This series of articles will layout a complete blueprint on how I accelerated my recovery from a major setback. It’s something I wish I had access to as soon as I needed it. Instead, I spent many hours of research and self experimentation to put this together.
I hope it saves you time and accelerates your path to optimized health and performance.
2020….I was 41 years old and in the best shape of my life. I felt great, I set personal records in physical feats, exercised regularly and had a great routine to optimize my health and performance.
Then in July, I felt a weird sensation on my left side. It progressively turned to a pain so I saw my doctor. After a chest x-ray and a CT scan (which I almost declined because I am not a fan of being exposed to radiation but more on that in a little bit), I was diagnosed with pneumonia. I had no other symptoms other than the pain…no fever, shortness of breath, etc.
So I went on ten days of antibiotics (again, not a fan of killing off my good bacteria too), but I completed the round and felt better.
In fact, August and September I felt great. I even PRed a daily measure measurement I take — I do 10 minutes of breathing exercises, then completely exhale and do as many push-ups on the breath hold as possible.
57, my best ever! (BTW, as of January 2021, I am now up to 72)
Then, in early October, I started to feel a weird pain in my side. It progressively got worse and on October 24th, I woke at 5am, barely able to breathe so my wife rushed me to the ER. I saw two doctors leading up to this moment that had both reassured me the asymptomatic pneumonia I had in July had resolved and the pain I was feeling was due to scaring from the pneumonia.
I knew something was very wrong and so did my Oura ring —
After eight days in the hospital, some serious antibiotics, a CT scan, daily chest X-rays, more bloodwork than I care for (I used to get excited to do my annual bloodwork🤦🏻♂️), and a chest tube, it was determined I needed thoracic surgery 🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️.
I managed to go home for two days to recover from what I had been through and prepare my body and mind for the upcoming surgery (this involved lots of family time in nature and soaking up as much vitamin D as I could get).
On November 3rd, I checked into the hospital again, this time for my first surgery ever — they had to remove the scarring and infected fluid from my pleural space that had been forming since July.
Fortunately, everything went well, though I had to stay in the hospital for five more days with two more chest tubes.
Now it’s back to recovering, and beginning my optimization process, starting from the very beginning.
I plan to address how I will:
- Support wound healing and accelerate recovery
- Heal my gut and repopulate it with good bacteria
- Detox from exposure to various drugs and counteract the radiation exposure
Over the next series of articles, I’m going to share how I plan to fully optimize myself and get to 100% — how I plan to recover faster, heal my wounds quicker, mitigate the damage from some of the strongest antibiotics like vancomycin, mitigate the long-term effects from high amounts of radiation exposure (according to a physicist at the Mayo Clinic, around 20,000 millisieverts*) and detox from the drugs administered.
Many of the techniques and hacks I will use are the same I used to optimize my health and performance in the past, because stress is stress—whether it’s from a hard workout or a major surgery and extended hospital stay.
I hope what I share can help you optimize your health and performance, and if needed, recover from a stressful event.
READ PART 2 – My Strategy to Mitigate the Damages of a Hospital Stay, Surgery & Radiation Exposure
*According to Dr. Peter Attia, exposure to 10,000 millisieverts of ionic radiation a year is normal; 50,000 millisieverts of exposure over a year is very concerning.
Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, so please don’t take this as medical advice.
Leave a Reply