My Highlight Reel AKA My Story

For many Facebook is a place to portray the life they WANT and desire, not the life they currently have.

And I’ll be honest I do my best to show both sides yet, I don’t often talk that much about my past.

I mean the ‘early’ days.

Sure I mentioned off the cuff a few bits here and there but if you really want to know who & why I do the work I do in this world, then this post will be it.

1984 – I was born.

Nothing eventful there except after 3 months my mum noticed an abnormality, shall we say, of my spine.

What proceeded that was 3 major operations before the age of 3 years old.

I spent the combined total of a year in Great Ormond Street Hospital under the care of a great doctor, Dr Webb.

The first operation was to place a rod next to my spine to help straighten it as it had started to curve to the side.

My spine responded and because I’m rather special it went the other way, doh.

The next two operations were make or break and would either commit me to a wheelchair, kill me or give a chance of walking as i grew up.

The operation was many hours and they punched my left lung and grafted from my floating rib to fuse my spine in two places.

A double fusion of my thoracic spine. The fusion was done at 64 degrees and I lost 6 inches of height roughly, it’s why I alway joke I’m 5ft 6 lol.

After the operation I had to spend 2 years in full back braces, one with an old school plaster of paris, the other a more modern clip on that actually allowed me to wash.

I actually remember my mum pushing flannels down the plaster brace and all the sweat, even at such a young age.

I also remember CLEARLY the day I had the brace taken off, the room was a sky blue and I was crying because of the little circular saw they were using to cut it off.

Yet, here I am.

No wheelchair, just the six inches hidden.

And that would be quite the start in life if that was just it.

Yet fast forward a little and several years of back pain to 15 years of age.

I was diagnosed with a autoimmune condition called Ulcerative Colitis (UC).

They told me it was incurable and no one knows where it comes from.

(apparently they still say the same today)

It was a tough first year.

When I was diagnosed i was losing a lot of blood from my rear end and the toilet trips were plus 20 a day.

My class mates and teachers didn’t like me much then either lol.

I’ll add that i was someone who would hide things, even at a young age and try to ‘tough it out’.

It got so bad with the UC That when I went to the docs my blood count was HALF.

I was so tired, yet i wouldn’t eat due to the pain it caused me.

This was also a tricky time as i was a sports nut. On the football team, cricket team, squash team to name a few.

I couldn’t do any as the stress response it caused to play pretty much guaranteed I’d shot myself.

It took a YEAR of the doctors messing with different levels of steroids to slow the symptoms.

At one point the flares were so bad they almost want to force me to have surgery to remove my WHOLE large intestine.

Thank fuck my mum and I refused as I’ve seen people that have gone through this.

So now the symptoms laid off I ATE everything.

I know steroids played a role but I now know emotionally I had lost who I was.

I wasn’t playing sport, I wasn’t ripped with abs popping out all of a sudden.

Putting on 3 stone rocked me and my confidence.

And again if it stopped here that would be ENOUGH right.

Wrong.

As I was juggling hospital appointments and medications to make sure my bones weren’t getting beat up and the anti rejection drugs weren’t terrorising my liver.

I started to get severe headaches.

One week pasted, still there.

In fact they got worse.

I started to get double vision.

Remember I said I used to hide things and tough it out, I did it again.

It got so bad that after 3 months over headaches everyday I collapsed in tears in front of my mum.

In so much pain.

Straight to the GP we go and he sends me for an eye test.

Comical.

The eye test confirms I have 20/20 vision and mentions inflammation of the optic nerve.

As it turns out I have a routine appointment with the gut doc the next day.

We turn up and immediately he asks me why I’m squinting.

3-4 questions later I’m at the front of a line for a ‘routine’ CT stan.

As I lay there looking at this awesome machine I KNEW what was going to unfold.

I’d already looked up my symptoms. I just didn’t want to believe them.

Anyhoo, they do the CT scan and i see the radiologist pick up the phone and call someone. They ask me to wait outside even though they said i would be free to go after the scan.

I looked at my mum and told her they found something. I explained that i saw them on the phone.

We go upstairs the x-rays are behind the doctors head all lit up.

Its pretty clear what I saw.

He confirmed it as a brain tumour down the centre of my brain, attached to my short term memory.

You know what, I didnt even shed a tear. Not one.

I just looked at my mum and thought, what do I keep putting you through.

As if a year by my bedside as a kid and then they 100’s of hospital visits after weren’t enough.

Now this.

I played the ‘cool’ card and went back to school to tell my girlfriend at the time and friends that I will likely die.

Pretty cheery convo.

I was in hospital within 3 days (on my birthday) having a drain put in my brain to remove the fluid and a biopsy of the tumour.

Wanna hear something funny?

They ONLY ever saw this type of tumour ONCE ever before, in a 24 month old child.

Yay for me. lol.

so, fast forward.

They find its mostly form of skin cancer and mostly benign.
They agree that I can wait to after my A-Levels to have it removed.

Yay, coz I LOVED school.

Actually I just used the time to play table tennis and pool which I got pretty good at.

i took my A levels and got something like CCD I think.

Not bad for not attendance of class or revision. I just wanted to go to uni with my mates.

So July 1st comes and I’m Nil by mouth awaiting for a professor to saw my head open and palpate the centre of my brain.

Just before the operation the registrar told my mum and dad that their son would likely never be the same and the best i could hope for is brain damage.

Cheerful fucker, eh?

Thank fuck he wasn’t doing the operation eh?

So I get the injection to send me asleep and remember counting to more than they expected as it was met with surprise that i got to 7,8 and then 9 lol.

Next thing I know is I wake up in ICU, the nurse is asking me my name, the date etc to which I get right.

And never one to miss a opportunity for Fun, when my mum and dad come in to see me….

“cliff, cliff, how are you? Can you hear me?

I look at them and say ‘who are you?’

I have never seen the colour dropout of two peoples faces so fast lol.

Don’t worry I was quick to remind them it was a joke.

If you can’t laugh at potential death, when can you laugh. I made a super fast recovery and was discharged in just 7 days.

One small detail.

When the doc removed the staples from the 6 inch scar on the top of my head the wound sprung a leak.

Now spinal fluid is pretty much the most infectious fluid in the body.

So not ideal to have it leaking out your noggin.

They send me home.

Relieved to close the chapter, or so I thought on another health issue.

I go to bed.

I wake up in the middle of the night with the SAME exact headache i had with the tumour.

And fluid covering my pillow that leaked.

Mum and Dad call an ambulance and they refuse to send it as we were out of the catchment area.

They drive me to the hospital 1 hour away and we wait in A&E with me not being able to look at any light through the pain.

After a few hours we are seen.

Cchecked out and I’m a okay apparently.

They send me home with a new stitch.

I wake up the morning after the pain killers wear off and I’m in worse pain.

My mums pretty pissed, takes me to the hospital and marches me onto the ward i was on for the op and demands to see the doc.

1 vile of blood and around 1 hour later I’m diagnosed with meningitis.

The next 4 weeks i don’t remember.

Apparently it involved be being pretty much dead and acting like a zombie.

I may have also forgot to mention that they were overdosing me with double the adult dose of a drug which meant I stayed like a zombie.

When my mum demanded they look at it, they realised the mistake and within 48 hours id ‘come back to life’ as they put it.

Woohoo…

So thats the first 18 years of my life right there.

Of course there were plenty of good things, great friends and laughs to be had in between the dying.

Yet when people ask why I chose the path I did its because of what shaped me.

I sit here NOW symptom and med free from an impossible to cure immune issue.

No testing can find it.

No tumour (They actually kept it for research)

No issues with my back.

I just want you to know that as humans we are ALL here to do amazing things.

Things we all likely don’t quite get or fully comprehend yet.
So this is why I’m so passionate about the Unlimited Life and people creating a life on their terms.

I was told with authority I’d be in a wheelchair, be brain damaged and die at various points, yet here i am.

Call it a miracle.
Call it God’s work
Call it what you like.

I call it a ‘calling’, a reason to BE the person I choose to be.

Now, I’ve only really skimmed the surface of illness here as there is the whole ’emotional and mindset’ part i missed.

Maybe another day.

So I say to you.

If you are going to have a highlight reel you show to the world.

Show ALL of your life.

OWN IT ALL.

It will EMPOWER you to do amazing things.

I promise.

Feel free the SHARE this if it will assist someone you know.

P.S If you read this far, you likely are someone, like me that wants to thrive in your life.

If that’s the case, you’ll LOVE the FREE 5 Day Immune Reset.

The blueprint Marta and I use to optimise high performers mentally and physically using the A.R.A. Method.

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