Thursday, March 1, 2012

From a Fan: Survival at Home

I love survival shows, and Man Woman Wild gave me inspiration, knowledge, and also made me and my wife laugh because the situations you're sometimes in are so recognizable to us.

You have a great sense of humor and are a breath of fresh air in this over commercialized world. You remind me of a friend of mine who, just as you did in your show, taught me to see things from a different perspective. After a tour in Kosovo he suffered from PTSD; he was able to overcome it and now serves as a firearms specialist in the Dutch army teaching Special Forces and security personnel all over the world. We often talked about survival shows and he told me that guys in the army are trained to withstand any environment. But for someone who is severely ill and has to battle that illness every day, that's a different kind of survival and you can't get training for that.

When I was 29 years old, I had surgery on my left shoulder. What should have been a simple medical procedure changed my life for good; I wound up with a dystrophy syndrome (an illness that causes nerves, blood cells, and muscles to be extremely sensitive for touch, stress, temperature changes or even sound, the pain is unbearable). I was prescribed almost every painkiller in the book, and due to the long term usage of these painkillers (over 6 years) I've become addicted. Even one day without them results in severe withdrawal symptoms. Sometimes I wonder what is worse; the illnesses or the medication.

So, this is my survival situation--like you would say, a static survival situation because there's no boat, car, or helicopter to signal that would come to my rescue. First thing I learned was keeping faith; I pray for strength. Ruth quoted Winston Churchill in one of the episode: "If you're going through hell, keep going." This is true, no matter how bad the situation looks, at a certain point things WILL change.

To keep busy, I started composing music and I also collect knives; the Hawke's Hellion is a good example of an inspiring knife. There are quite a few people out there who love my music and that gives me the energy to go on, even dream of releasing an album, so I have a goal which is a key point for survival.

You and Ruth have shown me so much of the basic life survival skills that although my situation sometimes looks dark and helpless, there is a way to deal with it. As a couple, you have shown that no matter how bad a situation gets, you come out stronger--which is also true with me and my wife.

I want to thank you both for your inspiring and motivating show, which makes us laugh as well, because humor is sometimes better than any medicine!

God bless you,

Marco

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