5 Facts About Me (Expose Yourself Challenge)

So, 2 days ago I was nominated for yet another shitty challenge, this time by @filotasriza3, and this time I have to expose 5 facts for myself.  Enough with the introduction, let's get this shit over!

1. My Biggest (and Only) Fear as a Kid Was That Aliens Would Abduct Me in My Sleep

I think I was quite fearless as a child. I would never say no to a fight (even if I knew I was about to get my ass beaten), defy parents and teachers all the time, steal all the time from the shops in the neighborhood just for the fun of it, return in scratches and blood everytime I went out to play, blah blah..In retrospect, I don't think I had a sense of fear for anything, and even if there was one, I don't think I paid much attention to it.

Fuck you creepy alien

But every super hero has a weakness. I was lucky enough to grow, from as long as I can remember, with plently of video games and plenty of thrillers and sci-fi. Especially sci-fi. My brothers would also buy all kinds of paranormal magazines (about aliens and shit) that I would consume in an instant. 

I guess I somehow grew a phobia for aliens and again for as long as I remember until the age of about 15 I feared that aliens would come and abduct me in the night. I used to imagine how they would take me into their spaceships and perform all kind of weird experiments on me. Or maybe they would just kill me, after all the xenomorph just wants to eat you or take you to the queen for impregnation. I wasn't that much afraid of the Predator though, since I carried no guns and was a child. Definitely, not worthy enough to be hunted in his eyes.

Too bad for them my blanket had magical powers. All I had to do was cover myself from top to bottom and transform into a tight human-blanket cocoon that their green neutron-beam couldn't suck back to their spaceship. I am still here, alive and with no tracking chips in my brain so I guess the blanket did have magical powers!

2.  I used to do lots of hiking and cycling 

When I became a bachelor student I immediately grew a love for cycling and hiking. My stamina was always on average levels, but two years later I had become a true beast. I could easily cycle 200 km on Saturday and then hike another 50 km the next day. It was actually the only time of my life I was thin with no belly :D If we sit for a beer I can share all kinds of stories for hours and hours and hours. It was probably the happiest period of my life, despite the fact that I had trouble finding other crazy people and usually ended up going alone for these adventures :)

If all went well, there is a good chance that by now I would have become one of those "weirdos" that you see on tv travelling the world alone on foot or something. But not all went well... Two years later I started to have some weird (but not painful) symptoms on the left knee and eventually had an MRI... The diagnosis, Osteochondritis dissecans. 

This is a rarely encountered condition. In simple words, a small part of your knee cartilage starts to detach and if left untreated dies and leads to severe osteoarthritis. In case you don't know, cartilage defects are the most difficult to treat knee injuries. And even if treatment does succeed, my cartilage would never be good as new. I would have to be careful for the rest of my life, which meant avoiding running (a short bout here and there is ok) and hiking long distances on a regular basis. If I continued to do what I was doing I would probably need a knee replacement by age 25 and eventually become a wheelbound cripple by 50.

I was shuttered, I was essentially forced to live a normal lifestyle.

3. I have had a total of 5 knee surgeries & Stem Cells Saved My Knee

The first one was about the Osteochondritis dissecans I talked about in the left knee. That surgery was very successful and that knee never bothered me again. However, about a year later I started to have some symptoms on the other knee too. The diagnosis was the same, only this time the detached part was very small so I managed a few years with just physiotherapy, without the knee deteriorating. But then about 5 years ago, my knee started to become quite painful. So I got settled for surgery, to have a microfracture. But that surgery was cancelled mid-way because they discovered (after they had insterted the arthroscope and had cleared the joint) they were missing some important biodegradable screws that were needed to fix my detached cartilage back to its place. So I had to wait another month and had a second surgery on that knee.

For about 1.5 years that knee went fine but then pain came back. Microfracture surgery is a hit and miss thing. Maybe it will work and you are ok for the rest of your life, maybe not. If it doesn't, chances are you get diminishing results with each one you have. And since it didn't work with me I looked for another, more advanced & permanent solution and eventually participated in a top-notch stem cell clinical trial where they took stem cells from my belly fat, cultured them for 6 weeks or so and reimplanted them back to the damaged area of my knee. Three years later the knee still feels great and the MRI are really good, showing new healthy tissue that is fully integrated to the original surrounding tissue.

I am 30 years old. In total, I have spend 12 months on crutches :D

4. I Used to Spam the Internet For a Living

I used to sell all kinds of weird shit on the internet for a living. But my days of serious affiliate marketing are gone now... What kind of shit? Go to your mail. Open your spam box. You will get an idea :D

5. This is My Favorite Song

I am not the biggest Metallica fan. But "One" is definitely my favorite song and everytime I listen to it, it brings back a very fuzzy memory. A memory that feels so distant now it's almost as it belongs to a totally different person. Maybe it does.. After all, some say  98% of the atoms in the human body get replaced every year:

Ok, and that brings us to the end of the challenge. I am nominating the whole SteemStem administration team, @janusface and @ned Hopefully, the latter one will not chicken out like the last time I nominated him for the B&W photo challenge