0:00

roxo media house

0:12

welcome back to fortitude folks we already got a dent we already got a dancer in the house

0:17

welcome back brinton you are brinton i am jw fortitude fw coming at you season two

0:24

uh welcome to the cap tech studio you obviously taken not taking a fancy to it sir but we have in the house uh in

0:31

the in the cap tech studio mr doc doctor excuse dr j maxx don’t you dare call me indeed indeed you’re everything respect

0:38

respect welcome j mack we’ve known you a while you’re a hell of a guy you’re a fort footworthy and you’ve got an incredible

0:44

story which we’re going to delve into now so cool grateful for your time no energy here man none whatsoever is it

0:50

all it’s all natural i know because i know you but what gives you all this fire all the time methamphetamines excellent yes uh no man i don’t know i

0:58

just i have a ton of energy and people are like when do you rest you’re involved in so many things and you know

1:03

i honestly don’t rest too much but i rest different parts of my brain there are times when i’m just like fully

1:09

activated in doctor mode and then i switched from that to being just fully activated in non-profit mode and then

1:15

fully activated and social media fully activated being dad and i just like i pour myself into these different things

1:20

and it like feeds my energy in every other realm if that makes sense you’re a lover of

1:26

is it healthy or does it ever get unhealthy where you’re like honey too much energy is going to here not enough to hear kind of thing oh

1:33

definitely yeah because i get i get very hyper focused and so yeah sometimes my wife needs to redirect me and be like i

1:39

love how passionate you are about these different projects but remember me like you need to focus on i’m like you’re so

1:44

right honey let’s go to the bahamas yeah we’ll get into rebecca here shortly but you began singing around the age of

1:51

three yeah this is in fort worth correct yeah totally so you uh your parents and your your immediate family discovered

1:57

this this kid is not like other kids he’s got a musical gift uh you can you and the way that i know

2:02

you is you can walk into a room now if there were a guitar or a piano sitting around and just complete strangers

2:09

you’re the kind of guy brinton that could sit down and just start singing and play and everybody’s like yeah this guy’s pretty good who is this

2:15

guy he came by that kind of naturally right like didn’t your was your mom have that she was sound or did something well

2:21

both of my parents really so my mom was approached music from a very intellectual background and um she went

2:27

to indiana university um for uh you know to get a major in music and at the time

2:33

that was one of the best places that you could go to in the country um and my dad was just completely self-taught just

2:38

like passionate songwriter and was you know playing in bars and stuff like that and so um my dad’s kind of like passion

2:46

and like aimlessness in life was kind of reeled in by my mom’s like kind of more intellectual and like structured thing

2:53

and so it only made sense that as we were growing up around all of this music

2:58

my mom became kind of the manager of the band it was like you’re gonna wear these matching outfits i have two older

3:03

sisters that sing and like dance at plants from us and my dad sings and plays here’s the funny thing about my

3:09

mom though she has terrible stage fright so she wanted to be like behind the sound console in the audience but she

3:15

was the brains of the whole operation yeah and then my dad was the performer up there who’s just like wherever wherever you put me i’m gonna play i’m

3:21

cool with it you know right on so you performed as a kid growing up you did casa you attended country day school

3:26

yeah yeah yeah but you’re a very big uh figure in casa manana uh sound of music

3:31

the who’s tommy yeah these are some of the few there’s i’m sure there’s a bunch of them yeah when you were 15 you

3:37

auditioned for a boy band uh put together by a kid craddock’s morning show correct us walk us through that yeah well erster

3:43

peace indeed so yeah well i mean to me it was just another audition it was a family friend who was like hey i heard

3:49

about this thing on the radio you should audition for it jmc could be perfect for it and uh and i show up to uh like

3:54

valley view mall in dallas you know and there are a ton of radio fans there and they announced me on stage and i’ll

4:00

never forget it man because you know there are a lot of people that are auditioning that are like 18 and 20 and

4:05

23 and all this stuff and then kelly raspberry from the radio show goes every boy band needs a baby

4:13

and they invited me to come up on stage and people like already and i was like i could get used

4:18

to this how old were you at the time i was supposed to be 16 but i lied i was

4:24

15. i made up i made it so a fake birth instead of like actually just pushing back my birthday by one year and making

4:30

me a euro i made up some fake birthday and so i’d always like forget it and call my mom be like what’s my birthday what’s my sign they asked me for some

4:37

magazine what’s my sign you know like an idiot was this like the uh this is past the new edition was this like boys or

4:44

what it was called new kids on the block we’re all so old we know about it they were later boy bands yeah it was

4:50

right when a genre was right when like backstreet boys and nsync were blowing up okay it was very clear that like

4:57

there was a formula there and so other people were following you like joey or whatever man like that’s uh yeah yeah

5:03

they all that little one yeah sure exactly abandoned question sons of harmony

5:08

sounds like a gospel group like you name it if you look it up you can come back you can feel bikers you can find a

5:14

sense of antarctica if you look up sons of harmony you find yourself in the band but you also find a

5:20

christian group that goes around the same moniker and does christian music that’s where it belongs that name

5:25

belongs in in that world so how big was sons of harmony because you opened up for bon jovi beyonce

5:31

child so how big did you get and how what kind of stuff did you see um you know we are very for because we were

5:37

created on a radio show they literally had the audience vote on who was going to be in the band and stuff like that

5:43

unfortunately i was invited to be in the bin you know but um our very first show 4 000 people were there first show we’ve

5:50

ever played we’re so nervous we’re in like matching red jumpsuits right on

5:55

we’re dancing on stage and stuff and 4 000 people are there and so it went from there to playing you know dallas main

6:02

street for y2ks right um you know new year’s eve and 75 000 people are there

6:09

granted they didn’t all come for us but 75 000 people were there that we got to perform in front of and then

6:15

the biggest like normal audiences that we performed in front of were when we were touring with destiny’s child and we were performing regularly in front of

6:21

like 20 20 000 something like that and it’s just i mean it’s an energy that you can’t get anywhere else

6:28

big auditoriums big stages mm-hmm we’re all across the country international um

6:33

it was mostly mostly throughout the southwest southwest area yeah very good they kind of picked us up there’s another boy band called like bb mack of

6:40

all things yeah some of the guys got sick from that and we had opened up for a destination before and so we got a

6:45

call and it was like your turn step up and we were like yeah this is a train you know it’s great did you guys get to

6:50

know them yeah did you get to kind of disorder or not i wouldn’t say we got to like know them we got to hang out with them multiple times yeah we would be so

6:58

excited to hang out with them we’d be like let’s sing for you guys they’d be like okay we’d sing for them and they’d get real into it and get excited and

7:04

that’s pretty difficult yeah they’d be like now leave we’re tired yeah okay we’re getting on our bus yeah exactly

7:11

what about beyonce any time with her ever yeah for sure what was that foreign she was always so

7:17

kind and humble and cool and you know there are just people that you meet in in the world of entertainment

7:23

where you’re just like man i’m i am glad that you are in the position that you are in because you’re a role model for

7:30

everyone else in the world of entertainment she was one of those people were they all out of houston like did they all come out of houston that

7:35

same church they initially did i don’t know if because they they ended up like adding and then removing multiple people

7:41

along the way i don’t know if all those people ended up from houston but the core original group yeah from houston the band lasted only but a few years

7:47

2001 you guys break up correct yeah what caused the breakup and well it was me it

7:52

was me because you know like the there was a wave you know like we were riding a wave of already successful boy bands

7:58

they had already been out for years before us way ahead of us in the game and to be real i mean better than us i

8:05

you know i i think that we were great you know but like it’s hard to compete with somebody like yeah they were just

8:10

like i mean back to boys is good but like to me the level of like talent and like performance ship that nsync had was

8:17

like totally totally amazing but i kind of i just knew that and we could feel that the wave was starting to kind of

8:23

like sure you know whatever peter out i guess you could say and uh and i was getting some offers from you know my

8:30

solo music because i had been playing guitar and writing songs for years and people were like you should do this you

8:35

know and i was like yeah i should do that because for me it was a dream to perform on stage in front of that many people but then i’d get off stage and be

8:41

like but it’s not my music yeah somebody else is writing it i’m dancing around on stage i don’t wanna be dancing around on stage like i did it but that’s not my

8:48

thing biggest hit um we had we had one it was i would give

8:53

you everything in my heart that i have love you more than anything in this

8:59

world keep going i can’t tell that apart from any other boyfriend i wouldn’t do

9:04

excellent if you were my girl

9:11

[Music] i knew a few people that liked that kind of stuff yeah yeah it might have been played at the mall man i remember ice

9:18

skating oh yeah so during that time or is it after that

9:24

time you were you started the acting side of your life because that’s always been in the cosmic but you were doing that after the band broke

9:29

up and you started doing shows like like family and then other movies came along yeah it was cool man it was honestly it

9:35

was like a hollywood dream i was performing out my own music which that was really the dream was for me to be

9:41

performing my music in front of 20 000 people and stuff like that and it never got to that place but you know i did get

9:46

some really cool opportunities along the way that in my mind we’re gonna support that dream and uh and i ended up um an

9:53

agent at like one of the top three agencies in the world saw me performing and she was like you should be an actor

9:58

and i was like yeah if it’s gonna help my music career let’s go do they say that do they kind of recommend that like they did like

10:05

because now you have like a lot of people who are actors then they go to the music thing uh much more than you

10:10

see like musicians going actors yeah i mean i think it all kind of like feeds feeds into the same like promotion

10:17

machine you know you’re just getting exposure and getting out there as long as they’re the right kind of projects

10:22

right right right you’re trying to be like a really like dark and legitimate um like greg allman plays a good bad guy

10:29

man all the time yeah like that’s really cool but then you know if you’re playing like teen bop tv shows or something like

10:35

that and then you got like some like kind of dark hardcore band that doesn’t go hand in hand yeah but so it doesn’t

10:40

promote each other and it doesn’t take you into a cast in a sitcom called like family yeah yeah if you’re playing that

10:46

dark that dark yeah exactly exactly it was a goofy show it was a really fun show man it was like the premise of

10:52

fresh prince of bel-air but it was white kid and his mom moving to the black family and that was kind of pushing the envelope at the time modern family

10:58

hadn’t come out yet and stuff like that so we were kind of doing something and what was really cool about the show is that it didn’t like overtly focus on the

11:05

race thing you know it was just kind of a thing and um and it just it focused on kind of um the beauty and support of

11:11

family and honestly working on a sitcom was one of the most fun things i’ve ever

11:18

done in my life and if that show went on forever i would have stayed on that show forever oh seriously it was a blast dude

11:24

california dude out in l.a yeah we actually filmed on universal studios a lot and then literally like right next

11:30

to us there were some fences that we would jump to go into universal studios the theme park and so the little 13 year old boy on the show and i would jump the

11:37

fence and go ride a ride and come back and film no kidding it was a dream but it was like down the hill right like

11:42

when you take the big escalators like down in that area you’re exactly right it’s amazing that you actually know we just went to the universal studios i

11:49

just kind of remember like this is a really long escalator and i guess that down in that area as well i’m guessing

11:54

that’s been fixed substantially maybe none i stuck into the like family

12:00

set right uh kid actor yeah wow he gets started on my show on accident and then

12:05

you got the big you got the call to the big leagues you get cast in a little movie called fat alvarez yeah with keenan thompson

12:11

man you know i talked about earlier how like beyonce was one of those people that just like kind of inspires others to be

12:18

like the best version of yourself despite your success that was keenan man it was like 110 degrees outside shooting

12:26

in the valley north of l.a he’s got a fat suit on everybody else is complaining about how hot it was and he

12:32

was like guys do you know how lucky we are to be here right now and you’re like you’re right keenan you’re right i know somebody who does

12:38

that he’s just always happy like that this guy who are you talking about this guy have you noticed that i do i like that

12:45

about him yeah speaking of hot it is kind of hot in here all of a sudden yeah thank you thank you um okay so

12:51

fat albert does really well uh you are you are you play the white kid in the show which is interesting because but

12:57

you just mentioned that i’m just always the token white guy that was like my niche in l.a right that’s good

13:02

so how many different things do you do until you reach the pinnacle where there’s another thing coming into your

13:07

life that yeah led you to wear this uniform so really what happened is that i i did the tv show i did the movie i

13:14

did some other guest spots on tv shows but i signed which i don’t even know if this exists now this was like during the

13:19

golden era of hollywood but they just like have so much money they would throw contracts at people to not work for

13:25

other networks so warner brothers paid me to not do other tv shows and i was

13:30

like okay who struck that was your mom your manager like did she like get that i wish man we could have kept that in

13:36

the family no no no there’s like a big time la agency and they took their cut don’t you worry oh yeah but they

13:42

negotiated this big you know six-figure contract for me as like a 19 year old to not work for any other network and the

13:48

idea was though that they were going to find me a job on their network and they didn’t so i ended up sitting around

13:53

getting paid for nothing everybody my age was like dream job but for me i you can see i got a lot of energy i want to

14:00

put it into something i want to like better myself every day and man i kind of sat on my hands for eight months and

14:06

i was miserable i was miserable and i was distracting myself from that misery by lifting

14:12

weights by skateboarding by surfing by doing all of these physical things and writing as much music as i could and

14:17

then i broke my hand skateboarding and uh took all of that physical distraction away and it was like look at

14:23

your life son and i had a total quarter life crisis how old how well yeah you’re like 25 or 20 that’s 20. no kidding yeah

14:29

quarter life crisis at 20. but i guess i’d done a lot of living before then you know yeah like i hit it a little bit but then was it like all right time to pack

14:35

up la’s over yeah yeah i knew it honestly i was on the phone with my mom and uh and she she

14:42

just told me man like she could just hear to my voice how sad i was and and i just ended up crying on the

14:48

phone in a ball on the floor and she goes it’s okay to come home son yeah damn yeah that was powerful that’s what

14:54

i needed to hear that’s what i needed here but i was like but if i’m coming home what am i gonna do because my whole life

14:59

was this like uphill journey like i’m fighting for this thing there’s this there’s this like end goal

15:06

and like how can i just have this mountain to climb my whole life and then have no mountain you know it was like it

15:12

was too depressing to think about that and i i honestly kept hearing all these

15:17

cool stories from my sister who worked in an er and she’s told me all these amazing stories of life and death and like deep

15:24

connections with other people and uh and doctors like jumping on the ground to stop like crazy bleeding from this like

15:30

stab wound in the neck and all this stuff and i was like i think i want to like live that yeah i think i want to like live those

15:37

stories but how the hell do i get there and that was the mountain and i was like i never saw myself honestly graduating

15:43

from high school i wanted to get my ged and be done unfortunately my mom was like you’re taking the sat and you’re

15:48

graduating from your private school that we spent all this money for in country day and thank god it did but

15:53

that was my mountain man and so i decided to go into medicine and that was like before any of those shows er and

15:59

stuff where were those fitting in you weren’t looking at those as like you were really just listening to your sister’s real life

16:06

i never i never watched any of those shows and i still really haven’t watched any of those yeah people always ask me like how much of those shows do you

16:12

watch i’m like i don’t know man i get enough medicine from every single day i want to experience other things where did we attend medical school so i went

16:18

to ut southwestern in dallas yeah it’s just not the best one or anything so good on you yeah it was a really great

16:24

school it was a very competitive med school as well which is great because i think it made me a better doctor because

16:30

you know i don’t want to brag but i like i felt i felt like i was a rock star going through tcu and taking all my

16:35

pre-med classes i felt real good taking all those tests and everything and then man i went to ut southwestern i was not

16:40

the smartest kid there and it was it was humbling um but it was it was it drove me to to be a better student and to be a

16:48

better doctor tell us some of the difficulties with med school that you you just mentioned yeah well i mean it

16:53

was it was very difficult at first to be taking these tests and it was very apparent like where you were you know on

16:59

on the kind of bell curve and i was not at the top anymore and i didn’t i didn’t do bad by any means but i was like kind

17:04

of running with a pack for the first time in my life and i don’t mean to say can be conceited with that but i was

17:10

running with the pac-man and it was you know eating eating some humble pie there but it drove me to to study harder and

17:16

do better and i ended up doing very very well actually in the long run but at first i got a kick in the tail big time

17:21

well you were coming from being the star out in l.a man like i mean that’s not that far of a like that’s pretty

17:28

understandable yeah was that whole you think that whole acting thing helped you in that regard or her

17:34

back i i don’t think it helped me academically necessarily i mean there was a ton of memorizing that i was i was

17:39

doing especially when i was on the tv show because they literally had wake up in the morning there’d be a brand new script on my doorstep and i’d have to

17:46

memorize it and we’d be shooting it at like 3 p.m you know so it’s like there’s a lot of very important quick

17:51

memorization that you had to do and then you’d have to execute on the spot and there was a lot of that in med school and everything but there was a lot of

17:57

just like remembering how to be a student again and everything and i experienced that through tcu where i did undergrad as well but med school was

18:04

tough man but it made me grow a lot and where i really started to shine in med school was when i was in person i wasn’t

18:09

just like a kid at a desk with a number two pencil you know back in the day when you’d actually like fill out you know

18:14

scantrons in some way i’m sure it’s all computerized now but uh but you know i’d go into the hospitals and it’d be all

18:20

about like how how well are you connecting with patients how well are you coming up with plans for your patients how well are you connecting

18:26

with the team and supporting your medical team as a whole and i was really good at that stuff and so that’s when i

18:32

started really separating myself from the pack and being extremely successful again in in my heart in my mind so you

18:38

graduate you residency you get your first job and where’s the first job yeah so i um i i do after uh med school i do

18:45

residency at ut southwestern parkland it’s the biggest single site um volume emergency department in the country see

18:51

the craziest of the crazy things from traumas to tumors that people from mexico have ignored for five years and

18:58

they come up and it’s like this massive thing kind of growing out of their face and they’re like i was told to keep driving north until i saw

19:05

um la bola and el cielo which is like the ball in the sky you think about the dallas skyline right and so literally

19:11

people would drive up from mexico to get care at parkland and so i just saw and experience some incredible stuff there

19:16

and then i started working um with a company called emc it’s a staffing company for emergency rooms mostly uh

19:23

texas health ers which like i love texas health and i love my doctor group so like big props to thr and to emc of team

19:31

health they just recently got bought out um because my job rocks and i’m super fortunate where do you currently where do you currently uh work i’m mostly at

19:38

texas health southwest here in fort worth and texas health alliance a little bit north of fort worth oh yeah the typical day for you j mac at the er well

19:45

the typical day changes so much because sometimes i’m a 6 a.m shift sometimes i’m at 11 am shift sometimes at 3 pm

19:51

sometimes at 8 pm sometimes i show up to work at 11 p.m like i put my kids to bed

19:56

i’ve like already watched some stuff on netflix and then i’m going into it because of being on call or just because

20:02

they need you kind of no because that’s how an er schedule is every er doctor works different shifts pretty much

20:08

unless like you just love being the night guy which like nobody loves being the night guy you kind of like spread

20:14

the pain a little bit you know and so sometimes you’re the morning guy sometimes in the afternoon sometimes you eating sometimes you overnight and we do

20:20

a little bit of each of those every single month and uh but it’s cool though because the er has a totally different

20:25

vibe at 2 a.m than it does at like 10 a.m than it does at like 6 p.m you know

20:31

fair to say you’ve saved lives you’ve lost lives you’ve seen probably everything in between yeah um all these

20:37

experiences led you to a little thing called tick-tock yeah yeah which is one of the things that’s really cool about

20:42

you you are very uh a very big advocate of sharing experiences heartful stuff

20:48

yeah absurd stuff yeah real life stuff through your through your posts currently i see you have 422 000

20:55

followers on tik tok well done that’s nothing no i got boy bands with more than that yes we have

21:02

four i think yeah yes period like that’s not four thousand or

21:07

yeah yeah it’s not 4k you know you deal with these are some of the things that i that i just grabbed from

21:13

watching i’ve seen a whole bunch of them but you discussed uh how robin williams really died which i thought was really

21:19

events inside the er medical questions that people have always wondered suicide substance abuse so what how does this

21:26

all work for you and your brain how do you what made you do this thing man a lot of things are inspired by real world experiences whether they’re inside the

21:33

er they’re outside of the er things that you know heartbreaking diagnoses that i’ve that i’ve given people things that

21:39

i can just tell i keep getting asked a question over and over whether it’s online or in person i’m like people want to know this yeah and so and i can give

21:45

a really unique perspective on it because not only do i know the answer i have seen that answer in human beings

21:51

for almost 10 years in the emergency department which crazy to think of because somewhere inside of me i’m still that kid you know like when you’re of

21:59

age and you’re showing your id to the person at the liquor store or the grocery store or whatever to buy alcohol

22:04

yeah you’re proud but also a little piece inside you is like like like you’re a little nervous still you know

22:10

like even to this day i’m 38 years old yeah and i’m still like play cool playing cool slaughter you know what i mean like that that that person that’s

22:16

like so excited and feels very lucky to be there is still totally there in my shifts every day and so i can see it

22:22

from that perspective and it’s even enhanced that perspective through my videos on tick tock and and on instagram

22:28

um because i’m trying to break things down in a very simple way to where people can experience it whether they’re in the medical field or whether they’re

22:34

not in the medical field fantastic how would you how would you describe to somebody like us the lay person and if

22:40

you can’t i understand but something tells me you probably can but how would you describe what what death is like to

22:45

see it all the time how does it feel in your mind for people who don’t really understand what that means what it looks

22:50

like the hardest thing about experiencing death on a daily basis

22:56

is keeping your emotions yeah you talk you talk to people we called it the thousand-patient stare

23:03

because you know you’ve heard like the thousand-yard stare that soldiers get in their eyes and you start residency as an

23:09

emergency doctor and you’re bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and you’re excited to go to work and then you see the third

23:14

year residents and there is a different look in their eyes they’ve seen so much death they’ve seen so much suffering in

23:20

my attending and i talked about it because some patients would be like why can’t you understand my pain and i heard i over

23:28

heard him say to her if i felt all of my patients pain every single day i would

23:34

have killed myself a long time ago and that’s a really intense thing to say but it’s true when you’re a truly empathic

23:40

human being the er is a very brutal numbing environment and it did that to

23:45

me uh you know where i had a similar experience on a little lighter level oh yeah when we worked in the baby’s rs man

23:52

before we had a kid and you see those parents you do have the exact same thing you have the kid in

23:57

the buggy and you’re like are they zombies man like what is wrong with those people those people are so washed

24:03

out looking with that kid we’re all like fresh like let’s go do the shopping it’s different when you’re in the trenches

24:09

yeah you know yeah yeah that’s that’s like the thousand day of having a newborn stair like the

24:14

thousand day stairs yeah yeah for sure but it was but just to answer your question

24:20

the the most important thing just to any medical providers that are listening or watching to watching this right now is

24:27

is is keeping your emotions open i think you know and it and i i lost my emotions

24:33

for a long time i was so burnt out from all of these overnights and weekends and suffering that i experienced

24:39

but i threw honestly through a lot of these videos and through really opening up to my friends and my family about the

24:44

traumatic experiences that i’ve had i’ve regained my emotions and it’s a beautiful thing because if you don’t if

24:50

you know people it’s almost like a merit badge that you can you know create this like wall in between you and suffering

24:56

and i thought that was cool when i first started emergency yeah and like but that wall will will be present outside of the

25:02

hospital too it’s only a matter of time not only that you’re not connecting with your patients with the patients don’t want that the patients want you to be

25:09

there with them in that moment and with the gravity of those diagnoses and those experiences but you’re also going to

25:15

miss out miss out on all the beautiful emotions of having children and having a wife and having a family and all this but they want i think you know they

25:21

there’s a real fine line there where they want you to be strong too empathetic and understanding yeah but

25:26

there’s a part of them looking at you going yeah man i don’t need you to break down yeah with me now i need you to be

25:32

well that’s part of the easy to beat that’s part of the art of medicine is to know like when it’s okay and when they

25:37

want you to cry with them yeah and when they need you to just be strong and step up to the plate and save their life and

25:43

fortune and that’s that’s the art that’s what separates a great emergency doctor from a novice emergency doctor yeah

25:48

greatest er story that involves you can you share the the best is there a one that sticks out that’s just like i did i mean we know

25:55

you’re doing great stuff yeah anything that really stands out among others um i’ve had i’ve had a lot of amazing

26:01

experiences through the years but just like one of the most memorable ones that i have um is when and i i told you this

26:09

one man i i told you this one actually when we were that’s why i’m asking yeah we’re having some whiskey um and uh and

26:15

so yeah basically doctors drink never know that ever doctors we always limit

26:20

ourselves to anyways um where i’m in the er and i heard nurse to triage which is never a good thing that means something

26:26

bad is happening that is not in the emergency department it’s in front of the emergency department and so this old

26:31

nurse that’s like gone gone into retirement has come out of retirement somehow it’s the guy that like runs out there and uh you know this uh this

26:38

granddaughter pulls up with her grandfather in the passenger seat and he’s he’s buckled in but he is so weak

26:45

when the nurse opens up the door he starts to fall out and the only thing that stops him from falling is the seat

26:50

belt and the the nurse kind of you know calls for help and somebody comes out and they get that guy and they put him in a

26:56

wheelchair and they start wheeling him through and after 11 years of training to become an emergency doctor my most

27:03

important job in that moment is that man is rolling through our emergency department so weak that he can’t even

27:08

hold his head up his head is like falling off to the side of the wheelchair out of full like you know two feet or something like that and my most

27:15

important job is just to hold his head up so it doesn’t hit the corner of a wall and we break his cervical spine or

27:21

something nasty like that yeah and so we get him into the room and his oxygen levels are low and his blood pressure is

27:26

low and his heart rate is high and he’s dying right in front of us he’s the closest to death that i really get to

27:32

see people or do see people and um and you know what he ended up having

27:38

basically is something called a tension pneumothorax which is when there is

27:43

pressure building up outside of the lung that is not only collapsing the lung more and more with every feudal breath

27:50

that the person takes but it also compresses the veins the blood vessels that lead back to the heart so you can

27:56

no longer get blood flow to your heart you don’t get blood flow to your heart the heart can’t squeeze blood to the rest of your body super deadly condition

28:04

yeah and the only thing that can fix it is releasing the pressure and so there’s pressure outside of the lung and the

28:10

only thing that’s keeping it from um essentially getting relieved is a scalpel in your finger and so i took a

28:16

scalpel and i cut into that man’s side of his chest and i didn’t even have time to call for the proper tools to do it

28:22

usually you’d like use these things called kelly’s to like push through the muscle wall and because you don’t want to like stab into somebody’s chest oh

28:28

yeah [Music] and so you know you cut down but you

28:35

don’t go through that last layer and so to get through that last layer i used my finger fortunately i’m trying to throw in a club and i pushed my finger through

28:41

that man’s chest wall and i pulled my finger down and the air evacuated and you can just hear it go

28:47

like popping of a balloon or something popping a balloon and you’re releasing all of that pressure that was compressing the lungs that was com

28:54

pressing the blood vessels leading back to the heart all of a sudden he gets blood flow back to his heart all of a sudden that lung re-expands all of his

29:01

vital vitals normalize and he goes what happened

29:06

and i’m like you almost died dude is that air does that air smell does it have like an odor i didn’t really get my

29:14

face up in it so i don’t know just wondering if it’s like you know it’s body air man or something

29:20

like that i’m sure it sure had a little tint of something you try to put on a mask

29:29

what is it what is it like for someone in your position to deliver news you mentioned off air

29:34

some people that you have to tell them they have aids or they have cancer inevitably that they’re going to die

29:39

what is there is there is there a simple way to i know there’s not but there’s a way that someone in your position does

29:45

that to comfort them in a way is there any particular way you do that just to be present man the most important thing

29:52

is to be present to like pull pull on on your your human

29:57

side and and push away your your medical side because you know when you when you get like very clinical and you’re just

30:04

you’re focusing on all these medical details like you know i could go into a room and tell people you know details

30:10

about you know the the cellular mechanisms behind this disease and you

30:16

know the prognosis and all this stuff but really in that moment i personally want to be as as little

30:24

of a doctor as i can be and as much of just a a caring um

30:30

empathic human being as i can and be in that room and answer any specific questions they have but try not to load

30:37

them up with too informati too much information at the same time and those those are the experiences where i i

30:44

really feel like i’ve done a good job at the art of being a doctor like we’re talking yeah and maybe not the best time

30:50

to introduce the sons of harmony background of your life right did i tell you i wasn’t a boy man

30:57

sorry that was bad wouldn’t it well that would i just think of those ads where it’s like we’re gonna get through

31:02

this together right yeah it’s my second surgery we’re going to do this together or whatever well great job delivering

31:09

the message that so many people have found and now enjoy so you do such in such a clever uh

31:16

wonderful warm way excuse me for the stutter there but you make it you make it personal when it’s it’s just a

31:21

general story if somebody wants to know but great job doing that thank you let’s talk for a second about this lady named

31:26

rebecca yeah you met her you met her young age but she is your wife and the mother of your three children let’s talk

31:32

about her for a second man my wife is just an amazing person and honestly like i i am so i feel like i have been

31:40

so fortunate in so many ways when you like look at my story and all the cool things that i’ve really been able to experience i’m very aware of that but

31:46

man like the the most fortunate experience that i had was

31:52

running into rebecca again um 15 years 20 years after maybe we

31:59

first met so we we met in um first grade at fort worth country day on the

32:06

playground we chase each other around and um and you know but but we obviously we’re

32:12

too young to like be a thing or anything like that yeah she was i always she was on my radar even though like i wasn’t

32:17

really like into girls like your whole life yeah yeah kinda you know but then but she ended up going to a

32:22

different school long term and i’d like see her think about her every now and then but you know

32:27

she ended up pursuing her passions just like i did ballet ballet she’s an incredible ballet dancer she danced with

32:34

the school of american ballet in new york she danced um with the paris opera ballet did this like really exclusive

32:40

summer program in vail and it was her and like maybe like 10 or 12 other girls

32:46

and from the whole country that got chosen to do this program and um and she

32:51

she you know really really gave it her all just like i really gave it my all in entertainment and we both kind of ended

32:57

up making more like practical you know decisions with our long-term careers but we ended up reconnecting just randomly

33:04

like at a bar thankfully i saw her and i was like rebecca shaw you know and she was like

33:09

huh and i was like i remember you from first grade do you remember you yeah she did remember me um and i was like you

33:16

got real hot and i kind of stalked her on facebook and uh ended up hanging out and we fell

33:22

in love through our mutual passions yeah in the arts um and through through music

33:28

we would go to all these cool shows and that was the way that i was like reconnecting you know with with my passion and my love for music was was

33:36

like with her during med school like one of the most like trying times of of my

33:41

life and one of kind of the most like emotionless times too where i’m like this just machine studying all day at

33:47

one point i was studying 15 hours a day dude 15 hours a day for a month and a

33:53

half for this damn test that you take that kind of determines what kind of doctor you can be yeah and throughout

33:58

that she was she was the thing that kept me sane and that kept me in touch with my passion

34:04

and my emotion and um and man she’s just like she is one of the most selfless

34:09

humans that i think exists on the planet and people are like how how are you able to to do so many things at the same time

34:16

it’s because of her and her support right yeah well great job i’m thinking of a number

34:21

and you you tell me what this number is i’m thinking like 10 to 12 and get guess what that number is

34:27

uh 10 to 12 on the hot scale it’s like 10 out of 10. she’s in the 12. it’s the cups of coffee or red bull she

34:34

must drink a date to keep up with me yeah did she as much as it wouldn’t be enough

34:39

yeah she is she is energetic or is it no she is not she has she has a lot of uh

34:45

depth of of emotion and depth of passion but no she doesn’t she doesn’t attack so

34:50

many different things at the same time okay okay uh let’s dig a little deeper into your family tree yeah yeah who the heck is

34:57

colonel cc slaughter yeah this is crazy man this is you hear stories about your ancestors growing up and stuff like that

35:04

and i totally did not appreciate what he was able to do but you know as i as i got older i was like wait who was that

35:11

guy that owned millions of acres out west yeah and there’s this dude colonel cc slaughter no joke cc stands for

35:18

christopher columbus so colonel christopher columbus slaughter any relation to sergeant

35:24

slaughter the professional no i wish i told people that he was my uncle though and if you messed with me he’d come and get you sergeant slaughter from the wwe

35:32

that was before he was even wwe oh yeah yeah and then he was like such a popular like you know professional wrestler that

35:38

he became a gi joe character as well oh that’s what it was yeah yeah cc slaughter though that sounds like a good

35:43

country song doesn’t it yeah it does maybe we should write a country song now i know that you play pedal steel

35:49

oh oh jw my fame has exceeded the show let’s move on let’s move on

35:56

so colonel cc slaughter this guy i mean was an extremely driven individual and

36:01

i’ll always always always be in a shadow no matter what i do in my life but mando and millions of acres out west yeah um

36:09

was at one point i don’t know it was a good thing or a bad bad thing but he was the highest um he was the the highest

36:15

tax-paying individual in texas maybe he needed better tax attorneys but that just goes to show you the level of

36:21

wealth that he’d accumulated the level of success he founded baylor medical right wow so bumsie in dallas baylor

36:29

university medical center he founded the first hospital there um and was i mean he he had a quote of saying that that

36:35

the lord gave me a hand to take and heart to give yeah and he was a huge

36:41

philanthropist as well and so that’s part of what drives me a little bit um in in the nonprofit world as well i mean

36:47

i’ll never be able to kind of fill those shoes but what an inspiration some might disagree with that statement you’re well on your way sir another one worth

36:54

mentioning jm zachary i think you’re your namesake right yeah i was named after this guy such an interesting human

37:00

being so a very successful oil businessman was the business partner for

37:06

mr penrose which was just like when you read like the legends of like oil and gas in texas he’s one of those guys and

37:14

so um my great grandfather um was the the partner literally would share a

37:19

partner desk this massive wood desk that i would study for med school on right

37:24

with mr penrose and he um i i’m his namesake and and his name was j.m

37:31

zachary and and the interesting thing is this guy who gave me so much from you know braces when i needed them

37:38

when i was 11 and 12 to my first car to making sure that i went all the way through private school is actually not

37:45

my blood relative yeah so my great grandfather who i am named after is this

37:50

like patriarchal giving human being that adopted my grandmother

37:56

um and married my my great-grandmother um and i owe so much to so somewhere in

38:03

between the inspiration of my great great great grandfather colonel cc slaughter yeah and my great-grandfather

38:10

the original j-mac i i feel called to have to give back i am it’s like

38:16

mandatory that i try to give back to the people around me because i have been given

38:21

more opportunities than i could ever provide um for myself or my community

38:27

and so i have to do everything in my power to try to pay that forward well nice okay with a few minutes we have

38:33

left j mac let’s talk about some of the philanthropies you’ve been involved with one particular music meets medicine mmm

38:39

uh it’s a 501 3c tell us about that so music meets medicine was actually inspired through

38:44

my experience with my mother’s breast cancer treatments my mother had stage

38:50

two breast cancer went through chemo double mastectomy reconstruction in total she had something like total like

38:57

20 surgeries over the course of a few years there and radiation and her first chemo

39:02

treatments were just like so dark and depressing were you in medical

39:08

school at the time or where were you i had already decided to become a doctor though which was kind of interesting

39:13

yeah it was my first experience kind of through a patient’s eyes and through a family member’s eyes yeah and there was

39:19

this one treatment in particular that was was so toxic it turned your fingernails and your toenails black

39:26

and so to try to counteract that you’d put your fingernails and toenails in ice and it would vasoconstrict it constricts

39:31

your blood vessels to where the toxins that you’re putting in your body to kill yourself but also kill the cancer can’t

39:37

necessarily get delivered so um so you think about putting ice on your head as

39:43

a kid you lasted what like seconds seconds and you were like my mom has my willpower so she’d put her

39:49

fingers and toes and eyes for an hour straight and as a 20 something year old self-centered

39:55

kid i’m looking at my mom going through this terrible experience and i’m i’m you know

40:00

for the first time in my life trying to take the spotlight off myself and be like okay i i have to do something i

40:05

have to help this this amazing human being in my life and my sisters and i brought our instruments to the next

40:11

chemo session yeah and it just like turned into the most like happy oh seriously joyous like powerful

40:18

experience of my life up until that point and after that we brought our instruments every single time and people

40:25

in wheelchairs would roll by and be like will you come see us next and we’re like sure so we kind of turned into like

40:31

music therapists before music therapy existed music therapy wasn’t really a thing the hospitals were still so like

40:37

cold and emotionless and we we don’t we didn’t have like kind of the emotional intelligence and the leadership that we

40:42

are starting to really have now and so we were one of the first non-profits that focused on bringing music into the

40:48

hospitals i was inspired by those experiences to try to do that and um and

40:54

so what we do is we donate instruments and free teaching lessons to kids at

40:59

children’s hospitals and so was that where it started at cooks like kind of at all yeah it all started through my

41:04

experiences with my mom’s chemo and then spread to different hospitals in the area we’ve supported music therapy at

41:10

cooks we’ve had lots of volunteer we even actually at dallas children’s hospital we donated a jam room we raised

41:16

150 000 to create this badass space yeah where patients can leave their treatment areas

41:22

be in a treatment-free zone and just lose themselves in an instrument whether that’s their thing or whether they’ve

41:28

never done it before we always we try to have what’s called embarrassment-free exploration options yeah where they can

41:34

put on a little headset and mess around an electronic drum set nobody can hear but them really what’s going on yeah jam

41:40

out on a guitar and only they can jump and i do that with our two-man uh silent raves

41:46

like where we just do our headphones and just dance indeed that’s that’s fantastic fantastic thing and the second

41:52

one that i’m most familiar with and yeah big fan of the slaughter family arts awards which just concluded here recently yes absolutely uh this is a

41:59

deal that i really love please yeah so basically the slaughter family you know since my wife and i um kind of joined

42:05

forces in life you know we just talked about how much we needed to give back to the arts community and how many opportunities that we were given right

42:12

and so we talked about giving out scholarships because she danced on scholarship for years and years and that was a huge part of her ability to

42:19

succeed in life and we always wanted to give out awards as well and so we were like well let’s just like give out some

42:25

awards and some little scholarships um to some kids at one school and then like

42:30

you know you know i go to meet with this person her name is melody halbach and she is

42:35

she’s the person who ran the theater uh department at fort worth country day for like 20 years she happened to be

42:42

retiring right yeah right at the time that we’re getting really jazzed about this this

42:48

idea and really you know we went to country day and saw an incredible show there we just saw the level of talent

42:53

and dedication and heart these kids have and we were like why wait another 10 years like let’s do this now let’s go

43:00

and so i met with melody hallback and my wife and instead of doing one school we were like let’s do five schools you know

43:07

let’s do six schools so at this point we’ve given away over thirty thousand dollars in scholarships somewhere over

43:12

like 40 different awards we just had a big award ceremony at i am terrell here in fort worth with that which has a

43:19

gorgeous a state-of-the-art like 50 million dollar amphitheater who knew um

43:24

and uh and it’s obviously something that’s very near and dear to our heart it’s only our third year and we’re just going to keep going up from there and

43:31

people can support you if they want to go yeah please do please do please go to slaughter or sorry sfaawards.org

43:37

or go to musicmeatsmedicine.org and uh and donate and support these uh these organizations

43:43

and we’re gonna put your dollars um to beautiful use to support our community jmac you exude confidence exude it in a

43:50

healthy awesome way does anything make you nervous does anything get to you

43:55

um this is gonna be an intense one but like when babies are dying that scares

44:01

the pants off of me you know yeah like i deal with like old people dying all the time every now and then it’s like a

44:07

20-something year old and i’m like you know and it kind of tightens that sphincter there but it there’s there’s

44:13

nothing more intense as an adult er doctor granted we train in pediatrics as

44:18

well but our day-to-day is in adults but when somebody’s dying somebody’s dying

44:23

and they go to the first hospital and so you can take care of some very very very sick children and that’s that old that

44:30

makes me a little nervous you know on that note i must say your name has such a dark connotation of

44:36

slaughter right like and you are the antithesis of your name man i don’t see anything creepy and dark about dr

44:43

slaughter yeah you’re the brightest light out of that name so it’s a really cool kind of

44:48

deal this guy is an example of what what is possible with positivity and and following your your dreams and your

44:54

passion i made this not to sound corny but you really you followed the path that you set out for yourself and you

44:59

made it all happen so kudos to you thank you brother thank you before we go he’s got a last question for you okay this one ought to be the best answer we’ve

45:05

ever heard yes no family right like i mean we just and it’s not because we don’t love our

45:10

families and stuff we just try to make this purposely hard best day of your life like all family stuff aside

45:16

direct and you know that kids and all that no kids okay okay so yes while the best day of my life would absolutely

45:22

include my entire family um man some of the best times of my life where when i was in costa rica we talked about

45:29

surfing a little bit when our sound was out but i was in costa rica for a month and a half i’d wake up in the morning i

45:35

would surf first thing in the morning watch the sun rise get some sun do something physical exciting and like zen

45:42

and relaxing all at the same time i would go and exercise my brain by relearning spanish because i knew

45:49

that i wanted to be able to communicate with my patients in their primary language and especially here in texas so

45:54

many patients can only speak spanish and so i’d go for four hours and my

45:59

buddy who was also a doctor and wanted the same thing to be able to communicate with this patient we would talk only in

46:05

spanish to these like medical spanish teachers there leave there go back to surfing yeah have a sunset session and

46:12

then after that write music and record music for the rest of the day we do that for

46:17

about a month terrible does it no well i want to thank you for sharing your life with us i want to thank our good friend

46:23

your good friend kevin donahue who introduced us hell of a guy he’s sitting there audience now thank you kevin love

46:28

you too kev thank you captain for making all this happen yeah dr j maxslaughter

46:36

[Music]