I had to have a complete liver transplant. I waited with a beeper for a year and 10 months to get that gift.
Organ donation is very personal to me. My mother, before her death, was on kidney dialysis for several years.
Everybody, sooner or later, will have to go under the knife. Let's hope they make out as well as I did.
I'm on a no-gummy bear or juice diet, and my body feels like it's dying on the inside.
My dad was suffering with cancer for six years and my mum was in coma for three-and-a-half months. So, I have seen the hospital life.
It was in 2003 that I realised there was no choice but to have dialysis treatment - by the time of the World Cup that year, I could barely walk. A year later, I finally had a kidney transplant.
My struggle to remain healthy is gradually killing me.
When you have cancer, it's like you enter a new time zone: the Cancer Zone. Everything in the Tropic of Cancer revolves around your health or your sickness. I didn't want my whole life to revolve around cancer. Life came first; cancer came second.
I was just used to being in shape, and getting out of it was really difficult for me.
It was challenging. It was never easy for me. My life changed suddenly, and I lost my health. I lost the body that I knew.
I finally admitted that obesity and diabetes were part of a life-threatening legacy - and I had to deal with that reality or die.
This is a year and a few months after the transplant. Before I had it my doctors told me that it would be the biggest thing that I ever had to face and believe me, when they take your liver out of ya and put another one in it's like replacing a football in your stomach.
Last year I had a stroke. It left me in bad shape. I had to teach myself how to walk and talk all over again. It was a long hard fight. My speech is not perfect but I'm getting there.
The patient must combat the disease along with the physician.
Going through chemo is a monster. You literally feel like you're dying every day.
I have an abdominal hernia which I tore and had operated on, and it's not the easiest thing in the world to get over. I'm gonna go on down the road, but hopefully I can get over the damn thing.
It's been so long since I've really truly felt what it's like to live life without substances to help. Massive struggle that's natural to one's health, but with addiction in my blood I play the cards I was dealt.
A few years ago, I thought, I'll never make it. I started to go to the doctor to help me lose weight.
The very process of living is a continual interplay between the individual and his environment, often taking the form of a struggle resulting in injury or disease.
I realized not long ago that by the time I leave this Earth, no matter when it is I will have officially only spent approximately 14 years of my life where I did not have to deal with cancer.
I had prostate cancer. It was rather painful and, in many ways, life-changing.
Chemotherapy tests your sanity.
For many years my inherited arthritis had given me problems.
A person on dialysis undergoes very heavy and irritating treatment, and in time, it seems more than you can bear.
My wife Lucy was very sick for nearly three years prior to her death. At one time, I was in the hospital with her for six months.
