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Voices for Voices®
Voices for Voices® is the #1 ranked podcast where people turn to for expert mental health, recovery and career advancement intelligence.
Our Voices for Voices® podcast is all about teaching you insanely actionable techniques to help you prosper, grow yourself worth and personal brand.
So, if you are a high achiever or someone who wants more out of life, whether mentally, physically or spiritually, make sure you subscribe to our podcast right now!
As you can see, the Voices for Voices® podcast publishes episodes that focus on case studies, real life examples, actionable tips and "in the trenches" reports and interviews from subscribers like you.
If that sounds like something that could help you grow personally or professionally, then make sure to join me by subscribing!
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Voices for Voices®
A Paramedic's Path from Crisis to Courage (Part 1) | Episode 153
A Paramedic's Path from Crisis to Courage (Part 1) | Episode 153
Chapter Markers
0:01 Paramedic's Journey Through Trauma and Service
8:56 Unveiling the Mystery of Happy Hypoxia
20:16 Censorship and Free Speech in America
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Harry Fisher, a seasoned EMT and paramedic, whose career spans the Army, Air Force, and the tumultuous times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inspired by his grandmother’s illness and spiritual guidance, Harry's journey is one of service, resilience, and profound personal growth. He opens up about the emotional and spiritual challenges faced by emergency responders, emphasizing the importance of preparation for those considering this demanding career. We also explore the puzzling phenomenon of "happy hypoxia" and how faith and community became crucial anchors during the pandemic.
Harry doesn’t shy away from discussing the censorship he faced on major social media platforms due to his outspoken views. We dive into the broader implications of free speech suppression in America, as Harry shares his frustrations and the innovative ways he and others have created networks to continue spreading their messages. This episode unravels the complex interplay between personal liberties and technology, all while hinting at Harry's future advocacy plans and his upcoming book. Don’t miss this compelling narrative that not only highlights the life of a dedicated paramedic but also raises critical questions about freedom and resilience in today's world.
Voices for Voices® is the #1 ranked podcast where people turn to for expert mental health, recovery and career advancement intelligence.
Our Voices for Voices® podcast is all about teaching you insanely actionable techniques to help you prosper, grow your self worth and personal brand.
So, if you are a high achiever or someone who wants more out of life, whether mentally, physically or spiritually, make sure you subscribe to our podcast right now!
As you can see, the Voices for Voices® podcast publishes episodes that focus on case studies, real life examples, actionable tips and "in the trenches" reports and interviews from subscribers like you.
If that sounds like something that could help you grow personally or professionally, then make sure to join me by subscribing!
—
Thanks for listening!
Support Voices for Voices®: https://venmo.com/u/voicesforvoices
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Welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for your support of our organization. This show, if you can like, subscribe, share with your networks. We would very much appreciate it, and thanks again for your support. Our guest today is coming to us via Zoom, so we'll head to him give him an introduction. He is a EMTP, he's a follower of Christ. He is an author of a book titled Safe and Effective for Profit, a paramedic story exposing American genocide. So we'll let our guest chat, and so, harry Fisher, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I appreciate it very much.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. I guess we could just maybe get started talking about how your interest in being a paramedic and all that for those that may be interested in that as a career, and then we can work our way forward.
Speaker 2:Okie doke. Been an EMT since 1997. Interests well, I like helping people, I like the thought of helping people. It was early on in my life, very early I was young, my grandma was. She had cancer. She had brain cancer. It was terminal and I watched as my mom was the caregiver. Grandma lived with us and I would help. But what's a young, young, young kid going to really help with? And I saw emotional support and so I had it in me that it was a good thing to help people at a young age.
Speaker 2:My grandma was very spiritual, she was a minister and I got to see her, you know, ministering to people, and that also had a hand in where I'm at today. That said it's it's not an easy road. If you want to become a paramedic, if you want to be an EMT, there's a lot of hardships with it. There's a lot of spiritual warfare, just like in anything in life but there's a lot of battles internally and externally, and nowadays, with all the mandates that they try to put on you, it's a very difficult process. So I would say, do a lot of prayer and then be ready to fight those spiritual battles that are going to come your way.
Speaker 2:But I've been in EMT since 97, became a paramedic in 2012,. 2013-ish. I've been in Army Air Force, both as a medic. I've been in Army Air Force both as a medic I work contract medic and I've been doing contract medicine since basically COVID. So they sent me anywhere from New York City, north Dakota, all over the place on contracts, working ERs, icu, ambulance, and now I'm pulling contracts predominantly in Alaska. It's been a very interesting career choice, to say the least.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for your service. I really appreciate what you've done, and all our servicemen and women, thank you, appreciate it, you bet. So helping others kind of planted the seed at an early age. As you were growing up, did I guess, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? I know I wanted to be, I think I said an astronaut.
Speaker 2:I mean it changed a few times. I mean, you know, it was always seemingly a career choice of helping. At first it was maybe fire department or maybe you know, police officer. You know I landed, or you know and I landed, on paramedic. As far as you know, wanting to be anything else, I never really wanted to do anything other than this type of work. That I can remember anyways. I mean, there was probably one point in time I wanted to be just a cowboy or something like that, like cowboys and Indians, but but no, it was always.
Speaker 2:It was always something like this I mean, I've been doing it since I was gosh. What was I? 17, 18, I mean, I guess. So I'm 40, almost about to be 44 now, so all of my life has been this. So when they tried, to take it away it was. It was a big blow to me, I mean, whenever they tried to say, hey, guess what? You can't do this anymore, the only thing you really know which I know.
Speaker 2:I, you know, I know more. You try to put me to work under your sink. I'm probably not going to fix it. I can, I can fix you, but fixing your sink, you know, I'm just, I'm gonna need to call somebody, but uh, but when, but when they tried to take that away, it was an amazing, amazing harsh moment in my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's jump into that. I'm sure you had peaks and valleys along the way as you were at EMT and then became a paramedic. As you were at EMT and then became a paramedic, can you describe or just share and maybe there's not anything that matches kind of the pandemic? But was there any other point in your career where things kind of got heated or wild, where things kind of got heated or wild?
Speaker 2:Well. I mean it's every call's, you know. I mean anytime you hear the tones go off, we get tones. You get toned out to something. You get toned out to a call. Your radio goes off.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And the call could be the worst call ever. I mean, you never know what's going to hit. So I've experienced a lot of calls that to this day, pre-pandemic, that still, I guess, haunt me per se to this day. So I guess the difference is it's where you had some calls that always were with you pre all of this. Now you've got a lot of this. It's just the amount, the drastic amount of bad, and then the amount of bad coming from our own government, our own governing bodies. So you not only have to deal with the, the mental anguish from the traumatic event that you're there for somebody while they're going through their worst moment be it they're losing their child, be it they're going through just the most pain they've ever been through.
Speaker 1:Add on top of that, your government hates you. Yeah, and that's that's. That's as well. We'll continue to. It's very, very unfortunate. You know, the government gets in, it gets involved with just about anything. It's usually not, you know, not somebody knocking at the door like, hi, we're from the government, we're here to help.
Speaker 1:It's not usually something that you want to hear. Can you talk to me maybe a little bit about that mental side? Like you said, you're seeing you're experiencing emergencies all across the board and how do you process that on your kind of the mental side?
Speaker 2:I went through a long time in my life where I processed it by getting off work and finding a bottle of alcohol and trying to drown myself in a bottle. A lot of medics do that, a lot of fire officers, and that leads to a lot of my friends committing suicide. Self-medication leads to suicide, I would say half the time, if not more. I've lost more friends to suicide now than COVID. I haven't lost a single friend. That's a first responder to COVID. Not one of my frontline friends died of COVID, but since then I've lost a lot of friends to suicide. What helped me inevitably was just turning to God, completely giving it to God. Turning to God, completely giving it to God.
Speaker 2:Read your Bible, not only read your Bible but try to get to understand it. I mean it's God's Word, so I mean literally our Maker's Word. Why wouldn't we try to understand every word in there and that to me, focusing on that and then finding a partner in life that wants to focus on that with you that to me is life-saving. So that's what I do now to process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think as human beings, we're social beings. Being around people, having the relationships, are key. So do you want to step into when COVID, when you learned about it and just kind of those beginning days? Sure.
Speaker 2:When I learned about it it was early. I had a friend who was living in Wuhan China. He's an ex-ranger military guy living in Wuhan China. He's an ex-ranger military guy living in Wuhan China.
Speaker 2:And I get an email from him and he goes. I don't want to say the words, but he cursed and said, bro, the apocalypse just happened. And I was like what? Like, what do you mean? And he was like entire Wuhan just shut down, like they just locked everybody down. And I was like what is Wuhan Like? I didn't know, I'm an American. I was just like what are you talking about? And he was like imagine somewhere like New York City or bigger just shutting down overnight. And he was like people are so scared. They're telling us that there's this virus that's going around. They're also telling us to wait for an email to see if any Americans want to be airlifted out of Wuhan, which he ended up getting airlifted out of Wuhan and and and I went through all that, but he had to leave his pet. And then he was also telling me that animals were being put into bags and people dropping them off of balconies, like, like, literally just killing their animals. So the way he was describing it was horrible.
Speaker 2:So early on I knew something bad was happening. I didn't know how bad was happening. I didn't know how bad, but my buddy didn't just freak out for nothing. It wasn't the type to just you know, oh my gosh, for nothing. So I knew that we were either up against a a very deadly, something bad is happening, or or we're being lied to. But at the same I'm one to go ahead and err on the side of caution. So I was, you know, I got my family, we, you know I was still working, but I got my family and lived out in the country and I was like let's stay here.
Speaker 2:And I mean it might have been two months of me wondering, ok, they're not shutting down flights from China. And then you know it was weird, they're not shutting down flights from China. And then, you know it was weird, they're not really talking about this on the news. I was sitting there like why isn't the president saying anything about what my buddy just told me is going down in Wuhan? Like this is strange. Nothing was really adding up in my head. So what I told my family is I was just like, okay, well, we're either going to experience massive death really fast or this is all BS. Yeah, I mean either. Or like I mean I was just where I was at, either or. And we didn't see the massive death real fast. But then we did see, basically the trickle effect of oh, someone just got escorted out of the Thunder game, the basketball game, and then suddenly it was mainstream news and then it was like, oh, now everyone wants to lock down and oh, everyone must wear a mask. Now, be six feet apart. So I got to see this very slow wave of weird all the way into suddenly a pandemic.
Speaker 2:Whenever we hadn't like I knew about wuhan getting locked down months ago, y'all why didn't we stop the flights, like, if it was that bad, why didn't we stop this? Um, so either someone was wanting to kill us, or it really wasn't that bad, or I'm not. I'm not 100, I'm. I've got opinion, I've got thoughts on that, but it's all speculation. I don't like to speculate openly about that kind of stuff because it's conspiratorial. That being said, it was just weird. But when we did lockdown and everything went crazy, we started seeing something called happy hypoxia, which should, to this day, be a major news story story, and I'm so surprised it's not.
Speaker 2:But if you look up the mystery of happy hypoxia. They still call it a mystery to this day and not all of our patients that were cooking where they were covid positive, had it. But if you had happy hypoxia, I knew you were this strange virus that was going around, because happy hypoxic patients would talk just like me. They wouldn't turn blue, they were experiencing a little anxiety and they would call 911 because of some anxiety and you would put. You know what the O2 sat, the meter that we put on your finger, yes, oxygen meter, mm-hmm, we put our oxygen meters on and the people will be sat in 40s and 50s. That's. It's just insane. It makes no sense. All my textbooks, that doesn't make sense. At first we thought our monitors were broken. We just thought, okay, because the people look fine and they're supposed to be sat in, you know 95 to 100 percent and they're starting 40s and 50s and looking fine. And inevitably we got this like mass email from her. You know it was actually facebook we, because we have facebook groups and we had these facebook groups with our services and they said there's something called silent hypoxia. Your monitor's not broken. Some people are calling it happy hypoxia. These people are COVID patients. They're actually satting very low. We don't know what it is and I would take, you know, for a while there I was taking, you know, sometimes a few patients a week that had this happy hypoxia to the hospitals and they were the last person that I can remember. She was talking to me about her poodles. We were just having a conversation about her dogs. I gave her a little bit of oxygen and what I saw worked is just giving them a little bit of nasal cannula oxygen would bring their stats up, would ease the anxiety and they would seem to be fine. Sadly, when we would get them to the hospital which I learned whenever I worked in the ICU after you know, months later, we would get them to the hospital and then they would medicate them for the anxiety. They would give them some anxiety medications and then they would start to cramp and then we would quickly vent them because the doctors didn't know what this was either. Like I had doctors going. We have no clue why they're satting this low, why their blood gases look this low, so what they would do is they would treat the anxiety, the patient.
Speaker 2:When you treat anxiety with anxiety meds, patients start to get tired. You know they start to. You know they start to sort of crumb because they're compensating. You know they're doing a heck of a job compensating. If they're doing a heck of a job compensating if they're sat in 40, 50 and they look fine, their body's doing a really good job at compensating, like like a miracle type job, like I don't know how to put an emphasis on how wild it was. Like I was calling them. Many of us were calling them zombie patients because no one can sat 40 and be talking to you just fine. It's like I can do CPR on you, you can be dead. I can do CPR on you and get you into the 90 percentile with your oxygen cells. So these people were just that low so they would vent them and the patient would die. So basically they would you know this would happen. They would vent on, the patient would die. I never really saw anybody come off the vents, so basically they would.
Speaker 2:you know this would happen. They would vent on, the patient would die. I never really saw anybody come off the vents. I mean, there are some miracle cases out there that made it off the vent, but I personally never got to see it. But that's something that everybody out there should look up. Is, you know, the mystery of happy hypoxia? That's how I knew COVID was a thing, there was something there. I knew COVID was a thing, there was something there. What I did notice, though, is the people that stayed home tend to make it through it.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's why I mean Africa, I believe, had you know a lot lower rates when it came to death.
Speaker 2:I don't think they were going to hospitals and getting vented and so that's. I would try to coach my patients when I was working in the ICU. I would be like, hey guys, you're going to get anxiety. Um, do the best you can to stay off of the vent because it's very bad outcomes when you go on the vent, so try to relax and, and what I saw is the people that didn't get vented typically made it.
Speaker 1:Wow, so so many incredible points you've made, Learning so much ahead from a buddy to how things unfortunately got started. So the happy hypoxia that was like the first indication, like you mentioned, that the patient had COVID. Yeah, if you had happy hypoxia.
Speaker 2:I mean you had whatever this COVID was, because nowhere in my career, the doctors that I know's career, all the nurses that I know, none of us have ever seen happy hypoxia it was. I had one doctor say, quote unquote, it's the weirdest shit that I've ever seen before in my entire life. It's just something COVID is. And and you know what did he say? He said and if anybody tries to tell you they know what this is, they're, they're effing lying to you. And that was in an ER, while I'm standing in front of a happy, hypoxic patient that they're starting to actually like put on. They were putting this one on BiPAP because his anxiety was so bad. He was just really just like his anxiety was bad, so they were going to BiPAP him and we were having this conversation and it was just it was. It was a surreal, surreal experience.
Speaker 1:It was just, it was a surreal experience. Your colleagues, how were they receiving I don't wanna say the news, but receiving patients? Were they seeing the same thing as you're alerting them?
Speaker 2:I was alerted by one of the colleagues first. Oh, okay, and he was a supervisor at the time who told a few of us which I had already seen one patient like that at the time and I'm pretty sure I think I just thought my monitor was broken because the patient was fine, like the patient was seen fine, and then I started listening to it and then we started seeing it like more and more and more. And it was. I mean, I don't know how better way to describe it other than imagine a group of medics standing around saying did you have a zombie patient today? Yeah, I had to. I mean that there was. It was that weird. It was at one point in time I put on YouTube, before I got banned on YouTube, I said this is like the weirdest zombie apocalypse I've ever seen before in my entire life. There's something going around that's making people sat so low that they should be dead, beyond dead, and they're talking to us. But I ended up getting banned on YouTube and I can't access Facebook, can't access YouTube.
Speaker 1:So anything, we were actually seeing on the street.
Speaker 2:you couldn't post anywhere, you couldn't post it on TikTok.
Speaker 1:You couldn't post anywhere, you couldn't post it on TikTok, you couldn't tell people, yeah, and that's really troubling because on so many levels, but really at the conspiracy theorist or you had like legitimate facts that were backing up what you were saying, you weren't just claiming something and that if I, if I could, access my facebook.
Speaker 2:You could actually, if I wish I could access my facebook, because you could go back then to that time where I'm talking to my colleagues, because I was having open conversations on Facebook at the time and I said at one point I said the COVID tests don't work, they're crap. I said let's just start putting O2 sensors on people's fingers and if they're satting 50%, they have whatever this is. I was like, instead of y'all trying to test us at work, why don't you just put an oxygen sensor on us? Wow, I mean, but that's on Facebook Years ago. I just I can't access Facebook.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that raises a whole other issue of you know, government and big tech suppressing, and so YouTube and Facebook are those the only two that you've?
Speaker 2:been banned on Facebook, tiktok, youtube. I didn't try Twitter much because I already realized, because I've tried to like post a few times and I think they removed like the posts. So I realized it was just like and then it was also. It was just like and then it was also. It was just all so bad. So then I just started with the TikTok because I noticed with TikTok I would get to like, oh, 30 or 40,000 subscribers, people that you know can watch, and then they would ban me. So I would at least get a little bit of traction and then they would ban me. So to me it felt like either I'm talking to the same people all the time or maybe I'm picking up new people that are actually getting the information.
Speaker 2:But that's the one place that would let me get you know with a new account, I would have to create a new account and it would let me pick up some. So I fought that. I called it the tiktok wars. Basically it was a banning of tiktok people and there's a lot of us that just would keep getting banned like that. And we started making support groups of I think they called it Patriot Pickup. Like, hey, patriot Pickup Harry just got banned again, and then they would pick you back up. So we were having to make backroom, you know, not backroom deals, but backroom communication with people that are all getting banned. So we could, hey, when you get banned, you let us know in this group, and then we would all just start throwing your information out there again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and your thoughts on, obviously, the banning, but the country, the government, our government, our US government, you know supposed to be the land of the free home of the brave, and you know the Constitution, and that Was that.
Speaker 2:Equally, as troubling as what was actually occurring. It sickened me to my core it still does the fact that they burned our Constitution. They literally held our Constitution in front of the American public and lit it on fire and waved, and then waved their middle finger at all of us and most of the general public out of fear, decided to just cowardly shut up. The few out there and I would like to real quick talk to the few out there that didn't shut up and you just fought those bans and you did everything you could. Good on you for standing up and at least just trying the best that you could during a very hard, just during trying times, because mentally, whenever you're raised, like you just said, land of the free, home of the brave, we're strong.
Speaker 2:We do not bend. When it comes to our right to free speech, we do not bend. When it comes to our right to free speech, we do not bend. When it comes to our right to bear arms, we do not bend when it comes to medical tyranny. Whenever you're telling me I have to take an experiment to go to work, I have to take an experiment that I've seen kill people to go to work and you're telling me I can't work but I still have to pay taxes.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, but this whole thing reeks of communist China and I am so disappointed with our country completely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's as divisive as can be and, you know, for you having having the facts trying to share, which which is usually a good thing, right, you're sharing like, hey, look out for this, here's what I'm seeing. It should be vetted, just like anybody any other news source, but just to shut it down because if of those keywords or whatever they use, the big tech companies use, so we're going to close this episode out and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about how your experiences are helping others on a massive scale, how X has helped give you a platform to do that, and definitely I'm going to talk about your book. So, harry, thanks for joining us on this episode and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:And I want to thank you, our listeners, our viewers. We can't do this without you. Thank you for all that you are sharing towards us, and we want to thank give a big thank you to Harry Fisher to join us to talk about life, things that we've all experienced and real facts, you know. Go ahead and do your research. Real facts, you know. Go ahead and do your research, but the facts, what Harry is saying shouldn't be banned we don't believe in. As our organization, voices for Voices. This is a voice that we want to make sure that is heard. So until next time, I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes, and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.
