Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | (0) Comments
A friend sent me this link to a story about a 37 year old guy who decided he would run a marathon after having open heart surgery. He is going to be writing a series of articles about it over at FOXnews.com so you might want to bookmark the page.
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I was lucky to be alive, that’s what my doctor said. The Starnes family gene pool and my proclivity to fried chicken had almost sent me to an early grave. I was 37-years-old, weighed almost 300 pounds, and I had just survived open heart surgery. My doctor suggested I needed to radically reevaluate my life. And he was absolutely right.
I love food —- never met an all-you-can-eat buffet that I didn’t like. I grew up in the South, where my mother managed to fry the entire food pyramid. I like my tea sweet, my chicken fried and my biscuits buttered. It’s just the way things are done in Dixie. But years of good-eating had put me in a precarious situation. My doctor told me I had been given a second chance at life. It was my job to make sure I didn’t screw it up.
About 24 hours after surgery, a physical therapist walked into my hospital room. He told me it was time to get out of bed. I told him he was nuts. After much cajoling (and a few choice words on my part), I managed to take what would become my very first step on the journey. It was all I could muster before collapsing back into the bed. I was convinced that my life was officially over. But my therapist smiled and reassured me that I had just overcome the most difficult obstacle on my road to recovery —- I had taken the first step.
I’m not sure why, but for the first time in two weeks, I smiled. “You know,” he said, “Before long, you’ll be running a marathon.” For some reason, I absolutely, positively believed every word he said.
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