I just talked to my best friend of 40 years today.

bycbmercado

437 followers

4 years ago

I just talked to my friend for the past 40 years today. We talked about our rich past filled with our past history together. When we were in high school we both quit the football team. We wanted to try something different and new for ourselves.

We joined the wrestling team and started to hit the gym really hard. We both got huge. My chest maxed out at 52". Everyone knew not to mess with us, even though we never got in fights and were pretty good students. We were part of the wrestling team which added to our mystique. We went to parties and drank lots of beer together. We had lots of fun staying out all night on warm summer nights having deep discussions about life, girls, cars and the next party. You know, important stuff. Then we went to different colleges on the other ends of the state. This was way before smartphones and emails. We actually had to use a phone connected to a wall. We made new friends at our respective colleges and visited each other occasionally. We still went on summer trips and winter ski trips but most importantly we kept working out. Year after year getting bigger and faster than the year before. I benched pressed 405lbs. 3 times and he squatted 750lbs.

But then we hit this invisible wall called age. Now, I'm saying that we are that old. We are both 55. Old to some young to others. By the way the pic above is of me and my mom when I was 18. Just for reference.

I started slowing down in my mid 40s. My friend started slowing down in his early 50s. The aches and pains were catching up to us. Until, I had a second major crisis. My kidneys stopped working so I went into dialysis 3 times a week for 3 1/2 hour sessions for 3 days a week. At first, I was big and strong. But after 12 years of that I soon lost size and weight. In my picture above I was 225lbs. I did lose fat and got semi-ripped for a period of time. I started dialysis at 200lbs. After a time, I went down to 165lbs. Then after waiting 10 years I got a match for a donor kidney. I had my transplant and left the hospital at 120lbs.

I lost 100lbs in the most excruciating slow way possible. But I am stabilizing now at a current weight of 13olbs. Now this Covid-19 scare has had my gym closed for 3 months. I am still waiting for my gym to open so I can attempt to put more weight on.

Now my friend. His collapse was much faster. He still went to the gym 3 times a week and he ran 3 times a week. After a run he noticed he had maybe pulled a muscle in his back. He was a dutiful stretcher but this wouldn;t go away. So he went to a Dr. and he recommended back surgery right away. My friend disagreed and sought a second opinion and he said with plenty of physical therapy he could avoid surgery. He liked this Dr's opinion much better.

So he started his physical therapy and his back didn't improve. In fact, it now spread to his hip. Now his back and hip were all fucked up. So he sought a third opinion and that Dr. told him he needed both surgery and intense physical therapy.

So he took the papers home to read them over and sign the required docs. Then the unthinkable happened. All Dr's appointments were canceled and all operations were put on hold for the Covid scare. So now he's in limbo. He gets by doing physical therapy sessions through Skype.

He's still in pain and he walks with a cane now. Just so you know we never took steroids so please don't ask us about that.

This is when he calls me up and relives our glory days as weightlifter jocks who were ready to take on the world in our youth. We talked bout how we kept our bodies big and in relatively good shape over the years. We talked about how we would have done things differently and how to take the good with the bad.

We did have respectable and happy lives...taking the bad with the good of course. But in the end we are just two friends getting older and fading away. We won't be remembered for what we did or said. We do hope that we will be remembered for sharing a laugh or two.

If you gotthis far reading this, I commend you.

Courtney-