Now Imagine doing the above without paying for an injection?
No will power?
Wow.
Well ok then, here goes -
1. I was Triathlete-level fit in 2012, exercising multiple times most days, when I was finally diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkins Lymphoma, it had been misdiagnosed twice since 2006 despite very obvious and visible signs, by the same Doctor. I then underwent 2 years of different primary and salvage chemotherapies, an autologous stem cell transplant, died from septic shock during that treatment, and luckily was revived by our amazing NHS.
I worked EVERY SINGLE DAY during my treatments. No sick days, no holidays, I just got on with work.
2. As a result of the assorted treatments and the organ damage that the large & extensive tumours had left on my body, life was never the same, but I kept on fighting. I was frequently ill for weeks at a time, but kept on working, including a full year in 2019 where I was running the entire IT Infrastructure & support for a then 450-staff Law Firm on my own. No sick days, NO HOLIDAY, frequently at my desk with 40C fevers etc. After years of telling the docs that something wasn't right during my 3/6-month Cancer checkups, somebody finally figured out that I was suffering from Immunosuppression due to all the Chemos etc. I now have to inject 96ML of ImmunoGlobulin-G in to my legs every single week to fight off ilness.
3. Despite the Immunotherapy, I was getting increasingly weak and towards late summer 2021, where I was tasked with being the Site Manager for our new Head Office buildout and was semi-living on-site there, dealing with all the IT side, electricals, builders etc., I started coughing up blood most mornings and had a cough throughout the day and generally felt like mild death. Work had to go on and we got to move in towards the end of October 2021. The blood continued, I saw the doctors when I could and then it stopped for a bit, but I was increasingly tired.
Around Jan 22 I started having difficulty breathing, difficulty walking up stairs, walking the dogs, getting to the point where I was having to prop myself up against lampposts when walking my daughter to school 150 metres up the road. I started having to try sleeping upright, but could never get enough air, just gasping. This ended up in an Ambulance call in Feb 2022 and me spending a week isolated in a Cystic Fibrosis ward, as they thought that the damage that one of the chemo drugs had done to my lungs (Vinblastin if memory serves) and the Pulmonary Fibrosis that it had caused was the culprit. They sent me on my way with a cocktail of drugs and I felt better, for a bit.
It all came back again and I was finally correctly diagnosed with Severe Biventricular Dilated Cardiomyopathy in Late-April 2022. Both sides of my heart were enlarged/stretched out and the valves were not sealing as a result. I was at sub-10% Ejection Fraction on one side and sub-20% on the other I think, my heart was battered. Thanks again to the amazing NHS, a ton of drugs that I am on for life and me FIGHTING, I recovered my heart at the fastest rate that the specialist had seen so far in her 30-year career. It will never be perfect and my ticker tells me it is unhappyy pretty quickly when I miss taking my pills, but I am still here.
4. I am now an Infrastructure Director with equity, in a fast-growing Top 100 UK Distributed Law firm, that I heavily helped build out from a one-man startup in 2006. I won't tell you how many holidays, times with family, sick days, Christmases, Bank Holidays I missed giving my all to that company (and 13 other firms that I also had at the same time as clients between 2009 and 2018, working alongside my best friend until it got to be too much for him). I am on a fully remote contract, yet am in the office 5 days a week for the good of my team and the company. Wifey, kiddo and I haven't had any form of break/holiday together since October 2022 and I have close to 20 days of leave that I need to take by the end of this year, but can't due to how busy work is and the projects that we have going.
In November 2023 our upstream MSP got breached/encrypted and despite all assurances from them and harassment from us to make sure that everything was protected correctly, guess what, it wasn't. No, I didn't recommend this MSP, but it's who we ended up with. We built out an entirely new IT platform for our then-750 globally distributed staff company in under a week and I personally worked for 37 consecutive 18+ hour days on the trot, missing my scheduled December holiday, Christmas day, time away visiting family, etc., everything, purely concentrating on getting all of our data back into all the right places for the company.
5. We have NO family support whatsoever (they all moved hours away), have two big dogs to take care of, as well kiddo, with wifey working full time too, but we just get on with it. Life is a real slog with no let-up, but we just get on with it. Finding the time, energy and drive to exercise, especially when I am limited to a cardiac training zone of 98-121bpm (half-asleep basically then....) is tough. As it is, I never stay within that safety zone, frequently going up to at least 140bpm as otherwise it seems pointless to me and the Cardiologist would not be a happy bunny if she knew.
I am sure that others on here have had it far worse, but eFour,
please, tell me again that I have no willpower....... Your comment seems purely trollish as far as I am concerned.
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