AJ shares how he started doing martial arts, and doesn’t let his bleeds or hemophilia stop him from going 100%.
My name is Aj. I am a hemophiliac of 31 years old. I’m from Susanville originally, and I live in Martinez now.
Well, as a kid, I wasn’t able to do much school wise because teachers were always worried about me getting a bleed by playing basketball, football or what not, so interacting with other children was fairly difficult so it made me shy in the long run. After a while of getting bleeds in my body, it limited things that I can do, period. Like, running and such and being able to play with kids isn’t really a possibility when you’re stuck in the hospital with bleeds. So, I never really got a full childhood, so to say, because I was always in the hospital and my main interactions were with nurses.
Never give up; there’s no such thing as, “I can’t”, “I won’t” or “No.” Those are all the figments of the imagination. There’s nothing you can’t do if you put a little bit of effort. Every hemophiliac always says, “I’ll never have that problem happen to me” or “I won’t have bad joints”, until you get older and you then you have bad joints and your like, “Oh, that really does happen”. No one ever really wants to listen to their peers as a child because their always like, “You’re just telling me that so I don’t do that”. But they’re really telling you that because they’ve gone through the same problems as you and they know how easily you can break. So their letting you know beforehand so you don’t have to go through the same stuff they did. Kids don’t really comprehend that so much and they’re just about learning their own life mistakes. It would just be better if they comprehended how badly it could turn out for them in the long run.
Never give up and always know that you can do it and no one can tell you no as long as you believe you can.
I have no real restraints. I always used to think I was restrained or I couldn’t do something that I put my mind to. Like martial arts for instance. As a kid, I always saw my brother doing martial arts and then I tried it once. I tried to do a ninja roll on my shoulder and ended up paralyzed from the neck down for 6 months. So, that threw me away from wanting to do it again, thinking, “I’ll never be able to do this because the second I try to do something it’s instantly going to break me.”
On my 21 birthday, I went to the Taekwondo class and started doing it and surprisingly enough it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I can actually do this and this whole time I thought because of my hemophilia I was never able to do the things that normal folks can do. Surprise! I found out that I am capable of anything I can put my mind to. I started off last year as a white belt and I am now on the verge of a blue belt, 3 belts away from a black belt. I want to teach other little kids and instruct other hemophiliacs and show that they are capable of doing this.
I am a river guide, so every year for the past 10 plus years, we have been doing a Disabled Adventure Outfitters camp where you take kids that have disabilities or hemophilia (things they think they can’t do in real life), then we take them out on the river and show them that there’s nothing that you can’t do. White water rafting seems pretty crazy or hectic and something you might get a bleed from, but it really isn’t all that bad if you just do it and have the right people around you. So I give back to the community by guiding these young teens and children down the river, showing them that they are capable of doing anything the want.
I will always have my mom’s back, my brothers’ back, my sisters’ back. In this community, every hemo has the back of the hemo next to them. It’s a great wealth of information; if ever I had some issues I could always count on my hemo family to understand. Being that it’s a huge community, theres lots of people who are always willing to help you regardless of what problems you might have.
Every hemo I’ve ever met has never really called me AJ, they always say, “Whats up brother?” because we’re super close.
Never hold back. Always go 100%. Don’t say that bleeds will stop you because you’re stopping you by saying bleeds will stop you.
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