Brain Surgery + 365 days of awesome

MB_Positif · February 2014

Well, it’s basically been about 11 months since I updated all of MFP with my progress post brain surgery. It’s been exactly one year today since I had decompression surgery to alleviate the symptoms of a rare brain condition I have called Chiari Malformation. You can read the whole story here if you are interested:
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/918358-they-cut-my-head-open-your-excuse-is-invalid
I am going to “try” and keep this short and sweet (probably a lie). I like to share my story because it proves that we can persevere in even the hardest situations if we stay focused on our goals, which in my case are strength and defined muscles. Prior to becoming symptomatic from my condition I had gotten back into strength training after many years of not doing it at all. I was devastated when I had to stop lifting because I barely had the energy to make a sandwich let alone lift weights. Once I was diagnosed and met with a neurosurgeon two of the most important questions I wanted answered were, “Will I be able to play tennis with my son again?” and “Will I be able to lift heavy weights again?” My surgeon assured me that I would even though many other surgeons say that you shouldn’t. I was at peace with my diagnosis and the need for brain surgery at that point.
Now we fast forward to everything that happened after my 4 week follow up appointment. I was given the go ahead to resume all normal activity including lifting. Initially I decided to take things slow and only did some cardio, walking and running intervals on the treadmill. By 6 weeks post op I had started to add in some lifting. By 8 weeks post op I was doing Stronglifts 5x5 again, using just the barbell to become comfortable with the barbell again and work on form. I was feeling good and loving that I could do these things again. 11 weeks post op our local 5k race was coming up the following weekend. I hadn’t been training, but after spending a lot of time in the Facebook support groups I saw that so many people with my condition were still in too bad of shape due to symptoms to be able to run a 5k. So I thought, “I CAN do this, so I am going to do this for them.” I set a goal of 45 minutes for myself and finished it in 39:05. I apologize in advance if pics are oversized. I suck at this.
Pre-race pic with one of my best friends:

Then summer rolled around and I got to play tennis again with this guy:

Then this fall I actually got asked to model for a fashion awards show…totally outside of my comfort zone, but I did it because I figure it may be the only chance I ever had to do it, right?

And from then on it’s just been me and the iron hanging out…working on these:

And these:

So…the TL;DR version of the story. The harder you fight to make this your lifestyle the easier it will be to battle life’s toughest situations, because you can even have your head cut open and manage to maintain your weight and come back physically and mentally stronger than you ever believed you could be.