I Survived Death at 15. Now I'm Defying Midlife.
A tale of comas and strangling nurses.
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At fifteen, I was given a 5% chance of survival.
Meningococcal meningitis septicaemia.
Brutal name. Brutal disease.
The fun:
Waking up covered in tiny black bruises.
Projectile vomit worthy of The Exorcist.
Being wheeled into an ambulance with the neighbours watching — and, a hazy memory of my penis poking out my pyjamas.
My family being told to prepare for amputations, deafness, brain damage… or my funeral.
A week in a coma. Another in a tropical disease ward, where doctors flew in just to gawp. Mum sleeping in my room every night.
My hair turned ginger. My body shed 2.5 stone in a few days.
Holes in my heel and my arse cheek that fused painfully to the bedsheets.
Steroids so strong I threatened to strangle the nurses, producing swearing so creative even the hardest 15-year-old would blush.
Photographed naked for medical journals as my scars were so mad (or at least that’s what they said the nude pics were for).
Six months recovering at home. Half a school year gone. A year of weakness.
To be honest, I don’t remember the horror of it (drugs are great) — but my family do.
When I woke up, I was alive — scarred, skeletal, but still with all my limbs.
And another chance.
That brush with death didn’t make me fearless.
But it did give me perspective.
It made me desperate not to waste the rest of my life.
It made me impatient. A bit of an outsider. Allergic to average.
It made me want to find every tool, trick, and edge I could — from fitness to thinking to humour — to improve my odds of a meaningful, unusual life.
They said I’d never be fit again.
At 48, I’m fitter than I was at 38 or 28.
Just like my illness, midlife isn’t inevitable decline.
It’s raw material.
Proof that you can use chaos, scars, and doubt as fuel.
If I can do that with 5% odds, you can do a lot more than just survive at 35, 45, or 55.
You can be sharper, stronger, funnier, fitter, and more relevant than 97% of your peers.
That’s the edge you’ll get inside Anti-Midlife Club™.
No coma required.
RESIST MIDLIFE.
Join me.
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