28-year-old Missouri native Michael Bigogno played multiple sports growing up, and went to college on a baseball scholarship.
But right after his junior year in 2012, he borrowed a friend's skateboard and had a bad accident that almost KILLED him. He fell turning a corner . . . the left side of his head hit a CURB . . . and he ended up with a serious blood clot called a subdural hematoma.
Doctors put him in a medically induced coma for two-and-a-half weeks, and had to remove a large section of his SKULL because of the swelling. At that point, they only gave him a 10% chance of surviving.
Once he was out of the woods, he had to do a ton of physical therapy almost every day for several months. And his memory was shot, so he could only remember things for about five minutes at first.
But after about a year, he made a FULL RECOVERY. And check this out. He went back and finished school . . . works as a gym teacher in St. Louis now . . . and just finished his first IRONMAN race about a week-and-a-half ago.
An Ironman is a two-and-a-half mile swim . . . a 112 mile bike ride . . . then a full 26-mile marathon...all back-to-back without stopping. He finished in 14 hours and 38 minutes, which was middle-of-the-pack. But obviously the point wasn't to win. It was to show the world (and himself) that he couldn't be stopped!
He says he never looks back or asks why it all happened to him. He just keeps moving forward and never takes a single day for granted.
AMAZING! Whatever challenge you're facing today, just remember that with hard work and grit, you WILL get through it!