In the first part of this blog series, How I Gained 30 Pounds of Muscle in 6 Months Flat, I set the stage for the initial conditions of my 30 pound muscle gain.

So, where were we…  Oh yeah – I remember:

“I remember standing in the shower, tracing with my fingers the 12 inch scar running from my clavicular notch to my diaphragm, feeling the knots in the metal wire used for my sternum repair post-CABG, and feeling humiliated, betrayed, defeated… and angry.”

How to gain 30 pounds of muscle…

STEP ONE – STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF

I began my rehabilitation, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually at rock bottom, in a state of SHAME.  This level of consciousness is characterized by emotions of humiliation and a life view of misery.  This is a very accurate description of where I was in July, August, and even September of 2015.  The problem is the SHAME level is it has practically no power.

Very little power to dig yourself out of the hole you are in.  This is the level most “victims” operate in.

Maintaining the mindset of a victim is no one’s fault but your own.  If you don’t take responsibility for your pain, then you are not allowed to take full credit for your success either.  I understand that this is a harsh point of view.  I don’t write this to cause further grief towards anyone that had to endure difficulty, injustice, tragedy, or loss.  The truth is sometimes bad things happen to good people.  Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.  Ironic as it might sound, accepting the fact that EVERYTHING IS MY FAULT has allowed me to survive more than just heart surgery.  Accepting that EVERYTHING is YOUR FAULT gives you the power to change your situation.

Given my current situation in 2015, I was reminded of the words of Mike Katz in the 1976 movie Pumping Iron  – “You see, you can beat a dog (only so long) and it’s going to do one of two things – it’s gonna roll over and die or it’s going to bite you and attack you.  And I’m the kind of person, who is the type of dog that will bite back… I wasn’t going to roll over and die”.  Generally, I have always believed that I am type of dog that would bite back, rather than rollover and die, but after the initial operation, I was kicked a few more times as I tried to get on my feet, and I my resolve was shaken.

As I mentioned in the previous post, ANGER is always my default response to crisis.  Actually anger does not really adequately describe what happens with me internally.  Rage.  Indiscriminately destructive rage.  That’s a better description.  In most of the crises I have faced, it’s a rocket ship trip from anything below Anger (shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire) right up to Anger, which is characterized by hate and a life view of “everything and everyone is against me” (antagonistic).  Anger is a more powerful level of consciousness than Shame, but still destructive.

However, my anger was on a lag this time.  When the doctors at Tufts told me they were sending me home on Monday, less than 1 week after my initial CABG surgery on the previous Wednesday, I was surprised.  “I can’t believe they are sending me home in this condition”, I said to my wife.  “Kate,” I whispered, “I’m not ready. This is a mistake”…  Sure enough, less than 48 hours later, I almost died (again) in the middle of the night at home.  And, boom, there I was again, kicked back to Tufts almost 1 week exactly since my original heart surgery, in even worse condition.  After stabilizing, re-evaluating, and treating me at their Cardiovascular Center for 5 more days, Tufts sent me home again, and, within another week, this dog got kicked again.  I had a complication in my right leg, near my knee, in one of the 3 spots they had taken arteries from to repair my heart.  This painful wound that swelled up to the size of a baseball was addressed by my heart surgeon on a return visit to Tufts and the result was a deep hole in my leg near my knee that would not seem to stop bleeding.  Home nursing services were assigned to me to unpack, clean, and repack the wound with fresh sterile gauze daily.  This is the state I was in when my good friend, Nick, came to visit… when I was kicked off my feet again and feeling broken.

Nick, a Green Beret for the United States Army, helped me gain some perspective.  Actually, in a subtle way, he convinced me to stop being such a whiny, little bitch.  If you are not familiar with his story, it’s a long one.  You will be amazed if you check out his Instagram and discover the living personification of what it means to persevere and overcome.  Despite having lost a leg in Afghanistan and having a multitude of surgeries over the past few years, he arrived at my house on July 29th, 2015 looking absolutely lethal.  If you don’t check out his Instagram, I want you to imagine Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  Specifically, Dwayne in his recent movie Skyscraper.  That image will give you a great approximation of the type of condition that Nick walks around in.

Much like growing up in my grandparents’ house, when Nick arrived, I put on my game face and tried to keep a positive attitude in the presence of a man that had been seriously injured in war.

It’s not appropriate to even think about complaining about your own health in the presence of real men who have sacrificed more than I likely ever will.  Especially military men that have suffered injuries.

I grew up mostly in my grandparents’ house and lived with my grandfather, Paul F. Egan, for many years.  Paul F. Egan was injured in a chemical explosion while serving actively in the Navy during WWII, an event that caused toxic encephalitis, and a permanent loss of most of the neuro-muscular function of his right arm and his right leg, included the loss of his left eye, and led to eventually 80% blindness in the remaining eye.  Despite this catastrophic event, Paul went on to marry, have 4 daughters, and eventually even commute, alone, Monday through Friday, to his office in Boston’s Government Center to work full-time as a Field Representative for the Blinded Veterans’ Association (BVA) using public transportation and his walking cane (for the blind).  My grandfather had a laundry list of complications in addition to his primary maladies, but you would never know it unless you lived with him and saw it first hand.  Still, I NEVER heard him complain.  Not once.  My grandfather’s disposition was forever kind, supportive, witty, bright, sunny, benevolent, happy, and fun-loving with a mischievous, Irish sense of humor.  In his presence, you would definitely feel like a fool for complaining about any of your own troubles, which are microscopic in comparison.

In March of 2013, while deployed in Afghanistan, my friend Nick, had lost his right leg from above the knee down.  While prepping to deploy for a mission, a forced Taliban asset jumped up on the back of a military vehicle (a pick-up truck) and used the flat-bed mounted PKM machine gun to open fire on Nick’s Operational Detachment – Alpha (ODA).  Nick caught 1 round to his lower left leg and 4 rounds of the 7.62 mm ammunition to his right leg, severing his femoral artery, while tackling two fellow ODA members to prevent them from being shot.   This event, ultimately leading to the loss of his leg  from above the knee, occurred after he had suffered a variety of other injuries in the field at other times, including being shot in the face, and taking shrapnel in his right shoulder.  After the loss of his leg, the military offered Nick a retirement package.  It seems as though Nick considered the offer to retire an absolutely ridiculous suggestion, as he informed his superiors that he had every intention of returning to his team for redeployment.  He just had some minor rehab work to do first.  The military, to test his resolve, and to make sure he was not returning as a liability to his SOF team, required Nick to jump through MANY physical, mental, and emotional “hoops” before they would sign off on his return to his team.  In this video, you see Nick completing one (1) of the twelve (12) specific tests that were part of his physical evaluation;

To me, it sounds like they amped these tests up more than usual to dissuade him from his intended course of action and encourage him to retire.  I’m sure they thought they were “talking some sense into him”.  Knowing Nick, as a close friend, that thought makes me chuckle!  No one, except Nick, is going to talk Nick out of anything.  Nick returned to his team for deployment in Afghanistan after his injuries in August of 2015.  Nick is the only above the knee amputee to return to his SOF team for active deployment.  Ever.

Like I said, around men like my grandfather and Nick, you have no right to complain, or feel sorry for yourself.  But, as a said, I was shaken.  I was having trouble holding it together.  A real low point in my life.  And while I was having a little pity party for myself, explaining the turn of events that now had me “suffering” through packing a wound in my leg, Nick was standing behind the couch in my living room, big as a house, taking it all in, assessing the situation.  Despite all he’d been through, he was looking bigger, stronger, and more imposing than I’d ever seen him.  I felt like a injured field mouse in the presence of a huge lion.


Very tactically, and tactfully, he began… “Yeah, man, I had a wound like that I had to pack.  It was a bitch.  We were on maneuvers to engage the enemy, close quarters type shit, and I caught some shrapnel entering the doorway of a 2 story structure, ripping a hole into my rear deltoid area, near my shoulder blade.  I grabbed a bunch of gauze, wadded into a ball and shoved it as deep as I could into the hole of the wound, and my medic covered that with a bandage.  It took us about 40 minutes of fighting to get this far in the mission, so no god damn way were we turning around for this little mishap.   We completed that mission and the following week, because of the depth of the wound, I had to pack that wound twice a day, which was difficult because we were still going out regularly on new missions.  I would be in the field and this thing would just start oozing blood down my arm and me and the medic would have to find a less than disgusting dirty cove so I could remove my gear, he could unpack it, sterilize it, repack it, and bandage it again, before putting all my shit back on and continuing the mission.”

And here I was, sitting comfortably in my living room, watching Step Brothers, while treating a similar deep wound in my leg, at least once a day with the assistance of a nurse, the other time with my wife, feeling sorry for myself?!?

A light went on in my head.  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you whiny little bitch. You have zero right to complain.  STFU, and get your shit together”.

I can guarantee you, no matter how bad your current situation is, somebody else has had it worse.

After I finally got my head screwed back on tight, thanks largely to Nick, it was time to start repairing my physical self.  I will describe the specific details of my weight training rehab program in my next post, here on The Perfect 105.

Thank you for reading.  And see Nick’s IG (below)…

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