From Athlete to Patient

In the last few months I've spent time with someone who is an absolute beast of an athlete, takes his training regime very seriously, rowing, weight training, cardio, nutrition, mindset stuff, has his own S&C coaching business too. I really admire his commitment and discipline to it all, however it has awoken something in me that I hadn’t thought about much for a few years, and I’d like to use this space to explore that.

So, if you knew me back in school, both primary and secondary, you’ll probably remember that I was that really annoying kid that treated every PE lesson like it was the world championships, I would train for sports day like a proper loser, nark kind of thing. I’d spend a lot of my time at basketball training, squash training, badminton training, I was at all of the athletics competitions, cross-country comps, I was always on my feet, always doing something active. Wycombe Pheonix Harriers wanted me to start training with them, I was playing basketball for south of England at one point, so you know I had a lot going for me sports wise. I’d love to add some photos but they’ve got a bunch of other thirteen year old children in them and I don’t feel completely comfortable uploading those photos without their consent.

Despite my potential, I struggled a lot with anxiety in competing (shock I know), so I don’t think I would’ve expected too much in terms of a sports career, however, this being said, when my CF started to take over, it was a very difficult adjustment as sports and exercise were an enormous part of my identity.

The thing that I remember so clearly in my mind, is the year 10 sports day where I was doing my classic 800m, 200m, long jump, relay, and whatever sports team I was supposed to be filling in for because nobody else wanted to take part. My first event of the day was the 800m and only like 200m in did I start to struggle; my chest became very tight, and I just had to stop and I kind of collapsed a bit on my best friend at the time.

Up until this point I was coming first in every event (for my year group) every year so you can imagine how devastated I was when my teachers didn’t let me do anything for the rest of the day and when another girl got the year 10-sports day best performance trophy thing. This goes without saying but I'll say it anyway, absolutely no hate towards her obviously but watching someone else get that award really hurt especially as this was the year I was sports captain of my house, and it was our last ever sports day. Urgh yeah rough day for a 14-year-old who basically lived in the sports hall.

After that, my lungs went to shit, and I was admitted into hospital that summer. Got back to school for year 11 and our basketball coach had left with absolutely no warning, he just didn’t come back and that was all we knew so I lost basketball too. At the same time, the doctors had told us I’d contracted the superbug of CF (mycobacterium abscessus) and I had to spend a month in hospital at the beginning of our GCSE year and then two-to-three weeks admitted every three months for the next year and a half. So basically, my lungs just didn’t really recover that well during that time, so I wasn’t able to do any sports or exercise half as well as I used to.

I’ve previously alluded to the fact that I was a very angry person in my teens, and that sport / exercise was my main emotional outlet so all these factors of poor lung function, hospital admissions, coach leaving and not being able to continue with my sports in the same way took me to a pretty dark place. Unfortunately (or fortunately) at that point I hadn’t dealt with much health adversity, so I had very little experience in how to appropriately navigate what was happening, let alone without my usual coping mechanisms. Goodness me that was a difficult period.

This, by the way, is what inspired my dissertation actually, I knew I struggled with the transition of going from promising athlete to inpatient status and it was an experience I wanted to explore on a wider, perhaps higher stakes level so I settled on “exploring the psychological impact of injury which prevent professional rugby players from continuing their professional playing career within the sport” (I got to interview some world class athletes which was mental). I did lose points though for the title being too wordy but I still got a B+ 😉

I managed to maintain some of the fitness I used to have, I did those two 10km runs in 2018 and 2019 in relatively decent time all things considered but I haven’t attempted anything quite like that since then; running just seems far too harsh on my lungs. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to run again in the future, but for now I can settle on a static bike in the gym. I’d love to play a team sport again, but I can’t risk the physicality of sports, even if it’s “non-contact”, you can’t always help some sort of collision.

I don't think I really understood what was actually going on at the time, I just knew that almost overnight I couldn't run for very long and was tethered to a drip stand with nurses asking me if I'd defecated that day so I was angry all. the. time. I'd lash out at my parents frequently, I think dad understood it well because he'd always been so sport driven. I don’t feel this level of anger anymore (or at least not on this subject), I guess because it’s been so many years since that period of acceptance and adjustment. Also, let’s be honest, so much other shit has happened since then that has occupied my grief so much so that the sport stuff took a backseat ages ago and even I don’t have enough anger in me to stretch ten years and multiple adverse experiences; you get a bit sick of it eventually.

Obviously the whole thing is upsetting, more so in a hindsight perspective for fourteen year old me; I just wish I could give her a hug and tell her that although there will be very dark and difficult periods in the coming years, she is so loved and has got everything she needs inside her to not only survive but thrive in what's coming (even if it won't feel like it at the time). Soz, got a bit lost in introspectiveness there so back to the subject in hand... since spending time with said athlete man, it's been quite a cathartic experience because it's given me an opportunity to work through this athlete to patient stuff that had been buried for ten years.