Richie has an amazing story. He’s unassuming, so he says otherwise. In his early 40s, he has a beautiful wife, two lovely children, and a successful business in Vietnam. As the COVID pandemic took grip on the world, and the parts of the business were forced to close, he received some chilling news: he had Hodgkin’s lymphoma a cancer of the the lymphatic system, which is part of the immune system.
Chemotherapy is almost as devastating to the body as the disease itself. Richie has a steely determination, and his response proved that resolution. Ice baths, eight day fasts twice a year, and an intense exercise regime are part of his counter attack.
He’s been an avid cyclist for a few years. That helps. His development as a cyclist had been pretty impressive before the disease struck, and he determined to get back to and beyond the levels that he’d been achieving then. He’s doing it, and achieving personal bests on a regular basis.
It helps that Katie, Richie’s wife, is a keen cyclist too. Out on the roads, she sets up QOMs (Queen of the Mountain) wherever she goes.
He has been part of the HRV Health community for five months. When he joined, he was already six months into his remission, and his HRV figures proved it. The normal rMSSD for a man in Richie’s age group is 32. His numbers are in the two hundreds. At the level of elite athletes.
Shortly after joining, he worried about upcoming health tests to establish whether the remission was holding. His HRV numbers indicated there was no cause for concern, and so the tests proved.
A couple of weeks after that, his numbers plummeted. We were worried.
“It was the golf!”, he said.
We were mystified. Golf is not a disease. That is unless the fourball consumes a case of beers over the round. Richie lives life to the full.
The “golf” offered a lesson, and he took it seriously. Alcohol and Richie have parted friends.
At the start of the year, he spent a week fasting. “It was brutal!” he admits. Towards the end of the fast, we could see that his body was struggling. It did not look good.
As he started eating again, he rebounded. It’s impressive. His HRV statistics went into new territory, and even though he is pushing his exercise regime, and working on reducing his weight, his metrics show that he’s doing well.
Now his numbers are proving useful in avoiding overtraining. It’s the syndrome most likely to affect him now.
To us, Richie is a hero. He doesn’t think so. But that’s Richie.
