EP 637: Honoring Veterans: Brian Clearwater’s Journey and His Search for a Kidney Donor

What happens when a veteran who has spent much of his life serving others finds himself in need of help?

In this Veterans Day special, Dr. Jannine Krause sits down with her friend and patient, Brian Clearwater, an Army veteran living with a rare condition that causes cysts throughout his kidneys and liver. After spending the last year and a half on dialysis, Brian is now searching for a living kidney donor through the Veterans DOVE program.

Brian shares his remarkable military experiences, including witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, his transition from military to civilian life, and the health challenges that brought him to this point. His story is one of resilience, perspective, and the importance of asking for help when you need it.

Most importantly, this conversation is an opportunity to help Brian find a donor and spread awareness about living kidney donation for veterans.

A Special Request: Help Brian Find a Living Kidney Donor

Brian is currently seeking a living kidney donor through the Veterans DOVE program.

You don’t have to be a veteran to help. If you’re interested in learning more about living kidney donation, checking whether you could be a match, or helping spread the word, visit:

Brian Clearwater

Even if you’re not a match for Brian, you may be able to help someone else through the paired donor program.

Please share Brian’s story with your friends, family, and community. Your share could help connect him with someone who can give him another chance at life.

Resources Mentioned

• Veterans DOVE Program: https://dovetransplant.org/brian-clearwater
• High Country Lodge – Breckenridge, Colorado: https://ahighcountrylodge.com
• Chemical Free Body: https://chemicalfreebody.com/thehealthfix
• Elonga HRV Device: https://elonga.com/en-us/?partner=DrJannineKrause

Looking for a winter escape in the mountains? High Country Lodge offers beautiful spaces for a getaway, wellness experiences, cooking classes, and the opportunity to connect with Dr. J.

Explore private wellness retreats: https://www.ahighcountrylodge.com/private-wellness-retreats/

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• Want more of Jannine’s unfiltered thoughts, wellness insights, practical tools, and deeper dives into health and aging?

Visit her Substack, Woman Versus Aging, and subscribe for free to stay connected and explore more ways to take back your health.

https://docjkrause.substack.com

• Check out Dr. Krause’s Website for more resources and subscribe for more conversations on functional medicine, longevity, brain health, hormones, nutrition, and natural strategies to optimize your health.

Be sure to Like, Subscribe, and Share this episode with anyone looking to live pain free for life!

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Podcast Transcript

Jannine Krause (00:00.47)
We’ll that. Now we’re good. All right. So

Kicking. We’re live and kicking right now, so you know, I think it looks good. So yeah, we’ll just call us in. So I’m like usually I do like an extra intro later. So we’ll come in right now and I’ll be like, Brian Clearwater, welcome to the House Fix Podcast. Well, thanks for having me, Dr. Janine. I appreciate it. Well it’s really fun to have a friend and a patient on because this guy here, we are gonna be talking all about some fun things that well he and I talk about all the time while I’m torturing him with the the bodywork. Indeed. And I still come back.

For more. You know, sometimes it’s just just works that way. So, of course, Brian’s here because we need to help this guy get a kidney. And of course, we time this for Veterans Day because Brian is a veteran from the army, and he’s got kind of a fun story because his dad was a drill sergeant. And you know, most most folks, I don’t even know if I’ve ever met someone who’s whose dad was a drill sergeant. So, what was it? What like, did you when you were a kid, were you like the last thing you wanted to do was be

the army or was it like no I really like this? No I I was I was I was a hundred percent boy. I mean we we we didn’t have video games we had we’d go play army if we weren’t playing baseball or football or something like that. we played army. dad definitely taught me the tricks of the trade along the way and

I won’t say that it necessarily corrected my behavior properly, but it certainly realigned my behavior in a pattern that would become useful to me later on in life. I see. I love my dad a lot and we used to laugh about, you know, at the end of it and he said it was

Jannine Krause (01:44.322)
For him, it was difficult to maintain the balance. Like who’s who, what’s what, how do you treat certain people? Because you can’t treat everybody like you’re a drill sergeant twenty four seven in your lives. Y you just can’t do it. You can’t do it. So Dad, wherever you are, thank you. You’ve done well. And how long has you been gone now?

Years. wow. So that’s fresh though. It still is, yeah. And so your kids got to meet him. yeah. And did he drill sergeant them even though he was saying he was not going to, or was he like the biggest softy in the world? he was grandpa. Nice. Nah, he yeah, he he wasn’t like that. He was he was a very loving, caring, gentle man who was a product of his environment. Nice, you know, having grown up.

Jannine Krause (02:43.918)
sort of changed that whole generation and their perspective on things. And so, you know, and then blowing into the sixties and seventies, and then subsequently having children. It was just an interesting segue for him in his life being at that book party. Now I find myself in that same position. also being a grandfather to a beautiful eight year old little girl. It’s about to turn nine, like this week, I think. my show. Wow.

Hey Maul. She’s she’s gonna be like in her twenties before you know it. my god. Or is she nine going on twenty? She’s eight going on nine. And we’re gonna leave it at that. No, she’s she’s she’s amazing.

She’s amazing. She’ll be here in a couple of weeks. Nice, nice. And your kiddos. Now your kids, did you like when you were raising them, did you keep in mind like I can’t do drill sergeant on Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know how well I succeeded at that, but I I i I certainly tried. I have three wonderful, well adjusted grown children who are great members of society. I guess that’s all you can ask for is a parent.

Genuinely good people, thank God. The their mother takes credit for that. I would absolutely say. But I was there to keep in line and at the same time I was also I was there to pick up. You know.

I was their coach at everything. Whenever they needed a volunteer coach, there I was sitting in the corner with my hand in the air. And so I had to throttle it back with other people’s kids. Because then I realized just how strict I was with my own kids when I watched other people in that environment. I’m like, they’re a little too loose and I’m a little too hard. Let’s meet in the middle. So

Jannine Krause (04:33.708)
I have great kids. And they still talk to you and they come and hang out with you. And that’s that’s the important thing. They come and hang out with us. So that that’s every parent’s wish. You know, can you get past that stage and then you can be friends. And that’s awesome. And we have that. We’re very fortunate. So yeah.

No. It’s beautiful. I you know, I hear obviously I see a lot of patients over the years. Some people have some really crappy relationships with their families, so it’s really good to hear that. Plus with the military situation, you know, I have experience being in Washington a lot and seeing, you know, my Tacoma families who are military families, and sometimes things are hard to keep together. Yeah. Now, what part of having kids and in life and your trajectory with the military? How how did it play out? Did you have kids while you’re still in? Well, you’re how’d that work out? It it’s kind of interesting because when I first got off.

active duty in nineteen ninety. I stayed in the reserves and so and that’s when the kids start coming. Okay. By the time we were heading to child

Number three, I kept having to change units because we were moving state to state because of my occup my full-time occupation. And that’s very difficult to do. if you’re giving up one weekend a month, that’s a big deal to begin with while you’re holding down a big civilian job. And in my case, I was also a full-time university student. Wow. So I’m trying to be a husband, trying to be a father, trying to be a student, trying to be a soldier, trying to be an employee, and who

It’s a lot of it was a blur. But really worth it because now where I sit in this quest for a kidney for transplant, all the all that time that I spent in the military is really paying off. So it’s

Jannine Krause (06:29.558)
Yeah, it’s a challenge. I don’t think my kids in any way suffered for that. If anything they got kind of a broader view of things. They l all of them love to travel. They don’t even think twice about going around the world. And if if that’s the only thing we taught them, fine, so be it. But th that’s just a small part of the big package of what they are. And they’re they’re unique in their own ways too. So

That’s always good. She’s pretty cool. I got two engineers and my little girl chases butterflies and now literally she works for the Department of Natural Resources. She’s I don’t even know what her title

Jannine Krause (07:10.69)
Sounds like a fun gig. She has a blas. They don’t pay a lot, but it’s a pretty good pretty good gig. So and the other two underachievers are engineers. But, you know, they’re boys.

They really haven’t changed that much. my goodness. Not true.

man, they’ve they’ve grown up from the stories you’ve told me that we cannot tell on the podcast because they will be very embarrassed. No. Very embarrassed. That’s their story to tell. Yep. We’ll let them we’ll let them share that. Absolutely. Now, okay, let’s move back a little bit into military service. And obviously things are classified, but you have told me some things that you experienced like when the Berlin Wall came down. So we’re gonna talk about that because I you know, I remember it as a kid because I was maybe like eleven or so, but being there, holy cow. Tell us a little bit about

Like leading up to that and and being there for that. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. my primary role when I first deployed overseas was with Persian two nuclear missiles. It was a mobile nuclear missile system that was put in to hold the Soviets in check because they had they had ten times more ways to kill us than we had to kill them.

So of course we need more ways to kill each other, right? But we had to do it in such a way where we could move our missiles anywhere we wanted to, all over Europe. We would hide them and they didn’t know where we were gonna be. So that was a really cool job. So at the age of eighteen, I was I was working on intermediate range nuclear missiles, putting them on mobile trucks and waiting to shoot them in Moscow.

Jannine Krause (08:56.758)
No tension, no pressure there. what’s hard. That was that was great fun. And then so I it it was fun because when we worked, we worked really hard. And we were on downtime, we downtimed really hard. So and we got to do it in Europe. So that that was a wonderful experience. Things began to work.

Reagan and Gorbachev had started having conversations. The first summit in Iceland yielded nothing. no agreements other than at the last minute they decided, let’s do this again. Because right now you’re talking about the United States and the Soviet Union having to sit down and discuss how what do we do? How do we move forward? We’re at the brink of war.

When that that was happening. Wow. It could have gone at any given moment. And that’s kind of the way we lived. Our life was the unit that I was in initially. we stood at the ready turnkey. I that’s a little scary. That comes up every now and again, but that’s a whole different podcast. So as as as time moves on and and relations begin to thaw,

you started to get this feeling because communist countries in the Eastern Bloc, the Warsaw Pact, where people were starting to get really agitated. They were learning about how life was in the West versus how they were living. And before you know it, without going into great historical detail, the dam broke one day, November ninth, nineteen eighty nine.

I was in Paris actually with a bunch of friends. We had decided that we because at that point I was on an operational team that we would it it was our downtime. And I said, guys, come on, let’s get that guy. Let’s let’s go to Best or let’s go do Veterans Day, which is called Armistices Day in France. Let’s go to Paris and do Armistices Day. It’s still a huge party, let’s go.

Jannine Krause (11:03.148)
So got a bunch of dudes. We all hopped in my car and we skirted off to Paris. So we’re living life like Vikings in Paris, having a great time. And we’re sitting in a bar and I look up on TV and I see somebody.

I d I start seeing people running through what I know it’s it’s called Checkpoint Charlie, which is right at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. It’s it’s it’s the central plaza. Whenever people think of the Berlin Wall, it’s that area they think of. And there are people screaming and I looked at the angle and I’m like, they’re heading west. Because I could tell I’ve been there a million times. I’m like, my God, it’s begun. So I turned to the guys and said, We gotta go.

It was about a four, three and a half, four hour trip back home. And we did it in like two. And I dropped buddy back off at base and they’re like, What are you gonna do? I’m like, Yeah. Since I’m getting out pretty soon, I some mojo I need to cash in and I called my boss and said, Here’s the deal, I’m not I’m gonna I I got some things to do. And he’s like, You didn’t talk to me, just go.

So I I quick ran home, grabbed my passport, a backpack, all my civilian clothes, because I was gonna be a college student hanging out in Berlin. I wanted nothing to do with the army. I didn’t want to be identified. I can’t be identified, really. I don’t want them knowing who I am. Right. So I hopped the next flight out of Stuttgart to Berlin on on my own dime and got to Berlin and said

Let’s let this party. Let’s get rolling. So we immediately beat made a beeline for the coup dam, the Kursterdam area of Berlin. It’s where all that happened. And it was already on. Berlin used to live under the auspice, under the motto of eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow may not come. It’s a very common phrase in Berlin because they were literally surrounded by the Soviet army.

Jannine Krause (13:09.994)
Ever since World War II. They have lived lock locked in the middle of their, you know, and all of a sudden that began to change. So the tempo of the partying in Berlin actually went double what it was in before it was crazy. When you doubled it, it was insane. I mean, so yeah. Ran to a hardware store, bought a sledgehammer, a chisel, grabbed a cab and said, take me to a part of the wall.

where there’s not a lot of people and he’s looking at me like, I don’t know where that is. I said, take me to one of the neighborhoods that the wall is their backyard. Because I know it exists. Because West Berlin kept up its stuff. So like there were kids playing. Mm-hmm. The outside on the other side of the wall was just nothing but death and misery. So Adam dropped me off there and I said, This is how I go in.

Not amongst fanfare or anything else, so just start sledgehammering, chiseling and met a few people along the way and we all got down to town and we made a big enough hole to get through it. It was amazing. It was like

Remember in in the movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy’s in Kansas, everything’s black and white. She gets whirlwinded into a tornado and everything lands in color. Well, it was like the reverse. The moment I went through that wall, it’s like everything went black and white. And you could just feel how awful things were over there. There’s about a forty, forty meter,

Entrapment zone it was all sand that we’d always heard contained anti-personnel mines in this sand so nobody can go in or out or anything else. And I remember we had one of the one of the take a step back. I loaded my backpack full of tradables because I had a feeling if I got to the other side I had some currency that would work. Money’s not gonna work. But a bot a bottle of good gin, maybe a cassette tape.

Jannine Krause (15:18.49)
A C D C’s album or whatever. Whatever was hot for that time. Right. Cigarettes, alcohol, music. Soldiers are soldiers all over the world. We’re willing to make a deal. So I go through the hole and I’m like, I didn’t come this far just to give up on this minefield that it is and said to hell with it. And just head down, ran through it.

And right as I got to almost the end of that, I see a guy on a motorcycle. like a patrol guy and there’s guard towers all over the place. Guy on a motorcycle comes screaming up because he’s like cause well, they’re already dealing with chaos. Right. And now here’s some nut job in the middle of nowhere. my god. He comes screaming up at his motorcycle. He’s got got his weapon drawn on me and I drop my backpack. And fortunately I speak German.

And you know, I said, Hey, look man, I don’t mean any harm. I’m just a student. And I got a little drunk and I got crazy and this is what happened. He does one of these, he looks around, he says, What do you have? I said, Yes. You’re like, score, I know what to do here. I got this. So we went up in a guard tower. He relieved the guard of his duty and said, you know, you need to he barked at him like you need to go back to the barracks and blah blah blah. And he and I went up in the guard tower.

And cranked open a bottle of gin. And at the time, Paul McCartney’s greatest hits had just come out. And on that song was or on that particular album, I’m gonna try to keep it together, it was the song Pipes of Peace. And I’ll never forget there was the two of us sitting in there just pounding a giant bottle of tangri gin, listening to that song, staring at each other like, what is happening?

How did this happen? So long story short, we trade uniforms, because I buried in my backpack my military uniform in the hope that I’d be. So we both got, you know, we he took his uniform off, I gave him mine, we exchanged some things, we both stumbled our way out of there, and I said, Hey, which way do I go to it’s they call it Potsdamber Plots on the east side by the

Jannine Krause (17:46.36)
Brandenburg Gate. Okay. And he told me how, you know, how far it is and everything else. I’m like, I’m gonna go back on my side of the wall to go there because I really don’t wanna have to explain this every six hundred meters. Right. And hope that everybody’s as cool as you are. So Gehrig and I said said our goodbyes and I wished him luck and I, you know, said, hey

When all this is said and done, let’s find a way to get in contact and we did a couple years later. we don’t stay in touch now. But yeah, so that was amazing. And then I spent the rest of the time when I was there between partying and just going wild, hammering down the wall and taking chunks of it home with me. And so when I got on my flight to go back, I ha I had to go purchase more luggage ’cause I had all these

Boulders of rocks in there. And this was I got there at the perfect time because they had quickly passed an antiquities law. Germany realized that they’re not careful, the whole world’s gonna steal this wall. Right, right. And it’ll be gone forever. And so I got out of there with everything I had. So I had East German border guard uniforms, I had Berlin Wall, I had

Photographs like crazy. I had barbed wire, I had a machine gun pin, I had know, I just had all kinds of cool stuff. And so next thing I know I wake up and I’m fifty-eight years old and I’m doing a podcast. And hanging out with me. It was all a blur. my goodness.

But how much fun though. How much fun. You all your stories I’m like, my gosh. All new things. Yeah, and you know, in the interim on that prior to that when things began to thaw with the Soviets

Jannine Krause (19:43.694)
I had the opportunity to do a lot of travel to a lot of really cool places. So, you know, I’m pretty grateful for that time period. It it was crazy at times, don’t get me wrong. It it it wasn’t all fun and games. Not even close. But there was enough fun to be had that I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

And even to this day, you know, I know a lot of people will talk about their military experience of having PTSD and different things and and you have you know, been telling me about seeing, you know, your therapists and everything, but still you wouldn’t trade it. Absolutely not. I would I would change some things if I could, but I can’t. And I was able to bury those away for a long time.

And I don’t know, something changes in the human brain. There I just started thinking about it more and more and more and I realized, you know, I tell guys all the time, if you need help, get help. Yeah. Well, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, You need to get help. And so I’m going down that path. Good deal. Good deal. And we’ve been doing body work. Absolutely. And and you’ve you’ve of course, you know, with with me in the kidney.

I think the big thing to kind of talk about here so folks get a little background is like when did you start feeling sick and what kind of things did did you start noticing and like how long ago was the diagnosis? Well, I I had gone to see my nephrologist or no. I was diagnosed with diabetes, that’s how it went down. And then

I as I was seeing with the kidney doctor, he comes in the room and he says, So I you know, how how long have you known about these cysts on your kidney? And I said, What are you talking about? And he said, Well long story short, I I found a new doctor. His his approach sucked. And so I went to somebody else and said, Talk to me. This is what this guy said. Run me through the ringer and

Jannine Krause (21:54.22)
ran me through the ring and they said, you need a liver and a kidney. Mm-hmm. I said, uh-oh, that does not sound good. So I lived on that list for the last year and a half up until about almost two months ago now.

Said we’re gonna let you go look for a kidney alone because my liver hasn’t gotten any better. Hasn’t gotten or it hasn’t gotten any worse. It hasn’t gotten any better, but it hasn’t gotten any worse. So they’re comfortable allowing me to do this, to ask you to please see if you can help. Yeah, see it, see if you can if you can’t help me. I certainly want you to go help somebody else.

Jannine Krause (22:35.693)
Yeah.

And of course we want folks to realize that, you know, this isn’t something, you know, Brian’s incredibly fit. He works out. We talk all about his his workouts. and he’s not pounding, you know, the junk and he’s not drinking, you know, and he was adopted by the the drill sergeant dad, so he really doesn’t have any history on family to know like is the cis thing something that was inherited. The what little I do know about my

family. and I’m in touch with a few of now. It took many, many years to get get the files opened up, but

The ones that I do know, they’re all like half siblings and everything else. Nobody has anything like this. Okay. So it’s just and the medical community doesn’t fully understand why. Yeah. It just happens, which to me is not a good answer. Right. I want to know. So but there’s some things you just I maybe I’ll never have an answer. But it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, I am where I am.

And I gotta meet that fact where it is, and that is that I need a kidney. I’m on dialysis right now. I have been for the last year and a half. I do what’s a form of dialysis called peritoneal dialysis where I have a a chest tube. There’s a little tube there, we have to always move it when we do I’d pull it up, but we’re not gonna do that. where six hours a night while I sleep, it the a a machine may

Jannine Krause (24:14.294)
It’s a dialysis solution is flushed throughout my body to pull all the toxins out. So that happens every night. which is awesome because most people in who believe that dialysis means going to some place where they they suck all your blood out, someone there cleans your blood and then they put it back in you. This is a game changer. Yeah. Because peritoneal dialysis allows for freedom. Now it’s not for everybody. You y

You need to qualify to be able to do this and there’s a number long list of factors. And fortunately for me, I came into this with a lot of those things already dealt with. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t use drugs, I’m pretty active, go to the gym,

So I had all those things already in place. A lot of people, when that’s hits them, it’s like a fire hose. Yeah. And you gotta try to gulp. A lot of people just turn their heads and duck. And I understand that. I’m just not built that way. I as a matter of fact, it made me fight harder. And so I’m in I’m in the middle of a fight. Mm-hmm. And I’m okay with that. If it’s gonna happen to somebody, let it happen to me because I’m built for this.

tough cookie. I’d be just need a little help. Yes. Yes. Unfortunately, he can’t manifest his own kidney in terms of out of thin air, but we definitely can can ask you guys, you know, if you know we’re looking for matches, we’re looking for you to say something to someone else, talk to your friends, talk to neighbors. There is a program that he has his own website on now. It’s the Dove program through the Veterans Administration. And so we learned that it well I had to learn what it standed for.

stood for, sorry, because we were trying to figure out the whole detail but I’m now we lost it. Where is it? We had it.

Jannine Krause (26:14.468)
donor outreach for veterans corpse, but I think we I think we mean it’s the donor outreach for veterans. That the V E I think might mean veterans. I don’t know. Or or depending on what part of the country you’re from, pronounce it veterans. Yes. Yeah. Veterans vet yeah. That’s that yeah. Is it cause is it cause I’m from Illinois? Yes. Do we have to have this conversation? Veterans. Veterans. I I heard I say roof. Roof from too. And bag and selling.

for those of you who are listening that may not be from the Midwest, fib, that is a couple swear words, but it has to do with Illinois drivers in particular. Yeah. And Brian grew up in Wisconsin. I now of course live in Wisconsin, so I’m kind of trying to go run under the radar because once you pass from the Cheddar Curtain, which is going over the highway there in Wisconsin, which you were like the

Cheddar Cheddar Defense Forces Forward is what I called my my home was a forward operating base for observational purposes to monitor fib movement anywhere towards the demarcation line, that is the cheddar curtain.

And I would report ahead so the state patrol knew to pull over every Illinois plate. Yeah. So if you’re driving an Illinois car in Wisconsin, you better watch out because like no joke, I I

I can’t admit how many times I’ve been pulled over with Illinois plates in Wisconsin, so that’s why I have Wisconsin plates. But anyway, we did we digress here. But if you are from Illinois, he’ll still take your kidney. hundred percent. 100%. I lived in Illinois for 15 years, so Yep. Yep. Right next to where I grew up, which is even more entertaining for me. Grays Lake, Illinois. I grew up in W Winter Farber. Huh, you know? Yeah. Small freaking world. What small world. Yeah. Crazy. So we’re gonna give all the details, of course, for Brian’s

Jannine Krause (28:12.182)
site Brian Clearwater, of course, we’ll give you his name again because I started it, but I better like put it back out there again so it’s it’s stuck in your head. But I want you guys to just, you know, if you know someone, you know someone that knows someone that’s like got good kidneys. Help this guy out. He’s working hard. And if if I could jump in just a little bit. A hundred percent tough. If not if not for me, do it for somebody else that’s out there.

Good Lord gave us two kidneys. We only need one. And when you’re in situation like myself where both of them are taking a nosedive, now we need

And you know, there’s the through this Dove organization, there are also I could go into great detail, but I won’t. you can do even if you’re not donating to me, you can donate to the general pool and somebody amongst the, I believe there’s roughly two thousand people enrolled in this program. maybe one of them will be able to use that. And so it’s it’s called

paired match donor or something. I I I honestly don’t know. I I’ve been learning as much as I can as fast as I can. so if if if not for me, if we’re not a match, that’s not a problem. Somebody else in line near me will be a match and you could save their lives. You could give a grandkid their grandparent back, a a kid their parents back.

You could give an individual who spent a portion of their life giving to all of us another chance. Mm-hmm. for something that they had no control over. And you know, I always tell people, I’m not speaking for myself, but veterans in general, they have done the hard stuff, so you get to laser on and do the easy stuff. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, and it doesn’t matter when or where.

Jannine Krause (30:13.246)
Every soldier, airman, marine, and sailor gives up a portion of their life to ensure that the American way of life can continue peaceably. That’s the point. Now it’s is so it’s very difficult for people in the veteran community to raise their hand and say, I need help. Mm-hmm. But that’s where I am right now.

I had to get over that. that was a psychological barrier because I don’t ask for help. I I’m not saying that’s a positive way to live your life, but it’s still quite a challenge. But I’m over that now. And if I can help somebody else, now I’ve given even more meaning and purpose to it. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean

We do live and I think a lot of people don’t realize how we live in a country that is unlike others if you’ve never been to outside of the US. I mean, if spend some time in some of the third world countries and you definitely and even, you know, Germany before that ball came down it was a whole different ball game. And I think it’s just something that a lot of folks don’t cherish right now. And I think it’s kinda sad.

Well yeah, it is. And it it’s a little disheartening sometimes. I know I used to get a little frustrated if I was on a twenty four hour shift and you know, I I was hearing about you know, friends of mine from home and everything, what they’re doing, how much fun they’re having off of college parties or they’ve gotten a job and they’re making X number of dollars per hour and I remember sitting down one it was like maybe one, two o’clock in the morning and I was at one of our

twenty four hour combat alert status bases where we kept twelve missiles at all times ready to fire. And I was in the operational control of it. So anyway, not every day was a turn the key and nuke the world day. And a lot of time to sit around and think. And so I started doing the math and was curious to see how much I make per hour. And it was dreadful. It was a dollar seventeen per hour.

Jannine Krause (32:26.798)
That’s what I was again. Then I would hear people say, well, you didn’t have to pay for the food. Like, you know, hey, are you ready for the funny part? Yes, I did. Because of my status, I was given a small stipend for food. So I literally had to pay to eat army crap on a base that I couldn’t leave and was making like half of minimum wage. Like, what am I doing?

Why did I do this? But you wouldn’t change it for the world. Absolutely not. No, absolutely not. I might tweak a thing, fewer, you know, a couple things here and there, but I wouldn’t change. And random question. Out of the MREs, did you have a favorite? Now that we’re talking about military MREs. I was the first generation of MREs.

So we didn’t have a lot of choices. If you look up MREs today, to me, it looks like you know these kids are spoiled. The food they’re getting is ridiculous. I’m sure they don’t feel that way. everything, almost everything that I got was dehydrated. Which meant you had to rehydrate them, which then meant you had to have access to water.

It didn’t have to be hot, it could be cold. And you also didn’t have to have water. You could chew a dehydrated patty beef, one each, and call that a hamburger. That was fun. Learn how to make tomato soup out of ketchup packets, you know, a little bit of water. And then you lay your your metal cup inside the hood of your vehicle while it’s warming up. You lay it right on the radiator, get it nice and warm, boom.

Yeah, tomato soup from Heinz. Or whoever made that cheap ketchup, but soldiers are notoriously good at finding ways to to survive. But MREs are yeah, they’re overrated. I’ll just tell you that right now. But but but they serve a purpose. It’s it’s a massive amount of calories, and it’s jammed with nutrients. How much the body processes those properly, I have no idea.

Jannine Krause (34:47.64)
But you could eat one and in theory it could sustain you for a couple of days. Wow. Now the downside to that is it did stay with you for many days.

So if you were deployed for a lot and you s you’re on like your tenth ORE and you realize you haven’t had to dig a hole recently. Uh-oh. Yes, I could see that being a problem. That was where we talked about the the enema situation. Correct. We’ll we’ll save everybody that soldier life’s kinda rough. And so if you’ve if you’ve got anybody who’s listening who’s got young kids or someone that’s like the military might be something for me, what would you tell them?

What would you say? I would say encourage them, but at the same time make them see reality. a lot of kids today, fortunately and unfortunately, when I was a kid and we played Army, we only knew what we saw in, you know, glamorous World War II movies.

you know, how to throw a rock like a hang grenade. And you know, just dump these kids are playing video games that are so unbelievably realistic. It’s almost like being in in super hyper combat situations. So a lot of get this false sense, you know, and I could usually tell even all the way back when I was in I I I could see a guy who was real gung ho, you know, kill the commie for his mommy G.I. Joe dude.

And I I didn’t want him. I I don’t want that person in my squad. He’s dangerous or she’s dangerous. I need somebody who is scared. You should be scared. It’s not a normal situation to find yourself in. but we can work with scared. I can’t work with bravado. Bravado gets people killed.

Jannine Krause (36:41.166)
and if you think you’re going in as John Wayne, I’ll never forget in basic training. There was a guy, he had played football for for Mississippi. He was a big dude. I mean, he was s I mean you looked at him and you’re like, whoa, this guy’s a rock. He quit within about a week. He just couldn’t handle it. He thought he was the biggest, toughest thing to ever hit the planet. And every drill sergeant available just they had to break him down.

And he went quick. And it was the other guys, the smaller guys, the guys nobody would look at that had the strongest will that kept going.

Makes sense. Makes sense. It d I mean, I learned from it because I was like, ooh, okay, don’t do that. Because You don’t want to end up that. I’m like, yeah, my dad warned me about guys like this. He said, there will be people. I’m like, Yeah, yeah, whatever, old man. You know, god, was he right? So yeah, I I don’t I I never wanted to be around John Wayne’s. Makes sense. Ever. They’re dangerous.

And you were and you were actually leading battalions. So you were I’m my word is are not gonna be right. So you can tell me because I know. I never I never led a battalion. What did you lead? A a squad or shift. Okay. okay. And I was w when I took over first as chef command, I

Jannine Krause (38:12.568)
couple weeks short of turning twenty. And so I took over, I had a five man team we were responsible for

Jannine Krause (38:25.26)
Whether direct our battalions to fire or not fire at the age of nineteen. That’s crazy. That’s a lot of pressure. I w I look at my kids when they turn nineteen and I’m like, What? I don’t even want you to have a car. And here you were. Yeah, different world. Different time.

And different in terms of also you saw combat. Like you were in lots of different situations. Some which you can’t talk about I know, but just so these guys have a little bit of background. Like you you weren’t just playing at the you know, Brooklyn Wall. Brooklyn Wall, what am I saying? Brooklyn Bridge, he just hung out. The ac actually the funny story about the Brooklyn Wall is there isn’t one.

It it’s called perimenopause and your brain loses the words. I meant the Berlin Wallet. I think the Brooklyn Wallet was taken down during the Battle of Trenton. I think George Washington ordered Samuel Adams to bring up some beer and they rushed it. Instead of the tea party. The tea party gets all the press. It does. It does. It’s because of the religious nature of everything. I didn’t want everybody to know soldiers were drinking beer.

Can’t have that in a pure botanical society. T T it was. So anyway, where the heck that got. Because I was trying to say he wasn’t playing at the Berlin Wall, but he was actually like real combat and there’s you know, I mean, I I never look at a veteran and ask the question about combat because it doesn’t mat to me it’s never mattered. You know, like there’s somebody whose role it is

in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to hand underwear out to brand new fresh troops that are in line going down. And that seems like the most unglamorous job you can possibly imagine. And it is, I would imagine. But at the same time, that same soldier will pick up a rifle and will do the duty. And s without the underwear guy handing them out to you, you’re out in the bush with no underwear. And nobody wants that.

Jannine Krause (40:40.812)
I don’t care what what your, you know, the get TV show Survivor. yeah. Most people wouldn’t last 30 minutes. But was it naked and alone or naked and naked and afraid? I’m like, okay, that we called that Tuesday. One time I was up in the Arctic and we had had it had been a long, long couple days, and we were just soaked our.

Snowsuits were so good that we were drenched with sweat all the time. And that’s that’s really scary if you understand sub operating in a sub-zero environment. And I don’t even know where I’m going with this. But we I know, we ran into a couple of locals when the mission was done. We were back in town, we were at Prudhoe Bay, and these guys wanted to buy our our suits from us. And we’re like, we’re not supposed to sell these things.

But then again I realized you know what the army’s gonna make us fill out paperwork to explain why they’re all beat up anyway. So we sold them. Man, did they stink? They were awful. They were awful. And those guys smelled them before they bought them. I don’t know. I didn’t bring it up. I was just we were just happy to have more beer money. So Prudobay’s expensive, by the way. It’s not exactly a tour. Well, I guess it is kind of a tour that they do like.

cruise ships will stop in there, I think. All I know is that fishing show with the Alaska people. Yeah, it’s it’s brutal. It really is. It’s brutal. And one one we we went from specifically we were up somewhere very far north. part of my operational team responsibilities was we had to go wherever we had to go.

So we had just gotten done with an Arctic Circle mission and we were back in Fort Orwood, California. And we were debriefing and going through all that stuff and our number comes up again. They were like, get out there, we got a C for C 130 on the tarmac, your gear’s low to get in. So we’re all like, wow. I can’t, we can’t even get like two days.

Jannine Krause (43:02.646)
So up the ramp we go, we get in there, a ramp closes up, and I start looking around in the cargo area. I’m like, Now what? You know, we had just gotten off a cargo area full of snowmobiles and now I’m in this thing. Where are we going? It was all jungle stuff. So one week we had gone from the Arctic Circle to the Panama Canal.

That was the I’ve never experienced such temperature extremes. That was wild.

But then again Noriega had to be

Jannine Krause (43:39.488)
Anyway, yeah. Man. Fun stuff. So many good things. and and so many so many adventures too. Yeah. Yeah, cool. I mean it’s kinda cool in a way, I always thought. Yeah, I don’t yeah. I mean I I I know like when when I first came off active duty, I had a lot of I had a lot of fun teaching other people stuff.

Like how do I take all this crap I just went through and put it into a civilian application? So I started teaching people ropes, ropes work and I’d take out repelling and teach how to do basic climb and before you know we had like a group of guys that would all get together all weekends and we’d go repelling. That’s fun. It was awesome. It was so much fun. Guys and girls.

So yeah, and you know, getting out of volunteering and I I I went to college in in Milwaukee and getting out into the inner city to volunteer to do like rehab work on public schools, just volunteering and stuff. It was great. I mean, to me I was like, This is awesome. No one’s no one’s threatening to kill me. You know, I c I can still continue to feel like I have a mission. and I needed that. ‘Cause coming down

What for anyone that has has family members that have been in the military, if you get to be really honest, one of the hardest things for former service people is the now what. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Now what’s next? What what am I doing then? Yeah, now I’m just what? What am I? I don’t even know what I am. And very you know from a recruiting standpoint they always show either one that’s like super cool or they show all these great skills you’re gonna learn that you can s bring back to apply in your civilian life. Well, like in my case, I was a Persian two nuclear operations specialist.

Jannine Krause (45:40.94)
Not a lot of civilian applications for that, thank God. Be tough. I’m just really glad there isn’t. SWAT team was something that kept popping up, and I’m like, they have no interest in doing that. So yeah, I mean it’s it’s hard for veterans to find that purpose. You know, what is what is my purpose now? Because every day you woke up you had a mission. Didn’t matter how minuscule you could be back to being the underwear guy at Fort Leavenworth.

Yep, that soldier had a mission. It was an important mission. And s all of a sudden one day, it’s gone. And that that’s that’s hard to reckon with. And some people never reckon with it. I’m blessed that I was able to reckon with it. And you went into what was your what what did you retire from? boy, I did lots of different things. I wore a lot of different hats.

Other than monitoring the folks that drove from Illinois until school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Other than that part. That actually wasn’t a paid position. That was yeah, no. probably the biggest, most fun civilian application job I had. I worked for a company that made building

Jannine Krause (47:03.758)
Products to build modular houses. cool. So like there’s a lot of them up here. Like they come in sections, it’s almost like this giant kit, you put them together, bingo bango bango, you got a three million dollar slap together house. Well there was a need, there was a small little niche in the company that made ballistic grade materials. And I was like, I can do this. So I started working on

that side of the house helping with

solid building materials. Like how do you make wall construction that’s not gonna stop bullets, but it will greatly reduce blast, shrapnel, impact, the whole nine yards. And so all those what we call connects is a lot of times you would see if you remember seeing deployed troops in the Middle East, it looked like they were living in tractor trailers. Well they kind of were

But it was fitted on the inside to where it was absolutely some of them, not all of them, some of them, were fantastic. And they were very safe. Very, very safe. So HVAC, the whole nine yards. So I mean it it wasn’t horrible. Then you stopped outside, it was a hundred and twenty six degrees. So can’t control that. That wasn’t my role.

So yeah, that was that was the the last really enjoyable civilian job. I was responsible for seven states for our manufacturing facilities that made this kind of stuff. Cool. Yeah. It was cool. It was it was kinda cool. So there are options out there and there are Yeah, but I don’t miss it, I’ll be honest. I don’t. No. I’m I’m glad to be done.

Jannine Krause (48:58.218)
And up here now your your favorite things to do are hang out with us here. Yep. Get get some work done up here. On my list I have a large medical team and Dr. Janine is definitely part of that team. Yeah. Yeah. I I consider myself very fortunate. married to a absolutely fantastic woman.

For my entire adult life. She’s the best the best part of me I could ever be. and then of course with my kids. So we love living up here. Her family has been coming up to this part of the state her entire life. And then so as f time rolled forward, we just decided, you know what, we’re done. Let’s get out of the rat race. And so we said, set up camp here full time and

That’s that. And he’s working on setting something up for the kids and for the granddaughter and we want to keep him around so he can enjoy all of that too. Yep. My little granddaughter got a piece of property on her own this summer. I went and bought a little wife and I went and bought a little

Trunk of land and we call it Mollywood. Nice. So yeah, she gets to play in her own little force now when she comes to visit us. man. Cool. That’s good stuff. I mean, that’s that’s what’s all for. That’s what it’s all for. Yep. So I hope you guys check out Brian’s website. It is the Dove website. It’s gonna be down below in the podcast notes at drjkraus nd.com. I believe it’s dovetransplant.org forward slash Brian.

Brian Clearwater, I believe. We’re gonna double Brian Dash Clearwater, I believe. Accessibility shortcuts. Whoa. Hello. Hi. Here we go. Yep. Dash Clearwater. I think.

Jannine Krause (50:56.142)
I think it is right here. I looked up earlier, but I think I think we got it. There it is. You guys can see this guy looking super young in his photos. Then we got Tommy Thompson. I didn’t know what the governor of Wisconsin looked like back in the day. That’s back in the day. And then we’ve got, you know, him and wifey. Well, and the other one in this corner there, that’s my dad. Yes, his dad’s over there in the came down. He he never took those sunglasses off. He always just stared at people with sunglasses on.

He’s a smooth operator. He was he was yeah. He whew. Yeah, thanks, Dad. Yes, dad, dad looks like a legit dude. And so yeah, dovTransplant.org forward slash Brian. And you spell it just like B-R-I-A-N dash clear water. Sounds just exactly like I said it. It’s like city in Florida, although they refuse to play to pay the royalties, and I’m very frustrated with that. I was really hoping to have my own city, but

Didn’t play you know, didn’t pan out. Well we’ll see if we can put in a plug at some point. And maybe someone listening knows somebody in the Maybe someone down at Clearwater Saint Pete is gonna take up my cause and give me that city. Yeah. Or just you know, Clearwater Beach would be even better.

I’ll just take that. Why don’t we just put your face on a picture right in front of the beat? Because they like tourists and they don’t they don’t wanna scare anybody. man. Well thanks for listening to another episode of the Health Picks podcast. You guys are great. And we will have all the info blow. Please share. We gotta get this guy a kidney and like I gotta keep working on him because it’s fun to torture him a little bit and then we gotta Mollywood’s gotta happen and we gotta have him see Mollywood.

Thanks, Dr. J. You mean everything. Goodbye, everybody. Bye.