In a matter of weeks, I went from having two six-figure jobs, traveling the US, and playing
basketball with pro trainers, to sleeping in the hospital for two weeks, taking 20 pills
a day, and becoming incapable of doing everyday tasks — let alone work.
**This last year has been by far the most challenging year of my life.**
I thought I had more or less achieved the goals I set out to achieve.
I was thriving.
I had just reached 100,000 subscribers on this channel, I was getting private viewings
of luxury cars, and the two startups I was involved in were doing great things.
I felt invincible.
Until March 21st, 2021 that is…
On that day, Michelle and I were just trying to move into Philly and I began to swell uncontrollably.
What we thought were allergies from an insect bite was actually a rare auto-immune disease
that to this day, had no cause.
Now, looking back a little over a year since my diagnosis, I finally feel like I’m thriving
again.
I’m not thriving in the same ways that I would’ve categorized before, but thriving
nonetheless.
**This mental shift was developed gradually, and I’m grateful to still be here to share
my story with all of you.**
I**t was a long, difficult, and honestly pretty terrible journey to get back to where I am
today.**
I still have a long way to go, but hopefully explaining my physical and mental journey
over the last 14 months will help anyone else dealing with uncontrollable life situations.
And hopefully, like me, you don’t let these situations break you.
**My time in the hospital was a blur.
All I really remember is how badly I wanted to sleep in my own bed and how I really didn’t
know what was about to happen to me.**
Naively, I thought that my time in the hospital would be the worst part of this journey.
I didn’t realize how badly my disease will deteriorate both my mental and physical health.
After my second stint in the hospital, I actually reached remission fairly quickly.
In the following two weeks, I lost around 60 pounds, which revealed all of the stretch
marks you see today.
And although I was on a lot of medication, the heaviest hitter was the 80 mg of prednisone
I was taking daily.
Some of the more serious side effects of being on such a high dosage of prednisone are depression,
rapid weight gain, irritability, and trouble sleeping.
Despite the fact that I have never been seriously ill before, it seemed like I got hit with
every side effect under the sun between prednisone and the other medications I was prescribed
to take daily.
**And for me, with this channel finally gaining the traction I hoped for, I was crushed feeling
like I couldn’t post videos as I was rapidly gaining weight.**
At this point, my brain felt foggy, I couldn’t juggle as many tasks as I used to, and I really
had to focus.
I ended up taking a solid step back in everything I was involved in.
With one of the startups, I was paid as an hourly contractor, so I had no hours to log
at the time.
With the other startup, we were trying to maximize runway, so as a founder, I stopped
taking on a salary.
At the same time, my last stream of income, YouTube, came to a screeching halt because
I couldn’t get over the idea of showing the current version of my face to the world.
Momentum on this channel slowed, and my appearance got worse and worse, no matter what I did
to try and slow the weight gain.
Financially, this was my rock bottom.
Basically all my streams of income came to a halt all at once, and now I had thousands
of dollars of hospital bills after insurance deductions.
At this point, my entire focus became getting myself back to my usual self, one day at a
time.
I had sold my car, cancelled the orders I had for any new ones, and paused travel for
anything not business related.
**Financially, I was in a tough spot, but fortunately the incredible people at the companies
I was involved in were very understanding.** They gave me time to ease back into things,
and slowly but surely, I was able to reach close to my old productivity levels again.
**Emotionally, I can really only describe my experience as overwhelming.** My disease
had no cause, and chances of relapsing are actually greater than 80%.
Every pain, every discomfort, and every time I peed and I saw bubbles, I would get really
anxious.
This experience sucked, and I was and still am, terrified that I’ll just have to go
through this over and over again.
**The medicine brought me lower when I was already at my lowest.** And looking back,
I’m just proud of myself for sticking to everything the doctors told me, for continually
checking on myself, and for allowing me time to recover.
**I think my biggest issue with the whole recovery process was that I thought I was
different than everyone else.** I thought I’d recover faster than the timelines they
gave me because I was younger and started from a healthier state, and I was point blank
wrong.
While the optimistic expectations I placed on myself had me looking forward to the future,
it placed me in an unhealthily impatient position.
Every time I’d check the scale and my weight went up, I would feel utterly defeated.
I was eating healthier than I ever was, working out consistently, and going on daily walks
— but I looked in the mirror and saw this.
For the last year or so, I have avoided making eye contact with mirrors that I walk by because
I’m embarrassed to see myself.
**I’ve made every excuse to not meet up with certain people or to post videos like
this because I’ve been scared about people judging the way I look.** I really dreaded
the question, “How are you KJ?”
because if I were to answer honestly, I knew that I would just make the other person worried
or sad.
And if I sugarcoated anything, it just felt like I had to take on more of the mental burden
of dealing with what I had to deal with.
To make the situation even tougher, I physically could not do things that I loved to do before,
like going on runs, working out everyday, or playing basketball.
It will take around 6-12 months since being off of prednisone for my metabolism and muscle
strength to get back to normal.
What kept me sane is trying to hold off any self-judgement or worry until I get past that
time table, which would put me around November, this year.
**So I thought that I might as well get sharper mentally as I continued to recover physically.**
I started spending extra time learning more about my other interests, like investing,
coding and creating in general.
For all of you that are hoping to sharpen your skills in these areas and so much more,
a great place to learn is Skillshare.
Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for anyone
who loves learning and wants to explore their creativity and learn new skills.
Through creativity, Skillshare can help you and me make 2022 a year of new learning, growth,
and connection.
If you’re interested in making a career pivot, or leveling-up your skills for your
side hustles, Skillshare is a great resource for you.
Classes like “Demystifying Cryptocurrency” by Meltem Demirors and “Start Your Creative
Career” with Sonja Rasula gave me valuable insights to push forward in my various endeavors.
Skillshare is ad-free, so I’m able to stay in the zone while exploring new skills.
And since new premium classes launch every week, there’s always something new to discover.
The first 1,000 people to use the link or my code will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare.
Huge shoutout to Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
**Okay so how’s my health now?** I’m pleased to say that I more or less feel normal internally.
That is to say that if I didn’t look in the mirror or I didn’t feel the additional
weight on my joints, I wouldn't know anything was wrong with me.
But I would be lying if I said that there weren’t days where I was still really down.
**This last week for example, Michelle and I made a trip to the mall to get larger formal
wear for MIT’s postponed graduation events.** At this mall, I could not find but one suit
jacket that fit, and not one pair of dress pants that fit.
As I tried on everything that was on the rack, and everything was too small, I began to dread
the events that I was so excited to go to before.
I went up 8 pant sizes and 8 suit sizes.
Barely anything that I wore before fits me anymore, and that’s crushing on the days
where I’m not feeling so good.
**Although my face has gotten better, which shows progress, I’m at my heaviest right
now.** The weight should come off faster than it would if I hadn’t been sick, but right
now is when I’m starting to reconnect with friends.
Right now is when I have things like my graduation and senior ball.
It crushes me sometimes to think about others viewing me in a negative light for things
that they don’t know were out of my control.
**Then there’s the fact that I have had to actually buy hundreds of dollars worth
of clothes that I am hoping I will never wear again, which in it of itself is really interesting
to grapple with.**
Besides that though, I’ve been able to really improve my well being by taking a step back
to focus on physical health through sleep, exercise, proper recovery, and diet.
While also focusing on my mental health by relaxing and not trying to do too much at
any given moment.
So I apologize for not posting as often as I know you’d like, and I guarantee I’ll
get back to my normal self with time.
Over the last couple of months since I moved to Boston, I’ve really tried to get back
to doing the things that I want to do, whether that be YouTube, traveling, going to concerts,
watching NBA games, or generally hanging out with friends.
**And something that’s really helped me through this is joining a Facebook group.**
Hearing everybody else’s story around rare kidney diseases helped me put things into
perspective.
I didn’t have to deal with these issues as I raised a family, and I was fortunate
enough to experience all of this in a world that normalized working from home.
Everything is all about perspective.
**I’ve carried over some of these perspectives into my personal goals and aspirations.**
I’m now much more focused on living in the moment and experiencing everything that life
has to offer, and less focused on how much money I hope to make.
I hope to one day raise a family of my own.
I want to be able to one day play basketball again, and I want to continue to share my
advice and story with the world.
I will continue to strive to be the most successful version of myself, but I’m not going to
sacrifice my general happiness in the meantime to get there.
**I want to make sure that I also shoutout my closest friends, family, and Michell for
keeping everything into perspective for me.** They never allowed me to fully break even
when life seemed to keep hitting me.
Michelle’s love and support for me never wavered the slightest no matter how difficult
the situation has gotten.
I’m just very grateful to be in the position where I have so much love around me on a daily
basis.
**As of last week, I’m in complete remission from the kidney disease.** I’m in the fortunate
position to be able to meet with a great Kidney doctor who I can call with any questions here
in Boston.
I’m currently taking zero medication and am expected to make a complete recovery outside
of the stretch marks.
I still have slight panic attacks when I get my blood drawn, but everything seems to really
be trending in the right direction again.
**Thank you all for supporting me through this and let me know in the comments what
types of videos you hope to see in the future.**