Month: July 2025 (Page 1 of 5)

To

Tom Sotis

Hi Tom.My hospital wanted me to start and write down a few of my experiences with Organ Donation Week approaching. I wanted to start by writing to you about my journey in AMOK and what it has meant to me.

I first started training in my backyard with privates. Peter would turn up at my home to train me. I was still on an oxygen hose at that stage and Peter didn’t charge me. He just saw how much I wanted to train.

It was some time before I managed to start training at the club with Paul. Many years in fact however I had became addicted to blade work.

What I wanted to write to you about is when I first started training with the club. My lung capacity was shot. I had to sit down all the time during training,but I turned up every lesson even if I couldn’t train. It was how the guys treated me. With patience and respect,never putting me down or becoming frustrated with my efforts.

I had just spent ten years of my life on an oxygen hose, the last four being pushed around in a wheel chair and was determined not to miss out on any more of my life.

A four month stay in hospital receiving my second bilateral lung transplant. 58 days in ICU,I had to drag my arse around in a gutter frame trying to get my legs to work again. However six months after returning home I was training in private lessons within several martial arts for rehab.

It was very difficult for me to rejoin society after that amount of time house bound. My staffy would drag me around the park to keep me walking. I would never have made it out my front gate with out her insistance of walkies.

However it was the guys at the club and their friendship, support and comradery that had helped me to rejoin life.They took very good care of me and my injuries. I finally had to hold up my shirt one day and say Ive been cut from arsehole to breakfast.Your not going to hurt me, half my back and chest are numb. Before they would train any harder with me.

It was several years into training that we had two special forces guys from South Africa turn up at class, they only made it through the first hour. My teacher came up to me after classand said “You last longer than those guys even with your injuries”. It was then he found out I had still been using a walking frame for the first three months of training.

At the time of the operation I required a 90 litre blood transfusion, the aorta was too short. This however left a very nice 14 cm scar in my groin. The scar tissue blew up to the size of a large german sausage,needing to be cut out. I was helping the doctors remove foam from the vac drain one day when they decided that knocking me out anestetic so many times had become dangerous. The hole was the size of my fist. This then needed cutting open again and sewn upin stages to reduce the possibility of herniating at a later stage.

I was going home from training and taking an endone and sculling two beers from the pain in my side and hobbling around on a walking frame. I was on that diet of pain killers and beer for two years.

I must have trained for something like four years before writing to you to ask permission for an AMOK tattoo. I said Id get it in my arm pit so you knew I was serious. The tattoo wasn’t to say I was a knife fighter or anything to do with ego.It was about saying how much support and friendship I received from the guys at the club and how much they helped me to become human again.

I took a break from the many martial arts I was training in to travel and study bushcraft and wilderness medicine. During that time I had several other surgeries. Recovering from throat cancer and had shoulder cancer cut out twice. All this while in a leg brace from a ruptured quad tendon. I still have trouble walking up stairs.

I returned home to have a PET scan to make sure I was clear of cancer and in the last year have had 20 hospital admissions from chest infections or fluid in the lungs.

It takes me two months to recover from one week in hospital. Starting with two minutes intervals on the bike at level one to build back up to my base of 20 minutes at level 6.

I wanted to let you know that next week I go back to training. I may have to sit out the sparring for a few months but can still do the static exercises.

My instructor still worries about me training, he always has but I have no fear.I have complete trust in my friends.

Cheers %^^&& from Australia

PS If you think this can motivate anyone else to train after they’ve had an injury please feel free to use in anyway you feel necessary..

When ever I get slack I think of my friend Kylie and push myself harder.