Rising from the Ashes - One Man's Life Turns to Advocacy

Mike Shoreman was a regular guy running a paddle-boarding business in Ontario until Ramsay Hunt syndrome struck him down and forced him to re-evaluate his life. Since then he has become a staunch advocate for the disability and mental health communities, showing how overcoming adversity is in all of us.

TRANSCRIPT

Evan:

so welcome back to DDA encouraging abilities podcast. I am your host. DDA communications manager Evan Kelly, today, we're not just talking about cognitive disabilities, but mental health as well adaptability, resilience and overcoming adversity. Joining me to talk about all that, is Mike shoreman.

Now here at DDA, I've been following mike on social media for some time. He is a mental health and disability advocate. Now, Mike is and was a typically developed, developed person and a coach, a paddle boarding coach with paddle Canada, until he was struck down with what's called Ramsay hunt syndrome back in 2018 now, the condition led to severe physical impairments, including loss of mobility, hearing and vision, chronic vertigo, facial nerve collapse, all of this culminating into a mental health crisis. Suffice to say, it was very life changing for Mike.

Perseverance is key. And by 2022, Mike became the first person with disabilities to paddle across all of Canada's five great lakes. So Mike, it's so great to have you here today.

Mike:

Great to Great to be here with Evan. Thanks for having me.

Evan:

No problem now, son, I don't want to give everything away, so I start this with a lot of my podcasts. So tell me a little bit more about Mike schorman.

Mike:

Oh, well, I am a keynote speaker, consultant and advocate. I work with organizations, academic institutions, government agencies, schools to help empower their people. And you know, help, help empower people and improve mental health, education and disability education. I work a lot with human connection. We learned a lot of things out there on the Great Lakes. It wasn't just me who went across them. It was a whole group, a whole team that I built to help support me, so we had to learn how to connect with each other to do these five marathons. But yeah, no, I'm I am just a regular guy who went out and did a big thing, and that was made possible by the support of a lot of incredible humans.

Evan:

Now, Ramsay hunt syndrome, that that's not something that comes up very much. I didn't even know it existed until I started to follow you. Had never heard of this condition. So what is it and how does it affect people?

Mike:

Right? So it's a neurological disorder, condition. It is activated. So what it is is essentially, if you've had chicken pox, chicken pox, once you've had it, it stays in your system, and it remains dormant. So many of us had chicken pox when we were kids. I did I had, I had a very mild case, me too, when I was Yep, and, and then it just stays in your system, and, and it can be awakened later in life as shingles. And, you know, both my grandparents had shingles. Shingles is usually you get shingles in your in your later stages of life.

Evan:

Well, ironically, ironically, I had shingles a number of years ago, probably about 20 years ago, when I was fairly young, and the doctor figured it was stress related, but it did happen to me.

Mike:

Right, connection, right? So the Herpes Zoster virus, which is chicken pox, it can be reactivated as shingles when brought on by stress and and so what Ramsey hunt syndrome is is it is shingles, but very specified to when it attacks your eye or your ear. So in my case, it attacked my ear. I ran myself into the ground and wasn't taking care of myself. As I was an entrepreneur and I was running my paddle boarding business, and and ultimately, I worked myself into the ground and wasn't looking after myself well enough. And then, and then, it affected many different things, because it affected my vestibular system as it affected my ear. So Ramsay hunt syndrome can be mild to severe. In my case, it was very severe. The mayor of Toronto, the current mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow she she had Ramsey hunt syndrome, I think back in 2000 Then eight she and she had to publicly announce it, because, because facial facial paralysis is part of it. And as being in politics, she had to make an announcement that this is not a stroke. This is what this is. And then a couple years ago, Justin Bieber announced that he had it and he canceled his entire world tour.

Evan:

Wow, wow, and so. So for you, what were some of the long term effects?

Mike:

So, what is a chronic condition? So even now, you know six, what are we were five, seven years later, even now, there are days where where my energy is low, or the barometric pressure changes, and I can feel it, or I get tired, and you can tell when my walking or my or my talking or with my speech, But no, I essentially lost my mobility, and I had to work with a vestibular rehab therapist to reprogram my brain ways to walk in a straight line. They said that I would never get back on the water, that I would never paddle board again.

I had to go for, you know, audiology tests and vision tests and and MRIs to rule out brain damage. So, no, it was a, it was a very big adjustment to to a new normal.

Evan:

Yeah, and then, so, you know, you're, you're a paddle boarding business, you're obviously outdoorsy, active kind of guy. Again, back to what I said earlier. Was typically developed. How, how difficult was this, to accept that life just suddenly changed?

Mike:

No, you know, when you acquired, you know, so many Canadians, so many people acquire disabilities later in life. I am just one of them, but it seems like there were so many all at once, and it was incredibly overwhelming. And you know when you lose your when you go from standing on a paddle board teaching people for 1012, hours a day and working for 17 hours a day, to not being able to walk and not being able to drink out of a cup, you know now you have to use a straw suddenly. And you know, when you have a shower because of the vertigo, you have to sit down in the bathtub rather than standing up. You know, all of a sudden, I lost my business. I lost the ability to earn an income. I lost my social life, which is hugely important with connecting with others when we're struggling. I couldn't I couldn't go out. I couldn't see people. So my world went from being very big to very, very small and and ultimately, you know, loss of independence, loss of social life, loss of identity in the world that I had created. And so I just didn't recognize, like, like, like many people who go through through that later in life. I just didn't recognize who I was anymore.

Evan:

Well, when you say later in life, though, that you weren't, I mean, how old were you when this happened? Oh, well, 35 Yeah, it's not very late.

Mike:

No, no, no, yeah, no, I Yeah, no, I was still, I guess still.

Evan:

Yeah, that was same for me when I, when I mentioned that I have shingles, I was probably around even like 28 I was that right? That young when that happened. So I guess we're poster children now for the fact that that can happen, not just later in life. Yeah. So, yeah. So was there a turning point when you realize that mental health needed to be the focus for you?

Mike:

It's dealing with physical stuff is one thing, but there's that whole mental health side of it, absolutely so a big focus on my recovery was placed on physical rehabilitation, but not so much with the mental Health and I was, I ultimately, what it came down to was that I felt like I, you know, I was, I was being looked after. And after months and months and months of this, I felt like I was a burden on other people, and I didn't see, you know, when we, when we go through a. Shift in, in our physicality and in, in, in how we operate and how we, you know, do day to day life. You know, it's it's a, it's a, it's complex. And I wasn't coping I didn't have the coping strategies in place at the time, and so ultimately, I ended up going for a stay in a mental health treatment facility, and it was there that I was set up with counselors and therapists, and I don't advocate for it with everyone. But in my case, it did work. I did go on medication and and it did, it did work well for me and and on the other side of receiving treatment, and, you know, coming out of there with, you know, coping strategies and tools that I could implement. That was when I decided I didn't want other people to ever feel as alone or as hopeless as I felt, and

Evan:

so suffice to say, your adverse, your advocacy that you do right now in life is a direct result of what happened to you. Absolutely yes, yes. And so this, so this inspired you to become a mental health advocate. And so, awareness and support, I guess, is your main goal is that is, I guess is that kind of your full time job? Now? Is that what you do?

Mike:

Yeah, so full time I work, I work with corporate I work with businesses and corporations. I do a lot and and schools, government agencies, nonprofits. I do a lot of conferences and and I work most. Most of it is stress management and burnout production, because that's what happened with me. So you know a lot of organizations who, who have, you know it's competitive out there. So a lot of people who, who have employees in industries who are ambitious and highly competitive. They look at my story and they see, they see the these. They see the face of of what, what can happen, you know. And, and then, and yeah. So I get to work with a lot of incredible, incredible people, and that is, that is my full time, my full time job.

Evan:

Now, when you look back and then you look at your life, now, does it seem weird that you're doing this rather than your business, your other business, I mean, your paddle board business.

Mike:

Yeah, no, it's, it's funny because I get to, I still get to do it. I get to do depending on the time of year and where I am. I've done team building exercises, so I still get to do that. So you know, if a company will have has me in and they want to do a keynote, but then they want to go paddle boarding. We bring in paddle boards or, or we set that up so, so that's really nice. I've got, I've, I've been able to carry that on and still keep, you know, my my toes in that a little bit, which is, which is nice for me.

Evan:

Nice. So what specific changes or outcomes have you seen as a result of your advocacy?

Mike:

So no, I've had some wonderful opportunities in 2022 of course, we created that campaign for jack.org which is Canada's national youth mental health charity, to cross the Great Lakes. So we recreated in 1988 Vicki Keith swam across the Great Lakes to raise funding for children, raise funding and awareness for disability organization that supported children with disabilities and and in 2022 we recreated that, except using becoming the first person to do it on a paddle board. And, and so that that helped create, you know, I don't know the numbers they have set jack.org. Has said this helped create, you know, helped us, you know, create programs and services supplied to 1000s of young people across Canada, so that that always makes me feel good. Yeah, but no, I've been, I've I've had wonderful relationships with several mental health organizations across Canada. I've done some consulting work with the newly launched 988, which is Canada's national suicide prevention hotline, to help them make their help them. Make the national number more accessible for persons with disabilities, because persons with disabilities face mental health challenges five times higher than the national average, yeah, so, so I do a lot of consulting work and and a lot of Connect, you know, connecting with people. In May, I had the honor of keynoting the 34th Annual National Suicide Prevention Conference in Vancouver.

So I've, I connected with mental health organizations all across the country. And from that, I've, I've, you know, they've had me. And so I've worked with my first indigenous communities now, which is highly rewarding, because they, you know, face significant it's a mental health crisis within indigenous communities in Canada, so to go In and connect with people and and, you know, provide education, but but some motivation and hope. Because when people are struggling, that's, that's, that's what they need. They need a reminder to keep going, and that today is today. Might be a dark day, but there, you know, there was tomorrow, and tomorrow can be a little bit better than today.

Evan:

Do you think Canada is succeeding in these kinds of supports? How are we doing? From your perspective,

Mike:

I think we've made significant progress. It's funny today, this morning, Bell shipped me eight massive boxes for balance talk. I do a lot of events during awareness days and months and weeks and and all. And the delivery arrived. But if we look at things like Bell, Let's Talk Day, just as an example, I think we I think it's been around for maybe 2022, years ish now, but corporations weren't talking about mental health before and and many organizations weren't. So we have made significant progress. There's still so much work to do now, I just made a post this week about the prime minister's resignation, because our campaign was I went to Ottawa and met the Prime Minister and and and the post really focused on what has been done within mental health and, and, you know, 988 which is Canada's national suicide prevention hotline that was implemented just, You know, a year ago. So you know, now, if you know people who are in crisis, who are struggling, who really just need someone to talk to, they they have that, and that has come in, you know, just recently, so we have made significant progress. Mental health is is so underfunded across the board, as as our, as our, as our many organizations, but specifically mental health. So no, I think we are making progress. And the more that we have these conversations, the more it's normalized, the more the more the organizations that are here to support individuals, they can benefit from that. So somehow, I think we are, we are making some headway on the right track.

Evan:

So how did your perception of the disability community change when this happened,

Mike:

absolutely so no, I think you know, prior to this, I I had no, I had my my thoughts and my, my. Perceptions of the disability community and what that looked like, and, and, and, and that did not include me. That was, you know, I, you know, I looked at the disability community as as you know, people, people in wheelchairs. And I didn't recognize that, you know, I didn't give it much thought, and I didn't, at the time, realize that, yes, there are invisible disabilities, there are there are invisible, and then there are visible, and and, and then, you know, the different kinds, and how this, how this affects people and and you know, no, it's, it's been a huge learning experience. When I had my paddle boarding business, one of my favorite things that I did, I shut down the business on Friday nights, and I worked with an organization called Autism Ontario, which was a provincially run organization In Ontario for families and persons who have autism and, and, and I did a lot of research and, and I really want, I've always been community oriented, and one of my favorite things was partnering with them. So, so on Friday nights, families would have the opportunity to come out on the water with with me and my business and and after doing a lot of research before even approaching them, I came to the conclusion, with with all of my reading, that that people with autism respond really well to to water, so So by bridging this paddle boarding with them, it was, it was a way, but no, that experience was probably One of my first, my very first experience within the disability community was with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. I did my high school Co Op with the CNIB back in the very late 90s, early 2000s and I worked with their with their marketing team, and that was kind of my first experience with the disability community. And this year, it kind of came full circle. I just did three, three events with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind in Toronto and Halifax and in Edmonton, speaking at their events as a person with a disability. So it was very interesting, you know, going go, you know, being a high school student, and then, and then, many years later, developing my own disabilities and going and speaking at their organization. It was very true, very interesting.

Evan:

So, that would have been no in terms of your the physical disability that you, that you experienced through this, this syndrome, what would like did you have much of an impression about, you know, how accessible is society? Did you feel or see any limitations and go like i This is so weird to me now, because this was so easy before, and now it's not?

Mike:

Absolutely…so vertigo. Will people who have mobility challenges, who don't use wheelchairs struggle all the time. I remember the first time that I really noticed it. You know, aside from going through the recovery and using a cane to walk and and holding on to someone while they were taking me to my appointments. The first, you know, the core memory, I did an interview with the CBC, and I had to go downtown Toronto. I live just on the outskirts. I had to go downtown. And I came out of that interview. I You, downtown, busy day, and all of a sudden it felt like I was in an earthquake, and I didn't know what to do, because that had never happened to me while I was on my own before, and I had to grab. Grab the walls to support myself, and I've noticed it at different different events. You know, you go over stimulation and sensories, my senses are heightened. So even though I have hearing loss, I also have amplified hearing in my other ear now. So you know, when I go to a concert, I have to wear earplugs in the one ear. Or, you know, the the flashing lights can become too much. So the importance of having sensory rooms or quiet rooms for for persons who, who need to maybe just check out for 1010, minutes, half an hour, just go rest and then kind of restabilize and and then go and integrate back into the activity that they were doing. Is, is, is really important, and I've really seen the need for that in in the past few years.

Evan:

Okay, so we're gonna do one last question about sort of this stuff, and then we're gonna get into more of your the other media that you're getting involved in. So did you ever see yourself as an advocate and doing speaking engagements like this? And how does this compare to your previous life? I sometimes I want, I want to sort of shape this question a little bit, because I, you know, I've heard from other people who've gone through these life changing events where they feel like their life is better because of it?

Mike:

Absolutely, absolutely, no, I agree with that. It's very fulfilling. It's very rewarding. I never saw myself as I gave you know, I went to college for marketing and public relations communications. Yeah. So,

so I were, I worked in a public relations agency in Toronto, and eventually left that. But the reason I went into intra entrepreneurship, you know, I bridged my love of communications and marketing with with people and fitness and and spending it with people and learning about them and their stories. And you know, you I wouldn't just go out and teach someone how to paddleboard. I go out and and have conversations with people, and that's what kept it fresh and kept it fun. Today, I get to travel across the country and work with different organizations and companies and the same thing, connect with with people. And usually after I come off stage or or whatever they they come up with me and and they share their story, and it allows them to to kind of give, gives them space to to acknowledge what, what they've been through. So that's that's incredibly rewarding, and and I get a lot of satisfaction from from being able to do that. Did I ever imagine doing it? No, I did a. I did a in my college course. I i had a class called presentations, and I wasn't that good back then. I've had to bring in a team of, you know, professionals who who specialize in this, to help build out frameworks and and help help me become better, so so that it actually lands properly. But now, if you were to tell my, you know, my presentations teacher from back then he'd probably hang Oh, my goodness, what he what's he doing?

Evan:

So now we, we touched on it a little bit in the beginning. Of course, one of the big things you've done since, since this syndrome affected your life, is you've paddle boarded across all five great lakes. Now that's That is no small feat. How did that all come together?

Mike:

Right? So I started volun. I was volunteering with jack.org and then doing different events to help them.

I built a platform and and profile, and I decided to leverage that and and bring attention to mental health. So I started working with jack.org and. And, and they were wonderful. And, and we built these, these events, and then all of a sudden, COVID hit, and, and so, you know, no events anymore. So we just so I thought about it, and I thought, well, we could still do an event. We just can't bring people together. We just can't bring people together like and I thought, well, I could try to cross. You know, many years ago, Marilyn bells swam across Lake Ontario and in in the 60s and and, and she inspired, she inspired so many swimmers to this day to go from New York State to Toronto and to do that swim. And I thought, well, we can try that on a paddle board. I think the I, you know, I'm back on the board now, and we could train and build this campaign. And so we did and, and ultimately what happened was we got halfway across, and it was called for, for weather and and we raised a lot of money, and we raised a lot of awareness, and but we didn't make it. And, and so I kind of had to go away and and lick my wounds and, and when I came, I had meetings behind the scenes with people and, and I said, you know, how, how far did we go? And they said, You did. You did 76 kilometers. And then I started looking at Vicky Keith's crossings from the Great Lakes, and I realized that her longest crossing was 74 kilometers, and that was the crossing of Lake Huron and and I thought, well, we we, we just went the wrong way. Most people go across, like Ontario, a much shorter route, and we did the long route, and it got camp like the weather, the weather kibosh did so. So we planned this, and then I kind of announced it. And I think everybody was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, you didn't make it across one. So there you're going to do five. And, but no, we designed it so that we were going to do the shortest first, and that was Lake Erie. And we were just going to build them up over a series of months and, and we developed, ultimately, developed this kind of three and a half month campaign around crossing lakes Erie Huron, Superior, Lake Michigan, and finally, Lake Ontario into my hometown.