Well this week I turn 55. On September 11 of all days. I really didnt think Id make it this far. All I had to do was outlast my animals which the last of them past two years ago November. In the past 20 years Ive gone from being 98 kilo and able leg pressing 300 kilo to weighing 60 kilo and can barely press 55 kilo.
I started by having damaged my back L4-S1 and had two surgeries. Not long after I was told I was terminal and had two years to live. I waited 18 months for my first bilateral lung transplant. This lasted two years before having Bronchitis obliterans and before becoming stabilized went down to 25% lung capacity and spent the next 9 years on an oxygen hose. It was then I was informed that i was going into respiratory failure and had a year to live. I lasted 15 months and the day I went into hospital for the last time they called for a second transplant. 58 days in ICU this time and i came out of there weighing 50 kilo. My normal healthy weight is 85 kilo.
Since then I have severed the left quad tendon. Spent 6 months in a leg brace and another 6 months on heavy pain killers and beer trying to bend the leg, throat cancer, shoulder cancer cut out twice. Tore the tendon on my right bicep and been told I need a new left shoulder.
Thats the high lights of learning how to walk three times and being told Im terminal more times than I can now be bothered counting. Last year I spent 16 days in hospital with covid, loosing 10 kilo of body weight. 75 down to 65 kilo. Then a few months ago at the same time as tearing the bicep I had right heart failure, pneumonia and a sudanomis infection loosing another 6 kilo over a six week hospital stay and 20 days on antibiotics.
It feels like Ive spent the last 10 years perpetually doing rehab in order to have a decent quality of life. Im up at 6am every morning and at the gym by 7am. Either on the bike or doing weights. In the last month Ive had to build up on the stationary bike by doing 2.5minute spits on level 1 to build up to 20 minutes. Then the same on level 2 and so and so. This week I have made it to level 4 on the bike and 5 minute spits to try building up to a full 20 minutes.
I was lifting 8 kilo bicep curls before the last hospital stay. I am now only doing 2 kilo in order to strengthen the tendon tear. Starting over after every major infection is a bitch. It take atleast 3 months to recover my lung capacity each time.
Ive been told Im hard to kill. I think that started after having a 90 litre blood transfusion to get of the operating table. The Aorta being too short. Ive got a 12cm scar in my right groin from where the transfusion swelled up like a big German sausage and they had to cut it out. I was helping the docs pull the foam out from the vacuum drain after they didnt want to give me any more anesthesia. I could have fitted my fist in the hole. Two years of dragging my leg around on endone and beer until it healed.
I started back into martial arts not long after returning home from hospital and was turning up after training and having an endone and two beers to stop the pain while still requiring a walking frame for the first 6 months to build up the strength in my legs. Id missed out on 12 years of my life and was determined not to miss anymore. I trained in 5 martial arts, sometimes four nights a week. only sitting down when I couldn’t breath or the leg pain became too much.
Im still trying to keep up with bushcraft and training but most of the last year has been spent trying to get my leg to work properly and rebuilding lung capacity while finishing off building my van. Im not exactly sure what Im doing at the moment other than trying to keep up a decent level of quality of life to keep traveling and experiencing as much as I can before the lungs once again fail after ten years post transplant. By the afternoon Im exhausted and on pain killers. Still pushing myself though.