Male 46 yold
Contracted Rhabdomyolysis 2007 @ Age 38.
Near Renal Failure. Hospitalised in a public hospital for 7 days.
I have been struggling with recurring symptoms for 8 years to date.

Here is my Story:

At school I was the top athlete, and in the gym I was the guy who others aspired to be. (or so I thought!) Exercise was my life. I was reading books on running and weight lifting in the 80s from an old town library. The books were out dated and preached the old method of, No Pain, No Gain! Others stated that it was normal for blood to appear in your urine if you were a long distance runner. So it was that I taught myself to push through the pain and ignore the signs of blood after a long run.

With movies like Rambo and Terminator, I figured I would turn to body building and give that a try. I seemed to be a natural at it. Back then, it was all about grunting super intense workouts. I found it hard to rest, so would often hit the treadmills to sacrifice the gains for the highs that easily came to me. I exercised so much my entire life it was pretty much all I knew.

I must admit though, I did take a few seasons off as the challenges of life passed with the passage of time. This often saw me gaining weight and the smashing out some bouts of exercise to quickly lose the weight. With each passing year, I noticed it was taking slightly longer to get back into shape. I always seemed to find super human strength from the years of mentally pushing myself. It was deeply ingrained in me. That was until one day an ambulance scraped me off the side of the road in 2007 when my kidney packed it in.

The days previous I knew something was wrong. It was when driving to town; I had to stop my car and get out and stretch my calf muscle. It was so painful I could not drive. Nothing like this had happened before and I really had no idea what was wrong. After making on appointment with a GP, I was told You just have cramps I tried to explain that this was like no cramp I had ever had before. I also explained the previous days to this happening; I was waking up with both legs in great need to stretch out as far as they could. No matter how much a stretch my legs upon wakening, they were as hard as iron and painful. You just have cramps, it will go away come back if it continues (probably worth noting I was on welfare and being bulkbilled)

I went home. The very next morning, I could not shake off my iron legs. I was crawling on the floor in a huge amount of pain.

Allow me to note my exercise regime just previous to this:
I was pushing as hard as I could with 30 to 40km bike rides back to back after morning treadmill runs I had just finished a 130km ride only days before. I was struggling to get out of my saddle as my legs were locked up. I always struggle with stopping to pedal. Something in my just kept pushing and I would lose track of time. To settle the pain I would drink my home brew! What can I say, I was an extreme case. Exercise was all I knew and the world was not really kind.

So anyways I am able to stand up and reach my phone, I call my friend because I was feeling like an idiot having to call an ambulance. I mean the doctor already said you just have cramps What was I going to say to the Ambos? Hi and have these really painful cramps? Whilst waiting for my friend to arrive, I walked outside and make it half way to the front gate where I was suddenly hit with another bout of cramps. Both legs at the same time. I dropped to the ground fighting back the urge to yell out in pain. The inside of legs felt so hard, I thought my upper thigh bones were going to snap.

I was living in a rural area with my closet neighbor well over a hundred yards away. My friend eventually arrives and I seem to recover enough to take a seat in his car. Off we go, but not long down the road he had to stop as I went rigid all again with no room to stretch out. This time I cried, saying if I dont get out of the car I was going to die!

As I opened that door I fell out onto the side of the rural road. I rolled down an embankment some pulling up with my legs doing their super stretch things. I was no screaming at the top of my lungs as the pain was now 10 fold than any other time. My friend described how white I looked as I was fighting to stay conscious with the thought of how blue the inside of my mouth must have looked.

Guess what the ambo said when he pulled up. Whats a matter mate, you got a case of bad cramps Had I not been so exhausted from the ordeal, I would of given him who know what!!!
I arrived at the hospital with my iron legs and was asked if they were always that hard. I was later really concerned after I was told to do a urine test and saw my pee come at as Black as Coal! I passed it to the orderly and he seemed as surprised as me. Im like WTF! But no one said anything to me for quite some time after that. Something about my CK levels being like 45000 or something stupendously high and how much pain I must have been in. (Yea Right!) I am telling you now, it was the worst pain in my entire life and I had a lot of experience with pain.

I stayed there for a week hooked up to a drip. I continued to have spasmodic cramping episodes where I needed help to get back into bed. I was told to move around a little as soon as I could. I eventually managed to walk up and down the corridor and my pee eventually went from coal black, to brown red, and then dark yellow red, to good enough to go home were it finally cleared up some more.

There were quite a few doctors that saw me I felt like I was some kind of special case, although they told be bugger all about just how *&^%ed up I really was. Basically that I would have to make sure that I drink lots of water from now on and be careful exercising in the future.

I must have had a bad case. In fact Im pretty sure they told me, had I not gotten to them when I did, that I could have died. Something about when the renal system shuts down, there is not much that can be done. I really did not understand it all, as I was pretty incoherent for the most part but I do believe they could of giving me more support when sending my home like they did.

NEXT I will tell you just how much I suffered from that point on.

Wow!

Thank you so much for sharing your story! I can definitely relate to the medical professionals (a) not taking me seriously then (b) being completely useless in terms of advising me on how to recover and the way forward.

I have been so frustrated by this experience and devastated from being out of training. Every day is an effort, and I terrified that my symptoms will suddenly return - I've experienced some swelling of my arms, the affected limbs, since then , first from playing computer games (for crying out loud) then from returning to training.

I am also dealing with a lot of social backlash from this. I've lost the trust of my friends and family because they think that I did this to myself. I've been feeling very alone and, no matter how much I tell them it was out of the blue, they are convinced that I was pushing through pain and overtraining. I started to log my story on YouTube in case someone else out there needs to see my story and my journey, because personally I feel so alone in this and I want other rhabdo sufferers to know they're not alone

I can also relate to the fact that I felt like a circus animal in the hospital - different doctors and specialists coming to see the "interesting case study." The doctors were asking me about rhabdo, how I got it, what the symptoms are, what the risk factors are etc because they honestly had no clue about exertional rhabdo so I had to give them a medical lesson.