tegid’s BodyBlog

1 May 2008 I was told by a ‘professor’ of neurology at London’s top epilepsy hospital that I would not be living beyond the age of 50.  In his opinion my condition would lead to progressive brain damage and death.  I got the impression that he wasn’t used to people disagreeing with him; judging by how defensive he became my subsequent 30-minute reply…

Anyway, what he said really isn’t that important.  It is one whole year since that meeting with the character that I chose to name ‘Dr. Death’.

There’s a number of ways people can react to this type of news:
* They can keep it secret and not tell anyone – keep it inside: they can ignore it and do the denial thing.
* They can rebel against the news: spend their remaining time in court and going sour on the world that brought them to this place
* They can throw abandon to the wind – after all they’re going to die so there won’t be time to get punished for whatever they get up to in this world.
* They can search for miracle cures in the remaining time

Over the past 12 months I’ve tried a little bit of all of those but I guess the last one was the one that appealed the most to me.

On reflection it seems as though ‘fate’ was anticipating my meeting with Dr Death and knew exactly what my reaction would be. Knowing that the journey ahead would be decidedly rocky, ‘fate’ brought some incredible people to help me - just as I was being told that my light was about to go dark. I want these people to know how very grateful I am for their helping me to shine on.

Firstly, I’d like to thank Carla.  This lady has the ability to ‘be’ there exactly when I need to sound-off or when I need inspiration.  She has the capacity to remind me of what is important and what I need to devote time to.  If anybody’s taught me to listen to my heart, it’s Carla - which is quite an achievement because she lives thousands of miles away from me.  She also has the capacity to recall birthdays and other important dates on the ‘Mike’ calendar - again, pretty impressive when you consider her own family commitments and commitments to her own training.  Following the incident with Dr Death, it would have been very easy for me to lose sight of the things that add richness to everyday life and Carla has been there to help me with this - most notably faith, hope and inner strength.  I’m convinced that she’s some sort of guardian angel, sent to watch over me: and to watch over my heart.  She does it superbly well.

Next I’d like to thank Dom.  It just seems such incredible luck - me stumbling across somebody that was doing leading research into the ailment that was (according to Dr. Death) finishing me off - on a bodybuilding website… Or maybe it was Dom that stumbled across me..  Nevertheless, it sounds impossible, even now.  When I tell people about it, they can’t believe that I was so lucky: neither can I.  The information and education that Dom has provided have been incredible.  I recently met with a children’s charity in the UK and they proudly announced that they were consulting the ‘top’ people in the field and then delivered the same names that Dom gets information from and discusses research.  

Dom has a scientific approach that I identify with (from way back in my past!) and I can apply this to the medical and dietary issues that currently face me.  He has provided me with so much of the information that I need to manage this illness.  It is a very different philosophy from that found in the British medical system (i.e. instructing me to "shut up", take sedatives and hand control over to them. It has helped me regain a lot of personal confidence, by showing that when I’m given the freedom to think for myself, I can still do some good work.  If I could describe anybody as a mind mate, it would be Dom.

I’ve kept quiet about my life prior to developing epilepsy 9 years ago. My university studies took me to glaciers, lakes and mountains.  I worked in the countryside of Wales and also in London/Scotland. I journeyed around the world and saw astonishing things including the Barrier Reef, Yellowstone Park, Monument Valley, Vancouver Island, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Jerusalem - anywhere that offered an adventure in terms of people or geography.  Having my mobility taken away from me (in terms of driving license) was a huge blow.  My soul needs adventure to stay alive.  In many ways, the gym compensates for this loss and nobody had identified that that until I met the Lido gym crowd - and one person in particular: Adam Read.

Adam has a ‘human radar’ in him – he ‘tunes in’ to the nuances of my body language that not even I am aware of - and he then tells me what they show… accurately.  It shows astonishing intuition.  He identified the hopes and fears that I previously didn’t have the courage to voice.  Up to that point I had chosen to discard my trust/faith in a lot of things as part of a defence mechanism.  Adam (rightly) yelled at me for believing what Dr Death said: I was letting some very negative words hold me down and tear out my soul.  Adam figured out that an explorer is at the heart of my personality: which means that I need goals - dreams – on my horizons to move toward and look forward to.  Hence my entry into the bodybuilding contest on 21 June.  Well…. What’s life if you haven’t got a dream?

Adam has been there when I’ve had seizures. When others have found it too disturbing to witness these - and have not come back - Adam has.  Always.  He has been there - not just to listen to me but also to talk: to lift me up when I’ve felt discouraged, bewildered, frustrated, inadequate and confused by the things that have complicated my life over the past 12 months.  He’s reminded me that these experiences need to be balanced with the more rewarding and more positive ones such as being creative, energetic and hopeful.

Over the eight years that I’ve had epilepsy, a number of experiences led to the erosion of my trust in other people.  Yet here is somebody that I have grown to trust: in terms of his advice for training and diet and also in terms of more philosophical things.  I am glad that I have.  If there was only one person that I could say had acted as a soul-mate to me over the past year, it is Adam.

As a teenager, I lived in dread of ‘Physical Education’ lessons at school. So much so, that I wouldn’t be able to sleep, the night before these lessons. I was scared about what would happen in them. The teacher that led these lessons thrived off terror and encouraging a pack instinct in those with typically ‘alpha’ instincts. I didn’t match these personality traits and they clearly didn’t like me.

Today I was woken up early, thanks to a thunderstorm that hit the south-east of Britain at about 5AM. I realized that these days I lay awake contemplating what I’d be doing in today’s workout and that going to the gym is the part of the day I now LOOK FORWARD TO. That is quite a contrast to my earlier experiences. I’d say that it has a lot to do with the attitude of the people I meet through training and a feeling of belonging that I associate with the gym culture.

I’m really lucky to have experienced this. How many other people felt scared of Physical Education lessons at school (at that particular point in history - I know it’s different these days) and as a result never did any form of exercise in adult life?