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This is a long but very very true story. I am now 41 years old and about 3 1/2 years ago I got sick out of the blue. I have been an athlete my whole life and compted as a youth in bodybuilding and powerlifting with out the use of anabolic steroids. I have always avoided them…
…Now back to the sorded story. About 3 1/2 years ago my heart started racing very quickly one night 160 beats a minute. My wife took me to the emergency room where we spent hours doing one thing after another usually involving a lot of pain. When they were done they let me go the next morning and suggested I see a specialist for my heart but nothing definitive.
This went on for about a month till one day my Blood Pressure shot up as well and they admitted me for a three day Cardiac workup. They ran me through a battery of tests and gave me Nuclear Medicine to see my arteries and all was good.
After $40,000 they let me go on my merry way. At that point I was about 295 pounds 6′ 2″ and the Doctor told me to lose some weight and that was it.
If only it were so simple…
About a week after that I started losing weight and without trying. I had found a Doctor that was willing to work with me to find out what was wrong with me about 2 weeks earlier.
I was losing 20 pounds a week and not trying. I was actually eating or drinking 9,000 calories a day to slow the loss down. They tested me for every disease known to man and nothing. The amount of calories I was consuming was slowing the process down but only slowing it. I was dying and no one could tell me why.
I went to 23 different Doctors trying to find and answer while still working with my one Doctor who would coordinate all the info to try and find a solution. I was sent to have cameras run up my arse: ( I was sent to have cameras pushed down my throat and see what was going on inside. I never thought of this before but I hope they did not use the same camera for both of the events:). I had over 70 pages of blood work done at different time looking for any anomaly.
I was working out 4 days a week before I got sick but my workouts had dropped to 15 to 20 mnutes of Cardio only. I went from Bench Pressing 400 pounds to 135 for 4 reps on a good day.
The whole time people that did not know me thought the weight loss was wonderful and that I looked good but inside my body was literally eating itself alive. I finally bottomed out at 215 pounds and very weak.
They call the disease I have wasting and HIV patients are very well aware of it as it kills them often. I am unusal as I had wasting with no attached disesae. My body just decided it had enough and starteds to destroy itself. I went through days and days on intense crampning as my muscle was literally being eaten away. I was so weak when it stopped I could not work out more than 2 times a week for 15 minutes or so. I had to start out weaker than I was in Junior High.
Now we all have heard about muslce memory and we would think what the heck you will get it back just as quick. Well reality being what it is my muscle memory was damaged as was my entire muscle strcuture as well as my joints and tendons as my body had starved and self destructed for over 4 months.
I became a vegitarian to alter the acidosis state of my body and blood and it helped. I took Enzymes to breakdown food as my body could not and took at least $1000 a month in prescription medicine to help try and balance my body.
I started the climb back up and my Doctor told me that he wanted me to take Steroids to help put weight back on and I refused. I explained that I wanted to do it naturally and combat what happened naturally by eating naturally.
He plainly told me that what happened to me was far from natural but respected my wishes. I will not bore you with the details of the time, that would take us to 1 year ago but I worked out when I could and ate very well.
As of 16 months ago I could work out 3 days a week for 1 hour tops. I was back to benching 225 pounds and weighed 225 pounds. I had gained a whopping 10 pounds. So much for muscle memory. My Dotor knew I was about to turn 40 and still struggling to get back some amount of what I had.
He took a full hour to discuss the pluses and minuses of using anabolic steroids and explained they have been using them for HIV and AIDS patients for 12 years with great success. Allowing them to gain weight and get back to normal lifes.
He went on to say that some of the HIV people have been taking them every week for 12 years without suffering side effects that are often associated with them as they were using lower dosages.
He explained that all we hear about are people that abuse the dosages not about people that are being saved by them. I decided to go ahead and give it a try as I was very depressed about my progrees and my joints ached often from lifting that was not even in my mind heavy. I spoke with my wife about it and decided to give a 12 week cycle a shot, pardon the pun.
By the end of the 4th week using very small doses I had gained back another 8 pounds. Almost as much as I had gained in the prior 18 monhts.
My strength was coming back and my joints were feeling better every day. I was also finding that my sexuality had been affected by all of this trauma and my wife and I were not having sex near as much as before I got sick. All of a sudden she had a new man to deal with. Our sex life moved into high gear and I felt like nothing could stop me. I was on the comeback trail and by using Steroids which I swore I would never do.
Today I weigh 250 pounds and can bench 350 pounds. Not as much as I once could but my joints are still a limitation though much improved. I am squatting again and running. I can work out 5 days a week for up to 2 hours if I wanted. All in just over 1 year.
I am about to start my third cycle and have had a ton of blood work done while doing all of this. I have had no negative effects from this at all. I am off all medicine and can eat meat again and no longer need Enzymes to digest food. I am, in short, feeling like the man I should feel like.
If it were not for steroids my life would still be a struggle, even if I had maintained exercising as my will was shrinking based on my sorry results.
I eat well and work out 4 days a week to give my body time to rest. I respect my self and what I do to my body and could not imagine life without steroids to help me heal from a devastating event.
I will probably have to use them the rest of my life as we found out I produce too much estrogen and not enough testosterone which could very well be because of what happened. We will never know as I never had a baseline to know what they were before I got sick. I take arimidex to block the estrogen and and oral testosterone along with 1 shot a week and my numbers are great.
If you would like more details I have the bloodwork to show what I went through and I am sorry that I am not a better story teller. There is so much more to tell.
If this helps you and anyone else then what I went through was not a waste but a learning lesson, and that would be easier for me to bear than a random event that so changed my
life.
Peace,
(Name Omitted For Privacy)
Tags: Anabolic Steroids
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