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Chapman: Cognitive Crash, Fatigue and Loss of Career

Day 3 · 6:04:13 · Mark Chapman · Shawn Buckley

  • 🧠 While teaching a course he himself authored he no longer recognized the slides and had to fake his way through.
  • 🌉 Brain fog causes him to forget why he crossed a bridge or to find familiar streets suddenly alien.
  • 😓 Metabolic reserve vanished; grocery-store aisles exhaust him and he now relies on a walker and scooter.

Sudden cognitive and stamina collapse ending elite aviation work.

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Transcript

Mark Chapman · 6:04:13

And at the same time, and, and I'm suffering from it now, my mental ability to organize thought started to fade. When I was in aviation, I had, uh, for 2 companies, built them complete crew resource management programs, put together a 300-page fully cited textbook for that and instructed that course. Uh, during this summer period, a colleague and I went to Greenwood where I was, uh, volunteering to do that kind of training for free to private pilots because they have to do it as well. And I was giving a lesson on, uh, critical incident stress reaction. A, a, a presentation that I wrote that I had given many times, and when I stood on the stage and clicked the first slide and saw the outline, I didn't recognize it, and I didn't know what was in the next slide. I'd had enough experience teaching that kind of material that I could click to the next slide, quickly look at it, and fake it.

Mark Chapman · 6:05:20

As if I had known what was coming. And I got through that, and I went to my colleague Mike, and I said, Mike, I can't do this anymore. It's just not working. I mean, I wrote that presentation and I couldn't give it effectively in my mind, right? Uh, short-term memory suffers. Um, I wrote headings down here because I just have a hard time putting it all together, and I'll help few things.

Shawn Buckley · 6:05:46

So like, sure, even on the brain fog, you told me about you're driving across the bridge. Oh yeah, and you get on the other side, you even forget why you were going.

Mark Chapman · 6:05:56

On the other side, I said, I can't remember why I come over here. I'm not lost, I know where I was, but it's like, when I come over here for— so pull off the road, I look at my calendar, I go, oh, I'm supposed to go to the pharmacy. Okay, off we go. But that kind of thing would happen. Or I'd go down a street that I've driven on for 25 years, and it was like, it's like the first time. And that's a little, a little frightening, uh, right?

Shawn Buckley · 6:06:21

So I, I want to pull you back to this chronic fatigue because you're talking about how, you know, on the Harbor Hopper, basically even walking up the stairs, you know, it's like, what the heck? Because I mean, you were walking 12, 15K, and, and all of a sudden you're you're wiped out by the end of the shift. You were telling me, um, on an earlier interview that even last month you ended up passing out a couple of times. Can I share with us about that?

Mark Chapman · 6:06:46

My wife has picked me up off the floor 5 times this summer. Um, I have such limited metabolic reserve that if I get a cold or the flu, that's all it takes to wipe me out. And I had 3 times where I completely passed out and hit the floor. And it's pretty, pretty confusing when you come to and, and realize that your face is pressed up against the floor and that you're horizontal and your wife is trying to pick you up off the floor. And that, and that happened 5 times this summer. The reserve is gone. My metabolic reserves are erased. As I went through this year, 2020, I started to get— when I heard somebody testify here yesterday, I think described his legs as being a drunk man's legs. That's exactly what I told my doctor. I said, I have drunk legs. I don't walk correctly anymore. My gait is totally messed up.

Mark Chapman · 6:07:47

At the same time, I have gross motor trouble here. I'm surprised I haven't knocked this glass of water over. That Happens all the time. Or I'll burn my hands because I can't feel the heat on a stove. That, coupled with my memory and cognitive issues, difficult to focus. And so I tend to jump from task to task and not finishing any of them. And that has a truly dangerous side effect. I always forget to turn off the stove. I know I forget to turn off the stove, but I still forget to turn off the stove because my brain jumps from the food is cooked, the job is done. It's not done. So I, I don't recognize that risk and I, and I leave it on. Or I'll leave the— I'll get something from the refrigerator and when I've got it in my hand, the job is done. Don't remember to close the door. This is not normal for me.

Mark Chapman · 6:08:49

I was, I was at the peak of my aviation game. I was training people to fly those helicopters in, in flight simulators. I was a flight simulator test pilot at CAE for the S-92 project. I was qualified in 5 countries to train people to fly the S-92 helicopter. I've flown, I've operated and trained people in every S-92 flight simulator in the world. Lafayette, West Palm Beach, Farnborough, Aberdeen, and Brunei. Um, they built another one since then. It's in St. John's. But, uh, to do that, you have to function at about 140% of the capacity of the aviators that you're training because they're busy doing their thing. You have to control the scenario. Be ready to critique their performance, operate the simulator, know what's coming next, and so on and so forth. So it demands a tremendous amount of organizational power, and, and I've lost it.

Mark Chapman · 6:09:52

It's gone.

Shawn Buckley · 6:09:54

Can I, uh, bring up another thing?