As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).

After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.

Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.

Saturday, September 07, 2013

Too Much and Too Young it's Scary... Saturday, September 7

The other day one of my Hulk members got rushed to the hospital via an ambulance -- he thought he was dying.  He's a 29 year old young guy who was experiencing extreme chest pains, tingling in his limbs, and his heart beat was under 30 beats per minute. 

That same day he was rushed into emergency heart surgery.

I visited him today and was completely alarmed when one of his friends showed up with soft drinks, fried sandwiches and sweets.  His eyes lit up with excitement when he smelt and saw the bag of goodies so I put my hand out to motion there was a problem.

"Do you plan on staying here longer?" I asked him.
"No" he answered, "I get out this week".
"Not if you eat like this will you."

My comment was a bit harsh but I wasn't about to add flowers and sweeten the truth because the truth of the matter was he's extremely vulnerable right now.  Him eating all this nasty food, which really isn't real food at all, was one of the reasons how he got in this terrible situation.  He's a 29 year old young guy who just had a tube put in his heart.  His years of excessive bad eating, drinking, smoking, and lack of physical exercise has added up to one big dangerous mess.  

"Eat that sandwich and I'm going to seriously hit you", I warned him.  He took a big bite of it and "SLAP" went my hand across the back of his neck.  Everyone in the hospital room stopped and starred at me.  "I'm not a bad friend" I explained, "...I rush to watch you possibly kill yourself so if you want to die, well then you'll have to wait till I leave and I've got all day!!!"  He laughed it off but I continued on to urge him to be careful and change his ways.  

I was quite stressed out about the whole situation and it really freaked me out, how someone I've tried to help has totally disregarded my advice and thought nothing about his degrading health.  I had another Hulk member like this.  I had to go as far as delete her from my Facebook pages, both company pages (Flipside and Hulk) and my personal page, so that I could divorce her from my life.  Stressing out over her health when I seriously wondered if she even cared two cents about it left me up late at night and almost in tears on several occassions.  She couldn't even be bothered to pick up her running shoes from Hulk's when her membership ran out, instead she got a common friend to pick them up, and that was the biggest and most hurtful of insults I've recieved in a very, very long time.  

So there I sat, looking at my member with tubes wrapped pertruding out from his body, wires connecting this to that so that they measure various things -- heart beat, blood pressure, oxygen level, etc.  It was scary and I was scared -- I was scared for him.

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