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In May, former UFC fighter Ben Askren was healthy and had plans for the rest of the year. Those plans did not include fighting of his life for months in the hospital and undergoing a life changing double lung transplant surgery, but that’s the hand life dealt him.
The 41 year-old doesn’t remember anything from May 28 util July 2 but survived. After 59 days, he was released from the hospital only to be re-admitted days later with an infection.
Throughout the harrowing ordeal, Askren and his family have provided regular updates on his condition and recovery. On Sunday, Askren posted a video update to social media from his hospital bed saying the experience has been ‘humbling.’
“I believe this is update No. 8, and I’m still in the effing hospital. I came on Monday for a check up. They said something was infected, and now it’s kind of just been thing after thing after thing,” Askren said.
“I’m going to be out of here sometime. I just don’t know when it is, so I just had to tell myself that, tell myself to be patient and not get too frustrated,” Askren continued.
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Despite being faced with enormous physical challenges and lifestyle changes, Askren has stayed positive and focused on recovery. The experience has been admittedly ‘humbling,’ but he’s not going to let pride stand in his way.
“The topic I want to talk about today is pride. This has been a really, really humbling experience because before this I was pretty much totally self sufficient,” he said.
“I took care of myself, didn’t ask for help, but man, when you can’t, I couldn’t run away when I couldn’t walk and talk. I asked for help. And even now, especially when I’m at home, I’ve got to keep asking for help because I can’t do much myself at all. That was kind of humbling and it was good,” Askren continued.
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“The way I see pride or ego, they hold so many people back in life. The biggest thing I can relate in wrestling to it is there’s certain kids with too much pride and they’re unwilling to admit what their bigger problem is.
“If I can tell a kid, ‘Hey, this is your problem,’ and they don’t have ego, they’ll work to solve that problem,” he added. “If they have too much pride, they’re aways going to make excuse for why that big problem isn’t a problem.”
“That same kind of thing happens in regular life also. People with too much pride don’t want to admit what their bigger problem is. A lot of times they don’t admit they have a problem at all, but to the outside looking in people, it’s obvious, obvious they have some issues. If you acknowledge what your problem is, you can solve your problem. If you’re unwilling to acknowledge your problem, you really can’t solve it.”
