Episode Eighty-Four: The Interview - Dr. Andrew Lustig

Dr. Lustig is the President and Founder of Global Outreach Doctors - but he had multiple miracles before that as an EMT he saw things that defied explanation, and the survival of his son after a tractor ran over him is a miracle indeed.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode 84 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

In this episode,

I get to interview Dr.

Andrew Lustig,

Who,

Among many other careers in his life,

Is currently working with an organization that he founded and of which he's the president,

Global Outreach Doctors.

On their website,

It says,

With its first mission in Nepal for the massive 7.

8 earthquake,

On April 25,

2015,

Global Outreach Doctors sent an initial team of nine medical and search and rescue staff with three canines within only 64 hours of the disaster.

And they've been doing good works like that ever since.

While Global Outreach Doctors is heavily involved right now with the humanitarian crisis that's happening in Ukraine,

They've also done good works in the Democratic Republic of Congo,

Iraq,

Kenya,

Ethiopia,

And Nepal,

Among many other places.

They are a team of dedicated volunteer medical professionals,

Including doctors,

Nurses,

Paramedics,

Naturopaths,

Homeopaths,

Acupuncturists,

And psychologists.

Again,

From the website,

The Global Outreach Doctors staff and partners collectively have worked in almost every corner of the globe.

And so while doing research for this episode,

I discovered that Dr.

Lustig was once the CEO of a media company in New York.

Which begs the question,

How does one go from CEO of a media company to doing great humanitarian works in the world?

And I just knew that his journey and his story was going to be one of the miracles I heard when I talked to him.

I just love the story of people's journeys.

They're always so surprising.

Where you think you're supposed to end up sometimes is not where you end up,

But somehow you end up in exactly the right place.

And when you listen to this episode,

I think you'll see that Dr.

Lustig is exactly where he's supposed to be.

So now,

Without further ado,

Episode 84 of Bite-Sized Blessings.

On two occasions,

I was in the back of an ambulance and I was alone because other team members were outside of the ambulance doing something else.

And the person,

The patient I was caring for died.

And in both occasions,

The monitor went flatline.

They were not,

They had a do not resuscitate or there was another reason why they would not be,

Uh,

Receive CPR.

And within just a few seconds,

I witnessed sort of this shape move from their head up into the air above them.

The way I describe myself first and foremost is really as a father.

I have two beautiful children and I think that is the most important thing that I've ever done in my life to put two human beings on the planet that will contribute in their own way.

Of course,

Then as we get into discussions,

You know,

I will mention my former life as a corporate CEO of a media company and my current life as the CEO of a global medical relief charity.

But,

You know,

As a human being,

It's important for me to demonstrate that I think the highest value is my children and what they produce in the world.

You know,

When I was young,

Kirsten,

We were in a family unit that went to synagogue occasionally on important holidays,

But we didn't really practice religious beliefs.

It was pretty much in my 20s that I developed my own belief about a higher power.

And I think that came from just feeling very fortunate and having some very close calls and brushes with death and injury and my children that I would look up at the sky and just thank the higher power for protecting me.

Power and spirit is really channeled through what human beings do and say and act every day.

And I don't necessarily believe that there is some force telling us what to do.

It's more of us receiving and using the higher power we have.

I can tell you that when I was a corporate CEO,

There was so much in my brain and a fair amount of it was toxic because it was basically kill or get killed that I didn't have the power and the abilities that I have now.

And I only recognize that after walking away from the corporate world.

And it was really only six months to a year that I would think of a person that I maybe had never spoken to in five years.

And they would call me or I would call somebody that was not expecting my call that I haven't spoken to that it wasn't planned.

And they would say,

I can't believe you've just called me.

I am just thinking about you or I have my mouse cursor on your name.

This is so uncanny.

And I almost use that today because it happens so regularly.

Kirsten,

As a shortcut,

You know,

I'm going to think of John and I expect that he will probably call me and he does or vice versa.

There was one at one point I was driving through a small town on the East Coast and I was thinking of somebody and they walked right in front of my car at a stop sign and there was not a chance that they live there or anything else.

And I didn't know they were in the town or whatever.

So I do believe that we are that we receive from a higher power and that if we sort of clear our mind and our heart,

We can use these tools,

You know,

Very,

Very effectively and to benefit each other and in kindness and in tuition and so on.

I studied film and television in college and my first job in New York was watching parking lots for Woody Allen overnight so that nobody parked in there so that when the crew showed up,

They could set up their trucks and so on.

And then I was a production assistant for various commercial firms,

Some very famous commercial directors who at that time would get on their bullhorn and be up in a crane and scream for 14 hours at the crew down below.

After that,

I worked a number of other production for film and television.

I then joined an organization in the tele-production industry,

Which is post-production and shooting stages.

I worked my way up the ladder.

My family was the owner of this facility.

I worked every single job in that from shipping when I used to bring audio tapes,

Reel-to-reel audio tapes to radio stations to play commercials and travel on the subway all over New York,

To eventually editing commercials for TV and radio and then working in sales,

Working in public relations,

Eventually into an executive role,

Eventually buying out all of the partners and taking over the company and becoming the CEO.

That's quite a journey,

But you were saying earlier that it was toxic.

I can't imagine the amount of stress you must have had in that position.

You know,

My early corporate life when I think back about it,

Kirsten,

It stuns me that I survived it.

I've always put one foot in front of the other.

My whole life has been about problem solving.

You know,

My problem solving now is very different than it was in corporate life.

My problem solving now,

Living on a horse ranch,

Is medicating a horse and taking care of injuries because they always get themselves in trouble and figuring out the flooding that's happening on my property,

On my acreage,

Because we have a storm and dealing with broken fences and broken tractors and so on.

And of course,

Problem solving with our team in Ukraine,

Running global outreach doctors and deploying people to the front line,

Has a,

You know,

A myriad of complications,

Most of which start at three in the morning because they are nine hours ahead of me and it's already noon there and there are problems that need some of my support.

Back in the corporate life,

The issues were,

You know,

Very important clients that had tremendous spending that we needed to cater to,

Every whim that they had,

To unfortunately very litigious,

The media world is very,

Was very litigious,

I believe still is very litigious,

Though I've been out of it for 20 years.

So I was very often Kirsten in courtrooms and I was either on one side of the table or another side of the table,

Either in contract,

Employee,

Real estate law,

There were companies that went bankrupt that owed us money.

So,

You know,

It certainly,

You know,

There was a fair amount of high-level stress in addition to the cost,

The high-level cost of equipment that we had to keep purchasing to keep up with the demands of our clients' needs.

And the equipment became less and less expensive,

Which then the priority was,

Well,

The client might buy it themselves because now it's accessible.

It used to be that I ran a facility with dozens of editing rooms and each room cost a million dollars,

But years later some of those editing rooms could be bought by a client and they could work in their living room with a couple of Macs and,

You know,

Maybe a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars.

That created this cycle of constantly looking for the best advantage we can offer the clients.

There was just sort of a six-month period of me saying to myself,

What am I going to do in the world to make it a better place?

What I'm doing now as a corporate executive is ensuring myself a lot of financial gains and a lot of other people financial gains and making television and making records.

We had a record company,

We had graphics and so on.

And I don't really think it was socially redeemable product that created good in the world.

It certainly provided entertainment.

However,

Later in my life,

I was thinking how can I actually improve lives and entertainment did not seem to be enough to me.

You know,

One day I walked out of my building and I called my CFO up and I said,

I'm done.

I'm not coming back into that building.

We're going to have to scale this thing down.

We're going to sell.

We're going to do whatever because I want to do something more meaningful with my life.

I want to create a benefit for more people in that had less than me and that Kirsten is when I decided that one way to do that was to become an EMT and work emergency medical technician and work on an ambulance.

And so I trained to do that and I began working on ambulances where occasionally you would save a life,

But most often you would improve a life because unlike,

You know,

What you see on TV sometimes you get a bee sting and sometimes you get somebody that broke a leg and on occasion you get somebody that needs to be saved and without your help.

They're going to die and I've had people die in my arms and I and I've also had people that were mildly sick over that period of time.

I also became a naturopathic doctor.

What I wanted to do was provide a variety of medical care both in the traditional medical world of allopathic but also as a naturopathic doctor using healing modalities that have advantages over the emergency medicine world that I was in.

It also allowed me to spend more time and monitor the change in the patient because as an EMT you might have the patient for 20 minutes in the ambulance and unless they were a frequent flyer,

Which is basically a patient that keeps needing an ambulance.

You really don't have follow-through.

What happened to the patient?

Did they get better?

You know,

You drop them at the hospital.

At one point,

I worked in an ambulance and then my shift at the hospital started.

So I quickly changed out of my emergency medical technicians clothing and I put on my hospital scrubs and started working in the hospital.

And sometimes the same patient I brought there,

I showed up and they said,

Wait a second.

You're the guy that dropped me off here.

And I said,

Yeah,

My shift is on.

Now,

I'm going to take care of you in the hospital.

As I became a naturopathic doctor and when I received my degree,

I started to work in Africa and in the Amazon jungle and lots of places with other NGOs,

With other non-government organization charities,

And watched how they as a organization provided medical care to communities in need.

Eventually after working for many NGOs,

I started Global Outreach Doctors,

Which is now working around the world in war zones,

Earthquakes,

Typhoons,

In high-need low-resource areas like Ethiopia on a mountaintop with no electricity,

Assisting delivering babies that whose mothers arrive on donkeys because there's no cow.

There's no cars up there at 10,

000 feet and there's no electricity.

Or in war zones for the Battle of Mosul in Iraq or currently in Ukraine on the front lines,

Or on the border of Syria handling enormous amounts of refugees with United Nations Commissioner of High Refugee,

Or even with the US Navy helping with the Venezuela refugee crisis working on their US hospital comfort ship,

Which is basically an aircraft carrier with mobile surgical rooms and clinics and so on.

We've worked 38 missions in seven years,

Some of them repeat missions.

And I would say the culmination of our skill set and ability and the size and scope of what we're involved in would be currently the largest would be the Ukraine war,

Where our teams are on the front lines where we have 11 ambulances in the country,

Where we have provided $300,

000 of financial support to hospitals around the country of Ukraine and where we're about to supply another $200,

000 of delivery of medical equipment.

You know,

As an EMT for many years,

I'm still licensed.

I don't practice anymore.

I don't practice naturopathic medicine either.

I run my charity Global Outreach Doctors full time.

I have enough medical knowledge to know who to deploy into what areas and what skill sets they'll bring to bear as an EMT and like many paramedics that have worked any kind of acute chronic ambulance work,

You know,

You will most likely experience a death several.

There was a period of time when I was working on the ambulance very regularly and there seemed to be a string of people that for whatever reason were acutely sick and died.

In two on two occasions,

I was in the back of an ambulance and I was alone because other team members were outside of the ambulance doing something else and the person the patient I was caring for died and in both occasions,

The monitor went flatline.

They were not they had a do not resuscitate or there was another reason why they would not be received CPR and within just a few seconds,

I witnessed sort of this shape move from their head up into into the air above them.

In one case the woman expired and I saw some type of shape,

Some type of image come from her head and move into the space above her head.

And you know,

I thought of at the moment the weight of a dime which people know is the weight of a dime is what a deceased person weighs less than when they were alive.

And in another occasion somebody also died and I was as I said alone in the ambulance and I think I'm clarifying that I was alone in the ambulance because I think that's when sort of it's just you and them,

You know,

And and there isn't a lot of distraction and your eyes are looking at each other and there aren't a lot of other eyes looking and there's not a lot of other commotion and and so that sort of unique bond between you and your patient at the time that they die could produce what I witnessed which was this image lifting from their body.

I'm intrigued were you did you step back,

You know in your mind and think wait what's going on here?

I think I was stunned because the first time it happened to me,

Of course,

I didn't have a history the second time it's like,

Oh,

I've seen this before this is familiar.

The first time I was just I just was frozen for a few seconds saying to myself.

What did I just witness?

I know I saw this.

I'm pretty practical,

You know,

I'm pretty much not somebody that believes in a lot of fufu woo stuff.

This caught me off guard and when it happened the second time it's like,

Okay,

This is what happens.

Yes,

You know,

I get it.

You know when I was a young father and my son was I think about six or seven.

We were on our farm in Connecticut at the time when I lived there and my son and I were picking apples and I was driving a large 7,

000 pound tractor and I would give my son a ride in the front bucket of this tractor.

And so he would sit in the tractor and then I would park the tractor put the brake on lower the bucket.

He would jump out and we would start picking apples.

So we were doing that exact thing and I lowered the bucket and he stepped out and I put the parking brake on and I walked out off the tractor to meet him and the tractor brake released and rolled over my son and the tractors back tire came to rest on my son's six-year-old son's head.

It had rained extensively the day before and the ground was soft.

I got back on the tractor and backed this 7,

000 pound vehicle off of my son's head.

At the time I did not have medical knowledge and I picked him up and saw the tread mark on the side of his head.

But what I noticed was that his head had pushed into the mud because the ground was soft and the tractor had rested on him between two large treads.

So there was somewhat of a space and I rushed him to the emergency room and I explained to them that a 7,

000 pound tractor landed on top of my son's head and they said,

Oh,

Do you mean you're a lawnmower?

No,

I said no,

I mean an almost commercial 7,

000 pound tractor.

So they grabbed him from me and rushed him into do scans of his brain and miraculously he had no injuries.

You know,

It is quite miraculous because everything had a line up there.

It had to have rained.

The ground had to be soft.

The space between two massive treads on very,

Very large five foot tires had to rest between my son's head.

And there is something special about my son because that is not the only incident that happened when he was young.

My son had another incident which happened only a few years later.

My family and I were sitting in a cafe with a large glass front and the cars would come and park in front of that glass front and you'd go through the front door and sit down.

We were all sitting having something to eat and a car came barreling through the parking area and went right through the glass front.

And at the time we were not sitting close to where that car came into the store,

But I had sent my son to go take something to the recycle bin which was directly in front of where that vehicle came through.

The car crashed through,

The ceiling came down,

Glass everywhere and stopped six inches from my son and who was standing there stunned.

And of course I rushed over and he was basically sitting under the car,

The front bumper of the car,

But had not been struck.

He just fell back and I grabbed him and inspected him.

He had a few scratches from the shattered glass,

But he was fine.

Another amazing miracle,

The timing of which,

I mean,

What if he had made it to exactly the location he was getting rid of the recycle and because that was crushed.

What if he was not sent to go recycle and he was still sitting with us?

What if that car moved just a few feet more?

So,

You know,

A stunning example of just,

And that is also when I kind of look up and realize how fortunate I was in that incident,

But I also have a very fortunate life.

I don't live the expansive expensive life of the East Coast anymore.

I live in a rural community in New Mexico and I don't have a high pressure job and I don't make the kind of money I used to make.

And so I'm in incidents like what happened with my son.

I just stopped and look up because there is some guiding force that protected that young boy and there is some guiding force that's protected me to be able to give back to thousands and thousands of people that we have saved their lives or improved their lives.

I don't think there are many accidents.

I think there are synchronicities and I think my leaving corporate America to be able to provide kindness and support to those in need is very fulfilling for me.

Thank you so much for listening to episode 84 of Bite-Sized Blessings,

Where I had the distinct pleasure to interview the kind and fearless Dr.

Andrew Lustig.

To read more about the group Global Outreach Doctors,

Go to globaloutreachdoctors.

Org.

There you can find out more about the many missions they've embarked on in the world,

But you can also donate to this very worthwhile cause.

I need to thank the creators of the music used for this episode as well.

Alexander Nakarata,

Raphael Crux,

And Sasha End.

For complete attribution,

Please go to the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sizedblessings.

Com.

On the website,

You'll find links to other artists,

Books,

Music,

And especially under Dr.

Lustig's episode,

A link to globaloutreachdoctors.

Org.

I hope each and every one of these lightens and brightens your day.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Andrew.

Be fearless.

Be inquisitive.

Be open to the mystery and have trust and follow that mystery no matter where it takes you.

You