When Life Gives You Lemons

As someone who has a permanent i.e. chronic disability, has dealt with severe disease and illness as well as relatively severe sporting injuries, I know the discouragement that can come with all the setbacks that these roadblocks bring with them. After years of training and struggle to see it all swept away in a matter of moments can be, well, devastating. Sometimes it can seem so bleak and even be so depressing that these types of events can easily send you down a road of months and months of inactivity, listlessness and even lead to complete departure from the sport or pastime you once loved.

Several years ago, after recovering from a life-threatening illness, I started strength training and eventually progressed into powerlifting. Over a two year period I put on around 20 kilograms (or 44 pounds) of almost pure muscle with negligible increases in fat - I followed a light, though relatively loose, caloric surplus diet for most of that period. I built up my big three lifts to lifetime PRs of 183.7 kg (405 pounds) on the Squat, 136 kg (299.8 pounds) on the Bench, and an extremely easy 205 kg (451.9 pounds) on the Deadlift. I was feeling fantastic and although the rate of improvement in my numbers on each lift was decreasing, overall the lifts were still steadily increasing significantly month over month.

Then about two months ago, I got what I thought was a stomach virus. Starting with the Sunday night before that work week in June, I began having bouts of diarrhea that then continued to get progressively worse throughout the week. The pain became so severe I had to up my intake of Ibuprofen to around 1200 mg a day to get any amount of sleep or work done.

Then came Friday morning, I woke up, rushed to bathroom to unleash the coming diarrhea and found nothing but a stool of blood when I had finished. This worried me. I took off on my Bike to visit my family doctor and he ran blood tests, took a stool sample, and told me that if anything got worse I should head straight to the hospital. I happened to be working remotely that day, I feel this is typical of Fridays in the post-Corona era, especially here in Nordrhein-Westfalen, and so I went back home and logged in to work.

Later that afternoon, I was in the middle of a conference call, when I started feeling nauseous and had to excuse myself shortly from the call. I rushed to Bathroom and began heaving chunks of bright red blood all over the toilet and sink. It was at this point that I realized I in an incredibly dangerous place. You see, my chronic illness is a portal vein thrombosis, i.e. a blockage, in my case full and complete, of the portal vein which is the primary source of blood flow to your liver. One of the primary side-effects of this disease is that it exerts enormous back-pressure, in the academic literature “portal hypertension”, on the veins in your stomach and esophagus. These veins have not evolved to deal with such high pressures and can then burst and explode and cause internal bleeding that can quickly lead to death.

All my physicians and caretakers had always told me to immediately call emergency services in the case that I ever threw up blood. And the moment had finally come. So I dialed, 112, our emergency number in Germany, and the ambulance came and immediately dragged me off to the hospital. The details of that journey are for another day, but in summary, amazing doctors and nurses, managed to save my life, over the course of about four weeks, in which I underwent four surgeries, at least three of them life-saving emergency ones, a couple days in an induced coma, and about a week in the intensive care unit. I will always be thankful to many skilled and caring physicians, nurses, therapists, transports, emergency care people who saved my life so many times I almost felt like a cat.

During that month, I was unfortunately unable to eat much at all, and the little I did eat, was in the form of liquids and was relatively low in calories. This lead to me losing a total of about 13-14 kilos (28-32 pounds) of muscle in just four weeks and my strength fell off a cliff. Just walking became arduous after the surgeries and lying in bed for such a prolonged period.

Even having survived. It was depressing. So much effort, so much hard work, and virtually all of it gone in four weeks. So what do you do? This is where I think my readings in Taoism have helped me a lot. In Taoism there is this notion, that you shouldn’t try to force things. That nature will do what it will, that things will happen. This doesn’t mean you have to love it, but you shouldn’t hate it or resent it either. It would be like hating the wind for blowing, or the sun rays for being too hot. Understanding then, that this disease, injuries, illnesses, whatever it may be, is just the way the universe is, that is out or your control, is in some way quite relieving. I don’t have to ask why it happened to me, I just accept that it did, and go on.

Further, the Taoist notion that the “ten thousand things”, that is everything within the universe, comes and goes in a cyclic manner, it is not there, it comes into being, it is there for a while, and dies or goes away, helps me go on because I know it will end; suffering will end; but also joy will end. The moment of reward in which I achieved the 300 pound bench might never come again, but that does not need to be sad, that is just the way of the universe - so enjoy it and treasure your achievements now.

Lastly, there is the idea that in order to know strength and appreciate what it means to be strong, there must also be weakness; that opposites define one another and give meaning to each other. And thus, by knowing weakness, I can appreciate strength when I have it, and now as I slowly gain it back and don’t have to be discouraged that I am lifting vastly less weight than I was just months ago, but can be filled with pleasure to experience the strength growing through my arms into my hands and down my legs into the heels of my feet.

In sum, do not let the emotions of sadness overwhelm you when an injury comes your way, your aging body, a sickness or disability slows you down. Instead, embrace those emotions and feel them, and then letting them pass over you like the waves upon the sand, rise up and walk up the mountain toward your goal, knowing full well that on the way, lie many more obstacles that will surely topple you down again, but that is just the way of the universe nothing more and nothing less.