The 1000 Day Challenge

I looked good for a man that was dying.

Okay, that was me in the summer of 2009.  I was 32 years old, weighed a hundred and fifty-five (the same as I did in high school!) and worked and went to school full time.  I didn't know it at the time, but I only had another month to live.

On July 17th I went home from work early because I felt exhausted and couldn't catch my breath.  I had horrendous heartburn all day long.  even drinking water felt like acid.  I got in the tub to relax my legs (which had been cramping almost daily for weeks) and discovered that they were both covered in purple stains, as if I had spilled ink all over myself.  I remember waking up once in the night and falling out of bed.  I was trying to go the bathroom and couldn't walk.  I didn't make it...

That was Friday.  I don't remember anything until the following Monday. 

And what I remember is fighting a breathing tube.  I was on partial life-support.

To spare the gory details, I had succumbed to diabetic ketoacidosis.  My blood pH was so far off I currently hold the record at the local hospital for the amount of Potassium (K+) pumped into me.  The hospital, with a level-2 trauma facility ran out of K.  I may have suffered a stoke as well, and had stage-3 renal failure.  I wasn't expected to live.  I was definitely not expected to be anything but a vegetable.

I was put on a blood pressure medication (for the kidneys) and insulin.  Later I was put on an anti-depressant for reasons that should be obvious.  I cannot work.  I went from the family's breadwinner to a very expensive and useless houseguest.  I began to think that it would have been cheaper and more convenient if I hadn't woken up after all.

That was five years ago.  In that time, I've made some great progress.  I no longer need to walk with a cane, my kidney function is normal, and I can cook and clean most days.  I also have had another five years with my family.  That alone is worth everything.



The problem is, thanks to limited physical ability for many years and the medications I've been on, I now look like this:

I look so smug because I ate the guy in the previous picture.

I don't want to be just surviving anymore.  I already feel like I've been robbed of my thirties by this illness.  I'm almost thirty-eight and I don't want to enter my forties in worse shape than the 63-year-old dad.  That's a recipe for an early grave.  I've already subjected my family the prospect of my dying young;  I'd be some kind of asshole if I did it again.

That's why I'm setting a deadline of  one thousand days from today to get in shape.  Not just in better than I am now, not just better than the average forty-something American man, but the best shape of my life.  It can be done.  I know for a fact I can do it, because just by getting out that hospital bed in 2009 I've already done the impossible.  I can do it again.

I invite you to join me on the journey.  It's going to an interesting three years.