Bloke woke up missing 3 fingers after horror illness – then became pro bodybuilder
A professional bodybuilder who found the sport after a devastating illness has revealed how he lost three of his fingers and nearly died after catching meningitis.
Justin Shier started out on his fitness journey as an enthusiastic BMX rider, before buying a gym and becoming a bodybuilder.
The strongman now competes with the IFBB as well as sharing his workout tutorials on his YouTube and Instagram pages.
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But, before he was finally able to make his professional bodybuilding debut in his 30s, he had nearly lost his life to bacterial meningitis when he was just 17.
“At the time it just felt like a really bad cold or like a flu, but there was one morning where it just progressed a lot past that,” he told the RxMuscle YouTube channel.
“I kind of just lost all bowel control, I had liver and kidney failure so my body just started shutting down. I remember making my way to the restroom one morning and I just collapsed.”
So, Justin remembered how he had been rushed to a nearby hospital while his brain began to swell and his organs shut down.
He explained: “I was pretty acutely aware that I was dying, in that moment you’re very certain of what’s going on.”
The then-teenager was quickly put into a medically induced coma, and was shocked when he saw the state of his hand when he eventually regained consciousness.
“I woke up two weeks later with three fingers that I lost due to sepsis; your body just takes blood flow to keep your heart and your brain going during that time and it will take it from your extremities,” he said.
“It looked like frostbite, the fingers were completely black, so I had to have those three fingers amputated. It was pretty rough, I was in the hospital for about three months after that.”
And despite the fact that Justin had been extremely fit before his illness, he described how he had been completely immobile at first during his long recovery.
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He continued: “I woke up fully paralysed from the neck down, I had to re-learn how to walk and move. It was about a solid week before I was wiggling my fingertips.”
Despite this setback, Justin was determined to regain his fitness, and explained that he had been inspired to start bodybuilding by a friend after he had bought a gym.
“I’d been a fan of bodybuilding, I just wasn’t competitive,” he recalled. “He told me he wanted to do it, and he told me if I did it he would do it.”
Less than a year later in 2019, Justin performed at his first show, and is now an IFBB professional.
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