Transcript
Speaker: Time for another Dirty Brief.
Speaker: Oh my, everybody.
Speaker: Because this one is going to be pretty fun and very, very vulnerable.
Speaker: So, most of you know that I have been going through treatments for stage 3 Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Speaker: Well, they're going...
Speaker: swimmingly, let's just say that.
Speaker: But yesterday I had to go get a PET scan to see where we stand in this process.
Speaker: And I feel really good.
Speaker: I'm going to tell you that right now.
Speaker: I think my healing journey is going about as well as can be expected, maybe even better than can be expected.
Speaker: But this PET scan is going to tell me everything
Speaker: about where we currently are.
Speaker: And I won't know for a couple more days, but I wanted to tell the story of going to get my PET scan yesterday because I had to return to a place I had been before.
Speaker: However, I had no memory whatsoever of ever being in
Speaker: in this imaging center.
Speaker: In fact, I went to the wrong place when I first got there.
Speaker: I checked into a medical facility that had no idea why I was there.
Speaker: And I quickly learned that there was another one 10 minutes down the road, but I didn't remember any of this.
Speaker: I was sure that I had never even been there, but then I go and I check in and the tech remembered me.
Speaker: I didn't remember him at all.
Speaker: But this guy, his memory, he started to come back.
Speaker: And I told him, I was like, yeah, last time I was here, my wife brought me in.
Speaker: I don't have any memory of that day.
Speaker: And he goes, oh, now forgive me because he was from the Caribbean islands.
Speaker: And I'm going to do a little bit of an accent because I do think it makes the story better.
Speaker: But he goes, oh,
Speaker: Oh, man, I do remember you.
Speaker: It's coming back to me.
Speaker: And he goes, your wife, she's very tall, right?
Speaker: And I was like, yeah, he goes, oh, wow, I can't even believe I'm looking at you now.
Speaker: When someone says they cannot believe they're looking at you, that means you have been through some kind of insane experience.
Speaker: And what he told me was that the day I was brought in to do this PET scan, I was so out of it.
Speaker: I couldn't remember any of his instructions.
Speaker: He could barely even get me into the machine to do the PET scan.
Speaker: And that's a scary thing.
Speaker: In fact, he told me it was one of the saddest days in his 20 years of being in this business.
Speaker: He said he can maybe remember two instances in the history of him working there where someone has come in in as poor shape as I was.
Speaker: And he said he was looking at my wife thinking, oh my God, this young woman is about to be a widow.
Speaker: Let that sink in.
Speaker: That's how bad of a state I was in that day.
Speaker: This was November 17th, 2022, and I wanna tell you what happened later that night.
Speaker: After the PET scan, my doctor that morning had given me a bunch of fluids.
Speaker: They saw that I was in rough shape.
Speaker: And honestly, they should have seen that I never should have left the hospital at all.
Speaker: Because later that night, I go home and the doctor, he just said, take a Vicodin, go to sleep for a little while, take a nap and see what happens when you wake up.
Speaker: So I go to get home at 4 p.m.
Speaker: And just so you know, this is all pieced together for me, from my wife and two other friends that came over later that night because I have zero recollection of any of this.
Speaker: November 17th, it's 4 p.m.
Speaker: and I go to sleep.
Speaker: I wake up four hours later and my wife is sitting on the couch.
Speaker: I emerge from our bedroom and I immediately go to our kitchen and
Speaker: take down my pants and start peeing all over the kitchen.
Speaker: My wife notices me and she goes, Alex, no, no, no, that's not what you do.
Speaker: That's not where you do that.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker: My apologies.
Speaker: Hang on a sec.
Speaker: I then walk into her office and continue to pee all over the wall.
Speaker: The place where she does business.
Speaker: Every day.
Speaker: I am now soaking in my own urine.
Speaker: Unbeknownst to me.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: She then finds me in her office.
Speaker: Takes me to the bathroom.
Speaker: I take off all my clothes and sit on the toilet.
Speaker: Now at this point my wife knows.
Speaker: Something is very very wrong.
Speaker: She calls up two of our closest friends.
Speaker: And they immediately come over.
Speaker: They rush here.
Speaker: I don't even know how they got here so fast.
Speaker: But.
Speaker: Obviously, at this point, I was in a very bad state.
Speaker: My friend told me that he asked me to sit down, and I told him that I didn't know how.
Speaker: I was standing there, and he had to physically help me to sit on the couch.
Speaker: Now, at this point, we go to the emergency room, and I don't know anything.
Speaker: I'm, they asked me my name.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: They asked me what year it is.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: They asked me who the president is.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And maybe that one is kind of a blessing in disguise, but they immediately realized that something was horribly wrong with me and that I would have to stay in the hospital.
Speaker: And what was happening, and this was probably happening at the imaging center when I was getting my PET scan,
Speaker: I was having a stroke.
Speaker: I was having multiple emboli occur at the same time and it was shutting down my entire body.
Speaker: I haven't told you all this yet.
Speaker: I haven't told anyone this other than my closest friends and my family.
Speaker: I had a stroke, not of genius.
Speaker: I didn't go in the bathroom and have a stroke because I was sexually frustrated and had to rub one out.
Speaker: I had a fucking stroke.
Speaker: Multiple emboli.
Speaker: Embolisms.
Speaker: Emboli.
Speaker: The word emboli, that's a little weird, right?
Speaker: Most people, I think, don't even know what you're talking about, which is why the word embolism has a lot more weight attached to it.
Speaker: This would embark a 33-day journey in the hospital.
Speaker: And I will do other episodes about that because I don't have the time.
Speaker: A dirty brief has to be less than 15 minutes.
Speaker: But I will tell you this because going back to that imaging center yesterday and hearing this medical professional tell me that it was one of the saddest days of his life, that hit me on a different level.
Speaker: That made me realize just how terrifyingly close I was to actually dying.
Speaker: And since I've been out of the hospital, I got out December 19th, 2022.
Speaker: I have had to push a lot of this trauma down.
Speaker: Not that I'm not afraid.
Speaker: It's not that I'm afraid to face it.
Speaker: I mean, I am a little bit.
Speaker: Let's be honest.
Speaker: There's a lot of shit in there.
Speaker: But I, for my own survival sake to heal, I had to focus on other things and kind of forget about all of the traumatic incidences that happened to me leading up to and in the hospital.
Speaker: But now I got to start processing that stuff.
Speaker: I'm far enough away and I'm healthy enough that I need to start going deep in there and really listening to my body and my mind about what happened.
Speaker: That's the only way I'm truly going to heal because my body feels amazing right now.
Speaker: My mind feels amazing.
Speaker: Do you know how scary it is for a comedian to have a stroke?
Speaker: For anyone to have a stroke.
Speaker: But my brain is my entire existence.
Speaker: I mean, I guess that's true for anybody.
Speaker: Although if I was just working in line at a factory, I don't think I would need it quite as much.
Speaker: Just, all right, just another Swiffer wet jet down the conveyor belt.
Speaker: Processing things is terrifying because we can't hide from it anymore.
Speaker: We have to face our truth.
Speaker: And this is part of it.
Speaker: And this is the part that's going to stay with me for a very long time.
Speaker: And that's why I have to get in there and do the work.
Speaker: And I'm seeing a therapist.
Speaker: I'm doing it on my own as well.
Speaker: I can't hide from this anymore.
Speaker: And I really hope you stay with me on this journey because I'm going to tell you a lot more about what happened to me over the course of that month in the hospital.
Speaker: And there is some gnarly,
Speaker: gnarly shit that you are going to hear.
Speaker: So please stay with me.
Speaker: Subscribe.
Speaker: I want to stay with you.
Speaker: So will you stay with me?
Speaker: Do me a favor.
Speaker: If you're not already subscribed, hit the subscribe button and make sure that you get your dirty brief in every single week.
Speaker: Follow me on social media at Hooper Hair Puff on Instagram and Twitter.
Speaker: Hooper Comedy on TikTok.
Speaker: Come see me live, everybody.
Speaker: HooperComedy.com.
Speaker: I didn't stay alive, so I could not get.
Speaker: Continue to entertain you all.
Speaker: And that's exactly what I am here to do.
Speaker: It's going to take some time.
Speaker: There's a lot of processing that needs to happen.
Speaker: But now you're starting to hear the real nitty gritty of it.
Speaker: Yikes!
Speaker: Can't wait to see what the Dirty Brief's going to be next week, because right now, I don't even know, but man, is it going to be good.
Speaker: So stay with me, everybody, because I love you, and I hope you love me too.
Speaker: Mwah!
