Ben Askren

I could,

I had a little infection on my elbow.

I washed, I showered, I soaked it, I added bacterial.

And within a couple of days, it was gone and I didn't think much of it, you know?

And then I made no connection, but about four days later, my back started hurting and I thought, okay, this is a back spasm.

And everyone always said, you would do it differently.

And I said, no, I wouldn't.

Whoever could guess, oh yeah, my back hurts because my body's eating my lungs from the inside.

Like no one's ever heard of that.

That's totally ridiculous.

So the staff got into my blood and it turned into a necrotizing pneumonia in which, uh, my body was essentially eating my lungs from the inside out.

That was what the back pain was.

So I dealt with that for about, uh, I think five days before I ended up in the hospital.

And then when I was in the hospital, it was like a really bad, like sepsis and necrotizing pneumonia.

Um,

And yeah, so they tried doing all they could to kind of like save my lungs and keep me alive.

And at some point it became the only way I was going to stay alive was to have a lung transplant, which again, I wasn't awake for any of this.

And so I believe I was in the Milwaukee hospital for about three weeks before that happened.

And then I got the lung transplant and I think I was still kind of like unconscious for about six more days after that.

And then I woke up and there I was.