Name: Tom Green on Being Grateful After Recovering from 3rd Degree Burns
Uploaded: 2024-02-24T19:07:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Green on Being Grateful After Recovering from 3rd Degree Burns' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-24. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Green on Being Grateful After Recovering from 3rd Degree Burns' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-02-24. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan experience and the reason it's taken me so long is I had a fucked
up thing that happened after I moved to the farm basically immediately after I
moved to the farm and everything was going great I was I had a major injury
that I told you about again to get into too much detail about it but I had a
major injury in Costa Rica I would I went down there for a vacation and there
was this you know a big bonfire on the beach and everyone was having fun I went
to bed in the hotel I wake up I decide to go back to the bonfire a few hours
later
it's like 2:00 in the morning at this point the fire has gotten a lot smaller I
pick up a piece of driftwood off this beach in this remote beach right I go up
to throw the driftwood on the fire and the reason the fire had gotten smaller
is
the people that had been at the fire put out the fire by burying it in sand and
they buried this huge bonfire that was about the size of this room in sand and
so now there was just a little fire with sand covering hot coals about four
feet
leading up to it and I'm walking up to the thing you know barefoot right in in
in you
know in in a you know in bathing suit and the t-shirt with a piece of driftwood
and my
foot goes into the sand into these hot coals immediate realization I fall back
so if I'd
fallen forward I mean my face would be burnt I ended up immediately realizing
what had happened
third-degree burns on both feet the top and bottom of my right foot and
strangely the top of my left foot
not the bottom thankfully and the nerves were completely burned off my feet so
after the initial
shock of it I wasn't in pain which was the weirdest thing and I looked down and
there's a couple people
came to my sort of assistance and we're putting water on it not feeling
anything you know I'll get graphic
because it's crazy but the skin is just falling off my feet oh my god I get
help back to my room
I'm not wanting this to be you know it's the first day I got there this really
ruined my vacation you
know I'm not feeling pain because the burns the nerves are gone so I'm
literally like trying to
clean it up with like some nail clippers chopping the little bit of burnt flesh
off and do you have
photos I do yeah of this yeah like when it looked like that not online so no on
your phone I have not
even I need to see I need to see I haven't it sounds insane I haven't even um
talked about it online I
didn't this first I've talked about it online yeah I never knew that you were I
didn't I didn't want
to talk about it I just didn't I
it was crazy I ended up spending two weeks in the hospital in Costa Rica and
then was medevaced on an air
ambulance with Charlie whoa Charlie you were there for the whole ride yeah with
Charlie yeah and um
the nurses take Charlie to go potty so I had some friends who came down who
were coming down anyways
and they they took Charlie oh Charlie they looked after Charlie for two weeks
while I so I got I got
driven to the San Jose hospital hi Charlie what's up yeah and she was she was
worried she's adorable man
she's such a sweet dog yeah and I know the people that are seeing her out now
like oh she's kind of
freaked out but normally she's not freaked out at all oh yeah yeah she's super
sweet she runs up to
everybody and wagging her tail yeah super friendly it's last yeah so anyways I
got to this hospital the
there's a surgeon from Colombia who worked there it's a great hospital
thankfully came out he said looked at
my foot said we're taking you in immediately into surgery oh my god and they
did skin grafts off my leg
and they took skin grafts like the size of a football off my right leg and stapled
60 staples to staple the
skin into my foot and uh then I come up out of surgery and the doctor says to
me uh which I think he was
trying to make me feel better but he said well the good news is you'll probably
be able to live a normal
life so he says to me it's the first thing he says to me oh my god and I'm you
know I can't move I had
uh morphine going into my back uh couldn't feel anything below my waist I
thought I was paralyzed they
told me I would be you wouldn't be able to feel anything below my waist while
this while I came out of
it and then I'd spend two weeks in the hospital bed and uh I was not able to
get out of the hospital bed
for two weeks um this is debatably too much information but it's interesting
you get you get
very constipated from all the medicine that's going into you and you end up not
being able to you know
go to the bathroom for about a week but then you ultimately have to go and you
can't get out of bed
because your foot has to remain elevated oh boy so this is where you drop a log
in a bucket you got
to drop a log in a diaper oh jesus and someone's got to clean your butts and
then these costa rican
nurses come in oh and clean your butt oh and it was just a really interesting
uh moment of uh clarity
for me where you realize you're humbled as a human being and you realize oh
this is this is i've lost all
ability to look after myself and you just kind of end up having to just kind of
go with it and
it was uh you know to my honest with i still think about that sometimes it wasn't
the worst thing in
the world no i'm just kidding but uh you know the the the uh they were very
nice the nurses were very
nice very sweet of them to take care of you like that and so you can't put any
weight on your foot
because the bottom of your foot is that skin graft as well or just the top uh
for for for the so then for
the next uh yeah exactly and it was very delicate the skin graft for the first
no was the bottom skin
grafted as well yeah yeah yeah really all around very very the bottom of your
foot like the sole
of your foot was skin grafted that's crazy because i would think like how do
they skin graft that right
does your footprint come back in the same way the ridges the dermal ridges yeah
but it's not perfect
though it's interesting the it was a world war ii doctor who invented the way
of taking these skin grafts
actually they did it for burn victims in in the war and they invented a some
really i don't know the
word for it but some tool that actually takes a micro thin layer of skin uh so
micro i don't really
have a scar on my leg anymore so wow it's amazing it's a very it's almost like
a paper less than paper
thin layers of skin they take them off the strips like this and then they
staple it into your foot
to hold it on there and um and then uh that's left on there for about i think
it was just about two
weeks actually and then at the end of the two weeks in costa rica they were
they i had to go
under three general anesthetic surgeries in costa rica in a central american
hospital by myself by the
way i uh i uh my mom and was i wanted to fly down my dad wanted to fly down i
was like no you know what
i'm just sitting here like you know half out of it you know so just i'll just
so i just spent two
weeks in there and they'd go there's a second surgery where they go in and they
uh checked it
they had to go in and check it and so i had to go under general just to like
take the bandages off
because it's painful and then the third general one was to go in and take the
staples out and um
and then medevac back to toronto to sunny brook burn center sunny brook
hospital burn center
where i spent another 10 days and then for the next essentially six months joe
i was i would have to go
to a doctor uh three times a week to have my bandages changed because it's like
you know oozing and six months yeah yeah it was about three times a week for
the first two months
and then it was like twice a week and then it was once a week and uh and they're
also monitoring
it for infection right because if you get an infection uh then they have to amputate
your foot
so it's basically six months of me just worried about i'm losing my foot you
know you're saying
am i gonna have am i gonna have like that one testicle and one foot is this
what's going on
with me so so they didn't uh they didn't have to amputate my foot fortunately
uh but it was
pretty pretty pretty scary holy shit dude and uh anyways uh and then you know
and then it was kind
of like limping for the next year and then now i'm kind of still a little wobbly
but it's it's it's
pretty good i'm i'm uh i'm just gonna i actually found some photos of this and
and pulled them up
because i thought you might ask when i told you about this of course now the
thing about this is
what's crazy is this is like
this is actually this is like actually when it had healed so i mean that's that
that's after it
healed this this is this is months months this is maybe two months after uh i
was back in canada at
this point wow i have some better ones sir um you know here's uh horrible here's
that's let's see
here's you know this is sort of healing up healing up this that's my mom my mom
at the thing healing
up at the hospital but uh yeah it's uh damn son you got fucked up yeah yeah but
uh it's uh you know
it could have been worse right it could have been worse so yeah you're alive
you're here could have
been worse and you get this you get this sense of uh almost it's almost like a
sense of gratitude you
get afterwards because you're like i'm alive i'm here i still got my foot and
say it's so strange how
that happens because it's happened to me twice now in my life because i had
testicular cancer when i was
when i was on mtv and i that's why i stopped the show and i'd go to the
hospital that room i took my
right testicle i still got the left one everything's fine um but uh and you go
you go from there's this
there's a moment where you're like in both occasions this moment where you're
sort of traumatized by
what's happening and angry about it and then it sort of almost instantly flips
it must be some sort of
human self-preservation kind of thing that's built into our way our minds work
where you're now grateful that it's not worse you know like you know oh it's
healing i still have my foot uh this is a learning experience you know i'm not
i'm not going to do
that again do you think that's wired into people i think the opposite i think
that's a learned skill
i think that's something that you you recognize as an intelligent person like
you know what i'm
i should be thankful for what i have all the time and we all should it's really
hard to be
you get so accustomed to the way your life is that you you can't imagine if you
were like severely
impaired if something horrible happened it's like after i had cancer it
sometimes it comes into my mind
like a like a little bit of a light bulb or a wave like i'll think to myself
you know if i'm having a
slightly bad day you know i mean and i'll be like like i don't for whatever
reason happens just
sometimes when i'm out doing normal errands and i'm having a slightly bad day
going to the gas station
pumping gas or something and then i think to myself oh man at least i'm not in
the hospital right now
dealing with some crazy you know existential life and death thing you know and
so yeah maybe it is a
learned thing because of what i've been through with that because the same
thing happened after i burned my
foot you know as soon as it's sort of as soon as i'm you're quickly start of
you go from i can't
believe this has happened i'm angry i just ruined my vacation i might lose my
foot this is horrible too
okay how are we going to get better how are we going to make sure that i do
everything to change the
bandages on time and your whole your whole life changes right you know i'm not
i'm not thinking about
all the things that i'm normally stressed about whether it's work or
relationships or whatever
things that are just normal standard things that you're pissed off about and
all of a sudden you're
just completely not even thinking about that anymore i'm just thinking about
making sure i don't get an
infection on my foot and you're sort of treating it like a military operation
trying to save your foot
or trying to you know make sure that you you know make the right choices in
your cancer treatment and
um and then when you come out of it it's true it's possibly a learned thing you
come out of it and you
realize oh all that that i'm normally worried about doesn't matter compared to
what what i just went
through and then you can kind of maybe learn from that and you know then you as
time passes you slip
back into the same routine you start stressing out about the same things again
but then every once in a
a while it pops into your head and go at least i'm not dealing with the foot's
healed and i'm yeah
outside right now and everything's good i'm walking i'm talking i'm alive so
gratitude i'm

Tom Green on Being Grateful After Recovering from 3rd Degree Burns

The Joe Rogan experience and the reason it's taken me so long is I had a fucked
up thing that happened after I moved to the farm basically immediately after I
moved to the farm and everything was going great I was I had a major injury
that I told you about again to get into too much detail about it but I had a
major injury in Costa Rica I would I went down there for a vacation and there
was this you know a big bonfire on the beach and everyone was having fun I went
to bed in the hotel I wake up I decide to go back to the bonfire a few hours
later
it's like 2:00 in the morning at this point the fire has gotten a lot smaller I
pick up a piece of driftwood off this beach in this remote beach right I go up
to throw the driftwood on the fire and the reason the fire had gotten smaller
is
the people that had been at the fire put out the fire by burying it in sand and
they buried this huge bonfire that was about the size of this room in sand and
so now there was just a little fire with sand covering hot coals about four
feet
leading up to it and I'm walking up to the thing you know barefoot right in in
in you
know in in a you know in bathing suit and the t-shirt with a piece of driftwood
and my
foot goes into the sand into these hot coals immediate realization I fall back
so if I'd
fallen forward I mean my face would be burnt I ended up immediately realizing
what had happened
third-degree burns on both feet the top and bottom of my right foot and
strangely the top of my left foot
not the bottom thankfully and the nerves were completely burned off my feet so
after the initial
shock of it I wasn't in pain which was the weirdest thing and I looked down and
there's a couple people
came to my sort of assistance and we're putting water on it not feeling
anything you know I'll get graphic
because it's crazy but the skin is just falling off my feet oh my god I get
help back to my room
I'm not wanting this to be you know it's the first day I got there this really
ruined my vacation you
know I'm not feeling pain because the burns the nerves are gone so I'm
literally like trying to
clean it up with like some nail clippers chopping the little bit of burnt flesh
off and do you have
photos I do yeah of this yeah like when it looked like that not online so no on
your phone I have not
even I need to see I need to see I haven't it sounds insane I haven't even um
talked about it online I
didn't this first I've talked about it online yeah I never knew that you were I
didn't I didn't want
to talk about it I just didn't I
it was crazy I ended up spending two weeks in the hospital in Costa Rica and
then was medevaced on an air
ambulance with Charlie whoa Charlie you were there for the whole ride yeah with
Charlie yeah and um
the nurses take Charlie to go potty so I had some friends who came down who
were coming down anyways
and they they took Charlie oh Charlie they looked after Charlie for two weeks
while I so I got I got
driven to the San Jose hospital hi Charlie what's up yeah and she was she was
worried she's adorable man
she's such a sweet dog yeah and I know the people that are seeing her out now
like oh she's kind of
freaked out but normally she's not freaked out at all oh yeah yeah she's super
sweet she runs up to
everybody and wagging her tail yeah super friendly it's last yeah so anyways I
got to this hospital the
there's a surgeon from Colombia who worked there it's a great hospital
thankfully came out he said looked at
my foot said we're taking you in immediately into surgery oh my god and they
did skin grafts off my leg
and they took skin grafts like the size of a football off my right leg and stapled
60 staples to staple the
skin into my foot and uh then I come up out of surgery and the doctor says to
me uh which I think he was
trying to make me feel better but he said well the good news is you'll probably
be able to live a normal
life so he says to me it's the first thing he says to me oh my god and I'm you
know I can't move I had
uh morphine going into my back uh couldn't feel anything below my waist I
thought I was paralyzed they
told me I would be you wouldn't be able to feel anything below my waist while
this while I came out of
it and then I'd spend two weeks in the hospital bed and uh I was not able to
get out of the hospital bed
for two weeks um this is debatably too much information but it's interesting
you get you get
very constipated from all the medicine that's going into you and you end up not
being able to you know
go to the bathroom for about a week but then you ultimately have to go and you
can't get out of bed
because your foot has to remain elevated oh boy so this is where you drop a log
in a bucket you got
to drop a log in a diaper oh jesus and someone's got to clean your butts and
then these costa rican
nurses come in oh and clean your butt oh and it was just a really interesting
uh moment of uh clarity
for me where you realize you're humbled as a human being and you realize oh
this is this is i've lost all
ability to look after myself and you just kind of end up having to just kind of
go with it and
it was uh you know to my honest with i still think about that sometimes it wasn't
the worst thing in
the world no i'm just kidding but uh you know the the the uh they were very
nice the nurses were very
nice very sweet of them to take care of you like that and so you can't put any
weight on your foot
because the bottom of your foot is that skin graft as well or just the top uh
for for for the so then for
the next uh yeah exactly and it was very delicate the skin graft for the first
no was the bottom skin
grafted as well yeah yeah yeah really all around very very the bottom of your
foot like the sole
of your foot was skin grafted that's crazy because i would think like how do
they skin graft that right
does your footprint come back in the same way the ridges the dermal ridges yeah
but it's not perfect
though it's interesting the it was a world war ii doctor who invented the way
of taking these skin grafts
actually they did it for burn victims in in the war and they invented a some
really i don't know the
word for it but some tool that actually takes a micro thin layer of skin uh so
micro i don't really
have a scar on my leg anymore so wow it's amazing it's a very it's almost like
a paper less than paper
thin layers of skin they take them off the strips like this and then they
staple it into your foot
to hold it on there and um and then uh that's left on there for about i think
it was just about two
weeks actually and then at the end of the two weeks in costa rica they were
they i had to go
under three general anesthetic surgeries in costa rica in a central american
hospital by myself by the
way i uh i uh my mom and was i wanted to fly down my dad wanted to fly down i
was like no you know what
i'm just sitting here like you know half out of it you know so just i'll just
so i just spent two
weeks in there and they'd go there's a second surgery where they go in and they
uh checked it
they had to go in and check it and so i had to go under general just to like
take the bandages off
because it's painful and then the third general one was to go in and take the
staples out and um
and then medevac back to toronto to sunny brook burn center sunny brook
hospital burn center
where i spent another 10 days and then for the next essentially six months joe
i was i would have to go
to a doctor uh three times a week to have my bandages changed because it's like
you know oozing and six months yeah yeah it was about three times a week for
the first two months
and then it was like twice a week and then it was once a week and uh and they're
also monitoring
it for infection right because if you get an infection uh then they have to amputate
your foot
so it's basically six months of me just worried about i'm losing my foot you
know you're saying
am i gonna have am i gonna have like that one testicle and one foot is this
what's going on
with me so so they didn't uh they didn't have to amputate my foot fortunately
uh but it was
pretty pretty pretty scary holy shit dude and uh anyways uh and then you know
and then it was kind
of like limping for the next year and then now i'm kind of still a little wobbly
but it's it's it's
pretty good i'm i'm uh i'm just gonna i actually found some photos of this and
and pulled them up
because i thought you might ask when i told you about this of course now the
thing about this is
what's crazy is this is like
this is actually this is like actually when it had healed so i mean that's that
that's after it
healed this this is this is months months this is maybe two months after uh i
was back in canada at
this point wow i have some better ones sir um you know here's uh horrible here's
that's let's see
here's you know this is sort of healing up healing up this that's my mom my mom
at the thing healing
up at the hospital but uh yeah it's uh damn son you got fucked up yeah yeah but
uh it's uh you know
it could have been worse right it could have been worse so yeah you're alive
you're here could have
been worse and you get this you get this sense of uh almost it's almost like a
sense of gratitude you
get afterwards because you're like i'm alive i'm here i still got my foot and
say it's so strange how
that happens because it's happened to me twice now in my life because i had
testicular cancer when i was
when i was on mtv and i that's why i stopped the show and i'd go to the
hospital that room i took my
right testicle i still got the left one everything's fine um but uh and you go
you go from there's this
there's a moment where you're like in both occasions this moment where you're
sort of traumatized by
what's happening and angry about it and then it sort of almost instantly flips
it must be some sort of
human self-preservation kind of thing that's built into our way our minds work
where you're now grateful that it's not worse you know like you know oh it's
healing i still have my foot uh this is a learning experience you know i'm not
i'm not going to do
that again do you think that's wired into people i think the opposite i think
that's a learned skill
i think that's something that you you recognize as an intelligent person like
you know what i'm
i should be thankful for what i have all the time and we all should it's really
hard to be
you get so accustomed to the way your life is that you you can't imagine if you
were like severely
impaired if something horrible happened it's like after i had cancer it
sometimes it comes into my mind
like a like a little bit of a light bulb or a wave like i'll think to myself
you know if i'm having a
slightly bad day you know i mean and i'll be like like i don't for whatever
reason happens just
sometimes when i'm out doing normal errands and i'm having a slightly bad day
going to the gas station
pumping gas or something and then i think to myself oh man at least i'm not in
the hospital right now
dealing with some crazy you know existential life and death thing you know and
so yeah maybe it is a
learned thing because of what i've been through with that because the same
thing happened after i burned my
foot you know as soon as it's sort of as soon as i'm you're quickly start of
you go from i can't
believe this has happened i'm angry i just ruined my vacation i might lose my
foot this is horrible too
okay how are we going to get better how are we going to make sure that i do
everything to change the
bandages on time and your whole your whole life changes right you know i'm not
i'm not thinking about
all the things that i'm normally stressed about whether it's work or
relationships or whatever
things that are just normal standard things that you're pissed off about and
all of a sudden you're
just completely not even thinking about that anymore i'm just thinking about
making sure i don't get an
infection on my foot and you're sort of treating it like a military operation
trying to save your foot
or trying to you know make sure that you you