:20:51

So we signed up for a third time and it felt better and better, but we

Steve Smelski: 00:20:58

still had a hard time accepting it.

Steve Smelski: 00:21:00

So we went to sign up for a fourth time and they said, well, You can sign

Steve Smelski: 00:21:05

up, but you're going to have to help.

Steve Smelski: 00:21:06

So I guess they thought we were better and we were like, we can't help anybody.

Steve Smelski: 00:21:12

And they're like, we think he can.

Marshall Adler: 00:21:15

What made you decide to help others?

Marshall Adler: 00:21:20

Because I will tell you that you were so instrumental in helping us through

Marshall Adler: 00:21:27

our grief process and I mentioned before to this many times to many

Marshall Adler: 00:21:33

people publicly that you have been a shining example for me and Debbie, how

Marshall Adler: 00:21:41

to survive the loss of a child and how to lead a productive, meaningful life.

Marshall Adler: 00:21:51

So I'm really interested in the thought process that you came through

Marshall Adler: 00:21:57

to make you decide that you wanted to help others after this tragedy?

Steve Smelski: 00:22:05

I think by signing up to go through the grief program

Steve Smelski: 00:22:09

early, no, it was two and a half to three months after Jordan's passing.

Steve Smelski: 00:22:16

I think that was a help because we realized for the first time, since he was

Steve Smelski: 00:22:21

gone, that maybe there was hope for us.

Steve Smelski: 00:22:26

We could see maybe a light down the road, somewhere that

Steve Smelski: 00:22:30

we could pull things together.

Steve Smelski: 00:22:35

Your brain is mush and it is so difficult to concentrate on anything.

Steve Smelski: 00:22:41

Our attention span was two minutes.

Steve Smelski: 00:22:44

I wish I had a dollar for every time I lost my car keys.

Steve Smelski: 00:22:49

It was that bad.

Steve Smelski: 00:22:50

I mean, sometimes I'd find the car keys in the freezer.

Steve Smelski: 00:22:54

I'd find them in the garage on top of a garbage can, just crazy thing.

Steve Smelski: 00:23:00

And I think once you start to feel a little bit better, it's like, you're

Steve Smelski: 00:23:05

you gravitate to it because anything is better than where you were at.

Steve Smelski: 00:23:12

And you're not even 5% of what you used to be and any chance that you

Steve Smelski: 00:23:20

might get back to what you were before, that's very attractive.

Steve Smelski: 00:23:24

So you gravitate towards it.

Steve Smelski: 00:23:28

Right after Jordan died, my sister-in-law was here and she found a couple family

Steve Smelski: 00:23:37

sites on the web for amoeba awareness.

Steve Smelski: 00:23:43

Jordan died from Naegleria Fowleri, which the press calls the brain

Steve Smelski: 00:23:47

eating amoeba, which is pretty much exactly what it does when Jordan died.

Steve Smelski: 00:23:54

It was 99% fatal, which means if your kid gets it, they're going to die.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:00

There's pretty much, no chances only been a handful of survivors.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:07

And about two months into our grief.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:09

Before we started the program, we realized that we didn't want

Steve Smelski: 00:24:13

anybody else to go through this.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:15

And we thought all these families have these websites, but we'd

Steve Smelski: 00:24:19

never heard of it before.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:20

We'd never seen the websites before.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:24

And it's like, maybe we could do it.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:27

We had no idea how to start a, not for profit and.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:34

Some of our closest friends and family members helped us pull it off and we

Steve Smelski: 00:24:39

set it up and we asked the, I think we had four of our closest friends

Steve Smelski: 00:24:44

that we thought could be influential on the board to be board members.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:47

And they said, yeah, she, when we started, it took us four or five months to meet

Steve Smelski: 00:24:52

with the different hospital systems.

Steve Smelski: 00:24:54

We basically did a David Letterman top 10 list.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:00

And we said, this is what happened to Jordan.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:02

We think every one of these assets has to change.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:06

And if we don't change it, the next patient's going to die too.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:10

We found out Jordan wasn't the first case.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:13

He was the fourth.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:14

Okay.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:15

So if you do nothing, outcome's going to be the same.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:18

Well, we met with Dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:20

Rajan Wadhawan and he was fairly new as the chief medical officer

Steve Smelski: 00:25:26

and he agreed to meet with us and we made a few requests and suggestions

Steve Smelski: 00:25:32

and he worked with us and, um, we started out wanting to do awareness.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:41

And at the same time, we're going through this grief program to teach

Steve Smelski: 00:25:45

us about our loss and our grief and the different steps in the stages, the

Steve Smelski: 00:25:50

different things that you're going to feel it, we couldn't understand as we

Steve Smelski: 00:25:56

started through our grief process, why.

Steve Smelski: 00:25:59

Some of the things we were feeling, we felt like we got over him and then

Steve Smelski: 00:26:03

two or three weeks later, they came back and they're actually stronger the

Steve Smelski: 00:26:07

second time until they start explaining that it's like being at the ocean and

Steve Smelski: 00:26:12

a set of waves coming in, the waves can knock you over, but it's not constant.

Steve Smelski: 00:26:17

You can get back up, get back on your feet and wait for the next one to hit

Steve Smelski: 00:26:21

you until they explained it that way.

Steve Smelski: 00:26:24

We thought we were going crazy because.

Steve Smelski: 00:26:27

It was like, man, I just got through that and now I'm going back through it.

Steve Smelski: 00:26:30

I don't understand what's wrong with me.

Steve Smelski: 00:26:34

Anger would come up and it kept coming back and coming back, came

Steve Smelski: 00:26:38

back like four or five times for me.

Steve Smelski: 00:26:39

I was angry about what had happened with Jordan.

Steve Smelski: 00:26:43

So we're going through the program, learning and feeling like we're, I'll

Steve Smelski: 00:26:51

say crawling for, because you don't run.

Steve Smelski: 00:26:55

You certainly don't even walk many times you fall down at the same time,

Steve Smelski: 00:27:01

we're working with our friends to come up with the idea of not having

Steve Smelski: 00:27:05

any other families go through it.

Steve Smelski: 00:27:08

And, um, after the second time through the grief program, we came up with

Steve Smelski: 00:27:12

the idea of changing how healthcare deals with what Jordan died from.

Steve Smelski: 00:27:21

And so he approached Dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:27:22

Wadhawan we worked with the health departments in

Steve Smelski: 00:27:25

Orange and Seminole counties.

Steve Smelski: 00:27:29

We reached out to the CDC.

Steve Smelski: 00:27:30

We reached out to several different experts around the U S and we

Steve Smelski: 00:27:34

came up with a meeting that we held in September of 2015.

Steve Smelski: 00:27:40

And we brought in the experts and we did a program Shelley and I

Steve Smelski: 00:27:43

didn't even know what we're doing.

Steve Smelski: 00:27:45

It was like, we were leaning on everybody else, but we got up and

Steve Smelski: 00:27:49

we shared, and we cried and we told them why it had to change.

Steve Smelski: 00:27:53

And they all got behind us and they started working well from that first

Steve Smelski: 00:27:58

summit some of the things we came up with and the education and some of

Steve Smelski: 00:28:03

the training actually led to the next boy that came through the hospital

Steve Smelski: 00:28:08

from South Florida, he came up to the theme park, ended up at the hospital.

Steve Smelski: 00:28:12

He swam in South Florida.

Steve Smelski: 00:28:13

He actually lived.

Steve Smelski: 00:28:17

And at that point we realized that we actually might be

Steve Smelski: 00:28:22

able to make a difference.

Steve Smelski: 00:28:24

So while everybody else focused on awareness, we focused on

Steve Smelski: 00:28:27

the ones who actually got it.

Steve Smelski: 00:28:30

Um, based on Sebastian's outcome, we put together a training video

Steve Smelski: 00:28:36

to train other health care lab technicians on how to identify quickly.

Steve Smelski: 00:28:41

Cause there is no early detection test.

Steve Smelski: 00:28:43

So if you misdiagnose it or you don't consider this, the patient dies

Steve Smelski: 00:28:48

because by the time you figured the damage is done and the patient won't

Steve Smelski: 00:28:51

live, that's why it's 99% fatal.

Steve Smelski: 00:28:55

So we put together a training video, which has been shared,

Steve Smelski: 00:28:58

it's been shared in Spain.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:00

And two years ago, there was a 10 year old girl that lived in Spain and the

Steve Smelski: 00:29:08

doctor at the hospital that we've worked with he shared it with all of his people.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:13

He actually went and identified the girl's case and he had watched

Steve Smelski: 00:29:17

the video and the girl lived.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:21

And then we realized that we really could influence something that nobody

Steve Smelski: 00:29:27

had ever taken the approach with.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:29

But I think it took a parent who lost two parents that have lost

Steve Smelski: 00:29:33

a child as their motivation.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:37

To not take no for an answer.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:39

I mean, we get turned down all the time, but we don't quit.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:44

In the meantime, we've continued to do the grief program and they

Steve Smelski: 00:29:50

eventually ask us to help facilitate.

Steve Smelski: 00:29:55

And we actually got healing from helping others.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:00

I know it seems strange, but you get to the point where.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:05

You're on your feet.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:06

You don't fall down as much, but helping somebody else and helping them go from

Steve Smelski: 00:30:12

where you were, where you are completely non-functional, couldn't stand on your

Steve Smelski: 00:30:16

own and to be able to come out and finally smile after five or six months.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:22

I mean, it almost felt like you weren't supposed to smile anymore because I've

Steve Smelski: 00:30:27

got all this pain and grief to watch somebody else come through the program

Steve Smelski: 00:30:31

where you were, and then ended up where.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:34

They give you a hug and say, thank you.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:37

And so I don't know what I would have done.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:40

I'll do it the rest of my life.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:42

It is very healing to be able to help them.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:47

And you know, they're going to help somebody else.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:50

It's amazing how many people we've talked through that came through the program.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:54

They said, you know, I've had three or four people reach out to me.

Steve Smelski: 00:30:57

And I, I actually.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:00

I know what to say or to do or how to maybe just listen.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:05

But until you get in that situation, I'm not sure you ever know how you

Steve Smelski: 00:31:09

can help somebody or what you can say or what you could even do for them.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:13

Shelly and I used to avoid people because we weren't sure what to say to him.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:19

And I remember going to the, to the grocery store and I see somebody

Steve Smelski: 00:31:23

in the first aisle there at the far end, I said, Oh, I'll meet him.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:26

When I get around to the next aisle.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:29

I look and I look, and I look to get the far end and they're gone.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:33

And then I realized they didn't know what to say to us.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:39

So being associated with a program that meets fairly regularly, I think

Steve Smelski: 00:31:45

we're doing 32 weeks out of the year.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:48

We're in touch with people who understand they get it.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:51

They know where we're at because they're a little bit further behind us.

Steve Smelski: 00:31:55

We had a few people that led us that are a little bit ahead of us and

Steve Smelski: 00:32:00

to take all the extra energy that we've gotten and put it into the

Steve Smelski: 00:32:04

foundation towards changing outcomes.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:11

That's very, that feels good as well.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:15

It feels like you're not, I don't think we've ever gotten back to the point

Steve Smelski: 00:32:20

of where we were before Jordan died.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:22

I, those people are gone.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:24

They both died with Jordan.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:27

I don't think were as sharp mentally.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:29

I don't think we can stay as focused all the time, but it actually

Steve Smelski: 00:32:32

felt good to accomplish something that nobody else had ever done.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:38

And I remember thinking, okay, we are never going to be able to do anything.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:43

We don't know what, we're not doctors, we don't know what's going on yet.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:48

We started raising questions that nobody had ever addressed before,

Steve Smelski: 00:32:51

and they were common sense questions.

Steve Smelski: 00:32:54

And we saw exactly what Jordan went through and we were

Steve Smelski: 00:32:56

like, that's got to change.

Steve Smelski: 00:33:01

So we've worked with doctors from around the U S this past summit we

Steve Smelski: 00:33:05

had in September, we had I think we had 24 doctors come in from 10

Steve Smelski: 00:33:12

universities around the University of Washington, Clemson, University

Steve Smelski: 00:33:19

of Georgia, Duke, Yale, UCF, USF, San Diego, and Northeastern.

Steve Smelski: 00:33:31

And we met with all the doctors.

Steve Smelski: 00:33:32

We did a day two, and we talked about part of the problem with this disease.

Steve Smelski: 00:33:38

Primary Amoebic Meningoencephalitis is there's no early detection tests and

Steve Smelski: 00:33:42

there's no drug made for this treatment.

Steve Smelski: 00:33:47

And so we've been supporting them because they got some brilliant minds and they

Steve Smelski: 00:33:52

may be able to come up with something that could actually save more lives.

Steve Smelski: 00:33:56

So we've tried to stay focused on both things that helps us

Steve Smelski: 00:34:01

personally to help others.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:05

And it certainly helps knowing that we might change outcomes

Steve Smelski: 00:34:09

from what Jordan died from.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:12

Our initial goal was to make sure that we could come up with a process

Steve Smelski: 00:34:18

for saving a patient with PAM.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:21

So Jordan would have lived.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:24

And we actually did that in less than two years because Sebastian

Steve Smelski: 00:34:27

came into the same hospital.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:29

Then we had the girl a couple of years ago in Spain who dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:33

Lorenzo Miralis had actually worked with us well, because we shared the

Steve Smelski: 00:34:37

information with him last year, I think it was a week before Thanksgiving, they

Steve Smelski: 00:34:44

had, a free-living amoebas conference.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:47

They call it FLA 2019.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:51

And the doctor that we funded research for at Virginia

Steve Smelski: 00:34:53

Commonwealth University, uh, Dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:56

Francine Marsianno Carrboro.

Steve Smelski: 00:34:58

She actually started this international conference 38 years

Steve Smelski: 00:35:02

ago, and every two years they traveled to a different country.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:07

And a lot of these have doctors have been to all of them, all 19 conferences.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:12

And I met a couple doctors from Germany and this was their 19th conference.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:19

Well, they invited us to go.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:23

And then the conference was in Costa Rica and Shelly and I had said we would,

Steve Smelski: 00:35:28

we would never go back to Costa Rica.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:31

And Dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:32

Morales reached out to us and said that they'd like to dedicate Wednesday

Steve Smelski: 00:35:37

of the conference week to Jordan.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:40

It was Naegleria Fowleri day and it was in Costa Rica and then they wanted

Steve Smelski: 00:35:44

a debt and they wanted our permission.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:47

So we talked about it and went to bed and we got up in the morning

Steve Smelski: 00:35:51

and we both had the same response because I said to Shelly, I said,

Steve Smelski: 00:35:54

what do you think we should do?

Steve Smelski: 00:35:55

And she said, I think we should go.

Steve Smelski: 00:35:58

But I think we should ask him if we can speak to the group.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:01

And I smiled because that's exactly what I was going to say.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:05

So we told them yes, they were estatic.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:08

He contacted the team in Costa Rica and they were phenomenal.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:14

And so Shelly and I went down with their board of directors.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:17

The week before Thanksgiving, we ended up doing an interview while we're there in

Steve Smelski: 00:36:22

Costa Rica and it played the whole week.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:25

We were there on national TV, the cab driver to Subutex back to the airport.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:31

He goes, Steve, I've been watching you on TV all week.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:35

Well, it was a great conference.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:40

We met a lot of different researchers from around the world, some great contacts.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:46

We talked about the things that we were focused on and the two doctors that were

Steve Smelski: 00:36:52

from the University of Costa Rica they, um, they were involved in a PAM case.

Steve Smelski: 00:36:59

So at the time, Jordan.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:01

Was the only confirmed case of PAM in Costa Rica.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:04

They'd never had another PAM case.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:06

In fact, I think they questioned whether he was infected there.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:10

Cause they're all the cases in Florida.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:12

Well, because of us going back, uh, Dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:16

Lorenzo Miralis did an interview in Spanish and I did the one in

Steve Smelski: 00:37:20

English and talked about what we were trying to do and talked about.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:23

Jordan had some pictures of Jordan that we gave them.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:27

Well, December 28th, 2019, a boy was diagnosed with PAM.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:32

The same thing that Jordan was infected with Dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:37

Miralis reached out to me and I go, wow, that's awesome.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:39

How did it happen?

Steve Smelski: 00:37:41

And he said, Steve, I asked the doctor and he said, I found out about it

Steve Smelski: 00:37:46

from the Jordan Smelski Foundation on the interview at Thanksgiving time.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:52

And then they didn't have the drug that they needed.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:56

And they started treatment early.

Steve Smelski: 00:37:59

The boy ended up passing away on January 9th of this year, but he

Steve Smelski: 00:38:04

was now the second confirmed case and the drug wasn't in country.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:09

Hadn't gone through customs, but they got it right near the end.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:13

We actually spoke with his mom.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:17

The boy who was his name was Jose.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:19

And he was 15 years old, met with his mom and spoke with her.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:23

One of our board members speaks fluent Spanish.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:28

So he, he did both ways translations for us so we could communicate.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:36

And she struggled just like we did all the same things.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:40

So she's reached out to us a few times, but three weeks after that, Dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:46

Miralis has let me know there been another case in Costa Rica

Steve Smelski: 00:38:51

and it was a four year old girl.

Steve Smelski: 00:38:53

Well, this two doctors who held the conference, identified it in

Steve Smelski: 00:38:57

that case, they were aware of it because of Jose's case in December.

Steve Smelski: 00:39:01

And she actually got what was left of Jose's drug and she lived,

Steve Smelski: 00:39:08

and that was just in, that was like February 14th of this year.

Steve Smelski: 00:39:13

So those are the type of things to keep you going.

Steve Smelski: 00:39:19

Those are the types of things that you want to give back on.

Steve Smelski: 00:39:23

Will it continue to help on the group side of it and we've started

Steve Smelski: 00:39:27

to realize that we can make a difference and we can reach out.

Steve Smelski: 00:39:30

It just takes an effort on our part to put ourselves out there and you never

Steve Smelski: 00:39:37

know what's going to come out of it.

Steve Smelski: 00:39:40

So we'll continue to help others because it's helpful to us and people did it

Steve Smelski: 00:39:49

to help us get to where we're at today.

Marshall Adler: 00:39:51

There's a old saying the Jewish religion that

Marshall Adler: 00:39:56

says that if you save one life, it's like you save the entire world.

Marshall Adler: 00:40:03

And you've already done that by changing the protocol, medically is

Marshall Adler: 00:40:09

amazing that you've taken your grief and literally saved lives with it.

Marshall Adler: 00:40:15

So the good work that Jordan did when he was on this earth, you and Shelly

Marshall Adler: 00:40:22

are continuing, which is incredible.

Marshall Adler: 00:40:24

And I'll tell you, I went to the 2019 summit that you put on here in

Marshall Adler: 00:40:34

Orlando, Florida, Florida Hiospital.

Marshall Adler: 00:40:35

Well, I was just amazed by the high level of organization, medical experts,

Marshall Adler: 00:40:45

cutting edge technology and research they were doing because of you and Shelly.

Marshall Adler: 00:40:50

It was, it was phenomenal.

Marshall Adler: 00:40:52

It really was.

Marshall Adler: 00:40:52

I was just blown away by it.

Steve Smelski: 00:40:54

Oh thanks

Marshall Adler: 00:40:54

And you know, every death is due to a medical reason, whether

Marshall Adler: 00:41:02

it's an amoeba or heart attack, stroke, mental illness, it's a medical reason.

Marshall Adler: 00:41:09

And throughout history, it's been a battle to figure out why that

Marshall Adler: 00:41:15

happened, what we can do about it.

Marshall Adler: 00:41:18

And obviously you and Shelly have really changed the course of medical

Marshall Adler: 00:41:22

history with this amoeba, which again is like saving the world.

Marshall Adler: 00:41:29

It really is

Steve Smelski: 00:41:31

We've had an awful lot of help.

Steve Smelski: 00:41:33

We've had some great support from Dr.

Steve Smelski: 00:41:36

Rowhowin and, uh, health departments here in Florida.

Steve Smelski: 00:41:40

We couldn't have done it on her own.

Marshall Adler: 00:41:42

Well, I want to tell one more story that applied to us personally,

Marshall Adler: 00:41:48

because you and Shelly were fantastic with the Grief Share course where we went

Marshall Adler: 00:41:55

through it literally was learning about grief, but it was also very comforting

Marshall Adler: 00:42:03

that we all spoke the same language when you're out in the real world.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:09

You know, people saying, how about them, Yankees?

Marshall Adler: 00:42:11

Okay.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:11

I'm a Yankee fan, but I look at the Yankees differently

Marshall Adler: 00:42:15

than I did when Matt was alive.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:17

It's just, it's a baseball game.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:18

It's different.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:20

So when you're out, dealing in the real world is just a different

Marshall Adler: 00:42:25

set of circumstances and people and language you're dealing with.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:28

So being among people who spoke the same language, it just made it easier.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:34

You didn't have to explain anything, tell the story for the umpteenth time and

Marshall Adler: 00:42:39

try to put a square peg in a round hole.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:43

But when it ended, it really affected us because you had

Marshall Adler: 00:42:48

this wonderful, um, ceremony.

Marshall Adler: 00:42:52

And I'll just digress for a second, which is interesting because what the

Marshall Adler: 00:42:57

ceremony was, was having everybody in the Grief Share program, write

Marshall Adler: 00:43:04

a note to your lost, loved ones.

Marshall Adler: 00:43:06

So Debbie and I wrote notes to Matt and we all went out and threw it

Marshall Adler: 00:43:13

in the bonfire and saw the smoke go up, hoping against hope that

Marshall Adler: 00:43:18

your lost loved one would get it.

Marshall Adler: 00:43:20

And Debbie's message to Matt was we'd not heard from him.

Marshall Adler: 00:43:25

Like we absolutely believe that we had been contacted by Matt in afterlife.

Marshall Adler: 00:43:32

And after we threw his note into the bonfire, we went into our car to go

Marshall Adler: 00:43:41

home and it was bittersweet because we loved going through the Grief Share

Marshall Adler: 00:43:48

program, but it was over, it was sorta, like you said, with the grief process,

Marshall Adler: 00:43:54

everybody's, they're helpful, but then people leave and you're on your own.

Marshall Adler: 00:43:59

In the same thing with grief shared, it goes on Monday nights, but then you got to

Marshall Adler: 00:44:02

go back to the, to your house and reality.

Marshall Adler: 00:44:05

And we went into the car and we know for an absolute guaranteed.

Marshall Adler: 00:44:10

No doubt what the last song that Matt listened to on this planet, it was a

Marshall Adler: 00:44:17

1967 song by The Association called Never My Love and of all the songs

Marshall Adler: 00:44:25

they could have played on the radio.

Marshall Adler: 00:44:28

We have satellite radio with a million different stations,

Marshall Adler: 00:44:31

really different songs.

Marshall Adler: 00:44:32

I started at car up right after we left.

Marshall Adler: 00:44:34

And Debbie threw that note into the bonfire, asking

Marshall Adler: 00:44:37

for Matt to give us a sign.

Marshall Adler: 00:44:39

We turned the car on and that this Jackie says, and here is 1967, The

Marshall Adler: 00:44:44

Association Never My Love and Debbie and I looked at each other and go, what

Marshall Adler: 00:44:48

are the odds of that ever happening?

Marshall Adler: 00:44:52

And.

Marshall Adler: 00:44:54

It just meant so much to us that I think Matt really knew

Marshall Adler: 00:44:59

we needed to hear from him.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:01

And we did.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:02

I really believe that.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:04

And it's, I don't want him to say the same thing, but it just interesting

Marshall Adler: 00:45:09

because we were, again, I'm, I'm a sports fan and they had this

Marshall Adler: 00:45:16

documentary recently about Michael Jordan and the coach was Phil Jackson.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:24

Who's a very metaphysical, very, very inteligient very intellectual type of guy.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:32

And they all knew that this team was going to go the seperate ways.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:36

And at the end of all, that the, the way they documented

Marshall Adler: 00:45:39

ended, they did the same thing.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:41

They took notes through it in a bonfire.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:45

And Phil Jackson had grown up, I think, in.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:49

Montana with very close contact with the American Indian population.

Marshall Adler: 00:45:55

And ironically, my mother, who was this Jewish woman from New York City

Marshall Adler: 00:46:02

was a public health nurse who spent six months on a Blackfeet Indian

Marshall Adler: 00:46:07

reservation in broadening Montana.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:10

And she fell in love with the American Indians.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:14

Till the day she died she was in contact with the Blackfoot

Marshall Adler: 00:46:18

Indian reservation in Montana.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:20

She went out there in 1990 with my father, some 43 years after she was there.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:27

And she saw middle-aged people that she helped bring into the world

Marshall Adler: 00:46:31

because she was the only nurse.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:32

If you were born 1947, she was there bringing you into the the world.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:37

And so my mother always had a soft part of her heart with the Indian

Marshall Adler: 00:46:47

philosophy of living and dying.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:51

And I think Phil Jackson had that.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:54

And I think I sort of have it now from the bonfire because

Marshall Adler: 00:46:58

it just, I just was different.

Marshall Adler: 00:46:59

And so it's amazing how you can take grief and say, we're going to do something

Marshall Adler: 00:47:10

positive out of the ultimate negative that can happen to anybody because we

Marshall Adler: 00:47:17

want our loved ones to make a difference.

Marshall Adler: 00:47:24

And I think that, especially when you lose a child, you want to make

Marshall Adler: 00:47:29

sure nobody's ever going to forget the effect that your son had on the

Marshall Adler: 00:47:36

earth and the fact that they're not here now, it's our goal to do it.

Marshall Adler: 00:47:41

So I cannot thank you enough for the effect you've had in our lives.

Marshall Adler: 00:47:47

And for the other hundreds of people that you've affected that haven't told

Marshall Adler: 00:47:52

you that I'm speaking on their behalf, because you've had a wonderful effect,

Marshall Adler: 00:47:58

not just medically with the foundation, but also what you do with Grief Share.

Marshall Adler: 00:48:06

And hopefully what we do with this show, because through technology, we

Marshall Adler: 00:48:13

obviously are going to have a much easier time reaching many, many,

Marshall Adler: 00:48:19

many people that will be grieving.

Marshall Adler: 00:48:24

Again, this show will hopefully be out there.

Marshall Adler: 00:48:27

A thousand years from now.

Marshall Adler: 00:48:29

So I'll just tell you that we're recording this in the year 2020, when

Marshall Adler: 00:48:35

there's a worldwide pandemic and somebody thousand years now, listening to this

Marshall Adler: 00:48:39

might have to go through a history book or a Google, or who knows what

Marshall Adler: 00:48:43

the be then to read about the 2020 pandemic, but we're in the middle of it.

Steve Smelski: 00:48:49

Right

Marshall Adler: 00:48:49

And I think because of that, it's just the unfortunate

Marshall Adler: 00:48:54

reality that people that don't even know it yet will be in our shoes,

Marshall Adler: 00:49:01

experiencing grief like we have.

Marshall Adler: 00:49:03

So I know when you and I talked about how to help others, a show like this

Marshall Adler: 00:49:11

with technology that now exists is the way to help as many people as possible.

Marshall Adler: 00:49:19

And I know Matt would want me to do that.

Marshall Adler: 00:49:23

And it sure the heck sounds like Jordan would want the same.

Marshall Adler: 00:49:26

Am I correct?

Steve Smelski: 00:49:27

Yes.

Steve Smelski: 00:49:29

And Shelly and I are just like any other couple that loses somebody really close.

Steve Smelski: 00:49:37

You don't want people to forget who they ever were and, um, that keeps us going.

Marshall Adler: 00:49:44

Yeah, I forgot which civilization it was and I should

Marshall Adler: 00:49:48

Google this, but it just came into my head that there's a civilization

Marshall Adler: 00:49:52

that believes you actually die twice.

Marshall Adler: 00:50:01

You die physically obviously when you're physically no

Marshall Adler: 00:50:06

longer here and you pass away.

Marshall Adler: 00:50:10

But you also die a second time when the last time somebody on

Marshall Adler: 00:50:15

his planet mentioned your name.

Marshall Adler: 00:50:18

And I heard that many times before and again, I don't know what civilization

Marshall Adler: 00:50:24

it's attributed to, but I never really understood it until Matt passed away.

Marshall Adler: 00:50:31

And I totally understand it now.

Marshall Adler: 00:50:33

I want people to understand how lucky I was as a father and our family was

Marshall Adler: 00:50:45

as a unit to have Matt in our lives.

Marshall Adler: 00:50:47

He just was a gift from God.

Marshall Adler: 00:50:50

And the fact that he's not here physically doesn't stop our love and it

Marshall Adler: 00:50:58

doesn't stop the good work that he did.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:02

And I'll, I'll just try to close with this, you know, at the Eulogy

Marshall Adler: 00:51:09

I gave, I had to tell about Matt's life to many people didn't know him.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:15

A lot of his friends were there, but a lot of our friends were there.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:17

They never met Matt.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:18

So I had to use a lot of quotations from movies and I use the line last

Marshall Adler: 00:51:27

line that Patrick Swayze Mays, in the movie Ghost with Demi Moore.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:32

If you remember the movie he was, he passed on and he was a ghost and

Marshall Adler: 00:51:37

she didn't see him till the end.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:39

And when he was going to the other side, he just told her that he said, I love you.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:45

I've always loved you.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:48

And it's amazing.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:50

The love inside you take it with you.

Steve Smelski: 00:51:53

I remember that line.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:54

Yeah.

Marshall Adler: 00:51:55

And I believe that,

Steve Smelski: 00:51:56

and that is absolutely true because he's been

Steve Smelski: 00:51:59

gone and the love doesn't go.

Marshall Adler: 00:52:03

The love doesn't go.

Marshall Adler: 00:52:04

So.

Marshall Adler: 00:52:06

I think we both have a connection with our children that is different

Marshall Adler: 00:52:17

than other people's because our sons are no longer physically here,

Marshall Adler: 00:52:22

but it doesn't make it less real.

Marshall Adler: 00:52:24

Doesn't make it less significant and doesn't make it less important

Marshall Adler: 00:52:30

to the betterment of mankind.

Marshall Adler: 00:52:33

And I believe that.

Marshall Adler: 00:52:35

So I can't thank you enough for telling your story and you've

Marshall Adler: 00:52:43

been such a good friend and such a help through our journey.

Marshall Adler: 00:52:48

And what I hope from this show that both of us will be able to

Marshall Adler: 00:52:55

help as many people as possible.

Marshall Adler: 00:52:59

They will be on the same journey that we have been on since we lost our sons.

Marshall Adler: 00:53:06

So, thank you so much for telling your story, Steve, and

Steve Smelski: 00:53:10

Oh thanks Marshall.

Marshall Adler: 00:53:10

You've been a very good friend.Thank You so much.

Steve Smelski: 00:53:13

All right.

Steve Smelski: 00:53:14

Thank you.

Steve Smelski: 00:53:17

Thank you for joining us on Hope Thru Grief with your cohost

Steve Smelski: 00:53:21

Marshall Adler and Steve Smelski.

Marshall Adler: 00:53:23

I hope our episode today was helpful and informative.

Marshall Adler: 00:53:28

Since we are not medical or mental health professionals, we cannot.

Marshall Adler: 00:53:33

And will not provide any medical, psychological, or mental health advice.

Marshall Adler: 00:53:40

Therefore, if you or anyone, you know, requires medical or mental health

Marshall Adler: 00:53:45

treatment, please contact a medical or mental health professional immediately.