Hi friend, Tomorrow’s knee surgery is experiment number one. A 6 a.m. start at Lourdes Hospital, hopefully just a quick trim and scope. If all goes well, I’ll be walking out by noon and right into rehab mode. I’ve got a day 1–14 plan that’s dialed in from the last time I went through this:• Ankle pumps to keep blood flow moving and prevent clots.• Quad sets to start firing the muscle again.• Heel slides for flexion.• Leg lifts to build strength back before the quad completely atrophies. I...
3 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Friend! This tournament forced me to do something I’ve never done before: take two medical timeouts. One when my knee locked up. Another when the heat and fatigue caught up. Add in the fact that I’m still adjusting to life with an ostomy, working around a torn meniscus, playing with a new paddle for only the second day, playing in brutal conditions, and the weekend became less about winning and more about managing. That’s not the way I want to compete. And that’s on me. The lesson I’m...
5 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Friend,We lost the quarterfinal to Ben and Alshon. We took the first game, and then twenty minutes in my body started shutting down. Breathing went tight. Vision narrowed. I threw up clear liquid on the court, took a medical timeout, and finished the match on fumes. Indoors yesterday I could have played forever. Outdoors today, the Malaysian heat cooked me alive. And it's not that I can’t handle heat. I have always loved it. Growing up in Georgia, I would go run in the middle of summer...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Hi friend, I woke up yesterday wrecked. Fever. Right ear felt like it took a roundhouse. Throat swollen, nodes up on the right, head pounding. I still played clean pickleball, which only made it more maddening. It made me question why I keep putting myself through this at forty with Crohn’s, an ostomy, and a body that never seems to stop breaking. I ditched the dusty Airbnb and moved into a cleaner studio with hot water. I don’t know if the last place had mold, but I didn’t get sick until I...
10 days ago • 2 min read
Hi there, Saturday in Manila reminded me how different life runs out here. The plan was simple: see the colorectal surgeon, pay, and move on. What actually happened looked more like this: Wait thirty minutes just to get in the elevator. Give up, take the 11 flights of stairs. Arrive very sweaty. Make it eleven floors up, only to find out the doctor was cash only. No problem, right? Until both hospital ATMs rejected my card. Back down eleven floors. Walk the streets hunting for an ATM that...
12 days ago • 1 min read
Hi there, Back for our second FGF!1. Tournaments Coming UpI’ve got a couple weeks of tournaments ahead. Malaysia next week, then Vietnam. My health is stable enough to compete, but I’ll need knee surgery soon. I had an MRI last week at Makati Med that confirmed it. For now, the plan is to get through these tournaments and then have the scopes done.The MRI itself was surprisingly smooth. It cost about 10,000 pesos, which is around 175 U.S. dollars. I walked in, paid at the front with my Visa...
15 days ago • 2 min read
Hi friend, This week brought two experiments. One in this ole body I compete with. One in the product I’m building. Both revealed the same truth: stress exposes flaws. Experiment 1: The Knee The MRI stripped away the guesswork. Bone bruise. MCL sprain. A complex tear in the medial meniscus. Fraying on the lateral side. Nothing catastrophic yet, but enough to make the knee feel like unreliable hydraulics. A piece of cartilage is partly out of place, and when it locks up, there’s the risk of...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Hi there, Last December in India, my knee locked up for the first time. It was during a test exhibition for the pro league livestream. One minute I was moving fine, the next I could barely hobble. I tried to act like nothing was wrong because I didn’t want to scare my partners or let anyone down. I forced myself off court slowly, got checked by the trainer, and was told nothing seemed wrong. It didn’t make sense. Eventually it loosened up and I played again, but something had clearly changed....
19 days ago • 1 min read
Feel Good Friday – First Edition Hi friend, The world feels heavy right now. Headlines are loud, often dark, and easy to doomscroll. I want this newsletter to be the opposite. Every Friday I will share five good things happening. From projects with momentum, stories of progress, to reasons for optimism. Here is the first one. 1. Ostowear is getting real My first Ostowear sample belts are landing in Manila this weekend or early next week. Three factories, three designs. One supplier in Wuhan...
22 days ago • 2 min read